Covenants Kept

Biblical Text: Jeremiah 31:31-34

The text is Jeremiah’s invoking of a new covenant. The sermon attempts to think about what we are talking about when we say the word covenant. What a covenant is is the Hebrew answer to the question: “How does God interact with man?” There are a bunch of other answer to that question. The sermon starts out cataloging some of them and how they came about. But the Hebrew answer is unique. And the Christian answer is the Hebrew answer.

The trouble that Jeremiah is experiencing is similar I think to what we might be experiencing today. Just how good does the answer of the covenant fit with how we experience God? A big part of the word covenant is simply a way that God binds himself. If the covenants appear to be failing, as they could appear to Jeremiah, in what way is the God who bound himself actually God? Jeremiah’s prophecy is “the new covenant”, not a breaking of the old ones, but their fulfillment. And that fulfillment is in Jesus Christ. Christ has always been the fulfillment, but in the new covenant we have the greater revelation written on our hearts. It is no longer blood on the external posts and lintels, but blood taken in. The fulfillment is no longer an external obedience, but the obedience of the heart through faith.

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Setting Our Faces for Jerusalem

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Text: Luke 9:51-62

I had to re-record this, sorry. I forgot to hit start.

The theme here is the mission and work of Jesus accomplished when he “set his face to go to Jerusalem”. All of that gets applied to us by grace, through faith. But it is a graceious and faithful call. A call not simply to a mental activity, like those sly foxes, nor a call to simply industriousness, like the bird. It is a call to follow Jesus. To set our faces for Jerusalem. We often walk toward and earthly Jerusalem that does to us that same thing it did to Jesus, rejects us. But we are always walking toward the New Jerusalem. By faith we can see that city, whose builder is God.

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Athens and Jerusalem?

Biblical Text: Acts 17:16-31,32-34
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The text is Paul in Athens. I could tell you very quickly what the core of the sermon is about, but then you might not listen. If there is one thing that we in the modern world are mistaken about it is the pace of truth. We think it is an intellectual exercise as quick as a download of information. And we expect it to be complete. Run the bit check on that download. Not that truth is more organic and takes time. But when you hear it, and you know you’ve heard it, well. That is what this is about.

Worship Note: I’ve left in our Hymn of the Day LSB 832, Jesus Shall Reign. The words are Isaac Watts’, the best hymn writer in the English language. The tune should be familiar from Easter, Duke Street, which is the common tune of I Know the My Redeemer Lives. It is a great hymn which captures the breadth of Paul in Athens.

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A Sword Will Pierce Your Soul – Pondering Cultural Lostness

Biblical Texts: Luke 2:22-40, Romans 1:18-32, Psalm 34:4-8
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There have been a string of national and then local tragedies. Unfortunately this sermon is something of a continuation of one just two weeks ago. I never meant for there to be a continuation, but events experienced called for it. In the middle of joyful events – like Christmas – as Simeon will say to Mary, there are swords to the heart.

I reviewed that sermon from Dec 16th a little, and I think it is the proper response for an individual. And one individual, ourselves, is all we can actually control (the fruit of the spirit of self-control – Gal 5:23). But that sermon left something unexplained or unexamined. What about the collective us? We ask questions like “what have we become?” And that question comes off the lips of a man who in no way has become what he is pondering, yet he supplies the “we”. It is another form of the “why?” question – why do such atrocities happen, one that actual betrays a developed conscience in that responsibility is placed on the right people. If we are asking “why me”, that individual question is not something that God tends to answer. But, if we are asking collectively, “why us” or “what have we become”, then I believe God has given us an answer, through St. Paul in Romans 1.

The first sin is forgetting or abandoning God. A trespass of the first commandment. From that trespass come all the others. Sin is both the cause of our troubles and the judgment. When we abandon God, He hands us over to our sins. When you are looking at a larger culture, that can get very evil very quickly. And if Paul is right (which I believe he is), the end point of that isn’t just sins but a collective culture that gives approval to their practice (Rom 1:32).

Why have we become a greedy, violent, lustful, callous, warlike and spiritually barren people? Because we have collectively abandoned the fear of God. And He has handed us collectively over to the rot of our collective culture.

What is the gospel? First, Simeon’s song. My eyes have seen your salvation/That you have prepared in the presence of all peoples/A light for revelation to the Gentiles/And the glory of your people Israel. God has sent a savior in Jesus Christ and we have seen his light. God doesn’t make false promises, and today is still a day of grace. Repent, for the Kingdom of God is near. Second, our hope is not in this flesh or this collective people. Our hope is in the resurrection and the New Jerusalem. The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them (Psalm 34:7).

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