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May 6, 2007
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Relationship
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Pastor Brian Shimer
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"That Amazing Word: Covenant"
Exodus 20: 1-21; Exodus 24: 3-11; Matthew 26: 26-30
- It is covenant that God is offering us in Jesus and it is a covenant that God made with Israel in the passage read in the giving of the 10 commandments. The old testament is called the "old covenant" and the new testament is called the "new covenant" and is what makes the old covenant "obsolete" according to the book of Hebrews (8:13).
But what is a covenant? And what is so special about it?
When we use the word so freely it is helpful if we really understand what the Biblical authors understood as they used it, and why God used that term in dealing with his people.
The passage Dave Burke read to us from Exodus is what we think of as the 10 commandments, but what it is actually is a passage from the middle of a section of the book of Exodus called the "book of the covenant" for what we have here is an agreement that God made with the people. This agreement was given in a manner they understood from politics not religion.
Prior to Israel becoming a nation by God calling them out of Egypt the word covenant was never used as a contract between people and God. No one would ever have used the term covenant as a picture of relationship between people and God. Actually all the peoples of the ancient near east knew that there were many, many gods and goddesses and the truly diligent sought to please them by always seeking to offer yet one more sacrifice. You feared leaving any god out. Many people still live this way today in this world in many different religious groups.
But God did something over against that kind of climate by calling a people to Himself and by making a covenant with them. He did something the people could understand which changed them eventually from a polytheistic culture into the first monotheistic culture following Yahweh.
- I want you to know that a covenant was an agreement between nations. It was an action that created something between them which is termed "fictive kinship". By enacting covenant there was birthed a relationship between the two parties that made them "like kin" in their relationship. We could compare this to the practice of adoption as practiced today, where someone who is not a member of the family is adopted into the family and made "kin".
So, when covenants were "cut" as was said, they created relationships that previously had not existed. To be made kin of someone was a big deal in this time period. It was a patriarchal society meaning that the only thing that mattered was who your father was. We are going to talk about that more next Sunday as we look at the relationship of Ruth and Naomi.
It was for this reason that covenants were so important. They created a new kind of relationship between nations. Smaller, equally powerful nations would cut covenants that made them "brothers". They would fight with one another against a common enemy. They would share resources.
The second kind of covenant, which is the kind found in Exodus, was called a Suzerain/Vassal covenant.
The word Suzerain meant a lord.
These covenants were between a more powerful nation, a superpower, and a smaller less well-defended nation.
If you want a way to organize your understand of everything that happens in the Old Testament, then covenant is the word for you. For covenants of this type were made many times between Israel and Judah and their neighbors. But prior to them ever cutting any of those covenants, God cut one with them.
- I tell you all this because you need to understand that the idea of covenant was everywhere in this culture. The people understood this well. They knew how to "cut" a covenant so that when God cut one with them, they understood that God was becoming their 'Suzerain' their Lord. And they knew that if they had one Suzerain the dare not have another one.
No nation would be so stupid as to cut a covenant with a 2nd suzerain when they have one already. But that is exactly what Israel and Judah did multiple times in their history.
And each suzerain/vassal covenant has the same components. There are nine main components. But you won't remember that many, indeed, I could not either, however, you can get a few of them and this leads somewhere, so hang with me.
Every covenant began with a title - the title was not like the title of a book, but the title of the Superpower making the covenant. Often this would be quite a long list of identifying words about the one making the covenant.
Look with me at Exodus 20. What is the title of this covenant given with Israel. Who is it that makes it?
Indeed: "I am the Lord Your God" "I am YAHWEH". When the God of all the universes says, "I am your God" what more need be said? As a professor once said, "It is not every day that the Sovereign of the Universe introduces himself" (notes see below) (Ex 20:2/Dt 5:6a)
The next piece of every covenant was the historical prologue. Can you identify this in the covenant here on the page in front of you?
Yes, the statement "who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…" is the historical prologue(Ex 20:2b/ Dt 1-3, 5:6b). This gave the REASON why the vassal should participate in the covenant and accept the suzerainty of the great king. And notice that after this prologue a "therefore" follows and then begins the stipulations of this covenant.
But before we go to them, notice that the command to obey does not precede but follows what God has already done for them. IT is not that they must obey to earn the grace that this God can bring, but they obey because of what this God has already done. The faithful suzerain has already acted no their behalf!
This is a crucial point for in every generation the church manages to enslave itself under a legalism that demands obedience before grace. We always try to find a way to MAKE ourselves good enough for God. Or worse, we try to find a way to make the unbeliever make themselves good enough for God. But the whole point in his historical prologue both in the old and the new covenant is that God's action on our behalf always precedes our actions on HIS behalf. We do not obey in order to win God's grace, we obey because He has given His grace. The question is no so much, "What would Jesus do?" as "what has Jesus done?"
- Next comes the "therefore" since God is the Only Suzerain they should have, then it follows that "you shall have no other gods before me." And God details for them every possible way they could rationalize around that one but basically is saying: No other Suzerains!
The Israelites were thus led into monotheism by this covenant - they were led out of the peoples around them who worshiped many gods and considered lazy a person who did not, into a people who honored this One God, their Suzerain.
We are familiar with the passage of the 10 commandments, but they are not to be excised from the text - they are not to be taken in isolation from the fact that God has acted on their behalf. These are the protections of their relationship with God, these commands are the true expressions of a relationship established. (Ex 20:3-17/ Dt 5:7-21; chapters 12-26).
In the treaties of a superpower with a vassal, the superpower would be called "father" and the vassal "son". It was a picture of relationship, of protective relationship.
Blessings and curses (Deut. chapters 27-28; Josh 24:24 were always included in a covenant of this kind, and these are not included right in this location but are included in God's covenant with Israel, most specifically dealt with in Moses' second giving of the law to the children of those who first experienced it in the book titled "Second Law" or "Deuteronomy" chapter 28.
In addition every covenant had a sacrifice(EX 24:3-8/ Gen 15/ Matthew 27:22-25). That is the reason for the saying to "cut a covenant". Animals were literally split in half from head to foot and then the two halves were laid opposite one another and the vassal would walk between the halves as if to say, "this is what will happen to me if I disobey the Suzerain's commands".
When God cut covenant with Abram in a marvelous action of grace, he had Abram split the animals, and only God moved between the halves of the animals while Abram fell into a deep sleep as if to say, if you break this covenant the judgment will fall upon me. And God eventually did take the judgment in Jesus.
After this ceremony these same animals were cooked and a fellowship meal was eaten.
In chapter 24 you have a picture of the fellowship meal that the leaders had with God upon the mountain. Did you remember they had had this feast together with God? That they were in the presence of God and saw God as He chose to appear to them? And here in this passage notice what Moses says: This is the blood of the covenant which he sprinkled on the people. Not many want to be sprinkled with literal blood, but since life is in the blood, to be sprinkled with the blood is a picture of being given life.
Jesus in the upper room with his disciples as he forever changed the Passover into the Last Supper, said these very words. He quoted Moses from this passage. He connected what he did in the upper room to this fellowship meal, connecting this "new" covenant to the old. As Israel was made the son of the great Suzerain there, so we are made the sons of the same great King with the actions of Jesus.
God took this rag tag group from Egypt and made them a nation and a fighting force to be reckoned with by calling them into covenant and thereby naming them a people. God took these polytheists and made them monotheists, bringing them to Himself. And Jesus took us, transforming us from a rabble of slaves into his covenant people when by means of the sacrifice and blood we were marked as the covenant people of God. Jesus was the second Moses and sprinkled not "the blood of bulls and goats" but instead distributed his own blood to the people in order to ratify a new covenant.
This means that this tame meal we come to month after month is actually a reenactment of the most dramatic event in human history, as God ratified a new covenant only this time He was the sacrifice.
(notes on covenant from a lecture by Dr S. Richter, Asbury Theological Seminary)
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