Apr 21 - Exodus 24:3-8

Moses … sent young men

of the people … who …

sacrificed oxen as offerings

of well-being to the Lord. …

Moses took … the book

of the covenant, and read it

in the hearing of the people;

and they said, “All that the Lord

has spoken we will do…”

Moses took the blood and

dashed it on the people, and said,

“See the blood of the covenant that

the Lord has made with you …”

Exodus 24:3-8

NRSV

 

Introduction to Covenant Keeping

 

When I was a kid, spit was often used to “seal a deal.”

 

You’d spit on your palm and extend the hands of friendship. (Apparently saliva is part of the cement that forges an unbreakable bond. It’s as close as eight-year-olds knew could get to a binding contract.)

 

Biblically, forging a covenant was somewhat akin to this childhood method of deal-making – “akin,” of course, in an icky, messy, bodily fluid kind of way.

 

To “cut” a covenant in Bible times, you’d take a bull and chop it in half. Pulling the two sections a few feet apart, both parties would walk through the blood and guts and entrails. This would “seal the covenant.” The apparent message was, “If I break this covenant, may the same thing happen to me as happened to this bull” (see Jeremiah 34:15-21)

 

Ouch.

 

A marriage is a covenant.

 

As a pastor, I’m glad that I don’t have to butcher a steer as part of every wedding ceremony!

 

Nevertheless, imagine what would happen if couples took their marriage vows as seriously as Biblical covenant-making – “The day I quit fighting for my marriage, go ahead and cut me in half!”

 

Question: For the next couple of weeks, we’ll be focusing on covenant keeping, but it must start with this question: Do you view your marriage as a convenience? A contract? A commitment? Or a covenant? God designed marriage to be a covenant, so the question is, in your marriage, are you investing yourself so fully that you might as well be saying, “The day I quit fighting for my marriage, go ahead and cut me in half!”

 

In Christ’s Love,

a guy who wants

to discover this week

the Biblical power

and purpose of

covenantal marriage