Covenantal Relationships
Notes
Transcript
What do I want them to know? We are to be in covenantal relationships
Why? It leads to love and life
What do I want them to do? Be in covenantal relationships
Why? It leads to love and life
What do I want them to feel? Challenge and encouraged
ME/WE
One of the things I preached on about a month ago is that there all types of relationships available to us, that we can be in.
Strings attached relationship: These are built upon a foundation that someone will love you if you buy them things, always meet there needs, believe the same way they do and if you do not the relationship is hindered or severed and only can be healed if you buy me these things or believe me....this is cancel cultures love foundation.
Work relationships with our fellow employees: These are relationships for the most part stay at work when you get into the building, Zoom room you are friends and outside of that you are not really friends, not because you do not like them it’s a work relationship.
And the list goes on, best friend relationships, toxic relationships, neighbor relationships.
TENSION
The question that remains for us, similar to the a month ago what relationship are we to have with God
What type of relationship is that? Covenantal, the deepest of all relationships, a combination of commitment, loyalty, love and sacrifice.
What type of relationship do you thing God wants us to have with each other as the church the family of God?
There are two
One: as a family of God we are to be brothers and sisters in Christ, not just friends, friends come and go....we are to be brothers and sisters to each other…to be there for each other, lift each other up, rejoice with each other, spur each other on.....you have been adopted as a son or daughter into the family of God....this is your forever family
Second: we are to have covenantal relationships with 1-3 people outside of marriage with people of the same sex....only one is of the same sex....those who are married who try to have a convenantal relationship with the opposite sex end up getting affairs.
We see David and Jonathan have this relationship
Paul had this with his traveling partners…Paul
We are going to see in a minute Naomi and Ruth have this relationship.
What is covenantal relationship with someone of the same sex look like?
It is a relationship that has
Loyalty and love (one of commitment I am not going anywhere and love) it is not feelings based....oh I feel like loving this person, it does not leave if there feelings dwindle or if that person is hard to love that day
Sacrificial
Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.
Covenantal relationship sacrifices for the other person....it is not I’m busy or I will return your call in a couple of days…or when I am done doing all my things I will
It is the relationship that you have where you are fully know and fully loved (there are no secrets)....That person knows the best and worst of you.
it is the place where you air your junk....your lighting rod
it is the person who picks you
Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil.
For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up!
Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone?
And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him—a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
it is the person who calls you on your stuff in a loving way
Faithful are the wounds of a friend; profuse are the kisses of an enemy.
it is the person who God uses to help shape and mold you
Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another.
What God is saying to us church we are to be in covenantal relationships with people.
Not Facebook relationships…you are not fully loved and know there....Facebook brings more division than love
I have called you to a family and inside that family to have a convenantal relationship with a couple of people
Why?
Why is a covenant relationship important?
Two reasons
We are wired for covenantal relationships
Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.”
We are wired for relationships, deep relationships, that to not have a covenantal relationship....we are wired to be loved and to really love in return.
The TRINIT ITSELF IS A COVENANTAL RELATIONSHIPS, THE FATHER, HOLY SPIRIT, and JESUS exist in covenantal relationship
Let’s be honest:This pandemic and our culture pushes against covenantal relationships...
Our culture is about me, individualist
Our culture is wired for instant and quick and covenantal is not instant and quick
I am too busy, why would I make room or time for a relationship like that? You do not have time not to
Our culture is quicker to cancel than to love
I’m just going to cancel you out
Most anti-biblical thing.....
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’
But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?
You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Why are we canceling out people God tells us to love???
We even see this in a secular study by Harvard that took place 30 years ago over a 9 year period and study 7000 people
have the group had deep relational connections
the other half did not but they worked out and eat well
Guess what group was healthier??? by far
Healthier emotionally, physically?
The group with the strong relational connections
4x times better at fighting off infections
lived far longer than those who eat right
The joke of the study is that is better to eat Twinkie's with friends than broccoli alone.
Second reason:
One of the things God uses the most to shape you is people....God sends people into your life to help shape you to be the person He called and made you to be....and we can accept those people or rejected those people.
If you want to know who you will be look at your closest 5 friends look where they are going and where they are going you are heading in the same direction.
If they work out, guess what you will be doing?
If they gossip or lie guess what you will be doing
If they truly love the LORD guess what you will be loving
Covenantal relationships are vitally important because they help shape us.
Objections
What if I get hurt? you will get, every great relationship has hurt at times because of sin....you have reconcilation and forgiveness and it strengthens your relationships
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.” - C.S. Lewis
What if I try and it does not work out ? Try again I tried again
GOD
I want us to see how a covenantal relationship looks, see a more detail story of how this happens in Ruth 1. We are going to see Ruth and Naomi in chapter 1 are going to enter into a covenantal relationship at time when Naomi needs it the most
Naomi has no husband, he died ten years prior
Her two sons died and they have not grandchildren all she has left is our two Moabite daughter-in-laws; Orpah and Ruth
And she is in a foreign land in Moab her family went there because there was a family in Bethlehem “the house of bread” and instead repenting and turning to God and if they did God makes a covenantal promise in Deut 28 that they would never have famine if they return back to God or remain faithful and instead her husband leds them in rejection to Moab
A time when she says her name is no longer Naomi, which means pleasent, but Mara which means bitter
AT THIS MOMENT IN TIME THAT GOD SHOWS UP PROVIDENTIAL in TWO WAYS..
Then she arose with her daughters-in-law to return from the country of Moab, for she had heard in the fields of Moab that the Lord had visited his people and given them food.
So she set out from the place where she was with her two daughters-in-law, and they went on the way to return to the land of Judah.
God shows up and visits His people and heals the land.....
What does Naomi do?
Does she still reject God and stay in Moab…no she repents, even in her bitterness..
This is the difference between repentance and remorse
Repentances means to change directions
Remorse is feelings based and you can get over it....many people are remorseful over bad things they did but they are not always repentant
At this point her daughter-in-laws say I’m going back too! Two Moabite daugher-in-laws going with her to Bethelhem, enemy land.
What does Naomi say to the Orpah and Ruth?
come join me? Come join in me, no
But Naomi said to her two daughters-in-law, “Go, return each of you to her mother’s house. May the Lord deal kindly with you, as you have dealt with the dead and with me.
The Lord grant that you may find rest, each of you in the house of her husband!” Then she kissed them, and they lifted up their voices and wept.
Stay here…find new husbands in Moab
How do the Orpah and Ruth respond?
They first cry…then they say
And they said to her, “No, we will return with you to your people.”
We are going to leave Moab and go be with your people...
Naomi said this makes no sense…go back
But Naomi said, “Turn back, my daughters; why will you go with me? Have I yet sons in my womb that they may become your husbands?
Turn back, my daughters; go your way, for I am too old to have a husband. If I should say I have hope, even if I should have a husband this night and should bear sons,
would you therefore wait till they were grown? Would you therefore refrain from marrying? No, my daughters, for it is exceedingly bitter to me for your sake that the hand of the Lord has gone out against me.”
Then they lifted up their voices and wept again. And Orpah kissed her mother-in-law, but Ruth clung to her.
(she’s in her 40’s at this time)
(will you wait 15ish years?…people married earlier as teenagers then) דָּבַק dabaq
What does Naomi say?
And she said, “See, your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her gods; return after your sister-in-law.”
But Ruth said, “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.
Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.”
And when Naomi saw that she was determined to go with her, she said no more.
(Chemish is there god)
Ruth says one of the most beautiful things in scripture…this is covenantal language
This is huge, she is leaving everything behind to be in relationship with Naomi....
Where you die is huge, because one of the customs of that day is you were buried with your people…and not to not be buried with your people was a horrific offense.
As for the bones of Joseph, which the people of Israel brought up from Egypt, they buried them at Shechem, in the piece of land that Jacob bought from the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for a hundred pieces of money. It became an inheritance of the descendants of Joseph.
This is so beautiful that Naomi’s losest point in her life…God providential provides someone....
Even when she didn’t want it, even when she said no, even though she is bitter…isn’t this us sometimes....leave me alone…let me God....God says you cannot be let alone…you need someone
US
God is saying this to us today....in our culture that is all about individualism, reject the lifelessness of that and
What we often do not need more of is another sermon, those are good, another devotional, those are good, those can only take you so far....
What you need is to be in a covenantal relationship with another believer....a place where you are fully know and love, a place where you are challenged and encouraged....real.....I relationship
HOW?
Pray (who does God want me to be in covenantal relationship with)
Ask
Say to someone I want to be a deeper relationship with you, one that is committed and intentional and asks the personal questions
Like how is your marriage doing
How has your fight with sin been going
How are you really doing
How can I pray for you
Here is the thing I will leave with, God does not call us to these relationships and not provide,
It may take time, pray for it, believe in it, take the risk....
Who you are closest to will determine who you become....