Why Covenant?

  • Jake Chambers
  • Jun 20, 2010
  • Series: SDSU

We are tackling a monster topic today - the topic of covenant. This topic is saturated throughout the Bible and it is one that we could spend a lifetime exploring. So we must concede, and I must concede before we even begin, that there will be many powerful truths, many insightful verses, many life-altering stories on covenant that are found in the Bible that we will not even get to sniff today.

That said, I am going to try to give us a broad overview of covenant as found in the Bible, in hopes that we may come out with a stronger appreciation of covenant and a stronger realization that we are in covenant with a covenant making God.

The Bible is broken up into 66 books and two major sections. The Old Covenant, or Testament, and the New Covenant, or Testament. Covenant is a big deal, in fact covenant is weaved throughout the story of God. Mankind sinned against God in the beginning when everything was perfect, and God has covenanted with us ever since to maintain a relationship with those that have rebelled against him.

God is a covenant maker and keeper: Our God is a covenant making God and he always keeps his covenants. He always keeps his promises. He always does what he says he will do. He covenants with us because he loves us and desires relationship with us, so he provides a way for us to remain in relationship.

Deuteronomy 7:9 "Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations."

Father’s day is not fun for some people, because their fathers made covenants or promises and never kept them. We are a fatherless generation where many fathers already bailed on the covenant they made with our mothers or never even entered into a covenant with our mothers, so this concept is foreign to our generation. Many don’t know what promises are or don’t know what "kept" promises are. Our perfect Father isn’t too selfish or scared to make a covenant, and when he makes one he always keeps it. Rest in that awesome truth.

Genesis 3:15 A promise is made here. This is the first promise of Jesus. The offspring is to come and this is the reason genealogies are meticulously kept because throughout the Old Covenant there will be a promised Messiah, a promised King. The first promise of this "serpent crusher" is found here in Genesis 3.

Genesis 17:7 God establishes an everlasting covenant with Abraham. Father Abraham: the beginning of this Old Covenant. God promises that Abraham’s offspring will be his people. God is promising to keep a people for himself. The link to this covenantal blessing is birth into Abraham’s family/nation. The symbol is circumcision. The condition is obedience but it is initiated by grace!

Exodus 3:6 "I am the God of your father, The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." God tells Moses that he is a covenant keeping God. Then he promises to free his people. He remembers his covenant and frees his people.

Covenant precedes Ten Commandments, it precedes Leviticus and the intense sacrificial cleansing system. We obey because we are in covenant, we don't obey in order to get into covenant. Commandments are for our good, for covenant blessing. The best thing for us is to be in covenant with the Creator. This is best thing for us.

We see this with Noah. God tells him that the earth is evil and mankind will be destroyed, but he is going to establish a covenant with Noah. He is going to rescue and save Noah and his family -by grace. He makes a covenant and then he gives Noah steps of obedience. Noah obeys, and it is for his good, and the good of all mankind!

I want us to jump back to Deuteronomy 7:9. This verse is crazy. See, there is something crazy going on here because God keeps his covenant but we don’t love and obey his commandments. God is modeling that he is not looking for ways to get out of his covenant, but is in fact looking for ways to maintain his covenant. But for this Old Covenant to be filled we need someone who will love God and keep the commandments. This Old Covenant palces us in desperate need of Jesus!

Hebrews 8:6-13 "In speaking of the new covenant, he (Jesus) makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away."

Humans never lived up to their end of the covenant and yet God keeps allowing them to come back into covenant with him. When they come crawling back he welcomes them, and in Jeremiah he promises a new covenant. God is aware that we break his covenant and yet opens the door for a new covenant.

The very fact that God makes a new covenant points to his radical steps to fulfill old covenant. Jesus becomes human to fulfill the old covenant, he is the promised one, he loves the father and obeys and keeps the covenant. He is the sacrifice and he is the inauguration of the New Covenant. Everything required from humans to keep the Old Covenant is completely fulfilled in Jesus, and every sacrifice the blood of the old covenant required from humans to break the Old Covenant is paid for by Jesus. This is what initiates the opportunity for a New Covenant.

Matthew 26: 26-29: The blood of the New Covenant. Jesus creates a New Covenant community because he has already filled the Old Covenant and knows his death is coming to inaugurate the New Covenant and crush the serpent’s head on the cross!

We are now part of this New Covenant. 2 Corinthians 3:4-6: a covenant empowered by God the Holy Spirit. This New Covenant is not dependant on the law, but on the heart. God gives us his Spirit and gives us new heart. The New Covenant is centered on the church and not a nation. The New Covenant is entered in by faith (new birth) and symbolized by baptism, not by old birth or symbolized by circumcision. The New Covenant has an eternal promised land and not a temporary promised land. The New Covenant is once again initiated by the grace of God and the condition is no longer our obedience, but faith in Jesus' obedience. And Jesus sends his Spirit into our hearts so now the power and desire to obey comes from God the Holy Spirit. The Old Covenant was dependant on us to fulfill it and Jesus fulfilled it for us, the New Covenant is about our dependence on Jesus the one who has fulfilled the covenant. Jesus gives us a new heart. Jesus is the priestly mediator. Jesus is the promised one. Jesus will bring us into a new eternal promised land. It is all about Jesus.

Our God is a covanental God and if we are his people then we are a covanental community. So what is covenant? I think we see a picture of it in the parable of the Prodigal Son. Luke 15:11-32: Imagine the tears and pleading with the son before he leaves. The son breaks covenant. He breaks the relationship but the Father keeps his covenant. The father would be right to break his covenant and punish his son but he is looking for a way to keep his covenant! The older son has this love at his disposal all the time and doesn’t realize it. The younger son repents. And covenant celebrates repentance!

Covenant is not a contract. Our world is based on contracts, prenuptials, steps and conditions, and we are always looking for a way out. Contracts are written to have ways out but a covenant is a promise that pursues ways for it to be kept. Do we love each other this way? We should, it's who we are!God is good so we don’t have to look elsewhere.

5 years of covenant marriage - and I would chase down my wife if she left. I will love my son or daughter with the gospel. And I would weep if they ran. But covenant is not revenge- if they do rebel it’s a celebration when they return. Celebrate repentance.

People will leave our community, but covenant celebrates their return. Loving truth will push people out when they choose sin over covenant, their own way over God’s way, but covenant rejoices when they return. And the Father celebrates our return!

Covenant is not looking for an excuse not to love, but searching for ways to love. This is what our God has done with us and this is what I am asking us to do today as we celebrate and covenant together to raise children in God’s covenant community. We can’t guarantee that these children will obey and love Jesus but we can covenant to love them and encourage them to love Jesus and we can covenant to rally around their parents, and to weep when they disobey and rejoice when they repent.

Maybe you are here and you do not know Jesus.d Maybe you were not raised in a church or don’t have Christian friends. God has offered a covenant with you that has nothing to do with your last name, your upbringing, your job, your works, your sacrifices and EVERYTHING to do with Jesus. You are invited into God’s New Covenant community. Stop looking elsewhere and look to Jesus.

Kaleo we are the prodigal son. We have stomped on our Father's covenantal love. We squander our inheritance and choose pig slop over the blessing and protection of our perfect heavenly father. We should be exiled from covenant but our Father has found a way to fulfill the Old Covenant. Our Father has sent his perfect son to take the penalty of breaking covenant. And our Father is eager to celebrate us coming back to him with the New Covenant! This Fathers day, know that your Father is the one who welcomes you back. Your Father is the one who has not left and has not withheld any of his covenant promises. Your Father is the one who does not withhold his blessings or his inheritance. Kaleo, this is our Father and he invites us to pray to him as "our Father." The same Father as Jesus. Kaleo, Happy Fathers Day!

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