They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that You performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But You are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them.” – Nehemiah 9:17
People are funny. In some work environments, households, and political arenas, the sentiment seems to be, “Yeah, but what have you done for me lately?” You might have worked like a dog, contributed all that you could, and had great success, but someone around you responds as if there is no historic context: your past dedication is too far removed – forgotten and ignored – as if you’re only as good as your last performance. We even see this in football fans as they watch players striving from one down to the next. A brilliant play means nothing 45 seconds later.
God witnesses such fickleness in His people. On Sunday morning, we hear a compelling sermon, re-commit to serve God with all of our heart, climb into the car to head home, and get into an argument about what to eat for lunch. Or maybe our faithfulness lasts a bit longer and it takes a whole day or two before we start complaining about how so-and-so at church isn’t polite enough or hard-working enough. Before you know it, the thrill is gone and we disconnect from others.
I had a pastor who once said, “You know why we have church gatherings on Wednesday nights? Because you can only backslide so far in three days.” He might be right, but I’ve seen people backslide pretty far in a matter of hours – or minutes, or seconds, even. People are fickle.
Remember how Moses pleaded with Pharoah to let his people go? The Israelites had been enslaved for 400 years. After 10 plagues, Pharoah relented. Moses led the people out of the house of bondage and brought them to the edge of the Red Sea. They stood there, freed from generations of oppression. What did they say? “What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness” (Exodus 14:11-12). “Yeah, you freed us, but what have you done for us lately?”
After the sea was miraculously parted and Moses led them to safety, God fed the covenant community with manna. How did they respond? “We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic. But now our strength is dried up, and there is nothing at all but this manna to look at” (Numbers 11:5-6). “Yeah, you rescued us and fed us, but what have you done for us lately?” You can hear this same sort of response from teenagers about their parents, and citizens about their civic leaders.
You really ought to notice that people are funny. We really are fickle. But God is not – He never has been and never will be. The contrast is what you need to see. Before the foundation of the world, the Triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – made a covenant of redemption: a commitment to save those whom He loved. God has been faithful to His covenant ever since. In the garden, God gave Adam everything. God said to Adam, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:16-17). Next thing you know, Adam and Eve don’t even argue about what they’ll eat for lunch – they go ahead and chow down, violating God’s covenant of works. You see the stark contrast between God’s covenant faithfulness and our covenant fickleness. This is what we call “Covenant Theology”. What is to be done about it?
Nothing is to be done – it is already done. God had promised to send His Son to redeem stiff-necked knuckleheads. He sent Jesus and we killed Him because people are fickle. There is nothing more to do because God has done it all through His Son. If you see your covenant fickleness, would you worship the One who is always ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love? The Hebrew word “hesed” means “steadfast love” and “covenant faithfulness”. The English word for covenant fickleness is “human”. If you are human, then you need to rejoice in God’s “hesed” – the grace of Jesus Christ.
