Untitled Sermon (2)

Sermon Manuscript: Knowing God through His Covenants (31 AUG 2025)

Unless indicated scripture references are in CSB throughout.

Introduction.

Good morning, Harmony. My name is Adam Akers, as most of you probably know I am one of the elders here at Harmony. If you are new to the church or just visiting, welcome. I am picking up today with a sermon series that I started over year ago focused on the covenants found in the bible. The sermon I am giving today was probably the sermon I needed to give at the beginning to provide context as to why approaching the bible in the manner that I am going to quickly review this morning is important and helpful in your walk with Christ.

I started about a year ago with the Adamic Covenant focused on God’s good creation and his intent for us to be rulers with him in that good creation. And then I preached on the covenant God made with Noah in which God’s justice is revealed as being necessary in a world filled with sin and violence. Now over the course of the past year or so I’ve learned more about God’s promises as shown and revealed in Christ and more importantly I believe I am better able to articulate them now than I was then. The first two sermons I’ve just mentioned are available on YouTube and you can find the link to those on Harmony’s website.

But with that being said myself and Pastor Jeremy are going to preach a short series for the next 5 weeks that introduces you to the covenants and finishes the series I started a year ago. But I need to define a covenant and also explain what kind of covenant we are going to talk about. To do that I am going to reference our membership covenant that many of you through our new member class are likely familiar with.

In our membership covenant we’ve defined a covenant as “a written agreement or promise usually under seal between two or more parties especially for the performance of some action.” Now we have pulled that straight from the dictionary and for the purposes of two groups of fallible people (church members and potential church members) this works just fine. We know as leaders of the church that we need to be held accountable as we shepherd the church and point you and others to Christ in our word and life. Likewise, we as a good Baptist church believe in a church filled with members who have professed Christ and are in fact “pursuing holiness”. So, we covenant together in church life because we wish to lovingly join together to pursue Christ knowing we all need the accountability.

I listened to a Podcast this week that featured the sermons of Tim Keller, who established a church in New York City, and in one sermon he preached on the idea of a covenant relationship. At the beginning of the sermon, he poses a hypothetical question to himself and to his congregation regarding whether or not there is a better word than “covenant”. His response was no; there is not a better word. He asked this because his New York City congregation possibly found the word covenant to be a difficult and awkward word, or in his words “archaic”.

Now we are in south-central Missouri, and I suspect we’ve probably heard that word thrown around in different contexts. In fact, in a church setting, we may even expect biblical words like covenant to be used. It’s a word that fits in right along with words like holiness, sin, righteousness, and wrath. But let’s say that you were going to a bank to sign the papers for a loan. Maybe it’s for a house, a car, or whatever else you may need a loan for. Let’s assume it’s an appointment in which you have to physically go to the bank to sign the papers. You go to the bank, you go to the office, and you sit down with your spouse or the cosigner of the loan, and the loan officer enters the office and sits down across from you. He lays out the papers so he can go over the terms of the loan that you are about to receive from the bank. The loan officer gets the papers straight, clears his throat, looks up at you and says, “We are about to enter into a covenant.” And your response is probably, “No we’re not.”

The point I’m getting at is that the word covenant carries weight. The weight of that word is inappropriate to the situation at the bank. You want to get a loan from the bank. That comes with an understanding that the contract is finite and dependent upon both parties keeping to their side of the agreement. More importantly, when you finish with the payments on the loan, that theoretically ends the relationship with the bank. So, like the congregation in New York City, I’m going to suggest that we too have a slight aversion to the word covenant.

Ecclesiastes 4:11 states, “He has made everything appropriate in its time, He has also put eternity in their hearts…”

Ecclesiastes 4:11 ESV

Again, if two lie together, they keep warm, but how can one keep warm alone?

The word covenant strikes us within, like someone tapping a tuning fork within our soul alerting us to something more profound than the day-to-day interactions that we have with each other and maybe even God. It suggests something profound, holy, and as Solomon puts it, eternal. That may be why the word seems out of place in other contexts.

The covenant series for the next five weeks will focus on God’s covenants with us. They are initiated by him and completed by him. There are other covenants throughout the Bible between people and nations, but those are not the ones we are talking about. We are talking about the covenants of God that drive the story of the Bible. But in order to introduce you to the major covenants of God I need to provide you a framework to understand and for you to follow along with. To do that I’m going to tell you a short story.

When I was a kid my family and I would go camping fairly regularly. We would go to places like Stockton Lake, Pomme de Terre, Truman Lake, or Lake of the Ozarks. We’d find a camping site and spend the next few days exploring woods or just sitting by the fire. We would always find time to walk the miles of trails that wound its way through the woods in the Ozarks and eventually we would find ourselves alongside the lake. The “beach” if you wanted to call it that, was filled with a variety of rocks, because that is the chief export of Missouri. Inevitably we would spend time doing what most people wanted to do in that situation, looking for and throwing the best rocks to skip across the water. Now if you are expert rock skipper you know that you have to examine the rock and assess its ability to skip across the surface of the water. It needs to be flat, relatively light, and small enough to hold in your hand as you throw it in a side arm fashion to make sure it strikes the surface of the water without sinking, skirting across the water in a satisfying series of ripples as you watched the rock glide across the lake. Some of the rocks hit the surface once, and like a golf slice, arced beautifully and then sliced into the water upon its second impact. Others were worse, either because the rock was not of good enough quality, or the throw was bad, or both, the rock would shoot straight in the water in a disappointing instant.

But as we were doing this camping ritual of ours, we would usually hear grunting and struggling come from behind us unexpectedly. You see my dad had selected his “skipping” rock and apparently he had not assessed his rock according to the standards I’ve just described to you. There is a wide variety of rocks on the beach, and he picked one that clearly would not skip. Was it the size of a softball? No. Was it the size of a basketball? No. Was it the size of a beachball? No. This rock was the size of your standard coffee table. He is walking to the very edge of the water with his skipping rock with the absurd notion that maybe (in a Heman like delirium) he could make this thing skip at least once. Of course, he was only ever able to flip the rock into the water with a great crash, splashing us in the process.

What I am going to attempt to do today is to metaphorically skip a rock across the top of the Bible through this sermon by hitting the high points in the Old Testament, creating ripples that intersect with one another as God’s promises start to fill in the details of the story and culminate in Jesus Christ. Why is this important? Because the story of God’s creating and redeeming is more than a few verses deep. What we don’t want to do is to pick a verse or a small section out of the bible, pull it out of its context, and then attempt to assign the verse a wrong or distorted meaning. Like my dad who jokingly thought he could skip a boulder, many sadly believe they can cherry pick particular verses and create for themselves a true understanding of God’s Word that either justifies sin or puts the work of salvation back on their own shoulders. In other words, they attempt to carry a weight that can never travel the length of God’s Word.

For as Jesus states, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, because I am lowly and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:29-30).

But importantly, our Lord gives us a major clue as to how we should read the Old Testament and ultimately understand the New. Please stand with me and turn to Luke 24 starting at verse 25 and read with me as Jesus gently rebukes the two disciples on their way to Emmaus.

25 He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! 26 Wasn’t it necessary for the Messiah to suffer these things and enter into his glory?” 27 Then beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted for them the things concerning himself in all the Scriptures. (Luke 24:25-27)

Now please move to Luke 24:44-45.

44 He told them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” 45 Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. (Luke 24:44-45)

PRAYER

Why then do we study the covenants? Here are the first two blanks in your notes.

A. To expand our understanding of God.

B. To inspire worship of God.

The disciples had their understanding of the scriptures enabled by the Jesus who the scriptures were all about. And as the end of Luke states, “…they were continually in the temple praising God.” And as you can tell Jesus does not give them a couple key passages but expands their understanding of the scriptures across what looks like most of the Old Testament. So, lets start from the beginning and see the framework that can help expand our mind to encompass the glory of Christ a little bit better.

So, our first covenant or first strike of the water’s surface is the Adamic covenant. Most of us can probably summarize the creation story fairly quickly. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days and rested on the seventh. He made everything according to its kinds and made man and woman to tend the garden and steward creation by reflecting the image of God. We also know that Adam and Eve failed to obey God when instigated by the serpent to eat the forbidden fruit. But I’m going to guess that we often forget a key adjective that God uses to describe his creation; good. By the way, that is your third blank and the first in a series of seven remaining blanks in your notes: A Good Creation.

Where’s the covenant in this story? It’s in Genesis 2:15-17 which states:

15 The Lord God took the man and placed him in the garden of Eden to work it and watch over it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree of the garden, 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for on the day you eat from it, you will certainly die.”[1](Genesis 2:15-17)

Why do we forget that creation is good? Because we understand that Adam and Eve fail to keep this covenant in the third chapter and God places a curse on Adam, Eve, and the Serpent which in part states:

15 I will put hostility between you and the woman,

and between your offspring and her offspring.

He will strike your head,

and you will strike his heel. (Genesis 3:15)

In this verse we see the basic conflict and promised resolution to the conflict that will occur between the serpent and the seed of the woman for the remainder of the story. We see this conflict play out between Moses’ and Pharoah’s advisors as the staffs that are turned into serpents fight and devour one another, we see this conflict play out in the wilderness as the people of Israel grumble against God and are afflicted by serpents that bite them and kill many of them. We see this conflict play out with the giant,

“…from Gath, came out from the Philistine camp. He was nine feet, nine inches, tall and wore a bronze helmet and bronze scale armor…” (1 Samuel 17:4-5)

What else has scales? A serpent. Humanity is the stewards of a good creation infected by sin and death and God still seeks to raise up for himself stewards of this good creation for his own glory. The ripples of this covenant find itself intersecting with the bible’s story with each of the broken servants of God, each fulfilling God’s will for them to steward a good creation and point us to the true God who in Genesis 1:31 finishes creation and determines with satisfaction that the world as he made “was very good indeed.” This is important to note because God is not abandoning creation he is remaking it through a shocking act.

14 “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.” (John 3:14-15).

In a shocking display of role reversal, the final servant, the new Adam, is raised up in place of the serpent who represents sin and through an act of pure love turns creation right side out. But unless we think the serpent is completely dormant, Paul warns the Corinthian church and thus ourselves.

“But I fear that, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, your minds may be seduced from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 11:2-3)

The serpent still seeks to draw us from the life we find in God. But we are getting ahead of ourselves.

The second covenant is the Noahic covenant found in chapter nine of Genesis. Following the flood that wiped out the world and all of humanity, save for Noah and his family, God reconfirms his love for the world but guides it a different path, one that acknowledges the continuing impact of sin on the world. In Genesis 9:5-6 God states:

And I will require a penalty for your lifeblood; I will require it from any animal and from any human; if someone murders a fellow human, I will require that person’s life.

6 Whoever sheds human blood,

by humans his blood will be shed,

for God made humans in his image.” (Genesis 9:5-6)

What God is describing here is A Necessary Justice. The world prior to the flood was filled with violence and grieved God, so justice rained down on a wicked world, wiping away those who filled the earth with their sin. When I say a necessary justice, I mean to instill a sense of dread or foreboding in our soul. We know deep down that the world is not as it should be, and we are the cause of it. Think about a child who has been playing kickball indoors and they break a mirror or vase in the house or the inmate on death row. These are of course very different examples on different ends of the spectrum, but in God’s wisdom these are the kind of circumstances in which a person may find Christ. A child who knows their parents are going to discipline them for doing something foolish and the inmate who knows they took a life are experiencing the heavy feeling of God’s necessary justice.

The emphasis on blood in this covenant communicates its heaviness. Shortly after this covenant is enacted Abraham cuts up animals and lays them out for God in order that another covenant may be enacted. In Exodus 24 Moses sprinkles blood on an altar and then turns and sprinkles blood on the people themselves. It’s after this that they then go and eat with God on the mountain.

But the blood of animals and humans does not appear to assuage God. The people of Israel try to buy off God so to speak by exaggerating this covenant and misunderstanding God’s necessary justice as they respond to God’s prophet Micah stating:

“Would the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams

or with ten thousand streams of oil?

Should I give my firstborn for my transgression,

the offspring of my body for my own sin?” (Micah 6:6-8).

God responds by saying no, I require you,

“…to act justly, to love faithfulness, and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8).

The weight of this justice is too much for people to bare and it is not something that the blood of thousands of animals or even the death of our children can satisfy. I believe the weight of this covenant came to bear on Christ’s ministry as he taught his disciples things they would only understand after his resurrection. In Mark Christ tells his disciples,

“The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after he is killed, he will rise three days later.” 32 But they did not understand this statement, and they were afraid to ask him.” (Mark 9:31-32).

The weight of justice felt by a disobedient child and a prisoner on death row was felt by Christ’s disciples but fell on Christ instead.

God’s promise of restoration comes in the form a new nation of people, with a new identity, and a restored future that will extend forever. A Promised Nation is the gift of the Abrahamic covenant. I think we all in some way yearn for a new home. For those who have been deployed overseas or have spent significant time away from family and friends in the course of their career the idea of home can be both heartwarming and a source of aching. Abraham is called out of his homeland, with no hope of a future, to a strange land promised by God in which a brilliant future is promised to him.

“The Lord said to Abram:

Go from your land,

your relatives,

and your father’s house

to the land that I will show you.

2 I will make you into a great nation,

I will bless you,

I will make your name great,

and you will be a blessing.

3 I will bless those who bless you,

I will curse anyone who treats you with contempt,

and all the peoples on earth

will be blessed through you.” (Genesis 12:1-3)

The people of Israel receive the literal promises of the land as Joshua distributes the land to the second generation of Israelites, and the line of David continues to expand until the land grant itself is fulfilled. But the nation does not last and in time due to Israel and then Judah’s unfaithfulness to God they lose the land and their citizenship in the country, instead becoming foreigners in a different land. But as you can see by the covenant’s wording Abraham is to be the father of a great nation through whom all will be blessed and through who all will be judged.

Christ’s understanding of citizenship went well beyond the boundaries of Old Testament Israel. Christ challenges the hard hearts of the teachers of the law who assumed that their lineage and status as Israelites would ensure their status.

“There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth in that place, when you see Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but yourselves thrown out. 29 They will come from east and west, from north and south, to share the banquet in the kingdom of God.” (Luke 13:28-29).

The promised nation will be built on something that transcends physical boundaries and ethnicities. In the NIV the book of Hebrews states:

“Instead, they were longing for a better country- a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.” (Hebrews 11:16, NIV).

All countries of course have a system of codes, ethics, and more importantly laws by which they are governed. It’s the law that communicates how we wanted to be treated and how we should treat others. But unlike the laws that attempt to mitigate the effects of sin on a good creation and fulfill justice that is necessary, God’s law is rooted in love. So, our next blank is “A Loving Law”. Have you ever seen a ridiculous rule in place? It’s like a restaurant with a buffet that has to put a sign on the sneeze guard that states, “Please do not place your head under the sneeze guard.” Why is that there? It’s because someone placed their head under the sneeze guard. In the same way, our spiritual blindness and separation from God requires a teaching tool that shows us where we have failed. And a law that speaks to our failures requires a guide, a priestly service, to show us the way to repentance and restoration.

“Now if you will carefully listen to me and keep my covenant, you will be my own possession out of all the peoples, although the whole earth is mine, 6 and you will be my kingdom of priests and my holy nation.” (Exodus 19:5-6)

The covenant God makes with the people of Israel makes them his priests, a holy nation that points to his glory through his law. So, then what should the effect of God’s law be on the people of Israel, and ultimately on the world? After the ten commandments and the law is given by the mouth of God himself on the top of Mount Sinai the people shrink back in fear (Exodus 20:18-20). The people of Israel fail to keep the law repeatedly in a cycle of sin and restoration. In one cycle of repentance Josiah a new king of Judah finds a lost copy of the law and is read its contents by a priest. His reaction is to weep and tear his clothes (2 Chronicles 34:19). The exiles of Judah who return from Babylon are taught the law by Ezra, the great teacher of the law. They have to be told not weep (Nehemiah 9:1-2). Why? Because they are cut by the law of God. They know they have failed, it’s obvious.

It's also not enough to simply keep the outward actions of the law but to be inwardly renewed, something the law cannot do. It simply points to the reality that we all share; that of God’s wrath. Christ’s sermon on the mount famously states that even calling someone a fool is grounds for condemnation. This is not an add-on to the law; it is the full extent of the law revealed. As Paul bluntly states,

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23).

But James shows us the point of the law in his letter.

“Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be miserable and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.” (James 4:8-10).

Ultimately all nations with laws need a government, typically one with a head of state. One who represents the entirety of the country and represents the ideals of the group. Now we in this country don’t typically look for kings and queens when trying to figure out who is going to run the nation. We want to be able to vote for our leaders because we want them to be accountable to us, which is right because we are voting for sinful human beings. But your next blank next to the word Son is “royal”. (“A Royal Son”)I picked this word precisely because of what is conveys, unquestioned right to rule. It suggests an ascendancy to a throne that we are not quite used to in this country. The promise is made to David and can be referred to as the “Davidic Covenant” It is captured in 2 Samuel 7.

“When your time comes and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up after you your descendant, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. 13 He is the one who will build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. 14 I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will discipline him with a rod of men and blows from mortals. 15 But my faithful love will never leave him as it did when I removed it from Saul, whom I removed from before you. 16 Your house and kingdom will endure before me forever, and your throne will be established forever.’ ” (2 Samuel 7:12-16).

New kings and their ascendancy are dangerous times for a kingdom. An interregnum can produce terrible violence and persecution for those whose king’s power is not quite established or readily seen. But the covenant made with David is not the first time a royal line has been prophesied. Balaam the mad prophet was hired by the king of Moab to curse Israel but instead exclaims:

“I see him, but not now;

I perceive him, but not near.

A star will come from Jacob,

and a scepter will arise from Israel.

He will smash the forehead of Moab

and strike down all the Shethites.” (Numbers 24:17).

The new king will destroy the old kings that stand against him, this is not particularly democratic. Christ’s birth unsettles King Herod and his death and resurrection is unsettling to Pontius Pilate. He is a strange king whose power will know no bounds.

In Revelation one of the last verses references this covenant stating,

I, Jesus, have sent my angel to attest these things to you for the churches. I am the root and descendant of David, the bright morning star.” (Revelation 22:15).

If you are going to start over, it helps to go back to the beginning. If you fail to make a good first impression in a job interview or you say something you regret to a loved one, one of our wishes is to be able to rewind the tape and make it new, the way it ought to have been, as if it never happened. The sixth blank in your notes is the word “new”. (“A New Creation”) Notice that this is compared with “good” in the first covenant. God didn’t make a mistake, we did. But in order to correct the problem of sin, God needs to make things new, as they ought to have been, as if it never happened. The new covenant in Jeremiah 31 states:

“Look, the days are coming” —this is the Lord’s declaration—“when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. 32 This one will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors on the day I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt—my covenant that they broke even though I am their master”,—the Lord’s declaration. 33 “Instead, this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days”—the Lord’s declaration. “I will put my teaching within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34 No longer will one teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know me, from the least to the greatest of them” —this is the Lord’s declaration. “For I will forgive their iniquity and never again remember their sin.”

There is a scene in one of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies in which Captain Sparrow is stuck in limbo on his ship. He got their because he died by getting eaten in the previous movie. So, his ship is at sea but in limbo, not in the land of the living so to speak. His friends somehow manage to get to the other side and meet him only for them to also be in limbo. In order to make it back to the real-world Captain Sparrow begins to run back and forth across the deck getting his crew to follow him thinking that he is looking for something. The ship begins to rock back and forth. And finally, the crew starts to catch on; he’s trying to flip the ship. They eventually do just that and while the ship is upside down in the water the sun does something to the water that transports the ship and crew back to reality. The new covenant in a way is like that. We in the church are mimicking our Lord without understanding entirely what he’s doing, but with purpose of mimicking the act of new creation that is just around the corner.

Now if you notice there is one more blank on your sheet. It does not have a number; it has a question mark. Now remember I’ve skipped a stone across the biblical narrative, giving you very brief glimpses of each of these covenants. There is a good creation, the necessary justice, a promised nation, a loving law, a royal son, and a new creation. The final blank is not another covenant it’s something else entirely. This is for the congregation to answer. What does God do on the seventh day of creation? (“Rest”)

When I thought about the idea of using a skipping stone across a lake to structure this sermon I thought about how the stone might stop. The idea I came up with was the idea of a nailed scarred hand catching it just as it descends to strike the water for a seventh time. I tried to imagine the rest of what Jesus might have looked like but was unable to do so. The rock in my mind is suspended over the lake and the lake itself goes very still. It’s also appropriate that Christ is standing on the water in the lake, at a distance, you can tell it’s a man on the water. By the way the lake is Stockton Lake or Pomme de Terre, not the Sea of Galilee.  The disciples saw this same phenomenon in the bible and were terrified, thinking it was a ghost (Matthew 14:26). On the other hand, it’s also an apt stopping point because it makes for a good invitation to step out on the water and follow the ripples to its conclusion; to the man beckoning you out on the water saying “come” (Matthew 14:29). Like Peter it’s not necessary for you to know how to swim and its certainly not your job to learn to walk on water, Christ will do that for you. You simply need to know your need for a savior. You need to know that you are a part of a good creation, who needs justice for yourself and others, that can be included in the promised nation, with a loving law already complete, serving a king who is madly in love with, who died and rose for you, establishing a new covenant with you.

“Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.” (Genesis 1:2).  

The rock hovers suspended above the waters with a man who walked on water to communicate a profound point about who he was. The rock will not remain suspended forever.

PRAYER

When the rock drops and it strikes the water a seventh time, the music may sound a bit like this.

JOY TO THE WORLD