Bound by Covenant

Prayer

Covenant People

So today I want to start with the end of the book of Joshua - or, at least where things end up. Namely, I want to show you a map of the land allocation. This map represents the twelve tribes and what part of the promised land they occupied after conquering it. As you can see, God fulfilled his promises - the land is theirs! All the way from the Mediterranean Sea on the west, past the Jordan River in the east (note the two and half tribes in the Transjordan, God, Reuben and 1/2 tribe of Manasseh. Their boundary goes north past the Sea of Galilee, and south past the Dead Sea into the Negev, the desert region. One more note - there is a part of the land they did not conquer - land of the Philistines, on the coast, further south. Where modern day Gaza is.

I’m showing this to you for a couple of reasons - visual look at what most of chapters in Joshua represent, if you read through Joshua 10-22, you’d find all the kings they defeated both in the north and the south, chapters describing the geographical boundaries for each of the lands given to the tribes, listing of the cities of refuge (cities you could flee to if you accidentally killed someone) and finally, a listing of the towns given to the Levites, as they did not receive an inheritance of the land, God was their inheritance.

But the main thing this really shows us is a promise fulfilled. This has been one of the central aspects of the story of the Old Testament as we’ve been making our way through it - all the way back to Genesis 12, when God brought Abraham out of land of Ur to this land (go to a land I will show you), promising to give it to him and his descendants. That through Abraham he would make a great nation, rooted in this land, through whom all other nations would be blessed.

All because God is so faithful, every word he speaks is truth. Every promise he makes will come to be. All of them. What God says, is.

It helps us understand what it means to say that the Lord our God is a covenantal God. He makes covenants with his people. He made a covenant with Abraham. He made one with his people through Moses. He makes a covenant with King David in 1 Samuel 7, promising that one of his descendants will sit on the throne forever.

That descendant, of course, ends up being Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, through whom God now offers a new covenant, a covenant that promises that if we trust in Jesus, if we affirm him as Lord, confessing our sin and placing our hope in his work on the cross dying for our sins and his rising to new life to defeat sin and death - we will have eternal life. We will be with God forever. God is a covenantal God, he willingly binds himself to us by his promises.

This morning I want to talk about what that means - what it means for us to know God as a covenantal God - and what it means for us to be a covenantal people, to enter into this covenant with God. We get a taste of that in Joshua 8:30-35, when the Israelites stop to renew the covenant at Shechem, immediately after their defeat of Ai:

Then Joshua built on Mount Ebal an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, 31 as Moses the servant of the Lord had commanded the Israelites. He built it according to what is written in the Book of the Law of Moses—an altar of uncut stones, on which no iron tool had been used. On it they offered to the Lord burnt offerings and sacrificed fellowship offerings. 32 There, in the presence of the Israelites, Joshua wrote on stones a copy of the law of Moses. 33 All the Israelites, with their elders, officials and judges, were standing on both sides of the ark of the covenant of the Lord, facing the Levitical priests who carried it. Both the foreigners living among them and the native-born were there. Half of the people stood in front of Mount Gerizim and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses the servant of the Lord had formerly commanded when he gave instructions to bless the people of Israel. 34 Afterward, Joshua read all the words of the law—the blessings and the curses—just as it is written in the Book of the Law. 35 There was not a word of all that Moses had commanded that Joshua did not read to the whole assembly of Israel, including the women and children, and the foreigners who lived among them.

So, as we talked about during our time of Unearthing the Bible, Joshua leads the Israelites to the top of Mount Ebal (mount of curses), where he builds an altar upon which both burnt and fellowship offerings are made. He then writes out a copy of the law of Moses on the stones of the altar. Then Joshua reads out the words of the law - the blessings and the curses (you’ll be blessed if you obey the word of the Lord, if you’re faithful to him - and if you don’t, if you forsake him for other gods, his curses will come upon you).

We’re told that everyone is there - all the Israelites, all the leadership, they’re standing on both sides of the ark of the covenant (so God is present as well). Not just Israelites, but foreigners living among them. They affirm the covenant with God. We agree to it. We will be faithful to God, as he has been faithful to us. We’ll hold up our end of the bargain - and they know all the expectations, they were just read out to them. They are written on the stones of the altar.

As you’ll see them do numerous times throughout the Old Testament, they renew their commitment to the covenant. Reminds me of the couple that owned Hillbilly Hot Dogs - don’t know if they still do this, but part of their story was to go and renew their marriage vows every year. What the Israelites are doing - at this point in their history, they want to be faithful to God. As God has bound himself to them, they bind themselves to God. He is their God. They will be his people. That’s the covenant.

Bound by Covenant

This is incredibly serious business - because it is, in the end, our covenants, our commitments, that will define who we are, how we will live. God makes no bones about telling us - I made you for covenant relationship with me, to bind yourself to me as I bind myself to you. He is a covenantal God, and he made us for covenant relationship as well.

Israelites actually find themselves confronted by this in an unusual way immediately after renewing the covenant. At the beginning of Joshua 9, we learn that the neighboring kings - from the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, decided to unite together to fight against their common threat, the Israelites.

There is one city-state, however, that tries a different tact, Joshua 9:3-6, However, when the people of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and Ai, 4 they resorted to a ruse: They went as a delegation whose donkeys were loaded with worn-out sacks and old wineskins, cracked and mended. 5 They put worn and patched sandals on their feet and wore old clothes. All the bread of their food supply was dry and moldy. 6 Then they went to Joshua in the camp at Gilgal and said to him and the Israelites, “We have come from a distant country; make a treaty with us.”

When they go to the Israelites to make the treaty, the Israelites are suspicious - how do we know you don’t live near us? No, we come from a long ways away - we heard about all the things the Lord your God has done for you. So our elders told us to travel to you to make a treaty with you. And look - this bread was freshly made when we left, now it’s dry and moldy. Our wineskins were new, but now they’re cracked. Our clothes and sandals are worn out.

Israelites check out the provisions, but verse 14 tells us that they “did not inquire of the Lord.” So they make the treaty and then they find out that they are actually neighbors, living near them. And here’s where the covenant part comes in - because the people of Israel are not happy with them arrangement - they “grumbled” against the leaders. Verse 19 shows the response of the leaders, ...but all the leaders answered, “We have given them our oath by the Lord, the God of Israel, and we cannot touch them now.

Now they do tell the Gibeonites that they must serve the Israelites as woodcutters and water carriers since they made the treaty under false pretenses. But for Joshua and the Israelites leaders - we made this oath in the name of our God, we can’t back out of it. We have to honor it - because of our commitment to him, we are bound now to this commitment to you. They decide to stay faithful to the Gibeonites because they had already made the commitment to be faithful to God.

And that commitment gets tested immediately - after this five kings of the Amorites decide to move against Gibeon and attack it, because they had made a treaty with Israel. So the Gibeonites send word to Joshua and they Israelites, who are camped out at Gilgal: Save us! We need help and we need it now. It would have been very easy in that moment - nope, they lied to us, now they are getting what they deserve. But that’s not what the Israelites do. Instead Joshua gets the entire army and they march the entire night in order to help Gibeonites, catching the Amorites by surprise.

God honors their honoring their commitment to the Gibeonites, helping them win the battle by throwing the Amorites into confusion, hurling down huge hailstones on them as they flee from their attack on Gibeon. God is a God of covenant.

Here’s the thing that’s essential to remember when we think about what it means to be a covenant people - all of us are bound to something, the important question is - to whom or what will we be bound?

But before we talk about that, it’s helpful to clarify the difference between a contract and a covenant, because we enter into agreements of all sorts all the time.

Contract - legally binding agreement. When you buy a home or rent an apartment, you sign a contract. When you get a loan at the bank - contract. When you “read & agree”, you are entering into a contract, agreeing to the terms and conditions the company lays out for the use of their services (which is probably one of the most often lies I tell). Way to ensure that what is being agreed upon is clear by all the parties (I’ll do this, you do this)

A covenant, however, is a binding agreement between persons - it is personal, relational at its core (which means that it’s much, much messier because it’s all about persons and our willingness to trust each other - because you are binding yourself to one another.

Covenant relationships are messy, but they are an essential part of who we are. We were made by God to be in covenant relationship - with him, first of all, and with others. So we will be bound to something - the question is to whom or what will we be bound? And this is critical because the covenant relationships we enter into will shape and form us.

Think about all the movie plots where two people are “stuck” together (sometimes literally), because of a shared goal, and part of the tension of the movie is them learning to trust each other (they always dislike each other initially, usually polar opposite relationships), work together

Examples: 48 hours, Nick Nolte & Eddie Murphy, or The Green Book (white driver for prominent black pianist in 1962), Trains, Planes & Automobiles - Steve Martin & John Candy. In all of these movies, these characters are in a covenant relationship, they are bound together - heart of the movie is the impact that they have on each other. That’s always part of the story, they are better people for having been bound together, however unwillingly it was.

So many ways we form mutual commitments, covenant relationships: think about sport teams (have your teammates’ back, team over individual), military, they are very intentional about cultivating this, they want those guys fighting for each other, for their “brothers”, gangs form covenant relationships (that’s an example of being shaped in the wrong way).

Of course, most common - is marriage. By God’s design, the center of the family unit is a covenant relationship. We know, intuitively that the covenant relationship shapes all of families as well, understood bond and commitment, mutual love and responsibility. God uses family to prepare us for the eternal family we are always meant for - why this is our true family, our true brothers and sisters in Christ (no marriage in heaven).

Even the person that avoids relational commitments are bound up - they are bound to their desire for personal freedom, happiness, success, accolades - these preclude you from being bound to others (teammate who cares more about their personal success will be a bad teammate), the spouse who’s more concerned with their personal happiness will feel tied down in marriage (example of Chinese Finger Trap).

Covenants, how we live them out, shape and form us - why God wants our first and biggest covenant priority - to be with him. It was, after all, their covenant commitment to God that spurred the Israelites towards integrity. They held true to their treat with Gibeonites and came to their aid when attacked.

Beauty of a covenant relationship with God is that we will never have a more faithful, more committed, more true partner than our Lord God. It is decidedly a one-sided relationship - to our benefit. He is always the more giving and good. We gain far, far more than we give. Yet God still very much wants us to bind ourselves to him as he has bound himself to us.

What I want to leave us with today is why it’s so essential for us to be thoughtful about what covenant relationships we enter into - and how we live them out, because they will shape and form us.

Gary Thomas written a book called Sacred Marriage - my favorite book on marriage because it speaks to God’s greater purpose in the marriage relationship. Thomas recognizes that the profound purpose of marriage covenant. There is no other human covenant relationship like marriage - one relationship where we make a sacred commitment to our spouse - till death do we part.

It’s here that God most teaches us about what it means to be in covenant relationship. Thomas recognizes that marriage is only for our time here on earth - there will be no marriage in heaven. But in marriage God is teaching us what it means to be in covenant relationship with him - and others - for eternity.

Marriage can be great soil for formation - if we attentive to it. We learn to be faithful, even if - especially if - we don’t feel like it. We learn to offer grace, to love the other as they are. Forgiveness. Patience. All because we have bound ourselves to this other person - no matter what, I’m committed to loving you, being for your good. Which is why, when that commitment ends, the marriage relationship is so painful.

It’s not just the marriage relationship, but there’s so many ways God can shape and form us through our covenantal relationships. Thomas has another book entitled Sacred Parenting - same concept, God can use the parenting relationship to shape and form us - great time to learn patience. Sacrificial love.

Why our denomination has made covenant an essential aspect of our movement. It’s in the name: ECO - Covenant Order of Evangelical Presbyterians. We believe covenantal relationships are vital to helping us grow in faith and love of God.

Why you don’t become a member, you become a covenant partner. Here at PCC, we talk about it as Shared Life Together (covenantal language). At center of our Spiritual Formation Group - to help build one another up in faith and love of Jesus. We talk about our faith, what God is doing in our lives.

As pastor, I’m obligated to be part of a PCG, Pastoral Covenant Group (met with mine this week). As a church, we are expected to be a part of a MAG - Mission Affinity Group. The idea is that at every level, in all the various relationships we have here, we are offering each other mutual encouragement and accountability towards following Jesus. Offering each other grace and truth.

Spiritual Disciplines

Covenant relationship with God - is that reflected in your schedule, your commitment to him above everything else? Sunday worship? Daily time in prayer and reading of Scripture? Time with Jesus.

What are the covenant relationships that are helping to shape and form you towards Jesus Christ? Spiritual Formation Group? Is there a friend or two you meet with on a regular basis? Average Christian has less than ten spiritual conversations in a year. Those should be a regular occurence in our lives, talking about our lives and faith in Jesus.