For the Covenant sermon series, we listened to Scripture depict holy covenants. We heard God’s promise to Noah never to destroy all living things again. Then we heard El Shaddai promise to be God to Abraham and Sarah, and to bring them a miraculous pregnancy. This would lead to a multitudinous family, which ended up enslaved in Egypt.
God called Moses to deliver the people from enslavement, and after the Hebrew people escaped, Yahweh led them through the wilderness, establishing a covenantal teaching we know as the ten commandments. With each covenant and new teaching, we hear LORD Yahweh enforce relationship with humanity; God promises to be God to us, fully knowing we always fall short of our end of the arrangement.
Then we heard the liberated people’s complaining against God in the wilderness, until God sent snakes to encourage them to stop whining. But Yahweh heard Moses’ plea for mercy, and provided protection for the people, if they would look beyond the snakes to God.
The series ends with the promise given at Judah’s most frightening moment, as the realm of the Babylonians is perched to conquer them. God initiates relationship again, promising still to be their God and to have them as God’s people. The final covenant is one of a promised future, when our relationship with God will be even more intimate, an internal knowing of each other, yet to come.
We are probably not surprised how, in each covenantal moment, God is faithful while the people fail. We know the holiness of God, and the flimsiness of us.
The transcripts for these five sermons have been collected here and are available for your study and reflection in the links below:
