Nathan E. Lewis

Remembering the Covenant: March 19 “Many Commandments in One� (Deuteronomy 11)

Have you noticed the repetition in the teaching of Moses? He has been addressing the second generation of Israel, teaching her to remember the covenant. In this particular section of his address, Moses asks the second generation to remember that her children were not eyewitnesses of the Exodus or the divine discipline in the desert. This third generation did not see the waters of the Red Sea swallow the Egyptian army. They did not see the earth swallow the households of the disobedient Reubenites. The second generation must tell the third generation the stories of God’s redemption so that the children will love God and obey his law. Moses is preparing these two generations to enter the land. Moses not only uses repetition of important lessons to prepare Israel, he also concisely summarizes the law.

Moses summarizes the content of the law in (13): “to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul…� The content of the law teaches us how to love God. This love is God owning us and our owning of God. We are solely devoted to him. We submit to him alone. This love, in other words, is expressed relationally. It is not merely a feeling within us, an endearment that makes us fond of God. It is an active relationship in which God cares for us and we reciprocate with praise, thanksgiving, and delight. This relationship of love is at the heart of the covenant.

Moses’ summary of the law calls us to love God and to serve God. These are not mutually exclusive commands. The command to serve God is calling us to express our love for God. This service of God is another way of describing our love of God. How do we love God? By serving him. To serve God is to do his will, to follow his agenda and plans, to obey his law. God is master and we are his servants. This is the relationship of the covenant. God commands and we obey. Now we can imagine Peter’s problem in allowing Jesus to wash his feet. Jesus took off his clothes, tied a towel around his waste, knelt at the feet of Peter to wash his dusty feet. Peter objected: “You are my master and I am your servant. I should be washing your feet. You shall not wash my feet.� But Jesus objected and said that if Peter did not allow him to wash his feet then he would have no relationship with him. Jesus, very God of very God, took upon himself human flesh becoming the human party of the covenant. According to the covenant, the divine party is master and the human party is servant. God the Father is master and Jesus Christ, God become Man, is the human party. As the human party, the Son of God humbled himself taking upon himself the form of a servant. He washed Peter’s dusty feet. He perfectly obeyed his Father in heaven, the master of the covenant. It is God’s will that our love for him would move us to love each other, to humble ourselves, kneel before each other and wash dusty feet. Jesus said to Peter and the other disciples, “By this shall the world know that you are my disciples – that you love one another.�

Our love for God moves us to serve God and we both love and serve “with all our heart and with all our soul.� All of our love is devoted to God. All of our service is rendered to him. We serve only one master. We love only one God. You may think, “This is a recipe for exhaustion! How can I sustain spiritual and physical energy to love and serve God 100%? What happens when I burn out?� Spiritual exhaustion occurs when we fail to love God wholly. When we divide our love between God and our idols, we burn out, running back forth between altars. But if we remain kneeling before the altar of the one, true God, never leaving his temple courts, we shall enjoy rest and delight, ever seeking his face and his pleasure. God remembers our frame, he knows that he formed us from the dust. He strengthens us to serve him. We burn out when we act as master, playing God. God has created us to serve. We are content when we serve. Our physical exhaustion from service is an indicator that we must pace ourselves and remember that God alone is God. Our spiritual and physical exhaustion also indicates that we have forgotten that our altar is Jesus Christ, our representative in the covenant. We can not perfectly love and serve God apart from Christ Jesus. We must be united to him and claim his perfect love and service of God as our own. We must acknowledge to ourselves and to the world that our strength is his strength. Then, and only then, are we able to live out the content of the law – “to love the Lord our God and to serve him with all our heart and with all our soul.�

Moses also summarizes the form/structure of the law in (26-28): “Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse: A blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I commanded you this day; and a curse, if you will not obey the commandments of the Lord your God…� The form of the law is conditional: “If you obey, then I will bless, but if you disobey, then I will curse.� God promises rain on the condition of faithful obedience. If Israel turns to idolatry, then God will stop the rain. God promises to drive out Israel’s enemies upon the condition of careful obedience. As Israel obeys her territory will expand. What do you think about this formula? Does it describe your life experience? Is your life this cut and dry? Can you trace a direct correlation between your obedience and God’s blessing of you? Can you trace all of your trouble back to actual sins you have committed? If you can, you live in a different world than I do. God has set alongside his form of the law several other forms that govern our lives. They all work together to accomplish his will.

Operative in this world, alongside God’s form of blessing obedience and cursing disobedience is his common curse of the entire world. When Mankind fell into sin, God poured out the common curse upon all creation. Disease strikes us, governed by the common curse. The religious leaders of Jesus’ day placed a blind man before Jesus, asking, “Who sinned, this man or his parents?� Jesus answered, “Neither. This has been done to display the glory of God.� These men were trying to fit all of life experience into the grid of law, the conditional formula of obedience blessed and sins punished. The common curse tires us, frustrates and irritates us. The common curse produces weeds, thorns, biting insects. Tsunamis wipe out entire communities while earthquakes demolish buildings, killing thousands. When some of us suffer the common curse we may think, “God hates me.� We draw a strict correlation between our personal behavior and the suffering. But the common curse produces suffering in our lives for one reason: We are members of a fallen race, living in a fallen world. Our suffering the common curse has nothing to do with our personal behavior. And so this complicates our lives.

To make life even more complicated, God has poured out common grace in this fallen world. King David observed and wrote in his Psalms that the wicked prosper at times while the righteous suffer. Does this not do violence to the strict form of the law, which states that God will bless the righteous and punish the wicked? David has a few questions to ask of God concerning common grace. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus addresses common grace. Jesus says, “Your Father in heaven causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.� In this fallen world, God sustains life and gives good gifts to those who do not deserve them. This common grace further complicates our experience. When we prosper we may think, “God is pleased with my behavior or doesn’t care much about those petty sins I have committed.� We draw a strict correlation between our personal behavior and our prosperity. But common grace produces prosperity in our lives for one reason: God loves all of his creation and will do what he pleases to sustain it all. We are part of his creation and so at times we prosper regardless of our personal behavior. This complicates our lives.

In the 1980’s and 1990’s a large portion of the Evangelical church in America sought to live by the principle of “sowing and reaping.� Based upon several of Solomon’s parables, the apostle Paul wrote, “Do not be deceived: God is not mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. Let us not become weary in doing good.� Paul places our behavior in the ultimate context of eternity. From day to day we may find it difficult to untangle our behavior from blessing and cursing, but we should not be discouraged. We should continue to do the good. This is Paul’s main point. He is not supplying us with a principle to help us assess the direct correlation between our behavior and God’s response to us. He is exhorting us to do the good regardless of the day to day experience. In the end, our sin will reap destruction. In the end, our union to the Holy Spirit will reap eternal life. If the principle of sowing and reaping were designed to help us make personal behavioral assessments on a daily basis, we would be reduced to rats in a laboratory cage, performing the trick for a treat.

God complicates our world even more by pouring out his special grace. From the beginning of creation to the present day of divine patience, God has been pleased to freely give special grace. To those who don’t deserve it, God has freely given his eternal favor through Jesus Christ, his one and only Son. It is to this special grace that the form of the law points us. The form of the covenant between God and Humanity is designed to enhance the meaning of the law, which is nothing other than special grace. The covenant is the only contract through which God dispenses life and his eternal favor. The conditions of this covenant must be met if the reward is to be received. The demand of the covenant is perfect obedience. If we are to enjoy peace with God, then the terms of the covenant must be fulfilled. The form of this covenant is concisely presented by Moses: “Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse: A blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I commanded you this day; and a curse, if you will not obey the commandments of the Lord your God…� Jesus Christ is the divine Son of God who has become the representative of the human party of the covenant. He has become our representative by truly taking upon himself our humanity. As a man, he has perfectly obeyed the law of God. His personal behavior has cut through the complications of the common curse and of common grace. His personal behavior was nothing less than perfect obedience to the law of God. The demand of the law has been met in Christ Jesus. The form of the law was his guide unto perfect obedience.

Jesus not only has won the blessing of the law, but he has also suffered the curse of the law. He represented us in obedience and then took upon himself the curse due our disobedience. Jesus suffered death upon the cross reaping what he did not sow. Paul wrote to the church at Galatia, “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.� The very form of the law forces us to consider Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of the law. The very form of the law calls us to embrace Jesus Christ as our only hope for peace with God. United to Jesus Christ, we can begin “to love the Lord our God and to serve him with all our heart and with all our soul…�

When you are united to Jesus, you discover more and more each day that the special grace he has won for you is a far greater treasure than the gifts of common grace. This special grace Jesus has given to you is sufficient to sustain you as you suffer the common curse. “Nothing, absolutely nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.�