PASTOR'S MESSAGE

   

My Covenant is with You

Genesis 17:1-16

     Alice Grayson had agreed to bake a cake for her church’s bazaar, but she forgot to do it until the last minute.  After rummaging around she found a dusty old angel food cake mix in the back of her kitchen cabinet and quickly made it.  But when she took it out of the oven, the center had dropped flat and the cake was horribly disfigured.  Not wanting anyone to think she wasn’t the perfect woman able to handle anything or that, God forbid, she was not participating in her church’s bazaar, she looked around the house for something to build up the center of the cake.  Alice found it in the bathroom – a roll of toilet paper.  She plunked it in and then covered it with icing.  Not only did the finished product look beautiful, it looked perfect!  Before she left the house to drop the cake by the church and head for work, Alice woke her daughter Amanda and gave her some money and specific instructions to be at the bake sale the minute it opened, and to buy that cake and bring it home.  Unfortunately, Amanda overslept and when she arrived at the sale, she found that the attractive perfect cake had already been sold.  She called her mom and told her what happened.  Alice was horrified. What would people think?  She would be ostracized, and ridiculed.  All night Alice lay awake thinking about people talking about her behind her back.  The next day, Alice had to attend a fancy luncheon-bridal shower.  She didn’t really want to attend because the hostess was something of a snob who more than once had looked down her nose at Alice.  But she couldn’t get out of it.  As it turned out, the meal was quite elegant, but to Alice’s horror, the cake she had baked for the bazaar was presented for dessert.  Alice felt the blood drain from her face when she saw the cake, she started to get out of her chair to rush to tell her hostess all about it, but before she could get to her feet, the Mayor’s wife said, “What a beautiful cake!”   Alice, who was still stunned and trying to formulate the words to explain the situation, heard the hostess say, “Why, thank you, I baked it myself.”   Alice smiled and thought to herself, “Truly there is a God.”

In a cute way, that story reminds us that we’ve all done things we’re not proud of – not just mistakes and blunders, but sins and transgressions.  And the more we try to cover them up and hide them, the worse it gets.  That’s because we imperfect human beings are sinful to the core.  How amazing, then, that God would choose to have a relationship with us – a loving and caring relationship, in which He protects us and provides for our needs.  In Scripture He calls this relationship His covenant with us and we see it beautifully described in our text for today. 

In our text, we’re told that Abram was ninety-nine years old, when God appeared to him to renew His covenant.  It had been twenty-four years since God had originally appeared to Abram and promised him that he would have a multitude of descendants too numerous to count.  And yet in those twenty-four years, nothing had seemingly happened.  Sarah, Abram’s wife was still barren, and Abram was still childless.  Oh, it’s true, his son Ishmael by Hagar the slave-woman was 13 years old.  But that simply represented Abram’s foolish human plan to bypass God’s promise, just like the harebrained scheme to make Eliezer his heir.  It was not a part of God’s plan, because God was going to give him his own son through Sarah.  And that’s why the Lord appeared to Abram in our text to renew His covenant with him.

Martin Luther once put it this way:  “It’s God’s way to empty a man first before filling him with His blessing.”  That may have been what He was doing with Abram those twenty-four years.  It’s the same thing He does with you and me.  He has to take out our own sinful self-righteous works, in order to make room for His grace and mercy.  Which is why in our text, He said to Abram:  “I AM GOD ALMIGHTY; WALK BEFORE ME, AND BE BLAMELESS, THAT I MAY MAKE MY COVENANT BETWEEN ME AND YOU, AND MAY MULTIPLY YOU GREATLY.”  In other words, God was re-establishing His covenant with Abram.

However, God’s covenant can only be received by grace as a gift.  And yet, the stubborn tendency of the sinful human nature is to think that somehow we can work for it or earn it or obtain it by our own merit.  To help disabuse Abram of that mistaken notion, God told him:  “WALK BEFORE ME AND BE BLAMELESS.”   This is obviously a clear word of Law, not meant to make Abram think he could actually do it, but in fact to show him that he could not.  Which, by the way, is the same reason God daily seeks to confront us with the Law – to show us our sin and to bring us to our knees in repentance.  For you see the statement, ‘walk before Me and be blameless,’ is impossible for us sinners to accomplish on our own.  What the Hebrew text actually says is that we should constantly walk before God’s face.  But we have a tendency to run ahead of Him, coming up with our own plans and desires, or to lag behind Him, resisting His will and His Word.  Worse yet, we often run away from Him in shame and disgrace and try to hide our face from His face.

That being the case, we clearly are not blameless.  As a matter of fact, the word ‘blameless’ means:  ‘to be complete and whole and healthy.’  As such, it was used to describe the sacrificial animals, which were to be ‘spotless, unimpaired and without blemish.’  It’s a word that signifies perfection in body and soul.  And that’s what you and I are decidedly not!  Instead, we are unhealthy in body and soul, filled with the sickness of original sin, passed onto us by our first parents.  And we ourselves are covered with the spots and blemishes of actual sins like greed and selfishness, pride and dishonesty, anger and prejudice.  It’s kind of like, when you go into a store and purchase a product.  If you get it home and find that it has a defect, you immediately return it, because it is marred.  Similarly, you and I are marred by the defects of sin, for which God ought to return us and reject us forever.

Dear friends, that’s why the comforting message of God’s covenant is that we are saved not by what we do, but by God’s grace as a gift.  Which is why in our text, God refers to it as ‘My covenant.’  It’s called His covenant, and not our covenant, because He’s the One who not only initiates it, but also establishes and confirms it with us.  God did that for Abraham by giving him a new name, changing it from Abram, which means ‘exalted father,’ to Abraham, which means ‘father of many.’  This indicated that Abraham was a new person with a new promise.  And God confirmed that to Abraham through the rite of circumcision.  But for you and me He has done it through the Sacrament of Baptism, where we are given the new name of Christian, indicating that we are brand new people, forgiven and free.  

You see, circumcision was the sign of the Old Covenant, because it symbolized the removal of the defilement of the flesh.  But Baptism is the sign and seal of our New Covenant with God, because it actually does remove the defilement of our sin by the blood of Jesus Christ.  He is the final sacrificial Lamb, who truly was spotless and perfect.  But by giving up His life on Calvary, and pouring out His blood to cleanse us, Jesus has now made you and me spotless and perfect in God’s sight.  All the blemishes and defects of our sin and guilt have been deleted.  It’s like hitting that ‘backspace’ key on your computer.  The mistake disappears.  So too, in our Baptism, Jesus has made all our sin and guilt disappear. 

That’s what St. Paul was talking about in Colossians in 2:11-12, when he said:  “In JESUS you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.”  He was saying that Baptism is the sign and seal of God’s covenant with us – His promise that we are saved and forgiven, made blameless and pure by His grace through the gift of faith in Jesus Christ.   Which is why in our text, he calls it as an ‘everlasting covenant.’  It began with Abraham, but was completed in Jesus Christ, and now lasts forever.  For although it can be broken on the human side, from God’s standpoint He will never break His promise to love and forgive and save us, until He brings us to His eternal kingdom in heaven.

That’s part of what God was getting at, when He told Abraham:  “I AM GOD ALMIGHTY!”  It was a word of reassurance to Abraham and to us – that although we are weak and powerless to save ourselves, God is almighty and powerful to rescue and redeem us forever.  In fact, in Hebrew the name ‘God Almighty’ is actually El Shaddai, which means: ‘God of the mountains.’  It’s a powerful reminder to us that, just as mountains are strong natural defense that remain unchanged and unmoving, even more so God is our strong defender, who surrounds us with His unconquerable love that never changes or wavers.  And it is only in that love and grace of His that we can receive His covenant with us!

In 1829 a certain George Wilson in Pennsylvania was sentenced to be hanged for robbing the mails and for murder.  President Andrew Jackson pardoned him.  But Wilson refused the pardon and insisted that it was not a pardon unless he accepted it.  That was a point in law never before raised in the United States.  The attorney general said that the law was silent on the point.  So, the president was urged to call on the Supreme Court to make a decision, because the sheriff had to know whether to hang Wilson or not.  Chief Justice John Marshall, one of the ablest lawyers, handed down the following decision: “A pardon is a paper the value of which depends upon its acceptance by the person implicated.  It is hardly to be supposed that one under sentence of death would refuse to accept a pardon, but if it is refused, it is no pardon.  George Wilson must hang.” 

Dear friends, how good it is to know that when it comes to our eternal judgment, the Bible defines it differently.  Although like Wilson, we too are guilty as charged, we too have been granted a full and complete pardon.  Since Jesus took our punishment for us at the cross, the penalty of eternal death has been commuted and we have been acquitted of all our sins.  And unlike the Supreme Court decision the value of our pardon does not depend on our accepting it.  However, the story does illustrate the truth that the death of Christ, although providing for the salvation of the whole world, is beneficial only to those who receive that salvation through faith.  If we reject it, we will be lost forever.  That’s why it’s so good to know that even our faith is not something we work up within ourselves, but is a free gift of God poured out to us in our Baptism.  In the waters of Holy Baptism, God said the same thing to me and you that He said to Abraham:  “My covenant is with you!”  And each and every day the Holy Spirit is working to establish and confirm us in that covenant by His Holy Word and Supper.  May that encourage us, then, to constantly make use of those precious Means of Grace, every opportunity that we get for the strengthening of our faith.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.   

            

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