This Sign Makes a Difference 10/6/46
Scripture: Hebrews 8: 6 - 9:15
A covenant is a precious thing! It is an agreement in sincerity, by which friend may live with friend in trust and understanding.
It was a great time in the history of the Hebrew people when they came to know that they did not have to live under a God whose whims and wrath were unpredictable; but rather that God had entered into covenant, so to speak, with Moses, and with Abraham. He was to be known among the people as their God, who cared for them; and they were to acknowledge themselves His people. He would allow punishment upon them for their evil doings; but He would receive them in forgiveness when they repented of their wrongdoing and acknowledged that they belonged to him.
A covenant is always impressive. It is a great moment when two people stand before their pastor and, before witnesses, in the presence of God, repeat the sacred words of their free purpose and intention: “I, John, take thee, Mary, to be my wedded wife;” “I, Mary, take thee, John, to be my wedded husband.” In that agreement something holy and dependable is declared. It is more than a legal contract. It is a covenant between two people and God and the society of human beings.
It is a day of rejoicing when parents bring their little ones to the house of God, and there covenant with God, with each other, and with the company of the church that they do consecrate that life to God and his righteous care, and that they will see that the child is raised in the knowledge of what it means to be a child in God’s faithful household.
It is a time of renewal and strengthening when people stand up in the presence of the congregation, confess their faith in God and, together with the congregation promise to walk together as Christian brethren.
The ancient covenant of God with Israel was of such importance that it was sealed with the most earnest symbol known to those people.
An agreement was especially impressive when the sincerity of a man was such that he would open a vein, take a few drops of the red fluid that seemed to be his very stream of life, and with it put his sign and seal on the agreement. And so blood came to have a great significance in some of the temple rites - not as a messy test of one’s fortitude, but as a symbol of a sincerity as great as life itself.
In modern time, a young man of Korea so mis-conducted himself in a school that he was judged unfitted to continue there; and for his wrong was dismissed. Weeks later, from a distant place, he sent a note to the principal, brief but written with the blood of his own veins. The words were simply “I have repented.” But the blood of that boy spoke to the principal of his deep sincerity.
There came a time in the turbulent history of mankind when Jesus came to a small community, in a little country bordering the Mediterranean. But he came with a message and a new covenant for all the world.
The chaplain of our State Conference [Roy Cannon] at Appleton last week opened one of his meditations in a striking manner. He invited us to imagine our feeling if we had come into that sanctuary and been seated only to hear him order the doors closed and locked, the windows shut, and a guard thrown around the building; then to announce that he was proclaiming a revolution!
And yet that is what the gospel of Christ is -- a revolution. To those who receive it, it means an entirely different way of living from the scheming, legalistic, self-gratifying, fearful, and disappointing ways that are the common lot of those who know him not. It is a revolution so powerful that we hardly realize that an old world is, for us, blown to bits and a new way is ours.
Time and again Jesus referred to the commands of Moses, the ways of Abraham. “Moses taught you thus and so -- but I say unto you;” -- and then some revolutionary phrase came from his lips. “Love your enemies.” [Matthew 5:44]. “Forgive as you would be forgiven.” [Luke 6: 37]. “I give you a new commandment, that ye should love one another as I have loved you.” [John 13: 34].
And he did not offer it as a new and desirable philosophy. He proclaimed it as something revolutionary - completely different - outside the stiff, strict rules of law and justice that had governed people before.
And he believed it so absolutely that he proclaimed a new covenant between God and man, and between man and man; a covenant in which he believed so thoroughly that he set the seal of it with his own blood and body, like some firm thumb print in the lower right hand corner of a document.
Our communion is not only a service of remembrance of him at this table, but a recognition of his covenant of spiritual liberation and salvation! With these signs of himself he offers to us all a new covenant. Do you wonder that His supper has been received through 19 centuries? It will continue for ages!
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Delivered in Wisconsin Rapids, October 6, 1946
Also at CWMA, in Wisconsin Rapids, October 8, 1946