THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR
"Covenant Renewal”
Rev. Carl Haak
(e-mail: Rev. Carl Haak) August 20, 2006; No. 3320
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Dear radio friends,
Renewed zeal for
God’s covenant follows on the heels of spiritual revival. Zeal for God’s covenant
– what is that? Zeal for the covenant is
when it pulsates in the hearts of Christians that we are made the friends and
servants of God by grace, through the blood of Jesus Christ. And we stand in awe of His Word: “I will be thy God, and ye shall be My people.”
We fall, as
Christians, as God’s people, into the sin of spiritual stupor, of becoming
complacent, indifferent, detached, resentful, and apathetic. Covenant renewal is when we are, by the
Spirit, made alert, thankful, committed, devoted to live in a bond of
fellowship with our God – a bond of fellowship that will be seen in faithful
marriages, Sabbath-keeping, deeds of mercy, and devotion to God’s house.
Renewed zeal for
the covenant follows upon the heels of spiritual revival. In chapters 8 and 9 of Nehemiah, we are told
of a spiritual revival among God’s people that brought them back to the Word,
back to worshiping God, back to humility and confession of sin. How did that revival happen? Was there some principle of church growth at
work here? No. It was sparked by a man who arrived in
And because of all
of this, we read (Neh. 9:38), “And because of all
this we make a sure covenant, and write it.”
Then we read further, in chapter 10:29, We will
cleave to our brethren and will enter into a curse and an oath to walk in God’s
law. Because of this spiritual revival
they are now brought back to a renewed zeal for godly covenant living, for
living as children of God, as friends of God, through grace in Jesus
Christ. They would be zealous for this
covenant specifically by maintaining godly, faithful marriages, by observing
the Sabbath day, by doing deeds of mercy, and by being devoted to God’s house.
Let us look at
that. I speak to you today on “Covenant
Renewal.”
The people of God,
under Nehemiah’s leadership, now recognize the horrible indifference to the
covenant that had characterized them since returning from captivity in
God sent prophets,
Haggai and Malachi, to prod them and to poke them into repentance. But now God’s people, at the time of
Nehemiah, see their sins in the light of God’s goodness, as we have pointed out
to you in the last two messages in that beautiful ninth chapter of
Nehemiah. And because they have now seen
God’s goodness and seen their sin and their need of God’s mercy, they say in
Nehemiah 9:38, “We make a sure covenant.”
Not a new covenant. Not for the
first time. But a vow
to be faithful to the covenant, the covenant that was established by God
with them. For
God had made a bond of love with them – the same bond that exists right now in
God’s bond of love for the church, for us. God’s one glorious
covenant.
This covenant in
the Scriptures is not of human origin.
That is, the bond of love and friendship with God is not a bond that
arises out of the soil of the earth. It
is not like a plant poking its way through the earth and then catching God’s
eye and then heaven responding to earth.
No. This covenant comes
down. “I will establish My covenant,” says the heavenly One. “I will be your God, and ye shall be My people.” This
covenant is established with us through the cross of Jesus Christ, not as a
result of men bartering with God and seeking to come to an agreement whereby
the two of us can, after all, get along a little bit. But it is of God’s grace that He condescends
to choose us to be His friends and to work graciously in us. Jeremiah 31:
But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of
The people of God
in this covenant in the days of Nehemiah want to renew that covenant. They want to affirm that covenant. “We make a sure covenant,” they say. “We give a fixed resolution that we will live
our life as the friends of God on earth.
We write down exactly what we vow and pledge before God. And we set a seal to it (that is, we sign
it),” they said. “Put my name down
there; record my name.” And we read that
there were twenty-two priests, seventeen Levites, and forty-four princes who
vowed and wrote their name.
What is the fact,
then, that is revealed in the tenth chapter of Nehemiah? This fact. When spiritual revival, worked by the Spirit,
moves among God’s people, when their hearts are pricked, and when they are awed
over the majesty of God and lost in wonder and in awe over His mercy, the
result will be that they shall be resolved henceforward to live in covenant
faithfulness to God. In simple language,
when you know God as God and you experience pardon and compassion to you the
sinner, you will be resolved, you will be determined, you will be devoted in
your life to live in all the parts of your life as the friend of God in Christ.
This
points out to us that, as Christians, we battle the sin of spiritual
callousness, of the loss of zeal for God as our Friend. The great enemies against our Christian faith
are the sin of complacency, especially if we have been brought up, by God’s
mercy, within the confines of the church and covenant of God and raised among
the blessings of the gospel of grace and showered with His goodness. So readily will our flesh make this outward
and we will begin to excuse ourselves of our sins of drinking, of swearing, of
dishonesty. Spiritual decline, you know,
is seldom a blowout. Most often it is a
slow leak. Renewal of the covenant must
be brought when the gospel pricks our hearts and humbles us as sinners.
We can also grow
indifferent to the covenant because of discouragements and struggles as we seek
to live a faithful life. We say, “What’s
the use? The problems are
insurmountable.” Or materialism can
erode our zeal for the covenant of God.
How many Christian homes in the day of prosperity have parents who are
teaching at home – fathers who are teaching their children? With all of the materialism, with all the
things, with all the greed, how often are not the lives of Christians
characterized by selfishness and bickering because things, possessions, and money
become the object of the heart? Oh, we
need a renewal of the covenant. We need
to see God as our treasure. We need to
see that the only thing that matters is the relationship in which we stand to
Him.
Let us take note
that when there is spiritual revival, that is, when the Word of God is living
and moving among the people of God truly, they will be resolved from the heart
to live a God-centered, covenant life as the friend of God.
Now in the days of
Nehemiah, they did not leave it to generalities, but they nailed it down to
some specifics. They said, first of all,
that our renewal of the covenant, of being a friend of God in this world, will
be seen in our marriages. We read in
verse 30 of chapter 10, “And that we would not give our daughters unto the
people of the land, nor take their daughters for our sons.” The first particular that they mention
concerning how they shall live as the friend of God is that this will be seen
in their marriages. Why? Because whom you marry and the spiritual life
of your marriage have everything to do with your enjoying the fellowship of God
because of the crucial place that God has given to marriage and the experience
of His covenant love. Whom you marry
affects profoundly your relationship to God.
God has made life’s most intimate bond, marriage, a picture of a higher
bond – His covenant. This truth controls
marriage. This truth shapes
marriage. This truth is to be applied to
every dimension of marriage.
That means marry
only in the Lord. That means live in
marriage even as God lives with His people.
Your marriage must be characterized by forgiveness and by
faithfulness. You must seek someone who
is loyal to God and marry that person.
And you must be faithful, even unto death, to that person.
It means, young
men, be men of God, be spiritual.
Prepare yourself for marriage. As
you date, you must show sensitivity to God and to His law. You must know how to treat her already when
you are dating her. You do not take
liberties. You do not drag her around
like some trophy. You develop a
relationship with her through prayer and through the Word of God and through
reading the Word of God with her and through praying with her.
And, girls, you
need to look for a leader. Not just
a leader, someone who pulls you around.
But you must look to that leader who brings to you the care and the
protection of the living God. You have
to look to his life as he lives before God.
Is he subdued and is he a loyal servant of the Lord Jesus Christ? This is absolutely crucial for your
marriage. The very first thing that will
be seen when the covenant is loved among God’s people and they are living in
awareness of God’s covenant is that they establish God-centered marriages to
which they are faithful until death do them part.
The second evidence
of the covenant renewal of the people under Nehemiah was seen in
Sabbath-keeping. We read in verse
31: “And if the people of the land bring
ware or any victuals on the sabbath
day to sell, that we would not buy it of them on the sabbath,
or on the holy day.” That is crucial,
too – how we observe the Lord’s Day.
Why? Because there is also an
intimate and inseparable connection between Sabbath-keeping and covenant
living, between how you keep Sunday and how you live as friends of God your
whole life. There is an inseparable
relationship between them. The Sabbath
is the special day of friendship and fellowship with God. It is the day when you are released by your
master (God) from your earthly obligation so that you can come home and enter
into His presence and commune with Him and give the whole day to fellowship
with Him. The purpose of the Sabbath is covenant, that you might enter into a special bond, a
special time, of fellowship with God.
The people in
Nehemiah’s day were vowing something about their friendship with God. They said that this friendship with God will
mean that we will not engage in commerce, we will not buy wares of the people
of the land on the Lord’s Day.
Therefore, the Lord’s Day is not a day for shopping at the mall,
browsing through the shops and comparing prices and styles and clipping out
coupons. It is the market day for the
soul. You may, on the Lord’s Day, buy,
peruse, clip out, and store up all the wares, all the good things, all the
valuables of Jesus Christ. It is the day
that you are to come home, enter into Father’s house, where mercy waits and He
will talk with you.
The Sabbath is also
a wonderful witnessing opportunity for the covenant of God. The Christian shop owner closes up his shop
once a week. Your neighbors see you on
the way to church. You haul the kids
into the van and the neighbors watch you leave for
church. You witness to them. You leave them in no doubt that you have an
allegiance to God, an allegiance that is first.
You say, “My allegiance to God transcends business interest. It transcends and is greater than domestic
concerns. It is more to me than social
obligations. It is more to me than a
beautiful day at the beach.” You say,
“My God counts. My God is best!” Twice a Sunday. You leave a witness.
But when you allow
more and more of the world to enter into your life and you come to Sunday
either totally exhausted because you have given everything to the things of
this life, or you allow the actions of this world to affect your Sunday, then,
on Monday morning, you have to talk to your neighbor (or co-worker) and say,
“You know, my God is wonderful.” You
have to say that – because it is not apparent to them that your God is
wonderful. It is not apparent to the
world that God is wonderful if Christians despise the Lord’s Day, make the
Lord’s Day as any other day. Then the
witness that the Christian is leaving with the world is not that God is
wonderful, but that God really does not matter.
The third thing that
showed the Jews’ renewal to the covenant was this, that
they were going to express their spirituality in selfless deeds of mercy. We read in verse 31 of chapter 10 (I am
paraphrasing now), “And this we will do.
We will show mercy to those who are indebted to us.” And that mercy that they would show (we will
not go into the details) was, of course, the reflection of His love. When you are resolved to live a covenant,
faithful life, then you will have mercy toward one another in the Lord Jesus
Christ. A good barometer of the reality
of a heart toward God is how one stands toward his
brothers and sisters and whether he is sensitive to their needs. Do you say, “Well, I got mine, let him get
his. He hurt me, I’ll get him back.” Or, “I’ll just withdraw from the whole
business.” If you bear a grudge, if you
view them all as sinners because of what they did to you, if you are ruled by
jealousy and are judgmental, that is sin.
No, when we stand
in the covenant of God, then we say, “I will forgive. I will put the best construction on the
actions of others. I will want them to
prosper.” And we will go out of our way
to show mercy and kindness.
And, fourthly,
covenant renewal in that day of Nehemiah was seen in renewed devotion to the
church. We take that from many verses in
chapter 10 in which they say, “And we will not forsake the house of our
God.” They will be devoted to the house
of God. Devotion to the church is
intimately tied to living as God’s friend in the covenant. Why?
Because, above all other things – above marriage, above Sabbath-keeping,
above deeds of mercy – above them all, it is in the church that God draws near
to us in worship. There is where He
comes down. Children, where is the spot
on earth closest to heaven? On this side
of the grave, what is the spot closest to heaven? It is the worship of the church. That means that if you are to live as the
friend of God in this world, you must support the church, you must be involved
in the church.
And the people of
God in Nehemiah’s day became very specific at this point. They said, “We will bring in offering, we
will bring in wood, we will bring in bread, we will bring in the firstfruits.” They
recognized their responsibility to give, to contribute. They supported the church.
The people of God
in Nehemiah’s day are again renewed to covenant faithfulness in their
life. “We make a sure covenant,” they
said. “We write our names and we seal
unto it (we sign it) as an expression of our personal resolve, by the grace of
God. We seal it, we are vowing.”
This was the result
of God’s grace among them. The result of
God’s grace among you is that you make a commitment that you shall live as the
friend of God – in your marriage, on the Sabbath, by showing mercy, by being
devoted to the church and to the house of God.
You will sign it. You will say,
“Put my name down, count me in.”
This is the
commitment that comes when the Holy Spirit sparks true, godly revival in our
hearts. Because He has forgiven us and
has had compassion upon us and has become our God, we pledge to live as His
friends in marriage, Sabbath-keeping, deeds of mercy, and devotion to the
church.
This is
blessing. For to live as the covenant
friend of God in love and fellowship with God is a life of hope and joy and
peace. It is the beginning of eternal
life.
Let us pray.
Father, we thank
Thee for Thy Word and we pray that this same renewal of living as the friend of
God may so characterize our lives. May
it come down to the specifics of our lives that we live in marriage faithfully,
that we keep the Lord’s Day joyfully, that we perform deeds of mercy humbly,
and that we are committed to Thy church on earth enthusiastically and with our
all. Grant us this grace, in Jesus’ name,
Amen.