Lent 3: Claim the Covenant

• Third Sunday of Lent.
with Hebrews 9

www.FirstChurchBville.com    @FirstUMCBville   @kerrfunk

A video of the worship service was posted on Facebook 3/24/19 https://www.facebook.com/FUMCWV/videos/361100887828330/

Sermon number three of five in a series based on the book One Faithful Promise by Magrey deVega.

• I used to work in a carwash. Getting a car clean takes a few steps:
1, show up; 2, select cleaning service; 3, drive into the tunnel.
That’s where we are in this covenant process.

Admit the filth, make the commitment, then put yourself in the position to receive the service. Don’t get clean by making the decision to go to the carwash. Don’t get clean by actually going to the carwash or by selecting the service, but by going through the carwash.

• One Faithful Promise. Wesley earnestly wants us to take covenant seriously. Sin is not a scraped knee in need of a bandaid, it’s something much more serious, in need of professional care.

Step One, Confide in God.

Step Two, Compose Your Spirit.
   Composing your spirit means staying focused
   and serious about committing yourself to God.

Step Three: Claim the Covenant.

• p. 33: Grab hold of God’s covenant and rely upon God’s promise of giving grace and strength, whereby you may be enabled to perform your promise. Trust not your own strength nor the strength of your own resolution, but take hold of God’s strength.

Check out the membership questions on page 34 of our hymnal:
Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you…

• I’ve told you about the monkey trap before… Attach a chain to a coconut, drill a hole just big enough for the monkey’s hand to fit in, and put a treat in the coconut. The monkey grabs the treat but cannot get his hand out as long as he’s holding the treat.

The treat that catches us is us hanging on to the notion that we can fix ourselves, that we don’t need God.

It’s an AA conundrum as well, which is why AA starts out with the premise that if we could quit drinking, we would. By myself I can try a dozen different ways of quitting, but I will always return. But when I let go of the notion that I can do it myself, I can be freed from the trap. When I can trust that there is a power outside of me, I can achieve sobriety.
And we find that God does in us what we could not do for ourselves.

• We are not able to make ourselves right.
We need to let go of the notion that we can so that God can.

• Wesley called this Prevenient Grace. Our ability to let go and let God comes from God.

• Wesley also believed we need regular opportunities to pledge our obedience to God and to remind ourselves of the need to entrust ourselves to God.

Which is why the small groups, holy clubs, societies formed, for regular accountability.
Which is why we gather in worship and specifically in holy communion.
Which is why we have prayer of confession and assurance of pardon, and why we remember baptism and renew covenant.

• This is why Christ came. This is why we gather.

• Hymn 468 Dear Jesus, in Whose Life I See

Hebrews 9:11-15 (NIV)

¹¹ But when Christ came as high priest of the good things that are now already here, he went through the greater and more perfect tabernacle that is not made with human hands, that is to say, is not a part of this creation. ¹² He did not enter by means of the blood of goats and calves; but he entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption. ¹³ The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkled on those who are ceremonially unclean sanctify them so that they are outwardly clean. ¹⁴ How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God!

¹⁵ For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant. ò