One Story: Covenant

Previously on...

If you missed last week or already forgot, we started a new sermon series called “One Story” and we began to look at the Bible and see how it is one story that leads to Jesus. Specifically we looked at Gods creative action in the world, and how humans were created to be stewards of that creation. But we haven’t done a good job at it, and we’ve become agents of decreation. We’ve taken a world that is meant to promote and sustain life and we’ve defiled it with violence, with death, and with evil. We’ve turned it into a place that does not promote life or sustain it very well.

But I also showed you how Jesus came and modeled for us the ways that we are called to be creatures who partner with God in creative activity. But it’s not as if God hadn’t been working in and through people up until that point. And so we are going to pick up the story of the Bible today right where we left off, in Genesis 12.

If you remember, we left off right after the tower of Babel incident, after God has scattered the people across the land, inherently creating what we will refer to as “the nations.” And from among these nations God is going to do something really special. At the very end of Genesis 11 we are introduced to a man named Terah, who has a son named Abram. This family is from the land of Ur of the Chaldeans, which is another name for Babel, which is another name for Babylon. Which is just a nugget for you to chew on for a few weeks until those folks show back up in our story. But this family leaves Ur and heads to the land of Canaan. And so we will pick up there. This is Genesis 12:1-9

Covenant

Genesis 12:1–9 NRSV

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran; and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram, and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb.

So we’ve got a scene that might be familiar to you, and if it is you might know why there’s some problems here. But, what we have here is the creation of a covenant relationship between God and Abram.

But what the heck is a covenant really? Well in most simplistic forms it is an agreement between two parties. Our first exposure and experience of this type of arrangement likely comes in the highly formal and legally binding form of the pinky promise. Did you all do that or have kids that did?

Basically its how older siblings or neighbors get one over on their younger counter parts. “If you do my chores today I’ll give you my ice cream tonight” “Do you promise” “I pinky promise” and then you interlock pinkies. And pinky promises are like meant to be this sacred unbreakable bond. But you all know what happens next right. You do your siblings chores and at the end of the night.... there they are. Eating the ice cream that they promised you. We learn at an early age that we often have our hearts broken, that some people aren’t really reliable to hold up their end of bargains.

Probably most relevant though to our adult lives is the institution of marriage. 2 people make a covenant with one another. A promise to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, to love and support one another until the end of their lives. This is a covenant, and a better representation of what God has chosen to do with Abraham than a simple pinky promise. Because the covenant of marriage is rooted and grounded in love and affection. And that is, what we will find, the driving force behind God’s desire to attach himself to humans who can’t even keep a simple pinky promise half of the time.

So anyway, back to Abram and the problem of this promise. God says go on, leave your country and your family and I’ll make your offspring a great nation. Well the problem with that is his wife is barren! He has no kids, and there’s not much natural hope that he’s going to have any kids. But the hidden in plain sight problem is this. God said, leave your father’s family and go. What does Abram do… he doesn’t leave them! He brings his nephew with him. So right away we can see that humans are going to struggle in this covenant partnership thing with God.

Fast forward

We can’t camp out too long, so we’ve gotta move forward. But here’s the deal, Abram and his family are what we call pastoral nomads. So they are roaming around the land of Canaan and through Egypt, pitching tents and following their flocks, and getting into all kinds of problems. Abram is kind of a mess, he causes problems in Egypt by lying and saying that Sarah is his sister rather than his wife, He’s constantly got to bail out his nephew Lot — who’s not even supposed to be with him.

But in Genesis 15, despite some of these moral failings, God comes to Abram again and formalizes this covenant that he previously made.

What happens is God comes to Abram in a vision and Abram is like hey, I’m telling you that your promise to make my offspring is ridiculous because I don’t have any kids. And God responds in this way

Genesis 15:5–7 NRSV

He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness. Then he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.”

Then Abram and God perform a covenant binding ceremony that involves some weird cutting of animals, its an ancient symbolic practice, and then Abram is seemingly convinced that he should trust God that this is all going to happen… for like 5 seconds.

The very next story is Abram’s disobedience, in which he has relations with an Egyptian slave girl named Hagar, who bears for him a son named Ishmael. And that doesn’t go well, because his wife Sarah — even though it was her idea — is jealous and they kick this woman and her child out of the camp. Not awesome. But God responds in grace once again. This is what happens right after…

Genesis 17:1–8 NRSV

When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.” Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him, “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you, and to your offspring after you, the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding; and I will be their God.”

God is like, well you messed up. But I’m going to make lemonade out of these lemons. Now you’re going to be the father of MANY nations, so you get a new name, Abraham. You might be noticing this repeated theme in all three of these passages of the land. This land is going to be referred to from now on as the promised land. This is what God promises, but remember that covenants are an agreement between two parties. So what does God require of Abraham in return? Well God says this a few chapters later when talking about Abraham and whether or not he should disclose to him what is about to happen in Sodom and Gomorrah… he’s like should I tell Abraham what I’m about to do,

Genesis 18:18–19 NRSV

seeing that Abraham shall become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him? No, for I have chosen him, that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice; so that the Lord may bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.”

These are kind of all of the pieces of the idea of covenant in the Bible. Covenants (generally) are an agreement between God and people that offer a gift and then ask for a specific type of behavior in return that helps bring about God’s purposes in the world.

Abraham will have numerous descendants and the land - the gift

Abraham will teach his offspring to do righteousness and justice - the request

All the nations of the earth will be blessed - the purpose

Do you see it? This covenant will continue to be rehashed throughout Abraham’s line, though his son Isaac that he has with Sarah at the age of 100, then Isaac’s son Jacob, and then through the 12 sons of Jacob who will become the tribes of Israel.

The rest of the Genesis story details the adventures and failings of these people, and I really wish we had time to go over it all. But what we have got to know is that Abraham’s family is dysfunctional, but God uses that dysfunction to further his purposes. One of Jacob’s sons, Joseph, ends up becoming the prime minister of Egypt, who in a dream learns of a famine coming. He stores up enough grain in Egypt that they are able to physically bless all of the nations of the middle east who are suffering from a 7 year famine. And then all of his family come to join him, living in Egypt, where the story will pick up next week.

Tracing the covenant

The covenant theme will continue, and much later at Mt. Sinai God will make a covenant with the whole nation of Israel — the same covenant made with Abraham. The gift of the land with the added new language of “I will be their God and they will be my people” for the request of teaching their offspring righteousness and justice through the law for the purpose of blessing the nations.

Later God would make a covenant with King David, which is essentially the same thing. Your family will rule this land, the requirement is to rule it with righteousness and justice, and from your line will come a king who will bless all of the nations.

All of these covenants collapse, because humans are incapable of holding up their ends of the deal. The kings are corrupt and lead the nation astray. The nation loses the law. The family of Abraham becomes as corrupt as the world around in. Rather than righteousness and justice, they teach unrighteousness and injustice. God’s purpose in the world to bless the nations through this people that he attached himself to seems like it’s lost.

The Perfect Partner

That is, until God sends his son, a perfect human covenant partner to restore the relationship between God and humans.

We are told that Jesus is from the family of Abraham - Matthew 1:1

He’s a faithful Israelite who is Capable of obeying the law - Matthew 4:1-11

He’s a descendant of the royal line of King David - Matthew 1:1

All three of the Covenants that God made with Abraham and his descendants are restored through the person and work of Jesus Christ. He steps in and fulfills all of these agreements that God had made with his human covenant partners so that the purpose of all of those covenants: to be a blessing to the nations would finally be able to be realized.

Through Abraham, Israel, and the line of Kings, Jesus comes with a new offer of a new covenant. It’s not really a replacement of the old covenants but rather is a widening of their scope, an offer from God to extend the offer and the promises of these agreements to the entire world through faith in Christ and the invitation to follow him in living a life of righteousness and Justice.

This is the gift that came to us through the perfect life of Christ, the work of the cross, and the resurrection. It is a gift that finds its ultimate fulfillment when God’s purposes are finally fully realized at the end of our Bibles. A future hope when the whole world is blessed by the righteousness and justice of God in the renewed creation.

What’s my part?

So what does this all mean for you and for me? Well it means that we are God’s covenant partners. God has attached himself to us with love through the work of Jesus Christ. And although all that God asks of us is faith in order to receive this gift, there is still an inherent call to action imbedded in our acceptance of Jesus as Lord of our lives.

We are called to be people who live into the righteousness and justice of God, and who teach our children and their children to do the same. And these are really fancy words that almost have become lost on us. So I think we need to look at what the point of living lives of righteousness and justice really looks like.

Certainly there is an element of behaving in a morally and ethically sound way here. That’s no surprise, God has very real moral and ethical standards for how we as his people are called to live. But it’s so easy for us to get caught up in the details of this, often leading us to impossible standards and the type of legalism that Jesus was most definitely against in his dealings with the religious elite of his day.

So how do I know if I’m living into the covenant that I’ve agreed to when making Jesus the Lord of my life? Well I’m going to go ahead and say the 10 commandments are a pretty good place to start, because I don’t think many people in the whole world would disagree with most of them… they establish pretty reasonable boundaries around our behavior. But let’s be honest. Lists of rules don’t inspire good behavior. The consequences of breaking those rules inspires good behavior, but not necessarily lives of righteousness and justice.

What inspires us then, if it’s not a list of rules, to live lives of righteousness and justice? Well, I’d have to say that it’s the purposes of God — which if you’ve been paying attention, are to bless the world. So I think that’s the litmus test for us here. Does this behavior, attitude, way of treating my neighbors further God’s purpose of blessing the world? Does it represent Jesus in a way that inspires other to actually want to have a relationship with him? Or does my behavior and attitude make Jesus kind of look like a bad guy? Does the way I carry myself and teach my children and grandchildren to carry themselves extend the love of Jesus to all people? Does it teach them to stand up for the marginalized and give those in need a hand up? Does it reflect the Jesus I find in my Bible?

God has partnered with us, his church for this purpose. And so let’s look at ourselves and find out if we are living into our end of the deal, into God’s purpose for our world and then get to work.