The Cost of the Covenant (Rock Springs UMC)

OK, before I get started in preaching today, I want to give

a heads up. So occasionally when I preach, I

preach what I think of as APG 13 sermon and next week's sermon is

APG 13 sermon. I'm not getting graphic about

anything. I'm just dealing with topics

that that really young children might have questions about, want

to give you a heads up that they might ask questions afterwards.

If you want more details, then then I'm, I'm happy to give that

to you to you later, but I just want to, you know, reach out to

me, but I just want to give you a heads up about that.

So, so we are at the point next week and, and working our way

through Genesis where we get to God's destruction of Sodom and

Gomorrah. And so I'm going to preach about

that two Sundays and next week is the the focus and the theme

is on the sin of Sodom. Why did God destroy Sodom and

Gomorrah? And the answer to that question

is probably different than you think it is.

The Bible gives very, very clear and explicit answer to that

question. Why God destroyed God out of

God's own mouth. This is why I destroyed Sodom.

It's probably not why you think and but because of the nature of

what was happening, the nature of the story in that chapter in

Genesis about the destruction of Sodom, Gomorrah.

I'm going to be talking about some themes that are are

certainly a little more mature, matures.

I don't know if that's the right, I don't know.

I don't like any of the language associated with how we talk

about this kind of stuff. But but but PG13.

So I'll just stick with that. Just want to give a heads up to

everybody. I, you know, I said that this

morning at Chester and, and Steven said, well, should we put

that on the church sign? And I said, well, yeah, that

might draw a few folks in if we put it on the church sign.

If that works, I'll, I can preach an R rated certain.

I'm not going to preach an R rated sermon, but just so we

know. But I do want to give people a

heads up because I, I never want to surprise parents and

children. If you want more details, more

information, give me a call, shoot me a text or a message and

I'll give you more specifics. But I don't have time to get

into the specifics this morning. Calls, the specifics on that

I'll get into next Sunday morning.

This week we are, oh, I forgot to pray.

Oh my goodness, I'm all discombobulated.

I was so not wanting to forget my announcement that I forgot to

pray. Let's pray.

God, thank you so much for today.

Thank you for your goodness and for your grace.

Thank you for your mercies and your compassion.

Lord, we pray for families that are are struggling with the loss

of one that they love, whether it's a children or a parent or a

sister or brother or friend. We just, we just pray your grace

on those families struggling through grief and, and death.

And Lord, we know that our hope is in your resurrection, but we

also know that it still hurts to lose someone we love.

We thank you for the hope that we have though we pray for those

families and, and individuals facing illness and surgery and

those kinds of things. Give them grace and courage.

Give skill and wisdom to doctors and nurses and technicians that

are caring for them and operating on them.

And, and Lord, bring the healing that only you can bring through

the work of of our healthcare professionals, which you have

provided. And we thank you for that.

We thank you, Lord, for another week of school and, and the

learning that happens and the teachers that teach and the

administrators and aides and all of the folks, lunch people and,

and custodians, everyone who makes those schools possible.

And we pray your grace upon them and keep the school safe and the

children and staff safe while they're there.

And we thank you, Father, for the joy of gathering with family

and friends and, and for the the fun things we get to do, whether

it's football or, or volleyball or cheer or basketball or

soccer, whatever those band, those fun things we do.

I thank you for the parents and grandparents that take their

kids to, to do those fun things. And I thank you for the kids

that are doing them and the teachers and coaches and that

are leading them and with a joy that all of that brings.

And we thank you for all of this, knowing that all of these

good things ultimately come from you.

And we pray all of this in Jesus name, and we pray together as He

taught us when we pray. O Great Spirit, our Father from

above, we honor your name as sacred and holy.

Bring your good road to us, where the beauty of your ways in

the spirit world above is reflected in the earth below.

Provide for us day by day, the elk, the Buffalo and the salmon,

the corn, the squash and the wild rice, all the things we

need for each day. Release us from the things we

have done wrong in the same way we release others for the things

done wrong to us. Guide us away from the things

that tempt us to stray from your good road and set us free from

the evil 1 and his worthless ways.

A ho May it be so. All right, now we can get here.

I got to get my notes out today. This is a day I can leave them

sit here for the moment. Our Scripture reading today is

selected verses from Genesis chapter 17.

Genesis 17 · chapter mention

And this passage is the passage where God formalizes His

covenant with Abram and Sarai. And we're going to read again.

We can't read. I don't want to read the whole

passage but we got to get points throughout the chapter here.

When Abram was 99 years old the Lord appeared to him and said, I

am God Almighty, walk before me faithfully and be blameless.

Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will

greatly increase your numbers. Abram fell face down and God

said to him, As for me, this is my covenant with you.

You will be the father of many nations.

No longer will you be called Abram, your name will be

Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations.

Then God said to Abraham, As for you, you must keep my covenant,

you and your descendants after you, for generations to come.

This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you.

The covenant you are to keep. Every male among you shall be

circumcised. You are to undergo circumcision,

and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you.

God also said to Abraham, As for Sarai your wife, you are no

longer to call her Sarai. Her name will be Sarah.

I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her.

I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations.

Kings of people will come from her.

On that very day Abraham took his son Ishmael and all those

born in his household or bought with his money every male in his

household and circumcised them as God had told him.

Abraham was 99 years old when he was circumcised and his son

Ishmael was 13. When I was growing up, I, I

loved watching professional wrestling and, and I, I enjoy

it, you know, and it's, it's, I'm, I'm more of the old school.

I haven't watched much for a while.

So it was Hulk Hogan, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Randy the Macho Man

Savage and Miss Elizabeth and and all of the great characters

that were, that were wrestling back in the 1980s and 90s, early

90s anyway, and, and wrestling, it was very entertaining, very

engaging, big strong guys doing big Andre the giant.

Oh man, he was great in Princess Bride too.

They, they did, it was so fun to watch.

And, and it's, and it's so simple and this, that the goal

in professional wrestling is to be the last man standing, right?

Be the last. And whether that's a one-on-one,

whether it's A tag team or whether it's a cage match, the

goal is to be the last man standing and then you win.

The goal that Abraham had was a little bit different, although

it kind of looks the same in certain respects.

Abraham has been through a lot. He's been through the ringer.

He's left his homeland, he's left most of the folks that he

knew. He left the culture he knew he

went to a new land. He's faced trials, he's faced

tribulations. He's he's had his his nephew

take the better portion of the land.

He's had to go to war, he's had to fight.

He's been fearful of his life, fearful of his wife's life,

fearful that God might not keep his covenant.

He's been through it. And the sense might be kind of,

you know, just just just keep standing, Abraham, just don't

fall down. Don't fall down, just keep

standing. But the first thing we see

Abraham doing in this passage is falling on his face as God

appears before him and and solemnizes this covenant with

him. Covenants are a strange thing.

They're a little bit like contracts, but they're

different. Contracts, you probably know is

an agreement between it's, you know, two people or groups of

people. And each party in a contract

agrees to do something, whether it's give money in exchange for

goods or give money in exchange for services, Give certain

whatever it is, there's, there's a contract.

And one of the things about a contract is if, if, if, if you

and I were into it, into a contract and I fail to live up

to my end of the bargain, then you don't have to keep your end

of the contract. Contract just goes away.

No more contract. Covenants are different.

They are agreements between individuals, between groups,

between an individual and a group.

It can involve more multiple parties, but in a covenant, when

one party fails to keep the covenant, the other party is

still obligated to keep the covenant.

So covenants were very serious things not to be entered into

lightly. When you committed yourself to a

covenant, you were committing yourself to a course of action

from which there is no honorable backing out, no honorable

retreat. There's a cost to a covenant,

always a cost to a covenant. We see a lot of covenants in the

Bible. We see the covenant that God

made between himself and Adam and Eve, the covenant that God

made between himself and Cain, the covenant that God made with

Noah. Then we see the covenant that

God made with Abram, now Abraham and Sarah.

There's a covenant that God later made with the children,

the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, but with Moses as the

mediator of Mount Sinai, that was made a few 100 years after

this. And then the the greatest

covenant of them all that we call the new covenant.

It's now 2000 years old, still call it the new covenant that

God through his Son Jesus Christ, made with anyone, any

human being who was willing to participate.

We're not going to look at all of those covenants today.

We don't have time. We're going to look at two of

those covenants, the covenant God made with Abraham and Sarah,

and the covenant that God made through Jesus Christ, the new

covenant. We're going to compare and

contrast those as we go along. The cost of the covenant with

Abraham was circumcision. Now it occurred to me as I was

preaching this morning that not everyone might know what

circumcision is. I'm not going to tell you

because I didn't give APG 13 warning about this sermon in

advance. My thought was to say Google it,

don't just say it. Don't ask.

Ask someone. Don't Google it.

Trust. Well, never mind.

Don't. The cost of the covenant with

Abraham was circumcision. Circumcision, and that's a

bodily cost. It can't be paid with money.

You can't buy your way in this covenant that God made with

Abraham. Abraham, you cannot buy your way

out of circumcision. There's no donation that can be

made. There's no active service that

can be performed, that there's no real estate that can be

given, no money that can be given to avoid it.

The cost is a bodily cost. You have to have, if you'll

pardon the expression, some skin in the game.

OK. It's a bodily cost and it's a

bloody cost. It's a bloody cost.

There's no way to do this without sacrificing and shedding

blood. It's a bodily cost.

It's a bloody cost. It's a permanent and ongoing

cost. Once you've done it, it can't be

undone. It is there and it will always

be there as long as that man is around, permanent and ongoing,

and it evolves a new identity. You are a new person.

God changed Abram and Sarai's names as they solemnized this

covenant. Abram was no longer Abram, He

was now Abraham. Sarai was no longer Sarai.

She was now Sarah. Abram meant honored father.

Abraham means father of May nations.

Sarah meant my Princess. Sarah simply means Princess.

God expanded their identities. An honored father is great.

An honored father is is just one person who has status among a

few other people, but a father of nations that has impact for

generations and generations and years and much broader reach,

much broader impact. The same with Sarai.

My Princess is just my Princess, my Princess.

But now Sarai is not just Abram's Princess.

Sarai is now Sarah. She is the Princess, the mother

of nations, the mother of kings, not just connected to 1,

responsible for many a new identity, an expanded identity,

and finally, this cost. This cost.

Circumcision could only be paid by males, by male descendants of

Abraham's or male members of their household.

Women can't be circumcised. Only men could pay the cost.

And so only men in a very real sense could fully participate in

the covenant. And the sign of this covenant

was the same as the cost. The sign of the covenant was

circumcision. So that's the covenant God made

with Abram. Now we're going to take a look

at the New Covenant, the covenant that God offers to all

humanity through his Son, Jesus Christ.

In the new covenant, the cost of the new covenant is death,

specifically the death of Jesus. This too was a bodily cost.

There was no money that Jesus could give.

There was no donation he can make.

There was no act of service that he could perform to avoid paying

the cost of death. Without his death, there is no

covenant. It was a bodily cost, and it was

a bloody cost, far more bloody than circumcision.

It was the pouring out of his life's blood.

When he was whipped, when the crown of thorns was beaten into

his head, when he was punched out by the soldiers, when he was

nailed to the cross, when the spear was stuck in his side.

His blood poured that day as he died to pay the cost of this

covenant with us. And it was a permanent and

ongoing cost. Two ways we can look at that.

One, the Bible is very clear about.

In the resurrection, Jesus still bears the scars of his

crucifixion. His resurrection body.

Jesus bears the scars of his crucifixion, a permanent and

ongoing cost. There's another way of looking

at that. The Bible doesn't talk

specifically about this. It's a way of looking at it that

comes. It has opened up to us as

science has developed and we begin to have slightly better

understandings of things like time and space, and that Jesus

is eternal. Jesus is God in the flesh.

Jesus always has been, He always will be, and an eternal means

more than just living forever. It means, in a very real sense,

being outside time and space. We get a picture of this when

after his resurrection, 1 moment Jesus is in one place, one city.

The very next moment he's in another city, inside a locked

room, without opening the door or the window to get there.

Jesus no longer bound by time and space.

Well, Jesus probably never was bound by time and space, except

maybe voluntarily. That means that there is a very

real sense in which Jesus always is, always has been, always will

be, and always is being crucified.

That that crucifixion is forever a present reality for Jesus as

someone who is not bound by time and space, A permanent and

ongoing cost. And for Jesus it wasn't a new

identity. It was a confirmed identity.

When the sky darkened, when the sun turned dark, when the earth

shook, when the curtain of the temple was torn from top to

bottom, not bottom to top but top to bottom, that's when the

Roman soldier, the Pagan Roman soldier who may have known

nothing of Jesus other than that he was assigned to be crucified

that day, looked at Jesus on the cross and said surely that man

is the Son of God. It was in Jesus death and then

in his resurrection that Jesus follower said, surely this man

is the Son of God, his death and the manner of his death.

You know what's interesting? It wasn't Jesus coming down from

the cross like his enemies were taunting him to do.

It wasn't him, you know, calling his angels, using his power like

the devil was taunting him to do, to wipe out all of his

enemies. That led the centurion to say

this man is the Son of God. It was the manner of his dying,

dying with grace, dying with compassion, dying with

forgiveness on his lips, even for the people that were

crucifying him. And in that death, the centurion

said, surely this man is the Son of God, is the Son of God, His

identity confirmed as he pays the cost of this new covenant.

And this cost could only be paid by Jesus.

He's the only one that could do it.

No other human being, past, present, or future, was good

enough, holy enough, righteous enough, powerful enough to have

paid this cost. He did it himself.

And one of the signs of this covenant is the cross itself

that reminds us every time we see it of the price Jesus paid

for this covenant with us. Now we know the covenant with

Abraham, what was promised, the promise.

In that covenant God says, you be faithful to me.

I will make your descendants a great nation.

Many nations, many kings will come from you.

That was the covenant. That was the promise.

The covenant with us is life. You'll be my I will be your God.

You be my people. I will be faithful to you, you

will be faithful to me, and I will undo what Adam and Eve did

when they ate from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of

good and evil. I will take that poison out of

you, and you will get to eat from the tree of life.

Life everlasting, Life everlasting in the Kingdom of

God, where the love of God and the mercy of God and the grace

of God and the patience of God and the compassion of God are

the rules of the day. Where there's no more

exploitation, there's no more abuse, there's no more

destruction of one human being by another.

There's no more people, some people living in luxury while

others living in abject poverty. All of that is gone, all of

abuse, all of the exploitation. That's the gift, that's the

promise, that's the covenant. And Jesus was the only one who

could pay the cost, and he paid it when he died on the cross.

And that's what the cross will forever symbolize for those who

put their faith in their hope in Jesus.

All of that is 100% true. It is also true that there is

for us a cost of this new covenant.

There is a cost of this new covenant as well.

And it's similar to Jesus, but not identical.

It's not our death, it's our life.

It's our life. And this too, is a bodily cost.

There's no donation we can make. There's no act of service that

we can perform that there's no gift that we can give that will

pay this cost for us, that will allow us to simply get our get

out, get our that will allow us to simply get our get out of

hell free card and go about business as usual doing what we

want. That's what Dietrich Bonhoeffer

called cheap grace. Grace that doesn't demand

anything of us. Pray your prayer.

Kneel and kneel and pray your prayer.

Get up and go on and live with your life.

God like you, you like to sin, God likes to forgive.

Let's just keep it that way. Cheap grace, which doesn't

demand anything from us. But this is not cheap grace.

This is grace that comes with the cost.

CS Lewis has said that that many folks approach God like they're

remodeling their house and God is the contractor.

And like God, you know, I just want this room needs cleaned out

and that room needs redone. But over here, everything is

fine. We're not going to mess with

that. And God looks at the thing and

says, I want the whole thing down.

We're starting new. There is a cost to this grace

for us. It's a bodily cost and it's a

bloody cost. It involves sacrifice and it

does involve service, not to pay for what Jesus did for us, but

to follow in his footsteps. Amy Carmichael as a as a

missionary, I often reference and think of, she was an Irish

missionary to India. She she embedded herself in that

culture, adopting the culture and the dress and the way of

life and the way of talking and and spent her life rescuing

girls from sexual exploitation and giving them homes and

freedom and life and opportunity.

And she measured faithfulness in this way, she said in one of her

poems. How can anyone claim to have

followed Jesus if they have no scars?

If you have no scars on your hands or feet, you cannot have

followed Jesus very far. There is pain, there is

suffering. There is cost to following

Jesus, and not all of us will pay a literal bloody cost.

But everyone who follows Jesus for any length of time really

faithfully following Jesus will have scars, whether on their

body or on their soul, their mind or their heart, as they

experience the same kinds of suffering and betrayals that

Jesus experienced. There is a cost to us giving our

lives to Jesus, and it's a permanent and ongoing cost.

We don't get to retire from it. Amy is so looking forward to

retiring. We get to retire from jobs.

We don't get to retire from following Jesus now and forever.

We are His. We are His servants at His

disposal to be sent wherever He pleases to send us.

We are His sisters and His brothers, younger sisters and

younger brothers under His authority as we are under His

protection and at His disposal forever and ever and ever.

Thank God He has our goodness in mind, for He has our lives in

His hands and for us it is a new identity.

The names that people have called you, the slanders they've

placed upon you, the insults that they've hurled at you,

calling you this ugly thing, that awful thing, this nasty

thing, that terrible thing, all of those things gone.

Go away. Jesus says I have a name for

you, I have an identity for you. I know you, I see you, I love

you. You are a person of sacred and

infinite worth you to me. Jesus says you are worth my life

and my blood, and no one else gets to define you.

I get to define you. And I have a beautiful,

wonderful name and identity for you.

And some of us kind of get a glimpse of that.

Now, I think some of us may not get a glimpse of that until we

stand before Jesus on that final judgement day.

And he says, I know you never could really figure it out, but

this is who you are. And every single one of us, when

we see it, we'll go, Oh my God, thank you.

This is who I am and who you've made me to be.

A new identity. And this price can only be paid

by you. No one else can pay it.

I don't know who said this. I thought it was cool.

I heard it years ago. God does not have grandchildren.

No one belongs to Jesus because their parents do.

Now our parents can have a great influence in that and lead us to

that relationship with Jesus, but our parents can't pay the

price for us. We can't pay the price for our

kids. We can't pay the price for

friends, for siblings, for anyone that we love or anyone

that we hate. This is a decision for every

individual to make. Will I pay the price and really

give my life to Jesus to be at his disposal at his back end

call to go where he says go, to stay when he says stay to to

talk when he says talk and to shut up when he says shut up.

That's the one I need to listen to more.

To be busy when he says to be busy and to be still when he

says to be still. And every individual has to pay

that price and it's hard to pay sometimes.

I know that song we sang a few minutes ago, Hard fought

Hallelujah. I know that one's hard to sing

and there's a little different style than we're used to here.

I think it's such a beautiful song and it said so well today.

A lot of what I was trying to communicate in this message

because it is hard sometimes to say Hallelujah.

It is hard to say praise God. There is a cost to that, and if

you're experiencing that and you feel like something's gone

wrong, if it's hard to say Hallelujah, it's probably

because things are going right. Not when it gets super easy and

there's never any cost or any pain or any suffering to it.

Then there's one to worry about whether something's gone wrong.

This price can only be paid by you.

And the sign, the other sign of this new covenant is baptism.

The beautiful thing about baptism in the cross is anyone

can pick up their cross. Anyone can be baptized.

Male, female, old, young, rich, poor, educated, uneducated,

athletic, unathletic. Even people with hair can pick

up their cross and get baptized. It's true.

I know some of y'all been cursed with a full head of hair, but

God loves you too. This.

It's water. Wherever we can find water, we

can baptize. Wherever we can find someone to

serve in Jesus name, we can pick up our cross.

Wherever we can refrain from a harsh word and unkind statement

to judgement, to condemnation, we can pick up our cross.

Wherever we can stand against evil and justice and oppression,

we can pick up our cross. No matter how old or young, how

rich, how poor, male, female, whatever, anyone, anyone can

bear these sides that Jesus has given us.

This is the cost of the covenant.

Nothing more, nothing less than the death of Jesus and our lives

and we can share and and enjoy the blessings of life forever

with God and his Kingdom together in Jesus name, Amen.

Amen.