HoHum:
Daniel Overdorf- I visited a friend in the hospital. He had neared the end of an extended battle with cancer. The chemotherapy had taken most of his ability to think. I read some Scripture passages to him about God’s promises, unsure if he even heard me, then I prayed. As I turned to leave the room, he mumbled, “How do I know He’ll keep His Word?” After overcoming my amazement, I gathered my thoughts and said, “He guaranteed it with a cross and a covenant.”
WBTU:
We have many contracts mainly business dealings but a contract with God? The biblical term is covenant but basic concepts of a contract apply.
A discussion of the church community begins with a recognition of the covenant in which we participate. At the most basic level, a covenant is “an agreement between two people or two groups that involves promises on the part of each to the other.” Now the covenant we have in God has far greater significance that this and much more modifications.
Thesis: Let’s start by talking about the covenant with Abraham and then Moses
For instances:
A Covenant Established
The OT roots of the NT church
Church is NT? Yes, but we cannot understand the NT church without exploring its OT roots.
While the church is a NT institution, the community of God’s people stretches far further back into history. In fact, God recognizes man’s need for community as early as Eden: “The LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone.”” Genesis 2:18, NIV.
God saved not only Noah in ark, but also Noah’s family; and after God released them from the ark he set the rainbow in the sky as “““my covenant with you and with your descendants after you” Genesis 9:9, NIV. From the beginning, God desired a people who would follow Him.
God’s Covenant with Abraham
God set the wheels in motion for this community with the covenant He offered Abraham, in which God promised: ““I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”” Genesis 12:2, 3
God further defined this covenant in Genesis 15 and 17.
Observations
Both sides of the covenant involve faithfulness- God’s faithfulness to Abraham and his descendants, and Abraham’s and his descendants’ faithfulness to God. This fact will remain true throughout the remainder of the Bible and throughout the covenant’s various modifications and additions, such as the covenants to Moses and David. Even in the new covenant through Christ, the heart of the covenant remains unchanged: God offer faithfulness to His people, and demands faithfulness from His people.
Important to understand that God initiated the covenant as an act of grace. Though man shares a covenant with God, this does not imply that man shares equal status with God. God, as the superior, approached Abraham, the inferior, as an expression of love and compassion- as an expression of grace. While we see in the Bible covenants between equal parties, the covenant with God is not in that category. The covenant between God and His people better reflects the ancient Near East covenants most noticeably between Hittite kings and their vassals. Hittite king was the superior and as an act of grace he offered a covenant with his inferiors. God’s offer of the covenant is not grounded in anything other than God’s own resolve to be in a relationship with people.
Mankind’s obedience to the covenant grows from our gratitude for the grace God extended. Believers express gratitude for grace by honoring the stipulations set forth in the covenant. In grace God offers us a covenant; in gratitude we obey its stipulations.
A Covenant Emerging
Marriage is a growing experience. Marriage provides a magnifying glass that displays where we need to grow spiritually, and a laboratory in which this growth can take place.
As we go from Abraham to Moses, a similar concept appears. In Moses’ day, circumstances forced God’s people to live in close community, an atmosphere through which God attempted to lead them into significant growth as His covenant people.
Community in the Mosaic covenant
Many years after Abraham, Moses served as God’s mouthpiece for an expansion of covenant. In a sense, the Mosaic covenant modified the covenant to Abraham. This reaffirmed, revalidated, and expanded original promises and stipulations to covenant of Abraham.
The Mosaic covenant offered the first concrete expression of God’s call for His followers to live, worship, and relate to one another as a community. “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’”” Exodus 19:5, 6.
Prior to the Exodus, Scripture focused on individuals such as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and their families. When they were put into slavery in Egypt the number of these people multiplied exponentially. We find in Exodus that God said to Moses, ““I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt.” Exodus 3:7, NIV. This is the first time in Scripture God used the phrase: my people. Throughout the plagues in Egypt, God echoed through Moses the constant refrain to Pharaoh: Let my people go. These slaves found hope, security, and promise in their position as God’s people.
Community stipulations that reflect God’s character
After they left Egypt, and as they wandered in the wilderness, the Israelites found difficulty in living out the implications of community. The Mosaic covenant contained numerous instructions to teach the people how they, as God’s community, should live.
The particular stipulations of the Mosaic covenant grow from this: ““‘Be holy because I, the LORD your God, am holy.” Leviticus 19:2, NIV. God called his people to reflect His character in their own lives, including how they functioned with one another in community.
10 Commandments show this principle. Before launching into “Thou shalt not’s” God began commandments with this statement: ““I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” Exodus 20:2. The first 4 commandments grow from this by establishing man’s response to God directly: worship no other god (1, 2), honor his name (3), respect him by recognizing the Sabbath (4). Remaining 6 commandments call mankind to live out the nature and compassion of God through their relationships with one another.
A covenant this exists only between people, with no thought of God, will fail. Enduring communities- enduring churches- share a commitment to God, and reflect the very character of God in their relationships with one another.
A Cross Erected
A new covenant promised
The old covenant required faithfulness from both parties- God and His people. Only the Lord kept his side of the agreement. He knew from the beginning the inadequacy of the covenant offered through Abraham and through Moses. This inadequacy was not in the covenant itself, but in man’s inability to keep it. We find from the OT a cycle of faithfulness followed by unfaithfulness. Time and agin the OT community demonstrated what Paul would later write: “For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.” Romans 7:22, 23, NIV.
A hotel in Galveston, Texas, that overlooks the Gulf of Mexico, faced a potential problem. The edge of the hotel hangs over the water. Before the hotel opened, someone thought, “What if someone decides to fish out of the windows?” This person then erected signs saying not to fish from the hotel windows. Guess at the result? People fished out of the windows. Rather than preventing a problem, the signs had the opposite effect and simply exposed humankind’s rebellious nature.
This consciousness of sin, and the Old covenant that brought it, stood as a necessary step in the process through which God would eventually fulfill His promise to Abraham that “all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Before arriving at the new covenant, mankind needed the old covenant to learn of God’s holiness, their sinfulness, and their need for a savior. “Therefore no-one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin. But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify.” Romans 3:20, 21, NIV. God never intended these first steps to conclude the journey. All along, God intended the old covenant to pave the way for a new one.
“So the law was put in charge (our schoolmaster- KJV) to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith.” Galatians 3:24 NIV. When the law passed the baton to Christ, the transition made many of the specific stipulations of the old covenant and the manner in which mankind expressed its faith in God “obsolete” (Hebrews 8:13). Lest we underestimate the significance of the law to the new covenant, Jesus said this: ““Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” Matthew 5:17, NIV.
