This is a special post
for the New Year. I’ll have my regular post up on Wednesday, January 2.
_____________________________________
It’s
evening in the Middle Eastern desert, and an old man stands watch over the
carcasses of a heifer, a female goat, a ram, a turtledove and a young pigeon. He
cut the large animals in two and placed the body halves on either side of a
trench, which now runs with their blood. He drives the vultures away as he
awaits nightfall, when he expects the King to arrive to seal the promised
covenant with him.
The old man
looks nervously into the darkening sky and murmurs, “How can I possibly keep
the promise I am about to make with this King? What will He do to me if I break
it?”
As night
falls he’s tormented by a vision and the King’s voice telling him what will become
of the man’s descendants for hundreds of years. Then, as the sky darkens and
becomes saturated with twinkling stars, the old man sees a smoking oven and a
burning torch pass between the animal bodies, right through the blood soaked
trench.
Then the man hears the King say, “To your descendants I have
given this land…”
The King
seals the covenant – alone – while
the man watches.
Hundreds of
years later, the King renews this covenant with the man’s descendants at the
base of a smoking mountain. The King gives them laws, and the people agree to
them. “If you obey me fully and keep my covenant, “ the King says, “then out of
all nations you will be my treasured possession…a kingdom of priests and a holy
nation.” In this covenant, the people agree to be the King’s servants, and He
agrees to care for and protect them. They enter into this covenant not only for
themselves but also for their children’s children.
Hundreds of
years later two young men stand before one another in a palace. One is the son
of an earthly king, and is the next one in line to the throne. But the prince
knows that the man in front of him, the one he loves as much as he loves his
own soul, has been chosen – anointed –
by the King of the Universe to ascend to the throne. Without malice, guile or
jealousy, the young prince makes a covenant with his sheepherding,
giant-slaying friend and gives him
his royal robe, his armor, his sword, his bow and his belt. This act symbolizes
his submission and unfailing loyalty to his friend. It is a covenant that will
surpass time and death.
Hopefully
those stories sound familiar to you, and you can give names to all of the
characters.
In the
first story, it is with Abraham who God, the King, makes a covenant. Yet God
knows that as much as Abraham wants to
keep his promise, he won’t be able to do so, and God has let him know through a
disturbing vision, that his descendants certainly won’t be able to keep it.
This seemingly brutal act of cleaving animals in two and walking through their
blood was a standard way of making what was called “cutting a blood covenant,”
when both parties would walk through the blood to show that they bound
themselves together in agreement and, when they did so, were obligated to follow the terms of the
agreement, or risk facing death at the hand of the other person. By walking
through the blood alone, God agrees to keep His side of the
covenant – forever – no matter
what Abraham or his descendants do.
In the
second story, God gives the law to the nation Israel through Moses at Mt.
Sinai. It’s a renewal of the covenant with Abraham, with some variations and
rules added.
The final
story is of Jonathan and David, the story of a human friendship that seems to
exceed all others in history. The story of two young men whose love for one
another is so deep that after Jonathan is killed in battle and David ascends to
the throne, David hunts down Jonathan’s surviving son, Mephibosheth, not to kill him, as everyone thought
he’d do because of the potential threat to his rule, but to invite him
into his house – “for Jonathan’s sake” – so Mephibosheth can be treated with
dignity and respect, like the son of a king. In addition, David restores all of
Jonathan’s family property to Mephibosheth, so he has an inheritance to give his
descendants.
Throughout
their history, the nation of Israel makes covenants with God that they break.
Over and over again, they suffer because of their unfaithfulness to Him, and
then, when they seem to have learned their lesson, He restores them to Himself.
It is the longsuffering love of God that restores them.
It is this
longsuffering love that caused God to send His only Son to Earth to join Jews
and Gentiles alike into a New Covenant with Him.
But do you
really understand the significance of this covenant you ascribe to when you
take Communion, or understand what Jesus meant when He initiated it in that
upper room?
During the
Passover meal, four cups of wine are blessed. And it is the third cup – the Cup
of Redemption – that becomes the special cup Jesus raises and refers to as His
blood. So let’s take a close look at that third cup, the cup that signifies the
New Covenant we entered into.
When a
young man wanted to marry a woman in Israel, a bride price needed to be decided
upon between the young man’s father and the woman’s father. This price wasn’t
to “purchase” the young woman, but to replace the great loss of a daughter. It
was a high price, like buying a house.
When the
price was agreed upon, the young man’s father would pour a cup of wine and
raise it to his son. His son would turn to the young woman, lift the cup and
hold it out to her, and say, “This cup is a new covenant in my blood, which I
offer to you.” In other words, “I love you, and I’ll give you my life.
Will you marry me?” Will you become
my bride?
The woman
had a choice. She could take the cup and give it back and say no. Or she could
choose to answer by not saying a word, and take the cup from him and drink of
it. Her way of saying, “I accept your offer, and I give you my life in response.”
During the
last Passover meal Jesus ate with his disciples, He took that third cup – the
Cup of Redemption – and blessed it with a traditional blessing.
Then He
probably shocked the disciples when He interjected the marriage proposal into
the service. Jesus said, in essence, “I love you,” and compared His love to a
passionate, pure love of a husband for his wife. Jesus said, “I love you, and I’ll pay the price for you.”
First He
says, “This is my body, broken for you.” Then He says, “This is my blood, sacrificed for you.
Drink of it so that you will be My bride and we may covenant together for eternity.”
Instead of
a blood covenant made with the blood of animals, God’s Son became the covenant sacrifice. Christ was the sacrifice; His blood paid the redemption price for you and sealed the
covenant.
When
someone enters into a marriage covenant, they promise to love, honor, protect
and serve the other person – forever.
When we partake of Communion, we are saying that we, His bride, willingly enter
into this kind of covenant relationship with Him, our bridegroom. You say you
accept His offer and give Him your life in response.
This new
covenant of grace is based on faith that brings life and righteousness. If you have stepped out in faith and
accepted God’s grace, then you are a legitimate child of God; son or daughter –
a treasured possession – of the King.
John 1:12 says, “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who
believe in His name.” Then in his first epistle, John remarks, “Behold what
manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!” Exclamation point!
That the King of the Universe calls us His
children. It’s why Peter says in his first epistle: “But you are a chosen
generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. His own special people, that you
may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His
marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God,
who…have obtained mercy.”
But what do
royal priests look like? What are their responsibilities? Jesus paid a high
price for you. How do you – the bride of Christ, a child of God – live in
covenant with Christ and return His
love?
As one
writer put it, “We look to Jesus’s teachings, and the teachings of His inspired
Apostles, to see the way that Christian faith should work in our lives. As the
Apostle John says, ‘“…let us not love in word and tongue, but in deed and in
truth.’”
We are
children of God’s promise, and we are free. But our
freedom does not give us permission to sin – it gives us permission and the privilege to serve Christ. The only
thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love” (Galatians 5:6);
love shown in our good works.
And what
are those good works? They are our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our
service and our witness.
Of all of
these, prayer must come first.
Prayer helps us accomplish all that God wants us to do. Through prayer we
acknowledge that God is our Father, a loving father we are so close to that we
can call Him by the intimate name, “Daddy.”
We remember His rightful place in the universe and in our lives by
acknowledging that His throne room is heaven and that only His name is holy. We ask that His will – not
ours – be done, and we ask Him to show
us His will. Then we ask Him to help us obey it.
In prayer,
we ask God to supply our needs, not just ours, but the needs – both spiritual
and physical – of others, particularly our brothers and sisters in Christ. We
are humbly reminded that we all struggle
in this life – to provide for our families, to forgive people who have sinned
against us – and that we need God to forgive us for the sins we commit so our
relationship with Him will in no way be hampered. We also remember that there is
an evil one in our midst who desires our destruction, and only God can protect us
from him.
Through our
presence with others, particularly
through weekly worship together, Bible study and small group meetings, we give
strength, hope, and joy to one another. We weep with those who weep and rejoice
with those who rejoice (Romans 12:15). We spur one another on toward love and
good deeds (Hebrews 10:24). Paul tells us to gather together so that we may
encourage on another…(Hebrews 10:25). And that includes joining with brothers
and sisters outside of your immediate church community to worship, such as when
you are traveling, just as the apostles and disciples did.
We give
monetary gifts, striving to tithe as
cheerful givers for God’s work in our particular congregation. We give extra,
as believers sacrificially did in the First Century Church; to meet others’
needs both outside of our own congregation and around the world. This is the one area in which God tells us to
test Him. In Malachai 3:10 He states: “Bring all the tithes into the
storehouses, that there may be good in My house, and try Me now in this, if I
will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you such blessing that there will not be
room enough to receive it.” I can tell you from personal experience that God
faithfully upholds this promise.
To serve, we identify our spiritual gifts
and talents so we are able to offer our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and
pleasing to God (Romans 12:1). As members of one body, working together, we
demonstrate and use our spiritual gifts of mercy, teaching, helping, serving,
relieving burdens, exhorting, giving, leading, administrating, and greeting
people in hospitality. We do not strive to “be everything” but to perfect the
specific gifts God has individually bestowed upon each of us. Utilizing your
gifts glorifies God and makes the body of Christ healthy and the congregation
rich.
Finally, we
can witness to others. Through our
prayers, words and actions we can invite people into a relationship with Jesus
Christ. Like David who went looking for Jonathan’s son, the physically crippled
Mephibosheth, to bring him into his house to treat him like a favored son, with
all of the rights granted to a prince, we need to look for the broken and
broken-hearted, to bind up their wounds, to help make their spirits whole; to
make and treat them like treasured possessions, the treasured children of the
King; to bring them into God’s eternal family; to give them a heavenly
inheritance.
Remember,
you are an ambassador for Christ. The way you act, dress and talk affects
people. Someone is always watching you.
As my
pastor reminds us, Christianity is a team sport, and love is an action. Love helps
us run this difficult race together.
Christ’s love compels us; our foremost goal should be to please Him in
everything we say and do. All of these labors are our way of working out our
salvation. Not “doing” to get saved, but doing because we are saved;
because we are grateful.
Yet, we ask
ourselves, “How can I possibly measure up and keep this covenant with Christ?”
It is a
serious, important question. God does not want you to enter into a covenant
lightly – with Him or with anyone else. He says He’ll call us to account for
any oath we utter with our mouths. So we count the cost and enter into this
covenant soberly, but joyfully, after
much prayer and repentance, for we know that He, by His mercy and grace, will always be with us to help us keep it.
And we also know, that by His mercy and grace, He will forgive us when we fail,
as we all repeatedly do.
As the United
Methodist Church Litany of Thanksgiving states: God remembers us when we forget
Him; He follows us even when we try to flee from Him; He meets us with
forgiveness when we return to Him; and He does all of this with unfailing
patience and overflowing grace.
Today, as
we look forward in anticipation of a new year, and all that God will bring into
our lives, it is the perfect time to reflect upon how we have upheld the
covenant this past year, to ask forgiveness for our failures, and to step out
in faith into the future by renewing our commitment to follow the Lord where
and in the way He alone will lead us.
May God
give all of us the wisdom, strength and discipline to do it.
May we live
wholeheartedly in covenant with Christ.
In this
next year, may you embrace your life-giving covenant with Christ with joy and thanksgiving.
May you prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers. And
may God make His face to shine upon you and grant you peace!
Thanks for joining me! Have a Happy (and safe!) New Year
celebration!
Blessings,
Andrea
Note: Some of the information for this sermon was derived from Ray
Vander Laan’s “That the World May Know” video series produced by Focus on the
Family.
