This essay was originally posted on August 8, 2005. It’s one of my favs, so I thought I would repost it. Enjoy!
This is what the Sovereign LORD says: I will deal with you as you deserve, because you have despised my oath by breaking the covenant. Yet I will remember the covenant I made with you in the days of your youth, and I will establish an everlasting covenant with you. Then, when I make atonement for you for all you have done, you will remember and be ashamed and never again open your mouth because of your humiliation, declares the Sovereign LORD.
After a scathing parade of evidence against the children of Israel, God through the prophet Ezekiel brings down the final indictment: his chosen have broken their covenantal relationship with God. Through willful act after willful act, God’s people deliberately chose not to live-up to their end of the deal, consequently breaking their agreement. But what exactly was this agreement? What is this covenant God made with Man?
Recorded in the Book of Genesis is the interaction between the Creator and a creature, Abram. As the narrative recounts, on one occasion the Lord of Hosts says to this chosen man, Abram, to leave his people and father’s household and go to the land He would show (Gen. 12). God calls on this man to leave his family, his people, his life, and his security, and simply follow Him to where He would lead. In essence, God was calling him out of the relationship he has with his own story, and into a new relationship defined by God’s Story. In so following, God promised His Story would make Abram into a great nation and He would bless him; God would make Abram’s name great, and he and his nation would be a blessing. God promised to bless those who blessed Abram and his nation, and whoever cursed them God would curse; and all peoples on earth would be blessed through Abram. But this was only the beginning.
Further along in Abram’s narrative, God further defines the terms: “I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless. I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.” Like any contract between two parties, Abram and his decendents are called on by God to do something: walk in obedience. But it isn’t simply obeying in a mechanistic sort of way, the way a student goes through the motions of obeying his school’s rules or his parent’s 11:00 PM curfew. No, this obedience is defined by love, because the obedience is carried forth in the context of a relationship.
Jesus, God in human flesh, further defines this in His Creed, found in Mark 12:29-31: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” There is no greater, because this is it! And how do we love God? We love God as Jesus says in John 14, “If you love me, you will obey what I command. If anyone loves me, he will obey my teachings. He who does not love me will not obey my teachings.” As God’s people, we are called to love Him (walk before me and be blameless) and love people (I will bless you…and you will be a blessing). As I said earlier this obedience is defined by love, because it happens in the context of a restorational covenant relationship.
In further defining this covenant between God and Man, the Lord of Hosts establishes his responsibilities. Yes, the Creator of the universe who created Man in the first place actually defines his own responsibilities to Man: “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, or I have made you a father of many nations. I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. The whole land of Canaan, where you are now an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants after you; and I will be their God.”
Do you see what God is doing here?!? Peal off the consumeristic blinders for just a minute (because I know the first thing you see here is the part about making him fruitful, a father of many nations, acquiring the whole land of Canaan as an everlasting possession!) and look at what YHWH does: he restores the God-man relationship, forever! Aside from the blessings (which are definite promises), the meat of the covenant is defined here: I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. And as if to seal the deal, God’s last words-in-testament are, “and I will be their God.”
So this is the Restorational Covenant defined:
The Clause of Man: Love God by obediently walking before Him blameless and be a blessing to the nations by loving your neighbor as yourself.
The Clause of God: Restore the God-Man to the way it was originally intended to be: an eternal relationship defined by blessing and love.
What blows me away even more in re-reading this ancient narrative, is a realization that the spark that started this revolution…no better, restoration was God. It was He who initiated this Restorational Covenant, not man. And because the infinite, eternal God of the universe initiated it, he faithfully maintains it, which brings us back to Ezekiel 16. Even though Israel is as faithless as a barroom floozie, God remembers the covenant He made with Her in the days of Her youth, and promises to establish an everlasting covenant with Her, yet again.
But then reality sets in: I am the floozie.
I have despised God’s oath a hundred nights by breaking the covenant in two-buck lap dance after lap dance. Grinding pole dance after grinding pole dance. Cheap trick after cheap trick. I am the Saloon Madden who’s mouth is shut in the shadow of the cross, who’s humiliation is magnified by that of my God nailed hand and foot to its grotesque beams. Yes, I was cleansed by the blood that flowed from Him, but the humiliation is felt no less by that reality.
There is no condemnation, because I am in relationship with Jesus Christ. Shame is of the Enemy. But humiliation is born out of a visceral realization I have traded my First Love for the scraps off Lust’s table. Humiliation is realizing my fleeting heart in light of God’s faithful, eternal pursuit. Humiliation drives me to the cross, because at it I regain my understanding of the extent to which God pursued me, bought me, and eternally sealed me in His Restorational Covenant of Grace. At the cross I regain my identity in being in relationship with Jesus, while remembering my oath and my mission: to be God’s and only God’s for His glory and for the good of the world.
humiliated,
-jeremy
