Let's pray before we dig into God's word together. Lord, I thank you for your word and how much is in there, that we can read it every day for a lifetime and still keep coming up with new treasures and new depths and new connections and new applications for our lives. And Lord, as we read your word today, we pray that you'll speak to our spirits, that you will help us to focus. And Lord, I pray for your hand on me as I bring this message, that I will speak faithfully from the message you've given me. In Christ's name, amen.
Right. So our word today is covenant. There's a lot of covenant talk in the CRC. I did a bit of research to see if I could find out how many Covenant CRCs there are in North America. There's about a thousand CRC congregations in Canada and the US. Quite a few. I couldn't really come up with a number. It looked like at least a dozen in Canada. Some of you that have lived in a few different places might think of a Covenant CRC, Covenant Christian School. There's got to be a bunch of those. What is a covenant? So that's kind of our big question. What is a covenant, and what does it have to do with me?
So our verse into this is from Jeremiah 31, which is actually quoted completely word for word in Hebrews as well, so we'll be referring to Hebrews a bit later in the sermon. "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. 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 them," declares the Lord. "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. No longer will they teach their neighbor or say to one another, 'Know the Lord,' because they will all know me, from the least to the greatest," declares the Lord. "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more." This is the word of the Lord.
All right. So, covenant. Well, we try to think of what a covenant means. We're going to start by looking at some of the covenants of the Old Testament. We'll see if we can come up with a definition for a covenant, see what that has to do with the New Testament then, and how this connects to us.
So, a few weeks ago, I was in a discussion. We were trying to figure out what was the most famous song written or performed by an Islander. Like, what does that have to do with covenants? Wait. So, anyway, what are some well-known songs that people off PEI know? So, first thing we come up with: okay, well, Lennie Gallant, he's maybe PEI's best-known singer. What's his most famous song? Well, his most famous song, according to research I did, was Peter's Dream, which is kind of cool because it's got that chorus, right? "Last night I dreamed that I was sailing out on the Sea of Galilee." Which actually, the last sermon I did was about Jesus calming the storm, which kind of got into this discussion in the first place. It's pretty well known in Atlantic Canada, maybe in some ways an Atlantic anthem. But if you're visiting here from Ontario, you might not already have heard of Lennie Gallant or the song Peter's Dream.
So, I think we can go deeper. Who's an even more well-known Island singer-songwriter? Stompin' Tom. Okay, so Stompin' Tom, it turns out his most famous song is not about potatoes. He has an even more famous song. Sports fans will probably know this one. So Stompin' Tom's most well-known song is about the good old hockey game. It's actually called The Hockey Song. "The good old hockey game is the best game you can name." I've heard that Leonard Cohen would sometimes take years to perfect a song. I don't know if it took Stompin' Tom years to come up with that chorus, but anyway. So Stompin' Tom, really well known across the country. The Hockey Song is played at NHL arenas across the country. It's a very well-known song, and yet probably not super well known outside of Canada.
So, who's an Island singer, an Island songwriter, that's written songs that are actually even more well known outside of Canada? Well, now we get to Gene MacLellan. Now, Gene MacLellan might not be super well known to a younger generation. He was big in the 70s and 80s. But he wrote songs that he performed, and other people also sort of covered his songs and became even more famous. Maybe his second most famous song is Snowbird. Launched Anne Murray's career. "Spread your tiny wings and fly away." Charted in Canada and in the US. Was covered by a bunch of different artists. That's pretty good.
But he's actually got a song I think is even more well known than that, that went to number one in Canada, number one in the US, charted in seven European countries, was on the charts in South Africa and Australia, covered by over a hundred different artists, including Elvis, Loretta Lynn, Bing Crosby, Justin Bieber, actually not Justin Bieber, who's the other guy, Sammy Davis Jr. So widely covered, charted in many different countries, written by an Islander. And the cool thing is it actually connects to today's sermon. Now, I can't tell you what the song is right now, because then it would earworm during the whole sermon. We will come back to it during the course of the sermon.
So, yeah. So, a covenant. I found in my previous career, when I was teaching math, it was usually better not to sort of just give a definition at the start and then say, "Here's what a polynomial is, now let's work on some questions." We'd look at a bunch of examples and say, "From all these examples here, can we tell what a polynomial is?" We'd figure out our own definitions. We're going to try that here with a covenant. We're going to look at four covenants in the Old Testament, and by looking at these four covenants, see if we can put some meat around, like, what do we mean when we're talking about a covenant? What's God doing? What are we doing? What's happening? What's going on with this covenant?
So, our first covenant that we see way back in the beginning of the Old Testament, in Genesis. Oh, actually, before we get to the, actually, okay, the Noah covenant. So, the flood waters have gone. The ark is fetched up on Mount Ararat. Noah takes off the covering. All the animals and the people come outside. Noah makes some sacrifices, and the Lord comes and says, "God said to Noah and to his sons with him, 'I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you. Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood. Never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.'"
So this is the first time we see a covenant. God comes to Noah and says, "I'm going to make this covenant." It seems kind of like a promise, right? "I'm going to promise this thing. I'm going to promise never to destroy the whole earth with a flood." It's actually a little specific, right? God never promises not to destroy the whole earth with, like, you know, an AI bot apocalypse or something like that. But anyway, floods are off the table, so that's good.
Now, I didn't put the whole passage of Genesis 9 up there, but I bet the kids could probably tell me covenants also have a sign. Just after this, God says he's got a sign he's going to give us, to remind us every time we see this that he will never again destroy the whole earth. Does anybody know what that sign is? I see some people aren't. What is it? A rainbow. Good. God puts his bow in the clouds and says, "Every time you see this, you can be reminded." So, there's the second thing about a covenant. It seems to be a promise from God, and also it's accompanied by a sign to remind us of that promise. Good. So, covenant number one.
The next covenant we see is just a few chapters later. This is with Abram and Abraham. Now, there's kind of two here. I'm kind of rolling them together and doing a bit more on the second covenant. So this is the Abraham covenant. God has just changed his name from Abram to Abraham, from "exalted father" to "father of many." "Your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. I'll make you very fruitful. I'll make nations of you, and kings will come from you. I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you."
Now, there's another word we pick up in here. We saw it with the Noah one, too. Forever. Covenants don't seem to be like a contract that has an expiry date. This is an everlasting covenant, to go on forever. So, God's going to make Abraham into a father of many nations. So, there's a promise. Now, there's a sign of this covenant as well. There's actually something Abraham has to do.
So, first, it's always good to throw a Greek word or a Hebrew word in here somewhere. So, the Hebrew word for covenant is the word berit. Little roll in the R there. Berit. So, berit is the Hebrew word for covenant, which means a binding promise. But it's also related to the verb karat, which means to cut. When a covenant is made in ancient Hebrew, in the ancient world, you don't sign a covenant. You don't handshake a covenant. You don't agree a covenant. The verb they use when they make a new covenant is you cut a covenant. That's how it goes. Covenants are cut. And in the Genesis 15 covenant, which we skipped over a bit, it's some bodies of animals that are cut.
But in this case, this is where the guys are like, "I don't like where this is going. Can we move on here?" So, there's going to be a sign for this covenant as well. God says to Abraham, "I will make your descendants into many nations, but you guys have to do something too. You guys have to undergo a cutting, circumcision." So that's the sign of that covenant. There is a promise, but there's also an obligation on the part of humans. If you go back to the Noah covenant, it's a few verses before, God tells Noah and all living people at that point, all eight of them, "Be fruitful and multiply." They've got a job to do. "As long as you keep doing your job, I'll keep doing my job. And here's a sign." So, "I, God, will make Abraham the father of many nations, and you will undergo circumcision. And as long as you keep doing that, everything will work out. And there's your sign."
All right. Next covenant: Moses, Mount Sinai. This is Exodus 19. So if you know your Bible, Exodus 20 is the Ten Commandments. This is right before the Ten Commandments. Moses is on Mount Sinai. God is explaining lots of things to him. They've passed through the Red Sea. They've escaped Egypt. And God says, "Now, if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation."
All right? So God takes the nation of Israel and says, "I'm going to set you guys apart. I'll be your God. You'll be my people. But you also need to obey me fully." And in case they don't quite get what that means, the next several books of the Bible are about, "Here's a big list of all the laws you have to keep." But there's much more of, we see kind of the two sides here. "I will do this if you will do this." Now, there's a sign for this covenant as well. The Ten Commandments are kind of given to us as a sign. And actually, there's something cut in this as well, because the Ten Commandments are actually cut into a stone with God's finger.
So, there's a nice little table coming up here. The teacher in me just couldn't resist, but how this all kind of fits together. So, we're getting a bit more of an idea of what a covenant is. There's "I'll do this if you do this," and "Here's a sign." There's very much an if-then kind of thing going on.
Well, let's look at one more. David. This one's interesting. This passage in this translation actually doesn't use the word covenant, but it's always considered a covenant. So, Samuel 7. David has conquered all his enemies. He goes to the prophet Nathan and says, "I feel like for an encore, I should build God a temple. Like, we just have this tabernacle. I should build a temple. I want to build God a house." Nathan says, "Go for it. The Lord is with you." But then that night, God comes to Nathan and says, "Tell David this." So Nathan goes back to David the next day and says, "The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you." You want to build me a house? No, no. I'm going to build you a house, but a royal house, a royal line, a family. It's a little play on words. Even in Hebrew, this works pretty well.
"When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever." I love verse 13 in there, too, because obviously it sounds like we're talking about Solomon, right? Solomon's going to build a house for my name. Now we're not talking about Solomon anymore. The foreshadowing here: "I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever." That's talking about a different one of David's descendants. You probably know where we're going with that.
So again, we have this if-then. It's just outside this passage, but "as long as the kings of Israel, as long as David's descendants honor me, you will always sit on the throne. I will bless your family." There's an if and a then. And there's a sign, which usually the sign is the temple. So, we have this if-then thing. I think we're kind of getting an idea of how covenants work. There's a promise made by God. He's going to do something as long as we do something. And there's going to be an outward sign to kind of show this up.
So, what does it come to now? Let's see if we can piece this together here. All right. So, I'm going to put the rows across there. I'll give you a sec to process. I don't know if it's 100% big enough to read. So in Noah, God promises never to destroy all life. They have to be fruitful and increase. The sign is the rainbow, and something is cut. The earth was cut apart when the fountains of the great deep burst forth. Abram, we didn't really talk too much about his first covenant. It's very similar to the second one. "I'll do this as long as you do this." And there's something that is cut. Moses, again, there's the promise, the sign, something is cut. David, here's the promise. As long as you do this, here's the sign. What is cut? Well, the stone to make the temple. The stone the builders rejected becomes, actually, I'm getting ahead of myself. The stone to make the temple was cut.
Now, it goes a little deeper than this. I don't want to geek out about this too long, but there's a couple of things about that that are kind of cool. First of all, the covenants build on each other. Not all Christian traditions think of things in terms of covenants. There's other ways to think about the way God seems to deal with his people at different times, especially in the Old Testament. Some people talk about dispensations or other things. What's really neat about covenants is it really kind of sees that it's not like God keeps changing the rules. "Oh, well, now you've got to do this. But now you've got to do this. And actually, now you've got to do this." God just keeps building on the same thing.
And if you look at how these covenants are made: first covenant, with Noah, with all life on earth. Then we kind of narrow it down. Abraham will be the father of many nations. Then with Moses, it narrows down some more, one nation. Then with David, it narrows down again, one family. And of course, again, we probably know where this is going. It's going to narrow down into one person from that family. So you can see how the new covenant that we're going to talk about in the New Testament is actually, it's not like changing the channel from the other ones. It's fulfilling all these other ones. It's continuing all these other ones that have been there.
So what's the definition of a covenant, then? Well, it looks like a covenant, this is kind of cool, I got this from bibleproject.org, is a relationship between two partners. It's not just signing a paper. You're actually establishing a relationship. Our dealing with God is a relationship. We make binding promises to each other. They're often accompanied by oaths, signs and ceremonies. There's obligations and commitments. One side's going to do this, the other side's going to do this. And they're different from a contract because they're personal. It's actually established between people, or in this case between God and people. So that's what we're talking about with a covenant.
Let's see now what happens when we get to the new covenant in the New Testament. Oh, we already talked about that. Okay, the new covenant. Now, many years ago, ten years ago I guess now, when I was working at Immanuel Christian School, I had only been on the job for about a month, and there was a guy who came down from Ontario named Ray Hendris. He was from the sort of school association, and he was one of the guys that would come down and be kind of a consultant or a troubleshooter. He liked to visit schools and help people out and say, "You guys are doing this well. You could work on this part here."
And so at one point we're sitting in my office, and I had moved in and thought I'd get the office organized at some point, and then people started coming by and I never really got a chance. So, I put up a few posters, just what I had from my classroom at school. But it was mostly a few maps of PEI and a couple of posters like that. And I kept thinking I'd get around to doing a proper job with the office, and I was always busy. So, we're sitting in my office, and Ray says, "You know, something that I'm noticing here: I look around your office and I see that you love PEI. I'd like to be able to look at your office walls and see that you love Jesus."
And my first thought was, "Oh, yeah. Yeah, I should definitely get some Christian stuff on the walls here." My second thought, the follow-up after that, was, "Oh, no. I don't love Jesus." I mean, it's not like I hate Jesus. It's not like I'm not a Christian. But I don't really love Jesus, not anywhere close to the way he loves me, not anywhere close to how much I should. I mean, I mostly love myself, I guess. Yeah. And it was really striking at the time: yeah, I don't love Jesus anywhere near what I could be. That's why it's all the more good that Jesus loves me, because his love is a whole lot bigger than mine.
And if you're sitting there thinking, "Wow, guy who's preaching doesn't love Jesus," well, you don't love Jesus either, not anywhere near what we could or should. We're not here calling on God our Father and Jesus our brother because we're so good and we love Jesus a lot and we deserve to be here. Jesus loves us. So that kind of stuck with me. I'm so glad that Jesus loves me.
Hebrews 9:15 defines for us a new covenant. "For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance, now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant." There's a lot in there. Let's look at that again. I'll highlight a couple of words in here, and we'll unpack this a bit, because this explains what this new covenant is. I think you can see the bold there. Christ is the mediator of a new covenant. Those who are called: we have been called into this new covenant. It's not something that we just decide to choose for ourselves because we're so smart or we're so spiritual. We are called into this new covenant.
We see that also with the covenants of the Old Testament as well. People didn't go seek out God. God came to people and said, "I want to make a covenant with you." And what does the covenant involve? A promised eternal inheritance. We are with Jesus. We are with the Father forever. And also, we are set free from our sins. Well, that sounds pretty good. And you're waiting: what is the catch here? Because with all these covenants, there's always "God will do this," and this sounds like the biggest one yet. Eternal inheritance, free from all our sins. I wonder what we're going to have to do as our part.
So, if we look at this table, we can add another row here at the bottom. So now we've got, from Hebrews 9, God makes this covenant with everyone. And what does God say? We will all know him. We'll have an eternal inheritance. He'll forgive all our sins. There's a blank there. Then the sign, of course, is the cross. And what is cut this time is Jesus' flesh, his back torn open by the Roman whips. And by his stripes we are healed.
And the cool thing about this covenant is that little bottom box there in the middle. What do we have to do? Well, what does it say back here? What's our job? "If only you guys will," right? Nothing. There's nothing we have to do. This is offered to us as a free gift. This is what makes the new covenant so amazing. It's not, "If you keep going to church every Sunday, I'll do all these things for you. If you make sure that you pray all the time, if you make sure that you live a sinless life, if you honor me by following all these laws." There's actually nothing. This covenant breaks those. In some ways, it continues all the other ones. It follows all of the patterns. And again, we start with all life, work our way down to one specific person, Jesus, and now we're back out to all humanity again. Through Jesus' death, the whole of humanity gets access to the rewards of this covenant. But there's not actually anything we have to do, other than, well, there's one little tiny thing we'll get to in just a sec.
You guys remember Pastor Don Dreer? I think I might have misspelled his name. Is there two A's in Dreer? Anyway, the slideshow was already in. Pastor Don Dreer was here a few years ago, and I remember in one of his sermons he said, if you're sharing the gospel with someone and they don't end up with the impression that there's absolutely nothing to do to become a Christian, if they don't get the impression that Christianity is way too easy, if they don't have that impression, you haven't really explained the gospel. If they don't think, "This is too simple, this is too easy, I could just become a, like, there's nothing I need to do?" That's right. If they haven't really got that idea, then that's not really the gospel.
So, what was that song by Gene MacLellan? Has anybody figured it out? Even bigger than Snowbird, even bigger than The Hockey Song. There we go. I heard people. "Put your hand in the hand of the man who stilled the water." Elvis covered it. I didn't know Bing Crosby covered that, or that it charted in Australia. "Put your hand in the hand of the man who calmed the sea. Take a look at yourself and you can look at others differently by putting your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee." Apparently he wrote that in 20 minutes while he was walking on the beach on PEI, which is pretty cool.
What is our part in this new covenant? Jesus offers us his hand and says, "I will give you eternity with me." And by the way, let's not miss the other part, too. Sometimes we focus on eternity and think, "I want to become a Christian so I can go to heaven. Okay, I'm just kind of waiting until I go to heaven." He also promises to walk with us every second of our lives here. That's what I find really cool about the hand part. He wants to take our hand and walk with us every day, to take all of our sins and also to share eternity with us. And what do we have to do? There is one little tiny thing you have to do. When Jesus holds out his hand like that, you just have to reach up and take it. So if you just reach out and take that hand, Jesus has got you, and he's never going to let go. It's really just a matter of saying, "Okay. Okay, these promises are for me. Okay, I'll take that."
John chapter 1. John the Baptist, John the Dipper, do you remember that? John the Baptist is dipping people in the River Jordan, and he sees his cousin Jesus coming along and looks up, and the first thing out of his mouth is, "Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world." Notice the word takes. He doesn't say, "Oh, look, it's the Lamb of God, who will trade you for the sin of the world. He will buy your sin as long as you give him the right kind of thing. He'll bargain with you. He'll sign a contract." No, he just takes it.
And the other part about taking is not just that your sin is gone, don't worry. It's like he doesn't really ask you all that much if you want to do it. He walks by the Sea of Galilee and sees Peter and Andrew drying their nets and says, "Follow me." It doesn't really sound like it's a question. "Come on, guys." He meets Paul on the road to Damascus and says, "Stop." He doesn't sort of stand there and say, "Hey, Paul, if anybody's interested, you know," like the sign, "corn maze, $5." No, he just says stop. He just takes. He just takes it, and it's gone.
So, what about that? I think quite a few of us here today know what that feeling is, to have Jesus holding on to our hand. It's almost like holding on to the hand of a child or a grandchild. So kids, you think about this again. Have you ever walked somewhere with your parents, and your parents were holding your hand, and you saw something else cool that you really wanted to go check out? A butterfly on the other side of the road, I don't know, something. And you went to pull loose and just go over and see it. Did it work? Maybe your parents had such a good grip on your hand. You tried to pull away and cross the road, but they knew there was a car coming. And it's not really that you were holding on to your parents' hand really hard. They had a really good grip on yours. That's what we're talking about with Jesus' hand there.
So, his hand is open. And a lot of us look at that and say, "Yeah, you know, I don't always feel it, but that's not because he's let go. That's just me. We know he hasn't let go." But some of us are like, "I don't know. I never really thought of it that way. I don't know if I've ever really said, 'Okay.'" And so, I'd like you to think about that, too. It really is just that easy. People, I think, in society think Christianity is a religion with a lot of rules, and sometimes it comes off that way. But really, it's the religion with zero rules whatsoever. You just have to say, "Okay."
And that's the beautiful way of thinking about a covenant. God makes this covenant where we don't have to do, I mean, we can't do anything even if we try. We can't earn our way into this. There's no way we can be on that level. So we just do nothing. By the way, I'll leave that thought with you. Have you said okay? Have you taken his hand? If not, pray that you would be listening to what he's saying. And if you've got that song in your head now for the rest of the day, "Put your hand in the hand," there's a lot worse things, I think, that could be in your head.
All right, let's pray. Lord, I thank you for making a covenant with us, with the whole world, for not piling on obligations and rules and debts. You just come and take our sin away and hold our hand. Lord, I pray as we go forward that we would appreciate your strong hand holding us, that we would desire to continually be more and more aware of how much you are holding us. And Lord, for those of us that aren't sure about having said okay, that really don't know if you're holding their hand, I pray for your Spirit to come in and just speak powerfully there. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen.