Covenants and Sacraments series intro

Back in June and in the recent Communion Card that went out just the last week or two or maybe coming out this week to you, I've mentioned that the Kirk Session have asked for some teaching on Communion and the reason behind this is that the Kirk Session want to be more proactive in involving children and young people in the Sacrament of Communion and so, this coming December, we hope to hold our first all-age Communion together. And so, over the summer, since that request, I've been busying away trying to just refresh my mind and learn afresh what I need to teach around this and as I've begun to dig into the issue, it's become quite apparent to me that not only did we need some maybe teaching on the Sacraments but we needed some teaching on the Covenants of God because the two go hand in hand. And so, for today,, in the next two weeks we're having a series called The Covenants and Sacraments and we're going to be looking at a whole sweep of passages as we try and understand more of God and of His saving purposes and we're going to have to do something called ‘systematic theology’ and I'm sure as I say that you're feeling either overwhelmed or daunted or put off, you might be even wondering if I’m going to argue for something that's just forcing the Scriptures to say something that's not really there, and I certainly hope, as we go through these weeks, to show you that I’m not doing that because systematic theology is actually a really wonderful tool. The books can be quite dense but it is a wonderful tool because we already do systematic theology every Sunday because we know and we sing about God being Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Three persons. But we also know there's only one God, not three. And strangely, I had a conversation with Hope about that at bedtime last night. I have no idea how that happened but a six-year-old's brain does things that you just don't expect. And so, we talked about that and it's systematic theology that actually helps draw that truth from Scripture because nowhere in the Bible does it mention the word ‘trinity’ and it's systematic theology that helps us hold that tension in place because, how can you have one God but three persons? but it's what the Scriptures teach and so we're going to be delving into some systematic theology, thinking about God's Covenants and Sacraments and, I must admit, as I’ve done this reading over the summer and prepared for today and even the coming weeks, I’m really excited, I’m really looking forward to this teaching because it's helped me appreciate God's purposes, His plans, what He's done and what He invites us into afresh, and in a deeper way, and I feel more passionate than ever, actually, about what God has done and what He reveals and I hope some of that will come across and that you will share in that in these coming weeks together. So, without any further ado, I'm going to invite Jennifer up to share our readings for today.