Mosaic Teaching Guide
3 January 2010

Teaching: Making and Keeping Covenant

Jeremiah 31.31-34
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

John Wesley’s Covenant Prayer
I give myself completely to you, God.
Assign me to my place in your creation.
Let me suffer for you.
Give me the work you would have me do.
Give me many tasks
or have me step aside while you call others.
Put me forward or humble me.
Give me riches or let me live in poverty.
I freely give all that I am and all that I have to you.
And now, holy God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
You are mine and I am Yours.  So be it.
May this covenant made on earth continue for all eternity.
Amen.

Question: On a scale of 1-10 are you a trusting person?
 1 = You must earn my trust over a lengthy period of time. Some would call me cynical when it comes to the human condition.
 10 = I trust you until you prove me wrong and even then I tend to give the benefit of the doubt.  Some would call me naïve when it comes to the human condition.

Trust Issues
“Doubting Thomas, I have come to realize, is my patron saint; and I suppose he will be until the day I die.” 

Who do you trust?

The Old Covenant
Covenant Formula:  “I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20.2). 

Torah life was the means through which Israel maintained covenantal fidelity. 

Covenantal Infidelity
Most of the OT is about a relentlessly faithful God who persistently pursues a relentlessly unfaithful people. 

The New Covenant
In this midst of unimaginable brokenness, God through the prophet, declares a new covenant will be established. 

Much of the NT is about how Jesus is the new and living Torah.

Covenantal Renewal
Perhaps God calls some of us to move from a vague deistic faith in the presence of a benevolent, albeit detached, divine being to the Living God of Jesus. 

But at the end of the day it’s really a matter of trust. 

 

 

 

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