06-01-13TSJ Methodist Church
The Covenant Service
1. Introduction
Two young Christians once made a covenant together.
They agreed that, come what may, they would each tithe ten percent of their income every year.
They were both young and neither of them had much money.
But then they both went off to University.
One trained to become a clergyman and the other went into banking
Whilst the vicar’s salary did not go up that much over, the banker’s salary did
After ten years, he was earning £10 thousand and so tithed one thousand pounds the year.
After 12 years he earned £100 thousand and so tithed £10 thousand pounds.
However after 20 years, he earned his first million but couldn’t bring himself to write a cheque for £ 100 thousand for the church.
So he telephoned his friend who by now was a vicar and asked to see him.
Walking into the vicar’s office, the banker begged to be let out of the covenant, saying,
"This tithing business has to stop. It was fine when my tithe was one thousand pounds, but I just cannot afford a hundred thousand pounds.You’ve got to do something, Vicar!"
The vicar knelt on the floor and prayed silently for a long time.
Eventually the man said, "What are you doing? Are you praying that God will let me out of this covenant to tithe?"
"No," said the vicar. "I am praying for God to reduce your income back to the level, where one thousand pounds is your tithe!"
For many people the concept of a covenant is a foreign idea.
But to the writers of the New and the Old Testament – our Bible - it was central.
For it goes to the very heart of the Gospel
It is unfortunate that our Bibles are divided into the Old and New Testament and not into the Old and New Covenant.
Because the word “testament” nowadays is synonymous with the idea of a Will
But in Biblical thought, a testament or covenant isn’t a Will.
A covenant doesn’t kick in when you die – it kicks in now.
A biblical covenant between two parties is more like a contract today.
There are obligations for both sides to keep.
The Old Testament is full of covenants – God’s Covenant with Noah, his covenant
with Abraham, his covenant with Moses. …David to name a few.
And then you have David’s covenant with Jonathan – a covenant between two friends
You will also find covenants between kings on various matters - especially in the books of Genesis and 1 Kings
Kings in ancient times made covenants to fix their spheres of interest or terms of peace.
(p.366-7 -Dictionary of New Testament
Theology Vol 1 Colin Brown - general editor)
The relationship between the partners in a Covenant is expressed by “covenant loyalty” a term known as hesed in Hebrew.
A covenant worked by setting out the rights as well as the responsibilities for BOTH SIDES.
And a good covenant was one where both
parties were satisfied with what was agreed.
In other words a good covenant is one in which you have a win-win situation rather than a win-lose
A covenant forced on the weaker party by the stronger was rarely going to work in the long run.
Example: The closest equivalent to a covenant today is the wedding covenant, where both parties go into it willingly and understanding the rights and obligations
And it is that Covenant – the marriage Covenant that is specifically referred to in the book of Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament:
This is what Malachi says in Mal 2:13-14
13Another thing you do: You flood the Lord’s altar with tears. You weep and wail because he no longer pays attention to your offerings or accepts them with pleasure from your hands.
14 “You ask why? It is because the Lord is acting as a witness between you and the wife of your youth, because you have broken faith with her, through she is your partner, the wife of your marriage covenant” (Mal 2:13,14)
In Malachi’s time, things were not going well for the Jews because they had not only broken their Covenant with God, they had broken it with their wives as well
As their wives got older, they would take on younger trophy wives and put their first wives aside
Malachi remonstrates with them for doing that because God takes covenants very seriously
2. God’s Covenant with his people
For very early in the Bible, God makes a Covenant with his people. IT is summed up best in Ex 6:7
“I will make you as my own people and
I will be your God.”
Wonderful – but what does it mean?
The Covenant of God with his people is explained in more detail in Dt 4;13
13“He declared to you his Covenant, the Ten Commandments, which he commanded you to follow and then wrote them on two stone tablets (Dt 4:13)
In other words, our responsibilities in the Covenant with God requires us to live the way God wants us to live
As Christians, we keep the Commandments God has given us – not to earn our salvation - but because we as Christians have entered a covenant with God.
It is a covenant that we freely entered and try to keep because we love him
But there is something special about the new Covenant in Christ to which Jeremiah alluded in one of our readings today
Jeremiah prophesied:
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 (Jer 31 33)
No longer will the law of God be written on tablets of stone as it was in Moses day but on God’s people hearts!
In the New Testament, we are reminded of God’s Covenant with us by the bread and the wine in Holy Communion, each week.
In it we are reminded that Jesus died on the Cross to take away our sins - but so often we forget that we have obligations too.
We have the right to be called Sons and Daughters of God – but we have the responsibility to live as Sons and Daughters of God too.
To follow Christ’s teachings in our lives
Interestingly, the New Testament describes the Church as the Bride of Christ again alluding to the Wedding Covenant
I came across this interesting story:
Story; In the first century, when a young Jewish man reached marrying age, his family selected an appropriate wife for him.
The young man and his father would then go and meet the young woman and her father to negotiate the “bride price,” the figurative cost of replacing a daughter.
The price was usually very high.
With negotiations complete, the custom was for the young man’s father to pour a cup of wine and hand it to his son.
His son would turn to the young woman, lift the cup and hold it out to her, saying,
“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?”
The young woman had a choice.
She could take the cup and return it and say no.
Or she could answer without saying a word—by drinking the cup, her way of saying, “I accept your offer, and I give you my life in response.”
It gives a fresh meaning to the Cup in our Communion services doesn’t it?
Our covenant service reminds us that we as Christians have done a deal with God to be followers of Jesus
Not my will but yours be done – as Jesus said in the Garden of Gethsemane.
St Paul put it like this in Romans 12:1,2
1 Therefore I urge you brothers, in view of God’s mercy to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God- this is your spiritual act of worship. 2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is- his good pleasing and perfect will (Rom 12:1,2)
The first followers of Christ – the Early Church were a changed people.
Look at what Luke in Acts 2:42-47 records:
42They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.
And within 300 years from this small beginning, the followers of Jesus Christ had turned the world upside down.
They understood the Covenant relationship they had with God.
Despite my great respect for Simon and Garfunkel – I have to disagree with their lyrics in the song : I am a Rock when they said
“A winter’s day
In a deep and dark December
I am alone
Gazing from my window to the streets below
On a freshly fallen silent shroud of snow
I am a rock, I am an island
I’ve built walls
A fortress deep and mighty
That none may penetrate
I have no need of friendship
Friendship causes pain
It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain
I am a rock, I am an island”
But the reality is – we are not alone
An African answer to the question: “Who am I?” is this “I am because you are.”
Jomo Kenyatta, Kenya’s first president said
“Nobody is an isolated individual; he is first and foremost several people’s relative and several people’s contemporary.”
And as Christians when we interact with those around us - we can make a real difference
I would like to conclude this morning by reading
you an article –from the Sunday Times dated 27th December 2008 written by Matthew Parris, who by his own admission is an atheist.:
December 27, 2008
As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God
Missionaries, not aid money, are the solution to Africa’s biggest problem - the crushing passivity of the people’s mindset - Matthew Parris
Before Christmas I returned, after 45 years, to the country that as a boy I knew as Nyasaland.
Today it’s Malawi, and The Times Christmas Appeal includes a small British charity working there.
Pump Aid helps rural communities to install a simple pump, letting people keep their village wells sealed and clean.
I went to see this work.
It inspired me, renewing my flagging faith in development charities.
But travelling in Malawi refreshed another belief, too: one I’ve been trying to banish all my life, but an observation I’ve been unable to avoid since my African childhood.
It confounds my ideological beliefs, stubbornly refuses to fit my world view, and has embarrassed my growing belief that there is no God.
Now a confirmed atheist, I’ve become convinced of the enormous contribution that Christian evangelism makes in Africa: sharply distinct from the work of secular NGOs, government projects and international aid efforts.
These alone will not do. Education and training alone will not do.
In Africa Christianity changes people’s hearts.
It brings a spiritual transformation. The rebirth is real. The change is good.
I used to avoid this truth by applauding - as you can - the practical work of mission churches in Africa.
It’s a pity, I would say, that salvation is part of the package, but Christians black and white, working in Africa, do heal the sick, do teach people to read and write; and only the severest kind of secularist could see a mission hospital or school and say the world would be better without it.
I would allow that if faith was needed to motivate missionaries to help, then, fine: but what counted was the help, not the faith.
But this doesn’t fit the facts.
Faith does more than support the missionary; it is also transferred to his flock.
This is the effect that matters so immensely, and which I cannot help observing.
First, then, the observation.
We had friends who were missionaries, and as a child I stayed often with them; I also stayed, alone with my little brother, in a traditional rural African village.
In the city we had working for us Africans who had converted and were strong believers.
The Christians were always different.
Far from having cowed or confined its converts, their faith appeared to have liberated and relaxed them.
There was a liveliness, a curiosity, an engagement with the world - a directness in their dealings with others - that seemed to be missing in traditional African life.
They stood tall.
At 24, travelling by land across the continent reinforced this impression.
From Algiers to Niger, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Central African Republic, then right through the Congo to Rwanda, Tanzania and Kenya, four student friends and I drove our old Land Rover to Nairobi.
We slept under the stars, so it was important as we reached the more populated and lawless parts of the sub-Sahara that every day we find somewhere safe by nightfall. Often near a mission.
Whenever we entered a territory worked by missionaries, we had to acknowledge that something changed in the faces of the people we passed and spoke to: something in their eyes, the way they approached you direct, man-to-man, without looking down or away.
They had not become more deferential towards strangers - in some ways less so - but more open.
This time in Malawi it was the same.
I met no missionaries.
You do not encounter missionaries in the lobbies of expensive hotels discussing development strategy documents, as you do with the big NGOs.
But instead I noticed that a handful of the most impressive African members of the Pump Aid team (largely from Zimbabwe) were, privately, strong Christians.
“Privately” because the charity is entirely secular and I never heard any of its team so much as mention religion while working in the villages.
But I picked up the Christian references in our conversations.
One, I saw, was studying a devotional textbook in the car. One, on Sunday, went off to church at dawn for a two-hour service.
It would suit me to believe that their honesty, diligence and optimism in their work was unconnected with personal faith.
Their work was secular, but surely affected by what they were.
What they were was, in turn, influenced by a conception of man’s place in the Universe that Christianity had taught.
Parris then goes on to describe the present “laissez-faire” attitude that the Africans have – and their tribal mindset
He goes on to conclude by saying this:
“Christianity, post-Reformation and post-Luther, with its teaching of a direct, personal, two-way link between the individual and God, unmediated by the collective, and unsubordinate to any other human being, smashes straight through the philosphical/spiritual framework I’ve just
described.
It offers something to hold on to to those anxious to cast off a crushing tribal group think. That is why and how it liberates.
Those who want Africa to walk tall amid 21st-century global competition must not kid themselves that providing the material means or even the knowhow that accompanies what we call development will make the change. A whole belief system must first be supplanted.
And I’m afraid it has to be supplanted by another. Removing Christian evangelism from the African equation may leave the continent at the mercy of a malign fusion of Nike, the witch doctor, the mobile phone and the machete.
(http://old.richarddawkins.net/articles/3502-matthew-parris-as-an-atheist-i-truly-believe-africa-needs-god)
End of quote
Conclusion
If this can be true about African Christians – then why isn’t it true about Western Christians?
Can it be perhaps that the African Christians take the covenant with God a bit more seriously than we IN the West do?
If we want to see people come to know the Lord, then we need to take our commitment to the
New Covenant in Christ seriously.
And it may cost us. If we allow him to do so, God will change us.
He may challenge us – and I speak not just to you but to me also - to leave our comfort zones
He may give us new gifts for service
Moses was 80 when God called him to lead the children of Israel out of Egypt.
Samuel was a small boy when God called him into ministry
What made these people stand out from their contemporaries was that when God called them they took it seriously.
If we are going to see the power of the Holy Spirit move among the folk of our villages, it has to start with us!
That is what the Covenant that God has with His chosen people!
