Closer To Heaven
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You can view an in-depth discussion of The Everlasting Covenant in the Hope Sabbath School class led by Pastor Derek Morris. Click on the image to view:
With thanks to Hope Channel – Television that will change your life.
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This video is produced by the South Pacific Division Discipleship team.
Week 3_The Everlasting Covenant_ study this lesson for Oct 16 from SPD Discipleship on Vimeo.
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Biblical scholarship has long recognized the similarities between Israel’s covenant with God and other covenantal agreements between kingdoms. This parallel shouldn’t be surprising. The Lord was simply working with His people in an environment that they could understand.
At the same time, the idea of a covenant, a legal agreement between two parties, with rules and stipulations and regulations, can seem so cold and so formal.
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Though that element must indeed exist (God is the law-Giver), it’s not broad enough to encompass the depth and breadth of the kind of relationship God wanted with His people. Hence, other images are used in Deuteronomy to help portray the same idea as the covenant between God and Israel, but just to give it added dimensions.
In each case, there is the idea of family, which, ideally, should be the closest, tightest, and most loving of bonds. God has always wanted this kind of relationship with His people. Even after their shameful rejection of Jesus during the time of the cross, Jesus said to the two Marys after He had been resurrected, “Go and tell My brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see Me” (Matthew 28:10). Even as the resurrected Christ, He referred to the disciples as “My brethren,” an example of love and the grace that flows from love for those who certainly didn’t deserve it. That’s essentially what the relationship between God and humanity has always been: grace and love given to the undeserving.
| What kind of relationship do you have with God? How can you deepen it and learn to love Him, while at the same time understanding your covenant obligation to obey His law? Why are these two ideas not contradictory but complementary? |
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Love does no wrong to others, so love fulfills the requirements of God’s law. Romans 13:10 NLT
A young grade-school boy and his daddy were walking down a country road when they noticed a car pull over to the shoulder a few hundred meters up the road. The passenger door opened, and a little puppy fell out the door into the ditch near the shoulder of the road.
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The boy watched in amazement as the car then sped off. The boy ran to the aid of the little puppy. He found the puppy whining and confused, as well as looking malnourished. When the father finally caught up to the boy, the boy firmly told his daddy, “I know you may not let me keep him, but we have to take him home and feed him right now!”
What did the little boy mean by “we have to?” How did an abandoned puppy suddenly became his problem? Was there some law written in stone that the boy had to rescue this poor dog? As a matter fact there was a law, but it was not written in stone. The only reason why the boy said, “we have to” is because there was a law written on that little boy’s heart.
In Luke 10:30-37 Jesus tells a familiar story we call today, “The Good Samaritan.” In the story both the Levi and the priest knew the law of God which was written in stone, but yet they passed by a suffering brother, because that law was not written on their hearts. Then a Samaritan walks by who has the law of love written on his heart. He at once recognized what he had to do, not because of the law written in stone, but because of a law of love tugging at his heart strings. Like puppet strings, his heart strings controlled his behavior.
Writing God’s law of love on our heart is not new to the New Testament. The goal was never to have the law of love written on stone. The ultimate goal was always to have the law written on our hearts. This goes back to the Old Testament.
But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel after those days,” says the Lord. “I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. Jeremiah 31:33 NLT
And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. Deuteronomy 6:5 NLT
“Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against a fellow Israelite, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. Leviticus 19:18 NLT
True justice must be given to foreigners living among you and to orphans, and you must never accept a widow’s garment as security for her debt. Deuteronomy 24:17 NLT
In the Old Testament as well as today, God does not just want the letter of the law written on stone. He wants the spirit of the law written on our hearts. That means showing love and compassion for a little puppy that will never be able to help you. It means showing love and compassion for a neighbor or foreigner who would probably just spit on you and pass you by if the situation were reversed.
This “letter” is written not with pen and ink, but with the Spirit of the living God. It is carved not on tablets of stone, but on human hearts. 2 Corinthians 3:3 NLT
A Samaritan had to rescue a foreigner left to die in a ditch, a young boy had to rescue a helpless puppy. They had to because the law was etched upon their hearts.
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It’s hard for us today to grasp much of what the ancient world was like at the time in which Israel was wandering the wilderness. If whole empires have come and gone, with only ruins (if that) remaining, what can we know of many of the smaller pagan nations that lived in the same area as Israel did?
Not a whole lot, but we do know one thing: these people were steeped in paganism, polytheism, and some utterly degrading practices, which included child sacrifice. Try to imagine just how degrading and evil a culture and a religion would be that would do that to their own children, and do so in the name of some god!
Image © Review & Herald Publishing at Goodsalt.com
No wonder, over and over, all through the history of ancient Israel, the Lord had warned His people against following the practices of the nations around them. “When you come into the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations” (Deuteronomy 18:9).
And that’s because God had called out this nation for a special purpose. By having entered into the covenant with God, they were to be a special people, a witness to the world of the God who created the heaven and the earth — the only God.
How fascinating that Moses begins these four verses with the words “this day,” as in right now, again, God commands you to do these things (Moses repeats the idea in verse 17). He had been commanding them all along to do these things. It’s as if he is telling them they need to commit at this very moment, again, to be the faithful, holy, and special people that is truly the central reason for their existence as the covenant nation. They were the only nation, as a nation, who knew the true God and knew the truth about this God and how He wanted people to live. In a real sense, they not only had “present truth” but they were, in their own way, to embody that truth until Jesus, “the Truth” Himself (John 14:6), was to come.
| Why is the idea of “this day” committing to God and to His covenant requirements relevant even to us, “this day”? |
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