One of my favorite topics or ideas to preach on is big themes found in the Bible. I tried to accomplish that on Sunday with an overview of the biblical covenants. What’s challenging about doing overviews like this is knowing what to cut out and what to include that fits the overall big theme. But teaching on big themes gives us the big picture of the Bible and begins to put things in perspective for us. It’s one reason why I like teaching big ideas. I enjoy helping people see how the Bible works together and how Jesus fulfills everything.
How Understanding Covenants Help Us
Like I said Sunday, trying to understand the Bible without understanding the covenants is like trying to walk without a spine. It’s impossible. Understanding the flow of the covenants and seeing how Jesus is the fulfillment of them, helps us see God’s omniscient and perfect plan throughout the pages of Scripture. But it also helps us as Christians. Here are a few ways that this helps us:
- It shows us the faithfulness and immutability of God (His unchangeableness). What we saw Sunday was that there is a plan in place that God started and accomplished. We saw His demand for obedience and His work of grace. And we saw it from beginning to end. Why? Because God is faithful and He’s unchanging. He’s not willy-nilly with His counsel or His demands. He’s faithful and never changing.
- It gives us peace knowing that God’s work of salvation finds its fulfillment in Christ, and no other ‘new’ revelation reveals this. See, we’re not looking for something new. We’re looking to Christ! And this is critical to understand, especially in light of our belief that God is still speaking to us today through various gifts in the church. God is finished speaking about the work of redemption. But for momentary daily needs of wisdom for helping friends or family members, personal direction, or things like this, the Spirit is still actively helping us through promptings, prophetic words, or friends speaking to us (all secondary to God’s written word). But the work of redemption and Jesus as the final way God relates to sinful humans is completed.
- It settles our guilty hearts because knowing that Christ’s work is finished and God’s covenant is secured, we no longer have to walk in condemnation. We can come clean with God about our sins and turn from them by the Spirit’s power. 1 John 1:9 is an amazing promise for the Christian. It is ‘just’ of God to forgive us of our sins…because Jesus satisfied God’s justice in His death. So, we don’t have to live with our heads down anymore. We can live with our eyes and hearts looking up to God’s faithfulness to us in Christ.
- It gives us an easy flow to follow in the Bible. The covenants tie things together. When you start in Genesis and look for the Genesis 3:15 champion, you can get a feel for how cool prophets were and why kings were considered “sons of God.” And it helps you see how short-sighted and sinful we are as humans. And yet, God keeps coming. This makes the Bible’s storyline flow and gives you portraits of grace throughout it.
Upcoming
This Sunday, March 12th, our Sunday services will be at 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. at the CLF building (notice, not 8:30 and 10:30). Our marriage retreat is the same weekend, and most of our team will be at the retreat. So don’t forget to ‘spring’ your clock forward one hour (or remember that you’ll lose an hour of sleep when your phone sets it automatically for you).
Things have gone so well at Jacoby that we think it will be our home for a while. However, we have 1 more “test” on March 19th. Let us know what you’ve thought about our services at Jacoby, as it will help us formulate our thoughts moving forward. Right now, we’re moving along as if we’ll be there, but we want to hear from our people about this.
From the Cheap Seats
- 7-0…Liverpool put a beat down on Man United. It was crazy seeing how the ball bounced Liverpool’s way.
- The more I read about the World Baseball Classic, the more excited I get about it. My main reason is that Mike Trout is playing for the USA this year, and I like watching him play. But many of MLB’s biggest stars are playing in the WBC this year, and it should be exciting. I read this week that many players decided to play after watching the 2022 FIFA World Cup and were inspired by the national soccer teams. I thought that was interesting. Here’s the article: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/mar/06/why-is-the-us-finally-treating-the-world-baseball-classic-like-a-world-cup
- The Arsenal 3-2 win over Bournemouth was one of the craziest games I’ve ever seen. Bournemouth scored their first goal in the first 9 seconds of the game. And Arsenal scored their last goal in ‘walk-off’ fashion. It was unreal. Here’s a link to the extended highlights: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fE8NnBxyxAY.
To watch or listen to the sermon described in this post, please click here.
Have a great week!
In Christ,
Dave York
