Walls of Protection in the New Covenant

This is the text of a talk given on Thursday, 13th April 2006. It has been slightly edited for publication in written form.

"And he said to them, 'This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many'." (Mark 14:24, ESV)

It might seem strange at first to entitle a service on this night "Walls of Protection". For it was on this night that all the outward protection around Christ was taken away and those who had long plotted to kill him finally seemed to gain the upper hand. From the point in the story at the end of our Bible reading onwards, when Jesus and the disciples "went out to the Mount of Olives," (v.26) Christ begins the final steps of his journey to the cross. There were no walls of protection around Jesus on this night when he was betrayed.

But really there could hardly be a more fitting title for us today. Because the good news is that through what Christ did for us – because he was not protected on this night - he was able to build walls of salvation around us in God’s covenant of grace. Through Christ’s sufferings, God’s covenant blessings for us were secured.

That’s why as soon as I thought about the night of the Last Supper and the theme "Walls of Protection" one word immediately jumped out from our reading and that word is COVENANT.

The whole Bible is about God’s covenants with people. Sometimes the theme of the covenant is so big we can find it hard to see just how widespread it is Scripture. Someone described it as being like when you are looking closely at a map and you focus in closer and closer on that particular town or village you are trying to find. When you do that you probably won’t notice that "SCOTLAND" is written in huge letters across the whole map. And sometimes it’s like that reading the Bible. God’s covenant is written in such big letters across the Bible pages, sometimes we can’t see the wood for the trees.

It was God’s "new covenant" that Christ focused on with his disciples at the Last Supper. Jesus says that this covenant is different from the others that have gone before because this one was going to be sealed not with the blood of pigeons, lambs or cattle, but with his own blood.

Someone might be asking to themselves what a "covenant" actually is. A covenant is a solemn, permanent bond between two different parties. The most significant covenant between people is the marriage covenant, which is of course a lifelong, close personal union between a man and a woman. The bond between God and his people, like a marriage, is above all a bond of love and friendship.

But unlike covenants between people, where both parties usually have certain conditions they have to fulfil to make the covenant valid, God’s covenant with us is unconditional. He designed it, he establishes it with us, and he sustains it with us out of his grace and mercy. There is nothing for us to contribute to it. There is nothing that we have to do or can do to strike a bargain with God. The new covenant is a bond based solely on God’s unconditional promises of grace.

The prophet Jeremiah quotes God saying this about this new covenant:

"Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people...I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more." (Jeremiah 31:31-33, 34b).

It’s all arranged for us by what God purposed and promised, what Christ did, and what the Holy Spirit applies to us. All we have to do is accept God’s invitation into that covenant relationship with him through faith in Jesus Christ. Faith is simply trusting in and relying on Christ. Faith is holding out an empty hand to accept God’s free gift of salvation. As the hymn Rock of Ages puts it:

"Nothing in my hand I bring,
Simply to thy cross I cling;
Naked, come to thee for dress,
Helpless, look to thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly:
Wash me, Saviour, or I die."

What you need to ask yourself tonight, is whether you are in this covenant relationship with God. Are you trusting in Christ for your salvation? Because the walls of protection that the covenant gives only applies to those who have truly come to Christ and trusted him to be their Saviour and Lord.

If you have done that then God’s walls of protection surround you tonight and always. But if there’s anyone here tonight who hasn’t opened their heart to Jesus, if there’s anyone here who hasn’t come to him and said, "Lord Jesus, I am a sinner. Without you I am miserable in this life and I know I’m going to end up in hell when I die. But I trust in you to be my Saviour, to give me a new life now and to make sure I end up in heaven forever. I want you to save me and I know you will. Help me to be yours from now on. Make me into the person you want me to be," then God is calling you in a special way tonight. If you haven’t come to him, not necessarily in those words, but with that attitude, then you have to ask yourself if you are still really outside God’s walls of protection. If that’s where you are now, come in out of the danger, out of the darkness, into his loving arms, into a new life, into the joy and light that only he offers in life.

"Whosoever wants to be saved, let him come to me," God is saying to you. And God’s promise of salvation stands true for everyone who believes it.

I pray that we are all inside God’s covenant house tonight as we take a look at four of its walls.

The first wall you see as you approach the house is of course the front wall. And in this covenant house we’re thinking about tonight, the front wall is REDEMPTION, or what we might call God’s Purchase of his people.

The fact that we have been redeemed or purchased by the blood of Christ lies at the very heart of our faith. It is one of the most important walls of protection Christ has built around our lives.

And so when we face the attacks that every Christian faces: doubts about whether we are really Christians, worries if we can be forgiven at all by God for what we’ve done, or despair at the thought that God maybe won’t really forgive us again and again when we still fall into sin. Or maybe things happen in life and we doubt whether God really loves us or cares about what happens to us. In all these things, which I’m sure many of us have felt at times (I know I have), we can look again at the cross and know the truth. God has bought us and we belong to him now.

Galatians 3:13 says (listen to these astonishing words!):

"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us -- for as it is written, 'Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree'."

Christ has redeemed us. He bought us by paying the price of his own blood, bearing the punishment we deserved, because he was determined to save us. We can look at the cross and know that all our sins have been taken away there and forgiven by God. We can look at the cross and know that God loves us no matter what we’ve done, because it was while we were sinners that Christ died for us (as Romans 5:8 says). And most wonderful of all, we can look at our redemption in Jesus and know that there’s no way God can punish us for our sins if he punished Christ for them in our place. In his justice, he cannot punish you and me if Christ has already paid our debt in full. As one old hymn puts it:

"Complete atonement you have made
And to the utmost limit paid
All that your people owed;
How then can wrath on me take place
If sheltered in your righteousness
And sheltered by your blood?

"Since Christ has my release procured
And freely in my place endured
The whole of wrath divine –
Payment God cannot twice demand,
First at my dying Surety’s hand
And then again at mine."

God has bought us at the highest price and he is not about to let the people who are his treasure be lost. That is our first wall of protection in the covenant. And what a magnificent edifice it is!

Closely linked to God’s Purchase of his people in redemption is the first of two very important gable ends in our covenant house. The first gable end faces the direction where the fiercest storms tend to blow from. The wall is called JUSTIFICATION, which we might call God’s Verdict on his people. Justification by faith alone is one of the most important truths taught in the New Testament. The fact that we are justified (which means "counted as righteous" or "declared righteous") before God, by trusting in Jesus Christ, is the central doctrine that divided the Protestant churches from the Roman Catholic church at the Reformation. It was probably the greatest truth rediscovered by the Protestant Reformers, because it is the very essence of the biblical gospel of sovereign grace.

Basically justification means that even though we are sinners, God declares believers in Christ to be righteous because of what Christ has done for them in taking away their sins and in giving them his righteousness. If we are justified, God looks at us and instead of seeing our sins, he sees all the good that Christ did in his life, and treats us as if we had done it. Christ’s righteousness is like a royal robe God gives us to wear over our own shabby clothes. Our status in God’s eyes is as if we had never sinned at all and so he declares us to be "not guilty" of sin. And so we are not only freed from punishment, but are regarded as fit to be welcomed into the eternal life and joy of heaven.

2 Corinthians 5:21 spells out the process of what happens when we are justified very clearly:

"God made him [that’s Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."

Here’s an illustration of what justification by faith alone is like. Imagine that you were born into debt – you inherited your ancestors’ debts and from birth onwards you have been accumulating more and more of your own debt. You now owe a vast amount of money that you could never repay in ten lifetimes. And then one day it is announced that a huge meteor is going to strike the world and destroy it – if you’ve seen films like Armageddon or Deep Impact you’ll know the kind of thing I mean. Now, there are going to be rockets to take some people away to safety on another planet. But you need to have no debts and a minimum of five million pounds to get a place on the rocket (after all these are good ole free market American rockets). Your debts are almost as much as that! You have no hope of working out a way of saving yourself. And then the son of the world’s richest billionaire comes to you and says, "My friend, I’m going to pay off all your debts – your bank overdraft is wiped out. And as well as that I’m going to credit a full five million pounds to your account. I’ll also make sure that any debts you run up between now and the day when the mission to Mars is ready to leave go to Mars will be paid too. In fact your bank balance will never go below five million ever again."

You’d probably say back to him, "What do I have to do before you’ll do this? What’s the catch?"

But then he says, "There’s no catch. You don’t have to do anything. Do you believe I will do it? Do you trust me to sort it all out for you?"

"Yes," you say finally.

"It’s done," he says.

That’s what justification is like. It’s not just that our sins are cancelled out. That’s only half of it! Yes, Christ pays the price for our sins and wipes our slate clean, but more than that he then gives us his own righteous status before God so that whenever we come to him now and when we stand before him one day, he takes one look at us and says – "Ah yes, one of mine. Purchased by my Son, all debts paid in full, and righteousness just like him. This one belongs in heaven with me."

The reason justification is such a great wall of protection is that once we live in the confidence that in God’s eyes we are accepted as righteous, we don’t have to worry ever again about doing enough good to get to heaven through our own efforts. We know we’re going to heaven because of how good Jesus is. The paradox is that for the Christian, rather than leading us to do less good for others and for God, justification actually encourages us to do more good, or at least it should!

If you’re trying to work your way to heaven so much negative energy is wasted in disappointment, guilt and despair, because you will fail over and over again. Justification frees us from these burdens. It helps us live more Christ-like lives, because our motivation for doing good is now gratitude and love. And doing something because you want to rather than because you have to is always easier – well it is for me anyway! It is a wonderful feeling to know that even when you fail God, even when you don’t do the things you should, you are still righteous in his eyes and nothing can ever change that.

On the other side of the house, stands the other gable end and it is called ADOPTION. Adoption probably needs less explanation than redemption or justification because it is still a word we use in everyday life and it still has the same meaning as it has in its biblical sense. It means that as well as purchasing us and declaring us to be righteous, God has actually adopted believers into his family and made us his children. Adoption is therefore one of the clearest demonstrations of God’s Love for us.

There are many blessings that flow from the fact that believers are God’s covenant children. The main one is that God is our Father. And like any good father that means he loves us, always does the best for us, and wants us to grow and live lives that are a credit to him as a parent. It means that God will sometimes punish us when we do wrong, but always as a father disciplining a child he loves, never as a judge punishing a criminal. God’s punishment of his children never calls their salvation into question. Being our Father means that God will provide for all our needs and we should look to him and trust him to do that. It should encourage us to spend time talking to him in prayer and getting to know him better through reading and studying his Word. And as a wall of protection, our adoption into God’s family will help us never to feel lonely or afraid, because every other believer is our brother or sister in God’s family. Being a son or daughter of God will surely encourage us, as royal children and heirs to his kingdom, to do what our Father wants, even when other people might ridicule us or hate us for being true to him. Most of all it should encourage us to draw close to him in personal fellowship, sharing our whole lives with him.

In any house or building with four walls, the wall that no one thinks about tends to be the wall round the back. It tends to be the aspect of the house that no one sees from street. In public buildings, like the City Chambers here in Glasgow, a lot of effort was put into the front and side façades with ornate stonework. But the back wall is just plain glazed brick. But without that wall the protection offered by the other walls is seriously diminished. As the back of a lot of houses is secluded from view, this is where attacks on the house or break-ins tend to occur.

In the covenant house, the back wall – not often noticed, just happening quietly in the background – is God’s Purpose to save us. We call God’s choice of who will be his covenant people ELECTION. Those who are God’s elect are God’s chosen people. People sometimes think name applies to the Jewish people, but this is not the case. In the Old Testament, yes, the nation of Israel were the chosen people, but in the New Testament, everyone who is in God’s church, whatever their ethnic background, is one of God’s chosen people, and all the promises of the Old Testament that applied to "Israel" we claim for ourselves as the New Israel of God.

As a wall of protection in the covenant, God’s purpose for us is a tremendous comfort. When we realise that God chose us before the foundation of the world, and God sent his Son on a rescue mission to save his people – specifically to save each one of them by name, and God saw to it that one day we would hear the gospel and come to Christ, it should make us feel very safe and secure for the future. More safe than anything else in life. Having thought about us so long ago and having gone this far with us, we should not be in any doubt that God will complete his plan for us.

Romans 8 is probably my favourite chapter in the whole Bible. And in verses 28-30 of that chapter we find these remarkable words of promise for everyone whom God has chosen (and remember God has chosen every Christian believer):

"And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified." (NASB)

These verses have been called the golden thread of salvation. They teach that what God starts, he finishes. God doesn’t start us on the road to salvation and then leave us to fend for ourselves so that maybe we’ll fail to reach our destination. God doesn’t build houses with three walls that look great from the front, but which are wide open to attack at the rear.

We have to be careful with doctrines like election and predestination though because they can so easily be distorted, as any truth in the Bible can be. In the New Testament election and predestination are not designed to be fodder for philosophical debates about freewill and determinism. And they are certainly not designed to be barriers to anyone coming to faith in Christ. Never does the New Testament encourage anyone before they are a Christian to speculate if they are one of the elect or not. Everyone without exception is called to accept Christ as their Saviour. And there is no barrier put up by God against anyone. The only thing stopping anyone from being saved is a person’s own refusal to come to Christ. No, in biblical terms – Old and New Testament – the sovereignty of God, including God’s choice of his people before the beginning of time, is always a practical pastoral teaching. It is designed to give peace and comfort, security and encouragement to hard-pressed believers living at the frontline of life’s hardships.

God is in control of his universe and in control of our lives, so we can dwell secure, safe, in peace and joy. If you think about it for a moment, how distressing would it be if the truth were otherwise? How horrible would it be to live in a world where God isn’t in control? If a man invented a machine that had the potential to harm life and damage property – a robot say – and then built it, but once he started it up he had no control over it, he would likely be arrested for his irresponsible conduct – and quite rightly so. And yet some Christians picture God as a creator who cannot really control what happens in his creation. Let’s not go down that road. God’s sovereign purpose is a marvellous truth we should rejoice and rest safely in.

Soon we will come to celebrate the covenant meal once again. As we take the bread and wine I hope we will look beyond them to Christ and to the wonderful covenant of grace he has established for us with God the Father. May we see that our protection and salvation doesn’t consist in conforming to outward ritual, but in conforming to the inner reality that the elements symbolise. So don’t just see people eating and drinking bread and wine. Don’t just eat and drink them yourself. See beyond them to God’s covenant sealed by Christ’s blood. See Christ redeeming you on the cross. See Christ justifying you before God forever by taking your sins away and giving you his righteousness. See God adopting you into his family as a precious child he loves and wants to lavish his love upon in countless blessings. See God’s purpose working all things for your good. See God’s walls of salvation around you and rest in his presence. For then you will not only be taking communion, you will actually have real communion with our great Covenant God.

Let us pray:

Heavenly Father, we thank you for your covenant. We thank you for all the covenant blessings you have given us. Most of all we thank you for the walls of salvation that the Lord Jesus has built around us. May we all dwell within those walls forever. Amen.