“The True Spirit of the Church”
a sermon by
Thomas L. Jenkins
Text: Hebrews 10:16-25
“…let us approach in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled
clean from an evil conscience…”
Friends, in what we are being told by God, in this Word written through
the Letter to the Hebrews, we are being blessed, given one of the
grandest visions of the truth of who we are in what God has done for us,
and how we are to come together right here, where we are. The subjects this morning are covenant, forgiveness, the true
reality of Jesus Christ, and how to come together at church and
encourage love in one another.
A covenant is not a contract. Through
the history of God with Israel, provided for us in the Hebrew
Scriptures, God continually makes and renews covenants throughout, with
Abraham and Moses, and often reinstated with the people many times
through the ministry of prophets.
From a human perspective we see a process of God interacting with
God’s people, making an agreement and pledge.
But, because the people of God’s choice are continually falling
away from God and God is dealing with this, we often come to think of
this whole connection like a contract, where there is a mutual
agreement, but if one side breaks the contract, then the deal is over.
And the people of Israel, like all of us who are human beings continue
to fall away from their side of the covenant as they struggle with faith
through the trials within the circumstances in their lives.
But, God never leaves them alone.
The whole point is, God, who promised the covenant is faithful.
A covenant is not a contract. A
covenant is a relationship between two, where each one is totally
devoted to the love of the other unconditionally.
We try, in the church, to represent a covenant in human marriage,
where we say to one another such things as, “I promise to be your
loving and faithful spouse, in plenty and want, in joy and in sorrow, in
sickness and in health; as long as we both shall live.”
When in a marriage we share in the love between God the Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, then we
participate in the true covenant between God and humanity.
There is one covenant. There
is one unconditional loving devotion between God and human beings and it
is located in the person of Jesus Christ.
On the very last night of His life before his death and
resurrection, at the last supper, referring to the wine, Jesus said,
this is my blood, the blood of a new covenant with God.
There is a covenant between God and humanity.
It is located in Jesus Christ.
God the Father loves humanity unconditionally.
Humanity loves God the Father unconditionally. God
is perfectly faithful and devoted to humanity in Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ stands in our place, represents humanity, and loves
God unconditionally and faithfully.
It has been accomplished. It
has been fulfilled. This is
the final true reality between God and humanity located in Jesus Christ.
This is why we heard this second statement regarding our sins, where our
author this morning has God saying, “I will remember their sins and
their lawless deeds no more.”
Listen to this. “I will
remember their sins…no more.” We
often think we still need to be forgiven of our sins.
We confess our sins every Sunday.
And we might very well confess our sins everyday.
And one of the ways we have been trained to think and believe is
that we have to confess right, repent properly, and do acts of penitence
to actually be forgiven by God. As
we think of a covenant like a contract, then we think we need to believe
and act in proper ways in order to be forgiven by God.
And we often think of the final judgment as a time after our death where
we must go and stand before God and see if we really are forgiven for
all the sins we feel such shame and guilt over.
This is contractual thinking, not covenantal thinking.
You and I, and each and every one of us have already been
forgiven for all our sins, past, present, and future.
And for this author to use somewhat figurative language at times,
its application to our hearts may very well be taken literally. God is
saying, “I will not even remember their sins any longer.”
It is when we are brought by God to see the awesomeness of this whole
situation of our lives in Christ that we are almost overwhelmed by what
it means.
I had been a Christian for about 15 years.
God had given me a higher education in Christian colleges and
universities. After about 7
years of wrestling with God calling me into the ministry, which I fought
with because I felt inadequate in my life, I went to seminary and became
a minister.
In my first church ministry one of my professors called me and
asked my what I would like him to pray for in my life.
I told him that I had been to seminary, I had learned the Greek
and Hebrew scriptures, how to prepare a sermon, how to counsel in
personal situations, and how to work within the polity of the
Presbyterian Church. But,
what I wanted most in my heart was to become a theologian.
I had been a mathematician.
I wasn’t great in terms of how quickly I calculated math in my
mind, but in my heart I knew what mathematics is.
That is what I wanted in terms of theology.
I want to be a theologian in my heart for the people in the
church.
I bought Karl Barth’s Church
Dogmatics, which are 13 volumes of the deepest and most profound
theology in the last 500 years in the church.
And I dedicated myself to reading them cover to cover, and it
took me about three years. Then
on one day, I was in my church office, and I was reading in the Gospel
of John the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, where we have
heard many times two of the most famous verses of the New Testament: (1)
“You must be born again” and (2) “For God so loved the world that
he gave his only begotten Son…”
And God showed me the truth of our situation in the covenant with
Christ.
We must be born from above.
That is why God sent His Son in Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ is our birth from above.
We are already born again. We
were born again by God in Jesus Christ without any vote in the matter.
God accomplished this. It
is finished. This is the
truth of who we now are.
This very experience was so amazing, astonishing, overwhelming to me
that I simply walked around in the sanctuary of the church for a number
of hours just totally in a new state of mind.
It was like I was totally outside of myself and in a new state of
being.
The truth of what God has already done for us in Jesus Christ, as we
grow in hearing, seeing, believing, experiencing, and living in it, is
what the true Spirit of church is all about.
When the Son of God entered into humanity by entering into the life of
Jesus Christ He entered into your heart.
God is in your heart. When
Jesus Christ was raised from the dead and returned to be with God the
Father, you were raised from the dead and returned to be with God the
Father. That is the real
truth that is in your heart; not because you put it there, but because
that is what God has done. You
are in the covenantal loving relationship between God the Father and God
the Son in the Holy Spirit. That
is the greatest truth of your life.
So, now, as we hear this, as we walk out of here today, let’s make
this our deepest consideration, “…let us consider how to provoke one
another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together…”
I told my professor I want to become a theologian in my heart.
If he called me today and asked how I would like him to pray for
me, I should say, “I want to know more in my heart about how to be in
church in the right Spirit, loving my brothers and sisters and
encouraging us all to see how we are sharing in the life we now have in
Jesus Christ.”
Let us pray…
Amen
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