369: What's a Testament? | Tim Henderson

Introduction

I feel like every once in a while you get an inspired idea from a mistake. So, Sloop, I think we should every year when we have new members we make the entire congregation stand and affirm their commitment to the tithe. You guys down with that? I think that'd be a good play going forward. Okay, let me ask you something. Have you ever noticed that we sometimes use words but we don't actually know what they mean? You might know how to use them, you might know where they fit but it's just kind of an empty phrase, right?

So I'll give it for an instance, in about a week and a half it's gonna be Maundy Thursday. And a lot of you know what Maundy Thursday is, you know it's like the day before Good Friday, perhaps, or part of Holy Week, maybe you know that it's the night that we do the foot washing. Although I will say side trail real quick, I'll pick up my argument in a minute, this year we're not doing a foot washing. We're gonna be having a service, we'll have a Maundy Thursday service but it won't be in this room, it'll be in the fellowship hall. And that's because really two really significant things happened on that day, the night that Jesus was betrayed. He instituted communion and he washed his disciples' feet. We all celebrate that with the foot washing, this year we're gonna do something different. There will be no foot washing, and so if you have never come specifically because you're like, thank you, no, this is your year, okay? We're gonna be in the fellowship hall, and we're gonna celebrate communion, but it'll be different probably than many of you have ever done it. We'll be seated at tables, there will be a bottle of wine and a loaf of bread on every table.

And the reason we're gonna do that is because communion initially was a meal that symbolized something, and it has somewhat become something that symbolizes a meal. But when Jesus did this, he was with his friends, they were eating, they were drinking. It wasn't like a drop of wine, it was a glass of wine. And so we're gonna run through, we're gonna celebrate this institution, this ceremony, but we're gonna do it in a way that honors not only the vertical connection to the Lord, but also the horizontal connection to one another. I think it's gonna be sweet, and I hope that you will come, or at least I hope that 210 of you will come, because that is all we have room for. Okay? But you should come, there'll be a loaf of bread, a bottle of wine, some cheese, and fruit, and grape juice, and whatnot, and we will celebrate that meal, like two Thursdays from now. Okay? It'll be in the fellowship hall. We hope you'll love it. You should come. Okay? And when we do it, it'll be on Maundy Thursday. So back to my point. Maundy Thursday, what the heck is a Maundy? Alright? You ever think about this? Why do we call it, a lot of kids think it's Monday, Thursday, like, does that even mean? What's a Maundy Thursday? Okay? It would be helpful if you knew that Maundy is Latin for mandate or for command.

The Meaning of Maundy Thursday

Okay? So it's command Thursday, and the command is that that night, the night that Jesus was betrayed, John records that he gave his disciples a new command, a command that they would love one another. So Maundy Thursday is mandate Thursday. It's command Thursday. It's love one another Thursday. That's really what we're saying every time we say it. And you have probably said it, but you may not have ever known what you really meant when you said it. Okay?

Another version of that and the one that I really wanna talk about is this, probably most of you in this room know that we divide the Bible into two different sections. Right? And if you know that much, then you also know what the sections are called. So what are the two sections of your Bible? Old Testament, New Testament. Duh. Okay? But what the heck is a testament? And why do we call it the Old Testament and the New Testament? Okay. You know, you might think, I don't know, is a testament a collection of religious writings? We have an old collection of religious writings? We have a new collection of religious writings? Okay. Good guess. No. Maybe you would be like, okay. Well, testament sounds like testimony. Maybe it's like we have an old eyewitness account of what God has done, and we have this new updated eyewitness account of what God has done. Also wrong. Okay? Not that.

If you wanna know really what testament means, then you might be helpful to know a little bit of Latin once again, and actually, just a little bit, a smidgen of history. Because in the fourth century, a Christian scholar named Jerome translated the whole bible into Latin, out of Hebrew, the old what we call the old test out of Hebrew, and the New Testament out of Greek into Latin. And when he did, he unified this whole thing, and he used a particular word testamentum to translate one Hebrew word and one Greek word. Now I don't speak either Hebrew or Greek, so I'll butcher this, but essentially, what it looks like is berit, b e r I t, is the Hebrew word, and then diathike is the Greek word. And those two words, he translated as testamentum from which we get testament.

But the and you don't need to remember any of that. What you do what you might wanna remember is what do those two words translate into in English, and Mary Beth knows. What do they translate to? Covenant. Okay? So what we really have in these two halves of the bible are a description of the old covenant and a description of a new covenant. And I think that that's a little bit of an unfortunate thing because covenants are really important, and it's pretty huge news that there was an old covenant, we got a whole book about it, but that it's been replaced or updated with a new covenant. I think it's somewhat of a shame that that really important concept has been obscured by describing it in a language that basically nobody speaks.

The Concept of Covenants

Okay? So, today, we're gonna talk about covenants. So what is a covenant, you guys? Covenant is essentially a contract. It's a promise. It's a it's like a solemn agreement that two parties make about how they will relate to each other. And the covenant that most of us are probably most familiar with, the one that we certainly see the most and maybe perhaps even live within, is the covenant of marriage.

My Personal Covenant

Okay? So we're gonna talk a little bit this morning about covenant. Let me tell you just a just a hair about my own covenant of marriage. My wife, Kelly, we met when we were students at James Madison University, which is the happiest place in the whole world. I loved JMU, it's so fun. I met Kelly there, and as our relationship began, that that is we fell in love together, basically going on walks at Purcell Park, if anybody happens to know Harrisonburg. Or more accurately, I fell in love going on walks in Purcell Park.

And while I think it's a matter of record that Kelly liked me first, thank you very much, I quickly came to like her more. And as we would go on these walks, it was such a time of joy. And of course, I came to like her more. Right? She was a joy to get to know. She's smart, and she's funny, and she's pretty, and she's sweet, and she's godly, and she's fun to make out with. Okay? And it was dating was a happy, happy time. Right? And as we walked through it together, there were basically two things that were happening.

Number one, I was happy. I was discovering things about her that were joyful. And number two, as I discovered each layer of thing, I was incentivized to learn more. I wanted to I was on it was a great big quest. It was a hunt to try to decide, do I want to marry this girl? And if so, can I convince her to marry me? But, something that never happened the whole time that we were dating, is I never told her that I loved her. And the I was falling in love with her, to be sure, but I didn't want to tell her that I loved her until what I meant was, I first Corinthians 13 you. Right? I enjoyed Kelly, and I appreciated Kelly, and I admired Kelly, but I didn't wanna tell her I love you when all that I meant was I enjoy you. I wanted to wait to tell her that I loved her until what I meant was I am committed to your good more than my good, because your good has become my good.

And Kelly knew that if I told her I loved her, that I had made up my mind, that I had bought a ring, and I was gonna be asking her to make a covenant with me. And finally, she thought that was a good idea too. And so on 10/03/1992, we were married in a covenant that united us to one another. And that covenant, as you can imagine, became the greatest source of joy, really, in a practical way in my life. And, the nature of those makeup sessions changed dramatically, became even more fun. And I love covenants, I love being married, I love being in a commitment to somebody where there is this mutuality in the promises that we have made about how we relate to one another.

The Old and New Covenants

Okay? The old covenant, before it gets old, it is a covenant. Notice that. God had a set of ways, a set of rules of how we were to relate to him, and how he promised he would relate to us. But it is an old covenant. It's a manner of relating that's been replaced by a new and a better manner of relating. And in fact, there are a handful of times in the Old Testament where God forecast that he is going to update it, he is going to change it, he is going to replace it. There were times where he said, this isn't working. And of course, what he meant was, I'm doing my part, but you're not doing yours. This covenant is not working.

In fact, if this relationship is ever gonna work out, we're gonna have to redistribute the expectations. I will take on more, and you will take on less because I am wiser, I am stronger, I'm more gracious, more powerful, merciful, more holy, more committed, and you are rebellious, and disobedient, and fearful, and weak, and faithless. God basically said, we are as unequally yoked as it is possible for two parties to be. And so, I will take it upon myself to do even more.

One of those places where God forecasts this is Jeremiah 31. So if you have your bible, to Jeremiah thirty one thirty one, and I'm telling you right now, this is in the top 10. This is one of the most important passages in the entire Old Testament. There are certain things that kind of get lifted off the page and you recognize and you know, everybody's heard of Psalm 23, you need to know Jeremiah 31. This is high, high, high important central text, it's incredibly important.

The Promise of the New Covenant

So let's take a look at it together. We'll start in verse 31. It says,

The days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them, declares the Lord.

Do you see how many things that he is saying here that are just exactly what I've been telling you? Right? There's a covenant, amen, but it's about to be replaced. There's a new covenant, not like the one I made with your ancestors. Right? You can see here also that the covenant is how two parties relate to each other. That's why God says that he was a husband to them. He's describing this in relational terms. He had made and he had kept a covenant with his people.

But I wanna show you a few more things that are different. We're gonna look at these next three verses. I'm gonna we're gonna ask and answer three questions, one for each verse in 32, 33, and 34, and see what, really, what Jeremiah wants us to get and why this passage is so important.

First question is this, why did he make a new covenant? Take a look. 31, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I'll make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah, will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them, declares the Lord.

Why does there need to be a new covenant? Because we broke it. Okay. Here's the thing, there was nothing wrong with the first covenant. There was something wrong with the people. Apparently, okay, the Jewish people and the Gentiles were no different, simply couldn't do it. God had determined that he saw that they had not, they would not, and apparently they could not obey. It's just not available to them. Was never gonna work. Disobedience, rebellion, faithlessness, we're just gonna be the consistent experience here. So, the covenant had to be changed. Nothing was gonna get better under the old set of rules. It wouldn't work.

Okay? And by the way, side note, did you notice here that it was personal to him? He says, they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them. I wonder if we might sin less. If it really sank in for us that we're not just breaking God's rules, we're breaking his heart. He loves us, and he wants a connection with us. And in ways that are honestly, I think, kind of absurd, that are puzzling, and that are borderline humiliating because it makes him look like such a simp. It hurts his feelings when we disregard him. He is grieved by the puppets of his own making. And this is unimaginably condescending. The one who contains within himself, the source of his own and all other bliss, could be in want of us. What in the world is going on here that his joy is in some measure contingent upon our faithfulness to him, that he has placed himself in this position of forgive the heresy, but on borderline neediness for us. It is extraordinary. Right? He knew the old thing wasn't gonna work. He was pained by our disobedience. And so he says, clear the tables, new covenant.

Alright? Take a look at verse 33. Look at what he changes. What's new? Notice what's new about the covenant.

This is the covenant that I will make with the people of Israel after that time, declares the Lord. I will put my law in their minds, and I will write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.

I think this is so interesting. Okay. The new covenant is described several times. There's a bunch of these moments where he's like, we gotta change this. This isn't working. We're gonna do it differently. Jeremiah 31 is central. Ezekiel 36 is another. Deuteronomy 30 is a third. There's a couple other smaller places where he does this. Each time he does, he he kinda lights up a different facet of what's changing, what's new. In this instance, in this particular example, the way that he frames it and describes it is that he's gonna put his law in our minds. He's gonna write it on our hearts.

Where did the law used to be written? Stone. Stone tablets. It turns out that we are the sort of a thing that won't obey written rules. You write it down, you carve it in stone, and we're like, yeah. You know, maybe maybe. Okay? It's not it doesn't work. And so he's saying, what we're gonna have to do, we're gonna move from external to internal. We're write it in your mind. We're gonna put it in your heart. The way he frames it in Jeremiah I mean, in Ezekiel, is he says, I will take out your heart of stone. I will place it with a heart of flesh. I will move you to follow my decrees and laws. I will put my spirit in you. All of these images, all these metaphors are essentially saying the same thing. You can't do it, so I will do it in you. He's basically saying, you are a disobedient sock puppet, and the only chance for you to say the right things is if I enter you and move your lips. This is what he's doing. I have a friend with crew, his name is Bob, and he used to say, your new OS is the HS. Your new operating system is the Holy Spirit. The operating system that governs your whole life is just broken, and it just crashes into sin, and it crashes into sin, and it crashes into sin. And so what we're gonna have to do here, the only way this is gonna work, is we're gonna have to give you a new operating system. And the new operating system is gonna be me. Your new OS is the HS. And if I live in you, if we change, if we recode you, well now, you can finally be what you were meant to be. I will put my law in you, I'll move you to follow my decrees and my laws.

Finally, the third question, what do we get? What's the benefit under this new covenant? Look at this, there's two. Show up in verse 34. No longer will they teach their neighbor or say to one another, know the Lord, because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord, for I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.

He goes, what are the benefits? Number one, we know him. And number two, he forgives us. And don't make any mistake, knowing him is the point of the whole thing. It's literally the reason the world was made, so that we could come into a relationship with, know and see the God who is glorious. He is not only the maker of the covenant and the keeper of the covenant, he is the prize at the end of the covenant. He is the benefit, and knowing him is the reason the world was made in the first place.

He is saying, the old covenant didn't give you what I meant to give you, me, so we're gonna clear it out, and you're finally gonna get what I meant all along. We're gonna get rid of the barrier, the thing that blocks you from seeing me because I will forgive your sin. I'm gonna wipe it all away, we're gonna clear the books, keep no record of wrongs, and enable you to finally be and do what we meant all along. Guys, the new covenant is a really good deal, and you should get in on it. Because you cannot live under the terms of the old covenant. You just can't.

The Significance of the Covenant

Okay? Now, one more thing. Oh my god. Okay. I got a couple minutes. One more thing and then we're done here. We began this little time here looking at testament, and I'm pretty downstreamy about calling the each half of the bible the old testament and the new testament, and I stand by that. I think it would be more clear, more accessible to people if we called this the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, that it was before us, that there's rules we were laid them by, we couldn't do it, we have a new set. I think that's a better way to frame it, but that's too late. This has been going on for you know, sixteen hundred years and we're not gonna change it. We're stuck with the Old Testament and the New Testament as labels.

But there's something actually really, really good about the language of testament. So I need you to think about this. There's one other context in which we ever use the word testament besides Old Testament and New Testament. Can you think of what it is? Will. And a will. Your last will and testament. Okay? So, a testament, a will and testament, has a particular meaning that you're conscious of, but I wonder if you've ever applied it into this.

Okay? A will and testament, in particular, your very last one, is a set of rules that goes into effect only under a very specific circumstance. What's that circumstance? Somebody's gotta die. Okay? If I were to write you into my last will and testament and say, you get all my money, you would get nothing until I died. And then, you would be so, so, so, so rich, you can't even imagine. Okay? But, not until I die. Because it is only at death that a testament begins to take effect. Making sense?

This is exactly what the book of Hebrews says in a passage that's a little bit confusing. Go to Hebrews nine sixteen. In this passage, every time you see the word will, it's diathike. It's that word for testamentum. It's that word for testament or covenant. When you see the word covenant, it's the same word. The translators kinda like try to make it helpful, but when they make it helpful, they kinda, they lose the distinction. So here's what it literally says, in the case of a testamentum, it is necessary to prove the death of the one who made it, Because a testamentum is only enforced when somebody has died. It never takes effect when the one who made it is living.

This is why even the first testamentum was not put into effect without blood. When Moses had proclaimed every commandment of the law to all the people, he took the blood of calves and he said, this is the blood of the testamentum, which God has commanded you to keep. You guys, in that sense, God's covenants are testaments, They are solemn agreements of how we relate, but they are only set into motion by somebody's death. That is why on the night that Jesus was betrayed, he took the cup and he said, this cup is the new covenant, the new testament in my blood which is poured out for you.

We're gonna live that out on Maundy Thursday, on love one another Thursday over there. Join us for a meal, fellowship around the table as we reflect on all that we have vertically with him and horizontally with one another. And I hope in that ceremony, it'll become even more clear to you that all that we have, all of the good things of the covenant are predicated on the single event of his death. We have the spirit of God who has come to live in us, to enable us to be what he means us to be because Jesus died. The only way you get the new OS update is because of the death of Christ. And we can know him, we can live in his grace, we can experience his love and his forgiveness because on the cross, Jesus took the full penalty for our sins upon himself.

Our inability to keep the covenant was solved by his keeping of the covenant at an incredibly extreme level. He's the maker of the covenant. He is the keeper of the covenant. He is the prize of the covenant. And he is the one who pays the penalty when we can't keep the covenant. He is quite literally the entire thing. And life is found when we come under his covenant of love and grace.

Invitation

If there is some part of your life, and I'm sure that there is, that you're withholding from him, maybe it's just a portion or maybe it's the whole thing, we wanna invite you to lay your life down before him. We're gonna sing a song. Latent in the song, you might hear these lines about the new covenant, that his spirit is in us, that his heart is in us. As we sing that song, I wanted to create some space right here on the sides. There'll be some friends that can meet you if you wanna pray, someone to sit with you and listen to you talk about what's going on in your mind and heart right now. You don't need anybody else to talk to you, you just wanna be alone with the Lord, this curved rail is a place for you. But come forward, meet him, and bring whatever part of your life, little parts, big parts, the whole thing under his covenant of love and grace.

Conclusion

Lord Jesus, we praise you because you are so great. Lord, who makes such a covenant? Who keeps such a covenant? Who keeps both halves of a covenant? Who keeps suffering for the failure of others to keep the covenant? Who is like you? We love you. We praise you. We worship you. Amen.