Well, good morning. I'm going to be in Genesis chapter 9 again this morning. My sermon title is The Rainbow Remedy. You know, we see signs of rainbows all over the place, and they've become a sign that represents a whole movement. But the world is trying to take our sign because God gives the rainbow as a sign. And the sign of the rainbow reminds us of a covenant that God made with us. And I always thought it was kind of a strange thing, easy to pass over. It's like, well, you know, see the rainbow in the cloud and you won't fear anymore. What will you not fear? You won't fear a worldwide deluge. How many people wake up with this fear in the morning? Wake up thinking, oh man, I wonder if today it's raining. I wonder if today the earth is going to flood. It's a strange fear to me. It's very far removed from our mind. But I think this is part of what testifies to the fact that it is true. Put yourself in the shoes of Noah and his wife and Shem, Ham and Japheth. What would you be thinking when the rain fell? What would be your inclination? Rain would be immediately attached to the most traumatic event of your life. Talk about some PTSD. You've spent a year, more than a year, 372 days aboard an ark. And everything in the world that you knew before has been buried. And when you get off the ark, you look around and you see mud everywhere with newly sprouted plants. There's things to eat there. It's quickly sprouting up because they stayed on the ark for a while after the water even receded. So there's green everywhere. There's new plants sprouting up all over the place. But the world is very different than the world you knew. And everybody you knew before the flood, everybody you had done business with, they're all gone. And to this day, we go around the world and we see fossils on mountaintops. This was a universal devastating flood. that covered the entire earth and killed everything that breathed. The only thing living on earth, on the land that is, not talking about the sea life, but everything on land, is something that you brought with you in the ark. Can you imagine the fear that would attend every time there was a thunder, a little bit of lightning? And so what does God do? Well, God says, I'm gonna put my bow in the clouds. And it's a reminder to you and to your posterity, to everything that lives, it's a reminder that I promise I will never again destroy the earth with everything that is on it. And this promise was given with a sign, the sign of the rainbow. And trusting in God's covenant promises gives peace and calms our fears to this day. We're going to see that the various covenants have various covenant signs. And so while you may not have a fear of worldwide deluges, it's foreign to us. It's distant in our past. Many, many, many don't even believe it ever happened, even though there's flood legends in every culture around the world on every continent. There's flood legends, flood stories, sometimes with names very close to the very pronunciation of Noah. But nevertheless, people don't live in this fear. However, we have fears that attend us as Christians. And particularly, I want to address the fears of those that every time they sin, every time they fall, or every time a doubt enters their head, they question, am I even saved? Am I a believer? I failed, I've fallen. There is a remedy for us. We look to God's promises. We look to the signs that he's given us, the two new covenant signs that attend faith in Christ. There's baptism and there's communion. And as we approach them in a proper perspective, remembering God's faith, our hearts also can be assured and it will calm our fears. Let's stand this morning for the reading of God's word. I've got a problem here. There we go. I don't know if this is actually working for me. It's not working, period. Somebody wants to take care of this. We got cute videos up there. That's distracting. Thank you. That's all right. We could all do stretching exercises or something. Yes, kind of tough. All right, here we go. And with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you. As many as come out of the ark. It is for every beast of the earth. I establish my covenant with you that never again shall all flesh be cut off by waters of the flood. And never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, this is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you for all future generations. I have set my bow in the cloud and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and a bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh. And the water shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth. God said to Noah, this is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth. The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah. And from these, the people of the whole earth were dispersed. Oh, Lord God, I thank you. that you are a covenant keeping God. The Father, you did not have to condescend to make covenants with men, and you certainly didn't have to condescend to become one of us, to live the life that we refused to live and die the death that we deserved, and to resurrect from the dead that we might trust in the certainty of your promises, that when we put our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and what you have done for us, that no longer do you see us for the sinners that we are, but you see us through the lens of the righteousness of Jesus Christ. God, I pray this morning that our faith in you would be bolstered, that it would be lifted up, that our faith in you would be unwavering. God, I pray for those that struggle under a burden of guilt. I pray, Lord, this morning that they would be set free. That God, those that feel dirty and filthy, that you would make them know that they are clean by the washing of the water of the word. Those that fear The future and what may come, Lord, I pray that they would see that as your sons and daughters, you will provide for them and you will lead them and guide them. God, we thank you for your many covenant promises. We thank you that you are faithful. Teach us, Lord, to walk with hearts of gratitude and faithfulness to you, our covenant keeping God and Jesus name. Amen. Well, now, these these verses and making it clear that The entirety of humanity was present at the making of this covenant. Noah goes out of the ark with his three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And from these three, all the nations of the earth have come. And as I mentioned before, there are flood legends that are found all over the world. People have memories of the flood. There's Babylonian flood legends. There's flood legends among Native Americans. All over the world there's flood legends because we all come from Noah and his wife and his three sons and their wives. But this covenant isn't merely just made with them or humanity, but it's a promise that God even makes with the earth and every living creature. This is an unconditional covenant that God makes with the earth, with the creatures, with humanity, and God promises Himself, promises to keep this covenant. Let's look here at verse 9. He says, Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark, it is for every beast of the earth. God makes a covenant with every beast of the earth, all creatures. He says, I promise I will do this. You ever heard people say, well, you can't put God in a box. And that is true, you can't put God in a box, but God can put himself in a box. What do I mean by that? When we make a covenant agreement, we are limiting our options. We are deciding to say, I am excluding all other options and I am committing to do a certain thing. What is a covenant? A covenant, the word covenant is used to refer to a formal arrangement between two or more parties. A formal arrangement. So when a man and a wife make a covenant to each other, till death do they part, sickness and health for richer and poorer, etc. They're saying, I'm excluding all other options. Up to this day, I could marry anybody that wanted to marry me. Now, those options are all off the table. I am giving an oath before God. I am pledging myself to you. All options are taken off. I am devoted to you. That is a covenantal agreement in which two people are voluntarily saying, I'm limiting my options. I'm gonna do this. Well, God here limits his options. From here on out, when mankind becomes wicked, when mankind becomes violent, God says, never again will I destroy the earth and everything that is in it by means of a flood or by a flood. And this was comforting words to Noah and his sons. It was comforting. Well, God says he won't do that anymore. You know, there are people, and I don't understand how Neil deGrasse Tyson sleeps at night. I was just seeing a little video where he talks in, I think, like 2039, there's going to be some huge rock that's coming incredibly close to Earth's orbit, even dipping perhaps closer than the satellites. Well, I bet as we get close to 2039, there's going to be a lot of people that are living in fear. They're going to be living in fear. I may have the year off, but it's going to be in a lot of our lifetime. It's going to come up and we may get to see people having hysteria over, oh my goodness, there's this massive rock flying through outer space. It's going to come extremely close to Earth's orbit. And you look up at the moon and you see it covered in craters. There's going to be a lot of people saying this is it. This could be This could be the end of the world. There's going to be people fearful. I've lived through several of these things where people were terrified. 2012, a lot of people. Some of you remember there's even a movie out there. It's comical to me. It still can be viewed out there. But there are a lot of people that said, well, the Mayans calendar ended in 2012 and there's all these predictions. The world's going to end in 2012. People live in fear of super volcanoes and meteors hitting the earth and global warming, again, flooding the earth, which is directly in opposition to this. They live in fear of climate change. Well, we live in a history, it's very evident, we've had a changing climate. Everything else changes. Why wouldn't the climate? Why wouldn't there be changes? There are places today that are a desert that used to be very green. There's evidence that Antarctica used to have trees in it, been buried, and animals. And there's evidence of life where there's no longer life. And there's evidence that there was desert where now there's life. I mean, the planet's changing all the time. And what do you do if all of a sudden Missouri turns into a desert? Well, you move somewhere that's not a desert. Don't be that attached, for goodness sakes. Get up and move. That's what humanity has done. Things get rough in one area, we move to another area. We're mobile. We can do that. There's evidence of cities born that were built under oceans now to this day. But as believers, we know someone's driving planet Earth. There's someone at the wheel. There's someone in control. There's a sovereign God who has the very hairs of our head numbered He's sovereign over us. He knows our days. He knows our fears. He knows what we pray before we pray it. He knows everything that we'll ever face. And we can take comfort in the fact that we have this promise in Romans 8, 28. God works all things together for good to those that love Him, to those who are called according to His purpose. It's very comforting to know that our Heavenly Father is in charge. He's in control. He's sovereign over us. And nothing can take us before our time is up. And nothing can keep us when our time is up. And when we die, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Eye hath not seen, ear hath not heard, neither has entered into the heart of man the things that God has prepared for those that love Him. There's so many promises that we could go into this morning that deal with God's promise of provision. In Matthew 6, 33-34, Take no thought for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself, sufficient for the days of evil thereof. God is in control. He's our provider. He's our father. We know as God's children, He's a good father. He's not a child abuser. He's not going to leave us or forsake us. He's with us. And as believers, We understand God is a covenant keeping God. He keeps his promises. And so this covenant that God makes with every creature on earth is God saying, I am telling you that I will never do that again. You have my word on it. This is what a covenant is. A covenant is used to refer to a formal agreement between two or more parties. You know, I wanted to get a definition for covenant. And I kept looking, I kept... ...and various lexicons would apply in one situation but not to another. And I read an article that... Ligonier put out, and this was the definition they put forth, and he saw the same thing, that the word covenant, in different contexts, people say, well, it refers to a cutting of animals. Well, there's no cutting of animals in this passage. There's all kinds of different word studies and different things, but it comes down to this. It's a formal arrangement between two or more parties. God has made an oath to humanity, to animals, to the earth itself, I will never again flood the earth. Here's the promise, verse 11, I establish my covenant with you that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. This is God's promise, I promise you. He's saying I promise you. You have his word on it, never again. He's entered into a covenant, I'll never do this again. Now if you trust God and you trust His promises, then you can say, well good, I don't have to worry about that. But the problem is when we doubt God, and we do have an enemy, we do have a real spiritual enemy, and he plays mind games with us. And even as believers, you know, the battle takes place in our mind. That's why Paul says the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God, the pulling down of strongholds, taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. We have to wage war in our minds at times. We have temptations in our minds. We have doubts that come into our minds. And we've got to put on the helmet of salvation and take up the shield of faith and put on the breastplate of righteousness and wage war. And it takes place a lot of times in our minds. But the enemy will cast doubt on God's Word. What does he do in the Garden of Eden? What does Satan do? First thing he does is he casts doubt on God's Word. Hath God said? Hath God said, you shall not surely die? What's he doing? He's causing, he's trying to get Eve to doubt God's word. He's calling into question God's truth, God's word. And so we'll find that the enemy will call into question God's word. It comes from many different sources. It comes from those that claim science as their authority. How can you scientifically prove a historical event? Were you there? Do you have a date? Do you have eyewitness accounts? Science deals with things that are testable, observable, repeatable. History is beyond the realm of the scientific lab. Who was there? God was there. So what does Satan do? Satan calls into question God's word. And when it comes to the issue that I want to focus on more this morning, when it comes to our standing in Christ, this is something particularly young believers, but old believers too, I've been walking with the Lord for a long time. I know I thought many battles in my mind over my salvation, my insurance. And how do we what do we do? Do we look to our feelings? No, we look to God's promises. God makes promises. The solution is not to look within ourselves or our feelings or even our experiences, but the solution when we question our standing with God is to go back to God's Word, His promises, and what He says. God makes promises. We have to believe them. In verse 12, God said, This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you for all future generations. I have set my bow in the cloud and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. So for this covenant God gives a sign. Now there are some that believe that prior to this there were no rainbows and That may be true. It may be that before the flood there were some kind of different circumstances. Some would say the canopy over the earth caused light to react differently and that sort of thing. Maybe so. I don't know. I wasn't there. But I don't think that's clearly taught in this passage that there was never rainbows. There was a mist that went up from the earth and even a mist with a garden sprinkler. You shine light through it. It's a prism that creates the spectrum of light, you'll see a rainbow. I thought it was fun as a kid spraying the water hose mist up into the air and the sunlight would shine through it and you'd see a ring of a rainbow. I don't know that anything changed with the nature of light. So what's going on here? Well, you'll find that God gives various covenant signs throughout the Bible and it's usually not a totally new thing. It's something that was already existing that God attaches a meaning to. He attaches a promise to. And so God says, the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you for all future generations, I have set my bow in the cloud. It shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. There's a covenant sign so that when you see the rainbow, you will remember God's promise. So you see the rainbow and you say, God has promised that never again will he flood the earth. It's a covenant with a covenant sign. There are covenant signs, and we're going to talk about that in the New Covenant. There are New Covenant signs. There are Old Covenant signs. And when we see the sign, we're to associate it with the remembrance of God's promise. God takes a sign, and He attaches a promise to it. And He says, when you see the rainbow, you can think of God's promise. When I see a rainbow, to this day, it's ironic to me that a movement that is very anti-God has the rainbow as its sign. Choosing a rainbow to be the sign because on one hand it reminds us of God's promise to never flood the earth again but every time I think that I also think about God's promise to judge all of humanity and that there will be a judgment where we stand before God and all of us are going to stand before His throne. All of us have an appointment with God. And we're either going to be judged by our works or His works. It's one or the other. We'll either stand before Him with our works brought to God, like Cain bringing his works, the product of his hands, or we'll come and say, I am trusting in the works of Jesus Christ on my behalf. It's going to be one or the other. And everybody who's judged by their works, who fall short of the glory of God, will not be found written in the book of life, it will be cast into the lake of fire. So the rainbow reminds me, yes, God will not judge the world by a worldwide deluge. We don't have to fear when the raindrops fall. But we still have an appointment with God. We're still going to stand before Him and give an account for the things that we have done in our life. And that, once you believe it, is a terrifying fact. That we're going to be called into judgment for all that we do. Unless Your heart has found the comfort of the gospel, the comfort of grace, the comfort of knowing that you are accepted in Christ. That in Christ, you can come before the throne of God's judgment and you can say, not by my works, but by His. I'm with Him. That is the comfort of the gospel, is that we won't be judged by our works, but we'll be judged by His works. We are given the gift of righteousness through the grace of Jesus Christ. In verse 14 it says, When I bring clouds over the earth, and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember My covenant that is between Me and you, and every living creature of all flesh. And the water shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth. Now God is speaking here and he uses the word remember repeatedly. And God is saying, when I see the bow in the clouds, I will remember. Now God is omniscient and he doesn't forget. But what he's doing is he's saying, This rainbow that you see, it reminds you of? of the promise? Well, it's a reminder to me. I have made an oath. I will never again flood the earth and everything that lives on it will be destroyed. God has promised He won't do it. But there's a relationship between the covenant and the promise and the sign. There's a covenant sign that exists as a monument. Look up the word sign. So many different ways that sign is used. Sometimes it refers to miracles. God put a sign, a mark on Cain. You know, it was a mark. People would see the mark and they would remember, oh yeah, we're not to kill that man. Right? But signs represent something other than themselves. Even when we use road signs. You see a sign with a yield and it's got somebody walking across. It's like, oh, pedestrians walk here. There's a crosswalk here. Deer are in this area. There's slow children playing. You know, there's all these different signs that point to a reality that's more than a picture. So the sign represents something. In this case, in a covenantal context, the sign reminds you of God's word, God's promise. So you look at the sign and you say, oh yeah, God has made a promise. And when they crossed over the river Jordan, this word is used as a sign, all the 12 tribes, they put stones. The men, they took a large stone, each tribe, and when God held back the waters of the Jordan River, and they put 12 large stones out there in the middle of the river, and the river would go around the stones with this pile of rocks. It was put there as a sign. to remind them that God stopped the Jordan River miraculously and God brought them through in fulfillment of the promise that he would bring them into the promised land and give them their enemies. So every generation could go and say, that is a sign, a monument that reminds us of what God has done, what God said he would do, which reminds us that God is true and God keeps his word. He brings it to pass. So the rainbow provides a remedy to to our fears. Fears that you and I no longer have, but they certainly would have had. It's a reminder. It's a reminder of God's Word and God's promise. Covenant signs. Verse 17 says, God said to Noah, this is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth. The sons of Noah who went forth from the ark were Shem and Ham and Japheth. Ham was the father of Canaan. These three were the sons of Noah and from these the people of the whole earth were dispersed." Now this covenant was a universal, unconditional covenant. There's nothing for Shem, Ham, and Japheth and their descendants to do. There's nothing that you have to do for God to keep His promise. God has said, I won't flood the earth again, and He put a sign there that reminds us, reminds Him, that this covenant has been made, but it's unconditional. It's made with all of humanity, it's made with animals, it's made with the earth. It's a covenant to all generations, it's unconditional, and there's a sign that God says, this is my promise to you, to your posterity, to all peoples, to all living things. When we get to Genesis 17, we get to a covenant that God makes with Abraham. And again, you have promises, and again, you have a sign And what, if I were to go into the entire chapter, which I will at some future date, Lord willing, get to Genesis chapter 17 someday, 10 years from now, we'll get to Genesis 17. We'll go quicker than that, probably in the next six months, I would think. We'll be talking about Genesis 17, but God initiates to Abraham and he says, Abraham, Abraham, walk before me and be perfect and I'll make my covenant with you. God's the initiator. He's always the initiator. Abraham wasn't seeking God, God sought Abraham. He wasn't a God seeker that just loved God so much and he found him. No, God seeks out Abraham in Genesis 12, makes a covenant in Genesis 15, elaborates on it in Genesis 17. But this covenant, unlike the rainbow covenant, the Noahic covenant, this one has conditions attached to it. So I'm going to read a portion of this, Genesis 17. And God said to Abraham, as for you, you shall keep my covenant. See, Abraham has to keep, guard, the word shamar, to guard the covenant. you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your offspring after you. Every male among you shall be circumcised. He shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you." So again, you have a covenant, you have an agreement between two parties, a binding agreement between two parties. It's God on one side of the party and on the other is Abraham and all of his descendants. But in this case, he says there's something for you to do. There's a sign of the covenant and the sign, just like the rainbow was a sign of that unilateral, unconditional covenant in Genesis 9, this sign, this covenant has a sign that is to be kept by the human parties, by Abraham and his descendants. It's circumcision. Verse 12 it says, He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised every male throughout your generations whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring. Both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh, an everlasting covenant. Any circumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant." So on the eighth day, every male child was to be circumcised. Now this is an initiation rite. On the eighth day, That's after the blood begins to clot on the 8th day, not the 7th day, but after the 8th day, the male child was to be circumcised. And this was the sign. And it was so serious that if anybody wasn't circumcised, he says, that person will be cut off. Cut off all the promises of Genesis 17, which we're not going into this morning, but all the promises, all of the things that God said we do, if they were not circumcised, they were cut off. They were not heirs. They were cut off from God's people. This was something that had to be kept and the parents would keep it. It had a sign. And you say, well, what would this sign remind of? Their identity. I am a child of Abraham. I belong to Abraham and all of the promises that were made to Abraham are made to me and my family. I am part of a special family. I am part of the sons of Abraham so that my sons and daughters, my household is included in all the promises of Abraham because I am one of his descendants. So this sign would remind them of their identity. Eight days after they were born. Or a servant bought with money. That means an adult maybe even had to go through the painful surgery. And they got all the privileges of being a Hebrew slave. Some people say, well, what? The Bible teaches slavery. You think about it. If you were born a slave and you were in a slave market in Egypt or Assyria or somewhere else, and you looked out in the crowd and you saw an Assyrian out there and an Egyptian out there and a Hittite out there and a Jew out there, whose slave do you want to be? Well, in the context of circumcision, you may say anybody but the Jew slave. But think about this. Every seventh day, you got off. you got to rest. As a slave in a Hebrew household, you had certain rights. You got to partake of the feasts. You got to partake of all the Sabbath days in the year. And if you were a Hebrew slave, there was a year of release where you were set free with skills and they were to be sent out with gifts and money to get a start in life. So the Hebrew slave was treated on a much better basis. And maybe they were a slave because they had taken out money that they couldn't pay back. So they were sold into slavery. There was a sense of justice to it. Maybe they had committed crimes. Maybe they were just born into slavery. But the Hebrew slave had a sort of path to freedom potentially. Or his children at the very least. And so it was quite an elevating thing to have access to God and his people, to be a genuine partaker of the promises of the Abrahamic covenant as one circumcised and put into a Jewish household. But this sign of circumcision was a reminder. God has made promises. I have an identity. I am a son of Abraham. God has separated me from all the other nations and made me part of His special people. This was the Old Testament, Old Covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant, the sign being circumcision and many promises that went with it. So that covenant also has promises and also has a sign. Now we could talk about all kinds of covenants in the Old Testament. We could talk about the Sinai covenant. We could talk about the Davidic covenant, the various covenants that God made with people at different times. But what about the new covenant? We have a new covenant with new promises and some new signs. I want to go to Colossians 2. There's so many passages I could go to, but I want to bring it down to where we are at as Christians, perhaps struggling with fears of our own. And Colossians chapter 2. In verse 8, it says, See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the wholefulness of deity dwells bodily. And you have been filled in him who is the head of all rule and authority. All right, before I get to the covenant side, let me get to this. Paul is warning us about being deceived. by philosophy, by tradition, by worldliness. And so I mentioned earlier that one of Satan's tools is deception, getting us to doubt God's promises, doubt God's word, doubt God's love for us, doubt God's faithfulness, doubt God's existence, doubt God's sovereignty. Well, Paul warns us about this, is be careful. Don't be taken captive by philosophy and empty vein deceit. Why? Because the truth is in Christ. The truth that we need, the truth that is sufficient for right relationship with God is found in Christ. Christ is the fullness of the truth. Sometimes I'll hear people talking about some new teaching, and oftentimes it'll be in kind of Christian garb, some Christian book or something. I'm like, okay, if what you're telling me is true, help me find the principle of it in Scripture. You know, like some years ago, The Secret came out. I never read The Secret. I never watched the movie The Secret. I just know it was really popular on Oprah. And they talk about the law of attraction, right? The law of attraction, I've heard it talked about, may have seen clips of it, whatever. You speak things into existence, you speak positive things, and then they're attracted to you by positive thinking and positive speaking and this sort of thing. That's not in the Bible. That's not biblical. And it sounds good to some people. It sounds good. It's like, oh, that sounds really good. What sounds good about it? Well, it kind of makes you God, doesn't it? You get to be God and you get to speak things into existence like God spoke things into existence. Who creates by the word of His power? God creates by the word of His power. We don't create by the word of His power. Now, is it true that you can be a very negative thinking person, full of fear, and you never try anything because you're scared because you always... Is there any room for some positive thinking? Yeah, there is. But we don't have magic powers. We're not little gods that get to speak things into existence. And this is a philosophy in vain deceit after the traditions of men. It's not found in scripture. It's not what the Bible teaches. People say, well, Abraham declared those things that were not as though they were. That's taken out of context. That's not what that's teaching. A lot of faith movement churches speak that kind of thing. That's not after Christ. There is no promise that you get to be God and speak things into existence. So we have to make sure that what we're trusting in and believing in is after Christ, is based upon Jesus Christ and his word. The world comes along with its psychology and its psychiatry and attempts to deal with man's deepest moral spiritual problems with means that God doesn't give us in scripture. And so we have all kinds of blame shifting and guilt shifting and drugs and all kinds of things that people are trying to look to to solve their spiritual problems when it's a spiritual problem. Now I just mentioned that because Paul is warning us about philosophy and empty deceit that's according to human tradition and not according to Christ. Now let's get to this covenant part here. Although the word covenant isn't used. It says, "...and you who were dead and trespasses..." Hold on a second. Skip to verse 11. And Him, meaning in Christ, in Christ you also were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised Him from the dead. Now this is an interesting passage. that it says you, and he's talking to men and women, talking to everybody, were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands. What's he saying here? He's saying well in the old covenant they were circumcised, the males were circumcised with a surgery. But you, as believers in Jesus Christ, have been initiated into a new covenant, not by something that your parents did to you, not by a surgery, but by what? By the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him by baptism in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised him from the dead. By faith. It's spiritual. The Old Testament sign was a physical sign done by the parents to the male child. The New Testament sign, the New Testament, version is done by faith in the powerful working of God. We are justified by faith in the gospel, in the promises of the gospel. And we are circumcised by the circumcision of Christ, which isn't physical, but it's spiritual. Now what's interesting is it's associated with baptism. I'm bringing this up because here's kind of what I'm getting to. God gave a covenant sign of the rainbow to remind them of the promise, I'll never flood the world again. God gave them the circumcision as a sign that his promises to Abraham would stand to all generations. Baptism is a physical sign of a spiritual work. When we get baptized in water, it is a sign of the new covenant. There is a physical side to it, there is a spiritual side of it. When John the Baptist is out and he's baptizing people, he says, I baptize you with water, but one shall come after me who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. So Jesus baptizes not merely in water, but with His Spirit. When we go from unbelieving, dead in our sins, to believing, something has happened to us. Something has changed us. It's not something that we do, it's something that He does. We go from a state of dead in our trespasses and sins, to trusting in Jesus Christ, something has spiritually happened to us. It's called in one place, John 3, being born again. And other places it's called regeneration. What's that mean? It means brought to life again. Here it's associated. We were dead in our trespasses and sins and now we're made alive again in Christ Jesus. So why do we get baptized? Well, when we come to faith in Christ, Jesus says that we are to make a confession of that faith and we're to be baptized. Now what will happen is, baptism is an initiation, it's a sign of initiation, like circumcision was a sign of initiation. When was a male child circumcised? On the eighth day of his human life. When are we baptized? Upon our new spiritual life. When an Israelite was born, into a family, they were circumcised. When you are born again, you are baptized. You get baptized. So baptism follows faith in Christ. It follows. The one follows the other. The one happens when they were born. The new covenant happens when you're born again. This is why we emphasize believers' baptism. Every week we talk about communion and I urge you not to take communion if you haven't been baptized. Why? Baptism is an outward sign of an inward work. It is a sign, like the rainbow is a sign, like circumcision is a sign. Water baptism is a physical sign of a spiritual work that happens when we put our faith in Jesus Christ. And what happens when we're born again? Verse 13, and you who were dead in trespasses in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. So he talks about certain benefits of this new covenant. It's contrasted with the promises of Abraham in the sense that God has made us alive together with him. What's that? That's what we call regeneration. A person goes from unbelieving to believing. A person goes from no peace with God to having peace with God. A person goes from not trusting to trusting in Christ. This by analogy is what we call being born again or becoming regenerate, becoming a new creature in Christ Jesus. That's one of the aspects of this new covenant that we have with God is that We're born again, the law of God is written on our hearts and our minds, and we become the children of God. He goes on saying, having forgiven us all our trespasses, all of them, past, present, future, are forgiven. This is a promise of the new covenant. Their sins and their iniquities, I will remember no more. It's God's promise to you. And yet many Christians after believing, after coming to faith in Christ, even after getting baptized, will at times go, boy, I don't know if I'm really saved. Well, it's worth examining yourself to see if you're just living as a hypocrite or if you're actually trusting in Christ. But rather than getting caught up in your feelings and your emotions and your fears, what should you do? You go back to God's promises. Christ said that if I believe in my heart and confess with my mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, I shall be saved. Is it true or not? Does he keep his promises or not? My salvation is therefore based upon God's ability to keep a promise. That's what we come back to. We come back to the sign. And we remember, no, I surrendered my life to Jesus Christ. I belong to Christ. I am trusting in Christ. And therefore, my trespasses are forgiven. Verse 14, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands, this he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and the authorities and put them to open shame by triumphing over them in him. What is this canceling of the record of debt? Well, we all have this record of debt that has accumulated, a sin debt. When Jesus was on the cross, you remember when he said, it is finished? The Greek word to telestai that he speaks on the cross was a word that was used to write when a debt was paid in full. It means paid in full. It is finished means paid. Paid. So what's it saying here? The record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. Every time we sinned and thought word and deed, every insult, every disrespectful thing we said to our parents, every lustful thought, every curse word, every violent thing that we did, every lustful thing we did, make up a long list. And this list was nailed to the cross. and it was canceled, paid in full. That's God's promise to those that trust in him. Your debt is paid in full. So when you're struggling with assurance of salvation, don't look to your feelings or your experience, look to the promise of God. If you weren't believing the promises of God yesterday, then start believing them today. I'm not sure if I was really genuine back then. Then it's time to renew or do for the first time, it's time to affirm your trust and what Jesus has done on your behalf. Not like an Israelite who would say, well I know I'm an Israelite because I was circumcised on the eighth day. But we go and we say, well I know I'm a Christian because I'm trusting what Christ has done on my behalf. And the sign reminds me of the promise. The sign. Now there's another sign, and this one's not called a sign in this context, but it's another sign of the New Covenant that we can again and again come back to. 1 Corinthians. This is the passage that we read weekly, or I quote from weekly, when we do communion. You'll notice that just like the rainbow says, I'll see the rainbow and I'll remember So the word remembrance is used in terms of communion. And 1 Corinthians 11, 23 says, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread. And when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. And the same way also he took the cup after supper saying, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. So we have the word covenant mentioned here. We have the word or testament in some Bibles. This is the new covenant. I've got a new covenant and I've got a sign that goes with it. Baptism is one sign. that we look to and we remember and we trust in the promises of God. Communion is another one. When we take communion, what are we doing? Well, when we take the bread and we break it, we remember. What do we remember? What He did for us. That Jesus lived a sinless life and He died a death He didn't deserve. And who did He die for? He died for us. What are we doing? We're remembering the promise, this is for you. Trust in Him. Trust in his covenant promise. You're remembering and you're doing it. He says, do this in remembrance of me. We're remembering what he did on our behalf. And we take the cup and we drink it in remembrance of him. Again, we're remembering the promise. This is a covenant sign. So in baptism, when we think back to our baptism, we think back to our initiation, our beginning. When we take communion, we're again, remembering. God promised to accept me on the basis of what His Son has done for me. That is His promise. So how do we approach the Lord's table? Well, it's good every week when we take the Lord's Supper as it's being passed out, as the music is playing, after we hear a sermon from God's Word, and we read God's Word, read God's law, read about things that we should have done that we haven't done, and we remember our fights with loved ones and the wrong things that we've done. We bring them to remembrance, and then we look to the Lord's table. We remember His body that was broken for us. We remember His blood, the blood of the new covenant that was spilt for us, and we trust in the promise, and we do it week after week. This is a form of covenant renewal. And what it should do, this weekly cycle of going to the mirror of God's law, looking into his law, seeing our sins, seeing our shortcomings, seeing our failures, being provoked to righteousness, to want to live more godly, to want to seek him more fully. We go to God's law and inevitably God's law brings some measure of condemnation because we know we don't live up to it. But when we come to the Lord's table, we see the gospel represented in a physical form. I'm doing this for you. My body's being broken for you. My blood's being spilled for you. For the joy that sat before me, I'm enduring the cross for you. And so you come to the Lord's table and you remember. And this should be working sanctification into our lives. We should be gradually growing in appreciation and love as we see our sin. From whom as much sin as much love. And we should be learning to forgive like he forgives us. We should be wanting to live in a way that pleases him, in a manner that pleases him, that honors him. So there's this weekly repentance and confession and faith in the promises of God. He says, for as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup. ESV says you proclaim the Lord's death till he comes. I didn't do due diligence. I should go look up the Greek word here. King James says by this you do show the Lord's death till he comes. That sounds like a sign. Right? You show the Lord's death. It is a visible sign of a promise made by God. So the rainbow is a sign that reminds us God will never flood the world again, and that assuages our fear of a deluge. Especially meaningful to that original audience of Noah and his three sons. Abraham and his seed, they had the sign of circumcision. It reminded them of their identity and the promise that God had made to their father. And now we come to baptism in the Lord's table and we remember the initiation and baptism, which is a parallel to circumcision of the Old Testament. But that was physical. This is spiritual. And we remember that we've been born again. That God's the one that gave us the heart of faith. God's the one that brought us to saving faith. And then with the sign of communion, We're remembering weakly the promise on the basis of what Christ has done for us. He accepts us and loves us and our fears dissipate. Have you experienced that? Do you know what it is to have peace with God? Are you trusting in the gospel directly or, you know, John the Baptist warned those that came to him and baptism. They were Israelites, they were Jews, circumcised the eighth day. And when it came to the new covenant, he specifically told them, do not say within yourselves, we have Abraham for our father. God is able to stone strays up children to Abraham. And what he was saying there is the New Testament is on a different basis than who your daddy was. The New Covenant is on the basis of being a child of God, of coming to faith in Christ, and making a confession in what He's done for you. That's the New Testament. That's why when Nicodemus not only circumcised the eighth day, but a leader in Israel on the Sanhedrin, what does Jesus say to him in John 3? He says, Nicodemus, accept a man, be born again, and cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Now, you might say, well, wait a minute here. I thought being circumcised the eighth day should be good enough. No. You were born and circumcised and therefore part of the Abrahamic covenant. But I'm talking about a new covenant in which you must be born again. You were born dead in your trespasses and sins. You're an Israelite, and therefore you have property rights as an Israelite. You get the heir of an Israelite. You get a vote, so to speak, in the Commonwealth of Israel. But if you want to be in the kingdom of God, you need to have a new heart. Nicodemus, you need to be born again. It didn't come through your daddy. It comes from being born not by the will of the man, nor by the will of flesh, but by the will of God. Are you trusting in the promises of God this morning? If not, I want to tell you, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Trust in the promise of God, that what Jesus has done for you is sufficient. Turn from your sins, surrender to Christ, and trust in Him. and you have his word, you shall be saved. Let's pray. Father, we thank you, God, for your many covenant promises given to us. Lord, there's so many more than I covered this morning, but I pray, Father, for the person that's wrestling with assurance of salvation or wrestling with their acceptance that, God, they would look to Christ this morning, that they would look to Christ afresh and that they would be comforted That they're accepted not on the basis of what they've done or what they can do, but on the basis of what Christ has done for us. Now, Lord, as we prepare our hearts to come to the communion table, I pray, Lord, that you would convict us of sin. That God, you would give us a heart that longs to be more like Christ, that wants to walk in obedience. Give us victory over our many besetting sins, Lord, and help us, Father, to look more and more like Jesus. as we behold you in your glory. Conform us to the image of Christ.