Sermon from May 28, 2006
If we are going to do justice to Christianity, we cannot avoid the heart of Christianity: Jesus Christ died. So what? Why does that matter so much? The Church has given two answer: 1) because of who He is and 2) because of what His death accomplished. Think about both answers for a minute.

The death of Jesus Christ is the heart of Christianity because of who He is. He is one of us. He is also the Son of God, the exact representation of God's being. God and Man are united forever in one person, Jesus of Nazareth. That's who expired at 3:00 p.m. on Friday before Passover during the administration of Pontius Pilate.

Second, the death of Jesus Christ is the heart of Christianity because of what His death accomplished. God was always prepared to be merciful to man. But God couldn't just say, "I forgive you. Don't worry about it." That would trivialize evil and mock our sense of justice. So, in a mystery God bore in His own life the consequences of our injustice and cruelty by subjecting His Son to the consequences of our injustice and cruelty. Jesus in obedience to the will of the Father entered our dead-end street and died a death He did not own to pay a debt we could not pay.

He was acting in a representative capacity. As the Jewish high priest, alone with sacrificial blood in the Most Holy Place of the temple, was the sole representative of the Jewish nation before God, so Jesus, the great High Priest, alone with His sacrificial blood in the Most Holy Place of heaven, is the sole representative of the human race before God.

He can represent us, because He is both God and man. He is the Mediator that brings God and man together permanently. He Himself is the reconciliation between heaven and earth. Because of Him humanity is "set in a different place before God and in the world," (Colin Gunton, The Actuality of the Atonement, 46). That is what we mean by the atonement.

I need to come up for air before I ask my next question. It is possible and acceptable to preach and to believe the good news about Jesus Christ without saying all I have just said. Christ died for our sins. Christ has risen. Christ has authority over all the earth. Christ will return. Repent. Believe. You will be saved. That's the message, and we can't go wrong by believing that message. Don't let anyone tell you differently.

However, the apostles of Christ were not content with simple faith. They probed deeply into the question that I just raised. Their example encourages us to do the same, as God enables us. Our failure to try may expose the gospel to the danger of degenerating into words that mean less and less as we use them more and more.

The New Covenant
That brings me to the next question. How does what we've considered make a difference in the world? Jesus died a long time ago. The meaning we give to His death is not really obvious. Even if He represents our interests before God, that seems almost as remote to us as the quarks and equations of quantum physics. If the atonement is relevant to our world, where is the evidence? (See Colin Gunton, The Actuality of the Atonement, 168).

I don't know if we are ready for the answer, but here goes. The evidence is the Church. The realities of heaven become the realities of earth in the life of the Church. "The Church is called to be ... the place where the reconciliation of all things is from time to time anticipated," (Colin Gunton, The Actuality of the Atonement, 179). The Apostle Paul illustrated this truth, when he said in 2 Corinthians 5:20: We are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God.

The story of the Church, checkered as it is, is the story of how the reconciliation of God and man is being revealed and embodied throughout the human family. Why the Church? The answer to that question takes us back to the letter to the Hebrews and what it says about the New Covenant in Hebrews 9:15.

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.

Look at one more verse in Hebrews 13:20. Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant.

We have replaced the word covenant with the word contract in our solemn dealings with one another. In a contract we lay our mutual obligations and penalties that we have agreed upon through negotiated settlements. But we do not talk about a contract with God. I think I can show you why.

In the Biblical world covenants with God are central to the story of salvation. Salvation depends on God. Humanity can't save itself. So, God always initiated covenants unilaterally. He did not ask for in-put. Furthermore, God not only initiated the biblical covenants, He made their fulfillment depend on Him alone.

Hebrews 6:13-14 gives an example of this. The writer was talking about God's covenant with Abraham and said this: When God made his promise to Abraham, since there was no one greater for him to swear by, he swore by himself, saying, "I will surely bless you and give you many descendants."

So, Jesus is the Mediator of a new covenant. And who are the parties in this new covenant? One party is Almighty God. The central mystery of our faith is that God united Himself to man forever in one person, Jesus of Nazareth. He Himself is the marriage of heaven and earth. That is how wholly and unconditionally God has committed Himself to the human family (see Thomas F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ, 125). The word covenant expresses that commitment.

The intended other party in the new covenant is mankind, the human family. The community that participates in God's intention is the Church. The visible tokens of the Church's participation in the new covenant are the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper. Jesus instituted Holy Communion by saying: This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins – Matthew 26:28. Jesus embodies in heaven, and the Lord's Supper represents on earth the reality of the new covenant that binds the Church to God.

Jesus is the great high priest, who sits enthroned at the Father's right hand. As long as He is there, the new covenant is in force. The disruption in the relationship between God and man has been permanently healed in the man, Christ Jesus. All who are included in the new covenant participate in that healing, incompletely now but in fulfillment someday. The Lord's Supper ratifies this in material signs.

The Church
Okay. I need to come up for air again. I said earlier that the realities of heaven become the realities of earth in the life of the Church with whom God has entered into a new covenant. How seriously do we take this biblical teaching that we, the Church, are in a covenant relationship with God? Evangelicals sometimes leave the impression that the Church is marginal to the Christian faith. Maybe a story here will help.

Some years ago, Carole and I were walking up Fifth Avenue in New York City. As we came to St. Patrick's Cathedral, a woman, who was walking ahead of us, stopped abruptly and said, "Oh, it's the church!" and crossed herself.

I can't imagine Protestants doing that. They would stop and admire the stained glass, the architecture, the organ, or the famous preacher. The Church is more than a place where Christians happen to meet, and I think the pious woman in front of St. Patrick's knew that better than we do.

St. Patrick's represented to her something that was larger than life, something that transcended personalities and architecture and national boundaries. Maybe she could never get it into these words, but it represented what it means for the Church to be in covenant with the Creator of all things. That's what it means to me. I want it to mean the same to you.

It's hard to do that, isn't it? You look around at the actual people sitting near you on the pew in all their tax-paying, zit-popping, high cholesterol ordinariness, and it's hard to think of them as people in a covenant relationship with God Almighty.

You remember the person you had words with at the church supper or committee meeting. You fight to shake off your drowsiness. You remember the scandals and the frauds and the Televangelist that turned you off. It's just too much. You can't connect the dots between the Church as you actually experience it and the high-sounding words of scripture and sermon. It would be nice, if it were true, but this is the real world. Let's not kid ourselves. That's why people admire Jesus and despise the Church.

Holy and Perfect
That's why we have a hard time with two verses in Hebrews that we are about to read. They tell us two more consequences of the atonement. Hebrews 10:10 says: we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Just down the page, verse 14 says this about Jesus Christ: by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy.

Jesus' sacrifice on the cross is making the Church holy, and it has made us perfect. I can't imagine two words that make people duck for cover faster than holy and perfect. And for the same reason that it's hard to think of them as people in a covenant relationship with God.

All our bad experiences with prigs and hypocrites and moralizers come rushing back into our heads and make us want to go a thousand miles in any direction from being called holy, much less perfect. We know what "perfect" people are like, and we can't stand being around them.

Nevertheless, we should bluntly contradict the prevailing distortion that holiness is only about moral character. Biblically speaking, holiness has more to do with being under new management than with being a nice guy. The first lesson about holiness has nothing to do with morality. It has everything to do with a relationship with God.

The death of Jesus created a new relationship with God; it also created a new community on earth that would embody that relationship. We call that new community the Church. Hebrews says it is holy. The Church bears a mark that reads: "Belonging to God." He has bound Himself in a covenant relationship with the Church. He takes responsibility for us, checkered past and all. He is not ashamed to call us His brothers, and He's not going anywhere. It is not for nothing that Hebrews 13:20 calls it the eternal covenant.

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
In 1995 three of us from BVBC went to a prayer and fasting conference in Lost Angeles. Campus Crusade for Christ sponsored it. We did not eat for two days; instead, we gathered in groups of 10-12 and prayed. Prayer topics were introduced by some of the best-known names in evangelical Christianity.

Each distinguished person had five minutes to introduce a prayer topic. That was a severe restriction on men and women, whose life required them to speak often. They honored the limits on them. One of those who spoke was Pat Robertson, who introduced prayer for the United States.

In his remarks he referred to America as the world's last, best hope. Another man and I, who did not know each other, spontaneously said to anyone who cared to hear, "No, it isn't." I would still say that today. I love my country deeply, and I want others to love it as much, but I love the Church more. The Church is the world's last, best hope.

It is the only global community that is not held together by force but by faith, hope, and love. It is a global community that allows each local culture to embody it in a way that is appropriate to that culture. It is the global community whose vocation is to be the dwelling place where God the Creator and Redeemer lives with the human family – a kind of beachhead from which He has already begun the liberation of the nations of the world from the disorders of sin. It is the global community whose story is not exhausted, when people go even to great lengths to document its flaws and failures.

Its anchor point in heaven is Jesus Christ, our great High Priest, who is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them – Hebrews 7:25. He is the Mediator of a new covenant in which the Lord of all creation has pledged Himself to the Church to be our God and save us from our sins and make us His people until He gives us a kingdom that cannot be shaken.

What can we do to take seriously this biblical teaching that we, the Church, are in a covenant relationship with God? Here are four possibilities within easy reach. First, aspire daily to live your life in a way that is worthy of this covenant relationship with God. If that's what you want, the Holy Spirit will teach you how to do it.

Second, fuel that aspiration by being here each Sunday to participate in heartfelt worship. It is here in worship and word that the Spirit teaches us. It is here that we regain an eternal perspective on the rest of our life.

Third, give to support the ministry here. Last week, I issued a special challenge to you, who benefit from this church and like this church, but who give far less than you are able to give. As a place to start, give an addtional $20 a month, beginning now. 200 households doing that could make a huge difference in this church's life.

Fourth, serve. As examples, I commend to you the deacons of this church. For the past 18 months I have watched these men come from long days of work and give themselves prayerfully, thoughtfully, and frequently to the ministry of BVBC. They have met seven out of the past eight weeks. Imitate their faith, and find a way to serve this congregation. You serve an eternal purpose. You co-labor with our covenant God.