Transcript
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Welcome to Gospel and Life. How do we share what it means to truly know Jesus, not just as a historical figure or moral teacher, but as savior and king? This month, Tim Keller explores what the Bible shows us about being public with our faith and sharing the hope we have in Christ.
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Our scripture comes from Deuteronomy 29:18. Moses summoned all the Israelites and said to them, your eyes have seen all that the Lord did in Egypt, to Pharaoh, to all his officials, and to all in his land. With your own eyes you saw those great trials, those miraculous signs and great wonders. But to this day, the Lord has not given you a mind that understands or eyes that see, or ears that hear. Carefully follow the terms of this covenant so that you may prosper in everything you do. All of you who are standing today in the presence of the Lord your God, your leaders and chief men, your elders and officials, and all the other men of Israel, together with your children and your wives and the aliens living in your camps who chop your wood and carry your water, you are standing here in order to enter into a covenant with the Lord your God. A covenant the Lord is 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 you and as he swore to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I am 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. You yourselves know how we lived in Egypt and how we passed through the countries on the way here. You saw among them their detestable images and idols of wood and stone, of silver and gold. Make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose hearts turn away from the Lord our God to go and worship the gods of those nations. Make sure there is no root among you that produces such bitter poison. This is the word of the Lord.
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We've been saying that Deuteronomy is a series of sermons that Moses preached just before he died. And if the last thing practically that Moses said, because here we are almost at the end of the end before he died, was you need to be in a covenant relationship with God. If Moses thought it was that important that it would be almost the last thing he says, then it would behoove us to figure out what that is. What's a covenant relationship with God? If we read the passage with that question in mind, we'll learn three things. The uniqueness of the covenant, the mystery surrounding the covenant and the hero of the covenant, the uniqueness, the mystery and the hero of the covenant. First of all, the uniqueness. People often will say, maybe somebody's already thinking, can't you come up with a more. A less archaic word than covenant? Don't you have a more modern word than covenant? And the answer is no. There's no more modern word, because modern society and culture doesn't really even have a category anymore for it. If you want to understand what a covenant is, look at verse 12 and the beginning of 13. You are standing here in order to enter into a covenant with the Lord your God. A covenant the Lord is making with you this day and sealing with an oath to confirm you this day as his people. Now, please notice two things. On the one hand, notice the language of love and intimacy. Personal possessive pronouns. You see, for example, it says, we are his people, not just a people, he is our God, not just God. Whenever you hear personal possessive pronouns being used, you know it's talking about an intimate relationship. So if you were just overhearing somebody who you didn't even know talk about my Johnny or my Susie, you would assume that person was talking about child, you know, spouse or someone very close, someone very intimate. So first, when you look at a covenant, you see the language of love and intimacy. Secondly, however, you see the language of law, see sealing with an oath to confirm. And there you have it. What's a covenant? A covenant is a relationship, but it's a relationship more loving and intimate than a merely legal relationship, yet more binding and enduring and accountable than a merely personal relationship. It's a stunning blend. The covenant is a stunning blend of law and love. It's stunning because it's a personal relationship made more loving and intimate because it's legal through voluntary, mutual, binding promises and vows to be loving and to be faithful no matter what the circumstances. That's a covenant. Now, modern society doesn't really have a category for this because modern society makes everything be ordered around the experiencing individual self and the happiness and fulfillment of the individual self. In modern society, your individual happiness and fulfillment and rights is the absolute. And everything else is a means to an end all other institutions, all other relationships. So in modern society, relationships more and more start like this. Two people look at each other and they say, I will be what I should be as long as and to the degree that you are what you should be. And if you're not, I'm out. But in a covenant, two people look at each other and say, I will be what I should be whether you are what you should be or not. I will be what I should be whether you are being what you should be or not. And therefore, it's scary to get into a covenant. And it only works if both people in a covenant say that. In a covenant relationship, both have to say, I'll be what I should be, even if you're not what you should be. Now, if only one says that and the other does not, then what you've got is exploitation or even abuse. But if you really do get into a covenant relationship where two parties are each saying you are more important than me, the relationship is more important than my needs. I will be committed to your needs before my needs. I will be committed to the relationship even if it's not meeting my needs at the moment. I give you my independence, I give you part of my freedom as a gift of love. And if one side and the other side are both saying that, if both people are saying, I'm not after my needs, I'm after your needs, I will sacrifice for you. If both people are saying that, that is a far more fulfilling, far more deep and profound, far more life changing and joyful relationship than a consumer relationship in which each side says, I'll be in this as long as you're meeting my needs. Now, I don't want you to give you the impression that all relationships ought to be covenant relationships. You should have consumer relationships. For example, I know my groceries, my grocer knows me. The grocer's, I guess I'm gonna go to the grocery store. They know me, I know them. I say, hi, hi, you know, but if I find a grocery store closer with better food at lower prices, I'm out of there. I'm just out of there because that's a, it's a consumer relationship, not a covenant relationship. So that's one. Then plenty of our relationships should be like. And at one end of the spectrum, they are. At the other end, you have marriage relationship between parents and children, you have covenant relationships. And in the middle you have various kinds of relationships. Some friends, the closest friends, are more covenantal, some are not so much. But here's my point, here's the point. If the most profound, most joyful, most life changing, most deep and glorious relationships are covenantal relationships, then your relationship with God has got to be through and through a covenantal relationship, it has to be. Now. Here's the problem. Modern people, as I said, they don't. They have trouble mixing law and love together. And what they say is, oh, I'm Spiritual, but I'm not religious. You know, sociologists for years now have been finding modern people like to say I'm spiritual but not religious. And what does that mean? Here's what it means. I believe in God, I want a relationship with God, but I don't want to go to an institution. I don't want to go to a church or a synagogue. I don't want people to tell me what I have to believe. You know, I don't want to give up my freedom. I don't want to give up my right to determine what is right or wrong for me. In other words, what everybody's saying is I want a personal relationship with God, but not a covenantal relationship. But the Bible says that's impossible. God only relates in terms of covenant. Every time he relates to somebody, Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Moses, it's always covenantal. And so that's point one, the uniqueness, a category busting thing is a covenantal relationship, a mixture of law and love that creates the most profound, fulfilling, life changing relationships and above all, the only way to relate to God. That's the first point. The second point, however, the second thing we learn here is there's a mystery surrounding this covenantal relationship. Now what do I mean? All covenants have terms or conditions because all contracts have terms and conditions. A covenant is more than a contract, but not less. All contracts have terms or conditions. And if you meet the terms or conditions, there are rewards or blessings. And if you fail to meet them, or if you violate the terms or conditions, there are penalties or in the biblical term, curses. So in verse nine, you see, it says, carefully follow the terms of this covenant so that you may prosper in everything you do. See, that's the blessings of the covenant. Carefully follow the conditions. But then down in verse 18 it says, but make sure there is no man or woman, clan or tribe among you today whose heart turns away from the Lord your God and worships other gods. And that's getting into the area of the passage that talks about the curse. If you violate the covenant, there are penalties. That's what makes a contract valuable. I mean, if you didn't have penalties, what good would the contract be? It's what keeps people honest. It's what puts backbone in your commitment. And yet, listen as you keep. Let me keep reading. We didn't print down to verses 19, 20, 21, but let me keep reading the passage. It says, don't let there be any man or woman, clan or tribe who begins to worship other gods. Then it says the Lord. This is verse 20. The Lord will never forgive the one who does this. His wrath and zeal will burn against that man. All the curses written in this book will fall upon him. The Lord will bring him disaster according to all the curses of the covenant written in this book of the law. Now, wait a minute. When you hear it say. When you hear God say, I will never forgive you if you break the covenant. Never. All the curses will come down if you violate the covenant, you say, well, wait a minute. I thought God was a forgiving God. And yet, of course, if he's a covenant God, what good is a covenant if you just ignore the penalties, Say, well, who cares? I'll forgive you. And at this point, understanding the covenant gets us into the very heart of the central mystery of the Bible and gets us right into the very heart of what the central message of the Bible is. Because if you read through the Bible, Old and New Testament, on every page in every book, not just some books, not just the Old Testament or the New Testament, on every page in every book, you have statements like this, where God says, I cannot bless a disobedient people. I cannot. You must obey. I am a just judge. I cannot wink at guilt. An earthly judge who winked at the guilty would be run out of town. How much less can I? So you must obey. I can't overlook it. I can't bless a disobedient people. There's a whole. There's hundreds of statements like that. But there are also on every page in every book in Old and New Testament, hundreds of statements that say, I will never leave you, or, I will never give up on you. I will always accept you. I will never forsake you, over and over and over. If you read through the psalms regularly, you guess one after the other in the same psalm. Sometimes you have God saying, I can only bless you if you do this, and other times where God says, I'm gonna bless you no matter what. And I had a professor years ago who said, this is the. This perceivably irreconcilable tension. This apparently irresolvable tension is the very plot line under all the other plot lines of the Bible. It's the thing that propels the narrative of the Bible forward because you see the people and you see God's people failing and failing and failing. And then the question comes up, will God give in to his people and just accept whatever they do? Then what about his holiness? Or will God just give up on his people? But then what about his faithfulness? And let me put it to you Theologically, that's narratively Are the blessings of God conditional or unconditional? That's the question, class. Do the blessings of God come conditionally? You've got to be good, you've got to fulfill the covenant, or unconditionally. It doesn't matter what you do, you're going to get them anyway.