If you had come to visit me in my dorm when I was in college, you just may have come across some most interesting sights. One day you would have turned the corner leading to my room and you would have seen me running down the hallway extremely fast and then throwing myself forward, kinda jumping forward into the air, and then crashing on my knees and actually really hurting myself.
You see, I had decided to question my assumptions, my beliefs. Something that it is good to do, especially when you are in college. So I decided to question whether God exists. No, this wasn’t a belief I needed to question. So I decided to question whether there was sin in the world. Again, no, not a belief I needed to question. The belief that I felt the need to question was the important truth that people cannot fly. You see, as a child, I had seen a loony tunes cartoon where Bugs Bunny and the Wily Coyote were just children and the Coyote was chasing Bugs around and they went out over a cliff and didn’t fall. Bugs pointed to the Coyote that he should be falling and the Coyote responded that he hadn’t learned about gravity yet. Bugs gave him a book that explained gravity as he stood there over nothing, he read the book, looked down, went uh-oh, and fell to the bottom of the cliff (the first of many times).
So I wondered whether the reason we couldn’t fly is that we believed we couldn’t fly. And so I felt the need to test this in a scientific manner in college. And thus, you would have found me running and jumping with all my might and then crashing into the ground and calling out in pain. I felt that if I held back in any way, it wouldn’t be a true test. And for any of you who want to repeat this experiment, trust me, we aren’t able to fly.
Whether I believed in gravity or not, it doesn’t make it any less real. Whether I accepted the truth of it or not, it was there, pulling me to the ground with all the grace of an elephant. So, my beliefs don’t matter to gravity. It’s going to affect me whether I believe in it or not. But my beliefs do affect me. If I truly believe in gravity then I will use it to my advantage, if I ignore it, I hurt myself.
In many ways our belief in God is much the same. It doesn’t affect him as much as it affects us. When we believe we will find ourselves coming in contact with him and working with him instead of against him.
What you believe affects the way you live, and how you live affects your belief. The two are connected, and it is not that one just leads to the other. They both influence each other. Let me give you an example of this. If you believe that God hears prayers, your life will be lived in a different way. If you believe that God answers prayers, your actions will show it. In believing these things, you will change the way you act; you will begin to pray to God because your belief tells you that there is something to be earned from this. But the opposite of this can be true also. You can begin praying to God whether you believe he will answer or not. And as you enter the life of prayer your belief will be changed, you will start to see God work and it will become harder and harder to avoid belief in the power of prayer. So today we are going to talk about belief in God. It will be a bit heady and intellectual, that’s what happens when you talk about beliefs. Next week we are going to talk about living the life of faith. But it is hard to separate these two because they are so very connected. So, today as I talk about what it is that we believe, I hope it connects to our lives, how we live. And next week when I talk about how it is that we are to live as Christians, I hope it connects to our beliefs.
The Bible talks a lot about belief. In 1 Corinthians 15:3-8 we hear one of the central beliefs of scripture mentioned by Paul: the belief in Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. Not only is the belief important but the fact that it is something that is shared. Paul, in this scripture connects his belief and what he is teaching with many who have gone before him. And therefore, today, as I talk about what we believe as Christians and as Covenanters, I want to connect what it is we believe, what we have seen, what we have heard with those who have gone before.
We as a Covenant Church have a document about what it means to be a Covenanter, what we think is important belief wise in understanding who we are. Our document is called the Covenant Affirmations and talks about the things we find important. These are central to who we are as a church, and therefore is something that it is worth us knowing, and knowing well. And so we are going to look at the five Covenant Affirmations this morning.
The first of the Covenant Affirmations is the belief in the centrality of the word of God. Covenant constitution tells us that the Holy Scripture, the Old and the New Testament, is the Word of God and the only perfect rule for faith, doctrine and conduct. We begin with the Bible. We believe that this is the Word of God. This is the place to turn when we have questions of faith. This is the place to turn when we need to know what to believe. This is the place to turn when we need to know how to live. This is why we have a sermon each and every Sunday, so that we can hear the Word of God and apply it to our lives. This is why you are encouraged to spend time in scripture yourself on a regular basis. Is the Bible central to your life? Is it the place you turn to with your questions and problems? Is it the place where you find answers? I know people will say that it’s an old book, the newest part of it is about 1900 years old. The oldest about 3500 years old. Does it really have anything to say to us today? Does it really deal with the issues and realities that we deal with? I believe it does. I believe that the Holy Spirit keeps it fresh and helps it to apply to each and every generation. I believe that this old book is a keeper. It is the place where God speaks to us the clearest.
The second Covenant affirmation is the belief in the necessity of new birth. We believe that you need to be born again. We believe that you need to accept Jesus into your heart, receiving forgiveness and eternal life from God. As covenanters we believe that there is a need for conversion. We are all called to reject sin and commit ourselves to faith. Now, this new birth is different for all of us. I have told you about my friend’s father whose conversion happened as he hung for his life over the side of a cliff. He had lived a rough life before and turned from this life to find Christ waiting for him. That is a very different story than mine, in which I cannot remember the moment I asked Christ into my life, for I was very young. But in both of these extremes new birth happens. In both of these instances, God offers new life and leads us down a path of faithfulness and obedience. Have you made this commitment to Christ? Have you been born anew? Are you living the life of a Christian, a child of God, a disciple? Being a disciple, being born again is more than just praying a prayer when you’re 12. It’s about following, it’s about giving control of your life to Jesus, it’s about repenting, turning and heading a different direction.
The third Covenant Affirmation is that the Church is a fellowship of believers. We think there’s something important that happens when God’s people come together. That relationship with God is important, but it isn’t just a relationship with God that matters. There’s something that happens when we come together as God’s people and enter into relationship with each other. We are all part of the body of Christ, whether we like it or not. Now, there are Christians who don’t see a need for Church. They figure that they can come in contact with God on that golf course just as easily as in a church building. We’ve all heard this said in some way or another. And as Christians and churchgoers, we often get upset at them for saying such things. But I worry that maybe it is true. Perhaps, because we haven’t been the body of Christ that we are supposed to be, they are able to come in contact with God better away from us. If so, then it is not them that need to change, but rather we who need to work better at being the body of Christ.
The fourth Covenant Affirmation is our conscious dependence on the Holy Spirit. We feel it is important to realize that we cannot do this thing we call Christianity on our own. We realize that we like to think we can make it by ourselves, and so we pray that prayer at camp and then think we can work out our own salvation by our own strength. We then come to a wall and cannot go farther. This is because we are ignoring the fact that Jesus promised us something, someone to help us in this call that he has given us. We are given the Holy Spirit. We aren’t expected to do it on our own. God provides for us in ways that we cannot imagine and the Spirit intercedes for us where we fall down. This comes from the covenant affirmations: “The early Covenanters in Sweden were linked by a common awareness of the grace of God in their lives. They spoke of the Holy Spirit communicating this warm sense of God’s grace to each one individually and directing them to a common devotion to God in Christ through the reading of the Bible and frequent meetings for the purpose of mutual encouragement and edification. They perceived the Holy Spirit leading them corporately to common mission and purpose.” You see how the Spirit is involved in each part of their lives: in their Bible reading, in their coming together as a church, in their call to salvation. Are we ready to let the Holy Spirit be involved in each part of our lives?
The fifth Covenant Affirmation is the belief in the reality of freedom in Christ. We believe that, as Jesus says in John 8, “if you continue in my word, you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” Jesus doesn’t offer us chains, he doesn’t offer us a life of structures and nitpicks and rules that we must follow to the letter if we expect to earn salvation. Jesus offers freedom. Now, Jesus offers this freedom to all his followers, but so often we ignore the freedom or take advantage of it. Jesus offers us freedom from sin, and yet we hold on to sin, unwilling to allow ourselves to be free from it.
This freedom allows us in the Covenant Church to sometimes disagree with each other about certain issues and yet live in communion with each other. We hold to the centrality of the basics, but we allow freedom of interpretation on other issues. Thus, we are willing to baptize infants or dedicate them. But freedom for its own sake is wasted. “Freedom is not for self-indulgence… but to serve and love God, in whom alone is found true freedom.” God’s freedom has a purpose to it.
The Covenant wants to add a sixth Affirmation this June at the annual meeting: something else that is central to who we are as covenanters. This sixth affirmation is our commitment to the whole mission of the church. We believe in the importance of the church’s mission. We have a purpose in this world. We have a place in this world. We weren’t just created to be separate from the world around us and build up walls to protect ourselves from them. Instead we are to have a relationship with them. And this relationship is to be two-fold. First, we are to share the truths with them that we find. We are to spread the gospel to them. We are to let them know about the God we serve. Second, we are to help them. We are to be a place where the poor and weak, the strangers and prisoners are cared for. Again, it isn’t enough just to have that vertical relationship with God, God wants us also to have lateral relationships with each other and with those around us. And again, we know that God doesn’t expect us to do this on our own, but rather sends us his Holy Spirit to help us.
So these are the things that we as Covenanters believe are important in following God. These are the things that are central to our understanding of what it means to follow and believe: that we place emphasis on the word of God, that we acknowledge the necessity of new birth in Christ, that we are committed to the whole mission of the Church, that we see the Church as a whole and as a fellowship of believers, that we depend consciously on the Holy Spirit throughout our lives, and that we remember that Christ offers us freedom. Hopefully these are things that you believe, and that you can enter into relationship with and get to know better. They are worth spending time with, as they have come down to us from our history as Covenanters. They have been prayed over as we attempt to explain what it means to be God’s children. So, know the covenant affirmations, and enter into them in a special way. As you begin to believe them you will find that the way you live will be changed.
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