Gooding, David: 3 - Remember God’s Covenant

When we broke off at twelve o'clock, Moses went on preaching. That's typical of him, and he didn't have to worry about a chairman. Fortunately, what he said was all written down, so that we can now read the written account of it. It is to be found in the book of De- Deuteronomy, chapter five, And we shall begin to read there in verse one. And Moses called unto all Israel and said unto them, Hear, O Israel, the statutes and the judgments which I speak in your ears this day, that you may learn them and observe to do them. The Lord our God made a covenant with us in Horeb. The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us who are all of us here alive this day. The Lord spake with you face to face in the mount, out of the midst of the fire. I stood between the Lord and you at that time to show you the word of the Lord, for you were afraid because of the fire and went not up into the mountain. The Lord spoke saying, I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have none other gods before me. Chapter six and verse four. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might. And finally, for the moment, in chapter seven, And here, talking about the enemies and the pagan nations that Israel will meet in the land, Moses says, verse five, you are to destroy them. But thus shall you deal with them. You shall break down their altars and dash in pieces their pillars and hew down their asherim and burn their graven images with fire. For thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God. The Lord thy God has chosen thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all the peoples that are upon the face of the earth. The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you because you were more in number than any people, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But because the Lord loveth you, and because he would keep the oath which he sware unto your fathers, has the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you out of the house of bondage from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Verse twelve: And it shall come to pass, because you hearken to these judgments and keep and do them, that the Lord thy God shall keep with thee the covenant and the mercy which he sware unto thy fathers, and he will love thee and bless thee and multiply thee. The Lord give us good understanding of his word. Already in his long sermons, Moses had reminded the people that God had at Sinai made a covenant with them. But now in this passage of his preaching, he returns to that topic and places significant emphasis upon it. The Lord God, he says, made a covenant with us in Horeb, the mountain range in which Sinai is. And then he says a startling thing. The Lord made not this covenant with our fathers, but with us, even us, who are all of us here alive this day. This is, of course, a Hebrew way of talking. When the Hebrew says not this but that, it often means not so much this as that. And when Moses here says he did not make the covenant with their fathers, he's not denying the fact absolutely, but he is pointing out to their third, second and third generations that not only did God make a covenant with their father when their fathers stood at Mount Horeb, but in making that covenant, he made it with the very people that were standing before Moses this day. Though the younger set of them were not at Horeb. Yet, says Moses, he made it with you. Because they were the people of Israel, and the covenant God had made at Horeb was with the people of Israel. And in God's mind and intention, when God came down to that mountain and made the covenant with Israel, it was not merely with people that since had died, but with these present people that God had made his covenant. It was exceedingly important, therefore, that that present generation that stood in the plains of Moab with Moses should remember and hear the voice of God again, making that covenant with them. The basis of the covenant that God had made with Israel, therefore, is given us in verses six and seven. I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. There was the basis upon which God proceeded to make his covenant with them. In other words, God did not stand in Egypt and say, if you will manage to get yourselves out of Egypt, then I would consider making a covenant with you. No, when God came to deliver Israel out of Egypt, he spoke to Moses personally and says, I have come down to deliver my people on the grounds of the covenant that I made with Abraham. Israel were not delivered out of Egypt on the basis of the law of Moses given at Sinai. They were delivered out of Egypt on the basis of the covenant and God's oath given to Abraham, their forefather. A covenant utterly of God's grace, what in technical language is called a one-party covenant. It was on the basis of that one-party covenant made with Abraham that now God drew near to Israel, since he had redeemed them out of Egypt, and they were now free to make with them this second covenant from Mount Horeb. The nature of the covenant, then. What is meant by saying that God made a covenant with his people? Two illustrations will help us this morning. The first we owe to a number of Semitic scholars and archaeologists, who, uh, uh, uh, uh, in last century, some eighty so years ago, uncovered the remains of a Canaanite civilization that people had not hitherto realized existed. In those far off days to which the clay tablets which they discovered there refer, there was a great emperor, Canaanite emperor. There was, in fact, a succession of such emperors. These great emperors conquered several lands, and each, in each land they had a vassal king installed, that the vassal king might, uh, see that the commands of the emperor were carried out. And the emperor would make with them a covenant. And since many, uh, tablets have survived from different periods, we can now read the various forms that these covenants took. They varied from time to time, but they had certain central features. The great emperor would begin the covenant by announcing who he was. One emperor was by the name of Supilu Lyumu, if that's how he liked it to be pronounced, I can't be sure of it. And he would begin the covenant by announcing who he was. I am Supilu Lyumu, do you see? And then he would proceed to say what he had done for them, namely beat them up in warfare and conquered them. After that, he would issue a series of command, a a a a a prohibition. You shall have no other emperor but me, in other words. He would issue a series of positive commands. You shall do this, and you shall do that. And of course, a series of prohibitions, and you shall not do that, and you shall not do the other. And then he would call the gods because he was a pagan, he called the gods to witness that if this people broke the covenant, then the gods would rain down their curses upon them. And then he would, uh, give directions that the covenant documents be written out, and the vassal king would assemble the multitude from time to time and rehearse in their ears the covenant that the emperor had made with them. And of course, when scholars found these documents, they got excited because we see the covenant that God made with, uh, uh, with, uh, Israel in the time of Moses shows very vivid similarities with those other covenants. I am the Lord your God. The great sovereign king of the universe, telling us who he is. Proceeds to tell Israel what he had done for them. I brought you up out of the house of bondage and gave you your freedom. Now, of course, there follows the prohibition. Thou shalt have no other God but me. And then the lists of the positive things thou shalt do, and the lists of the negative things. And subsequently we read how God assembled the people, and in the hearing of all the people, the Levites were to pronounce the blessings on those that kept the covenant, and the curse of God on those who broke it. And there was provision made that the Levites take the documents of this covenant and store them by the ark. And from time to time, as the days and years went by, they were to bring out the documents, assemble the people, and rehearse them in their ears. Which all brings us to perceive that this covenant that God made with Israel was an instrument of government. It was the b- uh, the basis of God's governing of his people. We need not force the comparison to any unseemly lengths, because there was another element to this covenant. And we picked that up from Jeremiah, chapter two of Jeremiah's prophecies, where in talking about the time that Israel spent in the wilderness, God says this to Jeremiah. This, of course, was centuries after Moses. And he says to Jeremiah, go and cry in the ears of Jerusalem, saying, thus saith the Lord, I remember thee. I remember for thee the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, how thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a lad- land that was not sown. Israel was holiness unto the Lord, the first fruits of his increase. What magnificent word, word, uh, speech that is, is it not? When you consider who it is that utters it. This is that same Lord that appeared on Mount Horeb in fire and cloud and storm. But hear how his heart was feeling, like a bridegroom going after his bride. I remember it, says God. Hundreds of years later, he remembered it. Like, I suppose, who knows, I suppose many a husband, now getting gray and bent ninety six years old, mm, can remember the first time he dared put the question to the lady that he had hoped would marry him. Remember it, sir? I remember it, says God. And then you'll notice how he phrases it. Not how I went after you, how you went after me. Now I have have to be very careful what I say here, being a man of no experience. But you see, sometimes it is thought that it is the young men that go after the young ladies, you see. That I have observed, however, from the touchlines, is not always the case. Of course the young ladies don't make it obvious that they are after Mr. Smith or whoever it could be. It's just that when he appears, they happen to be there, if you see what I mean. Hmm. I remember that, says God. Oh, he's talking about creatures of flesh and blood, whose breath is in their nostrils. I remember how you went after me. How does God come to speak like that? You went after me in the wilderness, and there was nothing there but bare old sand and rock. No occasion to go there, except it was me you came after. And I made my proposal to you there. And you said, yes. I remember it still, says God. Let's look at the proposal that God made to Israel when they came out of Egypt. This is Exodus in chapter nineteen, of course. Exodus chapter nineteen, Verse three: and Moses went unto God, and the Lord called unto him out of the mountain, saying, Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel, you have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I bear you on eagle's wings and brought you unto myself. I notice it. The goal of Israel's redemption was not the promised land. That was their destiny. But the goal ha- God had in mind when he delivered them out of Egypt, he here specifies exactly, you've seen what I did to the Egyptians. I brought you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself. This is the lover of men's souls speaking. When Israel came out of Egypt, it was under the gracious influence of God who bore them, so to speak, on eagle's wings and bore them to himself and sought their heart's affection that they should receive his covenant and be his. And he says, this is what you will say, Moses. Say to Israel this, now therefore, if you will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant, then you shall be a peculiar treasure unto me from among all peoples, for all the earth is mine. And you shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel. God going courting and giving his proposal. If you'll keep my covenant. He's talking now of the covenant as a marriage covenant, a marriage contract. If you'll keep my covenant indeed, then you shall be a peculiar treasure. Not our modern sense of the word peculiar, odd, though some of us are that, to be sure, uh, but in the sense of the private property, the personal private property, the personal treasure. As if God was saying to them, oh, my treasure, if only you'll keep my covenant, you shall be my very own, my personal delight, my personal joy, my personal treasure. And you shall be distinct, for all the nations are mine. And you shall be my special love. Oh, pray imagine it, this is the God of the universe. Owner of the billions of galaxy and uncountable number of angels that excel in strength. Comes to a band of once-timed slaves and says, if only they keep his covenant, they shall be his darling of his heart. I remember it, says God. And I observe, says God to Jeremiah. I who observe their first love have observed how Israel lost their first love. We pick up our ears, don't we? For the language is inescapable. And in one um Peter chapter two, the Holy Spirit applies it to us. Let me read his words to you, that you see I do not exaggerate. One Peter chapter two, but you, verse nine, but you are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession. That's the Greek for that peculiar treasure. People for God's own possession, that you may show forth the excellences of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. This is the language of the lover of our souls, a peculiar treasure to him. And we should notice, my brothers, my sisters passing by, as God gave his proposal to Israel and thus also to us. It is a question of what God got out of his redemption of Israel. Did you notice that? What God was looking for. Oh, it is true to say that at Calvary, in one sense, it wasn't God trying to get something from us, it was God who gives to us, but that's only half true. At Calvary, God was looking for what he could get, my brother, my sister, from you. If only you'll keep my covenant, he said to Israel, you shall be to me a peculiar treasure. He says the same to us. He's made us a peculiar treasure through the grace and redemption that is in Christ Jesus. And God is looking for what he can get by his redemption out of us. Oh, how it would delight him to see us, his people, would it not, going out after God, like Israel went after God in the wilderness. But, uh, because this language, which is the language of God's original covenant with Israel, is now applied to us, we should remember that we believers of this age are likewise related to our Lord under the terms of a covenant. Not under the terms of the old covenant, to be sure, but under the terms of the new covenant. Now you must allow me three and a half minutes, uh, just to turn aside and to demonstrate as quickly as I can to you from the New Testament that we who belong to the church are nevertheless under the terms of the New Covenant. I do so because thinkers and theologians and teachers, far better than I, have some of them come to the conclusion that the New Covenant is simply for Israel and has nothing to do with the church. And I respect their scholarship. They therefore notice that the new covenant prophesied in Jeremiah is promised by God to be a covenant that he will make with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. And these theologians therefore point out that it means what it says. This is a covenant that God will make with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, but not with the church. And that therefore the new covenant is a covenant that God will make in the future, when the Lord comes again and Israel is restored and all Israel say that then God will make the new covenant with them. I'm sure he will bring in the Jews of that time Israel restored into the covenant. But let us hear what the New Testament says precisely. In chapter eight of Hebrews, the law- lawyers among you, uh, should take note of the reference and study it again. In talking about the new covenant, the writer says of our Lord, this is Hebrews chapter eight and uh, uh, verse uh, six: But now hath he, that is our Lord Jesus, obtained a ministry the more excellent than that of Moses or the Aaronic priesthood. By how much also he is the mediator of a better covenant which hath been enacted upon better promises. Notice, please, the verb at the end of the sentence. This new covenant, says the writer to the Hebrews, notice the verb and notice its tense, has been enacted. The word means it has passed into law. It has been signed and settled. It is now in operation. It has been enacted. Hebrews chapter eight then, and we may notice that in the language of covenants, a covenant is made when the sacrificial victim is offered. That in the ancient world was the way of enacting a covenant. Animals were taken and slain and offered as sacrificial victims for the covenant. And if we ask ourselves, when was the new covenant made? When was it enacted? And what sacrifice hallowed and guaranteed the terms of that covenant? Oh, praise God. It was enacted when the great sacrifice died, and he shed his blood, the guarantor of the new covenant, the guarantor that all its conditions should be fulfilled. Oh, you may praise God for that. And we observe, of course, that when the old covenant was made, Moses took a basin, and he took the blood of the sacrifices and put it in the basin, and he sprinkled the book and all the people, and holding it up, he said, this is the blood of the covenant which God now makes with you. Listen, as our Lord in the upper room, a few hours from Calvary, took a cup, and handing it to his apostles, he said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is shed for you. All of you drink it. Do you see the similarity? When at his supper we take the cup, do we not s- see in our heart the blessed Lord himself handing us the cup? Said Moses to the succeeding generations, the Lord God made the covenant not just with our fathers, he made it with you. And I, Moses's little slave and apprentice boy, but I too remind you that when you take the cup, you, so to speak, were there when he made the covenant. What different is the new covenant from the old? Well, it's better. The Hebrews is all happy and anxious to pile on the words to tell us that this covenant is made on better promises, and it is a better covenant. The fault with the first covenant, so we're told in Jeremiah, and it's God who's speaking, that God made the covenant, but they forsook him. Although he was a husband to them, they deserted him and went after other gods. Ah, he had come down as the lover of their souls, offered him their, offered them his proposal. They lost their first love and broke the covenant and departed from the law. And Hebrews chapter eight uh, points out, in the Greek version of that same old covenant, the weakness. I gave them the covenant, and they continued not. If there's going to be a new covenant that's any better than the old, it will have to come to this heart of the matter. How can God get his redeemed people to continue and not play false and depart? The answer is in the marvel of the New Covenant, in the second distinction. The Old Covenant was written on tables of stone. Easy enough to write if your chisel is sharp enough and you've got a steady hand. But writing commands on bits of stone doesn't necessarily give people the strength and the puff to keep the commands. And Israel couldn't keep them. Oh, praise God for the new covenant. As Paul puts it as he talks to the Corinthians, two Corinthians chapter three, says he, are you not aware of what happened at your conversion? For when I came, the risen Lord used me as a writer will use his pen. The equivalent, so to speak, of the ink was a Holy Spirit of God himself, and God performed the miracle of the New Covenant, and he wrote his laws on your very hearts. Not some bits of stone. In other words, conversion, and more than conversion, being born again of the Spirit of God and the very life of Christ. The life of the Spirit of God put within. Give you two seconds and a half to pause and in your heart say, hallelujah to God. Failed and weak as we may be, is it not true, my brother, that God has written his law on your very heart, child of God, joined to Christ for all. Doesn't mean that we are free to sin as we please. When Paul writes to the Lord's people at Corinth about the Lord's Supper, points out that the cup is the cup of the new covenant. He exhorts them, when you come to the Lord's Supper, you examine yourself and put right the things that may not be right. Confess your sins before God, judge yourself, and you will not be judged. But suppose I, as a believer, come to the Lord's Supper unworthily, carrying on with things and actions and attitudes I know to be wrong, and I nevertheless come, and I say, but it's all of grace, my brother. I didn't worry about my sins. Then what will happen? Well, you'll find the Lord will fulfill the new covenant. But the new covenant says he's going to write his laws on your heart and will persist in engraving them ever deeper. And we can let him do it the easy way. Or if we are careless, he will take us in hands, says Paul, and he will chasten us. Bring us to a better frame of mind. What for? So that we may not be condemned with the world. There is no condemnation, thank God. But there is discipline. For the New Covenant is also an instrument of our Lord's government of his people. What are its requirements? The New Covenant. Well, I can tell you the old covenant requirement. The basic one was this. Israel, you believe that the Lord is one, only one, and Israel will fight tooth and nail to this very present time, those who believe their Old Testament will, for the oneness of God. And we Christians re-echo it, there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. The demand is the other side of the coin. If there's one God, then we are to love him with one undivided heart, mind, soul, and strength. And the New Testament says it explicitly. We're saved by faith. The righteous demand of the law is to be fulfilled in us who walk not after the spirit. How would you sum up the law that God requires? Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength, and thy na- neighbor as thyself. So says Paul, love is the fulfilling of the law. Now note what that means and what it doesn't mean. It doesn't mean, like some say, but now we don't have to bother about the law at all. Forget the law, forget the commandments, forget the rules and regulations. Just set about loving people, and you needn't bother what you do, so long as you're loving, do to them what you like. Doesn't mean that at all. It means that if you really love a person, you will in fact act according to God's holy law and love them. As you love God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength, you will love your neighbor as yourself. Oh, what right have I to preach it? It's the doing of it that counts, isn't it? I heard of a church recently in a far distant land. Oh, what lovely believers they are, but just now they're at each other's throats, tearing each other to pieces and causing division. God save us from a doctrine of grace that is so lax that we get the idea it doesn't matter what we do, we shall be in heaven at last. New covenant then. And in chapter seven, Moses puts down the, uh, God's demands for how Israel should behave. Tells Israel that when they get into the land, they are not to demean their holy status. For God chose you to be his peculiar possession, to be holy to the Lord. Don't forget it. Nor should we believers, should we? God's own possession, a holy priesthood, a royal priesthood. Our blessed Lord went and met with publicans and sinners, and so may we, to bring them the gospel, but we don't marry them, my brothers, my sister, and we don't marry unbelievers, do we? Beware lest we lower the dignity of our high and holy calling. We are married to another, even Jesus Christ, our Lord. And now I have to tell you something incredible, almost incredible. When Israel heard God speak to them out of the fire from Mount Horeb and heard his living voice coming to them, the very voice of God speaking to their hearts. They feared and quaked and felt they couldn't endure it any longer. And they asked Moses, please ask God to let us go so that we don't listen to his voice anymore. You go and be our intermediary between God and us, lest we die. And God, to my surprise, said, that's a very good suggestion, Moses. You listen to that. Oh, that my people might always remember it and never lose the reverence for God and who he is. Lose that reverence for the holiness of God, and we result with a grace that's a very cheap grace. All the people would remember my glory, my holiness, and reverence me all the days of their life. And Moses did that and became their mediator. Well, that's the easy bit to believe. Now I must tell you the difficult bit. Who was it that spoke on that mountain? So it was God, surely. Yes, but you're Trinitarians, aren't you, you Christians here? Who was it that spoke? Who is it, whenever God speaks, that does the speaking? Who is the word of God? And the Gospel of John will come and tell us, in the beginning was the Word, the Logos. He never became the Logos. He eternally was the Logos. He was with the Father. It shows you the distinction. He was with God, and yet at the same time he was God. Not three people in the Trinity, three relationships. But the relationships are what are called substantival by the theologians. It always has been the Logos. When God speaks. All this nearly incredible story, that God Almighty, having regard to our frailty, was not content to speak to us and woo us from the heights of Mount Horeb, but the Word who spoke at Horeb became flesh and tabernacled among us. All the magnificent wonder of it. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ, and we saw his glory, says John, glorious as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. Heard his voice, my brother? Yes, you say, I have indeed. Some voice, isn't it? Said he himself here on earth, the hour is coming one day when the very dead, physically dead in the graves, shall hear his voice. And the Logos speaks, and the dead shall come forth out of their tombs, some to life, some to everlasting destruction. He it is that comes and talks to us and says, he that hears my word and believeth on him that sent me has everlasting life and shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death unto life. For the hour is coming, and indeed now is, when the spiritually dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and shall live, of course. Moses' companions said, we can't listen to this voice anymore, we might die, for how can we bear such glory? Here is God incarnate, that same Logos who then spoke, and he says, the hour is coming and now is when the spiritually dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear shall live. Marvelous story. And if we are allowed to be romantic, it is written that Christ loved the church and gave himself for her, that he might sanctify her to himself, having cleansed her by the washing of water through the word, that one day he might present the church to himself, not having spot or wrinkle, but his darling treasure for all eternity. Shall we pray? Blessed Lord, it is our fitting response that we respond to thee personally. For the Father has ordained it that we are to pay the honors and honor the Son, even as we honor the Father. How shall we do else? Thou mediator of a better covenant, founded on better promises. Help us now, Lord, we do beseech thee. As thou didst hand us the cup, thou didst say this do in remembrance of me. Save us, Lord, from forgetting. Help us by the thy grace to make this a prime goal in our lives, that we shall never forget thee, nor the covenant that thou hast made with us. But we do bless thee for coming in human form, God speaking in thee, and speaking such words that have not shriveled us to the dust in guilt and fear, but have raised us up and given us new life and the certainty that we shall never perish, and none shall pluck us from thy hand. Only by thy great, great, gracious spirit help us that in the days to come we shall live loyally to thee and love thee with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and begin to love our neighbors as ourselves, for thy name's sake. Amen.