Covenant Keeper

Passage Introduction

Turn to Deut 4:21-31. First few verses of that overlap with last week’s passage, but that’s OK!

I’m pretty sleepy these days. Do OK through the morning, most of the time, but in the afternoons I almost always hit a major slump.

Partly biological, but also the freshness and urgency of the day wears off, and the day’s work begins to exhaust my brain.

Life of a Christian can be similar—start out zealously, but then energy dips.

Spiritual sleepiness hinders watchfulness, and we let ourselves slide into sin or error, or at least complacency.

Moses has that sort of drift in mind in this passage.

Let’s pray.

Sermon Introduction

God is radically committed to his covenant.

Be Warned

First of all, you ought to be warned by the thought that God is radically committed to his covenant.

That’s what this passage is mainly meant to be—a warning. And that warning really centers around what Moses says in verse 24: “For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.” I talked last week about that word “jealous,” comparing it to the right kind of jealousy that a man feels about his wife. That comparison is a biblical one, and a helpful one, but it doesn’t tell you everything.

It’s especially that word that tells me that this passage is about God’s radical commitment to his covenant. That’s really what God’s jealousy is about. You see, just by virtue of having created you, God has full right to expect 100% of your devotion. But he is a good God, and a loving God, and so he wants that devotion to be in the context of a real, personal, intimate relationship. Because God is so high above his creation, he has to initiate that relationship, and so he made a covenant with Adam, the first human. And since Adam was the father of all humans, he entered that covenant on behalf of every human being descended from him by ordinary generation. On the terms of that covenant, Adam would live if he perfectly obeyed God, and would die if he disobeyed—which is why theologians call that covenant the “covenant of works,” since it was by his works of obedience that Adam would live forever. But of course, if you know the first 3 chapters of the Bible, you know how that ended—Adam disobeyed, and he brought death into the world, not only for himself, but for all his descendants—so, you and me and everyone else.

Take Heart

[insert somewhere Isaiah 49:15 “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the child of her womb? Even if these forget, yet I will not forget you.”]