Tag Archives: Covenant

Bad Motorcycle, Better Covenant

January 23, 2026 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

https://open.spotify.com/episode/5ZJESYyjKSgNI5ynr06Jz3?si=lvzs8LXvS9a7zYAHu7PgRw

“However, if you do not obey the Lord your God and do not carefully follow all his commands and decrees I am giving you today, all these curses will come on you and overtake you…”
Deuteronomy 28:15 (NIV)

Yesterday at breakfast, Wendy and I discussed an article she’d read about a string of women who became adulterous lovers of a serial adulterer. When later on life’s road the serial adulterer gained a certain amount of notoriety, the women determined to make their former lothario into their scapegoat. They are determined to ruin his life as they blame him for ruining theirs.

Fascinating.

As I meditated on the situation, what I saw in between the lines of the news article was the chaos and the unraveling of life that comes with journeying down the road of infidelity and adultery. The line I love to quote about the path of adultery is from Bob Dylan. He sings that it’s “like a bad motorcycle with the devil in the seat, going 90 miles-and-hour down a dead end street.”

Believe me, you don’t want that ride.

Today’s chapter is arguably as tough as it gets when it comes to harsh Old Testament language. It’s the kind of chapter that causes modern readers to close the book and walk away. There’s so much going on beneath the surface of this chapter that I could write an entire book unpacking it—but let me try to do it succinctly.

Today’s chapter follows a well-established pattern of what we call an Ancient Near Eastern suzerainty treaty. A suzerainty was a dominant king who, in expanding his empire, would take over foreign cities and people groups. They became his vassals. The suzerainty treaty was one the king would make with vassals he’d conquered and who were now under his sovereignty and protection. These treaties had a distinct pattern they followed, and one of the pieces of that pattern was to briefly explain the blessings the vassals would experience by being faithful to their new king followed by a long host of agonizing consequences they would experience if they were unfaithful.

Today’s chapter follows the exact pattern of these suzerainty treaties, with God as the suzerain and the Hebrews as the people he’s entering into a covenant with. It was intended by the ancients to act like a prenuptial agreement. It briefly highlights the blessings the bride could expect in the relationship (life, abundance, provision, blessing) and then goes to great lengths describing in the harshest terms the unraveling that comes with infidelity and disobedience (death, destitution, poverty, chaos).

The suzerain was saying “You don’t want to hop on the back of that motorcyle.”

Now, hang with me because it gets better. I know that in the Great Story everything is connected, and today’s chapter is no different. The primary difference between typical suzerain treaties and today’s chapter is that the suzerain was typically a distant monarch sitting on his foreign throne. God has drawn up the covenant in the covenant language the Hebrews were used to, but He isn’t distant. He’s right there in the middle of their camp. He showed up and introduced Himself. He delivered them from Egypt then joined them on their wilderness journey. The blessings and curses presented are not from a distant, conquering foreign king but a divine suitor who for 40 years has been wooing them. God wants a good marriage with this people.

By the time you reach Deuteronomy 28, Israel already has a problem baked into the dough.

The covenant assumes:
A faithful people
A loyal vassal
A nation that listens, obeys, trusts

But Scripture immediately begins narrating the truth:
The Hebrews cannot sustain covenant faithfulness.

The blessings are glorious – but the curses become prophetic autobiography.

The Old Testament tension is not:
“Will God be faithful?”
It’s:
“Can Israel be?”
And the answer—generation after generation throughout the Great Story—is a weary, sheepish “no.”

When the Son of God appears on the scene, He doesn’t come as the suzerain King but as an every day carpenter — just another one of the vassals. As a human being, Jesus walks the same path as the Hebrews, but with fidelity.

Hebrews —> 40 years in the wilderness grumbling, testing God
Jesus —> 40 days in the wilderness, tempted but faithful

And when Jesus responds to the devil’s temptation, He quotes — wait for it — Deuteronomy.

He doesn’t invent a new covenant language. He fulfills the old one.

Suzerainty treaties assumed:
Loyalty
Exclusive allegiance
Submission to the greater king

Jesus refuses:
Political shortcuts
Coercive power
Empire without obedience

He won’t reach for an earthly throne.
He won’t grasp.
He won’t rebel.
That restraint?
That’s vassal faithfulness.

In today’s chapter:
Obedience earns blessing
Disobedience triggers curse

Jesus:
Lives perfect obedience
Deserves full blessing
Receives the curse anyway

Exile. Shame. Abandonment. Death outside the city. The faithful vassal takes the consequences of the unfaithful people. That’s not legal trickery.
That’s covenant love with skin on.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.”
Galatians 3:13

This means my relationship with God is not sustained by:
Perfect obedience
White-knuckled faithfulness
Fear of slipping into curse

It’s sustained by participation—showing up at the table, taking a seat, and choosing to stay.

It’s not about performance. I don’t earn blessing.
I inhabit it—because Jesus already stood where I couldn’t.
Obedience becomes response, not requirement.
Faithfulness becomes gratitude, not terror.
And Deuteronomy 28 stops sounding like a threat…

…and starts sounding like a story that finally found its hero.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Promotional graphic for Tom Vander Well's Wayfarer blog and podcast, featuring icons of various podcast platforms with a photo of Tom Vander Well. — These chapter-a-day blog posts are also available via podcast on all major podcast platforms including Apple, Google, and Spotify! Simply go to your podcast platform and search for “Wayfarer Tom Vander Well.” If it’s not on your platform, please let me know!

Chapter-a-Day

The Knife, the Cradle, and the Cross

December 22, 2025 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

It is the Lord your God you must follow, and him you must revere. Keep his commands and obey him; serve him and hold fast to him.
Deuteronomy 13:4 (NIV)

For twelve chapters Moses’ deathbed message for his people has lovingly poured out of his heart. Remember, remember, remember the God who introduced Himself to you, the God who made a covenant with you and your ancestors, the God who delivered you from your chains, the God who miraculously provided and protected you, and the God who has promised you hope and a future.

Moses reminds his children and grandchildren through these twelve chapters that their relationship with God is a marriage. God has perpetually wooed, courted, delivered, provided, protected, and guided. What He asks of His bride is faithfulness. This is Moses at his most intense.

Moses poses three scenarios.

A prophet arrives with signs and wonders that appear to be the calling card of divine authority. Bedazzlement then gives way to the whisper of seduction. The prophet suggests they worship other gods.

An intimate family member whom you love deeply and trust implicitly suggests that together you worship other gods.

An entire community of people within your tribe chooses to follow and worship other gods and it becomes part of the community’s acceptable culture.

Notice that none of these seductions come from outside. They arise from within—religion, family, and community.

The response prescribed is uncompromising: resist, expose, remove. Loyalty to YHWH is not negotiable, not sentimental, not softened by affection or awe. The chapter ends with a repeated refrain: “So all Israel will hear and be afraid, and no one among you will do such an evil thing again.”

Today’s chapter is jarring, especially at the beginning of the week of Christmas as I hum O Little Town of Bethlehem. Yet one of the things that I’ve discovered about this Great Story is that everything connects.

It is easy sitting in my 21st century context listening to soft Christmas piano music on my computer to think that today’s chapter is the antithesis of Jesus. Only if I’m selective in my hearing of Jesus’ words. The reality is that Jesus embraced and extended the covenant as marriage metaphor. He repeated an uncompromising demand for fidelity, and warned of the consequences of faithlessness. He repeatedly channeled the serious, uncompromising truth of Deuteronomy 13.

Whether it’s prophets:

“For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.See, I have told you ahead of time. “So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the wilderness,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.”
Matthew 24:24-28 (NIV)

Or intimate family members:

“Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”
Matthew 10:36-38 (NIV)

Or community:

Then Jesus began to denounce the towns in which most of his miracles had been performed, because they did not repent. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida!For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you.”
Matthew 11:20-22 (NIV)

Or even myself:

“If your right eye causes you to stumble, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to stumble, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.”
Matthew 5:29-30 (NIV)

Jesus does not dilute the command to love God alone; He intensifies it.

But here is the turn that happens at Bethlehem. Jesus, the Bridegroom of heaven, leaves heaven behind and comes to humanity. He arrives, not only to woo and court His bride, but also to pay the bride price.

Where Deuteronomy polices faithfulness from the outside, Jesus transforms it from the inside.

The battle moves from execution to examination. From purging towns to purifying hearts. The idol is no longer a carved figure—it’s whatever claims ultimacy. Whatever replaces affection and fidelity. Whatever becomes that which I care about more than the One who cared so much for me:

Power. Nation. Certainty. Distraction. Entertainment. Even religion itself.

And instead of destroying the seducer, Christ absorbs the cost of human unfaithfulness into His own body.

The knife becomes a cross.
The warning becomes a wound.
Love bleeds instead of legislates.

Deuteronomy 13 is not asking me whom I would stone.
It is asking me what I would refuse—even if it came wrapped in love, success, or certainty.

Deuteronomy demands clarity.
Christmas whispers comfort.

Together they ask a single, piercing question:

What has the power to lead my heart away – even gently?

This week as I stand at the manger, the text invites a holy audit:

What voice do I trust because it dazzles?
What affection do I excuse because it’s familiar?
What belief do I protect because it flatters me?

The babe wrapped in swaddling clothes will not compete for my loyalty.
He will simply lie there—vulnerable, unarmed—waiting to see if my love still knows His name.

And if I listen closely, beneath both Moses’ warnings and a chorus of angels, I hear the same ancient invitation of a Bridegroom:

Choose life.
Choose love.
Choose the One who refuses to seduce—and instead, saves.

And so, I enter this week of Christmas with a heart that is not just floating with sentimentality, but anchored in the sobriety of a Love who’s sacrifice “demands my life, my soul, my all.”

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

What’s In a Name?

December 12, 2025 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2i8w5uaaSLZsRs8CbW2Se6?si=ZxNL_HKBSDi-2kWPF65_Yw

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.
Deuteronomy 7:6 (NIV)

One of the things I love about living in a small town is being known. I love walking into a restaurant, a coffee shop, or the pub and being greeted by name. I suppose some people like to be anonymous, but research consistently shows that most of us truly want to know and be known. And the beginning of that relational journey is simply knowing one another by name.

The subject of names has been surfacing a lot in my conversations of late. My local gathering of Jesus’ followers is working on a short-term initiative intended to help people learn one another’s names. I just read a fantastic article about the neuroscience that proves just how powerful using a person’s name truly is. I talk about it in business all of the time as I deliver customer service training.

One of the things that I have learned about name-use over the years is that the deeper and more intimate the relationship the more likely we are to create nicknames and pet names for one another. Conversely, as relationships break down and marriages move toward divorce we stop using one another’s names and revert to using pronouns or impersonal descriptors like “my children’s mother.” Wendy is “my treasure.” From the very beginning of our relationship, it’s been a special moniker that is hers and only hers. Between the two of us it is a sign of affection, devotion, honor, and fidelity.

Today’s chapter is one of those chapters that is misunderstood in modern cultural context. It’s a love letter disguised as a battle plan. God reminds Israel that their chosenness isn’t about muscle or merit, but about affection and fidelity. They are to enter the land clear-eyed and clear-hearted—no half-measures, no flirtations with rival gods. Destruction of idols isn’t cruelty; it’s fidelity therapy.

God promises protection, fruitfulness, and flourishing—not as wages earned, but as the natural overflow of covenant intimacy. Obedience here is not stiff-backed compliance; it’s trust leaning its full weight into the arms of a faithful Lover.

In Jewish tradition, Deuteronomy 7 is foundational for the concept of segulah—Israel as God’s treasured possession (v.6). This chosenness is not superiority; it is purpose and calling. Israel is set apart for something: to bear God’s name and reveal Him and His character in the world.

This covenant love is a foreshadowing of Jesus, who loved the world so much that He left heaven behind and became one of us. He treasured us so much that He suffered and died to pay the penalty for our sin. Then He called us to bear witness of God’s Kingdom through our love of Him and others.

The contrast could not be clearer.

The world chooses powerful.
God prefers the weak.
The world finds security in big numbers.
God prefers faith in a few.
The world indulges in surface sensual appetites.
God prescribes deep, exclusive and intimate relationship.
The world values self-centered personal ambition.
God values faithfully putting others ahead of ourselves.

In both today’s chapter and Jesus’ example, it is God who loves first. It is God who makes the covenant. It is God who promises fidelity, provision, protection, and blessing. We are the object of His love and affection.

We are His treasure.

He whispers, “My life for yours.”

When God speaks of loving His people in verses 7 and 8, the Hebrew word is ‘ahav. It is not a giddy infatuation, it’s a choice and a volitional act. In verse 9 God’s ‘ahav blesses a thousand generations of those who ‘ahav Him. God’s love invites reciprocity. Not because it needs it, but because it awakens it. And notice: God’s covenant loyalty flows toward those who love him—not as payment, but as shared intimacy.

This is mutual devotion, not transactional obedience.

In the quiet this morning, I’m reminded that God says that those who choose to follow have their names written in the Book of Life. My name is there. God knows my name. But today’s chapter reminds me that my name being written in the Book of Life is far more than just a “Hello My Name Is” name tag knowledge. That’s just the record like Wendy’s and my marriage certificate in the safe downstairs. I am God’s “treasure.” He gave His life that I might live. That kind of love awakens love in me.

Less Hallmark card, more keeping marriage vows at 3 a.m.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Ten Words

December 5, 2025 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

“Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!”
Deuteronomy 5:29 (NIV)

The bedroom is absolutely quiet but for the softness of the deep breaths of fresh slumber. All is dark but for the warm glow of the nightlight near the door. I lay stretched out on the mattress and feel the warmth of my grandchild’s little body cuddled up next to mine.

This has become one of my favorite moments in life. I am happy to lay here long after the wee one has slipped into sweet dreams. Sometimes, I choose to stay until I follow them into the land of nod. In the meantime, my soul bathes in the holiness of the moment. I consider their tender young lives and the long journey ahead of them. I pray over their parents. I pray over them. Prayers of blessing, of protection, and guidance – bedtime transformed into Papa’s quiet vigil over this precious little life that I love so much.

In today’s chapter, Moses continues his final words to the next generation of his loved ones. He takes them back to the basics. In our English translation and Christian tradition we call them the Ten Commandments. In so many minds they have become nothing more than laws. Rules. Black-and-white demands of obedience. For many they are a symbol of a tyrannical God eager to punish.

As I read and shema (e.g. really listen) to the chapter, that’s not what I see and hear at all.

In Jewish tradition it’s called “the decalogue” or “ten words.” They’re not commands. In fact, rabbis speak of it being one ineffable sound of the divine from which Moses drew the ten words. What’s more, the context is not one of a tyrannical power monger but the intimate marriage vows of a lover.

God, who initiated the relationship.
God, who made a covenant with us, not the other way around.
God, who delivered us from slavery and chains.
God, with us – not our ancestors – with us here and now.
God, who amidst the chapter lays his heart bare:

“Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!”

The Hebrew word for “keep” is shamar. English flattens it into simple obedience. English has a way of forcing meaning into a box that can never contain it. This is a great example. Shamar is a whole-body verb—warm, protective, attentive, deeply relational. It is the Shepherd watching over his flock by night. It is a gardener guarding her precious plants from every threat. It is tending something fragile so it survives.

The root imagery of the word comes from watchmen on the walls of the city in the darkness of night, heart steady, every sense attentive. Not policing, but protecting because what they are guarding is precious.

Suddenly, my life-long perception of ten black-and-white “commands” is laid bare for the hollow and meager interpretive shell it has always been. The ears of my heart begin to shema the intimate heart’s desire that God groaned in one ineffable utterance, from which Moses teased ten words:

I am in love with you. I have proposed to you. I have delivered you.
I desire your love and devotion.
I desire to experience your honor and respect.
I desire regular rest with you, to stop and just be together.
I desire family to be a perpetual place of life, love, and security.
I desire that life, faithfulness, and truth be the core of who we are.
I desire contentment, because if we have each other – it’s always enough.

Which brings me back to the warm glow of the nightlight in the darkness. The soft repetition of a toddlers respiration as I feel the rise and fall of that little chest pressed up against me. Papa, the night watchman guarding over this precious little life. I lie there in the holiness of the moment feeling a love I can’t even describe. I think I’ll just lie here a while longer and shamar.

It’s taken nearly sixty years, Lord. I think I’m finally starting to get it.

Wendy and I celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary this New Year’s Eve. We’re leaving today for an early anniversary weekend getaway. As I read through my paraphrase of the ten words, it’s a good description of what I’m looking forward to savoring with m’luv.

Which means, I’m taking a few days sabbath from our chapter-a-day journey. See you next Thursday.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

The Tension

October 29, 2025 Tom Vander Well 1 Comment

“In all that has happened to us, you have remained righteous; you have acted faithfully, while we acted wickedly.”
Nehemiah 9:33 (NIV)

Throughout my career I’ve had the opportunity to audit the Quality Assessment, or QA (e.g. “your call may be recorded for quality and training purposes”) programs of different companies. In these programs, there is typically a list of criteria that companies listen for in the phone calls so as to maintain a quality standard and hold team members accountable to that standard.

In auditing these programs over the decades I discovered that there is a spectrum for how criteria gets applied, or not applied. It can largely be based on the temperament of the individual who created the standard, or the individuals who apply the standard every day.

On one end of the spectrum is the QA Punisher wielding his red pen like a guillotine. The Punisher is quick to find every infraction real or perceived. Coaching sessions become employee beat-downs in which team members infractions are viewed under a microscope of criticism.

On the other end of the spectrum is the Rainbow Rater who doesn’t even have a red pen because pink is so much more affirming. When a team member fails to meet a certain service quality criteria, she is quick to give them credit for intending to do it, as she is sure that they were. Coaching sessions have not a hint of discussion about improvement or things that could have been done better. That’s too discouraging. Nothing but encouragement and affirmation in the Rainbow Raters world.

In my spiritual life, I find that religion mirrors my career in QA. Fundamentalists are the QA Punishers of religion. They police behavior like a perpetual witch hunt, condemn sin mercilessly, and shame individuals into corporate obedience. On the other end of the spectrum are the liberal universalists for whom sin is an unpleasant notion altogether. Everyone is okay doing whatever they want and credit is always given for good intentions.

Truth is always found at the point of tension between the two extremes. Whether in QA or in Life, the covenant relationship between God and humanity is constantly finding the tension. Today’s chapter is a great example.

In yesterday’s chapter, the Hebrews heard the Law of Moses read by Ezra the priest. For the first time, many in that Jewish community heard the Great Story in its entirety to that point in history. It had affected the community deeply, and in today’s chapter the entire community offers up a prayer to God. In fact, it’s one of the longest prayers recorded in all scripture.

There’s a number of fascinating things about this prayer.

First, it was led and recited by eight Levites. That’s seven-plus-one and there’s metaphorical significance in that. Seven is the number of creation, it’s a number of completion. With the walls rebuilt, the gates hung, and the covenant remembered this is a “new creation” moment for the Hebrew people.

The prayer is a recap of their entire history. They’ve just heard the Story read. Now they recite the entire Story back to God as a response. They praise Him for His lovingkindness and faithfulness. They confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors. They hit the covenant “reset” button and renew their covenant commitment.

Jewish rabbis view this prayer as a classic example of what they call teshuvah – a return to covenant faithfulness. The prayer finds the tension and balance between chesed, God’s loving kindness with confession of avon, or iniquity.

Paul told the believers in Rome that it’s God’s kindness that leads to repentance. Nehemiah and the Hebrew community are Exhibit A in this regard. They find in their reading and remembrance of the Great Story God’s promise, provision, blessing, and faithfulness. This doesn’t lead them to a free-for-all understanding that they can do whatever they want and are excused from whatever they’ve done. Rather, they recognize in God’s kindness that they have not been faithful or obedient. Time and again they have made commitment only to break that commitment. Their recognition of God’s kindness and faithfulness through the generations leads them to repentance for their own lack of faithfulness.

So, they come back to the tension. They hit the reset button. They repent and renew themselves to their covenant commitment.

Just like I have done so many times before.

This earthly journey is a marathon. I have wandered in my spiritual journey towards both sides of the spectrum. I am guilty of being a religious Punisher at times. Other times I have been quick to excuse my destructive thoughts and behaviors as if they aren’t detrimental to me, my loved ones, or anyone else. The further I get in the journey, I find myself simply trying to hold the point of tension for myself and with others.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

“We Must Be Cautious”

August 26, 2025 Tom Vander Well 2 Comments

While Israel was staying in Shittim, the men began to indulge in sexual immorality with Moabite women, who invited them to the sacrifices to their gods. The people ate the sacrificial meal and bowed down before these gods. So Israel yoked themselves to the Baal of Peor. And the Lord’s anger burned against them.
Numbers 25:1-3 (NIV)

I get it. The ancient episodes in the Great Story are often strange, confusing, and even offensive to modern political and cultural sensibilities. Yet, lying behind the veil of time are deep spiritual implications that are as relevant today as they have ever been. Today’s chapter is one of those.

We’ve just been through two chapters telling the story of Balaam the spiritual guru for hire who was contracted by Balak the King of Moab to curse the Hebrew tribes camped outside his kingdom. Balaam failed and returned home. So it would appear that Balaam has exited the story and the events of today’s chapter are unrelated.

But they’re not.

In today’s chapter, men from the Hebrew camp begin flirting with some women from Moab. They are invited for a meal, which turns into some wild parties that turn into sexual orgies. The Hebrew men are then invited to go to the Moabite’s pagan church with their new girlfriends, make some sacrifices, and participate in the pagan rituals. The men shrug and follow along.

Hard stop.

At this point, I find it important for me to remember that God sees his covenant relationship with the Hebrew people as a marriage. They were slaves crying out in Egypt. He showed up. He redeemed them. He delivered them. He agreed to dwell among them in the center of the camp, provide food and water, provide protection, and promised them a great home and life. Thus, God made a covenant with them to be their God and they His people. Husband and wife. This literal covenant agreement came with a prenup that listed 10 major items. At the top of the list: “You’ll have no other gods.” Fidelity. Faithfulness. I redeem, save, provide, protect, and bless and in exchange I want you to honor me by being faithful to me.

So, when the boys from the Hebrew tribes willingly choose to be seduced, led astray, and shrug off the top item on their prenup with God, it’s not just a small thing.

And, the events of today’s chapter were not a random case of multicultural curiosity and innocent lust gone astray. The seduction was a Moabite plot rooted in the counsel of guess who? Balaam, the spiritual guru.

Fast forward to John’s Revelation at the end of the Great Story. In His dictated letter to the believers in the city of Pergamum, Jesus writes through John: “You have some there who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin by eating food sacrificed to idols and by committing sexual immorality.”

Balak was mad at Balaam for not cursing the Hebrews. Balaam offered the Moabite King some parting advice: “If you can’t curse them, corrupt them.”

So, as I meditate on these things in the quiet this morning, I find in the sordid and bloody Moabite seduction an apt spiritual reminder for myself. After all, Jesus carried the spiritual marriage metaphor forward. He is the bridegroom while I and all of my fellow believers are His bride. He came and paid the bride price with His own life to make an eternal covenant with me. He redeemed me, saved me, offered me protection, provision, blessing, and promise. I don’t want to be unfaithful and dishonor that love and commitment.

Yet Jesus warned His followers the night before His crucifixion that the enemy, while standing condemned, will never be idle. Jesus’ blood and sacrifice forever protect me from the enemies curse. But the enemy knows Balaam’s counsel: “If you can’t curse them. Corrupt them.”

As I think about entering another day of the journey in this fallen world, the sage voice of Obi-wan Kenobi just flit into my mind:

“You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy…We must be cautious!”

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

Lost Sheep, Living Hope

October 23, 2024 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

I myself will tend my sheep and have them lie down, declares the Sovereign Lord. I will search for the lost and bring back the strays. I will bind up the injured and strengthen the weak, but the sleek and the strong I will destroy. I will shepherd the flock with justice.
Ezekiel 34:15-16 (NIV)

Zeke and his fellow Israelites are strangers in a strange land. Having been forced to make a thousand mile march some ten years before, they have been making due eking out a life for themselves far from home. There’s no temple for worship. The thing around which their entire lives were centered for centuries. There are no pilgrimages. No feasts. No sacrifices. Everything they had is lost. They themselves are lost.

For ten years there was at least the hope of returning home one day. Then, in yesterday’s chapter, word came that Jerusalem had been destroyed. Solomon’s temple had been destroyed. Even the little hope that remained is now lost. There is no longer a home. In short order there will be more exiles arriving. King Zedekiah, his eyes gouged out after witnessing the slaughter of his own children will arrive in chains with the other leaders and “shepherds” of their people.

There are no shepherds. The flock is scattered with no one to protect the lost sheep.

That’s the backstory of today’s chapter. It’s important to know what Zeke and his fellow exiles are feeling as the prophet begins to share his message from God.

God Himself will be their Shepherd. God Himself has always been their Good Shepherd.

The temple and the sacrifices were never really the point in an of themselves. They were an object lesson to point His people to something much larger. He said so Himself in Psalm 50.

I have no need of a bull from your stall
    or of goats from your pens,
for every animal of the forest is mine,
    and the cattle on a thousand hills.
I know every bird in the mountains,
    and the insects in the fields are mine.
If I were hungry I would not tell you,
    for the world is mine, and all that is in it.
Do I eat the flesh of bulls
    or drink the blood of goats?

In today’s chapter, God foreshadows the Good Shepherd, the Messiah. There are so many parallels to Jesus’ teaching and parables I hardly know where to begin.

“When [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”

“I am the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep.”

“I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me— just as the Father knows me and I know the Father—and I lay down my life for the sheep.”

“Then Jesus told them this parable: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it? And when he finds it, he joyfully puts it on his shoulders and goes home. Then he calls his friends and neighbors together and says, ‘Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep.’”

Right at the moment when Zeke and his compatriots are feeling hopeless, God reminds them where their true hope lies. Their hope is ultimately not in an earthly city or a temple made with hands. Their hope is in the living God who has always been a Good Shepherd

Who led Abraham to Canaan and made a covenant with him

Who led His people out of slavery in Egypt.

Who provided for His people for 40 years of wilderness wanderings.

Who led His people to a Promised Land.

They may no longer have a nation, or a city to call home, or a temple around which to worship, but it was never ever about the rituals or the religion. It was always, and still is, about the relationship. They still have a Good Shepherd who will “search for the lost and bring back the strays” who will “bind up the injured and strengthen the weak.”

In the quiet this morning, I find myself thinking back to stretches of this life journey when I was lost and trying to find my way. I often hear people say that they found God, but the spiritual reality is that God found me. I was the lost sheep, but I have a Good Shepherd and because of that I have a living hope no matter where I find myself, even if like Zeke I find myself a stranger in a strange land.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

The Spiritual Triangle

July 25, 2023 Tom Vander Well 2 Comments

[Job] replied, “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”
Job 2:10 (NIV)

I’m getting to a place on life’s road in which retirement sits on the horizon. I have friends who have already retired, and retirement thoughts and plans has suddenly become a more frequent topic of conversation.

I’ve observed that retirement seems to be a piece of “the American dream.” We’re told to plan for it, save for it, and get ready to “enjoy” life in our golden years. It’s easy to feel that I have a right to those promises of a “good life” in the retirement years like you see on every drug commercial. I put in all of those years of work, and the financial planner promised that my savings and investments will allow me to do the things I want to do.

Over the past decade, I’ve watched my mother suffer and die from Alzheimer’s. I’ve watched my father suffer from cancer as well as a viral infection that almost killed him and put him in nursing care for months. I know it’s not the life my parents envisioned in their seventies and eighties. It’s easy to feel a certain sense of injustice in it all.

The prologue of Job (chapters 1-2) sets up a divine relational triangle. God and Job have a good relationship going. Both are happy and content with one another. Job is grateful and faithful to God, ritually providing offerings even for his children that they would be pure in their relationship with the Almighty (Job 1:5). This is an important piece of the story for me to understand before embarking into the main text of the story.

In the ancient near east, the Hebrews had a very different understanding of God than the other cultures surrounding them had of their many gods and goddesses. The other religions of Job’s day viewed gods as higher beings, like super humans who were very human-like. The notion was that the gods got tired of providing for themselves, digging irrigation systems, raising crops, building homes for themselves, and et cetera. So, they believed that the gods created humans to serve them, provide them with a home and daily needs (a temple or shrine, with food (offerings and sacrifices), and to care for the gods in every way. Humans were essentially a slave labor force. The gods provided for humans in order that humans could provide for them. This is referred to as “The Great Symbiosis.”

In contrast, the God of Hebrews revealed Himself in a covenant relationship of His own prompting. He asked for ritual offerings and sacrifices like the other gods, but not because He needed humans for anything. God promised to provide and protect the Hebrews, but not because He desired anything other than relational fidelity from them. God simply wanted to be in a faithful covenant relationship with His creation, a covenant relationship very much like a marriage. Marriage is used as a metaphor for the relationship of God and humanity throughout the Great Story, especially by the prophets and later by Jesus.

The third member of this relational triangle revealed in the prologue of Job is Satan. The Hebrew word satan means “accuser” or “adversary.” Satan attempts to drive a relational wedge between God and Job (I can’t help but see a literary parallel to Iago driving a wedge between Othello and Desdemona in Shakespeare’s Othello). Satan’s accusation is that Job is faithful to God only because of a “Great Symbiosis” type relationship like the other gods of the near east. Satan contends that Job is only faithful because God has provided for him, protected him, and blessed him. Take away his wealth, the blessing of his children, and (in today’s chapter) his health, and Job will certainly lose his faith and curse God.

We’ll never know a certain diagnosis of what Job was afflicted with, but within the rest of the story he describes symptoms of festering sores from head-to-foot, nightmares, hallucinations, fever, weight loss. His physical appearance was frightening. The fact that his three friends put ashes on their heads (an ancient sign of grieving for the dead) when they saw him basically meant they considered Job as good as dead. Job’s wife certainly believed that Job would be better off dead, and urges him to essentially commit suicide by cursing God and prompting God to finish him off.

Despite his agony, Job refuses to do abandon God or curse him. He asks his wife another one of the big questions that resonate throughout the entire story, and that resonates with me in my own life: “Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”

In the quiet this morning, I focused on the fact that Satan exits the story upon his affliction of Job and Job’s refusal to curse God. We’ll neither see nor hear from the Accuser again in this story. Job will question God, plead with God, and complain to God, but never will he curse God. The accuser is proven wrong. Now the questions that remain for next 40 chapters are how on earth did Job endure? How does Job make sense of his circumstances? Why would God allow this suffering?

In the quiet, I’m also reminded that Jesus never promised His followers an easy life. Quite the opposite, He said: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

A New Covenant

May 17, 2023 Tom Vander Well 1 Comment

“This is the covenant I will make with the people of Israel
    after that time,” declares the Lord.
“I will put my law in their minds
    and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God,
    and they will be my people.”
Jeremiah 31:33 (NIV)

Covenant is an important theme throughout the Great Story.

God made a covenant with Noah (Gen 9)
God made a covenant with Abram (Gen 15:18)
God made a covenant with Abraham (Gen 17)
God made a covenant with the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through Moses (Ex 24:7)

The prophetic words and ministry of Jeremiah and the exile and captivity of these same descendants of Abraham in Babylon is a major turning point in the larger story. God gave them the His law, but for 1,000 years they repeatedly failed to keep it and repeatedly broke the Covenant. Paul so perfectly describes the dilemma:

Don’t you remember how it was? I do, perfectly well. The law code started out as an excellent piece of work. What happened, though, was that sin found a way to pervert the command into a temptation, making a piece of “forbidden fruit” out of it. The law code, instead of being used to guide me, was used to seduce me. Without all the paraphernalia of the law code, sin looked pretty dull and lifeless, and I went along without paying much attention to it. But once sin got its hands on the law code and decked itself out in all that finery, I was fooled, and fell for it. The very command that was supposed to guide me into life was cleverly used to trip me up, throwing me headlong. So sin was plenty alive, and I was stone dead. But the law code itself is God’s good and common sense, each command sane and holy counsel.
Romans 7:8-12 (MSG)

The exile and captivity which Jeremiah prophesied and later witnessed was a result of the Hebrews repeated tripping up and falling into sin and idolatry.

One of the beautiful things about Jeremiah’s prophetic works is that in the midst of the doom and gloom of his repetitive messages about exile, God has him announce something stunning in its hope and optimism:

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord,
“when I will make a new covenant
with the people of Israel
and with the people of Judah.”

This new covenant is unlike the old.

The law will be written on the hearts and in the minds of people (31:33). It is no longer a written law code and list of rules, but a personal, intimate relationship between God and humans from every level of society (31:34). This covenant will be made possible, not because humanity somehow evolves into a better species, but because God Himself will take the initiative. God will take on human form, pay the penalty for the sin problem that started with Adam, and offer every one forgiveness (31:34).

Jesus declared this new covenant that Jeremiah prophesied on the night before He was crucified:

During the meal, Jesus took and blessed the bread, broke it, and gave it to his disciples:

Take, eat.
This is my body.

Taking the cup and thanking God, he gave it to them:

Drink this, all of you.
This is my blood,
God’s new covenant poured out for many people
for the forgiveness of sins.

“I’ll not be drinking wine from this cup again until that new day when I’ll drink with you in the kingdom of my Father.”
Matthew 26:26-29 (MSG)

In the quiet this morning, I find myself once again in wonder of how the Story fits together. In each covenant God makes, it is God taking the initiative with humanity. God reaches out. God makes the covenant. God pursues the relationship with humanity…with me.

The only question that remains is my willingness to receive.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Chapter-a-Day

The Bride

March 21, 2023 Tom Vander Well Leave a comment

“This is what the Lord says:
“‘I remember the devotion of your youth,
how as a bride you loved me
and followed me through the wilderness,
through a land not sown.”
Jeremiah 2:2 (NIV)

One of the keys to unlocking the power of the ancient prophets is to understand both the context of their time and circumstances in history and the metaphors they use in addressing them.

Jeremiah’s prophetic ministry began during the reign of King Josiah of Judah (648-609 BC). The authors of Kings and Chronicles have made it clear that the Hebrew people have spent most of their nearly 300 years as divided kingdoms breaking the first two of God’s Top Ten rules for life (1. No other gods 2. No idols). By the time Josiah ascends the throne, there had been 19 successive kings in Israel who all promoted the worship of local and regional pagan idols. Of Josiah’s 15 predecessors in Judah, seven had been outright idolatrous and most of the others maintained a policy of appeasement with those who wanted to worship gods other than Yahweh. The result was that even the worship of the God of Abraham, Moses, and David had been diluted to the point that it was an empty shell of what God had prescribed for worship as Moses led the Hebrew tribes out of slavery in Egypt.

King Josiah led a massive reformation after a copy of the Law of Moses was discovered in a storage closet in Solomon’s Temple. The fact that it had been lost in a Temple junk room lends evidence to how far worship had strayed from God’s design. Even the priests of God had not read or taught God’s law in who knows how long. Solomon’s Temple itself had become a polytheistic religious center in which shrines and altars to pagan gods were placed alongside the altar God had prescribed back in Exodus. After three hundred years of polytheistic political accommodation, it’s hard to believe that young Josiah’s dictatorial reforms were universally well-received by his people.

It’s in this period of religious reformation and the resulting political tension that a young Jeremiah begins his prophetic career. Jeremiah and Josiah got along well, and Jerry’s career took off under the power and protection of Josiah as his benefactor.

Today’s chapter is the first of Jerry’s recorded prophetic messages. He addresses God’s people with one overarching metaphor: marriage. The Hebrew people were God’s young bride. God initiated through Abraham and then again in Moses, God pursued her in Egypt, God secured her, and God led her out of slavery and into a covenant relationship. God provided for her and led her to a home He prepared for her. What He asked of her was faithfulness.

By the way, Jesus used this same marital metaphor. His followers are His bride. At the Omega Point of the Great Story is a wedding and the greatest wedding feast of all time (Rev 19:7-9).

As for Jeremiah, he sits amidst Josiah’s mandated reform and hears the grumbling of the idolaters who desire to go back to their shrine prostitutes and fertility orgies. He sees those who gave lip service to Josiah’s reforms but meet secretly with their idols on the down-low. In this, he envisions God’s bride following indulgent appetites into adulterous liaisons only to justify her actions and lie to herself that her husband doesn’t care.

In the quiet this morning, I can’t help but escape the power of Jeremiah’s metaphor as I face my past. I know the reality of a broken marriage and divorce. I have experienced “youthful devotion” that led to a broken marital covenant. I stand guilty like Jeremiah’s audience. The unspoken question, of course, is “What am I going to do about it?” The calling of a prophet is to call God’s spiritually wayward people to repentance, to find the Prodigal knee-deep in the pig slop, and suggest he consider returning home. And from his first message, Jeremiah is on-task.

As I meditated on the chapter this morning, a line from an old hymn popped into my head and heart:

“Prone to wander, Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the one I love.”

I head into today with introspection. Where, in my spiritual journey, am I prone to wander? In what ways do my own appetites beckon me to indulge and lead me away from the One I love? The following line in the hymn describes my heart’s cry:

“Here’s my heart. Oh, take and seal it.”

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

Wayfarer

Tag Archives: Covenant

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A New Covenant

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The Bride

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Just another wayfarer on life's journey, headed for Home. I'm carrying The Message, and I'm definitely waiting for Guffman.

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Lost Sheep, Living Hope (CaD Ezk 34) – Wayfarer

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The Spiritual Triangle (CaD Job 2) – Wayfarer

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A New Covenant (CaD Jer 31) – Wayfarer

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The Bride (CaD Jer 2) – Wayfarer

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Just another wayfarer on life's journey, headed for Home. I'm carrying The Message, and I'm definitely waiting for Guffman.