Renewing Our Covenant with God

Excuse me. Moses has just finished with a long discussion about the law and all that the law meant and the requirements of the law. And now he comes to the renewal of this covenant between the people and God. The idea being in the beginning that Moses was telling the story, and in the front of the story is a story of the covenant being made between the people of Israel and God at Mount Sinai. And now Moses has reintroduced that and summarized all of it and comes to the end of this summary by asking them to renew their covenant with God, renew this contract they have between them and God. In the Jewish tradition, once a year the people of Israel would come to hear the reading of the law. And they would read what we see as Numbers and Deuteronomy, or Numbers and Leviticus and Numbers. And they would stand to hear that entire thing read, the men, women, and children. If you can imagine that. And all day long they would read the law. At the end of that then they would affirm their commitment to be obedient to God. The contract they made with God was that God says, I will guide you, and that's what the law was, the guidance. I will provide for you, I will protect you, and I will make you a great nation. A nation that will influence all the world. So they came every year to remind themselves of the relationship they had with God. Both what God asked of them and the promises God had made to them. Both of those were key ingredients in what they were doing. Now Moses has summarized Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers into one book, the book of Deuteronomy. So the law is summarized again. And now at the last chapters, beginning with chapter 29, he's summarizing again, in a shorter kind of contract relationship. He's talked about the fact that they have seen these things in the past, but they have never really understood them. And that understanding the great events of God and the acts of God, require more than just seeing them. It requires understanding what these things mean. So you can read the Bible, and you can know all the words of the Bible, but unless you understand what they mean, they don't impact your life. And that's where he starts with them. Now, he starts here, talking about the very essence and meaning of what this renewal of the contract or the covenant is. Now, we don't have, in our own services in the New Testament churches, we don't have a time in which people renew their covenant with God. We have a time in which you make that promise to God. In some churches it is, you're supposed to be making it at the time when you're confirmed. In our tradition, you come and make your presentation, and then you're immersed in water to show your old life is over, and your new life has started. But we don't have an annual time in which all of that's done. What in our church we try to do, is provide at the time we take the Lord's Supper, an opportunity for people to renew and remind themselves of the promises they've made to God. Jesus said when he talked with his disciples, you take this meal with me, and then when we enter the kingdom of heaven, we'll eat it again together. So, I ask usually whenever we do it, to remember that the drink is to remind us of the blood of Christ shed for us, and that the bread is to remind us of his body given for us. As we drink the juice, it reminds us that we have received Christ into our lives. As we eat the bread, we remind ourselves that he now lives within us, and we're to live day by day in obedience and submission to him. So, we do it once a quarter as a way of reminding ourselves of the promise we've made to God, and the promise he's made back to us. See, the New Testament covets a little different. Not only is he promised he's going to guide us, and he's going to provide for us, and protect us, and make us have a great influence in the world, but it also has another dimension. He said to us, you know, I'm preparing a place for you. That where I go, you'll be with me. So, his promise to us is I'm going to guide you from this world to the next one. His promise to us is not that he's only going to provide in this world, but that he has a provision for us. I'm going to build a house for you there, a place for you to live. It's not only that he's going to protect us here, but he's going to make sure that the place we go has no enemies for us. And his final promise, that he would make us a significant influence on the world, he says, and you will be there with me. We'll sit around the table and eat together. God has yet another covenant promise for his followers that is the same thing he's promised from the very beginning of the Garden of Eden. And so, we celebrate that renewal in that way. So, when we come to a time of that renewal, this covenant contract here, this short one, might be good for us to remember. And he wants us to know that it means it's for the people who've seen and have understood. And whenever you see the story or hear the story of Jesus, but you never really grasp it, then it's outside of your own awareness of what it means. Now, beginning with verse 9, he talks about what is the essence of the contract that we make with God. Carefully follow the terms of this covenant. I'm using the word contract here because it's more familiar to us. Carefully follow the terms of this contract so that you may prosper in everything that you do. But God's intention for us was that we might find life complete. That's what he means by prosper. He doesn't mean get rich. He means you may find what you need. He's already defined that as everything you need to have and you have safety with it. So, I've made sure that where you go, the terms of this contract are for you to be safe and to have everything you need to be able to live. And you can do that by making the choices that I ask of you. So, he starts out by saying the contract is for all of them. Now, when he's making this contract with the people of Israel, it's somewhat different than the New Testament, where we individually, one by one, make that personal commitment to Christ. But now he's saying to all of you who are standing here today, and I want you to notice in this essence of what the contract is, over and over again, he uses the language today and now. So, count those off as I read this. All of you are standing here today in the presence of the Lord your God, your leaders, your chief men, your elders, your officials, and all other men of Israel, together with your children and your wives and the aliens living in your camps who chop the wood and carry your water. You're standing here in order to enter into a covenant with the Lord your God, a covenant that he's making with you this day and sealing with an oath to confirm you this day as his people, that he may be your God as he promised and as he swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I'm making this covenant with its oath not only with you who are standing here with us today in the presence of the Lord our God, but also with those who are not here today. Five references to the immediacy of the contract, of the renewal of it. This is the promise today that you're going to enter into this arrangement or contract with God. So, he's talking about that renewal time as a focus on what's happening right now. Now, excuse me, I'm having trouble with my throat. And what he's meaning is, I want you to look now at what I'm saying to you because this promise is immediate. It's something you are doing now. So, when you renew your vow to God in the Lord's Supper, you look at that day and say to God, here I come on this moment to make a promise, a new promise to you. What is it that I've done in which I failed in keeping the promises I've made to you? You confess that, you acknowledge it, and then you make that new promise. The promise comes in confessing your sin, asking for forgiveness, and vowing again to do the things you know God wants you to do. The renewal of the promise that Moses wanted the people of God to make, remember it just didn't Moses either, this is God's leadership. The renewal was before they were to enter the land. It's a good thing for us to remember when we face important decisions in our lives to make sure that we're standing where God wants us to stand. Because the decisions they're going to make as they enter this land of promise are critical to them. Are they obedient to God? Are they listening to what He has to say to them? Are they following it without error? Because every step of the way of our lives takes us either closer to God or away from Him. So we have to be careful about that. One time in our youth, we're having a youth meeting over here. There were probably 20 of them. And I had them take the chairs and line them up with the first chairs right against each other. And then the next chair about two inches apart. And the next two chairs two inches more apart. When you got to the end of the ten chairs, it was more like, you know, 20 inches apart. And what I wanted to show them is at that time in your life when you're a teenager and you're just a little off from God, it didn't matter very much. But the further you go and the longer you go, the further you get from Him. It is very important to recalculate. Isn't that what your GPS says? Recalculate. To stop and recalculate to see if you're really on track again. At any moment in your life, you can come back in line with where God wants you. But you can never do that if you don't recalculate. Where am I? What does God want me to do? And today, where am I? It doesn't matter if you started out right. But if today you're a long way away from where God wants you to be, it's just going to get worse every day of your life. But you can stop at any moment, come back and say, I know what you want me to do and I'm going to do it that way. That's what He's asking. This day, I want all of you to remember God intended you to have a successful life. That's what the prosper means. Jesus came and said, I've come that you might have life and have it to the fullest. That's what He's talking about. That you might have everything in life God intended you to have. And I cannot give you that unless you do the things I tell you to do. And that's what all the covenant contract was all about. Now, He says, all of you standing here today in the presence of the Lord, your God. And He goes down the list, the leaders of the nation, the chief men, that is the people that are in charge of those that are there, the elders, that is the wise people who have influence in the government, the officials, people who hold official offices, other men of Israel, together with your children, your wives. You'll notice in the Old Testament, like much of the culture, the men and the children and then the wives, they don't play as significant a role as others do. Aliens living in your camps who chop the wood and carry your water. Every person is to make this vow to God. And the people, among the people of Israel, there was no, you couldn't be a part of the people of Israel without making the vow of commitment to follow Him. That's what was required to be a person in the city of Israel. Now, we do the same thing in our church. I was talking to a young lady today, one of our children, who wants to make a commitment to Christ. And every person has to stand before the congregation and say, I have given Jesus Christ my life. Before we then put them in the water to show that their old life is over and raise them up out of the water to show that a new life has begun. Every person has to do that. Doesn't matter how old you are, how young you are, that kind of promise has to be made. The Bible describes the people of God, we say the church, but that's the people of God, as consisting of every person with the same kind of focus. I intend to live in submission and obedience to God. Verse 12 he says, You are standing here in order to enter into a covenant with the Lord your God. You're here to make this covenant promise. The covenant the Lord is making with you this day. The covenant God makes is twofold. There's a promise we make and a promise God makes when a covenant is made. That's why I like to call it a contract because you understand what that is. A contract to buy a car, you promise to pay so much money, they promise to give you a car. Contract to buy a house, they promise to give you a house, you promise to give them so much money. God's arrangement with this is the same way. You give me your life and completely submit yourself to my authority and I will give you a life that's full and complete. I'll guide you in your choices. I'll provide for your needs. I'll protect you and I'll make your life have a great influence in the world. You will be an influence for good to the people around you. That's his promise. So you're standing here today to make a promise to God. And God is making this promise with you this day and sealing with an oath. An oath to confirm you this day as his people that he may be your God. Now those two phrases, his people and your God, are the vowel parts of this. And what we ask and when a person makes that promise is come into baptistry and say, I've given my life to live and obey Jesus Christ as my ruler or Lord. That's a promise. I accept the authority of God over me to do the things that he tells me are right. And then God makes a promise to say, whenever you've given yourself to me, I make this promise to you. I will guide you, provide for you, protect you, and give you this life of value. That's his promise. So he's already made the promise to everyone who has trust in him. What we do at the baptism time is a person says, OK, now I declare my trust in Christ. And he makes that available to us in that contract ceremony. The Lord is making with you this day and sealing it with an oath. That's the way we do it. A promise from God and the act of immersion baptism to conform you this day as his people, to confirm you this day as his people, that he may be your God as he promised you. And as he swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, you see the same promise he asked of them was to promise to live in submission and obedience to him. And we make that same promise today. That's the contract we make with God in the same as has been done in history. Now, so the content of this is a vow from God and a vow to us, from us to God and from God to us. The promise of his caring for us, protecting us, our promise of submission to the things he's taught us. Now, the people of Israel had the Old Testament law to go to. We have that plus the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament. So we know what it is God wants us to do. Now, he explains this, I'm making this covenant with you, with this oath, and not only with you who are standing here with us today in the presence of the Lord, your God, our God, but also with those who are not here today. He doesn't mean that he's making this promise for those who were sick and couldn't come. He's talking about you and me. We couldn't be there. We couldn't make that promise. But starting with the covenant at Sinai, God began to go draw together his people. And from that day today, he's doing the same thing. And when you come to say to God, I give you my life, you are participating in the very same covenant contract that you read about here in the scripture. And when you say to God, I pledge my life to live in obedience to you, you're doing the same thing that was done here. You see, we didn't just spring up out of the grass. We're part of a long tradition of God's dealing with people. From the very beginning, after Adam and Eve, God has been collecting his people with this same covenant contract. And it's always been the same. And it's always been the same. And whenever you say to God, I give my life to you, you're doing the very same thing these people were standing here together doing. They didn't know about Jesus. They didn't know about his teachings. But they knew about God. And Jesus and God are the same. And all these things were true for them. And they're true for us. God wants us to make this covenant with him. I trust you enough to do what you tell me. I depend on you to keep your promises. So as I look about my life as what kind of choices to make, I'm going to take your instructions, and I'm going to make them consistent with what you say is the right thing. And I trust you to give me wisdom. Now, everything you do in the world will make you think that, you know, this is not going to work because people around you don't do it this way. But I promise that I'll take care of you. I'll provide your needs. I'll protect you from being destroyed. And I'll make your life influential. But God cannot keep those promises unless we keep our submission and obedience to him. You've talked, Sharon, you mentioned earlier about making promises to God. And I know you made promises to God one time. And then drifted a long way away from him. What happened in those years when you drifted a long way away? Were they the best years of your life? Were they the worst years of your life? See, that's true. The Bible's been true from the very beginning. You can't just one day decide, okay, God, I'm going to be a Christian and then forget it. And if you don't live this life that God's planned for you, he cannot do for you what he planned to do for you. And what the Bible is teaching us from the very beginning is the same, same story. You listen to me and you'll find life. You ignore me and you will find hell. And what he asks us is not to take lightly this vow of contract we make with him. That's why we don't take the Lord's Supper every Sunday, because when you say the same thing week after week after week, it kind of gets to where you forget the value of it. But we try to remind ourselves every once in a while what this is really all about. It's about the fact that we made a promise to you. And that you've made a promise to us in this world and forever. Let's pray. Father, we're thankful to be a part of this great family of people that you call to be your servants. You've made us a part of a great army of followers of yours. You've placed us in the world to live and to die for you. We ask, Father, that you would give us the courage to make the promises to you that you ask for, that you might do for us what you've promised. And I ask, Father, that today, every time we take the Lord's Supper, we'd remember that we stand in the footprints of people thousands of miles from us. That we stand in the footprints of people thousands of miles from us. That we stand in the footprints of people thousands of years who've promised you their lives. And you've never let them down. In the name of Christ, we pray and live. Amen.