BROKEN FOR US: The Covenant
Pastor Steven Osborne
Transcribed by DaVinci Resolve 18
Now this morning, a couple of things—we’re going to play with this word “broken” and “brokenness.” We’re also going to talk about “covenant.” It’s actually not something that we talk a whole lot about. What does that mean, “covenant?” How does that impact our lives and why that is important. And then just even through all of that, we’re going to look at temptation.
I want to start off with just kind of this cute little story on temptation. It says,
A man was trying to lose weight and decided that it was best if he not drive past his favorite bakery on the way to work each day.
Anybody can relate to that? Okay.
So he took an alternative route. This worked well for some time, but one day he absentmindedly took his old route to work, and when he realized what he was doing, he thought, “This must be a sign from the Lord.” So he kept driving, but just to make sure he wasn’t deceiving himself, he said, “I’ll drive past, and if there’s a parking spot, I’ll take it as a sign from the Lord that he wants me to buy something there.” And the funny thing was, on the eighth time around...
Temptation, right? We all deal with temptation as just part of this broken world, and this morning I want to start off with breaking news.
We Have an Enemy
It’s always interesting, you know, whenever it seems like Fox News or CNN is on, it’s like every five minutes there’s that little sound that you’re all familiar with, and the words “Breaking News.” And it seems like, yeah, every five minutes, it’s like, man, is there really so much breaking news? Right? A lot of breaking news, but this morning I do have breaking news for us. You might not be aware of this. And the breaking news is this: We have an enemy. You know that? Church, we have an enemy, and that enemy is Satan, and we need to be aware of his plans and his schemes. We see his impact throughout the ages. I mean, significant impact in our world. I mean, and we just look around us and we continue to see the impact and the brokenness because of the work of the enemy. And we know his ultimate purpose is to kill, steal, and destroy. And so right there in the beginning of Genesis, Genesis chapter 3, it starts off beautiful. You have “In the beginning God created,” and you see this amazing story of creation and God creating Adam and Eve. And then we find this moment where Satan shows up. And so Genesis chapter 3:1 says,
Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”
I want you to just be aware this morning of the word “crafty.” Satan is crafty. He is not dumb. He’s probably way smarter than us in a certain sense, right? Satan is created by God, but I want you to know that he is crafty and he is smart, and so many people have lost their lives and have fell into destruction and into different things because of his craftiness, right? And you probably have experienced that in your own life as well with certain decisions and different tricks and things that you have fell for, and it was like, “Man, how did I get there?” Right? “How was I that stupid?” And I have done that and have said that many times, when you sit back and you look back, it’s like, “Whoa, I really fell for that trick from the enemy.” And so there’s just kind of this warning. I want you to know that the enemy is crafty and we do have an enemy.
Secondly, in 2 Corinthians 11, kind of just another warning is this:
But I’m afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.
So just want to read again,
But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.
So this is Paul, and he’s just kind of warning the church again. He’s like, “Hey, I’m worried about you. I don’t want you to fall for deception and the tricks of the enemy again.” And it kind of—and the Message says it this way:
And now I’m afraid that exactly as the snake seduced Eve with his smooth tongue, you are being lured away from the simple purity of your love for Christ.
Your love for Christ, your relationship with Christ, is under attack. Amen? Do you know that? And the enemy will try and trick you and build this wall between you and God so that you don’t feel loved by God, or even just the revelation or maybe for you to think, “Oh, well, I’ve sinned and now I’m not loved by God anymore.” Right? But Satan is most definitely at work. Hey, you don’t have to be scared this morning; you don’t have to be nervous about it because we have the victory. But I just want us to be aware of what is happening in the spiritual realm, because as a church, we don’t always talk about this.
1 Peter 5 says,
Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him…
This is kind of some of our tools here. It says,
Resist him, standing firm in the faith, because you know that the family of believers throughout the world is undergoing the same kind of sufferings.
So there’s all kinds of sufferings around us in this world, and so nothing new, but the warning for us is to say, “Hey, be alert and of sober mind.” This is not the time for the church to sleep. It’s not the time. And most of us, a lot of times we say, “We are excited about the return of Jesus Christ.” Right? But a lot of times the church is kind of sleepy and it doesn’t look like we’re excited for his return. And so I was like, “Hey, what does that look like for us to be awake, to be sober, to say, ‘Jesus is returning. Jesus is returning. I need to be ready. I need to be excited.’”
Lies About Satan
Now, a couple of lies that we believe sometimes in the church and outside the church as well.
One of the key tools that Satan is using is the lie or belief that he doesn’t exist. Just want you to know that Satan is at work. If we don’t believe that there’s a Satan, then it will probably be hard for us to believe that there’s a Jesus and God, right? And so this morning I just want you to know, I want you to go and study God’s Word that Satan is real and that he is at work, right? And so sometimes we don’t like to talk about it, we kind of just ignore it. And the other extreme of it is within the church, a lot of times, is we try and find Satan behind every rock, and we don’t need to do that either.
A lot of times we’ll say, “Oh…,”—people think Satan has equal power to God. Because when we look at Hollywood, a lot of times when it comes to spiritual movies and exorcism and different things, you see a priest that’s being thrown around, and we act like believers don’t have authority. And we somehow think that there’s this equal power between Satan and God. In the martial arts, martial arts, sometimes we talk about that yin-yang. And this is absolutely a lie. Satan would love to make us think that he’s got all this power and authority and that him and God are equal, and they are not. He’s a fallen angel. He’s a pipsqueak under our feet. That was what God’s Word tells us, right? And so it is important for us to put him in the right place and not to give him too much power.
Another lie: Satan can force individuals to commit evil acts. Then we take away, kind of, our responsibility. You know, we’ve all heard, “Oh, the devil made me do that,” right? Like I had no authority and no choice in this matter. It’s like—we were laughing, I was just—going off track here, but I’m thinking about the dog. “The dog did it,” “the dog ate my homework” type of deal. And last week our dog actually ate Hailey’s birth certificate. Just all cute there on our bed, and it’s like, “Well, that looks like an interesting piece of paper,” and it’s like, it was Hailey’s birth certificate. And so it’s like, “Okay, we better put that in a little bag.” So there’s like a hundred pieces of her birth certificate in a little plastic bag because at some point I have to go and say the dog did it, right? So we’ll see how that goes. So at this point we can’t celebrate Hailey’s birthday.
The Temptation of Jesus
Now I want you to see how Satan even shows up in the life of Jesus. In Matthew chapter 3—if you have your Bible, you can actually turn to Matthew chapter 3. Matthew chapter 3, there’s something beautiful that happens here. It says:
As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven opened up, he saw the Spirit of God…
And then at the end of it we see,
And a voice from heaven said, “This is my son whom I love. With him I am well pleased.”
I want you to even just highlight that. Again, beautiful moment. This is Jesus, this is the start of his ministry, okay? It’s been fun, in the gospels, we haven’t read a whole lot about Jesus up to this point. I mean, we’ve got some of the stories of his birth, right? But now things are getting intense. It’s gonna really get excited as we look at the public ministry of Jesus. But there’s kind of this kick-off moment, and this is the kick-off moment for him.
And so here you have the skies opening up, and God affirms him as his son. He’s like, “Man, I love him, and I’m so well pleased in him.” And you think, “Oh, this is kind of a cool holy moment. This is gonna be all good.” Now let’s see what happens in chapter 4 right after this.
Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry.
Some of us struggle to make it till 7 in the morning, right? It’s like, man, 40 days, 40 nights, he was hungry. Yeah, you betcha. Yeah. That’s a double uff-da.
The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”
Jesus answered, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”
Then the devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. “If you are the son of God,” he said, “throw yourself down, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.’”
Jesus answered him, “It is also written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’”
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.”
Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan, for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve him only.’” Then the devil left him and angels came and attended him.
That’s actually kind of an interesting way to finish that thought and passage there of just these angels ministering to Jesus after forty days and after being tempted and having, in a sense, this spiritual warfare that was going on.
Now we have in chapter 3, we have this holy moment. It is a beautiful moment. You have maybe experienced this in your life too, where you have given your life to Christ, or you maybe had this beautiful spiritual moment, you went on a missions trip, and it felt like heaven opened up and then just the next day, boy, Satan shows up. And he brings discouragement, and he brings doubt. I don’t know if you’ve experienced this, but I have experienced this so many times. Sometimes it’s like, I’m not sure that I want to experience this spiritual high, because a lot of times right after spiritual highs, Satan is there.
I remember one time coming—not this church—I came back from a missions trip, and we had such a good time with this missions trip, and there was a parent waiting for me in the parking lot, and there was something dumb with the situation, and it was like, man, just even the kids were still getting out of the bus, and I got an earful, right? It’s like, wow, we just had this amazing spirit—oh, it was CHIC. It was something with CHIC. And I came back, and it was just beautiful moments—man, we met with Christ, and suddenly here’s just kind of a moment that was so discouraging and how Satan used that. It is not uncommon to go through some of these things. And so I just want you to be aware of that, that a lot of times we can expect attacks from the enemy after holy moments, and we see it in the life of Jesus.
When To Expect Satan
It is interesting that the Holy Spirit was leading him into the wilderness. There was the Holy Spirit. There were some things that he had to go through, and he was being tested in his faith and in his ministry.
So just this morning, I want you to know—and again, to be aware of the attacks of the enemy. When can we expect attacks from the enemy? Okay, here’s another breaking news moment. You ready? Always. If you are a believer, there’s a big target on your back.
Well, if we break this down a little bit more, I think it’s important to know a lot of times we might experience attacks when we think we are strong, when there’s maybe pride in our lives. When you think, “Oh, I have arrived.” Be careful for those moments. And we see this in the church world all the time and with Christian leaders, right?
Important: when you are tired. We are definitely open for attacks when we are tired. Sunday nights are kind of a big one for us. We have to be aware of just the stuff that we’re watching, what we’re listening to, because you’ve had a long day, long weekend, and so you’re just open. And so just be aware when you’re tired not to be discouraged. And a lot of times, Satan will really use those moments. Again, when we just even look with the story of Adam and Eve, Satan is just waiting there and waiting for the right moment. For the right moment. As believers, easy for us to say, “Oh, I’m prideful; I’ve got everything together.” You know what? And it just takes one weak moment for Satan to pop up and present a temptation on a situation in front of you, and you’ve been living your life with integrity, and suddenly, just because of this one moment of weakness and being tired and not being careful, not being sober, you open up your life here for him.
When you are isolated. We see this again in the church world. It is so dangerous when we are isolated, when we don’t have people that’s encouraging us, when we don’t have people that’s ministering to us, when we’re not in community, and when we can’t be encouraged. And so even in the life of Jesus, he’s all by himself. He’s in the wilderness. And so my warning for all of us is be careful for long periods of time where you are isolated. It is never healthy.
Response to Temptation
So then again, we kind of just see that story in Matthew 4:11. Jesus has had this high moment, he’s in the desert, he’s excited about the ministry, and the Spirit is leading him into the wilderness. And now Satan shows up, and he’s gonna bring some temptation. It’s important for us to know that temptation itself is not sin. It’s an opportunity for spiritual growth. Another way to say it is this: It is not sin to be tempted; it is sin when you act upon the temptation.
Now we all have experienced temptation. Who’s never experienced temptation? Oh, so I’m speaking to the right crowd. That’s good. We’ve all experienced it. Some big temptations, some small temptations, but it’s out there. And as long as you live, you will experience temptation. But here’s the good news: Jesus showed us the way to overcome. And he experienced all kinds of temptations, and he never sinned. So it is—don’t feel the guilt and the shame and the weight when you are being tempted. That might actually be a good thing. It might mean that Satan is trying to really distract you from what you’re busy doing with God’s plan in your life. I mean, Satan will do whatever to distract you into discount God’s plan for your life, to put you in a trap and in bondage, because when you are trapped and when you are in bondage and when you’re trapped in sin, it is really hard a lot of times to break free and then to focus on God’s plans and purposes for your life. But temptation in itself, if we can have the right biblical view on it, it is not sin. But it can definitely be a powerful tool to continue to grow if we follow the same track as Jesus.
You still awake? Amen. I almost said “alive.” Hopefully everyone is still alive. Hopefully my sermon isn’t that bad. People are dying.
It is powerful to see in this chapter, in chapter 4, kind of the line that we see over and over with the enemy’s attack is this: It says, “If you are really the Son of God…” Isn’t that fascinating? What a statement. Satan knows—I am sure that he isn’t that clueless to wonder if this is the Son of God. And yet he still asks him, “If you are,” or makes the statement, “If you are the Son of God, then you will do this.” And he is attacking his identity. He’s placing doubt in his life, which is so true for the church and for believers still today. And again, we saw that right in the beginning with Eve as well, where he was placing some doubt, and he was twisting the truth. And so many times in our lives, Satan might come too and say, “Man, if you are really a believer…,” right? And he’s gonna hammer and he’s gonna test your identity and what you really believe. Now it is all exciting and it’s pretty easy this morning—we are all sitting here we are all looking good, we had wonderful worship, after this we are going to have good coffee and cookies, right? It’s like, it is a pretty good morning. There is almost no snow out there. Praise the Lord, right? So great, we feel good, but by Monday morning at 7 AM, we don’t have maybe this. And you’ve maybe already had a crazy Sunday evening and a wild Monday morning, and here comes Satan, and he’s like, “Boy, do you really believe that stuff you heard in church? Do you really believe that you are loved? Do you really believe that I died on that cross for you?” It is amazing, the power of doubt.
And so we see him tempting Jesus in several areas: the lust of the flesh—we can’t relate with that, right?—the pride of life, and the lust of the eyes, right? And again we see Jesus succeed. He doesn’t sin. And every time he comes back to Satan with God’s Word. I mean it looks like a kind of a spiritual moment, and it is almost a little scary because Satan knows the Word of God. He quotes scripture to Jesus. You better know scripture when you’re gonna quote scripture to Jesus. And then—but it’s twisted. And then Jesus comes back—he doesn’t have conversation with Satan. He doesn’t mess around. He doesn’t push the boundaries to say, “Oh, let me just see. Let me see how far I can push the boundaries on some of these things.” He doesn’t mess around with the enemy. He immediately quotes scripture again, and then he dismisses Satan.
When it comes to our lives and God’s calling and purpose in our lives, we cannot afford to mess around with Satan. Don’t even be on that place where we are opening up maybe some gaps, where we—it’s like, “How far can I go in this relationship? How far can I go with this, with cheating? How far can I go,” you know, whatever it is, because Satan is sneaky. But dismiss him, and, you know, deal with scripture. Find scripture that will work in your life. When you know you have certain weaknesses, when you know that there’s temptations and things that is constantly tripping you up, you need to find scripture that is gonna help you in that moment that you can quote. And not just quote, but that you have to truly believe this is your weapon. If this was Christ’s weapon, then it needs to be our weapon as well, and that’s God’s Word. And so then we got to use it and to fight some of these spiritual battles that we are dealing with.
The Covenant
Now, let’s go to the covenant piece, and then we’ll wrap up. We’re gonna lay a foundation here for the rest of the season. And so, I said covenant is not something that we talk a whole lot about. Here’s kind of a definition as we think about covenant:
A covenant is a relationship between two partners making a binding promise to each other and work together to reach a common goal. They’re often accompanied by oath, signs, and ceremonies. Covenants define obligations and commitments, but they are different from a contract because they are relational and personal.
So we have the beautiful example when it comes to a marriage covenant, right? And so throughout scripture, we see different covenants that God creates with his people. And these are actually very important covenants and some of them really impacts us. And so one of the covenants that we see is the covenant that God makes with Noah after the Flood, and he said, “Hey, I’m gonna give you this beautiful rainbow as a promise that, again, that I will never destroy people by water.” If you’ve watched maybe the news lately and you saw all the floods that was happening in California, right? And so just one week of rain and you see all the flooding and the destruction that happened. Now imagine with the big Flood, with Noah, and God makes this covenant. He says, “Hey, I’m making this covenant with you. It’s an unconditional covenant.” Noah, in a sense, doesn’t have to keep up his end of the bargain. And God is just saying, “And the way that I’m gonna remind you of this covenant is through the rainbow.” Isn’t it beautiful every time that we see a rainbow after rain that it is just God reminding us of that moment between him and Noah? So it’s more than just, oh, Instagram moment. That’s cool, the Instagram moment, right? Take the pictures. That’s beautiful. But it is so much deeper and more meaningful than just that photo. It reminds us of that covenant between God and Noah. And I am for one very grateful for that covenant.
All right, then the covenant God made with David that he would bring forth from David a king to rule all kings forever.
Important covenant he made with Abraham to multiply his seed as more than the sands of the beaches of the earth.
And then you have the New Covenant. Now this is where I want you to be excited. And in a sense, all the covenants build on each other. And throughout life, you see this destruction of people. There was a covenant with God and Adam. Satan comes in and he destroys some of that. Now it’s kind of next plan. And then again, through Adam, and you see again sin and evil in this world, and there’s a Flood. God says, okay, let’s redo. And you have the big Flood, and you have Noah. And throughout time, you see all of these covenants, and because of our brokenness and of our shortcomings, we fail in this covenant, in our relationship with God. And finally, we have this beautiful and this ultimate covenant through Jesus Christ that we celebrate today as the New Covenant. And here’s what it means. And I really want you to go and study this.
What does it mean? This covenant offers complete forgiveness of sins through faith in Jesus Christ. Who’s excited about the new covenant? Cool, there’s four of us. Thank you, Brandon and Dick. You guys are the only ones that can experience complete forgiveness of sins today. The rest of you will have to pay some extra money for Haiti.
As part of the New Covenant, God places his Spirit within believers’ hearts. This indwelling empowers us, guides us, and transforms our lives. Who’s grateful for the Holy Spirit? Amen.
The promise of eternal life. I am so excited that I don’t have to hang around on this earth forever and ever and ever in its current state. We have a beautiful promise of eternal life as believers with God. And that’s part of the New Covenant.
Unlike the Old Covenant, which was based on law and ritual, the New Covenant is based on grace, freeing believers from the burden of legalism. And then through Jesus, believers are adopted as children of God, becoming heirs with Christ.
Now, this morning I shared just that covenant to show you that throughout the ages God stands, and he’s faithful to his covenant, but people keep messing up and breaking that covenant. And finally we have the New Covenant in Jesus Christ, and we can experience all of these promises. And guess what? We have to hold on to all of these promises because the warning piece in this is that you will be tested on that covenant. And so it is key for us to study, to know what the New Covenant means for us, so that when Satan shows up, when you are in that wilderness and when you are being tempted and when you are experiencing doubt, just in the same way that Jesus was quoting scripture, the same way we can now stand in the power of this covenant that you and I have.
The church will be so much more powerful, I believe, if we hold on to these truths and when we really understand the promise of the New Covenant and the authority that we have in the New Covenant. Can I hear an amen?
