This bonus episodes explores the theme of Chapter 8. The Dignity of the Cross in more detail.
Beginning with a strange scene in Genesis 15, where the presence of Yahweh walks a bloody aisle of sacrificed animals to cut covenant with a sleeping Abram, Justin Rossow unpacks the implications of the fact that God's own person was put forward as collateral for the covenant.
Moving from the covenant in Genesis 15 to the sign of the covenant in Genesis 17, to the Book of the Covenant in Exodus 19 and following, Rossow weaves the imagery of commitment and covenant promise to the words of Jesus in Matthew 26:28, "This is my blood of the covenant." We come to see the cross as Jesus putting Himself on the line for the sake of the promise.
Finally, Rossow turns to our own failure to hold faithfully to the sign of the covenant. In the face of our own weakness, we hold to the promise that we will not always be bound to a cycle of forgetfulness, sin, repentance, and forgiveness. The 8th-day sign of the covenant points us to a breaking of this fallen world's repetitive cycle. As Jesus ushers in the beginning of a New Creation on His 8th-day resurrection, we now belong to a covenant promise that makes us part of the New Creation, already now by faith.
This sermon takes advantage of the theory explored further in Preaching Metaphor: How to Shape Sermons that Shape People by Justin Rossow.
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