God's Covenant

Have you ever made a promise? I’m sure you have. We all have.

Maybe you promised someone you would do something for them. Or took a loan and promised to repay it. Or made a promise to yourself to eat better or exercise more.

Often promises are spoken. Sometimes we write them down, like an IOU scribbled on a piece of paper and handed to a friend. Sometimes they are very complicated and contain lots of big words, like legal contracts. Even paper money is a promise. The paper itself has no value but it represents a bank’s promise to recognize the value printed on it.

But it’s not just global economies that depend on promises. The kingdom of God is built on a promise too, a promise so serious that it has a special name: covenant

Have you ever made a covenant? We make many promises everyday, promises to quit a bad habit, take out the trash, or help somebody with a project but we will only make one or two covenants in our lives. Covenants are very serious business.

I keep a document in my computer that I run across from time to time when I am cleaning things up. It’s simply titled “Vow.” I like to open it and read it to remind myself of one of the covenants that I live under.

This is what it says:

“David

Recognizing that marriage is a sacred covenant ordained by God and that in its highest form it is a symbol of Christ’s relationship with his church

I vow to love you and in loving you I will demonstrate my love for Christ

With Christ as my example I will serve you, even as He washed his disciples feet.

I will seek your happiness and in doing so I will please my God and your God

I will walk beside you and cling to you through sorrow, drought, brokenness, persecution, and disappointment. I will laugh with you, cry with you, and seek the face of God together with you.

I will know only one husband as the church has only one Lord

I will remember this vow and keep it continually before me in my thoughts and my actions. I will speak of it when I go in and when I come out, when I lay down and when I get up. I will engrave it in my heart and write it on the doorposts of our house as long as brick and flesh remain.

May God deal with me if I should break this covenant I make before you and before Him this day.

God keep us faithful to one another and to Him

God grant that we are separated by nothing but death, that only for a short time, and that we awake together to meet our God.

Amen”

Marriage is an example of a covenant

Unlike promises which can be quickly fulfilled and may cost us very little. Covenants affect us for the rest of our lives. Once we step into a covenant there is no backing out. It’s for better or for worse, till death do us part.

Covenants, unlike promises, are never private matters. They are community matters. They change our self identity and our community identity

Why all this talk about marriage? We are moving from something familiar that we understand and deal with everyday to something less familiar.

God also has a covenant.

We can read about God’s solemn covenant with his people in Deuteronomy 5 and 6.

Deuteronomy 5 begins like this:

“1 And Moses called all Israel, and said unto them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and judgments which I speak in your ears this day, that ye may learn them, and keep, and do them.

2 The LORD our God made a COVENANT with us in Horeb.

3 The LORD made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day.

4 The LORD talked with you face to face in the mount out of the midst of the fire,

5 saying,

The Ten Commandments follow

I am the LORD thy God, who rescued you from slavery in Egypt.

Do not have any other God’s before me.

Do not make any idols or worship them

Do not misuse my name

Remember that the seventh day is a holy day of rest

Respect your father and mother

Do not kill

Do not commit adultery

Do not steal

Do not speak falsely about your neighbor

Do not want what is not yours

Moses Reminds the people how awesome that covenant making day was when God spoke out of the fire on the mountain. How he had been sent by the people to speak to God because they were afraid and how God had said:

29 O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children for ever!

Can’t you hear the love and longing in God’s voice? Oh if only they would be faithful to this covenant. How wonderful that would be! How happy they would be! God’s covenant was not intended to be a burden. It was given as a blessing. We read in Deuteronomy 30

19 I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: 20 That thou mayest love the LORD thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him: for he is thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them.

“Love,” “Hang onto,” these are not the words of a legal contract but a relationship. These are words we use in marriage covenants. The relationship God wants with us in not a legal contract defined by rules but a covenantal relationship built on promise. The Ten Commandments are God’s wedding vows with us. They are a picture of what the world would look like if we all lived in covenantal loving relationship with God.

What is your picture of paradise? What kind of world would you choose to live in if you had the choice? Wouldn’t it be a place where God is, where God is worshiped? Where everybody, even the very poor, even servants and animals, have time for rest. Where parents love children, and children respect parents. A place full of happy families and friendly neighbors. Where nobody kills. Where people keep their promises and covenants with one another and every child has a mother and father. Where nobody steals. Where people tell the truth about one another. Where everybody is content with what they have and nobody is jealous of anybody else. Wouldn’t that be paradise?

That’s what God wanted for his people then. That’s still his plan for us now. That’s why He gave us His covenant and told us not to forget. How do we remember? Deut 6

4 ¶ Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:

5 And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.

6 And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:

7 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.

8 And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes.

9 And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

God told Israel to take his covenant seriously. “Firstly, it should be written it on your hearts” He said. “Then, teach it diligently to your children. Then, talk about it with one another.” In a community of faith we should not forget to encourage and remind one another about the covenant of God. “Finally, tie it on your hands and between your eyes and write it on the walls of your house.”

But Gina, you may be saying, that covenant was broken and is void. We now live under the new covenant. The new covenant is grace, not law.

But there’s nothing new about Grace! Grace is as old as the law. And the law is a lot older than Sinai.

Don’t we read in Hebrews that Abraham was justified by faith and not works? Abraham lived under grace a long time before Jesus.

And don’t you remember how Joseph answered Potipher’s wife when she stood in her see-through silks beckoning him into the bedroom? He said, “How can I do this thing and sin against God?” Joseph lived before Sinai but he knew the law of God.

It’s true that Jeremiah mentions a new covenant and the writer of Hebrews expounds on it more. Does that mean that God’s original covenant wasn’t perfect? No. Let’s read

Heb 8:7 For if that first covenant had been faultless, then should no place have been sought for the second.

Heb 8:8 For finding fault with them, he saith, Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah:

Heb 8:9 Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they continued not in my covenant, and I regarded them not, saith the Lord.

The problem was not with the covenant but with the people. They did not keep it. They forgot about the covenant and broke it. They did not allow the law to be written on their hearts. They began to worship the Cannanite God’s of power, money, and sex. They forgot the covenant that begins “I am the LORD your God who brought you out of slavery in Egypt until they found themselves back in slavery in Babylon.

The book of James is not a very large book, but twice in that book the law of God is called “The Law of Liberty.” Why? Because the law brings freedom. Before the law there was Egypt and after the law was rejected and forgotten there was Babylon. Only when we have and remember the covenant of God can we be free.

Well why would God give a law to Israel, or to us, that we can’t keep? Wasn’t He setting them up for disaster? It was never his intention that either Israel or us keep the law by our own strength. Remember even Abraham was justified by faith.

After the Babylonian captivity some very devout Jews called the Pharisees began taking the law very seriously. They concluded that they had been punished in Babylon for not keeping the law. Their solution was to study the law carefully and try harder. They took it so seriously that they had the ten commandments written on small pieces of paper which were then rolled tightly, placed in small boxes, and literally tied to their right arm and forehead. They kept the literal words of God’s law perfectly but they missed the whole point.

.They had the law on the outside of their body but they forgot that God’s first command was that it be written on the heart. They turned the covenantal promise of God into a set of rules to be rigidly followed and the law of liberty became a law of bondage.

The following story is a good illustration of the Pharisees problem:

A husband and wife didn’t really love each other. The man was very demanding, so much so that he prepared a list of rules and regulations for his wife to follow. He insisted that she read them over every day and obey them to the letter. Among other things, his “do’s and don’ts” indicated such details as what time she had to get up in the morning, when his breakfast should be served, and how the housework should be done. Try as she might, the wife never seemed to complete the tasks perfectly and there was much bickering over her accomplishments at the end of the day.

After several long years, the husband died. As time passed, the woman fell in love with another man, one who dearly loved her. Soon they were married. This husband did everything he could to make his new wife happy, continually showering her with tokens of his appreciation. One day as she was cleaning house, she found tucked away in a drawer the list of commands her first husband had written for her. As she looked it over, she realized that even though her present husband hadn’t given her any kind of list, she was doing more for him than her first husband had ever required. She realized she was so devoted to this man that her deepest desire was to please him out of love, not obligation.

Trying to build a relationship by slavishly obeying a list of rules is impossible. It doesn’t work in marriage and it doesn’t work in religion either. God intended that his covenant with his people be motivated by love.

Covenant means promise and in the Bible it is always God, not man, who is making promises. If the pharisees had only read Isaiah they would have understood that the ten commandments are about what God does for us, not what we do for God.

Isa 26:12 LORD, thou wilt ordain peace for us: for thou also hast wrought all our works in us.

David understood this when he wrote.

Ps 57:2 I will cry unto God most high; unto God that performeth all things for me.

You see, our modern Bibles are all translations of the original Hebrew. The covenant of God has been translated as ten commands to reflect the more recent Pharasaic understanding of the ten commandments as a set of rules to be followed. But there is an older meaning. The Hebrew verb has no command form. That means the original Hebrew text was written in simple present tense, not as commands, but statements. So if you read the ten commandments in Hebrew they sound like this.

6 Because I am the LORD thy God, who brought you out of slavery in Egypt. 7 You will know no other God than me. 8 You will not make idols or bow down to them:. You will speak my name in reverence 12 You will rest on my holy Sabbath day. And you will give rest to your animals and servants. Children will respect their parents and have long lives. You will not kill or hurt one another. You will be faithful to your husbands and wives. You will have no need to take what is not yours. You will only tell the truth about one another. Everyone will be satisfied with what they have and no one will want what is not theirs.

You see, they are ten promises. Of course they are promises! That’s why God calls it his covenant. Covenants are always built on promises. The ten commandments are really God’s ten promises to us. They are a picture of what he promises to do for his people, in his people, if they will only love him and remain in relationship with him. Our part of the covenant is to love the Lord our God will all our hearts, minds, and strength.

Joshua understood that the command of God was to love him when he address the children of Israel this way

Jos 22:5 But take diligent heed to do the commandment and the law, which Moses the servant of the LORD charged you, to love the LORD your God, and to walk in all his ways, and to keep his commandments, and to cleave unto him, and to serve him”

You see, That was God’s plan for Israel from the beginning and it’s His plan for us now. He wants a relationship. An eternal relationship defined by a covenant and characterized by love. His vows are already written and waiting for us to read.

What about you? Will you vow to love Him too? With your whole heart and mind and strength? Will you allow God to write his covenant with you in your heart? Will you teach it too your children? Will it be on the walls of your house? Will it be a community issue that changes your public as well as private identity?

The same covenant that God offered to Israel is now waiting there for us. God promises to do all the work in us. All we have to do is begin to walk in relationship with him. To love him with all our hearts and minds and strength.