"God Rocks" Series / "God Pursues" (covenant) / July 31, 2011 Whatever kind of Bible you have with you this morning electronic or old fashioned, open up to Genesis 11, verse 31. We'll dig in there in a couple minutes... God rocks. That's what we are exploring this summer: God rocks, foundation stones of faith. And the truth is, God does rock. He's cool, and being a Christian is better than doing life any other way. Here are the God rocks we've explored so far: We believe that God is: there is a God, and that changes everything. God makes, God creates: exactly how he did it we debate, but we believe God did it. God loves: God created us different. We are not just another animal. We were made in God's image, to love God back. God judges: he has to judge, because we sin. We try to squirm around that truth, but we know it's true. And sin always corrupts, sin always deprives. So God judges. But that's not the end of the story; it's only the beginning. This morning we're going to unpack a big one: God pursues. And we're going to focus in on one of the biggest ideas of our faith: covenant. Most Christians don't grasp the meaning of covenant, and so we don't understand God, and we don't understand what it means to do life with God. Covenant is an idea most preachers don't preach about, most teachers don't teach about. And yet the God rock of covenant shows up 285 times in the Old Testament alone. This is a big one, right at the center of our life with God. Let me start with a couple definitions. We know quite a bit more about covenants in the world of the Bible than people did 100 years ago. Archaeologists have been finding and translating bunches of them. A covenant is kind of like a binding contract, a binding agreement. And in the Bible, making a covenant is extremely serious business. Some of the covenants of the Bible world were bilateral, a covenant between equals. You watch my back, I'll watch yours; you fight for me, I'll fight for you; equal terms. Other covenants of the Bible world were unilateral, where a powerful king makes a covenant with someone who is not his equal. You be faithful to me, and I'll take care of you. If you diss me, I'll crush you... When God makes a covenant with us, which do you figure it is: bilateral, or unilateral? The whole idea that God, the transcendent, omnipotent, holy God would want to make a covenant with us at all ought to blow your mind. But that's what the Abraham story is all about. This morning I'm going to dip into the story of Abraham at four places, to explore what it means to make a covenant with God. And then we're going to make it personal.
Ready? Genesis 11:31: The Bible says, "Terah took his son Abram [God changed his name later to Abraham], his grandson Lot (Haran's son), and his daughter-in-law Sarai (Abram's wife [God changed her name later to Sarah]) and moved out of Ur of Babylonia. They had planned to go to the land of Canaan, but when they reached the city of Haran, they settled there. Terah lived to be 205 years old, and then he died in Haran." Going on into chapter 12: The Lord said to Abram, "Leave your country, your relatives, and your father's family, and go to the land I will show you. I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others... All the people on earth will be blessed through you." God has a single command for Abraham: "Leave." Leave your country, your friends, your kin, leave everything safe and familiar, and make sure you leave your old gods too. You see, there is no evidence that God called Abraham because he was a godly man. Best we can tell, he was as pagan as the others around him6a few books later, Joshua, who was leading Israel at that time, said, "Long ago your ancestors, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates River and worshiped other gods." (Joshua 14.2) They were pagans. And God tells Abraham, "I want you to leave all that. I want you to be different." And God still calls us to be different, to be separate. To separate from our culture, from its values, from its priorities, from its obsessions. What is it that God is calling you to separate from? To leave behind? God calls us to leave anything that holds us back behind, and go wherever he calls us. Look again at verse 1: God says, "Leave your country, your relatives, and your father's family, and go [where?]... Go to the land I will show you." That's a little vague, isn't it? That's not much to tell Sarah, and wives like details about this kind of thing. These are real people, so imagine their conversation when Abraham gets home. "Sarah, pack up what you want, sell the rest. We're leaving." "Where are we going?" "I don't know exactly; I'll know it when I see it." And she says what any wife would say, "If you don't know where we're going, how will you know when we get lost?" "We won't get lost, and God will tell me when we get there." "God who?" Remember, they don't really know God yet makes following him pretty tough, doesn't it? This would be the one trip in history when a wife could ask, "Where in the world are we?" and the husband could say, "God only knows" and be speaking literal truth. Now this is not an easy decision for Abraham and Sarah. It never is when we choose to follow God. Abraham is not some jobless drifter with
nothing to lose. If you keep on reading you find out he is prosperous man, with a lot of stuff, and a lot of servants. He is living in one of the great centers of culture and commerce of the ancient world, right on the Euphrates river. And he is told to take off for a relatively barbaric wilderness called Canaan, where he has no land, no connections, no prospects, no network. This move seems like financial, and vocational, and cultural, and maybe even physical suicide. Nobody in their right mind does something like this. On the other hand, he hears a call from God. And God makes a promise to Abraham, he offers a covenant. God says, if you go, you'll be part of something bigger than you can imagine. If you leave, God says, "I'll bless you. I'll give you a great name; I'll give you a great family; and I'll make your life mean something I'll bless the whole world through you... If you leave, if you go where I say, if you do what I say, if you "covenant" with me." Remember that I told you there were two different kinds of covenants in the world of the Bible: bilateral covenants between equals, and unilateral covenants between a stronger partner and a weaker partner? What kind of covenant do you suppose this one is going to be: bilateral or unilateral? You got it. God is way up here, and we are way down here. Now in unilateral covenants the stronger partner usually gets something out of the deal: water rights, land for his cattle, taxes, something. The stronger party usually has an agenda. What do you suppose God gets out of a covenant with us? What does God get out of this deal? He knows what kind of creatures we are. The first 11 chapters of Genesis make it pretty clear. We are sinners. We are cantankerous, and rebellious, and self-centered and ungrateful a lot. What will God get out of this deal? Well, he gets someone to bless and he loves doing that. He gets someone to love on he loves doing that. And he gets someone to love him back he hopes. That's why the writers of the Bible, Old and New Testament are staggered, they are awed by the idea that God would make a covenant like this with us. And that he would be faithful to the covenant even when we weren't, a lot. In fact, one of the biggest words about God in the Old Testament in Hebrew was chesed his covenant love, his steadfast love, faithful love, the love of a covenant making, covenant keeping God. And there's one more piece you can't miss. God says, verse 3: "All the families on earth will be blessed through you." We need to understand this piece, because it's not just about Israel, it's about us. Some people think that when God called Abraham, when God called Israel, they were chosen to be his favorites, that they got an inside track to heaven. Guys, God choosing does not mean that he rejects those who are not Israel.
That's dead wrong. From the very beginning God chose Israel to be a model community, so others would come to him through them. And that's how he wants to use us too. It's not just about us making it to heaven, it's about taking others with us. God wants to use us to reach others. You buy that? So God says to Abraham, leave, get up and go. Leave your home, leave your friends, your family, your gods, and go where I lead you. Now how does Abraham make this covenant with God? He could have said, "I believe in you God. I believe you exist, I believe you are good, I believe your way is the right one. But I believe I'll just stay right where I am. I want to do life with you right here in Haran." Would that cut it? Abraham could have said, "I'll go God, at least half-way. I'll start doing church. I'll give a little, serve a little, try to clean up my act a little." That's the kind of trash we pull with God, isn't it? We try to negotiate our own terms with God. The whole Bible story hinges on two words. The Bible says, So "Abraham left"... as God had told him. And it says, "At that time Abraham was 75 years old." (Genesis 12.4) At 75 he bet the farm on God. Guys... do you ever trust God like that? Is God asking you to leave anything? Any idol, any sin, any fear? Is God asking you to go anywhere? A new ministry, a new adventure, a new mission? Do you ever trust God like this? Take a deep breath and say, "Okay, God, I'll leave, I'll go." Can you imagine how different our story would be if Abraham hadn't left? Let's skip ahead to Genesis 15, the next big scene that unfolds this idea of covenant. This one is kind of weird, but it is powerful. Abraham and Sarah are in Canaan now. They don't have a son, yet. They are getting really old, and beginning to wonder whether God's going to keep his word. But God says, "It's going to happen. I'm going to bless you, I'm going to give you a great family, and I'm going to bless the whole world through you." And for the first time in the story God uses the word "covenant." Genesis 15.18: "Then and there the Lord made a covenant with Abraham." And to seal the covenant God told Abraham to do something really weird, to us. Sometimes when people made a covenant in the world of the Bible there would be a ceremony connected with it. One thing they would do is to take some animals, and literally cut them in half, separate the pieces into. a kind of corridor, and then they'd go for a covenant walk, passing between the pieces of the animals. Here's what they meant, symbolically. They were saying, "May this happen to me, may I be cut in half, if I violate this covenant." That's serious stuff. Hundreds of years later this is
what God says to Israel: "Because you have broken the terms of our covenant, I will cut you apart just as you cut apart the calf when you walked between its halves to solemnize your vows." (Jeremiah 34.18) When people made a covenant, they literally "cut a covenant." This was serious stuff. When someone violated a covenant, they didn't just rip up the contract. That's when the sanctions, that's when the penalties kicked in. And things could get extremely unpleasant for the violator. Now let's read what happened. God reaffirms his promise to Abraham of a land, and a great family. Abraham says, "How can I really know it's going to happen?" Genesis 15.9(-10): So God says to Abraham, Bring me a cow, a goat, and a ram, each of them three years old, and a dove and a pigeon. Abram brought the animals to God, cut them in half, and placed the halves opposite each other in two rows..." Then as the sun was setting, God gave Abraham a vision of Israel's future. And here is the big piece, the weird piece - so powerful. Guess who takes the covenant walk? It says, 15.17(-18): "After the sun went down and darkness fell, Abram saw a smoking firepot and a flaming torch pass between the halves of the carcasses." Now in the Bible smoke and fire symbolize whose presence? This is God making the covenant walk. God desires so deeply for Abraham to trust him that he condescends to take an oath "Let this happen to me if I don't keep my word." Can you imagine that? We have a promise. making, promise keeping God; a covenant making, covenant keeping God. I'm not quite finished with Abraham yet, but we need to pause here for a few minutes. Maybe this scene will help you understand some of the power of this Lord's table? Jesus said to his disciples, this is my body, broken for you; this is my blood, poured out for you. You see, the old covenant had been shattered not because God broke his word, but because we violated it over, and over, and over again. And when we break covenant with God, the consequences are extremely serious. So Jesus says... "I'll take your place. Cut my body in half, instead." And Jesus said, "This cup will be a new covenant, in my blood." We're going to start over again, Jesus says. And when we eat the bread and drink the cup from this table, we are affirming that we are in covenant with God. Do you understand that? This is God's promise to us, and our promise back to God. That's why, this morning, we've set up the Lord's Table just a little differently. We've set a couple columns in front of each of the stations, and on those columns is a cross. Jesus died to make this covenant possible. His body was broken, instead of the some animal. And we want you to picture the Lord's Supper this morning as a covenant walk. Pass between the crosses the broken body of Jesus -- to go to
the Lord's Table. Because when you eat this bread and drink this cup you are making a covenant with God. You are telling him I'm all in. Wherever, whenever, whatever, I'm all in. Let's pray... Okay, two more pieces to Abraham and the covenant. God promised Abraham a family, but there was one little problem. Do you remember what the problem was? When God made the promise to Abraham and Sarah, Abraham was in his 80s, and Sarah was in her 70s. That's just a wee bit old to get started, isn't it? And time just keeps passing. Turn to Genesis 17. Here's the next scene. Genesis 17.1(-2): "When Abram was ninety-nine years old (hold on to that detail 99 years old), the Lord appeared to him and said, 'I am the Almighty God. Obey me and always do what is right. I will make my covenant with you and give you many descendants."'... Yeah, right. God says, verse 6: "1 will make you extremely fruitful. (He's 99!) Your descendants will become many nations, and kings will be among them!" Imagine being Abraham, hearing this stuff. And then God says, here's what I want you to do as a sign that you're all in verse 10(-11): "Every male among you shall be circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision (remember: 99 years old!), and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you." You old guys, would you do it? Imagine Abraham hearing that! Noah got a rainbow! I suspect Abraham pointed that out, to God. But he did it. Verses 23-24, he did it that very day. This guy's all in. But Abraham and Sarah struggled. This was tough stuff to believe, and tough stuff to do. And at different points both Abraham and Sarah laughed, at God. Genesis 17.17: Then Abraham bowed down to the ground, but he laughed to himself in disbelief. "How could I become a father at the age of 1007' he thought. "And how can Sarah have a baby when she is ninety years old?" And in the next chapter Sarah laughs, at God. 18.12: "Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, "After I am worn out and my lord (Abraham) is old, will I now have this pleasure?" Do you think there is just a little sarcasm here? Guys, this is kind of absurd. Abraham is 99 now, Sarah 89. There's no Viagra in Canaan back then. And God says, (verse 14) "is anything too hard for me? I will return about this time next year, and Sarah will have a son." (At the age of 90) And the crazy thing is, she did. Talk about funny, this was something to laugh about. Do you know what they named the baby? Isaac: it means, "He laughs." Isn't that cool. I suspect God was chuckling on this one. Chapter 21.6(-7), this is pretty cool. Sarah declared, "God has brought me laughter. All who hear about this will laugh with me." And they did! Everybody laughed at a child born in the geriatric ward with Medicare picking up the tab. Everybody laughed when Sarah was the only woman
in Kroger buying Pampers and Depends at the same time. Everybody laughed because Sarah would buy all those strained vegetables because no one in the family had any teeth. She said, "Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse a baby? Yet I have given Abraham a son in his old age!" Because we have a promise making, promise keeping God; a covenant making, covenant keeping God. Last scene, this one is staggering. Genesis 22. Now the writer wants us to know what Abraham did not know. This is a test, only a test. The writer knows that this story would be almost intolerable to us if we didn't know that piece. 22.1: Some time later (we don't know how long; we don't know how old Isaac was; some time later) God tested Abraham; he called to him, Abraham! And Abraham answered, "Yes, here I am!" Now you need to know that when Abraham says, "Here I am," he's not giving God geographical information. He's telling God, "I'm listening, I'll obey, I'm all; in." His whole life Abraham had heard this voice from God. "Leave your home," and he did. "Be circumcised," and he was. This is the last time Abraham hears God's voice in scripture. God says, verse 2: "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love so much, and go to the land of Moriah. There on a mountain that I will show you, (kill him) offer him as a sacrifice to me." Say what?! You can't see it in the English, but there is a little word in Hebrew that means something like, "Please." It is a strange word for God. God doesn't ordinarily ask, he doesn't ordinarily say "please" when he speaks to his children. "Abraham," God says, "Please take your son, your only son, the son you love so much, and go to Moriah... Take the son you waited 100 years for, take the miracle son I promised you, take the son on whom the covenant is depending, and kill him. You might want to make a little note here at verse 2. This is the first time the word "love" is used in Scripture, and it is used of a father challenged to sacrifice his beloved son. Go figure. And the incredible thing is Abraham obeyed. I don't think I could have. For three days Abraham trekked towards Moriah with his son. By the way, in later centuries Moriah would be called Mount Zion, where Jerusalem would be built. Why do you think God sent Abraham here? When they got there, verse 6, it says Abraham put the wood for the sacrificial fire on Isaac's back (keep that little detail in mind the son carried the wood); and Abraham himself carried the fire and the knife. Who do you think killed Jesus? Was it the Romans? Was it the Jews? Isaac asks his father, verse 7(-8): The fire and wood are here, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" Abraham answered, "God himself will provide the lamb." (Keep that little detail in mind God will provide the lamb). Abraham builds an altar, takes the wood from Isaac's back, and
he takes Isaac... His son, his only son, the son whom he loves; the reason he left home, the fulfillment of God's promise, God's dream. You can hardly imagine this. He lays him on the wood, ties him up, and raises the knife. The sheer impossibility of it all. And at that moment an angel from God says, verse 11: "Abraham! Abraham!" "Yes," Abraham replied. "Here I am!" The same words he said at the beginning of this story. I'm here, God. Where else would I go? What else would I do? Who else would I follow? The angel said, "Don't lay a hand on the boy! Do not hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son." He loved so deeply that he would sacrifice his only son. He loved so deeply that he would sacrifice his only son. How big a love is that! Guys, this is the Jesus story. This is the Jesus story foreshadowed. With a huge difference: God stayed Abraham's hand. But God went through with the sacrifice of his son, his only son, the son whom he loved for us. If that doesn't blow your mind, you are brain dead. We have a promise making, promise keeping God; a covenant making, covenant keeping God. His community is built on covenant. This church is built on covenant... We live in a culture that hates covenants. In our world making a covenant has become counter-cultural. People in our world want to keep their options open; we want to retain the right to change our minds and walk away. We are not fond of this level of commitment. But God has made a commitment to us, and he challenges us to make a commitment back. And what he wants to hear from us, what we need to say to God, are those words of Abraham: "Here I am, God. Whatever, whenever, wherever; anytime, anyway; whatever it takes. I'm all in." Have you said those words to God? Can you say those words to God? Some of you guys couldn't say those words. Some of you guys have never made that kind of a commitment to God. Some of you guys have never made a covenant walk. Guys... it's the right thing to do. Some day you are going to stand before God. On that day will you regret having made this kind (Radicalis) of a promise to God? Or will you regret that you had the chance, and didn't? Guys, do the right thing. Don't wait to do the right thing.