Covenant

Hey everyone, this is Josh from Encounter Church

Henley and thanks so much for tuning into our

podcast. Our prayer is that through this podcast

you can have an encounter with Jesus that'll

change your life. And now get ready for an inspiring

message from our preaching team. Matthew 26 verses

Matthew 26:26–30

26 to 30. As they were eating, Jesus took some

bread and blessed it. Then he broke it into pieces

and gave it to the disciples, saying, take this

and eat it, for this is my body. And he took

a cup of wine and gave thanks to God for it.

He gave it to them and said, each of you drink

from it, for this is my blood, which confirms

the covenant between God and his people. It is

poured out as a sacrifice to forgive the sins

of many. Mark my words. I will not drink wine

again until the day I drink it new with you in

my father's kingdom Then they sang a hymn and

went out to the Mount of Olives. This is the

word of the Lord Good afternoon church, if you

haven't met me, my name is Tim is great to be

with you On the screen you'll see an image of

something if you spend time on social media Should

be common It's a motivational post. It says,

the new year is a blank page, a fresh start to

a dream bigger, to work harder, to become the

version of yourself you've always envisaged.

Other classic motivational posts that come out

this kind of the year say things like tomorrow.

is the first blank page of a 365 page book, so

write a good one. The new year, it's a transition

moment and transitions can create turning points,

a renewed energy to chase those dreams. And don't

you just find it all so very exhausting? It's

just so tiring. I already feel like I'm doing

my best. And here's another New Year's to remind

me that I'm pretty far off my idealized version

of myself. I can't read 100 books in a year,

get jacked, be good at my job, run a marathon,

grow my savings, get enough sleep, spend more

intentional time with my family, be a good husband

and father, only make meals that I've made from

scratch, have a more efficient house and on top

of it all, cultivate a deepening relationship

with Jesus. There just simply isn't enough time.

in the day for all of that. And that's a problem,

isn't it? We all have these idealized versions

of ourselves. And every New Year's reminds us

that we haven't lived up to our own, sometimes

somewhat unrealistic, expectations of who we

could become. And this is the grief that comes

when you have to create a DIY self. See in every

culture, every other culture in the world for

most of human history, people have lived in cultures

that have stories and rites of passage and rituals

that tell you who you are and what you're here

to do. But in the Western society we have largely

stripped away all these stories, these rites

of passages and rituals that tell you who you

are and what you are here to do. And said, you

work it out. You shape your own identity you

can decide who you are And at first the freedom

is a rush because anything is pretty much open

to you But then the freedom quickly becomes a

kind of slavery because when you don't have Transcendent

stories rituals rites of passage when you don't

have something bigger than all you're left to

define yourself is what you you are or who you

know what you own and perhaps These things sessions

accomplishments abilities exhausting What if

there was a better way of certain people as being

self -made accomplishment? It is a gift. You

have been created by God You can't create or

earn your uniqueness as a person. You can only

receive it as a gift That means God has a self

Coming in if our eyes of our own making and is

an illusion Can you see that? God longs to help

you become the person He has created you to be.

God has an identity for you in Christ Jesus.

And it's a part of the package deal of faith.

When you put your faith in Jesus, you're united

to Him. He puts His Spirit within you and you

begin to change you, sometimes very quickly and

sometimes it's so slow it's almost imperceptible,

but when you look back you see it. And over time

you begin to glimpse the person that God has

created you uniquely to be. David Bennett says

this, knowing ourselves must begin by knowing

the self that is known by God. You can only really

know what something is and what something's for

when you know what its creator intended it to

be. I want to show you a drawing that my son

made, drew at Christmas a couple of years ago.

Look at that. Now, I looked at that and I thought,

that is Johnny Bravo. Or it's an exploding stapler.

But I don't know, but I asked, I know it's creator,

I know who drew it, and so I asked him, and lo

and behold, it's a tree. It's a tree. If you

want to know what something is and what it's

for, it helps to ask the one who created it.

God knows who you are. everything he has created

you to be DIY self but for the sake of others

and for the sake of the world I think this is

wonderful news and this kind of partnership that

God wants to have with us it has a biblical word

and it's called a covenant Whitney Willard just

defines a covenant as this it's a relationship

between two partners who make binding promises

to each other and work together to reach a common

goal Covenants define their obligations and commitments,

but they are different from a contract because

they are relational and personal. This is why

Christians rightly describe marriage as a covenant.

On Friday, Ash and I had our 10 year wedding

anniversary. Good job. And we didn't make a wedding

contract 10 years ago. In fact, to suggest that

would actually be kind of offensive. It was far

more personal and relational than that. We made

binding promises to each other, to forsake all

others, to have and to hold each other whether

we were rich or poor, sick or well through the

good times and the bad times. Ten years ago,

we committed to work together to glorify God

in and through our relationship and that our

new family would be a blessing to others. TLDR,

we made a covenant with each other. We covenanted.

And God makes covenants with his people often

in the scriptures. The most prominent covenant

is in the Old Testament between God and the Israelites

and the covenant at Mount Sinai, it's in Exodus

19, where God says, Now, if you will obey me

and keep my covenant, you will be my own special

treasure from among all the peoples of earth,

for all the earth belongs to me, and you will

be my kingdom of priests, my holy nation. And

then he gives the people, the Ten Commandments

and the law, to which the people respond in Exodus

24, we will do everything the Lord has commanded,

we will obey, is what they say. And so then Moses

sacrifices a bull and he takes the bull from

the basin and he splatters it all over the people,

declaring, look, this blood confirms the covenant

the Lord has made with you in giving these instructions.

So God and his people have a covenant. They make

binding promises to each other in a partnership

that's there to bless the world Now there was

no blood splattered at my wedding. I can assure

you that if you were thinking that would be weird

Here's the gist of the Lord's covenant with his

people The people promise to keep the Lord's

commandments and in exchange God's commitment

to them is that they will be forever the favorite

child They will experience incredible blessing

from the hand of God, safety and provision. But

here's the problem. This covenant, the old covenant,

it's conditional. If the people don't keep the

promises they've made, then the blessings that

flow from the hand of God will dry up. And if

you read the narrative of the Old Testament,

that's exactly what happens. Until the people

are driven from the promised land and into exile.

But in exile, God's not done. He's not finished.

The prophet Jeremiah receives the word of the

Lord. This is what the Lord says, the day is

coming when I will make a new covenant with the

people of Israel and Judah. And this covenant

will not be like the one I made with their ancestors

when I took them by the hand and brought them

out of the land of Egypt. They broke that covenant

though I loved them as a husband loves a wife.

But this is the new covenant I will make with

the people in those days. I will put my instructions

deep within them and I will write them on their

hearts. I will be their God and they will be

my people and they will not need to teach their

neighbors nor they need to teach their relatives

saying you should know the Lord for everyone

from the least to the greatest will know me already

says the Lord and I'll forgive their wickedness

and I will never again remember their sins. There

will be a new covenant and friends this new covenant

will be unconditional. The Israelite people couldn't

keep the Lord's instructions and so God's gonna

write them on their hearts and forgive their

sin. Michael Green says this about this promise

that God in the new covenant, what He's putting

on the table is this, universal knowledge of

Himself. Everyone will know Him or have the possibility

of knowing Him. Universal availability of relationship

with God and universal pardon of sin. Where each

of these promises were once conditional in the

Old Testament, now they are unconditional. This

is God's commitment to us. This is covenant with

us. Whether we keep up our end of the bargain

or not, He will. We can know Him. We can be with

Him and we can be forgiven and reconciled to

Him forever. And what is it that he asks in return?

To love him with all your heart, mind, soul and

strength. To believe in Jesus. To declare Jesus

as Lord with your lips. To believe in your heart

that God has raised him from the dead. To deny

yourself, to pick up your cross and to follow

him. To love your neighbour as yourself. To abide

in him like a branch abides in the vine. to flee

from sin, to seek his kingdom first, to care

for the vulnerable and the poor, to love one

another as we have been loved, to make a disciple

of all nations. Put simply, to want God, to want

God and to want to be His, to want to belong

to Him, to want His way, to want Him to be our

God. This is the new covenant the partnership

that God has given you by faith and it's and

it's ratified It's not temporarily by the blood

of a bull splattered over the people but eternally

by the blood of Jesus poured out for you and

for me And in our reading today, we see the origin

of the Lord's Supper communion Where Jesus takes

a cup of wine and he gives it to his followers

and he says each of you drink from it for this

is my blood Get this, pay attention, which confirms

the covenant between God and His people. It is

poured out as a sacrifice to forgive the sins

of many. This is the blood of the new covenant.

This is the covenant relationship that you step

into when you are baptized. And I want to dunk

some people in the ocean, so let's do some baptisms.

This is the covenant relationship you step into

every time you take the Lord's Supper. Every

time you choose God and His way. Every time you

choose God over the world. Every time you choose

God over others. Every time you choose God over

yourself. You step into this covenant that God

has made with you through faith. And here's the

thing. This covenant is... unconditional even

if we do none of those things we can still know

him we can still be with him and we can still

be forgiven and reconciled to him forever by

grace through faith if this new covenant is established

and maintained unconditionally not by our doing

of the right thing but by the finished work of

jesus on the cross should we take this for granted

Or as Paul asks in Romans 6, should we go on

sinning? By no means, he says, by no means. It

was actually a rhetorical question. No, we don't

take this glorious gift of God to us, this covenant

relationship, for granted. Instead, we choose

to step into it. We choose to become everything

that God has created us to be. We choose to accept

the self that only God knows, the self that God

intended for us when He made us. We choose to

believe what He says about us. We choose to step

into who He says we are and what He says we are

here for. And in doing so, we find our true self.

We find the Tim, the Dan, the Chelsea that God

knows, that God created, that God loves. The

covenant that Ash and I made ten years ago was

ten years ago, which feels like a long time.

But I still have to choose to step into it every

day. I still have to live into it. And I do that

every time I make her her morning coffee. Every

time I pray for her. Every time I fight for her.

Every time I choose her over myself. I step into,

I live into the covenant that I have made. One

of the spiritual giants of our heritage as the

United Church, we're a part of the United Church,

is John Wesley. And Wesley understood the importance

of stepping into the covenant that God has with

us as ordinary believers through Jesus. And so

he created what he called the covenant service.

And in it, he simply invited people to renew

their covenant with God. Not because our covenant

is in danger of breaking or disintegrating without

it being renewed but because because it's not

conditional rights unconditional but because

we forget and We need to remember We renew a

covenant like a married couple would renew their

vows To remember and to intentionally choose

to step back into the promises that we made Now

when Wesley did those services hardly one of

them would go by where some such comment wasn't

meticulously recorded in his journal because

this is the kind of guy that he was. Many mourned

before God and many were comforted. Many were

filled with peace and joy, many with holy fear

and several backsliders were healed. It was a

solemn season wherein many found his power present

to heal and were enabled to urge their way with

strength renewed. Several received either a sense

of the pardoning love of God or power to love

him with all their heart. I wonder if you need

any of that from the Lord tonight. I wonder if

you need any of that from the Lord tonight. So

fruitful was the covenant service that Wesley

held one every New Year's day. And if you've

been in the prayer room, the center of This service

was a prayer and that prayer is on the wall of

our 24 7 prayer room get in it, please And it's

a covenant prayer. It's a covenant prayer So

if the first Sunday of 2026 what we want to do

we want to invite you to renew your covenant

with the Lord For our first ever covenant Sunday

To choose to make a decision to step into the

person that God has created you to be to live

out the partnership He has invited you into for

the sake of others and for the sake of the world

and This is how we're simply gonna do it and

these bookmarks are for you to grab afterwards

if you want them If you'd like to renew your

covenant with the Lord today, I Want to invite

you to stand with me. You don't have to This

is a choice thing. I'll turn around and I can

do it by myself if I'm the only one. That's fine.

I won't be able to see. To stand and to lift

up your hands and to pray this prayer with us.

And we're going to pray it slowly so that no

one gets lost. So if you'd like to do that today,

please stand with me. Let's pray. I am no longer

my own, but yours. Put me to what you will. Place

me with whom you will. Put me to doing. Put me

to suffering. Let me put to work for you or set

aside for you. Praised for you or criticised

for you. Let me be full. Let me be empty. Let

me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely

and fully surrender all things to your glory

and service. And now, oh wonderful and holy God,

creator, redeemer and sustainer, you are mine

and I am yours. So be it. And the covenant that

I have made on earth, let it also be made in

heaven. Amen. you can grab a seat and Benji can

come up. If you prayed that prayer, I hope you're

ready for what it is God's gonna do in your life.

We're gonna go into worship and then we're gonna

take communion together as a way of remembering

the new covenant that we have with Jesus together.

These are gonna be up the back. Take one. And

whenever you're reading your Bible or reading

whatever TikTok fiction you're reading this week,

you can remember the covenant that you have made

with God. Let me pray. Holy Spirit, come, we

want you. We want you in our lives. We want you

to be our God. We want you to change us. We want

to be overcome by your holiness. To surrender

to you, you are the one who knows us. You are

the one who truly loves us. Our whole lives are

in your hands. And so we surrender Lord God.

We surrender all things to you. And we just pray

God that you would use us in this partnership

to see this world transformed, to see it put

right, to see you glorified as the King of the

universe. We honor you. You are the centre of

it all Lord Jesus. We pray this in Your Name.

Amen. Thanks so much for tuning into this week's

message. If you've felt challenged or need prayer,

we'd love to hear from you on Instagram at encounterhenley.

Or if you're interested in how you can support

this ministry, please go to our website encounteradelaide

.com .au. Thanks again for listening. God bless

you.