God of Covenant

I was talking to a friend of mine recently who pastors a church in another city that he planted with some other people a few years ago. And he was talking about their church compared to another church that was planted in their city about the same time.

This other church had all the trappings of a modern successful church plant. They were sent out from another church with dozens of people and they had strategy and branding and marketing and had all of these slogans about momentum and goals to get to certain attendance numbers.

And meanwhile my friend didn’t have any of that. And he didn’t think he needed any of that. He said to me, “We’ve got a book, we’ve got water, we’ve got bread and wine, and that’s all we need.”

I knew what he meant by that. He meant that he had the Bible, water for baptism, and bread and wine for the Lord’s supper. And my friend was believed that as He faithfully preached the word and did what it said, which included practicing baptism and the Lord’s supper faithfully, then He could trust God to build His church.

And I agree with him. But I couldn’t help but think how strange that conversation might have sounded to someone else listening in. Maybe they would have understood the value of a book to building a church, but what in the world do water and bread and wine have to do with anything?

That kind of talk almost feels medieval, ancient, far removed from the modern world we live in today. So what’s going on here?

And even if you do understand what he meant, you might still wonder what baptism and communion have to do with growing and being a healthy church.

Those matters have been on my mind as I prepared for today’s sermon, which extends our break from Matthew for another week. We’ve got a full tank of water behind us today and there’s three young ladies being baptized later. After that, we’ll celebrate the Lord’s supper. And the elders thought it would be wise, as we’ve done at various points in the past few years, to pause and talk about these things.

We want to make sure that we understand what’s going on here with water and bread and wine, or grape juice as we use here in our church. Whether these are confusing to you, or whether you’re so used to them you don’t think about them, it’s helpful to stop and reflect on these signs and what they mean.

Covenant

And the reality is that in order to think about baptism and communion properly, we need to start by thinking about Christianity properly. If we think that Christianity is just a set of moral guidelines, or a private spirituality, or a personal relationship between you and a deity, then water and bread and wine won’t make a lot of sense.

But these things begin to make sense when we remember what Christianity fundamentally is. What’s at its heart. And what’s at its heart is a covenant relationship between God and His people.

If you’ve been able to take in our Adult Sunday School class this year, this language of covenant won’t be surprising to you. We’ve been learning how the Bible is one story that is tied together by a series of covenants that God made with His people.

And the fundamental truth at the root of this is that God is a covenant-making God. He is a God who makes covenants with His people. 1 Kings 8:23 says, “O Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you, in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and showing steadfast love to your servants who walk before you with all their heart.” God is a covenant-keeping God. Which means that first, He is a covenant-making God.

With Adam and Eve, with Noah, with Abraham, with Israel, with David, and ultimately with us through Christ, God comes to us and enters into covenant relationship with us.

And what this tells us is two really important truths. First, God wants to be in relationship with us. This is captured by the central covenant promise, starting with Abraham, that He will be His people’s God and they will be His.

“And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you” (Genesis 17:7).

When God rescues Israel from Egypt, He said “I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians” (Exodus 6:7). And later He promises, “I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God” (Exodus 29:45). God wants a people and to be among them as their God.

And these promises reach their fulfillment in the second-last chapter of the Bible, where we get a vision of the future and hear “a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God’” (Revelation 21:3).

God’s covenants are about God’s relational presence with His people. And this is something we should never take for granted. That God would move towards us, seek us, be with us, show love to us, know us, invite us to know Him, even live with us forever—this is something we should never get used to.

In our men’s Bible study we’ve been looking at who God is. He is so not like us. He has no needs. He doesn’t need anything to stay alive or to stay happy. And He is eternal—existing forever in perfect eternity. Brad reminded us last week that God is high and exalted, far far above us.

And this majestic, perfect, eternal creator seeks to enter into relationship with people that He made. People who are needy, and short-lived, like a mist that vanishes. It’s stunning that He gives us the time of day, let alone desires to show lavish and faithful love to us like He does.

God’s covenants shows a God who wants to be in relationship with His people. But there’s a second truth connected to these covenants. They show that God also desires to order that relationship with His people.

That’s one short definition of a covenant. It’s an ordered, formalized relationship. There are promises and gifts and obligations and expectations.

In other words, God’s relationships with His people aren’t a free-for all. Adam was given a job, and a command not to eat from one tree, and major consequences for disobeying. Noah inherited much of Adam’s mission to fill and subdue the earth, with penalties for murder and eating blood. Abraham was promised land and offspring and blessing but was also told to go to another land and walk before God blamelessly and circumcise every male. Israel was graciously saved from Egypt and promised incredible blessings if they obeyed the many detailed commands given to them that ordered their entire lives down to their schedule and diet.

And for us in the New Covenant, we also find ourselves in an ordered relationship. We have incredible promises—and very specific commands. Think of Romans 8: God is working all things for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. What shall separate us from the love of Christ? And then Romans 12: offer yourself to Him as a living sacrifice. Or think of the Great Commission: Jesus is with us always to the end of the age as we teach people to keep all that He commanded us.

It’s not a free-for all, or a private spirituality. Many of you have heard people describe Christianity has a “personal relationship with Jesus.” I’m not going to say that’s wrong, because there is a personal element. But the problem is that in our culture, “it’s personal” is often a short-hand way of saying “none of your business.” “This is my thing, between me and Jesus alone, and I can do with it what I want.”

Which is not at all what we see described in Scripture. There is a personal element with our relationship with God, but there are also corporate elements that we do together with His covenant people. And every part—personal and corporate—are ordered by God.

So it might be better for us to say that Christianity is a covenant relationship with Jesus. It’s a relationship, yes, but a relationship that has been given structure by the God who established it with us.

Signs

This understanding of an ordered covenant is important because it helps us see the place of covenant signs. In the ancient world, when a covenant was made between two parties, there would almost always be a sign, or sometimes multiple signs, to signify that covenant. And this wasn’t just in the ancient world. Today, people still shake hands after making a deal. A physical sign that seals the deal.

Probably the most elaborate covenant ceremony we’re used to is marriage. In a wedding there are signs, like rings, and even more so the physical union of the couple which signs and seals their covenant union.

In the Scriptures, we see God giving covenant signs to His people. When He makes a covenant with Noah, He gives the sign of the rainbow. Abraham gets the blood path ceremony, with the split animals, and later on the sign circumcision is applied to every male. Israel is given the additional sign of the Sabbath as a sign of God’s covenant with them.

“Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a covenant forever. It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed” (Exodus 31:16–17).

So in the world of covenants, structured relationships, there are signs. And these signs, when the involve people, are not optional.

Genesis 17:14: “Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.’” Exodus 31:14: “You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people.”

Because these covenant relationships are ordered by God, He gets to set the terms and He gets to decide the signs.

And the same is true of the New Covenant in Christ. It is true that a major feature of the New Covenant is what happens in here: “’Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah… For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:31,3 3).

There’s that promise again—God and people, made possible because of internal transformation.

But that internal transformation doesn’t mean that there isn’t anything “out there” going on in this covenant. It doesn’t mean that it’s just a personal, private spirituality now.

No, like the previous covenants, this covenant had to be brought into effect with blood. Real blood. “This is my blood of the covenant,” Jesus said. And whatever symbolism was there in the cup, which we’ll talk about in a few moments, Jesus went out that next day and shed real blood to purchase and secure the forgiveness offered in this new covenant.

And so the author of Hebrews says that we have come “to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Hebrews 12:24). Abel’s blood was real, and cried out from the ground, and Jesus’ blood, just as real, speaks—as it were—the better word about our forgiveness.

Baptism

A relationship with God through Jesus is a real covenant, paid for with real physical blood. We should not be surprised, then, to find this covenant also has real, physical signs. Just like Abraham and his household were really, physically circumcised, just like Israel really, physically stopped from work once a week, so we mark our inclusion into the work of Jesus by a real, physical sign.

• “Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, ‘Brothers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, ‘Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit’” (Acts 2:37–38).
• “So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls” (Acts 2:41).
• “But when they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women” (Acts 8:12).
• “Then Philip opened his mouth, and beginning with this Scripture he told him the good news about Jesus. And as they were going along the road they came to some water, and the eunuch said, ‘See, here is water! What prevents me from being baptized?”’” (Acts 8:35–36).
• “Then Peter declared, ‘Can anyone withhold water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?’ And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 10:46–48).
• “And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name” (Acts 22:16).
• “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).
• “For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:27).
• “In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead” (Colossians 2:11–12).
• “Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 3:21).
• “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).

Baptism in the New Testament is everywhere. And it is what people do when they believe in Jesus. It is how they mark their faith and signify their entrance into the New Covenant and New Covenant community. It was applied with the same consistency as every other covenant sign before it.

Many churches here in the western world has come such a long way from this understanding. We have often come up with new signs that mark our entrance into the New Covenant. Like, praying a prayer. Or coming forward to an alter call while the music plays. Or writing the date and time you accepted Jesus in the front of your Bible. Or just going to church every week until everybody assumes you’re a Christian.

And as these “signs” have taken over, baptism has been pushed back to the fringes as something you can do, if you feel like you’re ready for it, after you’ve followed Jesus for a long time. For many people, baptism has become a sign, not of faith, but of maturity.

But that is not what baptism is. Baptism is the sign, given to us by Jesus, to mark out our entrance into the New Covenant and the New Covenant community.

And the Bible is pretty clear on how important that is. Did you notice the language used in Acts 10:48? “And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 10:48). Christians obey the teaching of Jesus and the apostles, and that starts with baptism.

I was talking with one of the people who is getting baptized this morning and I asked them, “Why do you want to be baptized?” And their answer was, “Because Jesus said to.” That simple obedience is beautiful.

Now there’s a question you might have heard at this point: Are you saying that people need to be baptized to be a Christian? Aren’t we saved by faith? What about the thief on the cross? Baptism can’t be that important if you can be saved without it, right?

And I hope that if we step back and see this big, beautiful idea of covenant, we’ll realize that these questions are like a guy saying to his fianceé, “Are you saying that I need to put a ring on your finger to be married to you? Aren’t we married through the vows we make? What about people who can’t afford rings? See, I don’t need to wear a ring to be married to you.”

And ladies, if you ever hear a guy saying that to you, you should ask what’s going on in his heart and why he wouldn’t want to put on a ring and proudly wear the sign that he’s your husband.

And while we’re on this point, understanding baptism as a covenant sign also helps us know why baptism needs to be public. Even though getting baptized in front of a lot of people is scary. So is getting married.

I’ve performed many weddings, and everybody I’ve married is nervous before and during the wedding—some so much that they’re shaking. But they go through with it because it’s important and wonderful for those people to witness them being joined to their wife in covenant love. It’s hard but worth it.

So, we as a church celebrate baptism as the sign of faith that marks out believers in Jesus and signifies our entrance into the New Covenant He bought with His blood.

Communion

Now, how is baptism related to the the Lord’s Supper, or communion?

To answer that question we want to go back to the idea that covenants in the ancient world were very often marked or commemorated with special meals. Even today, most weddings are followed by a meal, and it’s very common for couples to go out for a special meal on their anniversary to remember and mark their covenant. It’s common for business partners to go out for a special meal after signing a deal together.

Israel had many covenant meals that they were to celebrate. And perhaps the most important was the Passover, where they would remember the night where they were saved by blood from the angel of death that they might be rescued from Egypt and brought out to meet with God.

And it was the night before His death that Luke tells us that Jesus “reclined at table, and the apostles with him. And he said to them, ‘I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.’ And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said, ‘Take this, and divide it among yourselves. For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.’ And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’ And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood. But behold, the hand of him who betrays me is with me on the table’” (Luke 22:14–21).

Jesus was breathing new life in to the Passover. Within hours, the biggest act of salvation in the history of His people would no longer be the night in Egypt when divine judgement would pass over them because of the blood of the lambs who died in their place. Instead, the greatest act of salvation would be the dark day in Jerusalem when divine judgement would pass over us because of the blood of the perfect Son of God who died in our place.

And since then Christians have obeyed the teaching of Jesus by regularly eating and drinking in remembrance of Him.

1 Corinthians 11 tells us some very important truths about the Lord’s supper. It tells us that, by the time of the Apostle Paul, this bread and cup were no longer eaten and drunk as a part of a full Passover meal. Instead, these two elements, singled out by Jesus, were eaten and drunk together regularly as a special way of celebrating what Jesus did and what He’d promised to do.

We see this in a few places, but specifically in 1 Corinthians 11:34 which says about the Lord’s Super, “if anyone is hungry, let him eat at home.” In other words, this wasn’t supposed to be a regular meal. Eat first if you’re hungry. This is a symbolic meal by which we remember Christ’s body and blood together.

1 Corinthians 11 also shows us a very close connection between the church gathering and the Lord’s supper being eaten. Five times in that chapter we read the words “come together.” And the assumption is that when they come together is is supposed to be to eat the Lord’s supper.

Verse 18 says “when you come together as a church,” and verse 33 says “when you come together to eat.” It seems like when they came together as a church, they celebrated the Lord’s supper. The two went together. That’s a big reason why, recently, we’ve joined many churches throughout history by eating the Lord’s supper whenever we assemble as a church.

It also means that we need to think about this special connection between coming together as a church and eating the Lord’s supper. The Lord’s supper is not just a personal experience. It’s a sign of our union with Jesus and our union with each other.

1 Corinthians chapter 10 says, “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread” (1 Corinthians 10:16–17).

That’s why he tells them to wait for one another and eat it together in the next chapter. It’s something we do together. Jonathan Leeman wrote, “Partaking of the bread shows that we are one body. It reveals who the body of Christ is. It makes us visible to the world and each other. The Supper, we might say, makes the invisible church visible.”¹Leeman, Jonathan. One Assembly: Rethinking the Multisite and Multiservice Church Models (9Marks) (p. 61). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

And so we see that the Lord’s supper has the ongoing effect of keeping our baptism fresh. Baptism marks our union with Jesus in His death and resurrection, and the Lord’s supper keeps us mindful of the same things.

Baptism marks us out as members of the body of Christ, and the Lord’s supper continues to mark us out as members of the body of Christ. Baptism marks our entrance into the covenant, and the Lord’s supper is the regular covenant meal that we enjoy with the covenant community.

And the order there is important—baptism, then communion—which I plan to say more about in an article on the blog this week or next.

Conclusion

For now, let’s reflect on the big-picture beautiful truths we’ve seen this morning. God choses to be in relationship with us. And He orders this relationship through His gracious New Covenant in Christ, who enacted it with His blood and ever lives as it’s risen and living and active mediator. And He marks out this covenant, and the covenant people, through signs—real, physical signs we can touch and taste and smell and see.

Today, we get to see three young ladies publicly reenact their burial and resurrection with Christ in baptism. And then they will join us and together, as a little outpost of the New Covenant assembly, we get to eat and drink in remembrance and hope of Christ’s death for us and His promised return for us.

So that’s what we get to do this morning. And I trust you will find your faith encouraged and built up as we commune with Christ and each other that whatever challenges or struggles or pain or joys are ahead of you this week. As we wait for the day when God dwells with us forever, we look back to His presence in Christ and enjoy His presence today through His Spirit.

Like Brad reminded us of last week, Emmanuel isn’t just a word on our sign. It’s a beautiful statement of what is true, and a promise of what will be true in the best way imaginable forever.

So what curveballs are headed your way this week? God knows. And that’s enough. Because He is a faithful, covenant-keeping God who is with us and has promised to hold us fast.