Covenant & Treaty
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Reflections on te Tiriti o Waitangi as a covenant partnership.
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Sermon on Covenant: Our Promise Keeping God
Shared with Plimmerton Presbyterian Church, Advent Sunday, 1 December 2024. A week after the Hikoi mo te Tiriti.
Our God is a promise keeping God. It is core to the nature and person of God, as we understand it, that our God, the Lord and creator of all, the Father of Jesus Christ, this God is not fickle, not changeable. There is a fundamental stability to the universe that is only possible because there is a foundational stability in the character of God.
And at the same time, God is also constantly adapting – not because he has to but because our God chooses to be in relationship with us fickle willful ever changing human beings.
How does God manage this paradox? One way that God stays both firm and flexible is through a little something that God invented called covenant. I am preaching on covenant today. A covenant is an agreement between individuals, groups, and with God, that is intended to last for a long time. A covenant relationship is a relationship with a long term commitment.
I wonder what covenants you have entered into.
In the Christian tradition we see marriage as a covenant, a three-way relationship between a man, a woman, and God, intended to be both a stable foundation for family and society and also adaptable, flexible in order to meet changing needs. The keeping of the promises of marriage may evolve and grow through the years, but the promise stands.
When we built our home in the new subdivision of Wallaceville Estate we signed a covenant with the developers that sets out shared expectations of all those who own a house there. We promised not to turn our place into a jungle wilderness or a car yard.
In my own life, the most important covenant I am in is my commitment to Jesus, which I first made way back when I was just 12, when I asked him to be my friend. Through the years this covenant has matured, been tested and renewed. So now I simply cannot envisage my life outside of God’s promise to me. There is no part of my life that I keep separate – everything is given over to Christ in covenant partnership.
The Bible describes various covenants made, some broken by one side, some enduring. Let’s do a bit of an overview. The first was God’s covenant with Noah after the flood, with the rainbow as the sign.
Then comes God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah, with circumcision as the sign.
Jacob made a covenant with Labaan when Labaan released his daughters and grandchildren into Jacob’s care. Jacob built a stone pillar as the sign.
There was God’s covenant with Moses, with the 10 commandments as the sign, carried within the Ark of the Covenant.
God covenanted with David to establish him and his line on the throne. Some of the Psalms stand as a sign in song.
God revealed and proved himself to Israel as a covenant God, a promise keeping God. And, sadly, Israel kept of proving itself to be a covenant breaking people. The entire Old Testament is a story of promises made, broken, renewed, and broken again. It’s amazing that God didn’t just give up on them. But he did not.
All the prophets stand at this point of tension ... each of the prophets give us a glimpse into God’s faithfulness wrestling with his frustration with these people who keep on turning away.
Here is God’s heart, as revealed to Isaiah, keeping on promising, offering, reaching out:
Isaiah 61:7
Instead of your shame
you will receive a double portion,
and instead of disgrace
you will rejoice in your inheritance.
And so you will inherit a double portion in your land,
and everlasting joy will be yours.
8 “For I, the Lord, love justice;
I hate robbery and wrongdoing.
In my faithfulness I will reward my people
and make an everlasting covenant with them.
The Lord wants to not just keep covenant in a legalistic minimalist way, but to bless his people twice over, to give them a double portion, more than they deserve, way more than they have earned, only to come to him, turn to him, to be his people of his heart, sharing his joy and blessing. Oh what a heart cry.
I will come back to the Biblical story in a minute, but I would like to share with you something that is very much on my heart, what I believe is God’s desire for us here in Aotearoa New Zealand. How do we hear God’s heart cry for us, here and now, in our land? How might we experience the double portion of God’s joy and justice?
Last Tuesday I gathered at 7.30am with a wonderful diverse bunch Christians in the Wellington inner city for a prayer meeting. Powerful prayers were prayed. I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit very much with us. In that room we shared with our Lord Jesus Christ a vision for our nation for justice and partnership, where Māori and Pākeha and people of all backgrounds stand together. We were brought together by a clarity that the Treaty of Waitangi is the foundation for that. Then we joined the Hikoi together.
I truly believe that Te Tiriti is a covenant, which God gifted to us to enable the formation of our nation. As Christians we stand in the heritage of the missionaries who promoted the Treaty to the Māori people, because they saw it as the best, the Godly way forward for Aotearoa. As Christians now we share in responsibility for upholding the Treaty of Waitangi, because it is a covenant and our God is a promise-keeping God.
I wonder what you felt as you watched the images of the Hikoi mo te Tiriti last Tuesday, and heard fragments of speeches and waiata and haka. I wonder how you responded to the red white and black flags flying high and proud. Did you feel some fear or apprehension? Did you feel anger or confusion? Me, I just felt pride. My heart overflowed with pride - not for myself but for our country. I truly feel honoured to be a Kiwi, here in Aotearoa at this time. I truly honour the Māori people and rejoice in their rising tide of identity and mana. I am deeply priviledged to know personally several incredible Māori leaders with passionate faith in Jesus Christ. I genuinely believe that God is at work in the movement towards tino rangatiratanga, Māori self determination. Why? Because this is a promise made to Māori back in 1840 in the document of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. And I believe in a promise keeping God.
I am part of a Christian mission agency called Common Grace. We are calling on churches up and down New Zealand to join us in making submissions to the Treaty Principles Bill, which we believe is a breaking of covenant, a breaking of good faith, and a highly dangerous divisive assault on the foundations of our nation.
I encourage you to look up Common Grace Aotearoa when you get home and to read more about it, and take the action of expressing your views to the government, whether or not you agree with our stand.
www.commongrace.nz/
There are times in every partnership when breaking faith is the easier option. There are always good pragmatic reasons to choose other priorities, especially when the covenant was entered into a long time ago. But this is the Bible model, this is God’s way: to invest in covenant relationships, which endure across generations. And this is God’s strategy: to call out prophets in every generation to speak for loving faithfulness and promise keeping. I believe this is what he is asking of the church in this moment.
Today is Advent Sunday, which in church tradition is the beginning of a new year. In church tradition it resounds with the cry – Come, Lord Jesus, Come! Advent is a time to confess our need for God, because we know all too well how easy it is to break faith with God and with one another. As we look for the coming of Christ as a babe in the manger we also look for the coming of Christ again to restore all things. Come, Lord Jesus, come.
Advent is all about the action and character of God to renew. As God promised to make a new covenant, so in Jesus this new covenant is made, and the sign of the covenant is his own blood. Jeremiah had a glimpse of this, hundreds of years before Jesus was born.
Jeremiah 31:27-34
31 “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.
32 It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to[d] them,[e]”
declares the Lord.
33 “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.
34 No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
What Jeremiah did not realise is that God’s promise of a new covenant would go beyond, way beyond, even the people of Israel and Judah. You and I, unless you have Jewish ancestory, are not party to God’s covenants with Abraham, David or Moses. We are Gentiles, outsiders. We have no rightful claim to God’s promises through our own blood lines. Our only place in God’s covenant is through the blood of Jesus. Those of us of British descent have no more claim to God’s covenant promises that do the Māori people. It matters to me to stand in humility before the cross, trusting not in my own righteousness, or in my whiteness, but only in Jesus who is our one and only access to God the Father.
And so we come to this table, his table, because he invites us in, he widens the circle, he says to each and every person, come in, shove over, make room. This is the table of Jesus Christ and at it he makes over and over a new covenant with us. Here he declares:
I will be you God, and you will be my people.
And he is a promise keeping God.
And at the same time, God is also constantly adapting – not because he has to but because our God chooses to be in relationship with us fickle willful ever changing human beings.
How does God manage this paradox? One way that God stays both firm and flexible is through a little something that God invented called covenant. I am preaching on covenant today. A covenant is an agreement between individuals, groups, and with God, that is intended to last for a long time. A covenant relationship is a relationship with a long term commitment.
I wonder what covenants you have entered into.
In the Christian tradition we see marriage as a covenant, a three-way relationship between a man, a woman, and God, intended to be both a stable foundation for family and society and also adaptable, flexible in order to meet changing needs. The keeping of the promises of marriage may evolve and grow through the years, but the promise stands.
When we built our home in the new subdivision of Wallaceville Estate we signed a covenant with the developers that sets out shared expectations of all those who own a house there. We promised not to turn our place into a jungle wilderness or a car yard.
In my own life, the most important covenant I am in is my commitment to Jesus, which I first made way back when I was just 12, when I asked him to be my friend. Through the years this covenant has matured, been tested and renewed. So now I simply cannot envisage my life outside of God’s promise to me. There is no part of my life that I keep separate – everything is given over to Christ in covenant partnership.
The Bible describes various covenants made, some broken by one side, some enduring. Let’s do a bit of an overview. The first was God’s covenant with Noah after the flood, with the rainbow as the sign.
Then comes God’s covenant with Abraham and Sarah, with circumcision as the sign.
Jacob made a covenant with Labaan when Labaan released his daughters and grandchildren into Jacob’s care. Jacob built a stone pillar as the sign.
There was God’s covenant with Moses, with the 10 commandments as the sign, carried within the Ark of the Covenant.
God covenanted with David to establish him and his line on the throne. Some of the Psalms stand as a sign in song.
God revealed and proved himself to Israel as a covenant God, a promise keeping God. And, sadly, Israel kept of proving itself to be a covenant breaking people. The entire Old Testament is a story of promises made, broken, renewed, and broken again. It’s amazing that God didn’t just give up on them. But he did not.
All the prophets stand at this point of tension ... each of the prophets give us a glimpse into God’s faithfulness wrestling with his frustration with these people who keep on turning away.
Here is God’s heart, as revealed to Isaiah, keeping on promising, offering, reaching out:
Isaiah 61:7
Instead of your shame
you will receive a double portion,
and instead of disgrace
you will rejoice in your inheritance.
And so you will inherit a double portion in your land,
and everlasting joy will be yours.
8 “For I, the Lord, love justice;
I hate robbery and wrongdoing.
In my faithfulness I will reward my people
and make an everlasting covenant with them.
The Lord wants to not just keep covenant in a legalistic minimalist way, but to bless his people twice over, to give them a double portion, more than they deserve, way more than they have earned, only to come to him, turn to him, to be his people of his heart, sharing his joy and blessing. Oh what a heart cry.
I will come back to the Biblical story in a minute, but I would like to share with you something that is very much on my heart, what I believe is God’s desire for us here in Aotearoa New Zealand. How do we hear God’s heart cry for us, here and now, in our land? How might we experience the double portion of God’s joy and justice?
Last Tuesday I gathered at 7.30am with a wonderful diverse bunch Christians in the Wellington inner city for a prayer meeting. Powerful prayers were prayed. I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit very much with us. In that room we shared with our Lord Jesus Christ a vision for our nation for justice and partnership, where Māori and Pākeha and people of all backgrounds stand together. We were brought together by a clarity that the Treaty of Waitangi is the foundation for that. Then we joined the Hikoi together.
I truly believe that Te Tiriti is a covenant, which God gifted to us to enable the formation of our nation. As Christians we stand in the heritage of the missionaries who promoted the Treaty to the Māori people, because they saw it as the best, the Godly way forward for Aotearoa. As Christians now we share in responsibility for upholding the Treaty of Waitangi, because it is a covenant and our God is a promise-keeping God.
I wonder what you felt as you watched the images of the Hikoi mo te Tiriti last Tuesday, and heard fragments of speeches and waiata and haka. I wonder how you responded to the red white and black flags flying high and proud. Did you feel some fear or apprehension? Did you feel anger or confusion? Me, I just felt pride. My heart overflowed with pride - not for myself but for our country. I truly feel honoured to be a Kiwi, here in Aotearoa at this time. I truly honour the Māori people and rejoice in their rising tide of identity and mana. I am deeply priviledged to know personally several incredible Māori leaders with passionate faith in Jesus Christ. I genuinely believe that God is at work in the movement towards tino rangatiratanga, Māori self determination. Why? Because this is a promise made to Māori back in 1840 in the document of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. And I believe in a promise keeping God.
I am part of a Christian mission agency called Common Grace. We are calling on churches up and down New Zealand to join us in making submissions to the Treaty Principles Bill, which we believe is a breaking of covenant, a breaking of good faith, and a highly dangerous divisive assault on the foundations of our nation.
I encourage you to look up Common Grace Aotearoa when you get home and to read more about it, and take the action of expressing your views to the government, whether or not you agree with our stand.
www.commongrace.nz/
There are times in every partnership when breaking faith is the easier option. There are always good pragmatic reasons to choose other priorities, especially when the covenant was entered into a long time ago. But this is the Bible model, this is God’s way: to invest in covenant relationships, which endure across generations. And this is God’s strategy: to call out prophets in every generation to speak for loving faithfulness and promise keeping. I believe this is what he is asking of the church in this moment.
Today is Advent Sunday, which in church tradition is the beginning of a new year. In church tradition it resounds with the cry – Come, Lord Jesus, Come! Advent is a time to confess our need for God, because we know all too well how easy it is to break faith with God and with one another. As we look for the coming of Christ as a babe in the manger we also look for the coming of Christ again to restore all things. Come, Lord Jesus, come.
Advent is all about the action and character of God to renew. As God promised to make a new covenant, so in Jesus this new covenant is made, and the sign of the covenant is his own blood. Jeremiah had a glimpse of this, hundreds of years before Jesus was born.
Jeremiah 31:27-34
31 “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.
32 It will not be like the covenant
I made with their ancestors
when I took them by the hand
to lead them out of Egypt,
because they broke my covenant,
though I was a husband to[d] them,[e]”
declares the Lord.
33 “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.
34 No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
What Jeremiah did not realise is that God’s promise of a new covenant would go beyond, way beyond, even the people of Israel and Judah. You and I, unless you have Jewish ancestory, are not party to God’s covenants with Abraham, David or Moses. We are Gentiles, outsiders. We have no rightful claim to God’s promises through our own blood lines. Our only place in God’s covenant is through the blood of Jesus. Those of us of British descent have no more claim to God’s covenant promises that do the Māori people. It matters to me to stand in humility before the cross, trusting not in my own righteousness, or in my whiteness, but only in Jesus who is our one and only access to God the Father.
And so we come to this table, his table, because he invites us in, he widens the circle, he says to each and every person, come in, shove over, make room. This is the table of Jesus Christ and at it he makes over and over a new covenant with us. Here he declares:
I will be you God, and you will be my people.
And he is a promise keeping God.