Notes from
Covenant Service
1. Explain
Wesley Covenant Service
Puritans
2. Covenant
is key word thru scriptures. Assyrian for shackle or fetter—binding relationship with God.
Covenant always at God’s initiative. Our part is to respond to God’s grace.
Noah: never again to
unleash the waters of chaos and flood the world. Rainbow (Gen 6)
Abraham: father of
great nation, to your offspring I will give this land (Gen 12)
Moses: If you obey my
voice & keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession (Gen
19). Sign is the law, esp. 10
Commandments.
Jeremiah 31: after
exile, a new covenant, not like the old one which they broke, but I will put my
law within them and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God and they
shall be my people.
Christians find this covenant fulfilled in Jesus, for all
people, signs are baptism and Holy Communion.
3. There is
heavy language in this service:
commitment, self-denial, Christ as all or nothing, obedience. Partly, the times it came from allowed
firmer, more self-effacing language.
But also, like marriage, if the covenant
with God is to mean anything, it must demanding, disciplined,
all-encompassing.
D. L. Watson’s explanation in Disciple
video:
--when we
enter into covenant with God, we agree to be bound into a relationship which at
a later date, even if inconvenient or difficult, can’t be undone.
We willingly agree to be bound in a moment
of strength, so that in a moment of weakness we cannot be unbound.
In scripture, in order to keep our covenant
with God we must also make a covenant with one another.
Why?
We need one another to help us keep our covenant with God because we are
sinners—forgiven, being healed, but sinners all the same. Despite our need for God and longing for God,
we resist God’s grace, which is the root of all sin.
One example of covenant with one another is
the early Methodist class meeting—they covenant to meet weekly to pray, study,
serve others, and to hold one another mutually accountable, to watch over one
another. i.e., SMALL GROUPS.
Reminder: the heavy language is not to weigh us down or
break our spirits. It is to bind us for
good, willingly agreeing to be bound in a moment of strength so that in a
moment of weakness we cannot be unbound.
How easy it is to be unbound—go off on our own, go down unhelpful paths,
to come to believe that no one, not even God, still cares about us, when it is
we who have unhitched ourselves from God and others.
Image of Odysseus in Book 12
& sirens. Plugs crew’s ears
with wax and they bind him to the mast.
He begs them, but they only bind him tighter. Sirens are singing:
drink/drugs/promiscuity
materialism, money makes happy—TV
caring only about oneself & own family
sirens of violence and war
sirens of loneliness and despair
But you have been bound for good into relationship with God through Jesus Christ, and bound to one another in his name. And today we renew that covenant in a moment of strength, so that in a moment of weakness we do not become unbound.