JOHN188 - From Now On You'll Always Think of the Covenant When You Look at Those Two Mountains

0:17 Hey everybody, what's up? It's Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. And I'm going to start by talking about a time I heard a pop song that I like, and I'm going to recommend the pop song to you, which is rare for me, but it's going to happen. I was driving through the Black Hills of South Dakota, where I live.

0:30 And as I was driving along, I was on this road where there's this one really interesting spot. You got this craggy cliff on one side. And there's this weird, interesting like this architectural anomaly, this Airbnb that's built on top of this cliff on one side of the road. And then on the other side of the road, you got beautiful clear water rapid creek.

0:51 It's a trout creek that winds through our mountains. And somebody built a gazebo out over the water right there. It's just a very memorable spot. So I'm driving along there one day, and my random on the Spotify or whatever pulls up a song I'd never heard before, a pop song. And it was good. And that stood out to me because I don't think we're exactly in the golden age of pop right now.

1:11 And the song was Mr. Electric Blue by Benson Boone. Miss a lovely song. If you haven't heard it before, I mean, if you like pop, you might enjoy it. If not, I probably wouldn't listen to that. But I remember it every single time I drive by that spot. I just picture the song. The two things are connected to me.

1:32 That silly pop song, that weird little bend in the road. And maybe your brain doesn't work like this, but I think I'm in the majority here. I think a lot of people's brains work this way. And as evidence that this is a phenomenon, I would submit to you that this goes all the way back to ancient times.

1:48 And even in the Bible, there are physical locations that God seems to ordain as markers so that every time the people look at that place, they will think of the thing God wanted to communicate to them the same way that every time I drive around that little bend, I think of Mr. Electric Blue by Benson Boone.

2:09 Why am I bringing this up? Well, because it's just infinitely relevant to what we're talking about today. We've been lingering at the front end of John chapter four for quite a while now and been on some fun little side quests. They're all going to pay off. They're really cool. In John 4, 4 and 4.5, we get some itinerary details.

2:28 They go like this. Now he, Jesus, had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there. And then Jesus, you know, he's tired and he stops at that well, and we'll get into that story a little bit later on.

2:46 This particular spot, as we discussed yesterday, is so relevant. So many things happened here. So many of the huge names of the biblical past had encounters with God or important theological firsts that happened right here in this spot. The first time Abraham ever built an altar to the Lord, it was right in this spot, this T-shaped valley intersection that has two big mountains on either side.

3:14 Those mountains are called Ebal and Gerizim, right there in this little spot where the town of Shechem rose up is more or less the first place that Abraham ever built an altar. That's in Genesis 12. God is making his covenant with Abraham. That's a pretty big deal. Jacob built an altar there in Genesis 33.

3:34 Also, Jacob collected a whole bunch of idols that the pagans around that area had, and he buried them under an oak tree at Shechem. Like that detail is in the Bible, in Genesis 35. That's kind of a big deal. And in addition to that, God himself ordains prophetically, verbally out loud to Moses, that when they conquer Canaan, which includes this area of Mount Ebal, Mount Gerizim, and Shechem, which sits at the intersection of the T-shaped valley that runs between them, when that happens, God Himself ordains that they are to go to these two mountains, Ebal and Gerizim, and explain the whole covenant of God to the people, explaining the blessings that will befall the people from God if they obey

4:23 God on one mountain, and the curses that will afflict the people if they disobey God from God on the other mountain. So this is just a wildly important spot. And I remember I, you know, I grew up around church. Some of you have known me for a long time. You know that's the deal. My dad was a minister and everything.

4:45 Some of you were just meeting, and you might not know that. I've been around church for a long time. And the importance of Shechem and this little spot between these two mountains, maybe if you grew up around church, you knew it and it came up all the time at your church, but I just missed it. I didn't catch it at church.

5:01 I didn't catch it when I read through the Bible. It is only as I've gotten into adulthood and the whole, you know, faith 2.0 make this thing my own phase of my journey, that the importance of Shechem has really started to pop. And it was quite a while into my adult life before I ever even connected the dots that that's where we are with the whole woman at the well scene that we're warming up for in John chapter 4.

5:28 So let's set this thing up a little more. I don't want to make you take my word for it. In Deuteronomy chapter 11, there's been a whole lot of desert wandering. God has delivered his people from slavery in Egypt. He's made it clear that he is definitely still going to make them a people, but also he's made it clear that there's going to be a covenant, a conditional covenant between God and his people.

5:52 The deal goes like this. God is saying this. Hey, if you all obey me, I'm going to bless you beyond measure. And all the nations around are going to see that and be like, whoa, they the God of Israel is the one true God. If you disobey me, I'm going to punish you in such a way that all the nations around you are going to look at that and be like, whoa, the God of Israel is the one true God.

6:14 Either way, everybody's going to know I'm the one true God. How that goes is up to you. So that might sound like that's a pretty harsh covenant, but it I mean the terms are very clear. You can't complain about that, right? And so in Deuteronomy 11, God tells Moses specifically that he wants the descendants of Abraham when they get into the land, he wants that covenant, the blessings and the curses, he wants that deal to be geographically tethered in the minds of the people to this valley where the ancient city of Shechem rests, between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, the same way Mr.

6:55 Electric Blue is in my head every time I drive around that bend in the Black Hills. So much more so, God wanted his people every time they walked past or envisioned Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim and the valley in between, he wanted them to be reminded of the covenant. And that gets spelled out first in Deuteronomy 11, 26.

7:18 It says, See, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse. The blessing, if you obey the commands of the Lord your God that I am giving you today, the curse if you disobey the commands of the Lord your God, and turn from the way I command you today by following other gods which you have not known.

7:36 When the Lord your God has brought you into the land you are entering to possess, you are to proclaim on Mount Gerizim the blessings, and on Mount Ebal the curses. As you know, these mountains are across the Jordan, west of the road toward the setting sun, near the great trees of Morah. The whole thing gets spelled out right there.

8:00 And then that very specific instruction, geography and all, gets reiterated again in all of Deuteronomy chapter 27. And then Moses dies, and we turn the page over to the book of Joshua, and now we're under the leadership of Moses' protege, Joshua, who finally leads the people into the promised land. Joshua is an upright warrior king, and he goes in and he wins and takes most of the land.

8:29 Then in Joshua chapter 8, the story of the conquest goes to this valley between Ebal and Gerizim, where Shechem sits. I don't think there's an account in here, if I'm remembering right, of a conquest of Shechem. Maybe it happened and it wasn't recorded. I don't remember exactly how that played out. I don't think it's in the text.

8:47 But what I do remember is that Joshua, Joshua 8:30, built on Mount Ebal an altar to the Lord, the God of Israel, as Moses, the servant of the Lord, had commanded the Israelites. He built it according to what is written in the book of the law of Moses, an altar of uncut stones, and it goes on to describe all that stuff.

9:05 There, in the presence of the Israelites, Joshua copied on the stones the law of Moses, which he had written. All Israel, aliens and citizens alike, with their elders, officials, and judges, were standing on both sides of the ark of the covenant of the Lord, facing those who carried it, the priests who were the Levites.

9:24 Half the people stood in front of Mount Gerizim, and half of them in front of Mount Ebal, as Moses, the servant of the Lord, had formerly commanded when he gave instructions to bless the people of Israel. Afterward, Joshua read all the words of the law, the blessings and the curses, just as it is written in the book of the law.

9:46 So Joshua not only followed through on exactly what Moses told him to do, he not only went to exactly the spot and created this memory device, this memory hook of these two mountains and this T-shaped intersection at Shechem, Ebal and Gerizim. He not only followed through on that perfectly, he did it twice.

10:07 In Joshua 24, the final chapter of the book that bears his name. Now Joshua is an old man. And in Joshua 24, 1, it says, Then Joshua assembled all the tribes of Israel at drum roll, Shechem. And he runs the whole thing again. And with you know, some of the last words he ever speaks to his people, he challenges them.

10:31 Do not wander from this. This is your inheritance. This is the unique blessing of the God of all things. Do not chase after these foreign gods and this stupid stuff. Of course, they I mean the whole adventure of the Old Testament is people forget Joshua's challenge and they don't listen to him, and they do everything he said not to do, and it causes all the carnage and chaos and mess that takes us through the rest of the Old Testament.

10:58 But after saying all this stuff back at Shechem with Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim, right there, Joshua gives us the famous line where he's like, Yeah, you all might serve other gods, but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. And all the people, of course, are like, Yeah, we're totally gonna do that too.

11:16 And Joshua's like, uh I don't think you're probably gonna do that. And then he dies and he gets buried. And that's the end of Joshua. Okay, back to John chapter four. When we read in John 4, 4, and 5, now Jesus had to go through Samaria, so he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph.

11:40 Jacob's well was there. Oh my goodness. The more specific that John gets here, the more obvious it is that, oh man, we're right at that T-shaped intersection again, aren't we? Oh man, we're right between the two mountains that remind us of all of that, that conjures to mind the entire story of all the opportunities that we as a people had to get it right.

12:00 It was all so clear. Joshua even warned us before he died, right here in this very intersection, and we did not listen. And here's this little well that continues to produce. It's kind of a metaphor for the faithfulness of God across the eons and ages. And now we're getting a very curious meeting between God in the flesh and some Samaritan lady who hails from a people group whose very existence is a living, walking, breathing, speaking, practicing religious, cultural reminder of everything God's chosen people got wrong in the Old Testament, of everything they ignored that was spoken to them clearly, at least twice in this exact valley, with those exact two mountains right there, still standing

12:50 sentry over the entire affair, bearing witness to what happened here in the past and to what had gone wrong. That is the setting for the conversation between Jesus and the woman at the well. And that is going to set this conversation up to be far more interesting for you and I as readers, but even more than interesting.

13:13 It sets it up so that we can be in a position to appreciate the giganticness of God Himself taking on flesh and hanging out at that intersection by that well with all of that history right there. And finally, I haven't brought this up in a while, but I want to bring it up today. This program exists because some of you are crazy enough to support it at patreon.com/slash the TMBH podcast.

13:40 And you don't really like get a lot of things for that. Every now and then we send out stickers and stuff, but mostly it's just a bunch of people of goodwill who are like, we like this program and we want it to continue to exist. And so you decided to kick in and it's working. Thank you a ton. If you like this program, you can mentally high five right now.

14:00 Somebody who's kicking in to make this thing go. If you want to learn more about that yourself, there's always a link down below or again, patreon.com/slash the TMBH podcast. You can go there and learn more about what supporting the program looks like if you feel so inclined. All right, tomorrow, game on the woman at the well.

14:16 We're finally ready for the conversation. We put in the work. I can't wait to unwrap this present with you. I'm Matt. This is the 10-minute Bible hour podcast. Let's do this again soon.