The Story | God Who Keeps Covenant

Thank you. Good morning, everyone.

We haven't met. My name is Mandy.

I'm on staff here at the Garden Church.

I'm really excited to be teaching from God's Word this

morning. And we are just continuing our

exciting sermon series called The Story, which we've been in

for the last couple of weeks. So yeah, this fall, basically

we're going through a sermon series that talks about the kind

of through line of Scripture, right?

So basically we're going from creation to the fall to kind of

exploring God's redemptive story arc that the plan of the epic

plan of salvation and restoration of the world that he

is enacting. So basically we're covering the

entire Bible in 10 weeks. So no pressure, you know, But

given the title of our series, I actually wanted to get started

by talking a little bit about the concept of story.

So it's kind of at the center of what we're doing here trying to

get settled. So yeah, basically, whether

you're looking at, like, ancient hieroglyphs or like the latest

Hollywood blockbusters, humans seem to love stories.

Right. Let's do a quick poll of the

audience. I'm going to be that person who

has you shout things out from the crowd.

What are some of your all time favorite stories?

Just shout them out. All time favorite stories?

Is it the horse in his voice? Oh, that's a good one, Maggie.

I love that CS Lewis. I'm all about that.

What else did? What else did I hear?

Harry Potter. OK, Harry Potter.

Love that. I love that.

I love the diversity so far. And of all Anne of Green Gables.

OK. It sounds like you're just

listing my favorites. I appreciate that.

On behalf of everyone here. Yeah.

Where the. Oh, where the wild things are.

I can also kind of not. I can tell who has kids, but

it's like, maybe some of these things are a little bit fresher

in your mind. That's a good one.

Amazing. All right, Well, some of you

know me. If you do, you might know that

my undergraduate degree is in screen writing.

And when people find this out, one of the first things they

often ask is, you know, what's your favorite movie or favorite

TV show? And that question would give me

so much anxiety because as a storyteller, it's kind of, it's

hard not to feel like my answer says something, you know, deep

and important about what type of person I am.

Like to say that like, you know, this is the story that made me

want to write stories or that speaks the most to my soul.

So as much as I'd like to treat it as kind of a innocent

icebreaker, it's hard for me to kind of overcome this instinct

that my favorite stories are connected to who I am.

Why is that? When I asked for your favorite

stories, and I'm sure some of you thought of them and didn't

say them, it's OK. I also noticed that none of you

named like a legal document that you really like, or like an

encyclopedia, or even like a philosophy book.

Because if all we were trying to do is list rules or facts or

even principles we should live by, we wouldn't necessarily need

a story, right? Humans use story to make sense

of our experience of the world. We kind of grapple with the

strange realities of being flesh and blood, but also an eternal

soul, but also like this pulsing heart full of desire and emotion

by through story. And as we try to make sense of

what it means to be human and what are places in the world,

story seems to just come spilling out of us.

Because story helps us create meaning.

Scripture is a unique type of story because the meaning maker

here is not a mere human author, it's God himself.

And in a world of confusion that we live in, where like competing

ideas and narratives are kind of pulling us in every direction,

God's Word reveals who God is, who we are as his creation, and

what his plan is for humanity. So this revelation also comes

like, not in the form of these abstract ideas, but through

human history, through the lives of people who encounter God and

are changed by him. And so this story invites us

deeper into understanding God in his heart for humanity.

So as we dive into that today, I'd like to take a moment to

just pray for us in particular, that God would make himself more

fully known to us through his Word today.

Let me pray. Lord God, we thank you for the

story that you have given us, that it's not a mere story where

we are kind of trying to like take all the puzzle pieces of

human existence in the world and put them together ourselves.

Instead, we thank you that it's a revelation of who you are,

that we can know you, that we can know how you view us and

what you're doing in the world. God that we can have the

security of knowing the God that we follow, that he is faithful,

that he is gracious, that he is patient, that he is steadfast,

that he pursues US against all odds.

And so, Lord, we just pray that you would give us a clearview of

who you are this morning. And that if we came in today

with any anxieties or fears or just like just challenges and

difficult things that we're holding, we pray that this

story, this reality of who you are would speak to us and remind

us of who you are and remind us of how you see us and remind us

of where we fall in this grand plan of redemption that you're

doing. That there would be a security

and knowing that you are working in our world, that you were

working in the light of all the brokenness and all the

challenges and all the pain that we see, that you were constantly

at work and that we can count on you, God, to come through for

us. So we pray that you would open

our eyes to that this morning. We pray that in Jesus name,

Amen. Amen.

All right, so, yeah, in case you guys haven't been here the last

couple of weeks, I'm going to do a quick recap.

We started our sermon series with the story of creation as

one does. We learned that humanity was

created by a good God whose intent is for humans to live in

his presence and relationship with him and to partner with him

to bring about order and flourishing and creative

goodness in this world. But then comes the fall, the

tragic descent of humanity into sin, where we basically, instead

of trusting God and living in light of his wisdom and his

boundaries, humanity attempts to seize control, to go our own

way, to kind of become our own. Many gods and one sin has a grip

on the human heart. The downward spiral is rapid and

messy, like one sin begets another begets another, until

the world is just filled with deceit and envy and selfishness

and violence and death. So now we're in Week 3.

And so we're left with kind of a major question, which is, given

the dire state of this world, what will God do next?

Well, the good news is that God's response to humanity's

brokenness is to begin a plan of redemption.

So you're going to hear that word probably a lot through this

series, redemption. So what what do we mean by that?

Well, the 10 second version is that redemption means to be

released from bondage, specifically humanity's bondage

to sin. So God's plan of redemption is

how God sets us free from this cycle of self destruction and

death and brings us into a restored relationship with

himself. And how is he going to do this?

Well, the process starts with God making a covenant.

It feels like a very Christianese word, covenant.

I think if I had never become a Christian, I probably could have

gone my entire life and used that word 0 times.

Maybe you're like, I've used that word 0 times.

I'm not sure what it means. Tim Mackey, the creator of the

Bible Project, argues that covenant should actually be in

the top five words that we think of when we think of

Christianity. Mackie says God's covenant

promises Dr. The whole story of the Bible and are at the center

of the Christian faith. Well, if that's true, then the

answer to this next question is very important, which is what is

a covenant? Here's one definition that I

like. A covenant refers to a

relationship between two partners who make binding

promises to each other and work together to reach a common goal.

They're often often accompanied by like oaths, signs,

ceremonies. Covenants define obligations and

commitments, but they're different from a contract

because they are relational and personal.

So like a commonly used example is marriage.

This year I went to six weddings.

So that's a lot, right? But each one of them, a shout

out to the people in this room who invited me to their wedding.

I love you. I enjoyed your wedding also.

It was interesting, right? Because each wedding was unique

based on the couple's like culture and personalities, and

yet all of them had like these elements in common.

The couple made specific promises to one another.

They walked through a ceremony to symbolize their commitment.

And they came out on the other side with this new bond, a

deeper relationship than before and more clarity on what their

commitment entails, a commitment that they would then have to

live out, right. So these are all reflections of

marriage as a covenant. As it turns out, God is a God of

covenants. So the big four, as we'll call

them, are God's covenants with Abraham, with Moses and the

people of Israel, with King David, and then what we usually

call the new covenant, which is brought about through Jesus.

So today we're in the first covenant with a man to your text

will call Abraham. You probably know him as

Abraham, which is the fancy new name he receives in Genesis 17.

But we learned about this covenant in a couple of places,

but we're going to be in Genesis 12 and 15.

So these two parts that we might call the promise and the

ceremony, The promise and the ceremony, you know, it would be

really fun if I had like a device that turned pages for me.

I don't know, maybe I should just live in the 21st century

and not have paper. But I feel like I just, it's

tactile. I need it.

I don't know. But in Genesis 12, where we're

starting, God makes a promise to Abraham and it comes up like

kind of out of the blue. Like at this point, all we know

about Abraham is his name, his lineage, and that he's from a

land called ER. And then suddenly out of

nowhere, God speaks to him and says, go from your country, your

people in your father's household to the land that I

will show you. And then God speaks this five

part blessing over him. He says, I will make you into a

great nation. I will bless you and make your

name great. You will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you.

And whoever curses you, I will curse, and all peoples on earth

will be blessed through you. So this is like a fairly unusual

way to introduce yourself to someone, right?

Because at this point Abraham does not know the Lord.

Like scripture confirms this in the book of Joshua.

It says long ago your father's lived behind the Euphrates,

Tara, the father of Abraham and Nahor, and they served other

gods. So Abraham was an idol

worshipper and aside from that, he appears to kind of just be

some random guy. And yet this obscure person has

instantly become the beneficiary of these like outrageous

promises from God. For a man like Abraham and his

time period and his culture, these promises are like

basically everything that he could ever dream of.

Like I don't know what you would think in your mind is like that.

I don't know, like maybe the answer to like that.

What would I do if I won the lottery question?

It's kind of like everything that he could imagine getting

out of life is encompassed in these promises that not only

him, but like his whole lineage would prosper and that his would

be associated with bringing about good for the whole world.

And even here in these promises, we see a kind of nod to God's

long term plan that God will bless Abraham's family so that

all the families of the earth will be blessed.

So that's the plan of redemption.

And it's going to work kind of like a ripple effect where the

blessing starts with one man, but then it kind of expands and

expands until it has reached the whole world.

Now here's something important to notice.

When God makes this promise, what does Abraham have to give

God in return? It's a rhetorical question.

It's OK if you don't. Nothing.

God makes these epic promises and then he just stops speaking.

Now the next verse does say that Abraham does his God asks him

and he leaves his home for a new land.

So there's an important action for Abraham to take.

Like God invites him to go to basically like say yes to these

promises and Abraham goes. But there's no like, exchange.

There's no like, quid pro quo. There's not like God doesn't

require some kind of payment or service like people might expect

the Pagan gods to require. God doesn't ask Abraham to,

like, follow any specific rules. The promises aren't really

contingent on anything except Abraham saying yes to God's

extravagantly generous offer. So kind of make a note of that.

Keep that in your mind, and we're going to jump to Genesis

15 where we see the ceremony, which is kind of a formalization

of God's covenant. So this chapter starts with

Abraham bringing 2 concerns to God.

So first concern, Abraham is no child of his own, which kind of

seems like a major obstacle if God is promising that Abraham's

offspring will become a great nation.

And the second concern is that along with these promises, God

also tells Abraham that he will inherit like a fruitful land.

But Abraham asks, how can I know that that will happen?

Well, in response, God tells Abraham to do this.

He tells him to gather these kind of sacrificial animals, to

cut them in half and place the halves into two piles.

It's kind of strange. Then a deep sleep falls over

Abraham and he has a vision. And in the darkness, Abraham

sees a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between the

animal pieces. And the text says on that day

the Lord made a covenant with Abraham.

What does it all mean? Well, to unpack this, we need to

put on our Bible nerd hats for just a minute and talk about

ancient rituals. So here we go.

In ancient Mesopotamia, where Abraham lived, cultures didn't

really rely on the written word as much.

Now in our modern world, like, how would you normally formalize

an agreement? Like you would probably like

write out a document that like has all the terms and then you

would sign your names on it, right?

Well, what do you do in a culture where most people don't

read or write? Conundrum.

Instead, people in Abraham's world would seal a covenant with

a ritual where they would act out the consequences of breaking

the covenant. So it's very dramatic.

The animal pieces represent what will happen if the people

involved break the covenant. It's kind of a way of saying,

may what was done to this animal be done to me if I do not hold

up my end of the agreement? Now if the covenant was say

between like a king and a servant, one of two things could

happen. Either the king and the servant

would walk through the pieces or just the servant would walk

through the pieces, meaning there would be consequences for

the servant, but like not so much for the king.

So what is happening in the vision that Abraham has?

God, as represented by the fire pot and the burning torch, walks

through the middle alone. So the king seals the covenant

by himself. There's a teaching that I listen

to by I'm the late pastor Tim Keller that talks about this as

well, and let scholars talk about this as well.

But basically this act means that God is saying that he alone

will bear the consequences if the covenant is broken.

This is not an even sided agreement.

God alone initiates the covenant.

God alone seals the covenant with this ritual, and therefore

God alone is bearing responsibility for bringing his

promises to completion. OK, so that's our Bible nerd

moment. You can take your hats off.

Something profound and unprecedented is happening here.

But what is at the heart of this story?

Like what can we take away from all of this?

Here it is. Here's here's the main thing

that we're going to talk about this morning.

Understanding God as a covenant maker should fundamentally

change how we see God and understand his relationship with

us. God's choice to enter into

covenants should shape who we believe God to be.

There's a kind of common refrain I've heard might be familiar,

that the God we see in the Old Testament and the God we see in

the New Testament feel like two different gods.

I imagine you've like heard that or felt it yourself, right?

Like the feeling we get is that the Old Testament God is a God

of anger and punishment, but the New Testament God, as known

through Jesus is a God of love and grace.

Sound familiar? Feel like that's something I've

definitely heard before. So when I was in seminary, my

Old Testament professor started the semester by saying this,

that one goal of our time together in the Old Testament

was to prove. So all the books that including

the story about Abraham, like all the way from like creation

up until up until Jesus comes on the scene, that that selection

basically that the goal of our time together was to prove that

that dichotomy was a false dichotomy, that the God of the

Old Testament is not less gracious than the God of the New

Testament. They are, after all, one God.

The Bible actually reveals that grace has been there since the

beginning, and God's decision to make a covenant with Abraham,

especially kind of a largely 1 sided covenant, is one of our

earliest pieces of evidence of God's extraordinary grace.

And what is grace? Grace is a free gift.

Grace means receiving favor and blessing and love that we did

not earn. And because we did not earn it,

we cannot lose it once we've received it.

And that is how God chooses to relate to humanity.

He is profoundly and shockingly and beautifully and unimaginably

gracious towards us. So this is the first take away

that I want us to hold on to. God's grace has been present

since the beginning. If you look back to at Genesis 3

where the fall happens all the way through 11 to the part that

we land in today, we basically see, to summarize that whole

story, all that's happening is that humanity is just like

choosing evil again and again and again.

Like left to our own devices, we are rebellious and selfish and

very short sighted. We choose quick fixes and

instant pleasure over what is good and loving.

We are a danger to ourselves and to one another, and we would be

completely lost if God did not have the heart of a rescuer.

He pursues us as an act of grace.

Even when Abraham is introduced, it says nothing about his

character or his accolades, if he has any, because they're not

really relevant. God doesn't choose Abraham

because Abraham is good. God chooses Abraham because God

is merciful. And it's God's mercy that sets

His plan of redemption into motion and that leads us to take

away #2 because grace is the foundation, God's plan of

redemption is certain. So of the four main covenants I

mentioned that are in the Bible, only one is truly like fully

conditional or or breakable, at least by people.

The covenant with Moses, but that's a sermon for next week.

Every other covenant is primarily unconditional, meaning

it's core promises can't really be broken by humans.

Now this doesn't mean that there's nothing for humanity to

do. Like if we look at Abraham, he's

invited to leave his homeland and his idols to follow God.

And it's important that he does so to be a participant in the

covenant because an agreement has to be opted into.

So our steps of faith matter, our decision to say yes to God

matters, our character matters. And also God is aware that he's

partnering with wayward humans. So the unconditional part

basically means this. Our shortcomings can't stop

God's plan. If God's plan relied on Abraham,

then if Abraham made a mistake or struggled with doubt, God's

old plan would just get derailed.

But Abraham does make mistakes and struggles to trust God, and

tries to force certain outcomes along the way.

And yet God fulfills every promise he made without fail.

So what if the gifts of reading like the entirety of the Bible

is that you begin to realize that any time it feels like

maybe God is not going to show up, maybe he's not there, maybe

he's not going to come through. We discovered that he's actually

working behind the scenes and setting the pieces in place to

draw hard hearted humans towards himself.

And we see this through God's covenants very clearly.

Like God is the one who initiates this relationship with

Abraham. God is the one who blesses and

multiplies his family. God is also the one who

basically guarantees that a savior will be born from

Abraham's line, which is the the heart of the covenant with

David. It's basically that that a

righteous king will come from his his land and establish peace

on the earth forever. And finally, God is the one who

gives his own Son. To seal the final and the new

covenant where Jesus lays down his life to pay our debts, to

cleanse our sins, and to secure the redemption of this world.

So God is the one who does it all.

So these two takeaways are major.

God has been. God's grace has been present

since the beginning. And because grace is the

foundation, God's plan of redemption is certain.

So do we see how important this is?

Let's look at it another way. So what happens if we don't see

that grace is the foundation? Like what happens if we see

God's plan of redemption as conditional or uncertain?

Maybe it's not going to happen. Well, what likely happens is we

develop an anxious faith, which is an oxymoron.

And yeah, it's a state of contradiction that many of us,

maybe most of us, live out every day.

Like we say that God is our Savior, but then we worry he's

not going to come through for us.

We sing songs that God made a way of redemption for us, and

yet we act like we can't afford to make a mistake.

That acceptance is dependence on our perfection, which actually

makes it harder sometimes to repent and to change.

We pray for God's Kingdom to come on earth as it is in

heaven, but we don't really know if prayer works or that God is

at work. So we strive, we fight to force

certain outcomes sometimes like Abraham did.

So this is a question I had to ask myself this week and then

I'm going to ask you now, which is, are you living from a place

of anxious faith? Is there a part of you that is

afraid that you were too broken for God to accept you, that

maybe he's not able to bring beauty and renewal out of the

ashes in your life? Or is there a part of you that

looks at the brokenness of the world and on some level believes

that if you if we don't fix it, no one will?

When we see the effects of sin in our world and in our hearts,

it's it's kind of automatic that we go into fight or flight mode.

Like we try to run away and ignore our problems because they

feel too overwhelming. Or we try to fix things by force

by like trying to strong arm the world around us into operating

in a way that makes us feel safe.

Does that sound like faith or does that sound like anxiety?

The foundation of our faith is not that we are good enough or

strong enough or faithful enough that that God is.

He's perfect in his goodness, He's limitless in his strength,

He's eternally consistent in his faithfulness.

And in a world full of troubles, This is our source of peace,

that God does not give up on us. God does not start something

that he does not intend to finish.

So in light of who God is, how should we live?

That's our final take away. The story arc of God's

redemption is long, which means that faith requires patience.

So the timeline between God's covenant with Abraham and the

fulfillment of the new covenant through Jesus is about 2100

years. So it's an understatement to say

that God plays the long game. But second, Peter says this.

Do not forget this one thing, dear friends, with the Lord, a

day is like 1000 years and 1000 years is like a day.

The Lord is not slow and keeping His promise as some understand

slowness. Instead, he's patient with you,

not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to

repentance. So if we're going to live a

life, a life of faith, trusting in God's timing and God's way of

doing things, patience is a necessity.

And this is somewhat unfortunate because everything in our modern

world wants to disciple us in the ways of impatience.

We live in an age of constant stimuli and instant

gratification. I feel like I've even noticed

that we seem to want to form our opinions as quickly as possible,

like we want, like immediate and like compelling answers and

solutions, instead of taking the time to develop curiosity or

discernment. Our hurry, our dissatisfaction,

the reckless way we use our words like weapons, our

resistance to the the slowness required to cultivate wisdom.

All of this is the fruit of impatience.

And yet God is patient. He moves slowly because he is

motivated by grace and by love. And if we are followers of God,

why would we try to outpace him? Do we think we can improve upon

God's plan of redemption? Our reckless hurry is kind of

eerily reminiscent of the fall. Like Adam and Eve, we talked

about this last week. Adam and Eve are like eager for

wisdom. They want to become like wise.

They want to become more like God.

But they go about it by opting for a shortcut, like grasping

for control instead of coming to God with their desires.

And at the root of that, grasping for control.

And that kind of impatience is a lie, that God cannot be trusted,

that what God said won't happen, that we have to take matters

into our own hands. A church.

This is the opposite of what it means for God to be a covenant.

Maker forgot to be a God of covenants.

It means that he's so faithful that even though Abraham and

like generations of his descendants onward continue

making mistakes and doubting God and going their own stubborn

way, God still keeps his promise to bless and restore the world.

God has demonstrated time and again that he can be trusted

throughout history and in our own lives.

Recently in my community, the topic of testimonies came up.

So I was reflecting on like testimonies from my own life and

so many of them are about God as a provider, Like God coming

through when I had like a like a desperate financial or practical

need, when I couldn't pay my rent, when my car got totaled by

hit and run, when I needed a job, when I experienced a health

emergency, and the list goes on and on.

And often when I share these stories with people, if I share

them like here on a Sunday, people will be like, oh, well,

you know, wow, like God has worked all these miracles in

your life. It must help you to have so much

faith that he's going to provide for you.

And I'm like, yes, it, it must, right?

Like you would think that it would.

You would think that like the accumulation of all of these

testimonies of God powerfully answering my prayers would mean

that I just like never doubt that he's going to provide for

me. That would make perfect logical

sense if only humans worked that way.

It's it's true that as I've walked with God over the years

that he's worked like 1 miracle after another, that each one

kind of peels back the layers of fear and insecurity that I have

about not having enough. But The thing is like those

fears go really deep. Like deep into my past, deep

into my childhood, deep into places in my life where I wasn't

even like conscious of the decision to be afraid.

Like, I mean, that's kind of a weird way of putting it, but

basically, like those are things that that are deeply rooted in,

in the way that I'm wired. But maybe you can relate.

Maybe there are specific areas that you struggle to trust in

God's faithfulness where even though your head says one thing,

like your gut instinctively reacts with fear, like fear of

failure, fear of rejection, of conflict, of powerlessness, of

being trapped in uncertainty. I have grown a lot and trusting

God to provide and also I still struggle with fear.

But even this is a testimony to God's patience because he didn't

give up on me the first time or the second time or the third

time I doubted him. Like, you know, hey, I've

already shown him faithful. Like if you're going to doubt

me, you're on your own kid. His patience is persistent and

radical. So now as I'm looking to the

future and I'm looking at any area that I'm tempted to fear,

this is the truth that I want to rehearse in my mind.

God has always shown up for me. He is with me now.

He will be with me always. What do I have to fear?

Church? What if that was how we operated

in the world? What if that was how we spoke to

our fears? If when our anxieties are like

clamoring for our attention, we said, my God is a God of

covenants, He keeps his promises.

He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

So if he was faithful before, he's going to be faithful again

and again and again. Fixating on God's faithfulness

helps us to be patient. Patient for him to work in our

lives, patient for him to heal the brokenness of our world.

Patient for him to rework our patterns of sin and to teach us

to trust him. Because God cannot be anything

but faithful. That is who He is.

But often it is not until we walk toward God that we discover

He's faithful. This is true for Abraham when he

was called kind of out of out of obscurity.

Abraham learned he could trust God when he took a step of

faith. But Abraham first needed to go

and leave his country and his father's house.

He had to actually move toward God and God's promises to

discover that he was walking on a firm foundation that God was

going to keep showing up for him.

So that feels like an invitation for you today to like know God

as a covenant maker and a promise keeper.

I would invite you to move toward him.

And maybe this means turning your back on an old way of

living or thinking. Maybe it means rejecting the

voice of anxiety that like urges you towards grasping for

control. Maybe it means giving up an

idol, like something you sought comfort and purpose in instead

of God. Ask yourself, where am I

doubting in God's faithfulness and what am I trusting in

instead? Like what if I've been willing

to maybe confront or give up in order to follow God in the place

that He wants to take me? Today can be the day that we

take that step in trusting Him and discovering just how

faithful He is.