Defining the covenant

 This week's verses are Judges 6:1-10:

The Israelites did evil in the Lord’s sight, so the Lord turned them over to Midian for seven years. The Midianites overwhelmed Israel. Because of Midian the Israelites made shelters for themselves in the hills, caves, and strongholds. Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites, Amalekites, and the people from the east would attack them. They invaded the land and devoured its crops all the way to Gaza. They left nothing for the Israelites to eat, and they took away the sheep, oxen, and donkeys. When they invaded with their cattle and tents, they were as thick as locusts. Neither they nor their camels could be counted. They came to devour the land. Israel was so severely weakened by Midian that the Israelites cried out to the Lord for help.

When the Israelites cried out to the Lord for help because of Midian, the Lord sent a prophet to the Israelites. He said to them, “This is what the Lord God of Israel has said: ‘I brought you up from Egypt and took you out of that place of slavery. I rescued you from Egypt’s power and from the power of all who oppressed you. I drove them out before you and gave their land to you. I said to you, “I am the Lord your God! Do not worship the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are now living.” But you have disobeyed me.’”

 These verses are a good counterbalance to the modern Christian practice of taking the "promises of God" out of their proper context. In the time of the Judges, Israel was God's chosen people to demonstrate his greatness on Earth. They knew the promises of God to them, and his goodness. And yet they were being destroyed by predatory invaders who didn't even worship God at all. What happened to the promises?

The Israelites cried out to the Lord for help. But rather than answering with armies of angels to deliver them, God sends a prophet. And the message God delivers through the prophet is "Yes, I am exactly who you say I am, but you have disobeyed me." They remembered the promise, but conveniently forgot its context. God reminds them: "I said to you, 'Do not worship the gods of the Amorites, on whose land you are now living.'" A covenant is a relationship between more than one person, defined in a sort of contract. They had responsibilities too.

We're like the people who sign up for a deal but don't read the contract and take it to heart. We tell God, "I tithed $X/mo and I expect a certain amount of coverage," and God has to remind us that empowering us to do whatever we want with no accountability is not in the terms and conditions of the contract.

The Israelites suffered seven years of humiliation and war before they finally confronted the reality of their situation. Seven years is a long time to suffer without asking yourself what is the root cause. But some people go their whole lives looking at other people's broken promises and never at their own. A covenant has more than one side. 

The tragedy for the Israelites was that the covenant God made with them was already heavily weighted in their favor, just as the one he made with us is. For seven years they lived outside of that contract and suffered because they were giving up such a good deal. Don't we have seasons like that ourselves sometimes, where we are so busy dealing with the consequences of our poor decisions that we don't stop to notice that we have made poor decisions in the first place? Seasons where we hold God to his promises to us but don't ask ourselves what he has asked us to promise him in return?

There are a lot of books and promotional materials that pull quotes out of the Bible to tell us what we are promised. But there are much fewer that quote Jesus when he is asking something of us. Try to focus on those verses in the Bible, the verses that tell us how our Lord wants us to live, the ones that reflect his values. We don't want to be the ones, like the Israelites, to whom his last words are "but you have disobeyed me." Let us instead shoot for "Well done, good and faithful servant."