The surest way to remember that we are a people who have favor from God is to look at Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. But to be absolutely sure that this favor of God isn’t just a random event scheduled by chaos in the universe, we have to look at Jeremiah 31:31&34 that dictate the terms of favor from God to all of us. 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….And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, Know the LORD, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. To be clear, a “covenant” is a contract. As with all contracts, the covenant God had with Moses came with terms. While it looked nothing like the iTunes Terms of Service Agreement, there were 10 terms in God’s covenant with Moses. The failure of humanity was that even those 10 proved to be too much for us to handle, even for a chance at receiving an unlimited supply of God’s favor. This brings us to why God establishes a new covenant and this covenant doesn’t even ask the receiver of the covenant to achieve anything. In fact, the covenant according to the Prophet Jeremiah we just read goes, “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” That is favor. Because we’re all born into the original covenant made with Moses, God in his favor towards us, establishes a new covenant that basically, for all intensive purposes, “forgives and forgets” violations and breaches of contract in the existing covenant. That is favor. So we fly across history and time into the 1st century and we find the last passover Jesus celebrates with his disciples and he says, This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many, [Jesus] said to them. – Mark 14:24. Jesus openly pours himself out to fulfill the “forgive and forget” requirement of the new covenant. The type of God who willingly and unabashedly sheds His own blood because the subject can’t meet the terms of a contract is a God who wants to do everything so that we receive His favor. Just imagine if we, in our business dealings and personal matters, make a contract with somebody else to do x, y, and z and then after failing to do x, y and z, do everything in our power to pay them for services not rendered. It doesn’t make sense, unless we had some special vested interest in pouring out whatever we had in terms of contract value towards that other person. In the same way Jesus pours it out for us and provides for us the benefits of meeting a contract despite our disinterestedness or inability to meet the requirements of the contract. We have favor in our brokenness. It doesn’t matter how short we fall. Nor does it matter what mistakes we made. “Favor” is given to us despite our ability to meet the minimum standards; and because of a covenant where God puts the burden of meeting the terms of the agreement on His own. I’m not saying this is license to be an incredible slacker or an infinite underachiever; rather I am saying if it does happen, God is still pouring out His favor on you. Even Peter, who claimed in Jesus’ face that he will not betray him or deny him, receives Jesus’ favor, and Peter denied Jesus 3 times before the rooster crowed twice! Catch the 2/12/2012 Sermon on “Receiving Favor through Our Brokenness” on iTunes later today.
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