Making A Covenant To Keep The Covenant

We can also ask this question: How could marriage be what God intended it to be if the man and wife were not united on this most fundamental question? In Genesis 2:24 the man shall cleave to his wife and they shall become one flesh. This one-flesh-ness speaks to a union of all they are. Such one-flesh union is impossible without agreement on who God is and what it means to know and worship Him.

Paul taught in Ephesians 5 that marriage is about Christ and the church (Eph 5:21-33). (See further Hamilton, “The Mystery of Marriage.”) Paul learned this from the Old Testament, where the relationship between Yahweh and Israel, the covenant, is treated as a marriage (e.g., Jer 31:32; Hosea). If a man and his wife were not united in the worship of God, how could their marriage reflect the relationship between God and His people?

This commitment not to intermarry with idolaters was not a harsh requirement that was imposed on the people of God. Rather, the people of God devoted themselves to the Lord by committing themselves to living such that coming generations would know the Lord (for discussion, see Hamilton, “That the Coming Generation Might Praise the Lord”). They sought that by devoting themselves to marrying only those who worshiped Yahweh.

The New Testament calls Christians to the same marital standard. In 1 Corinthians 7:39 Paul says that a widow is free to remarry “only in the 194Lord,” meaning that she is only free to marry a believer. The teaching that believers should not marry unbelievers can thus be found in the Old and New Testaments.

This requirement is not merely a box we want to check, as though a believing spouse settles the matter. We want to pursue what this points to: the relationship between God and Israel under the old covenant and Christ and the church under the new. That’s what our marriages are about. We want to cultivate wonderful marriages so that our marriages will display Christ’s love for the church and the church’s submissionto Christ.

So if you’re a married person, let me invite you to renew your commitment to the accurate display of the love between Christ and the church in your marriage. If you’re not married, I call you to commit yourself to marrying only someone who is united with you in the worship of the one true and living God by faith in Christ. Prepare yourself for that by relating to other single people in ways that will lay a foundation for a marriage that displays the gospel.

The second obligation they commit themselves to is where they say,

There are several parts of this one commitment: the weekly Sabbath, the sabbatical year, and the consequent obligation to cancel debts. Let’s think first about the Sabbath.

Notice how they come at the observance of the Sabbath. They don’t just reiterate the commandment to honor the Sabbath and keep it holy; they address the loophole. It appears that the reason they needed to word the commitment this way was that some Israelites claimed that they were not working on the Sabbath; it was the idolaters who did the work. So they themselves weren’t exactly breaking the Sabbath by engaging in trade with those surrounding peoples who were doing work. That loophole was closed by these words.

Keeping the Sabbath is evidence of faith. This commitment to keep the Sabbath is not about legalism. It is a declaration of trust in Yahweh. An old covenant Israelite could only keep the Sabbath by trusting the 195Lord. A man could not keep the Sabbath apart from faith because there would always be something he would like to be doing. There would always be another way to be productive. The only way to keep the Sabbath was to trust that resting would be better for him than being productive would be. The man who kept the Sabbath trusted that the best stewardship of the time he had was to rest, not work.

Just as the commitment not to intermarry ensured that familial obligations would be kept, promising to keep the Sabbath functioned as an umbrella concept for all other seasonal duties. Everything else Israel was called to do in terms of festivals in Jerusalem and other holy days, all of those would fall in line if the Sabbath was kept.

Similar things can be said about the Sabbatical year. Keeping the Sabbatical year also gave evidence of faith. One who did not have faith would not do this. Imagine the absurdity of the Sabbatical year: year seven rolls around, and a man is not to work his land. He was not to till, plant, sow, or harvest. He was to let his fields lie fallow. He was to do nothing in the way of farming.

That doesn’t look like good farming practice, and it doesn’t seem like economic wisdom. Proverbs 3:5-6 comes into play: a man had to trust the Lord not his own understanding. He had to know Him in all His ways.

Perhaps the most difficult thing to do would be to release the debts in the seventh year. When the seventh year rolled around, the money a man was owed wasn’t owed anymore. The only way he would let that debt go was by faith.

Forgiving debts required the Israelites to believe that God provides; God makes rich. Resting the land required them to believe God’s promise to cause the sixth year to produce enough for three years (Lev 25:21-22). A man would not allow the land to lie fallow if he didn’t trust God to do as He had promised and cause the land to give him three years worth of food—food for the year before the Sabbatical year, food for the year the land was to lie fallow, and food for the next year when he began to work the land again. If he didn’t trust God, he wouldn’t give the land its Sabbath in the seventh year.

If an Israelite didn’t trust God, he wouldn’t keep the Sabbath, wouldn’t release debts in the seventh year, and wouldn’t let the land lie fallow.

What about us today? The commitment in Nehemiah 10:30 applies to us. We are not to intermarry with unbelievers. What about the commitment in196 10:31? Are we obligated to keep the Sabbath now? If there was a place in the New Testament where a New Testament author had an opportunity to affirm that Christians must keep the Sabbath, the place for it would be Romans 14:5-6. Paul says, “One person considers one day to be above another day. Someone else considers every day to be the same. Each one must be fully convinced in his own mind.” The esteeming of one day likely refers to the Jews honoring the Sabbath and keeping it holy. The esteeming of all days alike probably refers to Gentiles who did not keep the Sabbath. All Paul would have had to do to establish Sabbath observance for Christians would have been to quote the commandment: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” That’s not what he did. He made it a matter of Christian conscience when he said, “Each one must be fully convinced in his own mind.”

If you feel that you should honor the Sabbath and keep it holy, do so. If you are convinced in your own mind that the Sabbath is not something you’re obligated to because Christ has fulfilled the Mosaic law and brought it to its appointed consummation, and if by faith you look to what the Sabbath pointed to, which is rest in Christ, then be convinced in your own mind. Similarly, the author of Hebrews says, “we who have believed enter the rest” (Heb 4:3). The Sabbath points to eschatological rest in Christ. Trust Christ and fulfill the Sabbath. Paul warns in Colossians 2:16 that no one should be taken captive in regard to a Sabbath day, which I think means that we’re not to allow others to impose their convictions on us in this matter.

The issue with the Sabbath is not the fulfillment of legalistic duties or the avoidance of certain activities. That’s not the point. The point is to be those who trust Christ, those who rest in Him.

We come to the third obligation they took upon themselves: supporting the worship of God at the temple. Look at all the references to the temple in this passage:

Every statement in this section communicates the people’s commitment to support the work of the ministry at the temple. As with the other obligations, wider obligations are implied: the marriage commitment sets a good trajectory for all familial issues; the Sabbath commitment addresses all seasonal observances; and the temple commitment facilitates everything that pertains to the worship of Yahweh.

The whole point of the Mosaic law and the temple was that these things enabled Israel to enjoy the presence of God. These commitments were not about legalistic obligations, nor is the covenant we enter into when we join a local church today legalistic. These commitments and obligations that we take upon ourselves are things we do to enjoy the good pleasure of our God.

God said He would dwell in that temple among His people, but if they wanted to avoid being struck dead by His holiness, they had to offer sacrifices for their cleansing. They were unclean. They were sinful. The sacrifices had to be offered. To enjoy God they had to sustain the ministry of the temple. The temple was about the Lord.

In the new covenant, we are the temple. There is no building in Jerusalem that believers are now obligated to support financially, but there are passages in the New Testament that speak to the way that believers should support the work of the ministry (1 Cor 9:6-23; 16:1-2; 2 Cor 9:6-8; Gal 6:6, 10; 1 Tim 5:17-18; cf. Luke 10:7). So today we want to be committed to the new temple, the body of Christ. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3:16 (my trans.), “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” To be committed to the temple today is to be committed to the church. And to support the worship of God financially today is to support the ministry of the gospel at the church. We do this to declare that God is Lord over our money, and we do these things as acts of worship. We trust God, not money.

What is at the heart of these three issues to which the Israelites have committed themselves?

The Lord is the point of marriage: marriage exists to display the way God loves His people.

The Lord is the point of the Sabbath: old covenant Israel rested from their labor to declare that Yahweh was their provider. We rest from 198our works and take on the easy yoke Christ offers to proclaim that He saves us; He gives us rest.

The Lord is the point of temple worship: the point of that temple being beautiful, the point of those priests offering sacrifices, the point of the seasonal trips to Jerusalem to worship the Lord there—all that is about being with God, knowing Him, enjoying His presence.

We don’t live for that to which the Navy SEALs have committed themselves. We live to know God. Our cause is not the way of life of the American people. We have something so much bigger and better than that. We have this good news that sinners can be reconciled to God by faith in Christ because Christ has satisfied the wrath of God, He paid the penalty for sin, and all who trust in Him are right with God.

Maybe you’re not a believer in Jesus and you hear me talking about these obligations that have to do with not intermarrying with unbelievers and keeping the Sabbath and sustaining worship at the house of God. What’s all this about? This is all about knowing God. We who believe want you to know God with us.

What you live for is what gives meaning to everything else in your life. These old covenant Israelites are saying, “We live for the Lord.” That dictates who they marry. That dictates what their calendar looks like. That dictates that they care for the most sacred place in their society.

We live for the Lord.