Stick a Needle in My Eye

Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye. It was the covenant promise of the playground. You dropped this handy dandy little rhyme every time you made a promise to your friends that was super serious. You might even actually cross your heart with your finger. Maybe in your neighborhood, you executed the legendary pinky swear. Another celebrated ceremony is the spit shake. Yeah, those are nice, but the heart crossing covenant comes with a curse. You would rather die than to fail holding up your end of the deal.  And if that’s not enough, you would go so far as to impale a sharp object into your eye. It’s a covenant with consequences. 

(Now let me be very clear. While we regularly made the promise and consistently broke it, nothing ever happened. No funerals for promise breakers. No self-inflicted eye injuries. No six year olds were harmed in the making of this covenant!)

Flip back into the Old Testament to the book of Nehemiah and you’ll see something similar. No, this isn’t a group of elementary school kids crossing hearts in obedience. In Nehemiah 10:28-31, the Jewish people living in Judah agree to abide by the promise of total obedience drafted by their leaders. They highlight a couple of very specific commands which are clearly current problems for them. Hooking up with unbelievers. Failing to take a day off. Then they throw a blanket over every single Hebrew person living in and around Jerusalem and “enter into a curse and an oath” (v29). If they fail to do everything God has commanded, there’s punishment. It’s a covenant with consequences.

So how did we get here? How did we get to the point where God’s people have resorted to some sort of supernatural spit shake and pinky swear? Let’s back up just a bit. It’s 445 BC. Nehemiah has just led them in the successful completion of rebuilding the city walls of Jerusalem in just 52 days (Neh 6:15). They’ve been a pile of bricks ever since King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon’s army bulldozed the city on a hill and all but turned into a ghost town almost 150 years ago. As part of the citywide celebration and ribbon-cutting, the people invited the great teacher Ezra to read from the first five books of the Bible (Neh 8:1-9:3). The standard of God’s Law acts like a divine MRI and delivered a fatal diagnosis of sin and rebellion. The demands of God are for perfection and holiness. The only treatment is repentance, confession, and turning to the goodness of our gracious God (Neh 9:6-37). 

It’s at this point that the Hebrew people decide to write down their promise to obey the LORD and “make a firm covenant in writing” (Neh 9:38). Their leaders put their John Hancock this covenant (Neh 10:1-27). That’s when the Jewish people agree among themselves to do absolutely everything God has commanded them to do. In case you’re wondering what percentage of God’s people give the thumbs up to this pledge, Nehemiah runs it down for you.

The rest of the people.

The priests.

The Levites.

The gatekeepers.

The singers.

The temple servants.

That pretty much covers all of the folks serving and working in the newly rebuilt temple.

Next, things get a little messy. “All who have separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the Law of God” (v28). The translators have sanitized things a bit here. These are Jewish dudes who have hooked up and with local unbelieving hotties. For those who might not know, that’s running right through one of God’s big stop signs for His people (Ex 34:15-16; Dt 7:3-4). Just like this is a hot topic in the early 21st century, it’s a huge problem almost 500 years before Jesus. God uses the conviction of His Word to send these rascals back to their families. It’s probably no surprise that “their wives, their sons, their daughters” all join their dads and husbands in their pledge of obedience. God is clearly healing things on the home front.

Next on the list are “all who have knowledge and understanding” (v28). This would include everybody who knows what’s going on. Those who can wrap their brains around the depth of the rebellion. They may not know exactly what to do but exactly Whom to turn to. Just in case you’re worried somebody is not being invited to the party, these various groups of people “join with their brothers, their nobles” (v29). The big idea here is that the full roster of the Jewish people agree with the covenant signed by the leaders. Take a look around at all of God’s chosen people. They’ve all given thumbs up. That guy over there. This lady here. Those folks standing by the wall. You’re not locking eyes with anyone who’s not taking part in the pledge.

The Hebrew people have given the a-okay to “enter into a curse and an oath” (v29). Here’s the “cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye” portion of the program. Throughout the Bible, a boatload of covenants have consequences for failing to comply. Usually those are presented in some sort of gory ritual that involves cutting up animals. One particularly bloody example is when God made His covenant promise to bless Abraham (Gen 15:9-17). The LORD orders Abe to cut a cow, a goat, a ram, a bird each in half. That was followed by a wild dream involving a smoking pot (no, not THAT kind of smoking pot!) and flaming torch passing in between the dismembered animal parts. The point is that God’s failure to fulfill His promise to will result in Him becoming like the sliced and diced critters in the dream. While the author doesn’t tell us specifically what the curse is, you can bet it’s something along those brutal lines. Yeah, this is a bit more serious that a pinky swear or a spit shake. It’s a covenant with consequences.

The entire Jewish population of Judah agrees “to walk in God’s Law that was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the LORD our Lord and His rules and His statutes” (v29). Again, this is pretty standard language when God’s people realize they’ve totally blown it and promise to never fail again (2Ki 23:3; 2Chr 34:31). They’re not promising partial obedience. They’re not hoping to bat 500. They’re shooting for perfection. And that’s not a bad thing since that’s God’s standard (Lev 10:37). Be perfect because He is perfect (Lev 11:44-45; 1Pet 1:16). For those of you who think the New Testament lowered the bar of obedience, you may want to flip over to James. Jesus’ kid brother tells us that to fall short on just one command means we’ve broken all of them (James 2:10). Anything less than complete obedience is complete disobedience. 

While the people make a blanket promise of total commitment, they highlight a couple of specific laws. “We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons” (v30). As we saw earlier, this has been a chronic problem for the Jewish people. Despite God’s very specific “no,” His people couldn’t stop jumping into the sack with men and women who didn’t worship the LORD. And the sin went right to the top. King Solomon may have been the wisest rascal to ever walk the planet but his blatant stupidity brought down his kingdom (1Ki 11:4-14). The people were up to their old sexual escapades after their return from exile in Babylon (Ez 9-10). And just a few years after Ezra convinced them to break up with their pagan lovers, Nehemiah had to deal with it all over again (Neh 9:2). I guess it’s no surprise they wanted to get that one on the table. There’s only one little problem. They’re going to do it all over again just a few years later (Neh 13:23-24).

The other law that gets special attention has to do with keeping the Sabbath set aside as a special and holy day. Saturdays will be a day without any commerce, sales, or trading with their neighboring nations. “We will not buy from them on the Sabbath or on a holy day” (v31). But this has nothing to do with restrictions and everything to do with freedom and faith. God put obedience of the Sabbath in His Top Ten (Ex 20:8-10; Dt 5:12-15). Remember the context of the original command. God’s people had been in slavery for 400 years in Egypt WITHOUT A DAY OFF! Instead of seeing this command as shackles keeping you from having fun, it’s just the opposite. God is telling us to stop working and take a day off!! It’s a huge example of faith in God to provide everything we need. In this specific situation, the Hebrew people are to trust in God to give them what they need instead of the peoples of the land.There’s only one little problem. They’re going to do it all over again just a few years later (Neh 13:15-18).

Four hundred plus years later, Someone would come and “enter into a curse and an oath” on our behalf. Jesus came “to walk in God’s Law that was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the LORD our Lord and His rules and His statutes” (v29). Christ was completely obedient in our place when we totally train-wrecked our end of the deal. He suffered the consequences of the curse on the cross for our sin. Both the Old and New Testament writers know that death on a tree makes you the object of God’s curse (Dt 21:22-23; Gal 3:13). Jesus did for us what we could never do. We could obey God’s Law completely. He even faced the curse of God as our substitute. 

While nobody back in the old neighborhood ever followed through with the pledge to die and/or sticking needles in their eye, our Savior stepped up in our place. He loves us so much that He fulfilled the oath of sinless obedience. He loves us so much that He took the curse of God’s wrath for our sinful disobedience. It’s a covenant with consequences.