Introduction
It’s New Year and the same companies that encouraged self-indulgence before Christmas now want us to make New Year Resolutions. So Boots, who told us Christmas was all about making ourselves look gorgeous, have now re-launched their ‘Change One Thing’ campaign. Knowing that sixty per cent of those who make resolutions break them within a fortnight because their targets are too ambitious or too complicated, Change One Thing encourages a simple and manageable improvement to people’s lives. They encourage you to ‘pledge, plan and persist’.
If we think of the Methodist Covenant Service as in any way being like a spiritual New Year’s Resolution then we may think that it calls us not to one simple and manageable target but sets the goal so high we know we are going to miss it. It’s only a matter of time.
So it would be tempting to change our Covenant Service prayer and make it the religious equivalent of Change One Thing. But we don’t. We leave the bar high. Doesn’t that make what we are going to do today a counsel of despair or an exercise in hypocrisy? Not if we look at what God promises first in his covenant with us. And for that I want to take us to the traditional reading from Jeremiah. We’ll explore the nature of God’s covenant with us. Because our covenant is but a response to all he does for us. What is in his covenant? How does it help us to make or renew our commitment to him? And in particular, how is the New Covenant better than the Old Covenant? Because one thing is for sure: Israel broke the Old Covenant much like we break New Year Resolutions. If we can see the differences we may be able to see our way forward with God in faithfulness and holiness.
1. Redemption
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord.
(verses 31-32)
The problem with the Old Covenant wasn’t with God. It was with God’s people. God didn’t break the Old Covenant. His people did. And it’s a tragedy, because of what the Old Covenant gave them. And the New Covenant cannot be inferior: it is better. It includes all the best that God gave in the Old Covenant and more.
In particular, the Old Covenant began with redemption. He ‘took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt’ (verse 32). Before anything else, God saved his people from the oppression of Egypt. The commands of his covenant were only ever given after they had been delivered. So the Ten Commandments are given at Sinai, after their salvation at the Red Sea. God’s commands are only ever to be obeyed in response to and gratitude for what he has done for us.
So even now, when God makes a New Covenant with his people, it will still at the bottom line include redemption – being set free. Whereas before it involved liberation from Egypt it would now include being set free from Babylon and in due course under Jesus Christ would involve redemption from sin.
And so that is where the New Covenant begins for us. It begins with the liberating news that Jesus Christ in his death on the Cross offers the forgiveness of sins to all who trust their lives to him. It is the good news that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. It is what Matt Redman has recently dubbed ‘Beautiful News’. He says,
We live in a culture marked by bad news. You only need flick through the news channels for a few moments to be faced with all kinds of negative or alarming news. The wonderful thing about the gospel of Jesus Christ is that it’s an altogether different kind of message. It’s ‘beautiful news’, refreshing to the soul and full hope, joy and peace.
Beautiful news – redemption – is the beginning of God’s covenant relationship with us. It is what he offers to us in Christ before we ever do anything for him. Our covenant responsibility is to respond to this love and grace with grateful hearts who love to do the will of the One who has redeemed us at immense personal cost.
The danger is in the wrong kind of response, and I can think of two. One would be just to take redemption for granted and go on living the same selfish lives. That in essence is how Israel broke the Old Covenant. It is a response that does not truly receive what God has done for us.
The other danger would be to respond but in the feeble strength of our own human efforts. And that is where we need to move from Old Covenant to New Covenant. That is where New Covenant is better than Old. So if we move on to the second and third themes of God’s work in the Covenant that I want to reflect on I hope we’ll see how it’s possible to live in response to his gracious salvation.
2. Renewal
But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
(verse 33)
The law of God within us, written on our hearts by God. What a contrast with the Old Covenant where the law of God was written externally on tablets of stone. Now the word is within. God is at work within his people. No longer is he working outside his people to bring salvation and declare his law; he is bringing his transforming power to work within his people.
And for this reason I call this aspect of the New Covenant ‘renewal’. In New Testament terms this is the work of the Holy Spirit. God not only redeems us in Christ and shows us the lifestyle that would please him as a response; he does more. His Spirit takes his word and puts it within us, making it part of us. It is no longer an external standard to be attained; it is part of what God is making us to be as he restores his image in us and makes us more like Christ.
Yes, here is the work of the Holy Spirit. That great twentieth century American saint A W Tozer used to say that the Spirit-filled life was not a deluxe form of Christianity for first-class Christian; it was the birthright of every Christian. Covenant Sunday is a day to remember that. Today is a day to say, ‘Come, Holy Spirit.’ Today is not a day to look back on past glories of previous spiritual mountain-top experiences and bask in sepia-tinted nostalgic light. Today is an occasion to take stock of where we are spiritually now. Whether we have known great past spiritual triumphs or whether we have never truly known the Spirit-filled life, on Covenant Sunday we all cry, ‘Come, Holy Spirit, fill us with your presence as the Father promises in the New Covenant. Come fill us, because without you we cannot adequately respond to God’s gracious work of salvation in Christ. Come fill us, because we long to show our gratitude for the love of God with lives overflowing with divine love.’
Some find this offensive. It may offend their pride, but that is what the Gospel does. It offends our pride. Everything we do of worth in the Christian life is given to us by God. It is not from our own hand.
Others are offended, because an earlier spiritual experience is not enough. This was the criticism brought against the nineteenth century revivalist D L Moody, when he preached once on Ephesians 5:18, which says, ‘Be filled with the Spirit.’ Moody correctly pointed out that the original Greek implies a translation of ‘Continue to be filled with the Spirit.’
One vicar objected to Moody’s teaching. ‘Why do I need to be filled with the Spirit again when I received the Holy Spirit at conversion?’ he complained.
‘Because,’ said Moody, ‘I leak.’
And we leak, too. Covenant Sunday may well be an occasion when we are conscious of the leakage, and that we have not lived up to our promises of last year. This may be at the forefront of our minds as we come in confession. But the Spirit is promised in the New Covenant. The Spirit is promised so that we can make a pleasing offering to God. So let us ask for more of the Holy Spirit with confidence that the Father will delight in our prayer and answer.
3. Relationship
No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
(verse 34)
In some Christian circles there is a lot of cheesy talk about the Gospel meaning that people can have ‘a personal relationship with Jesus Christ’. It can sound like the Beautiful News is reduced to a cosmic mateyness. But however crassly it can be presented it remains at the heart of the Gospel: the New Covenant invites us into a personal relationship with the Almighty. ‘No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord,’ says our text. All within the Covenant shall know the Lord.
What we are called into is not religion – a set of rules and rituals with a belief in the existence of God. We are called into a relationship. God is so intent on breaking down the barriers that he ‘will forgive [our] iniquity, and remember [our] sin no more.’ His Son went to the Cross that we might know him personally. He sent his Spirit so that we might live to please him and reflect Christ.
No, the New Covenant brings us into personal relationship with God where we know him. It is why each of us can approach him in prayer, thanks to the Cross. It is no longer true that prayer is the preserve of specialists. All have an audience with the King, thanks to Christ’s work. It is not simply that we talk to the Father but that he talks to us. We hear his word and respond. Preachers and Bible teachers may help in understanding that word, but there is no papacy of scholars who are the only ones truly to understand the divine message. It is open to all who put their faith in Christ and become his disciples.
How does that enable us to respond with greater fidelity to the challenges of entering into a covenant with God? Like this: it is a personal relationship because it is about love. Our response – as well as being enabled by the renewing power of the Holy Spirit – is also the response of relationship. It is the reply of love answering love.
So it isn’t the following of rules. It isn’t cold, deadly obligation. It’s an affair of the heart. A heart set free by divine redemption and renewed in the image of Christ by the Holy Spirit wants to express love, gratitude and devotion to the One who brought about redemption.
And that’s what we’re about today. What God has done in Christ is so immense, so universe-shattering that we are not interested in tired old New Year Resolutions. Our answer is the reply of Covenant to his Covenant. And he who has redeemed us makes it possible for us to do so. This is the New Covenant.
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