The Cost of the Covenant (New Beginnings UMC)

Anybody here like professional wrestling?

Anybody. Anybody.

I used to love it. I haven't really watched it for

years. When I was in junior high and

high school, I loved it. Hulk Hogan, you know, Hacksaw

Jim Duggan, Randy the Macho Man, Savage, the the Andre the Giant,

That crowd, the old days. It's simple, right?

Professional wrestling. Not easy to do by any stretch of

the imagination. A friend of mine was a a pro

wrestler, never reached the big time, but it's it's not easy to

do, but it's simple that just be the last man standing and you

win, whether that's one-on-one, whether it's tag team, whether

it's cage match, just the goal is to be the last man standing.

It's not how things worked for Abram and Sarai, and we're going

to talk about that today. But before that, my friend

Squeak is is facing a dilemma and he texted me about it and I

was hoping the kids might be able to help Squeak sort out his

dilemma. So if if the kids would like to

come up and sit in the front for this, you want to knock on

Squeak's door because we need someone to knock on Squeak's

door. Come on up, come on up, and you

can knock on Squeak's door here and wait till everyone gets up

here though. Oh, you have some furry little

animals as well, so OK, go go ahead.

Hey, yeah, hello. How are you guys this morning?

How are? You.

Guys, you doing all right? You got friends there?

Is that octopus real? Because I think octopus is elite

mice and the turtle will too. Lobsters.

I don't know. I eat lobster so.

Maybe watch out so. All right, Squeak, I know you

didn't come here to talk about them.

Squeak has a problem. Yes I do and did.

Did you get my? Text.

Yep, I got your text. So.

So could you tell the kids in general what the problem is

before we get to your text? Yeah, so I I starting at a new

school next week and I don't know anybody and I'm trying to

figure out the best way to make friends and I'm scared about it

and that's sure what to do. And so I suggested that Squeak

text me some of his ideas for good ways to make friends, and

then we could talk about it. So I got Squeak's text.

OK, first thing, Squeak says. I've saved a lot of money, and I

have enough money to pay one kid $20 a week to be my friend, or 4

kids $5 a week to be my friend. Really.

Squeaky. Yeah, I have.

I've been working hard all summer.

What do you think? Is that a good plan?

No. Well, you got to save up for

your Xboxes and stuff. Well, but I want to have a

friend. I want to have a friend because

you can play Xbox with me. Is.

Is that? What's that?

Be nice, but it'd be kind. What if you run out of

batteries? Be nice batteries.

With your controller. Be nice and be kind and don't

steal. Those are good plans.

Other other ideas. So no, right now I we're not

going to worry about the Xbox. We're going to worry about the

friends right now. So let me let me that's that's

AI think that I think Aiden might be on to some.

Let's check squeaks. Second thing, you said that you

would agree to do homework for any kid that would do your be

your friend, is that right? Yeah, I'm pretty good at school,

work, and I figure if I do their homework for them, they'll be my

friend. What do you think about that

one? No got.

To get to know people get get, get to know people, that's

that's kind of hard. How do I get to know people?

Well, I. Made a friend on the very first

place he he did have another thing on he did have another

thing squeak that that might might help you get to know

people. Maybe.

I guess you said you would clean the room and mow the lawn of

anyone who would be your friend so they wouldn't have to do it.

Is that your? Yeah, I like mowing lawns and I

don't like cleaning, but I figure if I go to someone's

house and clean their room and mow their lawn, I'll get to know

them a little bit and then you'll be my friend.

What do you think? Yeah.

No, No. What do you think?

No. All right.

We need some more ideas for Squeak here.

Be nice, be kind. Don't steal.

Get to know people. How do you get How can Squeak

get to know people? Show them your pets.

Do you have do you have pets? Toys you can bring and and show

them. Well, yeah, I I got some of

that. I could do some of that.

What? What else could he do to make

some friends? Be nice, be gentle?

OK, play with someone the first time they ask.

That's a really good. Idea.

What's that? I think that's a great idea,

Squeak. Look out for someone and see if

they're alone and then you could be their friend.

I think, I think I can do that. It's kind of scary though,

talking to a new person when you don't know him.

Pray to pray to God. Did you think about God and all

this? Yeah, I did think about God.

I was going to give him some money to be my friend too.

No, I don't think that's what Aiden meant.

That's not what you meant, was it, Aiden?

No, no. What did you mean?

Just pray. Talk to God.

Just pray. You don't have to pay God to

talk to him. He he will be your friend even

if you don't pay him. Oh, that's good, because I don't

think I had money to pay God and the kids to be my friend.

So, all right, Well, Squeak, I think you've got some good ideas

for how to make some friends. Do you think so?

I'll try it. It's going to be scary, so maybe

you guys can pray for me too, OK?

All right, OK, awesome. Well, let's we all pray

together. Dear God, thank you for today.

Thank you for squeaking the kids being here today and help us all

to look out for people who are alone and try to be their

friends in Jesus name, Amen. Amen.

All right, you guys can head back.

You can head back. Well done.

Papa told you you could, huh? All right, we had that issue in

my house too. Or so Amy says.

Covenants and friendship are not exactly the same, but there's a

lot of overlap because both involve relationship, both

involve connection, and there's a cost to both.

There was a cost to the covenant that Abram and God made.

There was a cost to the covenant that God made with Moses and

Abraham's descendants on Mount Sinai.

There's a cost to the covenant that God made with all of

humanity when Jesus came and lived and died and rose again.

A covenant is an agreement. Friendship involves agreement.

You might not covenants, you're usually explicit about it.

This is why we're in this relationship.

This is what I'm going to do for you.

This is what you need to do for me.

Friendships usually aren't quite like that, but it's still a

relationship. And, and, and, and covenants

sound like a contract, but they're not.

And that's where they're kind of covenant is kind of somewhere

between friendship and contract because in a contract, when one

party breaks the terms of the contract, the other party is

free to break it as well. If we said, hey, we're going to

we're going to pay John $500 a week to get up here and do what

he's doing on Sunday mornings. And John said, that's great.

And then John just decided to spend the next month, you know,

traveling. We would say, well, John, you

didn't live up to your end of the bargain.

We're not paying you for that. And John would say, OK,

probably, yeah. So if you break, if one party

breaks the contract, the other party doesn't have to keep it

covenant. Much more like friendship in a

covenant. When someone side of the

covenant violates the covenant, the other side of the covenant

is still honor bound and obligated to keep the covenant.

Covenants are serious business. When you get into covenant,

you're getting into a relationship that that and

you're obligated to do certain things in that relationship.

So again, much like a friendship, but there's a cost,

there's always a cost. We're not going to talk about

there's a lot of different covenants in the Bible.

We're only going to talk about two today and we're going to

compare and contrast them. One is the covenant that God

made with Abraham and Sarah, and the other is the new covenant,

the covenant that God made with all humanity in and through

Jesus Christ. So we're going to jump in and

talk about that. This is a bit of APG 13 sermon

as well in which that if if someone doesn't know what the

word circumcision means, they might ask awkward questions

after we're done. I would advise not Googling

circumcision, just saying the cost of the covenant with Abram

was circumcision circumcision and there's a lot of aspects to

that kind of cost. First of all, it was a bodily

cost. This wasn't something you could

buy your way out of if now, if you're Abraham or one of his

male descendants, there's no gift you can make, there's no

active service that you can do. There's nothing you can do to

substitute for circumcision to buy your way out of it.

The cost is a bodily cost and it's a bloody cost.

There's no way to participate in circumcision without blood.

It's a bodily cost, it's a bloody cost, and it's a

permanent and ongoing cost. Once you pay that cost, that

cost is paid. You don't have to keep paying it

and you can't undo it. It is a reality for you for the

rest of your life. And it's a new identity.

There is a new identity going on here.

And, and we see that very literally in Abraham and Sarah,

who went from being Abram and Sarah to Abraham and Sarah at

this very moment when this covenant is is solemnized by God

and Abraham with this act of circumcision.

God had made these promises before.

Now it's formal. Now it's official.

Now the covenant has been signed, if you'll pardon the

expression. Now there's skin in the game.

Thank you. That there is.

It is made official in this act, and at this time God gives

Abraham, Abram, and Sarai new names and new identities.

Abram meant honored father. Abraham means father of nations.

His identity is expanded. It's great to be an honored

father, but in a social scale it's a very small thing.

The Father of Nations is a very large and broad thing with an

extended impact over many people and many generations and many

times and places. Sarai meant my Princess.

Sarah means Princess. Before Abram could say this is

Sarai, this is my Princess. But now the possessive is gone.

Now Sarai isn't just I'm his Princess.

Sarah is a Princess, and from from her will come Princess and

princesses and kings, Queens, rulers.

She will be the mother of rulers, as Abraham is the father

of nations. Her identity is expanded, her

impact, her place in the world is expanded as part of this

covenant of circumcision. Finally, well, almost finally,

this cost could only be paid by men.

There was an exclusivity to this covenant, to the covenant that

God made with Abraham. Abraham paid it.

Ishmael paid it. Isaac paid it.

Later, every male person in Abraham's household paid it.

And so have people, Abraham's descendants for generations, for

millennia, Jewish people still practicing circumcision as part

of their covenant with God. But only the men can pay it,

which means in a very real sense, only the men can fully

participate within the covenant. Only they have full

participation. The final thing then is that

with circumcision, with this, with the covenant, with the in

God's covenant with Abraham, the cost of the covenant,

circumcision was also the sign of the covenant.

Circumcision was the sign of the covenant.

It was a bodily, permanent indication that this person

belongs to God and those in their household belong to God.

The sign and the cost were the same.

Now let's take a look at the New covenant, the covenant that God

offers to all humanity in and through Jesus Christ.

We're going to compare and contrast.

The cost of the New covenant was and is death.

Specifically the death of Jesus, God himself in the flesh, God's

own Son in the flesh. This was also a bodily cost.

There was no gift that Jesus can make, no active service that he

could perform, no no work that he could do that would allow him

to sidestep this cost. For this new covenant to be, he

had to offer his life as sacrifice in death, and he did.

It was a bodily cost, and it was a bloody cost, far more bloody

than circumcision. His body poured blood when he

was beaten with the whip and lashed however many times.

When they put the crown of thorns on his head and beat it

into his head with sticks, when they nailed him to a cross, when

they stabbed him in the side with the spear, Jesus's blood

flowed. It was a bloody cost that Jesus

paid for this covenant, and it was a permanent and ongoing

cost. Jesus, in his resurrected body,

still bears the scars of his crucifixion.

His body is marked permanently and forever with the cost that

he has paid. And this is kind of a that part

is clearly explicitly stated in the Bible.

This is kind of a sciency thing that's not really explicitly

stated in the Bible, but I think makes sense.

And I think is is a powerful thing in and of itself that

Jesus as God is not bound by space and time.

He is eternal and that doesn't just mean living forever.

That means that he isn't bound by space and time.

We do see that after the resurrection where at one point

in the Gospel of Luke he's in in the city of Emmaus, and then the

next moment he's in the city of Jerusalem without intervening,

time passing. And he's not just in the city of

Jerusalem, he's inside a locked room without any doors and

windows being opened. Jesus is not bound by time and

space, which means, as Jesus is eternal, that in a very real

sense, Jesus always has been, always will be, and always is

being crucified. That is a present reality for

him as someone who was not bound by time and space, A permanent

and ongoing cost that Jesus pays so that we might enjoy the

benefits of the new covenant. And we'll see what those are in

just a moment. For Jesus, this wasn't a new

identity. Jesus as God always has been and

always will be, but it was a confirmed identity.

It was in Jesus's dying on the cross that the Pagan Roman

centurion, the soldier who may have known nothing about Jesus

other than this, is one of the guys you have to crucify today.

When he saw Jesus die on the cross, when the sky went dark,

when the earth shook, when the curtain of the temple was torn

from top to bottom in Jesus's death, the centurion looked at

Jesus and said, surely this man is the Son of God.

Notice this the way the Pharisees, his enemies, taunted

him. Prove to us you're the Son of

God by getting down from the cross.

That's not what proved Jesus was the Son of God to that

centurion. It wasn't getting down from the

cross. Devil's temptation to Jesus was

use your power to destroy your enemies.

That isn't what Jesus did that confirmed he was the Son of God.

It was not being the last man standing that confirmed he was

the son of God. It was the manner in which he

died with grace and love and mercy and forgiveness on his

lips in his death, even for the very people who were crucifying

him. And the centurion said, surely

this man is the Son of God for his disciples.

It was the resurrection that led him them to say, surely this man

is the Son of God, a confirmed identity.

This price could only be paid by Jesus, no one else.

No one else could do this but Jesus to make a way for this new

covenant. And what is the covenant?

The covenant is this God promises.

I will be your God and you will be my people.

And I will undo the curse, the poison of eating the tree of the

fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

I will undo all of that and instead give you the fruit of

the tree of life to eat, and you will have life forever with me

and my Kingdom. You will be my people.

I will be your God forever and ever and ever in a Kingdom and

which love and mercy and compassion rather than power,

wealth and exploitation are the rules and the ethics by which

everyone lives. This is the promise.

This is the covenant, and the cost of that covenant was and is

Jesus's death. The sign, one of the signs of

that covenant is the cross sign that we keep always before us in

our worship and and ever present in our minds and in our hearts

as we are following Him. The sign of this covenant is the

cross now. All of that is absolutely true,

and there is nothing we can do or have done to earn what Jesus

did for us at the same time. And equally true is in this new

covenant. Just as there was a cost for

Abraham and every male descendant of his, the new

covenant, there is a cost to us, and it's similar to Jesus's

cost, except it's not our death, it's our life.

It's our life, our living. CS Lewis put it this way, said a

lot of people come to Jesus and it's like they're hiring a

contractor to remodel their house and they say to the

contractor, look, this room needs cleaned out, that room

needs cleaned out, this room needs remodeled, that room needs

cleaned out and remodeled. But everything else is good.

We're just leaving with that. And God comes in and says, Nope,

I want the whole thing down. We're starting over.

There is a cost to following Jesus, and that cost is a bodily

cost. How and what we do with our

bodies. Because in this covenant, we're

we belong to Jesus. We're his younger siblings.

God is our Father. That means we are under their

protection and we are under their authority.

And when they say go, we go. When they say stay, we stay.

When they say be still, we're still.

When they say get busy, we get busy.

When they say talk, we talk. When they say shut up, which is

the one I hear pretty regularly, Blevins, stop talking.

Just stop. We need to stop talking.

This is the cost of the covenant.

It's a bodily cost. What we do with our bodies now

was not a matter of our decision, but God's.

And it's a bloody cost. Not for everyone, a literal

bloody cost. But I believe every faithful

follower of Jesus and every time and every age will bear scars

into eternity of their following of Jesus.

The scars that they received as they loved, as they served, as

they obeyed in Jesus name, some of those scars will be on our

bodies. Amy Carmichael is a is a

missionary that I admire. I reference a lot.

She was an Irish missionary to India and and she did her work

at great sacrifice. She she fully embedded herself

in the culture in which she lived.

She wanted to live as much of an indigenous life as was possible,

and her work was rescuing girls from sexual exploitation and she

rescued many and gave them education and gave them homes

and gave them positions where they could live free and

fulfilling lives rather than being used as sex slaves.

And she measured, she said. Describe faithfulness like this,

she said. Can anyone claim to have

followed Jesus if they have no scars?

If she said how? If you have no scars on your

hands or feet, how can you have followed far?

And they're not always visible scars.

They're not always physical stars.

Sometimes there's scars on our hearts, sometimes on our mind,

sometimes on our emotions, sometimes on our bodies of

following Jesus, of loving like Jesus did, of serving like Jesus

did, of taking up our cross like Jesus took up his.

The cost to us was and is a bloody cost, and it's a

permanent and ongoing cost. You don't get to retire from

following Jesus. People can leave, you can quit,

but there's no retirement. Amy's so looking forward to

retiring. So looking forward to retiring.

You can retire from Nestle, but but as long as you're a follower

of Jesus, you're a follower of Jesus.

And there's no retire, even death.

I really don't. I do not believe heaven in the

Kingdom of God and life after death is an eternal vacation

where we're all just playing golf or knitting or doing

whatever we enjoy doing that there will be work to do for the

Kingdom and the Kingdom then as now, it's a permanent and

ongoing cost. And for us it is a new identity.

All those names that people have put on you, all the things

you've been called, all the labels that have been smacked

upon you or or have been, you know, wormed their way into your

mind or your heart, all of those go away.

And Jesus said, no one gets to define you but me.

I made you. I designed you.

I know who you are and what your true purpose is.

I will give you your identity. And none of those names that

folks have called you get to stick.

We have a new identity in Jesus. And the thing about this cost is

it can only be paid by you. Someone said, I don't know who

it was. I think it's good.

I repeat it. God doesn't have grandkids.

No one is a follower of Jesus. No one's a participant in this

new covenant just because their parents were Parents can be a

great influence, but everyone has to choose for themselves.

Everyone has to decide for themselves whether they will

participate in this new covenant or not, whether they're willing

to pay this cost to have the whole house down, to live with

this costly kind of grace. It can only be paid by you.

I can't pay it. I can't pay it for my kids.

I can't pay it for my wife. I can't pay it for my parents.

None of them can pay it for me. We all have to decide.

And here's the thing. The other sign of this new

covenant is baptism. The cross and baptism are the

signs of this new covenant. And anybody can go in the waters

of baptism. Anybody can take up their cross

and follow Jesus. Doesn't matter whether you're

male or female, doesn't matter whether you're black or white,

whatever your race is, whatever your national origins are,

whatever your language is, whatever your orientation is,

whatever your identity is. What are all of these things?

Whether you're rich, whether you're poor, whether you're

talented, whether you're, you're, you're smart, whether

you're, you know, academically gifted, all of these things or

not, anyone can go into the waters of baptism.

And if you're being immersed, you're being, you're reenacting

the death and resurrection of Jesus as you go down into the

water like he went into the grave and come back up like he

rose to new life. Or whether you're sprinkled and

poured. It's like the the, the, the, the

Israelites putting the blood on their doorposts And when the

Angel of death passed over and he saw that sign, that mark,

that blood for us, that water and says this one belongs to

God. Death won't touch this one.

This one belongs to God. Whether it's simply that

beautiful imagery of being washed clean inside and out and

made whole the new anyone can participate in this covenant if

they're willing to pay the cost. And the cost is our lives.

It's not a it's not cheap grace. It's not saying a prayer like

it's an incantation and then getting a get out of hell free

card and going about our business as usual.

It is our lives belonging to Jesus and following him

faithfully wherever he lives leads the cost of the covenant

Abraham. Abraham was not intent on being

the last man standing. That is not the posture of this

covenant or participation in the Kingdom of God.

What Abram did when God showed up was Abram fell on his face.

He humbled himself and said I belong to you.

And God said that's good. I'll be your God, you be my

people. In Jesus name we can do the

same. Amen.

Amen.