Covenant

Life on Earth requires a lot of “fine tuning.” Our planet is just the right distance from the Sun to allow freezing and melting, and the planetary axis tilted just so for seasons. There is a moon for tides to circulate and cleanse shores and oceans, an atmosphere to distribute heat (otherwise the sun-side would cook as the night-side froze), and a magnetic field that contributes to our protection from harmful solar radiation.

That all these needs were met (and many more) is all a big (coincidence) for evolutionists – we just lucked out and got just what we needed.

But we didn’t need rainbows. And yet, as astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez recently noted, we’re on the only planet in the Solar System to get them. What’s needed for a rainbow is:

Suspended water droplets in the atmosphere and the direct sunlight that results from the sun being between the horizon and 42 degrees altitude. This typically occurs just after a thunderstorm has passed and small droplets are still in the atmosphere, and the sky is clearing in front of the sun. Seems like a simple setup. This must be a common phenomenon in the cosmos, right?

But it isn’t so simple. Our moon doesn’t have the atmosphere. Mars doesn’t have the moisture. Venus has too thick an atmosphere and as we head further out, the other planets don’t have liquid water. So, the only planet to have rainbows is the only one with people on it to see them. To evolutionists that’s just one more (coincidence). To God’s people, just another example of his love and care. It’s as if someone has been trying to get our attention with a pretty shiny object writ large across the sky, saying, “Look here. ... This is important!” “I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth” (Gen. 9:13).

As a young Christian, pastor and author Tim Keller said, "I found the Old Testament to be a confusing and off-putting part of the Bible." But while he was at a study center someone asked the great Bible scholar Alex Motyer a question about the seeming disjointedness between the Old Testament and the New Testament. Keller writes:

I will always remember his answer … [Dr. Motyer] insisted that we were all one people of God. Then he asked us to imagine how the Israelites under Moses would have given their "testimony" to someone who asked for it. They would have said something like this:

We were in a foreign land, in bondage, under the sentence of death. But our mediator—the one who stands between us and God—came to us with the promise of deliverance. We trusted in the promises of God, took shelter under the blood of the lamb, and he led us out. Now we are on the way to the Promised Land. We are not there yet, of course, but we have the law to guide us, and through blood sacrifice we also have his presence in our midst. So he will stay with us until we get to our true country, our everlasting home.
Then Dr. Motyer concluded: "Now think about it. A Christian today could say the same thing, almost word for word."

My young self was thunderstruck. I had held the vague, unexamined impression that in the Old Testament people were saved through obeying a host of detailed laws but that today we were freely forgiven and accepted by faith. This little thought experiment showed me, in a stroke, not only that the Israelites had been saved by grace and that God's salvation had been by costly atonement and grace all along, but also that the pursuit of holiness, pilgrimage, obedience, and deep community should characterize Christians as well.

Croatia's capital city of Zagreb is the home for an unusual museum. The Museum of Failed Relationships was founded by two Zagreb artists after the end of their four-year romantic relationship. The pair laughed about setting up a museum to showcase the many shared objects from their life together that now held complicated memories.

The joke snowballed, and the artists (collecting items from friends and visitors to their growing number of gallery shows) soon had over 1,000 items—each with a story—on their hands. "We might say it's a love museum, just upside down" says Drazen Grubisic, one of the founding pair. Their collection includes a shiny new axe (used to splinter the furniture of an ex-lover one item per day), pink fur-covered handcuffs (no description given or needed), and scarred and partially crushed lawn gnome (hurled at the car of a departing husband).

A kitschy wooden box (made from matchsticks) frames a little picture of a couple named Jelka and Valdo. Valdo made it for his wife Jelka on their wedding day. The description on the box reads:

After 18 years of marriage he left me for another woman; we officially divorced after our 25th wedding anniversary … [For our anniversary] I ordered a cake with the number 25 written on it and the pastry shop cut it in half. I sent him the half with the 25. Our sons celebrated our anniversary first with me and then with their father. He and his girlfriend were very shocked but they ate the cake anyway. The cake is gone and so is our marriage. I still have the box, two sons and a lot of memories …

While the items are personal, the feelings that come when love fails are universal. Each item is an intimate peek into how we strive for and often lose love. "Some [people who come to the museum] are laughing" Grubsic says. "But some … some are really thinking."

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Divorce; Marriage; Commitment; Vows—Our love (and our failed love) for others; (2) God, love of; Christ, love of; Covenant—God's committed love for us. We're all hungering for a kind of love that won't ever let us down. That love is found in Christ.

The New York Times reported on a major study that tracked 1,761 people who got married and stayed married over the course of 15 years. The article reported that "newlyweds enjoy a big happiness boost that lasts, on average, for just two years. Then the special joy wears off and they are back where they started, at least in terms of happiness." These findings have been confirmed by several more studies.

Christian author Gary Thomas illustrates these findings by using the image of an hourglass. Thomas says,

The moment you become smitten by someone—the second you find yourself deeply "in love"—is the moment that hourglass gets turned over. There is enough sand in that hourglass, on average, to last you about twelve to eighteen months. On occasion, the sand may trickle down a bit beyond that, up to about two years, but never by much and not with the same intensity. The average life span of an infatuation is almost always less than two years.

Yes, sexual chemistry and romantic attraction can remain [or be revived, but those romantic feelings will be revived, but they cease to be the main glue that holds a relationship together on a day-to-day basis. Feelings become "warm and dependable" more than "hot and excitable." God simply did not design our brains to sustain a lifelong infatuation.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Marriage; Dating; Premarital Counseling—This is a great example for the need to develop a long-term commitment in marriage. (2) God's Love; God, covenants of—This illustration could also be used to contrast our limited human love with God's everlasting covenant love—that is, God doesn't have an hourglass!

Picture this: a bride and groom dashing out of the church, through the showers of birdseed and into the limo, all aglow with the light of love from the vows they've just taken. In the backseat of the car, en route to the reception, they embrace and kiss. Then the groom announces that he has something to say.

Now you realize, my dear, that, as far as I'm concerned, we can't really say we're married, because I don't know yet what kind of wife you'll turn out to be. I hope for the best, of course. And I'll help you all I can. But only at the end of our lives will I be able to tell if you've lived up to my expectations. If you have—then, and only then, I'll agree that we truly got married today. But if you don't, then as far as I'm concerned we were never married at all. After all, how can I call you my wife if you fail to be a wife to me?

Under such circumstances, it will not be a happy honeymoon—if there's one at all. A wife cannot be a wife if her whole existence as wife is conditional and under constant scrutiny (likewise for a husband). She will certainly fail. This groom has completely misunderstood [the power of marriage to transform the beloved]. The couple that tied the knot only 60 minutes ago is every bit as married as the couple celebrating their 60th anniversary. Whatever happens in the course of the marriage does not affect the "married-ness" of that couple.

Possible Preaching Angles: Justification by Faith, Gift of Salvation—In the same way, how can we be expected to love and trust a God always watching us like a hawk to see if we fail? Right standing with God isn't something that we have to generate from within ourselves. Right standing with God is a free gift—and that's what helps us grow to trust, love, and obey God.

Elizabeth Edwards, the former wife of vice presidential candidate Senator John Edwards, described the agony she experienced when she learned of her husband's infidelities:

After I cried, and screamed, I went to the bathroom and threw up. And the next day John and I spoke. He wasn't coy, but it turned out he wasn't forthright either I felt that the ground underneath me had been pulled away.

I spent months learning to live with a single incidence of infidelity. And I would like to say that a single incidence is easy to overcome, but it is not. I am who I am. I am imperfect in a million ways, but I always thought I was the kind of woman, the kind of wife to whom a husband would be faithful. I had asked for fidelity, begged for it, really, when we married. I never need flowers or jewelry. I don't care about vacations or a nice car. But I need you to be faithful. Leave me, if you must, but be faithful to me if you are with me.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Marriage—of course the pain of infidelity applies to both men and women; (2) Spiritual Unfaithfulness—It's no coincidence that God often uses the analogy of marital infidelity to describe our unfaithfulness. God doesn't react exactly like Elizabeth Edwards, but Scriptures does reveal God's intense anger and even grief when we are unfaithful and idolatrous.

This is a story of 30-year-old friends who had a reunion and were discussing where they should go for dinner. Somebody suggested that they meet at the Glowing Embers Restaurant because the waiters and waitresses there are young and beautiful. They all agreed. Fifteen years later, at 45 years of age, they met and discussed again where they should have dinner. Somebody suggested the Glowing Embers because the food and wine selection there are very good. They all agreed. Another 15 years later at 60 years of age, they once again discussed where to meet. Somebody suggested the Glowing Embers because you can eat there in peace and quiet and the restaurant is smoke free. They all agreed.

Another fifteen years later, at the age of 75, the group discussed again where they should meet. Somebody suggested that they should meet at the Glowing Embers because the restaurant is physically accessible and they even have an elevator. They all agreed. Finally, 15 years later at the age of 90, the same group of friends discussed one more time where they should meet for dinner. Somebody suggested that they should meet at the Glowing Embers because they had never been there before. And they all agreed.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Old Age—Obviously in a gently humorous way this story highlights the reality of growing older. (2) Spiritual Forgetfulness or Unfaithfulness—This story also illustrates our tendency to forget the bedrock truths of our spiritual lives. (3) God's Covenant of Love for Us—The Lord does not forget us; he remembers to bless and redeem us (see Gen. 8:1).

Tim Keller, in the sermon "Literalism" said:

Many years ago, when I first started reading the Book of Genesis, it was very upsetting to me. Here are all these spiritual heroes—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph—and look at how they treat women. They engage in polygamy, and they buy and sell their wives. It was awful to read their stories at times. But then I read Robert Alter's The Art of Biblical Narrative. Alter is a Jewish scholar at Berkeley whose expertise is ancient Jewish literature. In his book he says there are two institutions present in the Book of Genesis that were universal in ancient cultures: polygamy and primogeniture. Polygamy said a husband could have multiple wives, and primogeniture said the oldest son got everything—all the power, all the money. In other words, the oldest son basically ruled over everyone else in the family.

Alter points out that when you read the Book of Genesis, you'll see two things. First of all, in every generation polygamy wreaks havoc. Having multiple wives is an absolute disaster—socially, culturally, spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, and relationally. Second, when it comes to primogeniture, in every generation God favors the younger son over the older. He favors Abel, not Cain; Isaac, not Ishmael; Jacob, not Esau. Alter says that you begin to realize what the Book of Genesis is doing—it is subverting, not supporting, those ancient institutions at every turn.

When I read Alter's book, I then reread the Book of Genesis and loved it. And then it hit me: What if when I was younger, I had abandoned my trust in the Bible because of these accounts in Genesis? What if I had drop-kicked the Bible and the Christian faith, missing out on a personal relationship with Christ—all because I couldn't understand the behavior of the patriarchs? The lesson is simple: Be patient with the text. Consider the possibility that it might not be teaching what you think it's teaching.

In his sermon, The Discipline of Communal Examination, Skye Jethani said:

A few years before I married my wife, Amanda, she bought a car with the help of her dad. They went to a dealership, and they had found a car they really liked. She called me to get my opinion, and I felt really uncomfortable. I knew Amanda's dad really liked the car—and he was the one helping her pay for it, not me—but I thought the car was junk. But I was just the boyfriend. Who am I to dictate what they should do? I thought. I told Amanda to do whatever her dad thought was best. I figured it was not my car, not my problem.

Two years later, when we got married, the car became my problem. One thousand miles after the warranty expired, the transmission gave out. Although I was tempted to do so, I didn't turn to Amanda and say, "You bought this lousy car—this is your problem." We were married. Her problems, regardless of where they came from, were my problems.

Even in the midst of an economic crisis, the average couple spends $3,215 on an engagement ring and $2,036 on wedding bands. Author Laura Vanderkam uses these numbers and other statistics to show how we tend to stress the wedding event over marriage:

The $5,251 the average couple spends on rings could be viewed as 105 nights of paying $50 to a babysitter so you can have uninterrupted conversation or neck in your car like teenagers. The average $11,000-plus wedding reception bill could cover a cleaning service for the five sticky years many two-kid couples spend in [the] babystage—when children spill milk just to see what will happen. The $1,240 brides spend on average to buy (and preserve) their dress and veil and shoes could cover 48 weeks of a laundry service …. The average $1,276 flower bill could be doled out as 127 $10 thinking-of-you bouquets offered once-a-month [for a decade].