Covenant Renewal

by NEELY, G. | Category: Bible Covenants | Jul 2007

At one hundred and twenty years old, Moses stood before the people of Israel including mainly those who had been born in the wilderness, and spoke to them about the covenant of God with those whom He had chosen to be His people. As they now stood on the brink of their entrance into the land of promise, Palestine, Moses spoke these words to them: �"You stand today, all of you, before the LORD your God: ... that you may enter into the covenant with the LORD your God, and into His oath which the LORD your God is making with you today, in order that He may establish you today as His people and that He may be your God, just as He spoke to you and as He swore to your fathers ..."� (Deut.29:10,12,13).

The blessings and curses of the Mosaic covenant had been reviewed with them (Deut.28). This covenant (known as the Palestinian covenant) was a new covenant made with this specific people who stood there expectantly that day awaiting the dramatic entrance into this land to which they had been heading for decades. Their fathers had failed in keeping the covenant of Sinai and had died as a result, never having seen the promise of it fulfilled. The Abrahamic covenant (Gen.15:18) had much more far reaching consequences than to just those people of that day (even to our own day and generation, Galatians 3:6-9, and to a future day for Israel). Yet in the wonder of God's dealing with men, and in light of those two previous covenants, they were given this Palestinian covenant. While God's covenant through Moses brought the responsibility of obedience to inhabit the land, the people failed and were scattered among the nations, a fact still evident in our own day. Nehemiah recounts the sad litany of Israel's rebellion and evidences the curse of which the covenant spoke: �"But they became disobedient � therefore Thou didst deliver them into the hand of their oppressors who oppressed them"� (Neh. 9:26,27). This renewed covenant with this younger generation, however, focused more on what God was going to do than what Israel was supposed to do. That they would fail is history! That God will succeed is guaranteed.

Renewal, returning, rejoicing

So Deuteronomy 30 brings the promise of renewal, of returning, of rejoicing! Four promises of God are made to the people. Firstly, when the people turn again to the LORD and recall His unalterable word to them in covenant �"then the LORD your God will restore you from captivity, and have compassion on you, and will gather you again from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you"� (v.3). Secondly, the Lord would circumcise their hearts to devotion to Jehovah their God (v.6). They would love the Lord with all their heart and soul. Thirdly, He would judge their enemies with curses (cf. Deut.7:15). Fourthly, they would obey the Lord and He would prosper them in their obedience (v.8, 9). �"For this commandment which I command you today is not too difficult for you, nor is it out of reach"� (v.11). Perhaps Israel saw partial fulfillment of the promise in Nehemiah's day, after decades of captivity, when they were again allowed back into the land to rebuild the city of Jerusalem and the temple of God. But again in 70 AD they were overrun by the Romans and the full effect of these promises has not been seen. But there is coming a day when the Lord will stand on the Mount of Olives at the end of the great tribulation: �"And then they will see THE SON OF MAN COMING IN CLOUDS with great power and glory. And then He will send forth the angels and will gather together His elect from the four winds, from the farthest end of earth, to the farthest end of heaven"� (Mark 13:26,27). Then will the promise and blessing of this Palestinian covenant have full effect for the people and land of Israel.

Amen

God's covenant with Abraham was based on Abraham's faith (Gen.15:6) with no conditions of obedience to realize the blessings to come. When Abraham said, "Amen" (the word in Hebrew for 'believed') to God's promise of descendants, in spite of having no offspring, God was very pleased. The land for his offspring generations later was guaranteed! When the people of Israel gathered at Sinai hundreds of years later to listen to God's conditions for blessing, they said, "Amen" to them (Ex.24:7) and the blood of the covenant was sprinkled on them and on the requirements to which they had just agreed. The land was guaranteed! When they lost it due to their inability to keep the promises they had made to God, He kept His promises to them and they were driven from the land. That law (and Israel's inability to keep it) did not invalidate the covenant promise made to Abraham, however (Gal.3:17). When God makes a promise, God keeps His promise! He always has a plan and it is a plan that no one can thwart. Renewal is something in which God is deeply involved and which thrills His heart. And the ultimate renewal for Israel, as with every man, woman or child, is that which comes through Abraham's seed, God incarnate, the Lord Jesus Christ (Gal.3:16). The unconditional nature of God's covenant with Abraham was not thwarted by the conditional covenant with the people at Sinai which they could not keep, though their prosperity was certainly affected by their lack of obedience. And in this Palestinian covenant, the promises were based on God even while prosperity was based on obedience.

The apple of His eye

God will bring the Jewish people back to Israel. No one and nothing can stop the covenant-making, covenant-keeping God from fulfilling His purposes in Israel (Ps.33:10, 11). Zechariah 2:8 declares what God feels for His people, the very reason He brought them into covenant relationship with Himself: �"� he who touches you, touches the apple of His eye"� (vv.10,12). But more than that is the blessing that will occur in Israel, not because the people are restored and the covenant renewed, but because of who else dwells there:

�"Sing for joy and be glad, O daughter of Zion;

for behold I am coming and I will dwell in your midst,"

declares the LORD ...

"And the LORD will possess Judah as His portion in the holy land,

and will again choose Jerusalem."�

There can be no greater blessing for any person or nation than to know that in their very midst dwells the glorified Lord. How true indeed the words of the unknown psalmist when he exults:

�Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD,

the people whom He has chosen for His own inheritance� (Ps.33:12).

Obedience and disobedience - blessings and curses

That same psalmist reiterates what Moses reminded those relatively youthful people that day in the wilderness: �Behold the eye of the LORD is on those who fear Him, on those who hope for His lovingkindness �� (v.18). Abraham realized it; the people at Sinai realized it (though they quickly forgot or ignored it) and these people at the entrance to the land were reminded of it. Joshua stood before them years later, after they had entered the land and made conquest of it, and again reminded them that obedience would bring blessing whereas disobedience would bring harm. He recounted in their hearing what God had done from Abraham's day through to their own day in bringing them to this land. The people again vowed to do what history reveals they repeatedly failed to achieve: �"We will serve the LORD our God and we will obey His voice"� (Josh.24:24). So Joshua made a covenant with them that day (v.25). It was reminiscent of what Moses had done when he too had written down the words of the Lord and set a witness against them (Deut.31:26). They would fail; it was only a matter of time before they would again let the Lord down and bring harm upon themselves. Time and time again it occurred. And the written word testified against them. It always does, in whatever dispensation, in whatever nation, in whatever good intention is expressed.

Better things to come

But there is One who is the mediator of a better covenant, enacted upon better promises (Heb.8:6)! For Judah and Israel, the time of the Lord's return to earth will bring aspects of this new covenant for them which will cause �� all Israel [to be] saved� (Rom.11:26). The Lord will be their kinsman-redeemer (Is.59:20), one related by blood, one reason for His incarnation (Heb.2:14). Renewed by the transforming presence among them of deity incarnate, they will �"� all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them ... for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more"� (Jer.31:34). Recognition of and belief in the One whom they pierced (Zech.12:10) will cause Israel to mourn and subsequently be cleansed. Her enemies will be destroyed as the pierced feet of Christ touch the Mount of Olives and He comes to reign. �And the LORD will be king over all the earth; in that day the Lord will be the only one, and His name the only one� (Zech.14:9).

And what of us who are not of Israel? He mediates a better covenant with better promises for us today. No need to wait with longing for renewal. The current rejection by Israel of their Messiah is salvation to us (Rom.11:15). �For God has shut up all in disobedience that He might show mercy to all� (Rom.11:32). What a covenant! What a renewal! What a Redeemer!

NEELY, G. | Jul 2007
Bible Covenants