Boundaries for the Covenant

Dating, Marriage, and the Nature of Covenant

At some point or another, every relationship has “the talk.” You know which talk I’m talking about- the “where do you see this relationship going” talk. I’d be willing to bet that everyone in this room over the age of 18 has had that talk in some form or another, at least once. You don’t just find yourself married without discussing your goals as a couple and whether or not you are both interested. Sometimes that’s a conversation that couples have more than once as they face strains on their marriage through the years. And sometimes, that talk doesn’t go well. One person in the relationship isn’t as dedicated, as interested, or thinks that the relationship is going to work- doesn’t believe in the long-term survival of the relationship. In that case, the talk ends with a seriously strained relationship or a breakup. There’s a decent chance you’ve seen a movie or a tv show in which a person’s response to a surprise “will you marry me” is “uh…can I think about it and get back to you.” That’s never a good sign, and in those shows, it always leads to “the talk,” admittedly something that should have happened before anyone pulled out a ring. And as it goes along, a relationship grows, changes, you get to know more about the other person, you share experiences, good moments and bad, and for couples that head toward marriage you have an event where you publically state your commitment to each other, and, through vows, outline, at least in some way, the boundaries if your relationship. “To have and to hold, love and comfort, in sickness and in health, good times and bad, till death do you part.” And in the ancient world, at least more so than us today, the promises made around marriage by the people and families involved, constituted something akin to a contract. These are the expectations and boundaries. Now, there’s certainly more than just that. Clearly vows don’t explicitly state whether or not you’ll have kids, and if so, how many. Vows don’t clarify who takes care of which duties around the house, where vacations will be to, or whose family Christmas is with this year. There are lots of things a relationship encounters which those vows don’t explicitly answer, but everything exists inside the boundaries and expectations outlined in those shared words. A couple’s experience up to that point, the moments they’ve shared, the conversations they’ve had, the way that they’ve grown to trust each other- all of that helps lead to the wedding day and the marriage covenant, but none of those things are, in and of themselves, the covenant. They help get you to that decision, but they aren’t the decision themselves. You still have to decide, you still have to commit, you still have to announce, and then you move forward with that covenant defining how you live your life in relationship to the other. And that promise, that covenant, influences how you make decisions- small decisions like where you’re going to eat, and big decisions, like what your other relationships look like and who you’ll be faithful to.

The Marriage of God and Israel

The image of the relationship between God and God’s people being like marriage is a relatively common image in the bible. Hosea figures most prominently, but he’s not alone. Today I want to use that image to help understand the 10 commandments in general, though just the first few will be our primary focus today. Before we get to that point, lets talk about just how influential the 10 commandments are. The Ten are the cornerstone of biblical law- all further law that exists in the old testament exists inside the framework of these 10 regulations. The decalogue, the 10 commandments are so important that more than a thousand years after the story this passage tells, Jesus, the Pharisees, and other rabbis are still debating what it looks like to live them out to the fullest. In fact, when Jesus is asked by a Jewish Legal expert which of the commandments is most important, Jesus, as a rabbi, isn’t being asked an unusual question. This was a common debate in the years before, during, and after Jesus earthly life. There’s a story about the great Jewish teacher Hillel who was once told by a Gentile that he would convert if Hillel could teach him the entire law while standing on one foot. So Hillel lifted one leg and said, “whatever is hateful to you, to your neighbor do not do. everything else is just commentary.” roughly a hundred years after Hillel, Jesus teaches in the sermon on the mount, “Do to others as you would have them do to you. This sums up the law and the prophets.” What this means is that, more than a thousand years after these commandments are handed down, they are still the foundation of what it means to love and follow God. And their importance in Jesus own teaching means they still have significance for us as Christians another 2000 years further on. And the teachings are dense. Each individual command could occupy a sermon, so I’ll carry forward the tradition of ancient Jewish teachers and work in summary form today. Let’s begin by reading .

Common English Bible Chapter 20

20 Then God spoke all these words:

2 I am the LORD your God who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

3 You must have no other gods before me.

4 Do not make an idol for yourself—no form whatsoever—of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters under the earth. 5 Do not bow down to them or worship them, because I, the LORD your God, am a passionate God. I punish children for their parents’ sins even to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me. 6 But I am loyal and gracious to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

7 Do not use the LORD your God’s name as if it were of no significance; the LORD won’t forgive anyone who uses his name that way.

8 Remember the Sabbath day and treat it as holy. 9 Six days you may work and do all your tasks, 10 but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. Do not do any work on it—not you, your sons or daughters, your male or female servants, your animals, or the immigrant who is living with you. 11 Because the LORD made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and everything that is in them in six days, but rested on the seventh day. That is why the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

12 Honor your father and your mother so that your life will be long on the fertile land that the LORD your God is giving you.

13 Do not kill.

14 Do not commit adultery.

15 Do not steal.

16 Do not testify falsely against your neighbor.

17 Do not desire your neighbor’s house. Do not desire and try to take your neighbor’s wife, male or female servant, ox, donkey, or anything else that belongs to your neighbor.

18 When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the horn, and the mountain smoking, the people shook with fear and stood at a distance. 19 They said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we’ll listen. But don’t let God speak to us, or we’ll die.”

Faithfulness or Unfaithfulness?

Let’s start by recognizing who is speaking. It’s God. And God is speaking to God’s own chosen people, the ones he has liberated from Egypt, repeatedly provided for in the Desert, and has led to this mountain, to this moment. And what God is saying here, the commands that God is giving the people, are much more than rules. To come back to where we started with this as a marriage analysis- what is happening here is “the talk.” God is telling the people that if they’re going to move forward together in union with God, then this is what the relationship is going to look like. What isn’t stated at the end though we certainly know is true is that the people are not pawns on God’s chess board- they have a choice as to whether or not they are going to choose a relationship with God. And the first few verses here deal specifically with how the people are to relate to God. First and foremost, God says, if you are choosing a relationship with me, you are choosing me and me alone. This isn’t a open relationship, and God is clear that unfaithfulness has no place in this relationship and won’t be tolerated. God isn’t going to be unfaithful to them, and that’s the standard expected in return. And those God’s aren’t foreign to the people of Israel. They know their names. They worshipped those gods in Egypt. They know the festivals and sacrifices of those gods. They know the myths and legends of the Egyptian gods, for many perhaps better than they know the stories of the LORD’s work with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob- remember they have only recently been freed from Egypt where they spent generations in slavery. But if they’re going to pursue a relationship with God, there’s not space for other “old flames”- burnt sacrifice pun intended. And I want to pick apart that phrase “before me.” The Hebrew here literally means “before my face” or “against my face.” To give something else priority over God is, if you are in relationship with God, to challenge God’s value and authority. Its not simply an issue of priority for us- its a problem for God because God is the other partner in the relationship. Broken relationships don’t just affect one party involved- it affects both. Placing another before God, or “In God’s Face” also obstructs our view of God and either overlook or only see part of Who God is and what God wants. Placing something before God isn’t the same as forgetting God. Perhaps its worse- it acknowledges Gods history and the relationship while making it clear that the relationship isn’t important enough to prioritize. There are two ways to read vs 4, and I think both are appropriate. One, the prohibition against idols, handmade or natural, as representative of a god, is placing something in competition with God. But the other thing that falls under this command is making a physical representation of God- Creating God in a tame and safe way. Creating a version of God that we like and can fully understand - it is one of the most common Christian idols there is, one likely carried in this room, often without realizing it. A version of God that isn’t God is exactly what happens when we put something before God- in this case our own understanding. When we are dedicated to God and God alone, when there is nothing else that we want, we are able to let go of the selfishness, anger, distrust, and pride that steer us into violation of the rest of the commandments. It is those things, those attitudes, that are so dangerous to relationships- when we are more concerned about having things our way than we are the healthiness of our relationship.

While it is easy to say that, if you are living with God as your only concern, the rest of the commandments are unnecessary. And yet here they are, listed out anyway. That’s because these commandments, while directed at individuals, are rooted in community, and while individuals are notoriously terrible at holding themselves accountable, accountability is one of the benefits of community. If you see your neighbor being drawn toward one of these actions, then you are responsible for recognizing that they have put something before God and helping move them back. These laws aren’t simply about individuals, its about the community as a whole because it is the community of Israel that is moving into this covenant relationship. When the prophets call the people to task, it because they have obscured their own view of God by placing something else in the way. The visible symptoms of that unfaithfulness are that they break the covenants that are to define the relationship with the other people around them.

When you love the Lord with everything that you have, heart soul, mind, and strength, it shows in your actions and attitude. When you’ve put something before God, it shows in your actions and attitude.