Rev. Roland J. Wells, Jr. - Pastor

Reformation Sunday - October 27, 2002

Lessons: Jeremiah 31:31-34; Romans 3:19-28; John 8:31-36

"A Covenant People"

I) A Covenant Remembered:

In Lent of 1998, March 8, to be precise, we had a sermon on the text in Genesis, one of the times God made a covenant with Abraham. Several of you have reminded me of it in different settings in the last few years. ( I printed copies of it for review if you'd like one.)

It was a story about how God told Abraham to take a bunch of animals, kill them, cut them in half, and lay them on the sides. That's the way a victorious king would impose an agreement on a lesser or losing king. They'd lay out the dead animals, cut them in halves, then make the lesser party walk between the animals- because if the loser broke the treaty, they would be like those dead animals. Covenants were sealed in blood.

The story with Abraham went like this: 9 The LORD said to him, "Bring me a heifer three years old, a she-goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon." 10 And he brought him all these, cut them in two, and laid each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. 11 And when birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, Abram drove them away.12 As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram; and lo, a dread and great darkness fell upon him.

Then God gives his promises to Abraham again, then 17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces.

Here's the payoff: In this type of covenant, the weaker party walks between the carcass halves. Unexpectedly, God in his grace does the walking. God's the one who seals the covenant and takes the hike of the loser!

II) The Covenant Model

This is one of the most remarkable stories of the Old Testament. YAHWEH binds himself to Abraham in a covenant that God himself imposed- and obviously he's the greater party- but he takes the role of the lesser party- he acts as if he is beaten, to bind himself to Abraham and to US.

This story, one of the many times God makes a covenant, like Noah, Jacob, Moses and David. But this story about Abraham gives us the model- God gives the covenant, and God pays the price and binds himself at his own cost! Later God gives Moses his name,YAHWEH, so that he can be called on. After Moses is given the Law as part of the covenant, time and time again Moses goes back to YAHWEH when the people of Israel are in trouble, and he reminds God about the covenant. "OK God, these are your people, not mine, you remember that? You better do something or all the peoples around us are going to laugh at you." As part of the covenant, YAHWEH gave them his name, so they could call on him when they needed help. He bound himself to them; he gave himself to them.

God passing as the firepot, God giving his name, both of these are pictures of the kind of covenant God was going to ultimately give to his people. God in Christ comes and gives himself completely into the hands of humanity. He gives himself on the cross. It's a covenant in blood. God takes the position of the loser. Do you see how remarkable this is? A God who writes his promises in blood. A God whose promise is a matter of life and death.

III) Covenant Christianity is Biblical Christianity

American popular Christianity doesn't always present a God like that. So often today Christianity is offered as something we do. Christianity is something that we decide ourselves into, we commit ourselves to. Somehow, we've gotten an understanding that being a Christian is like deciding to join the Cub Scouts or the YWCA. That's called a 'voluntary association'-something Thomas Jefferson wrote about- but that's not the Church. That's not being a Christian. That's not being a part of a covenant. Being a Christian is something as deep and mysterious and primitive as that smoking pot floating through that Canaanite dusky evening. The mystery of the walk of a Christian is that you have been claimed. You have been mysteriously grasped, claimed, grabbed in time and space by the mysterious Word of God. You have been claimed by a God who has grasped you, and claimed everything you are. You have been grasped and conquered at great cost. You were saved by the sticky blood dripping down a rough wooden cross. You did nothing. God's Word came and grasped you and broke into your life, and you are no longer your own.

That's the radical call of the Covenant of the Living God. It's exactly the same today as it was 4,000 years ago with Abraham, or 3,200 years ago with Moses or 3,000 years ago with David. These are all real people. They were all grasped by the powerful call of God, and God began his mighty work in their lives.

Now, with that as a preparation, hear the words of Jeremiah again, from 2,500 years ago, and think about what they mean:

"The time is coming," declares the LORD,

"when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah.

[32] It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt,

because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them," declares the LORD.

[33] "This is the covenant I will make with the house 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 a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,'

because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the LORD.

"For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more."

That's the time we live in. 2,500 years ago Jeremiah said that YAHWEH would cut a new covenant- he didn't realize that it would be written in the very blood of God himself come in the flesh. It would be a covenant cut into the hearts, the innermost being of God's people, with an internal knowledge of God. So we would know him- that's a word that means deep intimacy. It's used of the most intimate of relationships between husband and wife. It's to be very, very close. To know the Lord. Think what that means. To be intimate, to be close to, to understand, to anticipate, the very being of the Living God. Let that sink in.

And the key to this would be the forgiveness of sins. Not just the covering of those sins by sacrifice; not by some kind of earning enough merit to somehow atone for them ourselves, or try to do enough good to make up for them- but that the sins will be forgiven. Forgiven by the very blood that created the sacrifice. As a gift. A gift that has grasped you and claimed you. By grace. All by the power of God. You have been claimed. You have been grasped by a covenant signed in blood. It was imposed by a greater on a lesser, but amazingly, at the cost of the greater! But you can't create it, you can't bind God nor claim anything from him. He has grasped you. It's a covenant, not a voluntary association. You've been claimed.

IV)The Covenant Makes Everything Else Make Sense

Without understanding the idea of Christianity is covenant, you can't understand Baptism. Baptism is that covenant coming to you. That's why I Peter 3:21 says "Baptism...now saves you." We can weasel all around that verse, wanting to make salvation something we create- but if Christianity is a covenant, then Baptism as we understand it makes perfect sense. If Christianity is a voluntary association, then it doesn't. But a voluntary association is Thomas Jefferson, not biblical Christianity.

If Christianity is a covenant relationship, the Lord's Supper makes sense, too. It's not some kind of memorial meal we do to remember our late great leader. The Lord's Supper is not just a memorial. It's re-living, re-experiencing the covenant that grasped us. It's re-living the covenants: going again to that flaming fire pot; it's daubing the blood of the lamb on your doorposts; it's the flint knife of circumcision; it's standing before the flaming mountain as God himself speaks. It's receiving the Very Living God who is once again giving you the covenant he has paid for in his own warm, sticky blood, and his innocent suffering and death. It's primitive, it's violent; it's not some cute symbol. It's death and life. It's the kind of life and death you'll need as you take your last breath. A nice symbol won't do. The Lord's Supper doesn't make sense, unless Christianity is understood as a covenant.

Without the covenant, we can't understand the Church. The Church is made up of people who are all claimed; it's people who passionately cling to each other. They stick with each other, because they see that needing each other is a matter of life and death. Because God has made a covenant with them, they are covenanted to each other. People who are part of a voluntary organization give up on each other, or bounce off to another organization as soon as they hit the first bad experience. Covenant people are welded together, bought by blood, and they learn to forgive and grow even more deeply together.

In a 'voluntary association' only the commitment the people holds them, and that's based on what they get out of it. Today we see Christianity being marketed all over based on what you get out of it- "Come to our church and we'll make your family happy. Come to our church, and we've got a great program for every aspect of your life. Come to our church, and be where the successful popular people are. Come to our church and you'll find it will always be exciting. Come and get, get, get!" Some of my friends who serve some of the marketed mega-churches whine about how many people move back and forth between this mega-church, then a year later to that mega-church which is then the more popular, etc. Some are based on selling, selling, selling a more slick program. That's a voluntary organization.

And maybe the Gospel is somehow served. But when they complain about Sunday School teacher absentee rates of 50% on any given Sunday, we can see the weakness of a church that has become a 'voluntary association' based on me, me, me. If we don't understand a covenant, and see marketing as the basis of who we are as Christians, we end up with something we think is based on us.

Summary: BUT, God has called us to be a covenant people. People of a deep mystery, of smoke and flame and blood. A people who are grasped and claimed, and so they cling to each other, even when they get their feelings hurt. They are formed into a resilient, covenanted people, who God clings to and welds together into the Body of Christ, the same covenant people as Abraham, Jacob, and David. And you. When you hear this, you are claimed. God's Word has come into your ears this morning as you heard about the God who claims you in that covenant. That's his will for you from before all time. And it is good. You can trust him and his covenant. Invitation, Amen

Reformation Sunday - October 27, 2002

Jeremiah 31:31-34

"The time is coming," declares the LORD,

"when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel

and with the house of Judah.

[32] It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers

when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt,

because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them," declares the LORD.

[33] "This is the covenant I will make with the house 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 a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,'

because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," dclares the LORD.

"For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more."

Romans 3:19-28

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. [20] Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.

[21] But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. [22] This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, [23] for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, [24] and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. [25] God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood. He did this to demonstrate his justice, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished-- [26] he did it to demonstrate his justice at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.

[27] Where, then, is boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On that of observing the law? No, but on that of faith. [28] For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from observing the law.

John 8:31-36

To the Jews who had believed him, Jesus said, "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. [32] Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

[33] They answered him, "We are Abraham's descendants and have never been slaves of anyone. How can you say that we shall be set free?"

[34] Jesus replied, "I tell you the truth, everyone who sins is a slave to sin. [35] Now a slave has no permanent place in the family, but a son belongs to it forever. [36] So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.