The God Keeping Covenant and Lovingkindness

I think there have been a few times over the decades now that I've had the opportunity of speaking here that what I've done on a Wednesday night has been prompted by something that was said or studied on the preceding Lord's Day.

And so I don't do this to go, now, Pastor Fry talked about this, but he just didn't get enough of it done, so we're going to try this again. That's not what I'm doing. In reality, what frequently happens is I will run into something on Sunday, and it will be one of those situations, and I guess I'm admitting something here, that you start looking at something, and I suppose it's distraction if you don't finish listening to what was being said.

I suppose that's distraction. But at the same time, something will strike you, and you'll really start thinking about what was being said, even if it wasn't the major point of the sermon. So it's a Wednesday night.

We normally are in the Psalter. But what is the Psalter? The Psalter is the hymn book of the ancient people of God. And what kind of literature are we normally looking at on a Wednesday night? We're looking at poetry.

You may have noticed in some of the translations that the text we looked at Sunday evening is set off as poetry in a number of texts, and that's Nehemiah chapter 9. So turn back with me there. I just want to look specifically this evening at the concept of God's covenant faithfulness.

Now, that term is a term that amongst Reformed Baptists, that term covenant, should not be unusual to us. It should not be scary to us. Over time, maybe when you first come here, maybe your background is such that that term is not real often repeated.

But over time, you do some reading in some Reformed men, you do some listening to some Reformed preaching, and you're going to discover that amongst Reformed people, the term covenant appears a whole lot more often than it does amongst the non-Reformed.

Amongst the non-Reformed, it'll come up when it's in a biblical passage, but it's probably not going to be central to one's understanding of how God deals with his creation, especially with being the very central aspect of explaining what the very purpose of creation is and what God is doing.

Reformed folks like to talk about things like the eternal covenant of redemption, the relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit, and the covenant they enter into to bring about the very glory of the triune God in all of creation, the incarnation, redemption, the summing up of all things in Christ, the sending of the Holy Spirit.

All these things are what God, within the triune nature of God, covenanted to do in eternity past. So the concepts of covenant and covenants are very, very important amongst Reformed folks, primarily because it's very, very important in the Scripture, and I hope you saw that.

Let's look at Nehemiah chapter 9, I'm not going to read the whole thing, just look at a couple of verses, beginning at verse 29. Remember, at least remember back, we have here, again, a recounting. And think with me for a moment, how many times in the Psalms, how many times in the Old Testament do you have a recounting, a going back over of the history of God's dealings with His people?

For a lot of folks, it's almost too much, it's repetitive, it's sort of like, yeah, we know, we've got that. But if you think of it that way, you've sort of missed the point of why it is that we have these frequent recountings of God's faithfulness, God's blessings, and very often, the abuse of these things by God's people, resulting in the bringing of judgment, etc., etc.

This is recounted for us, why? Well, because evidently we need to hear about it a lot, and we need to recognize that God has acted in a particular fashion toward His people. And the term that's normally used, the term we're going to see here, is the Hebrew term teset.

Now, the Hebrew term for covenant is berith. The term that I want us to focus upon is teset. It's normally translated as loving-kindness, and King James, I think it's the new King James, I think the American Standard, pretty much follow after that loving-kindness concept.

But what we need to recognize is that in teset, there is a, when we think about the meaning of a word, we recognize that unless you have a word that has an extremely specific meaning, like aluminum, okay?

There's not a big range of meaning of the term aluminum. But when you talk about the word word, logos in Greek, large, what's called semantic domain, a large area of meaning, and you have to locate where that word is being used within that semantic domain in any one particular text.

Well, in teset, there is an element of the covenant in it. It's covenant faithfulness. It's loving-kindness, it's mercy, it has a wide semantic range, but it is very frequently connected to God's covenant faithfulness toward His people.

And let me just say this before we get lost in the forest. One of the greatest encouragements to prayer for God's people is to recognize the repeated emphasis of Scripture upon God's covenant faithfulness toward His people.

We can pray, we can bring our burdens to the Lord because He calls us to do so, and He can point us to generation after generation after generation after generation where He has been faithful to His people.

He has shown covenant faithfulness. And so we have here in Nehemiah chapter 9, as we've already looked at it, this recounting of God's loving-kindness and the sinfulness of the people, and I blessed them in this way, and then they sinned in that way, and so on and so forth.

God's Covenant Faithfulness in Nehemiah 9

So beginning verse 29, and you warned them in order to turn them back to your law, yet they acted presumptuously and did not obey your commandments, but sinned against your rules, which if a person does them, he shall live by them.

By the way, I just stopped. Heard that one somewhere before? That's the very same concept picked up by Paul, saying if you want to be saved by law-keeping, then the person who lives by them needs to do them.

And that's a true statement. There's only one problem. We never live by them. And if you only go to law, there's no grace in that law. And that's what's being discussed here, which if a person does them, he shall live by them.

And they turned a stubborn shoulder and stiffened their neck and would not obey. Many years you bore with them and warned them by your Spirit through your prophets. There's a tremendous discussion here of the role of the Spirit in the proclamation of the Word of God and the fact that God sent prophets and he warned.

And they were not just speaking from their own mind, but this is again very similar to what Peter says. Men spoke what? From God as they were carried along by whom? By the Holy Spirit. And so whenever you hear someone, and you get this a lot, saying that the New Testament writers were coming up with a new religion and a whole new perspective, well, there's many new things, but they're fulfillments.

They saw themselves as standing in this very line. They saw that their Bible was the Old Testament. And they could affirm that the prophets had borne witness to the people of God and that they had done so by the power of the Spirit of God.

So you warned them by your Spirit, through your prophets, yet they would not give ear. Therefore you gave them into the hands of the peoples of the lands, nevertheless in your great mercies you did not make an end of them or forsake them, for you are a gracious and merciful God.

Now, who is it that is in view here in regards to the people of Israel that he does not make an end of them or forsake them? There is a particular term that begins to become predominant in the later prophets and it's picked up in the New Testament and it's called the remnant.

The remnant. And though God brings great judgment and devastation upon the large majority of the people in the land, yet there are those that he reserves for himself. There is that remnant. And why is there a remnant?

For you are a gracious and merciful God. You are a God of grace and mercy. Now, it's interesting, this almost becomes like a formula. And in fact, when you look at the phrase merciful, I'm going to say it in Hebrew and you're going to go, really?

The term is Rahim, here it's Rahum, but you've heard that before somewhere, probably recently if you've listened carefully to the news. What is Allah always described as in Arabic? Rahim. As they keep saying, Allah is merciful and forgiving.

It's all through the Quran. And the root is the same root that is used here. Now, the author of the Quran had no concept of the concept of forgiveness and mercy. That we see in the Bible, but you will find the Muslim repeating over and over again that Allah is all forgiving and merciful.

And they repeat that in their prayers all the time. The irony, the sad irony is that because Muhammad did not understand the concept of a mediator, he has robbed from the Muslim people the only way they could ever know the very word they repeat in all of their prayers over and over and over again.

Every time I hear it, it strikes me because it is a term that we find echoed in the scriptures. You are a gracious and merciful God. The people of Israel knew much about gods in the nations around them that could never be described as gracious and merciful.

When we look at the Canaanite gods, when we look at the gods of Babylon or Assyria, these were not gods that would be described as gracious or merciful. And in fact, many of those nations more highly valued and prized the gods who were the exact opposite of that.

Because they were warrior races and warrior nations. And it would be considered a weakness on the part of a god to be merciful or gracious. But the reason that there is a remnant, the reason that there is a people who have not been utterly cut off is you are a gracious and merciful god.

Verse 32, now therefore, our god, and pastor Fry emphasized this fact that here is a confession on the part of these people. Even though they are confessing that their fathers have sinned, that God has been just in bringing the judgment, they can still say, now therefore, our god.

Our god. And then in the original language you have, it is literally, therefore, our god, the god, and then you have descriptive terms that follow in direct order after this term. So you have the god, the great.

The god, the great. The great god. Not just a great god. These people know all about the polytheistic religions around them. But this is the great god. Our god is great. Then you have the mighty. Now where have you heard that term before?

Mighty. It's the term Gabor. Gabor in Hebrew. And you've probably heard it cited to you from Isaiah chapter 9, where the Messiah, the coming one, is described as El Gabor, mighty god. Mighty god. Now a lot of people struggle with that.

Well, all the way back in Isaiah, the deity of Christ? Yes. Even in Isaiah, the very next chapter, Isaiah chapter 10, Yahweh is described as El Gabor, the mighty god. Here it's applied to the one who would come.

A son who is given, a child who is born. He is the great god. He is the mighty god. He is the god, here it says awesome god, but it's literally the god to be feared. He does things that result in a proper awe of him, which is where I guess awesome would come from.

We think of awesome as, oh, awesome. We don't really think about what its history was. And that is, like, well, you know, our older Trinity hymnals here have a different reading in that one hymn, where in the old ones it's awful, and now it's been changed to awesome.

Awful to us is, oh, that's awful, that's terrible. But awful used to mean full of awe, and that's what it was actually referring to. So the language has changed, even in the editions of the hymnals that we have.

And so it's the one who does things that creates awe and fear and reverence. And so each of these is being put together in describing our god as a god who is great, who is mighty, who is awesome, who should be feared.

And those would be terms that you would find amongst the peoples around Israel in describing their gods. I can guarantee you, I didn't look it up in that time to look it up, but I can guarantee you that the terms Gadol, great, Gabor, were used of Baal.

They were probably used of Molech in the writings of those peoples who worshipped those gods. But what makes this so amazing to me, and what caught my attention as I was looking at the original language text Sunday evening during the sermon, was the next phrase.

As we render it, who keeps covenant and steadfast love. Now, it's actually a participle, so it's the one keeping. The one keeping. The one keeping the covenant and Chesed. And that's what struck me, was you have Berith, the covenant, that covenant that is described in so many different ways in scripture.

Keeping covenant and steadfast love, loving kindness, covenant faithfulness. The fact that there are so many different ways to render Chesed should communicate to us the fact that we're looking at a term that is very, very rich.

And what caught my eye especially is the description of God as the one present tense in the form of a participle being described as the covenant-keeping God. The Chesed-keeping God. And I guess what struck me about that was it is just so unlike.

With all these terms of power, people around Israel would have used the same types of terms of their God. But I doubt that anywhere there would be any language similar to this at all. I really doubt it.

And if there was anything even remotely like it, it would have been something along the lines of, you know, supporting a particular king or something. It has some political aspect to it, which this does not have at all.

That's what struck me, is you have power and awe and might and then keeping covenant. The covenant-keeping God. The steadfast love-keeping God. It's the only way that as the writer looks back at the history of Israel, that he can explain that God has done all these things.

And yes, God, even in his power, brought judgment upon his people. He fulfilled the blessings and cursings in Deuteronomy. He had warned and warned and he had been patient and he had sent prophets and by the Spirit of God he had done all those things.

And so he showed his power and yet he does so in such a way that he is seen as the covenant-keeping God. The one who keeps covenant. The one who keeps this hesed. There is this loving kindness. And the people around Israel would have a very, very hard time understanding this description.

And maybe even the people of Israel that had experienced the destruction of Jerusalem might have likewise struggled to fully understand what this means. But especially us, given the vantage point that we have, given the revelation that we have, we can look at this.

And I don't think that we're in any way violating any hermeneutical principle. So look back at this and with fulfillment eyes rejoice to see just how full this kind of language really is. I mean, we can see this even more deeply than anyone in that day could.

What do you think about it? I mean, think how much is still future for them. And for us, we look at what God has done in Jesus Christ. We look at the incarnation and you want to see keeping covenant? Do you want to see keeping hesed?

Do you want to see the incarnation of hesed? How is Jesus described in John chapter 1? What's he full of? Grace and truth. Grace and truth. What does hesed mean? Loving kindness. Steadfast love. It's very fulfillment.

I don't think many of these folks. I mean, maybe if they had some of them had contemplated the prophecies of Isaiah and chapter 9, they might have had some dim idea. But we with the full light of Scripture can look at this and go.

Yes, our God, he's great and he's mighty and he's awesome. But he is he exercises that power purposely in the keeping of that covenant. And in the exercise of hesed, of loving kindness. And that's what brought about the very incarnation, the cross, the resurrection and what we experience today.

That was God's purpose. That was the purpose of the triune God from eternity past. That the sun would come into human flesh. That he would give himself. That there would be a people united with him. This is how God was going to glorify himself.

No God of the ancient world in the highest language and description of that God ever came close to anything like this. Anytime you hear people saying, oh, well, that's Galway stuff. You know, he's just one of the many.

He came like God. La, la, la, la, la. That person has not even begun to consider what's found in the Scriptures and the description of God there. Hasn't even started. Hasn't even started. And so, these folks know.

You saw in verse 33, yet you have been righteous in all that has come upon us. You really, really see when the Spirit of God has done a work of God in someone's heart. When they look at how God has brought judgment upon sin.

There's no more self-righteousness. There's no more complaining. You see God's righteousness. You admit his truth. Admit that he has the right to bring that judgment to bear. Whenever I run into anybody who doesn't think God would ever do anything like that, I'm really concerned for them because they're still yapping their mouth in self-righteousness.

This author said, you have been righteous in all that has come upon us. And it's that person who, when they say these words, when they describe their God as the one keeping covenant and steadfast love, they're speaking from a Spirit-born revelation to them of God's true nature.

And if that could happen then, how much more now should we with confidence approach this covenant-keeping God who has demonstrated, has proven in the incarnation, in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, his ascension, his being seen at the right hand of the Father, his interceding for us, that he truly is the God of chesed, of covenant faithfulness.

And he will remain that tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day. That is a tremendous foundation upon which to stand as we come before God in prayer this evening.