Covenantal Commitment

*The sermon manuscript below was generated from the recording by AI, take it with a grain of salt…

We have been following a spiritual revival, haven’t we, among the exiles of God that have returned from Babylon. And last week, we saw what I called a V-shaped confession, if you remember. And we talked about the fact true confession begins with adoration of God, a recognition of the holiness and the glory and the majesty of God. And in that recognition, it brings us humiliation. It humbles us and brings us low so that we descend into the recognition of our unworthiness, our sinfulness. And in this very recognition, we are brought to the place of crying out for mercy because we recognize we have nothing good in and of ourselves in comparison with such a thrice holy God. Correct?

And so we come and we cry out to Him for mercy, and we look to Him by faith. And when we were talking about that, I said there were, there were 2 parts to this upward side of the V. There was the recognition of our need for mercy, a crying out for mercy, but the second part was a covenantal commitment to walk with God. That true confession always includes true repentance, which means turning away from sin and turning towards God.

And in today’s chapter, we have the joy of looking into this covenantal commitment. We saw the confession last week. Now we see the covenantal commitment of this covenantal community in Nehemiah 10 as they devote themselves to God.

But it’s important for us to remember before we look into the covenant that covenant always comes from somewhere. It doesn’t just spring out of the, a hole in the ground. So if you think of some of the covenants throughout history, you might think of some of the famous ones like the ones in the Scottish church. The Scottish Presbyterian Church established a covenant, and it was a result of the king and the Church of England, which was trying to enforce its prayer book upon the church and demanding its ministers read from the prayer book. And the people of the Scots, being a fiery people, refused it, stood firm. They are our forebearers in the reformed faith. We look to them as an example, and they adamantly set themselves in covenant to withstand all enforcements against religious liberty and to lay down their lives if necessary for the sake of the freedom to worship God. It was a movement of God in their hearts to give all glory and worship to God alone in a pure form. It didn’t just spring out of a hole in the ground. It came from somewhere.

And the same is true here. It, it’s interesting that when the Greek translators of the Old Testament translated this section, they used a very specific word for covenant. You see, in Greek, there’s multiple words you can use for a covenant. They could have used a word which is sunthēkē, which would mean a, a covenant between equals. A little bit like a marriage covenant, right? 2 equals who enter into an agreement together, a covenant together. But they didn’t use that word. Instead, they used diatheke, which is the word used to speak of a divine covenant established between one party to another party, where the other party submits. They use the word to express that the covenant they are establishing is a covenant that they believe originates with God. This is not just them as a church saying, “We’re gonna make a covenant.” It is them declaring, “We are responding to what God is doing. We’re responding to what God is doing in our hearts and in our lives.”

You see, what they recognized in their declaring of God’s glory and their confession of their sin and in the making of this covenant is that God, by His Holy Spirit, is doing a work in their lives, that they must make this covenant. It’s not optional. This is a must because they are seeking God.

And brothers and sisters, I think it’s good for us to remind ourselves that the same is true for you and I. We’re part of a covenant, aren’t we? And I’m not talking about the RBC covenant. I’m talking about the new covenant. What do we s- what do we acknowledge every Sunday morning as we gather around the table? Jesus said, “This is my blood of the new covenant.” This is the new covenant established in my blood, and all who believe in Christ, both New and Old Testament, are saved through that new covenant, through the covenant established in Christ.

And yet where does this covenant originate? Does it originate in you and in me? No, it originates in the work of God in our hearts by His Holy Spirit, doesn’t it? And so as we look to this passage, we must remember as we go out from here, seeking to covenant and devote ourselves to God, learning principles from these Old Testament believers, that we are doing it in response to the gracious work of God in our hearts, to all that He has achieved.

You see, all covenanting in the New Testament and the Old Testament is cross-shaped. In the Old Testament, it’s under a shadow, not clearly seen. But with the dawning of hope in Jerusalem on Good Sunday, everything is clear and it becomes obvious. And so we must view this, this covenant work, both Old Testament and in our own lives, in light of the gracious work of Christ.

And I want us to observe, observe 3 things in this covenant. I want us to observe firstly the, the people of the covenant, secondly the promise of the covenant, and thirdly the particulars of the covenant. But just an advanced warning, we’re probably not going to get to the particulars of the covenant till next week. I realized this afternoon that I had bitten off way too much. So Lord willing, we will finish off the sermon next week, and we’ll look at some of the particular details.

But let’s observe the people of the covenant. You know, there’s 39 verses in this chapter, and the first 29 are devoted to a list of bizarre names. I don’t know if you maybe lost attention while I was reading them. I stumbled over one or 2. They’re a challenge to read. Why do we need them? Why are these names here? Why are they significant?

Well, you can tell a lot based off who signs a document, can’t you? I remember during COVID, it, it, towards the end especially, it started becoming very popular for people to start making documents and getting people to sign them. You know, so there came all 0 all over the show, statements started coming out. There were statements written in Australia and in America and in Europe and in different parts of the Christian world where people were saying, “We need to stand and we need to do this.” And, and as they got sent to me, and lots of them did, one of the first things I would do is skip down to the who signed them section because I wanna know who I’m standing with, right? And, and I remember one of them, I skipped down to the section at the bottom, and I saw some very well-respected reformed ministers, and I thought to myself, “Oh, these men are more learned th- than me. They’re more godly than me. They’re more honorable than me. This is worthy of my attention.”

I vividly remember someone sending me another document, and I think it had 3 signatures on the bottom. And I thought to myself, “This one probably doesn’t need a whole lot of my time.”

Now, rightly or wrongly so, I judged the document based off the names of the people attached to it.

And I think we can look at this document and learn some very important things from these people and, and firstly, observe that it begins with the covenantal heads of the communities. It begins with the covenantal heads. It starts with the civil heads. It, it’s not as clear in the English, but Nehemiah, the governor, and Zedekiah are 2 civil people. Zedekiah, we think, was a civil scribe. And so you have Nehemiah and Zedekiah as the civil heads of Jerusalem heading up the front, saying, “We put our stamp of approval on this covenant.” And so the civil magistrate of the town says, “We agree. We want to seek the Lord.”

Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful if we saw that in our day? Well, we prayed about it earlier. But could you imagine if our prime minister or if the King of England stood up and said, “We must seek the Lord. We must govern our affairs according to God’s Word.” Wouldn’t we rejoice as a people? We go, “Praise the Lord.” And if they stood up and the whole of the beehive arose one day and said, “We are making a covenant to rule New Zealand in accordance with what we confess in our national anthem.” Wouldn’t that be refreshing?

Well, that’s what we see here.

But it’s not just the civil heads. It’s also the religious heads. The priestly heads are there, and we see them listed from verse 2 down to verse 8. We don’t need to read them again. They’re not just priests. The way it’s written in the Hebrew suggests, and when you compare them to other names, that these are family heads. Not just a few priests decided, but the representative priests of all the priestly families signed the document.

Now, you imagine that happening in New Zealand. The government civil heads said it, and then all, every minister, every minister in New Zealand stood up and said, “We too, we too will sign a pledge, a covenant to walk in faithfulness before Christ, to do all things in keeping with His law.” That would be an exciting thing, wouldn’t it? I mean, there’s so much unfaithfulness in the church. There are churches where God’s Word is not even read. Churches where instead of blessing men and women according to the scriptures, they bless their pets. It’s laughable, but it’s not. It’s, it’s something worth weeping over.

And yet here, the, the religious leaders, they queue up to put their names on it.

But not just the religious leaders, but also the Levitical teachers. The Levites are there. And the Levites jump in, and it’s the heads of all the Levitical tribe. They’re there to put their name to it.

But not just the Levitical leaders either, but did you notice the chiefs of all the people? The chiefs of all the people, in verse 14, are there to put their mark on this covenant.

Now, this was seen in the Scottish Covenant. It started with the ministers, and the ministers signed. And then the heads came up and signed. And some of them would sign it with their blood. They would cut themselves, and they would use quills with their blood to sign it to say, “We will keep this covenant.”

You know, covenant, covenantal headship and representation means leading, doesn’t it? It means leading a people, not in the way you want to go, but in the way God wants you to go. To lead a people in righteousness, and that’s what we’re seeing here. Nehemiah, the civil authorities, and the religious authorities, and the Levitical authorities, and the heads of households, they come and they say, “We want to lead those under us in godliness, in righteousness. We want to set a pathway forward.”

And it reminds me of a, a wonderful little quote in C.S. Lewis’ book, The Horse and His Boy, where he puts in the mouth of the king these words: “This is what it means to be a king, to be first in every desperate attack and last in every desperate retreat. And when there’s hunger in the land, to wear finer clothes and laugh louder over a scantier meal than any man in your land.” It’s to lead, isn’t it? To show the way.

And so I think this is a challenge for those of you who consider yourself to be heads or leaders in some particular sphere, for fathers and husbands, but for those of you who are seeking to one day be fathers and husbands, where are you leading? Where are you leading? You’re, you’re leading somewhere. Don’t fool yourself. You never lead nowhere. You are leading somewhere, and, and you might ask yourself, “Well, how can I know where I’m leading?” Well, if you’re leading a group of people, the easiest way to know is to look behind. Look at those under your authority. Look at those wives and children under you, wife. You know what I mean. I hope none of you have wives, but you know what I mean. Where are they? Are they growing in godliness because of your leadership, or are they declining into sinfulness? Are they falling into petty trivialities and being saturated with the world, or are they growing in their delight of the Lord Jesus Christ?

And here’s the thing, it should be very clear and obvious, shouldn’t it? That those that follow you shouldn’t be second-guessing and trying to figure out where you’re going. It should be obvious. It should be like these men signing this document where the families can look and go, “Oh, that’s where we’re going. That’s the direction.” And they should look and see their father, their husband, their religious heads, elders, deacons, ministers. They should see them with their face transfixed upon the glory of Christ and the Lord’s ways, and they should say, “There’s one thing that I know about my father, my husband, my elder, my deacon, my minister: he is pursuing righteousness.”

Can you say that? Do, do your family, would they say that?

I remember being very struck by a comment by the wife, Bethany, I think it is, of Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Now, when you think of Martyn Lloyd-Jones, if you’ve heard of him, what do you think of? Well, you probably think of a series on Romans, preaching. He was a preacher. He just preached all the time, and long sermons, and fantastic sermons. Someone asked him, “What, what’s the most significant thing you would say about your husband?” Do you know what she said? She said, “If anyone wishes to know anything about my husband, he ought to know that he is a man of prayer.” What a striking thing. Wouldn’t that be a delight, husbands, for your wife to say about you? Or if not prayer, his devotion Christ.

But it’s not just heads, is it? It’s not just heads, because heads without bodies would be grotesque and pointless. Heads need a body, and what we see here in this passage is that the heads, as they put themselves forward, are supported 100% wholeheartedly by those that are in their, under their leadership.

Ha-have a look at verse 28. The rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the temple servants, and all who have separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the law of God, their wives, their sons, their daughters, all who have knowledge and understanding joined with their brothers.

Now, let me ask you a very simple question. Who is excluded in that list? No one, right? There’s none. It includes all classes. It includes all sexes. All, 2 of them. It includes all ages. All who have the ability to understand are included in the list.

Are, are, are there people here who feel excluded, who feel like they don’t have to be concerned ’cause they’re too young, or they’re too old, or they’re a female or a male, or they’re busy? Well, the word of God here says it’s everyone. All are included.

But notice what they do. They join. Now, joiners, it’s a little bit lackluster I thought. I think it’s in the King James version. It uses the word clave. Now, there’s a musical instrument called a clave I found out, but it’s not that. It’s the past tense of cleave. We would say cleaved, of course. It’s the same word used for Adam and Eve. What will a husband and wife do when they get married? They will leave their father and mother, and they will cleave to one another. They will cleave themselves together.

That’s the picture we’re getting given here. This, this group of people, everyone, cleave themselves to this covenant. They don’t treat it lightly. Why? Because they follow their heads. They unashamedly and unreservedly say, “My head is going in that direction and I will follow.” They are led in righteousness and so they follow in the paths of righteousness.

And this is important for us, isn’t it? Because if we’re honest, as those under authority, whether it be religious, like an elder or a deacon, or whether it be a father or a husband, we can do something that’s called passive following. Have you heard of passive following before? It’s the person who says, “Yes, I will follow you,” and then drags their heels every step of the way. It’s like when you have the toddler who you say, “Shall we go for a walk, dear?” And 30 seconds into the walk, you’re like this and you’re kind of dragging them behind you the whole way. And if you let them go, they’re behind you by 20 paces because they don’t really want to follow a walk.

And brothers and sisters, can we not be like that? Wives, at times can we not drag our feet? Children, at times can we not drag our feet when our husbands and fathers are seeking to lead us in the right way?

The, the other area here that can come up is not one of passivity, but one of grumbling. Are we not tempted to do this when our husbands or when our church leaders seek to set us in a direction and we disagree with their decision? Now, we know that as good Christians, we ought to obey and submit to those that are above us, but then we grumble about it. We, we do what my mother once said to me. She said, “It’s very easy to submit on the outside, but submission of heart is a whole other level of difficulty.” And so we submit on the outside while internally grumbling and waiting for it to go wrong so we can do what? “I told you so.”

It’s a temptation for us, isn’t it? And we must guard against it. These people follow unreservedly.

And so if our elders or deacons lead us in a direction, let us throw our weight behind it. Let us turns up– turn up with hands to the plow, ready to go. We may not understand, we may disagree, but we’re not the leaders, and so we support actively and willingly. wives and children, the same thing. If your husband says to you, “Let us go to the house of the Lord,” don’t drag your feet. Don’t make it difficult. Or children, if your parents say, “Let’s go to the prayer meeting,” don’t sit and grumble and say, “Oh, I’d rather stay home and read my book.”

The, the writer to the Hebrews says, “Make it easy. Obey your leaders so that it might be easy for them, because they must give an account for your soul.” Don’t make it a burden for people to lead you. Rather, throw unreservedly your weight behind the plow of God’s appointed leadership.

And here’s the wonderful thing, my dear sisters and my dear children. when you throw your weight behind a leader who is leading, do you know what happens? They go on in all strength. They will lead you better when you follow them faithfully.

And so we see the people of the covenant. There they are, willingly joining, cleaving together to follow the Lord. It’s like that wonderful picture of Ruth and Naomi. “Your God will be my God. Your people will be my people. Where you go, I will go. Where you die, I shall die. Whatever happens, I’m with you.”

And we ought to be like that. All of us are under authority, aren’t we? We’re all under Christ. Regardless of our station, we are all under authority, so let us, head and body alike, obey the Lord by joining in covenantal commitment.

But then we, we observe the promise of the covenant. The promise of the covenant. We see this in verse 29. It’s quite brief. They say, “We join with our brothers, nobles, and enter into a curse and an oath to walk in God’s law that was given by Moses, the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the Lord, our Lord, and his rules and his statutes.”

Now, we’ve had the joy recently of seeing Ming and Jess get married, haven’t we? And during their wedding, what did they do? They made promises. They made vows. And next week, Lord willing, we’ll all have opportunity as members to make promises and oaths to a new family, and we’ll have the joy of watching the newlyweds take oaths and promises, to promise to walk faithfully, to promise to raise their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.

And we have our own covenant, It’s just over there on a piece of paper in case you’ve forgotten it. Maybe go read it. You might want to remind yourself of what you signed.

Every covenant has promises, and this one’s no different. There’s one overarching covenant that, that covers this whole chapter. This one promise in verse 29 is, is like the, the head statement, and everything, the particulars from verse 30 onwards that flow out of it, are just details of how they will fulfill verse 29.

And so it’s very important that we understand it well, understanding that this is a commitment that flows out of the work of God. Not a commitment to earn favor from God, but a commitment to respond to the gracious mercy and favor of God displayed to them.

So what do they promise? Well, firstly, they promise to walk, and secondly, they promise to observe.

To walk. Why walk? Well, walking means wherever you go, an active duty, every aspect of your life. And why observe? Well, the word shamar is the word used to describe keeping something, guarding something, or observing something. So they don’t just promise to walk in it, but to keep it, like Adam was to keep the garden. To keep the garden after God’s own mind.

The people of God say they will observe, they will keep. It is a total devotion to every aspect of God’s law.

Look at how they detail it. “We will walk in God’s law that was given by Moses, the servant of God,” AKA, in particular, the Book of Deuteronomy, “and to observe and do all the commandments of the Lord, our Lord, and his rules and statutes.”

This is not just a general statement, is it? It’s a specific statement. We will observe everything God says in his law, but you have to ask yourself the question why? Why could– Why didn’t they just say, “We will do” verse 30 onwards? Why do they bind themselves specifically to the law of God?

If, if you turn to Deuteronomy with me, I think it captures well why. Deuteronomy chapter 4. The book of Deuteronomy was to be written by the king when he became a king, and he was to read it constantly as a reminder and to hold it up before God’s people. The book of Deuteronomy was led Josiah to a great revival in his day.

And in Deuteronomy chapter 4 in verse 40, we read these words: “You shall keep his statutes and his commandments, which I command you today.” Why? “That it may go well with you and with your children after you, and that you may prolong your days in the land that the Lord your God is giving you for all time.”

So why should we devote ourselves to the law, you might ask of the people of Nehemiah’s day? Because God has promised a blessing in response to obedience. Or to put it differently, where there is no obedience, there is no blessing from God.

Now, you understand, as we’ve said in the past, blessing is defined on God’s terms, but there is no divine blessing without obedience.

And so you can work out pretty quickly why it would be important in a covenantal commitment to commit yourself to the Word of God, right? I mean, don’t we want to be blessed, brothers and sisters, by God? Do we not want our church to be blessed? No. Then obedience matters, and not just on some things, but on all things.

I listened to a, a sermon recently by, by my favorite preacher, and he was preaching through Joshua. And one of the points he made as you get to Ai, you remember that story where they go up to Ai and they get defeated because one guy stole some stuff. And he makes the point that as long as there is sin in the camp, God will only look upon you with judgment. While you embrace sin and say, “I will have sin and not God,” God will hand you over to the desires of your heart, and it will lead to cursing, not blessing. It’s a principle we must embrace as the people of God.

But notice secondly in this point, brothers and sisters, that the promise of the covenant is not made in a sort of passive, unenthusiastic, non-committal way. It’s not like, “Ah, I suppose we better make mention of the law and why we should keep it.” But they say it. They commit to it with blood earnestness.

And so they say, verse 29, “We join together and we enter into a curse and an oath.” They call down a curse of God upon themselves if they do not keep it. Why? Because that’s exactly how God had dealt with them.

Do you remember the end of Deuteronomy chapter 28 and 29? What did the Lord say? He laid before them 2 great chapters of blessings and curses, and he said to them, “If you will walk in my way, I will bless everything. But if you rebel, I will curse you everywhere, and I will drive you from the land.”

And these people were living in light of that being worked out, right? And so now what they’re doing is they’re looking back to 28 and 29 of Deuteronomy, and they’re saying, “Lord, you did it in the past, and we are covenanting ourselves. We are putting ourselves back under that same covenant to walk godly fashion before you.”

They were blood earnest. They were devoted with passion.

And, and yes, brothers and sisters, we live in a different time, and Jesus says, “Let your yes be yes and your no be no,” and we’re not to call down curses upon ourselves any longer. And yet, can we not learn from their conviction? Can we not learn from their passion to devote themselves wholeheartedly to say, “We will only have one master. We will not serve both God and money. We will not serve the idols of the nation and God. The Lord, our Lord, he is our God, and he we’ll serve, we will serve.” To be like Joshua and say, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. Even if we are the only one in Israel, we will serve the Lord.”

Brothers and sisters, is that our passion? Is that our heart? Do we bleed obedience to God so that people out there and other churches would look at us and they would say, “Well, there’s one thing you’ve got to know about RBC. They’re very serious about obeying God’s Word.”

That would be a glorious compliment, wouldn’t it?

I find it unbelievably striking that people today can be so casual about the law of God, so casual about the Word of God, as though it’s a take or leave it thing. As though it’s open to my own interpretation to do with as I please, and I can decide if I want to obey the law, and I can decide which parts apply to me.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve have, had someone say to me, “Logan, you don’t need to be so rigorous. You don’t need to be so serious.”

Now, a brother in American Samoa told me the, the exact same thing after listening to last week’s sermon. He said that he himself has entered into covenants at times, and people have said to him, “Oh, you don’t have to be so serious. You don’t need to covenant yourself.” They want to be light and frothy, chipper and casual.

Brothers and sisters, let us have passion for the Word of God, passion for obedience and the law of God. You can’t be too serious when you’re faithfully obeying God’s law. Yes, you can be Pharisaical, but that’s not obeying God’s law. The Pharisees were zealous, but they were zealous without knowledge. They were foolish zealots. We must be wise, zealous people, right?

And I think this has some very practical applications to

Are we prepared to covenantally commit ourselves to obey God? I’m not suggesting we get a piece of paper and write up a covenant right now. But let me ask you, individually, every one of you, head or body alike, are you willing to covenantally commit yourself to walk in the ways of God? Not half-pie, but with blood earnestness, as though your life depended on it.

Because, brothers and sisters, your life depends on it. Because sin leads to death, disobedience leads to damnation, but obedience leads to life.

Are you prepared to sign with the blood upon your hand in faithfulness to God?

Another thing we can see here is that we should leave no stone unturned. You know, they don’t say, “Well, we’re gonna keep half of the law.” It’s all of it.

And so let me ask you, what areas of your life have you attempted to hide away from God’s law? Do you know what I mean? You know, “Lord, you can have everything else. I just want this little sin. I’ll give up everything else, but this little thing, we’ll deal with that later.”

Brothers and sisters, we must take no quarter. We must deal with all of our sin. What, what would you say if the housewife who sprung clean her house and there was one enormous cobweb in the main living space in the corner, and you walked in and you said to her, politely of course, “Honey, I th- I think you missed a cobweb.” And she said, “Oh, no, I’m keeping that”

“But you’re spring cleaning your house.” “Yeah, but I got up to that point, and I decided, actually, I don’t want a totally clean house, and so I just left that one there.”

Wouldn’t, wouldn’t you shake your head and think, “That’s a bit strange.”

So what would you think of a Christian who said, “Oh, yes, I will obey the Lord in everything except for pornography. No one sees it. No one gets hurt by it. No one knows about it. And so I’ll just keep that one in my back pocket, and I’ll devote myself to God in everything else except for that part.”

It would be the height of folly, wouldn’t It would be the rich young ruler who says, “Lord, I’ve kept all of that law.” It’s striking, isn’t it? “I’ve done all of those things since I was a child.” And Jesus says, “Great. Give away everything and be my disciple.” And he goes away sad because he loved his money more than he loved God.

God forbid that that’s a picture of you and I, brothers and sisters.

And so apply the law to every area of your life in blood earnestness.

But we will look at the particulars next week. They are being a holy people, being a restful people, being a generous people.

But brothers and sisters, I wonder if you’ve ever noticed the, the words that are very, very familiar to us in Hebrews 13:20-21. “May He who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus,” now hear these words, “by the blood of the eternal covenant,” what goes next? “Equip you with everything good that you may do His will.”

We hear it so often, it washes over us, doesn’t it? Christ is blessing you so that you might be dedicated to Him, so that you might obey Him.

Or to use the words of Titus, “The grace of God appeared that you might say no to worldliness and yes to godliness, so that you might be a people zealous for good works.”

Or to, or to use the words of Paul in Colossians, we read them this morning after the table, “He has saved you, He has reconciled you, He has redeemed you, in order to present you as a people blameless in Christ.”

Brothers and sisters, whether we sit down and write a covenant like this or not, one thing we must remember, we are in a covenant. We are a covenantal people, and I’m not referring to that document. We are in the new covenant, in the blood of Christ.

And so, let us be people equipped for every good work.

And may the Lord stir our hearts to zeal and passion, to live as a covenantal community for His praise, for His glory.

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