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We’re on in the middle of a new series together. We’re actually towards the latter half of this series called I believe. And so I just want to thank everyone who’s been able to come out and be a part of this series that we’ve studied together. Well, we’ve looked at is the core of what Christianity is all about. When someone says, I am a follower of Jesus, what that entails, what does it mean that you follow Jesus? The early church had a belief. Let me do this real quick. I see a disaster waiting to happen. The early church had a a belief that was so strong in the God that they followed that even unto the point of death. They would not back away from the God who they pursued a truth that was so strong that even in the face of death, they would not waver in what they believed. What was that belief? Together, we’ve been experiencing what that means for the early church, what it means for us today to believe in God as he has correctly identified himself to us. And today we continue that theme of understanding the truth of who God is. And in understanding that truth, come to believe and trust in the God that we are seeing. This morning, we’re going to emphasize a theme that is found throughout all of Scripture, both Old and New Testament, and that is simply God pursues. It’s been often quoted of God that he is the great hound of heaven, and he is jealous over you with a godly jealousy.
God created you for relationship. Most importantly, God created you for a relationship with him. And unless you find your ultimate purpose and defining who you are and the identity of God and how he has created you, you won’t be satisfied or be fulfilled in the life that you have, because God has created you for his purpose. And God pursues The hound of Heaven is after you, and the theme of the Bible from beginning to end is God’s pursuit for relationship with man all the way to the point of the cross in which Jesus died for our sins. As we begin this journey together, let me just ask you a simple question. Has anyone ever harmed you? Has anyone ever betrayed you or hurt you? How did you respond in that moment? How did you feel at their actions? And what did you say to that person? Or what did you do to that individual who harmed you so deeply? What about the way God has responded to us as people? We think about our response to those who have wronged us. How has God responded to us as people if we have wronged him? God has opened up life for us to experience. We’ve seen together as we’ve studied this series that we were created, God created this world, and he then created us as the crowning glory. After he designed man and he created the entire world, he stops for a moment and says, now it is very good.
And he breathes into man, the breath of life, giving us his spirit to connect with him relationally. God has made us in his image. He’s given us a spirit. The Bible tells us that he blessed us. He created helpmates for us. He created relationships for us with other people as we go out into this world. And he told us as mankind to be fruitful and to multiply, to rule this world and to subdue it. And yet when we read in the book of Genesis very early on, man rejects God. How did God respond to us in the midst of our sin and rejection of him? God didn’t fight. God didn’t leave. But what God did was affirm his love for us through a word that we commonly refer to as covenant. God pursued us through a covenant relationship. Your Bible is divided between two covenants. We sometimes use the word testament. The Old Testament or the like word in place of Testament would be covenant comes from a passage of Jeremiah 3131. The New Testament could also be referred to as the New Covenant being defined through Jesus. And how God responded to us was through covenant. I’m going to show a large portions of Scripture for us this morning. I really only want to grasp one thought from each portion that we’re about to show, but I want for us to be painted within our mind.
The idea of God’s pursuit of man throughout all of history, which pieces together for us the Bible in both Old and New Testament. When we think about these verses together, there’s one theme verse that I’d like for us to get across, one that I want to be seared upon our minds as we think about who God is in relationship to us. Will you click for me once? There we go. It comes in Ezekiel chapter 37. God repeats this theme often throughout Scripture in different forms and different ways and contexts. Maybe one of the most famous one would be in John 316 For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him will not perish. Right. Every time you watch a football game, someone has that in the end zone. God is pursuing man. God desires a relationship with you. And. And God is not okay with the sin that divides you from him. In the Old Testament, speaking to Ezekiel and also to Jeremiah, he says it this way I will be their God, and they will be my people. God knows within him for our sake there is joy, there is peace, there is patience, there is kindness, there is gentleness in that relationship. We discover with him and he is passionate about your relationship towards him. God is pursuing you, and he’s pursuing you through a covenant relationship, a covenant, by using that word.
What I simply mean is is it a binding agreement between two parties? Usually the breaking of that agreement results in consequences. Oftentimes in the Old Testament, when they would refer to the word covenant, they would say the cutting of a covenant. The idea behind it comes in a passage found in Genesis. Let’s see if it works. All right. Give me a click. I don’t know what happened. It’s the technology demon. The cutting of the covenant took place this way. When an individual would make a covenant with another party, they would take an animal. They would split the animal in two. And the two who would agree upon the covenant would pass between the dead carcass of the animal, and it would be a reminder to both of those individuals making that covenant that if they were to break that covenant, it would result in death. Genesis chapter 15 and verse nine, it says, so the Lord said to him, he’s talking to Abraham. Bring me a heifer, a goat, and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon. Abraham brought all these to him, cut them in two, and arranged the halves opposite each other. As the sun was set, Abram fell into a deep sleep. His name was Abram at the time. It changes later on, when the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking fire pot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces.
On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abraham. What’s significant here is that God in the Old Testament was oftentimes symbolic of a flame or a fire. He’s referred to in the Bible as a consuming fire. And God calls us as this animal is split in two. In the covenant, the cutting of a covenant is about to take place. God causes us Abraham to fall asleep and God upholds his end of the covenant, promising to Abraham that this promise of this covenant all rests and relies upon his shoulders. And God passed through this covenant. This binding agreement in which God has made with us is the deepest commitment that God could ever give to us as individuals. Maybe we could compare it to us in our earthly nature to that of marriage in our lives. The greatest commitment or covenant that we can make to an individual is found in the bonds of marriage. And God makes this covenant with man this cutting of a covenant. The covenant relationship shows us that God is pursuing us. He is both initiating and desiring relationship with us. God is sovereign over all circumstances. Establishing the terms of the covenant by making Abraham fall asleep. God is holy because he demonstrates his perfection in the covenant, down to the details of the sacrifice which would take place. God loves us. He desires to bless us in this covenant, to deal with our sin and to pursue us through it.
God loves you and the Bible is divided really for us in the Old Testament, based upon major themes and covenants that exist, displaying to us the glory of God and His pursuit and relationship with man. The first came in the Garden of Eden. One more try and then I’ll just kill this thing. Okay. Go ahead. You’re. You’re good at that. The first comes in the book of Genesis, and it’s referred to in the Bible as the Abrahamic Old Covenant in Hosea chapter six and verse seven, it tells us that Adam broke his covenant with God. God created us in the beginning for his purpose, his covenant agreement, his love, his relationship towards us. And it says in Genesis chapter one and verse 28, God blessed them. And God said to them, be fruitful and multiply. Verse seven of chapter two. Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being. You see, between Genesis chapter two and verse seven and Genesis chapter three and verse 15, we have existing here the fall of mankind, our sin. God promised to bless our lives abundantly, to give us life with him forever. But he gave Adam and Eve one one rule that they shouldn’t break in the Garden of Eden, and that was to not eat of the tree of good and evil.
Sometimes we call it an apple tree. I don’t like to do that to apples, and in so doing curse fell upon man. And it tells us because of that sin, death reigned. When we talk about death in the Bible, we, we, we talk about it in two forms existing in one way. And it’s not the ceasing of existence of existence, but the absence of presence. And so when man died, we died from the absence of presence before God. Spiritually, we died the moment Adam and Eve sinned physically, the promise came that we would die later on from this earth. And Jesus told Adam and Eve from dust they were created, and from dust they would return. But God, from the very beginning, understanding that man has sinned against him. God continued to show his covenantal, passionate pursuit of loving us, and he gave us a promise in the Garden of Eden. It was the very first promise that one sin came into this world, that a messiah would come and redeem us for a relationship with him. It says in chapter three and verse 15, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise him on the heel. Notice it says from the seed of the woman. Most of the time in the Old Testament it says, from the seed of the man. But in this case Jesus was born of a virgin woman.
And so the promise of the Messiah would come not from the seed of a man, but from the seed of a woman. And it says to Satan that he will crush the head of Satan. It’s symbolic of the authority that Satan manifests in the presence of the Garden of Eden as ruler over sin. And Jesus promises that he will come and crush him. And in the process suffer a heel wound. And on the cross, we know that Jesus was nailed to the cross in which he suffered a heel wound. God established with Adam a covenant. Every covenant that exists in the Old Testament is a fruition and building upon Jesus, who would ultimately come and redeem us as all mankind. But God continues to reveal his passionate love towards people. Our kids are having fun this morning, I think. Don’t be worried about them. No one’s dead. There’s a screaming part somewhere in there, I guess. Covenant of the. The blessing or mediator or head of this covenant. There’s always an individual that God selects to speak through. In this case, it’s Adam. This conditions of the covenant. If we eat of the tree, we die. And so man died. The blessings of the covenant is life, the Garden of Eden, food, marriage and dominion to rule over this world and the sign of the covenant. Every covenant that God gives to man always has a sign, and in this case it was the Sabbath.
God, in creating the world, rested on the seventh day, an opportunity for man to reflect on God’s glory and goodness present in his life. The promise of the covenant was life, and when Adam violated it, ultimately God brought a greater promise that would redeem us as mankind through Jesus. God desires that relationship. Man’s response to that rejection of God. It doesn’t take long. When you read the Book of Genesis to discover that after Adam and Eve, they begin to have children and Cain and Abel are born, and then Cain killed Abel. I mean, what is up with that? What is God’s response to that situation? Go ahead and give me another clue in Genesis chapter six. The story continues. Adam sins and Cain sins. And yet all of mankind continues to reject the goodness for which God created him, leading us to the new covenant says in chapter six and verse five, the Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the man of the human heart was only evil all time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled. So the Lord said, I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created, and with them the animals. I should pause there for a moment and just say, you want to have an understanding that God is holy.
God has no sin before his presence, and God hates sin. And at the moment that Adam and Eve sinned in the Garden of Eden, God would have been completely just and creating us and then wiping us off the face of this earth, having become sinful creatures. But God didn’t do that. And he’s looking at the time of the garden and excuse me, in the New Covenant, and he’s seeing the the disaster that the Earth had become. And as he could wipe the face of the human race from upon the earth, and with the animals and the birds and the creatures that are moving along the ground. For I regret that I have made them. The Lord says, but in verse eight it’s a very important word. It says, Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. This word favor is the Old Testament word of grace. It’s not saying to us that Noah was anything special, that he did anything to deserve God’s love. But Noah found grace from the time of Adam and Eve, and to the time that we exist today, the only reason any of us are allowed to enjoy the presence of God and His mercy in our lives is because of his grace. Noah is no different. He grew up in the generation of perverse people. Noah himself was a was a sinner from the very depths of his heart. But Noah found the grace of God.
Go ahead and click to the next slide for us. The big lesson to us is that we all move forward by the grace of God. In Genesis chapter nine it says, Then God said to Noah, I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you. And God said, this is the sign of the covenant, God always gives a sign. The first one we saw was a Sabbath. He says, I am making between me and you and every living creature with you a covenant for all generations to come. I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth. God creates man. Man rejects God. God promises Jesus. God finds that man rejects him again Noah comes. Noah finds God’s grace. Man still rejecting God. But God still offers his grace and favor to us, and he gives us a sign of his covenant, the rainbow. Opportunity for us as we think about the Sabbath as a sign of God’s love this day, we have to worship We look at a rainbow that can reflect the sign of God’s love for us. God promised to bless Noah. God tells Noah shortly after this that they are to respect life and begin to be fruitful and multiply.
The external sign of God’s love is seen in the rainbow, and the response of man internally is to place their faith in the promise of the Messiah who would come. Jesus being a better leader than Noah. Noah found favor in grace, so we too can find grace in Jesus from the judgment and sin that hovers over us as people. And you think at this point it would be good enough for man to say, you know, every time we we leave God, we sort of get this wrong. I mean, we ate in the garden. Disaster happens. Sin came. We ran from God’s presence. Adam and Eve clothed themselves in fig leaves to hide from God. Jesus has promised to come. Jesus is going to die on the cross. You think at that point they might stop and say, you know, this is costing quite a bit for God to show his love to us. Yet the noahic flood time comes and man rejects God. And and shortly thereafter, when the flood passes, God gives his promise to to Noah. It doesn’t take but a couple of verses from this section to read that Noah gets totally wasted. Noah gets drunk. The Bible tells us that his son in that situation violates him. Doesn’t tell us how, but it tells us that his son goes into the tent and sees his father naked, and therefore his son is cursed for behaving in such a way.
You would think at this point man would just say, you know what? Maybe we should pursue God and the reason that he created us. And the Bible goes on. Go ahead and click for me again. We enter into a time of Babel. The Tower of Babel is being built. The people at the time and the City of Babel building this tower are saying to themselves, let’s build this tower to declare to the world how great we are. And once again, the people of this world have left God. And there is a man by the name of Abraham who lives in the godless city of Babel. Abraham, just like Noah, was a godless man. But the Bible tells us that Abraham finds grace in the eyes of God. In Genesis chapter 12 and verse one, this is the calling of Abraham out of the the place of Babel into the land of Canaan, where God can bless them and create a nation through him, of which today we call the Jewish people. You wonder, as you read the Old Testament, why the Old Testament deals so much with Jewish history. It’s because up until chapter 12, God dealt with all mankind for all time. But God now decides to work his glory through a nation to identify who he is to all people. So starting in Genesis chapter 12 to throughout the Old Testament and into some of the New Testament.
We primarily deal with the Jewish people because it’s a writing geared toward them. And it says in chapter 12 and verse one, the Lord had said to Abraham, go from your country, your people, and your father’s household to the land, I will show you. I’ll make you into a great nation. It says, I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. Go ahead and click to the next slide. The covenant is reminded to Abraham multiple times throughout the book of Genesis, and God in chapter 15 goes on to say, in the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham or Abram, saying unto thy seed have I given this land from the river of Egypt, and to the great river, the river of Euphrates. In chapter 17 this is my covenant with you and your descendants after you the covenant you are to keep, every male among you shall shall be circumcised. The sign of the covenant here with God is circumcision. You are to undergo circumcision. It will be the sign of the covenant between me and you. And I would have to say, you’ve got to have some faith right? God desires to pursue man even at the time of Babel when they are rejecting him, desiring to make a name great for themselves and leaving God behind. God promises that through his seed he will create a seed large enough as a nation that will bless all nations.
It tells us in Genesis chapter 22 that when this child is born that they name him Isaac, which literally means laughter. Abraham was nearly 100 years old when God had given this promise to him. Could you imagine the reaction if you had a child at 100 years old? I would do more than laughter. I would probably name my child something worse than Isaac. And God also changed the name of Abraham. His name was Abram, and God named him Abraham, which means father of nations. If you’ve ever heard that young children’s song Father Abraham had many sons and many sons had Father Abraham. He is the father of nations. And Sarah, his wife went from Sarah to Sarah, which means princess, because from Sarah would come many kings who would rule and reign, and ultimately the King of kings, who is Jesus? God gives us the sign of his covenant. He’s given us Sabbath. He’s given us the rainbow. And here in this situation, he’s brought forth circumcision as a reminder to the people as his covenant love towards us. And you think at this point we would say, and now men pursued God, but it wasn’t the case in your Bible. When you turn to the book of first Samuel, it begins the story of the kings God created for the nation of Israel. Oh, excuse me, I’m ahead of it. If you turn in Exodus, it begins.
Excuse me the time of the fair. Go ahead and click for me. Run. See if I if I had a clicker, I wouldn’t mess that up. From the book of Genesis to the book of Exodus, we have over 800 years that exist from the time of Abraham and to Moses. The nation of Israel experiences a famine. They go into the land of Egypt to receive food. Joseph takes his family there. It says that nearly 70 family members went into the land of Egypt, and there they lived in Joseph, ruled in the land of Egypt. 400 years into their living there, God makes them slaves within this nation. And it says in Exodus chapter one and verse eight, now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph, the one who brought the people of Israel into the land, and at the time were merely 70 people in chapter two. So God heard their groaning and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 400 years into their captivity, the nation of Israel began to groan and remember the covenant that God had established with them a covenant people marked by God to be assigned to this world of everything that God had promised in pursuit of them, and offering redemption through Jesus. And yet the people of Egypt forgot, and the nation of Israel begins to remember this covenant with God. And I would say, rightly so. I wouldn’t want to be a slave either.
And God pulls apart Moses to remind the nation of Israel of his love for them. We’ve seen Noah, who has rejected God, Adam who has rejected God, Abraham from the town, the city of Babel, and now Moses, also a rejecter of God. Moses was a murderer. And yet Moses finds grace and favor in the eyes of the Lord. Give me a clicker in chapter six and verse seven it says, then I will take you for my people, and I will be your God. And you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you to the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord. Go ahead and click one more time. And so God brings forth his covenant to the nation of Israel. The Bible shares within the next chapters from six on to to 19, that the nation of Israel escapes the captivity under Jewish or, excuse me, Egyptian persecution. They went into the land 70 people and God pulls them out of the land, over 2 million people strong now. And God establishes a covenant with them, and God gives them his law. He says, Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain, saying, thus you shall say to the house of Jacob.
And this is where Moses is receiving the Ten commandments, and tell the sons of Israel. Now then, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be my own possession among all the peoples. For all the earth is mine. And you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel. The covenant leader in this situation is Moses. You remember, as God had given this law to the nation of Israel to follow, and God had given them ten commandments. When they exited out of Egypt, they left on one enormous boom which was celebrated through the Passover. The ten plagues hit the nation of Egypt, and the Pharaoh refused to let the people go. And finally, on the 10th plague, God said, I’m going to send my death angel on the land of Egypt, and the firstborn within every family will die. Just as Jesus, being the firstborn, died. And God says, I want everyone to sacrifice an innocent lamb with no blemish, just as Jesus was an innocent lamb having no sin or no blemish. He said, I want you to apply this blood to your life. I want you to take this blood of this lamb and put it on the doorposts of your home. That way, when the death Angel passes by you, it’ll pass by your home because you have accepted the sacrifice of this lamb It was a foreshadowing of the sacrifice in which Jesus would ultimately make on the cross for our sins, and whoever had the blood applied to their life was saved or spared.
The sign of this covenant was the Passover. The inward sign of these people was seen in placing their faith in everything that God had promised to them, the redemption to come in Jesus. And at this point you would say, surely after seeing all that, they followed God, right? Somebody at some point gets this right. But if the Bible continues to reveal to us that as God is glorious and gracious, man continues to reject. And from the Book of First Samuel, throughout the rest of your Old Testament, we deal in the time of the kings and man continuing to reject God. God at this point, through through Moses he brought forth prophets and priests and judges to help the nation of Israel pursue after him and understand God’s truth. And yet man continued to reject. Insert David, go ahead and give me a click. Run! God finally appoints a king to rule and to reign over them. He establishes his covenant with his king, and he says in verse eight and into verse 12, now therefore, thus shall thus you shall say to my servant David, thus says the Lord of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, to be ruler over my people Israel. You see a common theme with these leaders that God is appointing to share his covenant with Adam was nothing special.
He had been created. He couldn’t even prove himself worthy of anything before God. Noah was nothing special, yet he found grace in God’s eyes. Abraham was nothing special. He lived in Babel, which was a godless city. Moses was nothing special. Moses was a murderer. And here we are looking at King David, a great and glorious king, the greatest king to reign and rule over the nation of Israel. And it says to us, David, where did you come from? Lowly. David came from a pasture caring for sheep. God is passionate for you. It has nothing to do with you and everything to do with his goodness and grace being made known in your life. Verse 12, when your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendants after you who will come forth from you and will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. When Jesus was later born, he was of the lineage and kingdom of David. Jesus was the ultimate King of Kings and Lord of lords. In Psalm 89 and verse three, this covenant that God established with David is referred to specifically as a covenant. In Psalm 89 and verse three, David being the mediator of this covenant. The blessing of this covenant was the protection of a king, ultimately through the the King of kings and the Lord of Lords.
The outward sign of this covenant was seen as the nation of Israel received a throne, and for the first time in their history also had a temple built, a reflection of God’s glory and his pursuit of a relationship with people, a reflection of God’s authority as he would reign as king. And the inward desire of this covenant from God would be that people would place their faith in him. And again, we’re left at a moment where you would say, and surely people followed God. But as you read the rest of your Old Testament and you get into the time of, of the prophet Jeremiah, you see that the nation of Israel continued to reject God. In fact, shortly after King David, King Solomon ruled, and right after King Solomon there was a civil war that took place and the nation of Israel, literally just divided in two over the civil War. And the northern Kingdom was referred to as Israel, and the southern kingdom was referred to as Judah through the rest of Israel’s history in the Old Testament. The northern Kingdom of Israel never again had a godly king that ruled over them. The southern kingdom had but a few. Eventually God leads them into captivity. The northern kingdom was conquered by Assyria and the southern kingdom conquered by Babylon. And yet, as man continued to reject God, God continued to pursue us, because God’s desire is that he would be your God and you would be his people, to the point that God finally fulfills his promise all the way back in Genesis chapter three through Jesus, go ahead and give me a click.
In Jeremiah chapter 31, it’s not on the screen, but I’m going to go ahead and read this to you. It’s where we get the name for our Bible as the Old and New Testament. Jeremiah 31 and verse 31, behold, days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day. I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them, declares the Lord. But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord, I will put my law within them, and on their heart I will write it, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. We fast forward hundreds of years later, from the time of David to the time of Jesus. Nearly a thousand years have taken place. Jesus in Matthew chapter six and verse 26, remembers the covenant that he promised for all people a covenant through Abraham, that he promised to bless all nations through his seed.
And it’s the night of the Passover. And Jesus enters into the upper room with his disciples, and Jesus begins to share something just. Blowing the minds away of his disciples as they’re participating in a Passover dinner together. It’s the night before the lamb is slain, or the night when the lamb is slain for the Passover, in which they have celebrated for years as a sign of the covenant that God made with them, starting with Moses. It says, while they were eating, Jesus took some bread, and after a blessing he broke it and gave it to the disciples and said, take, eat. This is my body. And when he had taken a cup and given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, drink from it, all of you. For this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for the many for forgiveness of sins. In the night that the Passover lamb was slain, Jesus went to the upper room with his disciples, and he compared himself to that lamb who was giving his life for the sins of the nation of Israel, ultimately fulfilling his promise and his great covenant and commitment to us as a people, offering redemption to stomp the head of Satan and suffer a heel wound in the process. The blessing of this covenant is salvation, forgiveness, the indwelling of the spirit of reconciliation with God and our relationship, and an opportunity to experience eternal life with him.
The condition is that we turn from sin and trust in him. And the sign of the covenant which we’ve seen here is communion and the sign of the covenant, which we celebrated last week was baptism. It’s a reflection to us of everything that Jesus has done for us, despite of any rejection that we’ve brought forth to him. How does Jesus relate to these covenants? Jesus is seen as a better Adam while Adam brought death to this world. Jesus brings life Jesus is seen as a better Noah who judges sin yet brings salvation and offers us a new and better world. Jesus is a better Abraham, who is the promised seed and blessing throughout the entire earth. Jesus is a better Moses who conquered a stronger Pharaoh, which is Satan, and he fulfilled all the law in which he had written to Moses. Jesus is a better king than David because Jesus reigns as King of kings and Lord of lords. Jesus is the promise of all of those covenant agreements that he made for man. And the most significant thing that I just want to share with us this morning is this word that we use in Hebrew called Hasid. It’s a powerful word in the Old Testament, which doesn’t really translate well into English for us. Moses, when he began to experience the covenantal love in which God brought forth to him, he reflected upon this word has said. He said in Exodus chapter 34 and verse six, the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long suffering and abundant in his haste and truth, has said, carries multiple meanings in the Old Testament.
It isn’t a word that can just be defined through one word. In our Bibles, we often see it written as a word, as of loving kindness or mercy or goodness. But a sad carries this meaning. It’s God’s relentless and constant mercy, grace, love, beauty, good deeds, kindness, pity, favor, and even judgment of sin for the sake of man. When we talk about God’s covenant to us, we are saying God’s covenant is has said God is passionate for you. God finally has the opportunity to take Moses in his old age, and he brings him to the the edge of the promised land the children of Israel hasn’t had haven’t had the opportunity to go into this land yet. And Moses sits down with all the younger generation of people, and he looks upon them, and he begins to preach a sermon in which we call Deuteronomy in our Bible, the book of Deuteronomy. And he shares with these young people that he knows is about to go into this promised land and take possession of this covenantal promise that God had made to them. And it reflects to this nation of Israel all about this God that he came to understand and to us today, as we look through the Old Testament where we read the New Testament, the main character, the theme of the whole Bible is God.
God, this main character pursues you in his relationship of love and has said towards you because of his binding covenant towards you. This covenantal agreement is the greatest agreement that God can make, and reflection of his grace that he desires to lavish upon you as people. And in Deuteronomy, go ahead and click for me. He says this No. Therefore, to the younger children of Israel, that the Lord your God, he is God, the faithful God, who keeps his covenant and his loving kindness, has said to a thousand generations with those who love him and keep his commandments. Give me one more. One more clicker. The theme of your Bible is expressed ultimately through many verses in Scripture, but God’s pursuit is that he would be your God and that you would be his people. God loves us, and God is passionately pursuing us as the great hound of heaven. This morning I asked if someone has ever wronged you in your life, how have you responded? What did you say? How did you feel? What did you. Do? You think about the history of man and our continuous rejection of God. And yet we look at people who offend us. And what we cry for is justice. And when we look to God, what we cry for is mercy. Can I suggest to you this morning, to those of you who follow Christ with your life, it’s not a commandment that comes easy.
Jesus said to us, take up your cross and follow me. We’re most like Jesus and reflecting his nature to this world, that when anyone offends us, we have the opportunity to show grace and love. I don’t like what Gandhi taught, but I do like this quote. He said, be the change that you want to see in this world. And to you this morning, who may not know the Lord? Wondering what kind of God that we’re worshiping here this morning. It is a God who loves you beyond anything that you can ever compare to in your life. You know, I think in this world, what we ultimately pursue is just someone who would just love us despite the wrong that we have and the baggage that we carry. Someone who wouldn’t make us prove ourselves to them, but would just embrace us and give us that gentleness and love and grace that we need in this world. And Jesus came all the way to the cross to demonstrate to us that, yes, he passionately loves you in that way. And I don’t know what response we have this morning, but I can only think that one response would be rational on our behalf as people. And that is just to simply look at this God and stand in awe and say, Lord, above everything in this world, I love you. God has demonstrated that love to you, and he’s just simply asked that you love him in return.