Understanding God's Covenant and Promises

It's an opportunity for you to express to him your love and appreciation you have in the songs, but your own personal love and appreciation to him for what he's done. Prayer is an important commandment that God gives us to pray, and we pray because we know he wants us to talk to him, and we know when we carry our concerns to him that he will hear them and respond to them. So we provide a guide for you, hoping that you will use this time every day of the week to take a few moments to talk to God. We ask you to pray for one of our members each week, and Kolinda Clay is our member. Anything you want us to pray with you about this week, Kolinda? Okay, we'd like to ask you to pray for her daughter to be able to get a job this week, and we'll look forward to seeing that that takes place. We list a couple of our missionaries, one overseas, one in Zambia this year, and one in North America. We support through our cooperative program, the money you give, a portion of that every week goes to missionary causes around the world, and so we want to be able to support them not only with our money, but also with our prayer. And we list people in our church family who have birthdays. It gives you an opportunity to pray for different people. The request on the other side of the bulletin prayer guide is for people who have special concerns, and so we have an opportunity on these green cards for you to express to us the people you'd like us to pray for. Megan asked us to pray for Anna Burke, and for Brenda, and Kolinda. And we ask that you remember, and for me, thank you. And we ask Jolene, here's Jolene's name on here. We ask you to remember to pray for those people that God would guide and direct them. Carrie asked us to pray that she'd be able to see that her father is safe. So pray for her, for peace for her. We ask you to pray for Chris Rathbun, the cancer's gone, she is here visiting this week. And Charlotte, who's seeing Dr. Boehm about her eyes, so to pray for both of those. But we primarily want you to pray for yourself, too. But we have one additional concern we'd like you to pray about. Judy Swaggerty, could you come up here just a minute? Judy here? Judy has worked for many years as director of our preschool area, and we appreciate very much what she's done, and given her appreciation, a certificate of appreciation for your faithful service and leadership in our preschool work for the church, for you. We want to thank you very much. I know a lot of times you worked in the Sunday school hour, and the church service, and spent your whole time back there, and we appreciate the commitment that you've made. And one small gift to be able to express to you, and say God bless you. Is that okay for you? Lord, many times children have come to our preschool area that Judy has worked with. She's touched their lives, she's told them about you before they could understand all the words. I ask for her that you would allow her to see the benefit of what she's done in the lives of children as they grow up. The foundation is laid in these early years for children to come to know who you are, and to be able to trust you with their lives. I pray in the years to years go by, and she sees these children come older, and be able to understand what it means to give themselves to you, that every one of them that does that would be an indication to her of the investment that she's made now come to fruit. We give thanks to you for her commitment to you, her dedication to your kingdom and service, and for the gift she's given you of her time in life. In the name of Christ, we ask you to bless her. Amen. God bless you. So if you would pray for Judy, and thanksgiving for her, also during our service, Sunday school, we have teachers in our preschool area, in our worship service, there are people in our preschool area, and pray for them, those that are there, that they might understand the love that they feel from the people who are caring for them. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. Heavenly Father, I thank you for your word that you've given us in the Bible. I thank you for the calling that you put on the hearts of every one of us. You have a specific call, a specific thing that you want each one of us to do every day. Are you satisfied with us? I pray that that song we sang will really be the question that we have in our mind as we listen to your word today that your servant Doyle is bringing to us. I pray, Father, that we will hear and that we will obey. I pray in your name. Amen. Amen. I have on the front seat up here a clock that kind of helps me keep track of the time. It helps me know kind of where I'm going. The alarm button is broken off of it because we had some energetic people of younger ages that came one Sunday and set the alarm for 11.40 and it went off. But this week I preached in a church and they had at the back a digital sign that told the time. And when I got up to preach, I had 30 minutes and I was supposed to get up at 9.15. When I got up and looked back at the clock, it said 15 something. I thought, what is that? I'm trying to preach and thinking this at the same time. What is that? Is it 24 hour time or what am I looking at here? So I couldn't figure it out. It kept, but then started going backwards and I thought, well, that's saying I have like 14 minutes and 30 seconds to finish. But I'm supposed to have 30 minutes. So I didn't understand what's happened. Then I preached a little bit longer and then it changed to 20 in the back. So I said, I'm not going to pay any more attention to that. I'm just going to go ahead and do my thing. So I'm watched the clock for you and all of you want me to watch the clock. So I watched the clock for you. You don't have to. I do it myself. I did get in church one time where they had a clock built in the pulpit, but it was broken and said 10 till 12 all the time. So you didn't look at that. You get panicky. I want to read from Genesis chapter 12 for just a moment, but Deuteronomy chapter 20, chapter 5 later on. The Bible is one long stream of God's activity with people. Since God is the same yesterday, today, and forever, His reaction to us is always the same. People divide the Bible into Old and New Testament for some value, but sometimes it's damaging to us because we tend to think that one is over and only one of them now is important to us. But God is the same in the book of Genesis that He is in the book of Matthew. He is not changed. His explanation about who He is changes over the years as people come to understand more and more about Him, but God is not changed and His expectations of us have not changed. What He's talking about in this passage I want to read is His encounter with people and what He wants to do in the minds, hearts, and lives of people. In this event, He called Abraham. Abram is his name in this passage. He called him and said, I have a great mission for you to accomplish. The Lord said to Abram, leave your country, your people, your father's household, and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse and all the people of the earth will be blessed through you. I want you to go where I tell you to go and when you go I'll make these promises to you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you. I will protect you from those who curse you and through you all the nations of the world will be blessed. This contract He makes with the people of Israel is the same contract He makes all the way through the Old Testament and it's basically the same contract that you make with God when you give your life to Him. This is His promise to us. It hasn't changed and it doesn't change. Abram then went to, did exactly what God told him, left the land where he'd been living and when they got there, in verse 7 of chapter 12, he said to Abram, to your offsprings I will give this land, a land, a whole nation where people had already lived was His promise to them. Now we've been talking about the Ten Commandments for several weeks and the Ten Commandments are the time in the life of Israel when God began to renew this covenant with them. It wasn't that the covenant had expired but it had been hundreds of years since this was made with Abraham and God wanted to make sure that all of the people who were His followers knew exactly what the arrangement with Him really was. He wanted them to be able to see what it was He required of them exactly as He did with Abram. There are many other commandments that God gave to the people of Israel but the Ten Commandments are like the beginning. It's like an outline of all the things that God requires. Nowhere in God's dealings with people is there anything outside of the Ten Commandments that God adds to the requirements He makes to us. There are many different ways to apply each and every one of those instructions but God never changes them. In Deuteronomy, this passage of instruction chapter five, we're looking at the last of these commandments, verse 21, you shall not covet your neighbor's wife. You shall not set your desire on your neighbor's house or land, his manservant or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. God's command in this last one was somewhat different than all the others except the first. The first and the last have a unique place. They're unique because in those two He is giving a command about your mind. The first one He says, you're to have no other gods before me, means there is to be no one that you give allegiance to or submission to other than me. Now we can't tell by looking at a person or even by their words what they're thinking in their head. They can say to you, yes I'll do exactly what you tell me, and they can say it in the most sincere voice, with not a sign or hint of any kind of deception, and in their mind they're thinking as soon as they leave I'm going to ignore what they ask me to do and do exactly what I want. We can't tell what people think. The first one, you're to make me the ruler of your life. The very last one is, you must change your heart and you must control your desires and your passions. You can't always tell what another person thinks by looking at them. You can walk up to them and they can smile at you, you can stick out your hand and they can shake your hand and say nice things to you, all the while they're looking at your watch and saying, when I get a chance I'm going to steal that. We just don't know what they're thinking. Jesus takes His clue from this last of the commandments to go back to every single one of them that was given when He gives His Sermon on the Mount and explain to us that the action that is described in Deuteronomy is only half of the story. What really is the issue with God is the mind, the heart, and the will of people. He wants us to shape our minds and wills according to His will and His mind. He wants us to think like He thinks, He wants us to value the things He wants, He wants us to see the world the way He sees it, He wants us to accept His way of seeing the world. And so when we surrender ourselves to God, we are surrendering ourselves to His authority and His control. So in this last one, He's saying to them, I want you to control the way you think about people around you. I want you to control the passions you have about the things around you, so that your mind and heart will be under my authority and under my control. Now what God is doing in this passage is He's referencing this contract that He made with them. Denise referenced this when she was singing one of the songs. What God makes a promise for us, He's going to do are four basic things. First I'm going to give you guidance. So when you're thinking about what to do, you should always, if you've devoted your life to Christ, say, Lord, what do you want me to do? I do it about the sermons, she does that about the music, you should do it about the choices in your life, because He's the Lord. We ask Him, what do you want us to do? In all the circumstances of your life, that should be the primary question for guidance about how we should react to circumstances. He promised the people of Israel, I will give you a place. He said to Abram, this is the land I'm going to give you. Then He said to the people of Israel, I'm going to give you this land of promise and each of you will have your own special land where you will be able to grow your crops and raise your animals to provide all your needs. It's the provision God promises. So for us, He says, I will provide every need you have. That's my promise to you. So when you get to the place where you have needs, you turn to God and you say, here is my need, I ask you to meet that. That's what we pray about. That's how we pray for each other. That God would honor the promise that He's made to us. He promises us protection. So when you get in circumstances that are frightening or disturbing, you can say to God, I know you've made a promise to me that you would protect me, I trust you with this. In this situation, I trust you. You see the power of God's overseeing people in difficult times in Jesus Himself on the cross. He was asked to die. God did not say, I'm going to protect you from dying. He didn't say that to any of us, but He said He would protect us from the things that would destroy us. Jesus' life on this earth was stopped, but He was not destroyed. He went on to live the most powerful life forever, resurrected. So God promises that, and then He said, I will make you a great blessing to the people around you, so that your life will make a difference in the people that are around you. Those are His promises in His covenant. That's what a God does. I will be your God if you will be my people. After the Ten Commandments were given, and Moses was on the mountain, and God said, I want you to call all the people together, and I want you to present this to them, but first ask them if they're willing to do everything that I tell them. And Moses came down and said, the Lord is going to give us instructions about the covenant that we have with Him, and our part of the covenant is to do everything that He tells us He wants us to do. And the people said, we will do everything God tells us we should do. That was their part of the contract. We will obey. When you give your life to Christ, you're saying to Him, Lord, I will do everything you tell me as best I can. This is our promise to God. It seals our sight of it. Like when you're buying a car and you say, I will make the payments. That's our responsibility to Him. Now, the commandment that God gives in this last one is to deal with our mind and our desires. I want you to understand God saying, I've promised you a family, I've promised you children that your parents would care for you, I've told you not to steal, I've told you not to commit adultery, I've told you that I would make sure that you're cared for. Now what I'm asking you to do is to live in that covenant confident, satisfied. What God says is, when I make my provision to you, I want you to accept my provision as being adequate. I want you to say, I know what there is around me and I can desire a lot of things, but I have chosen to say, I trust God for the provision of my life. Every one of these commands or every one of these promises that God gives us, and many times in our life we're going to come to the edge of them in which we doubt them. Sometimes when you're asking for guidance from God, you'll say, God, tell me the choices I should make. And your mind will flurry around and you'll think on something you should do, and then immediately as you think this is the right thing to do, it's consistent with the Bible, it's a moral decision that's right, it's fair to everyone around you, there'll be something in the back of your head that will come to say, wait a minute, is this really the right choice? You may be in trouble if you make this choice, it may cost you some money or time, and so we begin to waffle on the choices that we're supposed to make. He asks us to trust him that when we know what the right thing is, we do it regardless of the apparent difficulties it might bring. You need to know for sure that God wants you to make the decision, like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane prayed and prayed and prayed until he finally came to say, I know what you want, and then it was settled for him, it was absolutely sure. You want that. But the promise he makes is, I will take care of you, I'll guide you, and I'll provide for you. Whatever you need, I will provide. I will protect you, you won't be destroyed. Now he focuses on two areas here. The first one is a provision of sexual mate, a wife or spouse, man or woman. He says when I give you a man or woman for your life, now this presumes something, that you look for God's guidance in selecting a mate. And when you've asked for God's guidance in selecting a mate, the person that qualifies because they belong to Christ and are obedient to him and are living according to the instructions of the scriptures, and you say, okay God, guide me to this person, and he does, you have confidence that that's the choice you should make. He says be satisfied with the choice you have. Don't be looking around for someone that's more hunky than your husband is or someone that has more brains than your husband has or someone that earns more money than your husband has. Be satisfied with the choice God has given you. There's a reason for that. This is what God's selection for you is. And so for the man, you don't go looking for someone that's a little hotter than your wife or has more money than your wife or a better job than your wife. You say this is what God has provided for me. I am going to be content with God's choice. No one that you choose to marry will be the best human being in the world. If there is one best human being in the world, then all the rest of us are left out because that one's probably gone. So what he says for us is, this is my gift to you. If you've been given a gift and you take the gift and you look at it and you say, well, I don't know, I think there's a better gift somewhere than this one. It's an insult to the giver of the gift. If God who gives you the gift of a spouse has given you the gift that in the process of your life you turn against, you've turned against God. And when you say, I can find someone else that is better satisfying to me, you've said to God, I refuse to accept your choice. Now, the beginning of the Christian life, you've said to him, I give my life to you. Whatever you tell me to do, whatever you want me to do, I will do it. So in the process of this, you're rejecting the very plea and commitment that you made to God. That's why this is so serious. Adultery is serious to the follower of Christ, not because it's against the law of our land, but because the person who's lived in obedience to God, selected a mate that God guided them to, made the promise that they were supposed to make, and then they decide they want another choice. They have violated their trust in God. I don't trust you. I did for a little while, but I've decided after a while you're not trustworthy. What a rejection of God that is. It's to say, I no longer accept your authority over my life. For the follower of Christ, adultery is not just a sexual sin. It's a moral rejection of the authority of God. That's one of the things he talks about in this one. Do not covet someone else's, your neighbor's wife. So he said, don't set your desires, that's the language he uses next, on your neighbor's house or his land, manservant, maidservant, ox, donkey, or anything else that belongs to your neighbor. Now, it's a material issue here. Now, the provision is the same. God said to the people of Israel, I'll give you a piece of land, you can live on that land, you can have all that you can raise on the land, it will be enough. Now whenever you begin to say, God, you've given me this land and I've built this house with the things you've given me, but my neighbor has a better house. And I want that better house. I want the cattle that my neighbor has. I want the servants my neighbor has. I want the things that my neighbor has. What you're doing is rejecting the authority and the gift of God. So the gift that God gives you becomes insignificant to you. And the wisdom of the giver is in question. That's why it becomes a sin to us. It's a rejection of the authority of God and an accusation to him that you have failed to keep your contract with me. How is it that you can live in this world and control your mind and your heart? It's a difficult thing to do, for sure, but we find in Paul's letters to the Philippians, he wrote about himself and about the circumstances in which he found himself. Many people think he was in jail when he wrote this particular part of the epistle with one of his letters. I rejoice in chapter 4 of the Philippians, I'm going to begin reading verse 10. I rejoice greatly in the Lord, at last you have renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you've been concerned, but you've had no opportunity to show it. I'm not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need. I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well-fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength. Now that last verse, verse 13, I can do everything through him who gives me the strength. Sometimes people use that in the wrong way. A fellow told me, he was a wrestler, and before every match he would pray this prayer, Lord, you're going to give me the strength to beat this guy that I'm wrestling with. That's not what God is talking about. He's talking about in the process of living your life, you're going to find yourself in circumstances where it may appear to you that God is not keeping his promise to you. He's not keeping his contract with you. You may get to a place where it appears to you that you don't know what to do, and you may say, God is not keeping his promise, he's not guiding me. You may get to a place where you don't have all the food that you'd like to have and you're even hungry, and you may say to God, God, you've failed in your contract with me. Paul said, I've learned in every situation not to be disturbed by the circumstances in which I find myself. I have learned to be content in all of those situations. Now maybe you've traveled with children. You'd understand this. You're going down the road in the car, everybody's, well nobody's ever peaceful if you have very many children in your car, but things seem to be going okay, and then someone says, I'm hungry. I don't want to eat. And you hear that cry and you say, well, I know it's getting close to lunch, and we'll be in a good town in 30 minutes. And you say, we'll be in town in 30 minutes. And the child says, I'm hungry, I want something right now, I'm starving to death. As a parent, you know they're not going to die in 30 minutes. You know that you are going to buy them some food when you get to the town, so you discard their complaining. What do you want them to do? You want them to say, I have every confidence in the world, Dad, that you're going to provide me with food. I have every confidence in the world that I'm not going to die. And so even though I'm hungry, I'm going to be quiet about it and wait until the time comes for you to provide for me. I trust you. My children never said that at all. Most of them don't, but that's what you'd like. And as you grow older, you understand that being hungry does not demand immediately that you eat. So an adult, two adults may be driving down the road, one of them driving, the other one sitting there, and the other one says, you know, I'm getting hungry. They don't demand right then food. They understand it's going to be a little while until the next town, and so they are hungry but content, unlike the child who's hungry and is a constant thorn in your side because they can't be content. This is what Paul says he's learned. I have learned that God keeps his promise. And when I have plenty to eat, I recognize it's a gift from God. And I give praise and thanks to him for this. And when I don't have enough to eat, I recognize that God has made me a promise. And even though I can't see where the food is going to come from, I am absolutely certain that my Father is going to keep his promise and provide it for me. Why? Because I have confidence in God. I have learned in whatever circumstance I'm in, whether I'm out of jail or in jail for Paul, to be content. Because I know that God has made a promise to me. Paul was traveling on the water in a boat. They were going to leave the shore and travel, and God told him it was a bad thing to do. He told the captain it was a bad thing to do, and the captain depended more on his skills as a sailor than on Paul's skills as a sailor. And so he ignored Paul and set out on this trip, and they got into a terrible storm. It drove them all over the Mediterranean Sea, and they lost all their cargo. The ship was shipwrecked. Before the wreck came, God said to Paul, I want you to go tell everybody. My second warning here. They didn't listen the first time, but everything's going to be okay. You'll lose the cargo, but you will make it. No one will die. Paul, perfectly confident in God, went and told everyone on the ship what God's promise was. He knew it would come to pass. In the middle of this disastrous circumstances, he remembered, God promised to protect me. And his promises are true. The ship was wrecked. Everyone got to shore. No problem. Everyone was there. Well wait a minute. There's one problem. They were going to build a fire, and Paul started gathering the brush all around. They still had a fire, and there was a snake in there, and the snake jumped out and bit him. And everybody there, a native of that island, knew it was a dead, dead, poisoned snake. They said, this man must be a demon. God is trying to kill him. He didn't die. They discovered, instead of being a demon, he was a protected man of God. See, what oftentimes looks like disaster to us is merely an opportunity for God to demonstrate his power to those around us who see us. You may go through financial difficulties, and you may say, I wish I had the money that person has. You might go through circumstances where you have to live in situations that are not necessarily the best for you. I wish I had that kind of house. God takes care of you. Be content with what you have, for his promise is sure. Every child of God has the promise of their Father in heaven, I will guide your life so you'll make the right choices. And even if other people make the wrong ones that affect you, God will guide you.