From Garden to Glory: 10 Days Through the Bible's Grand StoryНамуна

Day 4: The Heart of Our King

THE HEART OF THE KING—LOVE

Knowing what compels God to act helps us to understand and appreciate his action. Why did he embark on this great rescue mission? Why didn’t he just leave us to our own plight? Was he obliged to rescue us? Was it pity that compelled him? Did he stand to gain anything by rescuing us?

In Deuteronomy 7:6-8, God, spoke through Moses to the people he had just redeemed out of Egypt, and told them,

You are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

The exodus (or exit) out of Egypt—when God delivered his people out of bondage and slavery—is the great rescue mission in the Old Testament. God references it repeatedly throughout the story, and this is meant to typify, or to give a foretaste of, the even greater rescue mission that he would perform through Jesus Christ. So, when God told the Israelites they hadn’t done anything to compel him to rescue them, we can appropriate the same thought to his even greater rescue of us. God did not rescue us because we are great, wonderful, strong, or even cute. He rescued us because of his great love.

THE WAY OF THE KING—COVENANT

What is the difference between marriage and living together? The difference is a covenant. The covenant that I entered with my husband on a cold January day in 1990 provides the framework for understanding the nature of our commitment. Yes, we love each other, but it is the covenant of marriage that binds us together. Love compelled us to enter this covenant, but it is the covenant that defines the nature of our relationship: We are bound to each other.

In a much greater (perfect even) way, God binds himself to us with covenants. Love compelled him; covenant binds him. Covenant is the way that God goes about accomplishing his purposes—he makes certain promises to his people, and then he binds himself to those promises. Our God is a covenant-making and covenant-keeping God.

Covenants were part of the ancient world, the world of the Old Testament. The most common type of covenant was called a suzerain-vassal covenant, in which the suzerain, or stronger party (think nation or king), pledged to protect and provide for the weaker party, or vassal. In return for that protection, the vassal promised obedience and loyalty.

God used a concept familiar to the ancient Israelites to help them understand what he was doing. He would be their suzerain, and they were to be his vassal. He was the initiator of the covenant because he was the stronger party. He would provide and protect and, because his people were the weaker party, they were to pledge loyalty and obedience.

But why? Why would an omniscient, sovereign, faithful God bind himself to an unfaithful people?

As we see in Leviticus 26:12, Jeremiah 30:22, and Ezekiel 36:28, God wants to be our God and wants us to be his people. In other words, he wants to be in relationship with us! He loves us. And so he binds himself to his own promises, knowing that he is the only one who will be faithful and keep the covenant.

Covenant is our God’s binding promise to be our God and to make us his own—to redeem a people for himself. That is God’s mission. But even though God has only one mission, did he make only one covenant for the accomplishment of that mission? No. He made multiple covenants. God entered covenants with Adam, Noah, Abram, Moses, David, and, of course, us—we have the new covenant through Jesus.

How are we to think about the fact that God entered multiple covenants? Does God change his mind or alter his course? No! God’s promise remains the same: to redeem a people for himself. But each covenant gives a little more information about how he will do that, what his people should be looking for, and how they are to respond. Each covenant builds on the ones before and gives a little more information about God’s great rescue mission.