A Call to Loyalty pt.1

About this sermon

There is a word repeated throughout our text that takes us to the very heart of what this passage addresses. It is the Hebrew word (בָּגַד) (bā·ḡǎḏ). It’s translated “faithless” in the ESV. It is translated “deal treacherously” in the NASB. In the English Standard version, it’s translated by words like faithless, betray, traitor, treacherous. It means to be faithless to a principle, or to a person, or to a group of people. It can mean to break faith, to prove untrustworthy. Five times in seven verses, God speaks to His people about faithlessness. All of this has to do with loyalty. To be faithless, in this context, is to prove disloyal to God, disloyal to the covenant. And what is striking is that this disloyalty to God involves acts of disloyalty toward people. God is being dishonored as people are being mistreated. A couple of things come to mind when I consider this. For one, I think about how we often misunderstand the nature of the Mosaic covenant. The Mosaic covenant was never intended to be a means by which one was to be found righteous before God. Whenever the Jews did that, or anyone else has done that, it represents a perversion of what the covenant was intended to be. It was never a way to earn the favor of God. ESV Romans 9:30 What shall we say, then? aThat Gentiles who did not pursue righteousness have attained it, that is, ba righteousness that is by faith; 31 but that Israel awho pursued a law that would lead to righteousness1 bdid not succeed in reaching that law. 32 Why? Because they did not pursue it by faith, but as if it were based on works. They have stumbled over the astumbling stone, 33 as it is written, ab"Behold, I am laying in Zion ba stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense; cand whoever believes in him will not be dput to shame." Nor was the Mosaic covenant simply intended to show man his sin. It certainly serves to that end, but as a covenant its purpose was more than that. The Mosaic covenant was intended to be a faith agreement. It was how the people of God were to worship and pursue God, how the nation was to be managed by God, until the Messiah came. It was tutor. It prepared for Christ and pointed to Christ. It was never perfection that was required by the covenant. It was LOYALTY that was required by the covenant. That’s why you see God be so patient with His people. If PERFECTION was what the covenant required the nation would have been destroyed immediately, and the covenant would have never made any sense. No, what the covenant represented was a way in which God wanted His people to live, and by faith those people were to remain loyal to Him by following Him. THIS IS WHY THEIR SINS CAN BE DESCRIBED IN THE TERMS OF DISLOYALTY. God gave commands. Those commands could only be obeyed by faith. Their rebellion was faithlessness. Their sins were expressions of unbelief. And it was that unbelief that expressed itself in disloyalty to God to His people. Now, that leads to the second thing that comes to mind when I consider what we see here. Not only do we often misunderstand the nature and purpose of the Mosaic covenant. We also woefully underestimate how our relationships with people speak of our loyalty to God. Genuine faith is not only manifested in an individual relationship with God, genuine faith is manifested by believing God about how He would have me treat other people.