Covenant Renewal

Hey, good morning. Good morning. Welcome to coffee and devotions is where every day you and I we get together We have a little bit of coffee. We get into god's word and we grow in our love for the lord together in this year 2023 lord willing We make it from genesis through leviticus. So glad to be with you today. Why don't we have some coffee?
We'll pray we'll jump into god's word Let's pray. Father we thank you so much for the blessing of being able to be in your word today. We pray that you would please help us. Help us Lord to understand your word and please apply it to our hearts and lives in Jesus's name. Amen. Let's jump into God's word today.
Exodus chapter 34 beginning at verse 10. And he said, behold, I make a covenant, before all your people I will do marvels such as has not been done in all the earth, nor in any nation. And all the people among whom you are shall see the work of Jehovah. For it is an awesome thing that I will do with you. Observe what I command you this day.
Behold, I am driving out from before you the Amorite, the Canaanite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, and the Hittite, and the Jebusite. Take heed of yourself. lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going, lest it be a snare in your midst. But you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images. For you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God. lest ye make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they play the harlot with their gods, and make sacrifices to their gods. And one of them invites you, and you eat of his sacrifice, and you take of his daughters for your sons, and his daughters play the harlot with their gods, and make your sons play the harlots with their gods. Ye shall make no The Feast of Unleavened Bread you shall keep. Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread as I commanded you.
In the appointed time of the month of Abib, or in the month of Abib, you came out from Egypt. All that opens a womb are mine, and every male firstborn among your livestock, whether ox or sheep. But the firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, and if you will not redeem him, then you shall break his neck. All the firstborn of your sons you shall redeem, and none shall appear before me empty-handed. 6 days you shall work, but on the seventh day you shall rest, in plowing time and in harvest you shall rest. 7 And you shall observe the feasts of wheat, of the first fruits of the wheat harvest, and of the feasts of ungathering at the year's end.
8 Three times in the year all your men shall appear before the Lord, the Lord God of Israel. For I will cast out the nations before you, and enlarge your borders. Neither will any man covet your land when you go up to appear before Jehovah your God three times in the year.
You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leaven, nor shall the sacrifice of the Feast of the Passover be left until morning. The first of the first fruits of your land you shall bring to the house of Jehovah your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother's milk."
Then Jehovah said to Moses, Write these words, for according to the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with you and with Israel. So he was there with the Lord forty days and fourteen nights. He neither ate bread nor drank water. And he wrote on the tablets the words of the covenant, the Ten Commandments. Well, we need to ask ourselves, A, what's this about? B, what's the best verse to summarize this? And C, what are we called to do in response to this? Where's Christ? Where's a covenant connection here, right?
So this is talking about Moses going back up Mount Sinai. God has told him, I'm going to give you the Ten Commandments, or I'm going to give you two tablets again. We're going to write these out again, Moses. Moses has interceded for the people, he's asked God not to cut them off, and this is a covenant renewal. What we're seeing here is God giving his covenant a second time. He's merciful, he's gracious, he's long-suffering, and so he's entering into covenant again. They've broken the covenant! This whole thing with the molded calf, what Aaron made was absolute covenant treason. They broke it. They broke the first commandment. They broke the second commandment. It was just horrible. But now God is gracious still.
Moses goes up and God's talking to Moses face to face and you notice a whole bunch of just kind of like hitting all sorts of things we read before in the first part of Exodus. God's reinstituting, this isn't him giving the full Ten Commandments again, this is God saying, hey here's a summary of all these different things that I commanded them.
I'm gonna have you tell them again. I'm gonna write the Ten Commandments again to summarize these. Because I am a jealous God. And we're coming into covenant again and I need you to understand I'm going to do amazing things for you. Here's the things I'm going to do. I'm going to fulfill my promises. I'm going to give you the land.
I'm going to chase out the Amorites, the Hittites, the Jebusites, the Canaanites, all the Ites. He's going to chase them all out. But you must not worship them. You need to smash their sacred pillars. You need to get rid of all their fertility gods. You need to get rid of all their sacred altars. You need to get rid of all of it. Because I alone am to be worshiped.
And if I alone am to be your God, and you are to worship me, and you are to have this land, and have peace in the land, and I'm going to do these miracles for you, this is how you'll respond. I'm going to show you my love, and you're going to show me your loyalty. This is the way you're going to show me your loyalty. First fruit is mine. First of the womb, mine.
Sabbath keeping, to honor me, to see that I'm the one who created the world and everything in it. And so it's one out of seven, you're going to rest. All these different commandments, right? You're going to keep the Passover. Remember that I'm the one who redeemed you from Egypt. It's all these things. He's reminding them again. This is renewing this covenant that they had broken. God is graciously bringing them back into. That's what this whole passage is about.
So what's the best verse to summarize this passage? In my Bible, I would probably underline verse 10. Behold, I make a covenant. Before all your people I will do marvels such as has not been done in all the earth nor in any nation. And all the people among whom you are shall see the work of Jehovah. For it is an awesome thing that I will do with you. I think that it's a part of what's going on here.
I might also be tempted to underline verse 13 and 14. You shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images. For you shall worship no other god, but the Lord whose name is Jealous is a jealous God. This is where I'm going to go with seek calling. What are we called to do? The Lord wants our love and loyalty.
He wants our hearts not to be chasing after the sensuality and the things of this world, right? When he talks about the sacred pillars, these are astral poles that were in the Canaanite temples. This was the primary god of Tyre and Sidon that people would have, he says, when you go to these places of sodom, right, because they would have prostitutes there. And people thought somehow in this grotesque thing that if they express themselves freely there in the temple that then it would guarantee or somehow help with the fertility of the land. Sometime maybe I'll talk to you about Baal and Asherah and how these fertility goals work.
It was disgusting. It's abusive. It was wrong. It violated everything that we've seen that God thinks is pure and good and holy. And God says, don't do that, right? Worship Me only. Follow My commands. Why? Because it's going to go well for them. Because He loves them. So we also...
We're filled in a society and in cultures where there's all sorts of things that we can bow down and worship, and God says, no, worship Me only. Our hearts are the factory of idols now. Yes, there are idols in the world around. And I know some people who watch this are in places like India, where there are shrines and idols. But for many of us, the idol isn't in front of us, it's in our heart. And that desire to go chase after something other than the Lord, and the Lord says, no, I'm enough.
I've done the miraculous thing, I've redeemed you, so follow me. So cling to the Lord, brother and sister. Love him, for he is a jealous God who has loved you with an everlasting love. Let's pray. Father, we thank you that you have made for us a covenant, that you have blessed us. Lord, we pray that we would follow after you. Lord, please help us to walk in your ways and to know, Lord, to know who you are and who you have called us to be. In Jesus' name, amen. Oh, may you love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. May the joy of Jesus Christ be the light of your heart.
And I'll see you next time. Bye. Thanks for listening to this week's message from God's Word for You, a ministry of Sharon R.P. Church in rural southeast Iowa. We pray that the message would be used by God to transform your faith and your life this week. If you'd like to get more information about us, feel free to go to the website, SharonRPC.org. We'd love to invite you to worship with us. Our worship time is 10 a.m. every Sunday at 25204 160th Avenue. Morning Sun, Iowa, 52640. May God richly bless you this week.