Solemn Assembly 1-29-11

Hebrews 4:12-13 tells us that the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. 13And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do.

And so I am going to keep my own words to a minimum today so that the word of God can do what the word of God needs to do. What we are doing this weekend in this solemn assembly is renewing our covenant vows. I probably should have spent some time explaining covenant to you before this because it is much more than walking and aisle and coming to Jesus. So I will lay out briefly for you the basics of what a covenant relationship with the living God consists of. It is really what the core of being a Christian is all about. The first thing we need to understand is that the only way that human beings can exist in reality is in a covenant relationship with God. Covenant is how the world works. Adam and Eve were created into a covenant relationship with God. God explained to them very clearly how life in God’s creation worked: If you obey my commands you will live but if disobey you will die.

What we see is God’s covenant world is set up as an “IF THEN” world. It is a world of consequences. And consequences are directly related to obedience or disobedience to the commands of God. Walk on the path of life and live. Leave the path of life and die. That is the way the world works and until we get that deep in our hearts we will be frustrated by everything that we encounter.

Because Adam and Eve chose death and not life every single human being of Adam’s race is born into a broken covenant relationship with God. We are all born sinners. We are born into death. We are born without humility, not praying, not seeking the face of God, and unwilling to turn from our wicked ways.

The way that we enter into a New Covenant relationship with God is stated like this in 2nd Chronicles 7: 14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. That is the bare minimum of what it means to come to Christ. You can say you trust in Jesus all day long but if you don’t humble yourself, pray, seek the face of God and turn from your wicked ways then your sins WILL NOT be forgiven no matter how many times you walk the aisle or how much grace you say you have. Salvation is not an intellectual process; it is an obedience process. Grace gives you the ability to humble yourself, pray, seek the face of God, and turn from your wicked ways. In fact, that is the bare minimum of what Grace must do for you to be saved.

The path of life is laid out clearly for us in the law of God. Deuteronomy 4:1 says it clearly: “And now, Church, listen carefully to these decrees and regulations that I am about to teach you. Obey them so that you may live, so you may enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. 2 Do not add to or subtract from these commands I am giving you. Just obey the commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you.

This is not salvation by works this is what you do to keep living after you have been born again. If you have been given the grace to enter the new covenant then these are the things that you must do to continue living. Grace puts you on the path of life. Grace causes you to pursue life. Grace leads to life. Life is found in obedience to the commands of God and no where else. Do these things and live. Period. No ifs ands or buts. No: I don’t like that law or that law is so mean, or that law is outdated, or that law doesn’t apply. The law of God IS the path of life. You fight against it you will die. The land that you live in will get sick.

Humble yourself, pray, seek the face of God, turn from your wicked ways toward the path of life that is the good news. You don’t have to stay on the path of destruction. You can be saved from the death that is your existence . Jesus said it very clearly: Repent for the Kingdom of God is right here, right now. Get on the path of life.

As I said covenant is always an “if then” proposition. If you humble yourself then you get the blessing of life. If you refuse then you get the cursing of death. I want to spend the rest of our time this morning going over the blessings and cursings so that you will get a better understanding of what God has laid out in his covenant.

Here are the basics of the path of life: “I am the Lord your God, who rescued you from the place of your slavery to sin. “You must not have any other god but me. “You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind, or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea. You must not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God who will not tolerate your affection for any other gods. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children; the entire family is affected—even children in the third and fourth generations of those who reject me. 10 But I lavish unfailing love for a thousand generations on those who love me and obey my commands. “You must not misuse the name of the Lord your God. The Lord will not let you go unpunished if you misuse his name. “Observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy, as the Lord your God has commanded you. You have six days each week for your ordinary work, 14 but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work. This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your oxen and donkeys and other livestock, and any foreigners living among you. All your male and female servants must rest as you do. 15 Remember that you were once slaves to sin, but the Lord your God brought you out with his strong hand and powerful arm. That is why the Lord your God has commanded you to rest on the Sabbath day. Honor your father and mother, as the Lord your God commanded you. Then you will live a long, full life in the land the Lord your God is giving you. You must not murder. You must not commit adultery. You must not steal. You must not testify falsely against your neighbor. You must not covet your neighbor’s wife. You must not covet your neighbor’s house or land, male or female servant, ox or donkey, or anything else that belongs to your neighbor.

Those things are the basics of the path of life. The rest of the content in the books of the law are nothing more than a fleshing out of those 10 commandments. All of the law flows from these ten sayings. Jesus compacted the law even further when he said that all of the law and the prophets are summarized in two sayings: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and Soul. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself. This is what the law is about. The LAW IS LOVE.

You see when we practice biblical love we will be blessed. When we do not practice biblical love we will be cursed. Now I am going to let the bible explain what that means: I will be reading out of Deuteronomy chapters 26 -29.

“Today the Lord your God has commanded you to obey all these decrees and regulations. So be careful to obey them wholeheartedly. 17 You have declared today that the Lord is your God. And you have promised to walk in his ways, and to obey his decrees, commands, and regulations, and to do everything he tells you. The Lord has declared today that you are his people, his own special treasure, just as he promised, and that you must obey all his commands. And if you do, he will set you high above all the other nations he has made. Then you will receive praise, honor, and renown. You will be a nation that is holy to the Lord your God, just as he promised.”
I want to begin by declaring some covenant curses. I am going to make a statement and I want you to respond to each statement by saying: So Be It which is what the word Amen actually means.

God says: If you refuse to humble yourselves before him then: ‘Cursed is anyone who carves or casts an idol and secretly sets it up. These idols, the work of craftsmen, are detestable to the Lord.’ And the people said: So be it. 16 ‘Cursed is anyone who dishonors father or mother.’ So be it 17 ‘Cursed is anyone who steals property from a neighbor by moving a boundary marker.’ So be it 18 ‘Cursed is anyone who leads a blind person astray on the road.’ So Be it. 19 ‘Cursed is anyone who denies justice to foreigners, orphans, or widows.’ So Be it. 20 ‘Cursed is anyone who has sexual intercourse with one of his father’s wives, for he has violated his father.’ So Be it. 21 ‘Cursed is anyone who has sexual intercourse with an animal.’ So be it. 22 ‘Cursed is anyone who has sexual intercourse with his sister, whether she is the daughter of his father or his mother.’ So be it. 23 ‘Cursed is anyone who has sexual intercourse with his mother-in-law.’ So Be it. 24 Cursed is anyone who attacks a neighbor in secret.’ So Be it. 25 ‘Cursed is anyone who accepts payment to kill an innocent person.’ So Be it. 26 ‘Cursed is anyone who does not affirm and obey the terms of these instructions.’ So Be it.

Listen to the words of God: “If you fully obey the Lord your God and carefully keep all his commands that I am giving you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the world. 2 You will experience all these blessings if you obey the Lord your God: 3 Your towns and your fields will be blessed. 4 Your children and your crops will be blessed. The offspring of your herds and flocks will be blessed. 5 Your fruit baskets and breadboards will be blessed. 6 Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will be blessed. 7 “The Lord will conquer your enemies when they attack you. They will attack you from one direction, but they will scatter from you in seven! 8 “The Lord will guarantee a blessing on everything you do and will fill your storehouses with grain. The Lord your God will bless you in the land he is giving you. 9 “If you obey the commands of the Lord your God and walk in his ways, the Lord will establish you as his holy people as he swore he would do. 10 Then all the nations of the world will see that you are a people claimed by the Lord, and they will stand in awe of you. 11 “The Lord will give you prosperity in the land he swore to your ancestors to give you, blessing you with many children, numerous livestock, and abundant crops. 12 The Lord will send rain at the proper time from his rich treasury in the heavens and will bless all the work you do. You will lend to many nations, but you will never need to borrow from them. 13 If you listen to these commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today, and if you carefully obey them, the Lord will make you the head and not the tail, and you will always be on top and never at the bottom. 14 You must not turn away from any of the commands I am giving you today, nor follow after other gods and worship them.

15 “But if you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and do not obey all the commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come and overwhelm you: 16 Your towns and your fields will be cursed. 17 Your fruit baskets and breadboards will be cursed. 18 Your children and your crops will be cursed. The offspring of your herds and flocks will be cursed. 19 Wherever you go and whatever you do, you will be cursed. 20 “The Lord himself will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in everything you do, until at last you are completely destroyed for doing evil and abandoning me. 21 The Lord will afflict you with diseases until none of you are left in the land you are about to enter and occupy. 22 The Lord will strike you with wasting diseases, fever, and inflammation, with scorching heat and drought, and with blight and mildew. These disasters will pursue you until you die. 23 The skies above will be as unyielding as bronze, and the earth beneath will be as hard as iron. 24 The Lord will change the rain that falls on your land into powder, and dust will pour down from the sky until you are destroyed. 25 “The Lord will cause you to be defeated by your enemies. You will attack your enemies from one direction, but you will scatter from them in seven! You will be an object of horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. 26 Your corpses will be food for all the scavenging birds and wild animals, and no one will be there to chase them away. 27 “The Lord will afflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, scurvy, and the itch, from which you cannot be cured. 28 The Lord will strike you with madness, blindness, and panic. 29 You will grope around in broad daylight like a blind person groping in the darkness, but you will not find your way. You will be oppressed and robbed continually, and no one will come to save you. 30 “You will be engaged to a woman, but another man will sleep with her. You will build a house, but someone else will live in it. You will plant a vineyard, but you will never enjoy its fruit. 31 Your ox will be butchered before your eyes, but you will not eat a single bite of the meat. Your donkey will be taken from you, never to be returned. Your sheep and goats will be given to your enemies, and no one will be there to help you. 32 You will watch as your sons and daughters are taken away as slaves. Your heart will break for them, but you won’t be able to help them. 33 A foreign nation you have never heard about will eat the crops you worked so hard to grow. You will suffer under constant oppression and harsh treatment. 34 You will go mad because of all the tragedy you see around you. 35 The Lord will cover your knees and legs with incurable boils. In fact, you will be covered from head to foot. 36 “The Lord will exile you and your king to a nation unknown to you and your ancestors. There in exile you will worship gods of wood and stone! 37 You will become an object of horror, ridicule, and mockery among all the nations to which the Lord sends you. 38 “You will plant much but harvest little, for locusts will eat your crops. 39 You will plant vineyards and care for them, but you will not drink the wine or eat the grapes, for worms will destroy the vines. 40 You will grow olive trees throughout your land, but you will never use the olive oil, for the fruit will drop before it ripens. 41 You will have sons and daughters, but you will lose them, for they will be led away into captivity. 42 Swarms of insects will destroy your trees and crops. 43 “The foreigners living among you will become stronger and stronger, while you become weaker and weaker. 44 They will lend money to you, but you will not lend to them. They will be the head, and you will be the tail! 45 “If you refuse to listen to the Lord your God and to obey the commands and decrees he has given you, all these curses will pursue and overtake you until you are destroyed. 46 These horrors will serve as a sign and warning among you and your descendants forever. 47 If you do not serve the Lord your God with joy and enthusiasm for the abundant benefits you have received, 48 you will serve your enemies whom the Lord will send against you. You will be left hungry, thirsty, naked, and lacking in everything. The Lord will put an iron yoke on your neck, oppressing you harshly until he has destroyed you. 49 “The Lord will bring a distant nation against you from the end of the earth, and it will swoop down on you like a vulture. It is a nation whose language you do not understand, 50 a fierce and heartless nation that shows no respect for the old and no pity for the young. 51 Its armies will devour your livestock and crops, and you will be destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine, olive oil, calves, or lambs, and you will starve to death. 52 They will attack your cities until all the fortified walls in your land—the walls you trusted to protect you—are knocked down. They will attack all the towns in the land the Lord your God has given you. 53 “The siege and terrible distress of the enemy’s attack will be so severe that you will eat the flesh of your own sons and daughters, whom the Lord your God has given you. 54 The most tenderhearted man among you will have no compassion for his own brother, his beloved wife, and his surviving children. 55 He will refuse to share with them the flesh he is devouring—the flesh of one of his own children—because he has nothing else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your enemy will inflict on all your towns. 56 The most tender and delicate woman among you—so delicate she would not so much as touch the ground with her foot—will be selfish toward the husband she loves and toward her own son or daughter. 57 She will hide from them the afterbirth and the new baby she has borne, so that she herself can secretly eat them. She will have nothing else to eat during the siege and terrible distress that your enemy will inflict on all your towns. 58 “If you refuse to obey all the words of instruction that are written in this book, and if you do not fear the glorious and awesome name of the Lord your God, 59 then the Lord will overwhelm you and your children with indescribable plagues. These plagues will be intense and without relief, making you miserable and unbearably sick. 60 He will afflict you with all the diseases of Egypt that you feared so much, and you will have no relief. 61 The Lord will afflict you with every sickness and plague there is, even those not mentioned in this Book of Instruction, until you are destroyed. 62 Though you become as numerous as the stars in the sky, few of you will be left because you would not listen to the Lord your God. 63 “Just as the Lord has found great pleasure in causing you to prosper and multiply, the Lord will find pleasure in destroying you. You will be torn from the land you are about to enter and occupy. 64 For the Lord will scatter you among all the nations from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship foreign gods that neither you nor your ancestors have known, gods made of wood and stone! 65 There among those nations you will find no peace or place to rest. And the Lord will cause your heart to tremble, your eyesight to fail, and your soul to despair. 66 Your life will constantly hang in the balance. You will live night and day in fear, unsure if you will survive. 67 In the morning you will say, ‘If only it were night!’ And in the evening you will say, ‘If only it were morning!’ For you will be terrified by the awful horrors you see around you. 68 Then the Lord will send you back to Egypt in ships, to a destination I promised you would never see again. There you will offer to sell yourselves to your enemies as slaves, but no one will buy you.”

These are the terms of our covenant relationship with God. These are the terms of salvation. This is the “IF Then” of covenant.

Hear again the words of the Lord and the opportunity to renew covenant: “In the future, when you experience all these blessings and curses I have listed for you, and when you are living among the nations to which the Lord your God has exiled you, take to heart all these instructions. 2 If at that time you and your children return to the Lord your God, and if you obey with all your heart and all your soul all the commands I have given you today, 3 then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes. He will have mercy on you and gather you back from all the nations where he has scattered you. 4 Even though you are banished to the ends of the earth, the Lord your God will gather you from there and bring you back again. 5 The Lord your God will return you to the land that belonged to your ancestors, and you will possess that land again. Then he will make you even more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors!
6 “The Lord your God will change your heart AND the hearts of all your descendants, so that you will love him with all your heart and soul and so you may live! 7 The Lord your God will inflict all these curses on your enemies and on those who hate and persecute you. 8 Then you will again obey the Lord and keep all his commands that I am giving you today. 9 “The Lord your God will then make you successful in everything you do. He will give you many children and numerous livestock, and he will cause your fields to produce abundant harvests, for the Lord will again delight in being good to you as he was to your ancestors. 10 The Lord your God will delight in you if you obey his voice and keep the commands and decrees written in this Book of Instruction, and if you turn to the Lord your God with all your heart and soul.

“This command I am giving you today is not too difficult for you to understand, and it is not beyond your reach. 12 It is not kept in heaven, so distant that you must ask, ‘Who will go up to heaven and bring it down so we can hear it and obey?’ 13 It is not kept beyond the sea, so far away that you must ask, ‘Who will cross the sea to bring it to us so we can hear it and obey?’ 14 No, the message is very close at hand; it is on your lips and in your heart so that you can obey it.
15 “Now listen! Today I am giving you a choice between life and death, between prosperity and disaster. 16 For I command you this day to love the Lord your God and to keep his commands, decrees, and regulations by walking in his ways. If you do this, you will live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you and the land you are about to enter and occupy.
17 “But if your heart turns away and you refuse to listen, and if you are drawn away to serve and worship other gods, 18 then I warn you now that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live a long, good life in the land you are crossing the Jordan to occupy.
19 “Today I have given you the choice between life and death, between blessings and curses. Now I call on heaven and earth to witness the choice you make. Oh, that you would choose life, so that you and your descendants might live! 20 You can make this choice by loving the Lord your God, obeying him, and committing yourself firmly to him. This is the key to your life. And if you love and obey the Lord, you will live long in the land the Lord swore to give your ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

Let’s pray: Oh father be gracious to us and let us renew our covenant relationship with you. Cause us to see our sins and to turn from it. Cause us by your mighty grace and loving kindness to walk on the path of life in all that we do. Be our God and let us be your obedient people. In Jesus’ power and authority I ask these things. So Be It –Amen.

I want us to close with the song there is a redeemer. Then I ask you to go home and contemplate all that has been said today. Re-read Deuteronomy 27-29. Ask God to do whatever it takes to put you on the path of life and keep you there. Spend the afternoon seeking God’s face. If you live far away and want to stay here you are welcome to. Then come back tonight at 5:30and we will finalize our covenant renewal by partaking of communion. And at 6 we will break our fast.

There is a redeemer, Jesus, God's own Son,Precious Lamb of God, Messiah, Holy One,Jesus my redeemer, Name above all names,Precious Lamb of God, Messiah, Oh, for sinners slain.Thank you oh my father, For giving us Your Son,And leaving Your Spirit, 'Til the work on Earth is done.When I stand in Glory, I will see His face,And there I'll serve my King forever,In that Holy Place. Thank you oh my father, For giving us Your Son,And leaving Your Spirit, 'Til the work on Earth is done.