GOD'S COVENANT FAITHFULNESS
Throughout the Bible we see a sovereign God making covenants with the human beings he created for his glory, despite the huge chasm that our sin caused between us and his perfect holiness. Created in his image, we messed things up with our sinful disobedience to him, both outwardly and inwardly. Turn on any light, and darkness completely disappears. That is difference between our darkness of sin and his holiness of light. The two cannot exist together for long. Sin dies, so we need a way for our sin to be covered.
God offers us Christ's blood as our covering. He justifies us if we choose to believe in him and trust him with our life. He rejects any other covering, so trying to justify or excuse our sin against him is nothing but "filthy rags" to him. We can only be clothed in his undeserved gift of righteous to us, as we trust in his own righteous act for us on the cross. Anything less than that is a huge insult to him. He wants our thanks, not our reasons for why we sinned.
To see how we are affected by sin, God has chosen to record in his Word how he wants us to relate to him, despite our sin. In this way, he is showing us how faithful he is to us, despite our moments of faithlessness toward him. From cover to cover, through the stories of every person we read about, God is trying to remind us of this fact.
The only real hero in the Bible is God in Christ. He is our ultimate example. Christianity is all about God's faithfulness to us, despite our unfaithfulness to him. "No one is righteous," in and of themselves, "no not one." What he wants to make clear to us is that in returning to him in confession and repentance is our salvation. It has nothing to do with our own efforts to please him in our own human strength and willpower. Thank God that he has recorded the lives of other human beings, including all of their failures, to show us that he is merciful.
King David's sins were much much worse that King Saul's sins were, at least outwardly. David's sins were adultery and then murder. Saul's sins were not waiting for the prophet Samuel to show up when he said he would, and allowing his soldiers to keep some of the military spoils for themselves. And yet God called David "a man after my own heart," and rejected Saul. Why? Because David was real with God and Saul wasn't. God looks at the heart, not the outside of us. He is more concerned with whether we are willing to return to him honestly after we have sinned. He is not surprised when we sin, because he knew before he created us that we would sin against him yesterday or today.
Here is the difference between Saul and David, and the difference between all of us today in God's eyes. When Saul sinned, he said, "God, I have sinned against you, but..." Then Saul gave God his reasons and excuses. "It was my soldiers who caused me to sin, by deserting me." Today, we might be tempted to believe that other people caused us to sin, just like Saul did. Adam blamed Eve, and then he also blamed God by saying, "The woman you gave me caused me to sin." In other words, "God, it's not my fault that I sinned against you." God does not want to hear our self-justification, our own false sense of self-righteousness, or our vows and promises to make ourselves be more obedient to his laws. In returning to him in humble confession and repentance, when we do mess up, is our strength.
We are not called to look upon God's laws first, and our own human efforts to obey those laws, because these perfectly laws only condemn us every time we fail to completely obey them. By putting human beings under his law for centuries, God proved to us that we are not able to obey them both inwardly and outwardly. Jesus most often spoke to to people about those hidden, invisible sins that are matters of the heart, such as bitterness, resentment, unforgiveness, envy, jealousy, greed, and selfishness, to name just a few. Satan uses God's laws for the purpose of causing us to fall into the trap of self-condemnation. As even God himself tells us, his Old Covenant is "the ministry of condemnation and death" (2 Corinthians 3:7,9). Instead, we are called to live under his "ministry of justification" and the ministry of his Spirit" (2 Cor. 3:8-9), which is his New Covenant ministry to us. It is all about beholding the Lamb of God first, who takes away the sins of the world.
Now, listen what our Father wants to hear from us, as his sons and daughters. When David got caught in his sin, he said, "God, I have sinned. Period. It's me. It is nobody else. It's me." God just wants us to be real with him, so that he can cleanse and heal us of the wound that our sin has caused us. What is that wound? It is the guilt we end up carrying around with us. This guilt, not matter how much we try to suppress it, becomes such a heavy burden that we start to fear God's judgment of us. That's where it really gets heavy, even if we don't start feeling it until we are in an nursing home someday. Christ died, in order to free us from any fear of death and judgment. God does not want us to live in this kind of frightening fear, which is why he came here to earth to die for us in Christ. He wants to restore us to himself, but it's pretty hard for him to do that, after all that he done for us on the cross, if we come to him wearing a mask of pretense.
His covenants with us are the essence of what the word "religion" actually means. Taken from its two Latin root words, "religion" means "to reconnect" and "to bind together." This speaks of God's redemption of us, and his desire to bind himself to us in love, because "God is love" (1 John 4:16). So true religion means having a close, personal relationship with our Creator and Redeemer, after we have allowed him to save us from his wrath against sin. To establish this bond of love with us, God came down to us in Christ, shed his own blood, sacrificed his life for our sake on the cross, and was then resurrected, in order to send his Spirit into our hearts. He died a substitute death for us, and for our sins, so that he could be our substitute life. It is absolutely necessary to God that we allow him to live his life through us, by giving him his rightful place in the affections of our heart, as well as in our life.
The Christian life is Christ's life, lived in us and through us, and as sons and daughters of God, we were created to be living extensions of our Father's life. In his wisdom, he created us so that he could reveal his glory "to" us, by revealing his glory "through" us. Despite the separation from God that our sin against him caused us, he chose to redeem us back from our bondage to that sin, rather than eliminate us. Life is in the blood, he tells us, and when Adam and Eve chose to make their life sinful in disobedience to him, they infected their blood with sin. Consistent with the laws of genetics, which God established, we have all inherited our original parents' sin-infected bloodline. Our sin did not catch God by surprise, because the Bible says that he imprisoned everyone in disobedience, in order to show that his mercy is available to all who choose to believe and trust him. We are "imprisoned" in sin because we are born into sin. The evidence of this is in the fact that we do not have to teach little children how to misbehave and be rebellious. It's in all of us.
Because God is omniscient, that is, all knowing, he knew that we would sin against him, and he knew that to create us in the flesh would cost him his own life in the flesh. "The wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:22), and "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins" (Hebrews 9:22). Instead of immediately cursing all of creation to death, God chose to be merciful and curse his creation to decay before death, thereby giving every person the choice to repent of their sin and turn to him for his free, undeserved gift of eternal life.
God announced his plan of redemption immediately after the first sin was committed in the Garden of Eden, but he did not actually put his plan into action until the time of Abraham. Prior to Abraham, God established his first covenant with us through Noah, promising to never again destroy all of humanity with a flood. Now through Abraham, God established another covenant by promising to create a nation of people for himself through Abraham's descendants. This covenant involved establishing his people in true worship on a piece of land he would give them. It involved separating them from the false worship of the things God had created, rather than in the One who created them.
God gave Abraham no laws at this time, but he did ask Abraham for faithful obedience. He called Abraham to leave behind all that was familiar to him, and go to a place that God would show him. This is what God does today with every person who he calls out of empty promises and false hopes that this world offers. Although Abraham made numerous faithless missteps along the way, God remained faithful to his covenant. So this covenant was a covenant that depended more on God's grace than on Abraham's performance.
Eventually, God would miraculously free his people from their slavery and bondage to the Egyptians, by inflicting plagues on Pharaoh and his people because of their stubborn refusal to let God's people go free. After this great deliverance from over 400 years of slavery, God then rescued his people from the Egyptians, who had changed their minds about letting them leave. At the Red Sea, God made a way out for them that no one knew existed, by parting that sea. He then continued to faithfully lead his people toward the Promised Land, despite their faithless grumbling, complaining, and their desire to return to Egypt because they started doubting God's faithfulness to them. Finally, God led them to the base of Mt. Sinai, where he told them through Moses, "You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation" (Exodus 19:4-6).
Even at this point, God had still not given his people his laws. He said, "if you obey my voice," not "if you obey my laws." He had led them out of a land filled with false god idol worship, and faithfully provided them with everything they needed, despite all of their faithless complaining against him. They were under a covenant of grace, not a covenant of law. I think that, at this point, God expected to hear thanks and praise from his people, but instead of thanking him for all of his gracious power on their behalf, they boasted of their own abilities to him. The people all answered as one: "Everything that the Lord has spoken we will do" (19:8).
Upon hearing this boast of self-willed obedience from his people, God's relationship with them suddenly changed, even though he already knew that they would respond to his undeserved grace this way. He told the people to back away from the base of the mountain, otherwise they would be put to death. The next day, God came down on the top of that mountain in a dark cloud. There was thunder, lightning, huge flames, a deafening trumpet blast, and the whole mountain shook when he spoke. And at that, God spoke his commandments to them, commanded them to sacrifice burnt offerings to atone for their sin, and promised to bless them if they obeyed his terms of worship. The people had boasted that they could obey God completely, in effect trying to cheapen the standard of obedience to him, to a level they thought was "good enough." So God responded by holding his laws back up to their holy standard, and by attaching his ordinance of sacrifice, so that the people could see that they could not obey him completely, but yet still have a way to be made right with him.
After putting people under this Old Covenant of law, which they had brought down upon themselves, God led them to the Promised Land, only to see them faithlessly disobey his command to enter and take possession of it. After 40 years of time spent banished to the wilderness, God once again led them to the land he had promised their ancestors. This time they did enter, follow God as he took victories before them, and settled down in the true worship that God was looking to establish them in.
Unfortunately, they did not completely obey God, allowing many of the pagan people, who worshiped false gods, to remain in the land with them instead. Eventually, their idol worship corrupted their hearts toward God, to such a degree that God had to exile the entire nation into captivity, by giving them over into the hands of their enemies. Then, after obeying God's command to return to their land 70 years later, they waited centuries for the promised Messiah to come. Unfortunately, when God in Christ did come to them, many did not recognize him and receive him as their Lord and Savior. Despite this, God still remained committed to establishing his New Covenant, by remaining committed to staying on that cross, even though it was humankind who nailed him there.
What Jesus saw among the most religious people was a steadfast desire to remain under the Old Covenant law, rather than beholding him and following him, in order to know the Father. Instead of looking to God in Christ first, and allowing him to lead them in obedience to the Father's will, they wanted to look first at the law and then depend on their own human strength and willpower to obey it. As Paul wrote later, "I can testify that they have a zeal for God, but it is not enlightened. For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes fro God, and seeking to establish their own, they have not submitted to God's righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes" (Romans 10:2-4).
When Christ died on the cross, the Old Covenant died. When he was raised from the dead, the New Covenant came to life. Walking in his Spirit, by walking in faith, replaced walking in the flesh of human effort, in order to be declared righteous by God. Now, we are declared to be right with God the same way Abraham was; by believing God and faithfully obeying his call on our life to leave behind that which is familiar to us, and go to whatever place God shows us to go to.
It's always been about faith in God's unmerited, unearned grace, first and foremost. Obedience then becomes the fruit of his grace working in us. He will always lead us in obedience, never in disobedience. And the grace, or power, to obey his commands, are in his commands. Our part is to trust and obey his voice. When he said, "Let there be light," there was light. Being light had nothing to do with light's ability to hear him, or do what he commanded. And light did not say, "Let me think about this first, because I've never been light before." No, the power to obey God's command is already in the command. His grace, or his ability to do for us what we cannot do, comes first and foremost.
God is only looking for a faith channel to work through, not a "try harder" channel. We cannot receive salvation by faith God's grace, but then say to God, "Thanks, I'll take it from here the rest of the way." And God does not give us doses of grace, and then tell us to check back with him next Sunday, to let him know how we made out. All power to live for God is in God's Spirit within us. He does his will through us. He fulfills the promises he makes to us, as we trust him to live his life through us. The New Covenant is all about keeping our eyes on Jesus, by reminding ourselves that we belong to him, spending time alone with him in prayer, reading his Word, and remaining sensitive and alert to his presence each day. Here are God's terms and conditions of his New Covenant with us, prophesied to us hundreds of year before Jesus was sent to earth:
Jeremiah 31:31-34 "The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant...I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people...they shall all know me...I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more."
Ezekiel 36:25-27 "I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances."
Jeremiah 32:40-41 "I will make an everlasting covenant with them, never to draw back from doing good to them; and I will put the fear of me in their hearts, so that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing good to them, and I will plant them in this land in faithfulness, with all my heart and all my soul."
The fear God wants to put in us is a holy, reverent fear of him, not a frightening fear. It is this reverent fear of God's power that the Israelites had after they went through the Red Sea. "Israel saw the great work that the Lord did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the Lord and put their trust in him" (Exodus 14:31-32). The holy fear that we have for God under the New Covenant includes looking at the great work God has done for us in Christ. It is looking in awe at this almighty God, as he hangs on that cross and pays the price of death for us, which the perfectly holy law demands for sin. It is seeing that he was willing to die for our sake, so that we may live forever with him. It is seeing his amazing grace, that just does not quit on us, despite the way we oftentimes treat him. This is "the fear of the Lord," and God tells us that this is where true wisdom from above begins. Once we see just how much he really loves us, and we receive that fact by faith, then he floods us with his wisdom.
It was on the night in which he was betrayed that Jesus broke bread with those who he knew were about to betray, deny, and abandon him through his worst time of trial and suffering. We were there when they crucified our Lord, and we crucified him as well. How can that be? Well if you and I say that we are saved, then the only way we could be saved is through his shed blood and self-sacrifice, otherwise we die in our sins. If you and I were the only people on the face of this planet, and God in Christ came down to us on earth, either he would have to die for us, or we would have to pay the price of physical and spiritual death for our own sin. We would have to crucify him, in order to be able to live with him forever.
Nobody walked past his cross that day, looked up at him, and said, "Look, there he is, the greatest warrior who ever lived!" Nobody said, "This is the greatest battle that's ever been fought, and this is the greatest victory that's ever been taken!" No one said that. His disciples didn't say that. You and I wouldn't have said that. But that's exactly what was happening. See what a mystery this is? See how God hides this mystery to human reason? This is why we cannot come to know God through human logic. What he did for us just makes no sense to us. Even the prophets, who wrote about this coming Savior, had to put down their pens and inquire of God. Why? Because they then found themselves going on to write that this glorious Savior would be severely mistreated, falsely accused, spit on, beaten, have his beard torn out, be despised and rejected, and then finally hung on a tree...by the very people who he had come to offer eternal life to.
In 1 Peter 1:10-12, we read this, but we also see that these prophecies were things that even the angels "longed to look into." Even they didn't understand this kind of grace and love. When you "long to look" into something, it's because you don't understand it at first glance. It just doesn't make any sense at first. So you look longer into it. Holy angles do not sin and rebel against God. If they do, the Bible says in 2 Peter, they are cast into outer darkness, and they await God's judgment together with Lucifer, the devil. So imagine the angels, as they longed to look into what God's prophets were writing, and as they saw these prophets beginning to ask, "God, what are you inspiring me to write here? Can this possibly be true?" It is not a stretch to imagine the angels saying among themselves, "God is going to do what? For them? Is he kidding? We live in God's presence. We know his love because we experience it. But what kind of amazing love is this?" Those same angels will be coming one day with Jesus, and as they gather us up to be in the clouds to be with him, they will not be whispering words of judgment to us for how we have oftentimes mistreated God. Instead, I can only imagine them saying, "Do not be afraid, I've come to you to take you home. By the way, and believe me when I tell you this, you have absolutely no idea just how much your Father loves you." This is how God has bound himself to us under his New Covenant. Great is his faithfulness.
Now, there is something that we have to look at in ourselves, when we consider God's amazing grace and love to us. As Christians we have a responsibility to be his witnesses in this generation, because God is not using his angels, nor is he writing big messages across the sky, to tell people about his love for them. The New Covenant is not just about allowing Christ's Spirit to truly rule and reign in our lives, so that he can lead us in obedience to his law. Jesus says to us, as he said to his disciples in various ways, "As the Father sent me, so I send you. Go out into all the world and share the gospel. Feed my sheep." Paul says to us today, "Because we understand our fearful responsibility to the Lord, we work hard to persuade others." We have Good News to share with this generation, not bad news. God has not called us to a religion of trying to self-will ourselves, in our own human efforts, to align ourselves with his word. We are to walk in faith, and live by the power of God's grace, as he lives his life through us. Without that, I have no idea of knowing what God's day-to-day will is for my life, nor do I have the power to do his will in the way he wants me to.
The problem is that this Good News is too hard to believe for many people, because it is not based on the world's merit system for reward, which says, "If I do good to others, and I try hard in my own strength and efforts, then I'll gain favor, be blessed, and be rewarded." The world's way is all about "doing," but Christianity is all about what Christ has already "done" for us on that cross, and out through that empty tomb. All merit is in the Son, and all power to live is by his Spirit. To keep walking in the flesh of self-planning and self-effort, that originates with us, is death, the Bible says, not life. We may think that we are in the River of Living Water, which is the Holy Spirit, but if we are standing on our own two legs, and in our own strength, in the knee-deep part of the River, God will say to us, "Look around you. There's no life."
We may be "having church," and we may be observing religion, but are you seeing fruit-bearing trees on the riverbanks? We may be Christians, save by God's grace, and yet only be Christians up to the ankles, knees, or waist, afraid to go further and deeper in God's Spirit. Afraid to be fully immersed in him, to the point where he is carrying us by his power. One evidence of whether or not we are in the deep part of the River is seen in our conversations. Are we talking about what God is saying and doing, or are we talking about what people are saying and doing? Are we sharing with others what God has been revealing to us, including certain issues he has been addressing in our own heart, such as forgiveness and mercy toward others, or is our conversation about what people are saying, and about what activities people are doing?
When Moses went up to the top of Mt. Sinai to be with God, the people began wondering what Moses was up to, rather than wondering what God was doing. Their conversation was all about Moses, not God. By the time Moses came down, they were already worshiping a false image of God. We can end up worshiping a false image of God, even though we may not realize we are doing that. Aaron told Moses, in effect, "I don't now what happened. The people threw their gold jewelry into the fire, and out popped this golden calf. Is there a problem?" What resulted from the people's licentiousness, and from Moses' dashing to the ground of God's word, was God telling Moses, "Sure, you can still go into the Promised Land of my provision, but I won't be going in with you." In the same way, we can also end up having "church without God," when we stop following his leading, and get too caught up with activities and what people are saying.
Some people say, "I believe that God works in every church." Yes he does, but so does Satan. Jesus tells us that the thief comes "in" to steal, kill, and destroy. Satan is not locked out of any church, so the church has to deal with him. What he's looking to come in and steal is peace, so he tries to tempt people to misdirect their pride of themselves, rather than keeping it fully in Christ. He loves to see people argue over theology and the exact meaning of the sacraments, such as communion and baptism. He loves to see people become defensive, stand their ground, and tell other people, "No, I'm right and you're wrong." God does allow this thief to come "in," because Satan has a legal right to.
In the same way, we cannot say to God, "I only want to hear your voice. Block out the enemy's voice, so I don't get confused." If we tell God to do this, he will remind us that we live in a sin-infected, fallen world. He will also tell us that he wants us to trust his discernment and revelations of truth. David said, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for thou art with me." God walks us through the evil lies of the enemy. He does not detour us around it, so that we don't have to be exposed to it. When we pray, "lead us not into temptation," it does not mean that we will not have to face temptations to believe falsehoods and deceptions. Satan quoted from Scripture when he tempted Jesus in the wilderness, and what he quoted sounded very close to what was actually written. It's just that the devil slanted the verses ever so slightly, which then caused what he said to mean something quite different than the truth. God wants to protect us from falling into the trap of self-deception, which can happen when we don't fully search the Scriptures and test the spirits. Anything we hear, including what we hear in church, should be tested by us. The Holy Spirit, speaking through Paul, commanded the people to test for themselves what Paul and the other apostles preached. Through John, we hear the Holy Spirit give the same command to us today:
1 John 4:1-3 "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. And this is the spirit of antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming; and now it is already in the world."
Too many people today are following the preaching of certain preachers because they are attracted to the preacher's charisma or appearance. A vast arena full of people, and an entertaining religious service, does not prove that the speaker's message is the true gospel of God's grace in Christ. Failure to test what we hear, by praying and searching the Scriptures for ourselves, can result in our worshiping a false image of God, without us even realizing it. Prayer to a false image of God is prayer that will not get answered until that "golden calf" is removed out of the way.
Satan, who is a legalist, is always accusing us and petitioning God, in order to test the kind of faith we are proclaiming. And because God is just, he does allow Satan to test our faith, just as we saw with Job and Peter. The devil is a prosecutor, however, he is a created being who is merely an instrument God uses. Through Satan's tests of us, God's desire is to purify and refine our faith, in order to strengthen it. The impurities that God wants to purify us of include sin in our hearts, but they also include the sinking sand of fleshly self-righteousness that we tend to stand in from time to time. Satan cannot misuse God's law to try and condemn us unless he can first lure us to drift back under the Old Covenant way of relating to God. The problem with drifting back under that religion of legalism, where our obedience to the law depends first on our own human efforts, is that animal sacrifices are no longer acceptable to God.
Under the New Covenant, we are to keep both of our eyes on Jesus, because the new law we live under is "the law of the Spirit of grace." That does not mean that we have a license to sin, or that God excuses and waves off our sins. Jesus paid a severe price for each and every one of the sins we confess. Living by God's grace does not give us a right to justify a deliberate sinful lifestyle by saying, "Oh, I can live this way because I'm living under grace. God understands me." That is idol worship, because in our heart we have set up our own little false god that tells us, "It's OK. God approves of how I'm living." But the truth is that this false god we have set up in our heart is really just our self. Living by God's grace means that we come boldly to God's throne of grace, obtain his mercy, and then move forward in obedience by depending on his grace working through us in Christ's Spirit. This disarms Satan, taking away his legal grounds to demand of God our condemnation because of our sins.
Faith in Christ's finished work on the cross is the channel by which we live by God's grace. We receive everything from God by faith in Christ and his cross. If our eyes shift from Jesus to the law, and we try to earn God's blessings by depending on our own efforts alone, then we will become spiritually blind, faith is null, and God's promise of inheritance to us will be made void. In other words, God cannot conform us into the image of his Son, by forming his own life in us, if we are trying to live under law, rather than living by the Spirit of grace within us. It comes down to who we are depending on, and who is our power source. Is it God, as he lives his life through us, or is it our own human effort and human power. "For it is not by power and might, but by my Spirit," says the Lord.
2 Corinthians 3:14-18 "Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside. Indeed, whenever Moses (the law) is read, a veil lies over their minds; but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit."
Romans 4:13-14 "For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith. If it is the adherents of the law who are to be the heirs, faith is null and the promise is void."
Romans 9:16 "So it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy."
To be continued.......
