Deuteronomy 7:6-16: Living In The Covenant of Love

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.

The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments. But those who hate him he will repay to their face by destruction; he will not be slow to repay to their face those who hate him.

Therefore, take care to follow the commands, decrees and laws I give you today. If you pay attention to these laws and are careful to follow them, then the Lord your God will keep his covenant of love with you, as he swore to your ancestors. He will love you and bless you and increase your numbers. He will bless the fruit of your womb, the crops of your land—your grain, new wine and olive oil—the calves of your herds and the lambs of your flocks in the land he swore to your ancestors to give you. You will be blessed more than any other people; none of your men or women will be childless, nor will any of your livestock be without young. The Lord will keep you free from every disease. He will not inflict on you the horrible diseases you knew in Egypt, but he will inflict them on all who hate you. You must destroy all the peoples the Lord your God gives over to you. Do not look on them with pity and do not serve their gods, for that will be a snare to you. - Deuteronomy 7:6-16

God chose us, not because we were special or because there were a lot of us, but because he loved us. Because of his love, he made a promise. And because of that promise, his favor covers us. We are inside his family, not outside.

God has chosen the difficult route of being our God. Rather than fear and punishment, he has chosen love and gratitude as the motivators he will use to change our behavior and our character. It is the difficult route because it is easy to take his goodness for granted. It is the difficult route because we can choose selfish behavior and know that God still will love us. I lived a lot of my life worried about how God might be disappointed in me rather than grateful at how generous he is. Worry is ultimately selfish because it focuses on my failing while gratitude focuses on his giving.

Knowing that, he still chooses to wait for us to love him back. "Therefore, take care...If you pay attention..." It is true that we can fail to experience the full goodness of God because we turn away from him. This doesn't discourage the 1,000-generation-faithful God and his covenant of love. But it does direct the pattern of his interaction. When we act like we are in a covenant of love with God, he can bless us, knowing that the blessing is a lesson to us in gratitude. When we do not act like were in a covenant of love with God, he must interact with us in the fashion that teaches us the goodness of God, not the goodness of fate. 

 

Isaiah 49:8-13: The Covenant Is A Person

This is what the Lord says: “In the time of my favor I will answer you, and in the day of salvation I will help you; I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people, to restore the land and to reassign its desolate inheritances, to say to the captives, ‘Come out,’ and to those in darkness, ‘Be free!’ “They will feed beside the roads and find pasture on every barren hill.

They will neither hunger nor thirst, nor will the desert heat or the sun beat down on them. He who has compassion on them will guide them and lead them beside springs of water.

I will turn all my mountains into roads, and my highways will be raised up. See, they will come from afar—some from the north, some from the west, some from the region of Aswan.”

Shout for joy, you heavens; rejoice, you earth; burst into song, you mountains! For the Lord comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones. - Isaiah 49:8-13

Normally, a covenant is an agreement-a sacred agreement between two parties. There is the old covenant, established between God and the nation of Israel through Moses. It establishes the agreed-upon roles and obligations of both parties, spoken or written by word. But these verses from Isaiah are different. The covenant that it talks about, the new covenant between God and people, is a person. 

The covenant has a purpose: restore and free and enlighten and nourish. The covenant-this person-will "guide them and lead them" Covenants usually describe how each side can meet the terms and become pleasing to the other party so that they will fulfill their part. But this covenant is unique, because it is not a system of rules or conditions that you meet. There is no way to "fulfill" the covenant. It is a relationship with Jesus and when you are "in him" you become acceptable to every requirement of the other party: God the Father.

Rather than spoken or written words, the covenant is the Word, Jesus Christ. Paul said: For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus. (1 Timothy 2:5)

Jeremiah 31:23-34: New Start without a New Heart is a Non-Starter

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says: “When I bring them back from captivity, the people in the land of Judah and in its towns will once again use these words: ‘The Lord bless you, you prosperous city, you sacred mountain.’ People will live together in Judah and all its towns—farmers and those who move about with their flocks. I will refresh the weary and satisfy the faint.”

At this I awoke and looked around. My sleep had been pleasant to me.

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will plant the kingdoms of Israel and Judah with the offspring of people and of animals. 

“Just as I watched over them to uproot and tear down, and to overthrow, destroy and bring disaster, so I will watch over them to build and to plant,” declares the Lord.

“In those days people will no longer say, ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ Instead, everyone will die for their own sin; whoever eats sour grapes—their own teeth will be set on edge.

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. 

“It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord.

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. 

“I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 

“No longer will they teach their neighbor, or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. 

“For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” - Jeremiah 31:23-24

Without a change of personality, having a new start really isn't going to do you much good. God promises that he will return the people of Israel from captivity. God will "refresh the weary and satisfy the faint." He will build the people up and the mistakes of all of their parents and grandparents won't be held against them and won't determine their future. There is no baggage in God's eyes.

But God is going to make a change. He had given the people of Israel a chance for a fresh start when he led them out of Israel and gave them the covenant on Mt. Sinai. There were guidelines for nearly every circumstance, a complete list of bonuses for fulfilling the covenant and penalties for failure to fulfill the covenant (Deut. 28). But that covenant hadn't worked out so well and God had invoked the penalty clauses and brought the people into exile. 

This time, he was trying a different tack, one that would zero in on the source of the problem: the human heart. He will make a new agreement with the people of Israel, but it would be different "because they broke my covenant" (v. 32) He would take on the role of the father and inscribe the laws on their hearts (see Deut. 6:7) More importantly "they will all know me" (vs. 34). Who? Not some "Lord" as in master or ruler, but Yahweh. Six times, it is Yahweh who says these things and it is Yahweh that they will know. 

I think this is a reminder that God is a person, not a concept ("foundation of all being") or a role ("ruler of the universe") God may be different that all of the other people of our acquaintance, but he is still someone who wants to be known by name. I may have a new heart because of what Jesus sacrificed and what the Holy Spirit continues to do in me, but I am still prone to put God at a distance. Maybe I am more comfortable that way, like the distance ruler of Jesus' parables. But a ruler who greets me by name, no. That distance sometimes allows my indifference towards him and his desires. I pray for difference, not indifference, towards God.