A Little Introduction to Covenants

00:00:00.000 | We end the week talking about covenants. Yes, covenants. We need to. In the

00:00:06.460 | words of one recent book on the topic, "The covenants are not the central

00:00:10.760 | theme of Scripture. Instead, the covenants form the backbone of the Bible's

00:00:15.020 | metanarrative, and thus it is essential to put the covenants together correctly

00:00:19.880 | in order to discern accurately the whole counsel of God." Those are the words of

00:00:25.640 | Peter Gentry and Stephen Wellam. So covenants are a sort of skeletal

00:00:30.020 | structure, and we must put them together rightly. And to explain covenants and how

00:00:33.620 | they work, I called Dr. Don Carson on occasional Fridays to call him up as

00:00:37.500 | part of our relationship with our friends at the Gospel Coalition. Carson

00:00:40.760 | is the co-founder and president of the Gospel Coalition, and he's the editor of

00:00:44.000 | the NIV Zondervan Study Bible, which is the study Bible version of what we're

00:00:47.560 | doing in these occasional Friday podcasts. So what is a covenant, and how

00:00:52.060 | do they hold our Bibles together? Here's Dr. Carson to explain. Christians know, of

00:00:57.960 | course, that the Bible is made up of two Testaments. They may wonder from time to

00:01:03.480 | time where the word "Testament" comes from. It comes from two passages in the New

00:01:07.680 | Testament, one in Hebrews and one in Galatians, where actually the word is

00:01:14.680 | properly rendered "covenant." It would be easier, it would be more accurate to speak

00:01:21.200 | of the Bible as having two covenants, the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. Of

00:01:26.360 | course, we've inherited the term "Testament," so we'll continue to speak of

00:01:28.840 | the Bible having two Testaments, but the notion of covenant shapes an

00:01:33.840 | awful lot of how the Bible is put together, rather than "Testament." Again, we

00:01:40.120 | should begin in Genesis 1, 2, and 3 in the Garden of Eden. The word "covenant"

00:01:44.880 | isn't used there. But one of the striking things that we've already seen part of

00:01:50.440 | about Genesis 1, 2, and 3 is that those chapters lay a kind of seedbed of

00:01:57.520 | notions that are developed in much richer detail farther on in the Bible.

00:02:02.960 | The Bible doesn't talk of God as King in those chapters, but he's clearly reigning.

00:02:09.240 | The Bible doesn't talk about the Church in those chapters, but there's the

00:02:14.320 | beginning of his own elect covenant people. The Bible doesn't really talk

00:02:19.560 | about blood sacrifice in those chapters, but nevertheless, the covering that God

00:02:26.400 | provides for Adam and Eve depends on the death of an animal. The Bible doesn't talk

00:02:31.080 | about the Trinity, yet you have these strange expressions like "Let us make men

00:02:36.160 | in our image." And in the same way, the Bible certainly doesn't speak of

00:02:41.880 | covenant there, yet there is in some sense what some theologians have called

00:02:46.680 | a covenant of words. Probably the best defense of the notion that covenant is

00:02:52.480 | introduced in these chapters is the book by Michael Horton called Covenant and

00:02:57.480 | Eschatology. In any case, there is an agreement made by a sovereign, in this

00:03:03.520 | case God, with human beings where there is worship and adoration on one side, and

00:03:09.760 | blessing and protection and privilege granted by God on the other side, on

00:03:16.080 | condition of certain obedience, with threat of certain judgment if there is

00:03:21.960 | disobedience. That's the setup for the horrible drama of chapter 3, where

00:03:28.320 | human beings choose defiance and disobedience and die, die in multiple

00:03:33.200 | ways. I suppose, however, the first covenant that people fasten a lot of

00:03:40.680 | attention on is the Abrahamic covenant. But before we get there, there is the

00:03:46.200 | the Noahic covenant, or sometimes it's pronounced the "Noahic" covenant, the

00:03:50.800 | covenant with Noah. After God destroys the world with water, with only eight

00:03:58.840 | human beings left alive to repopulate the earth again, he promises in grace not

00:04:05.480 | to destroy the world again by water. The next destruction of the world will be by

00:04:11.320 | fire at the end of the age. That's a theology that is picked up in 2 Peter.

00:04:15.760 | But in this case, God makes a covenant that is sealed by a public sign, namely

00:04:21.720 | the rainbow. The rainbow takes on that covenantal significance. The Abrahamic

00:04:27.520 | covenant is much more complicated. It's sometimes called a covenant of promise.

00:04:31.480 | It turns on several chapters. First of all, Genesis chapter 12, "The Lord said to

00:04:40.360 | the Lord had said to Abram, 'Go from your country, your people, and your father's

00:04:44.720 | household to the land. I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I

00:04:49.200 | will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will

00:04:53.160 | bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse. And all peoples

00:04:57.680 | on earth will be blessed through you.'" Now the word "covenant" isn't used there, but

00:05:03.560 | there there is a flat-out blessing from God with promise not only to Abraham, but

00:05:10.560 | through Abraham to all the peoples on earth who will be blessed through him.

00:05:14.840 | That's chapter 12. Chapter 15 has a dramatic scene. There, God establishes

00:05:24.520 | his covenant with Abram. We read, "After this the word of the Lord came to Abram

00:05:29.640 | in a vision. 'Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.'" Then

00:05:36.640 | there's a lot of talk about God's promise that he will provide a son and

00:05:42.080 | an heir and an inheritance. And we're told, verse 6, "Abram believed the Lord, and he

00:05:49.280 | credited it to him as righteousness." Then by the end of the chapter there

00:05:54.600 | is this dramatic scene that the first part of the chapter introduces. In this

00:05:59.640 | scene, in a vision, as the sun is setting, Abram falls into a deep sleep and a thick

00:06:06.120 | and dreadful darkness comes over him. And the Lord promises some things that will

00:06:11.880 | take place in the future. And when the sun has fully set and darkness has

00:06:16.400 | fallen, there is a smoking fire pot with a blazing torch that appears and passes

00:06:23.080 | between animals that have been cut up. And this symbolism derives from

00:06:30.040 | curses in the day. Sometimes a sovereign state, a regional superpower, would enter

00:06:36.960 | into a covenant with a vassal state. In fact, it would be an imposed covenant, but

00:06:42.880 | it would be cast after a sort of historical preamble. It would be cast

00:06:46.960 | into the mode of mutual promise. The regional sovereign promises protection

00:06:52.320 | and security and blessing and prosperity, and the vassal state promises obedience,

00:06:57.640 | paying taxes on time, not rebelling, and that sort of thing. And then there's a

00:07:02.040 | mutual curse. "Let this be done to me and more also if I should break this covenant."

00:07:07.920 | What it means, in fact, is that the curse falls on the lower member, on the

00:07:14.520 | vassal state. In other words, if the vassal state rebels and tries to make a

00:07:18.880 | political tie with some other regional power, there will be terrible judgment

00:07:23.120 | that follows. And in the symbolism of the cut animals, the two parties then are

00:07:27.620 | supposed to walk between the cut up animals, and implicitly they're saying,

00:07:32.280 | "Let this be done to me. Let my body be cut up and trashed if I were to

00:07:37.600 | break this covenant." But in this vision slumber of Abram, only the fire pot that

00:07:43.600 | represents God goes between the two animals, as if God himself takes on the

00:07:49.920 | entire curse all by himself. That's chapter 15. In chapter 17, the covenant is

00:07:57.360 | sealed by the sign of circumcision. And then in chapter 2 of Genesis, in the

00:08:02.840 | the testing of Abraham, the almost sacrifice of Abram's son, after God stops

00:08:11.080 | Abram from killing the boy, "Do not lay a hand on the boy," the voice from heaven

00:08:16.200 | says. The angel of the Lord speaks, "Do not lay a hand on the boy. I know that you

00:08:21.800 | fear God." And Abraham eventually calls that place, "The Lord will provide." And to

00:08:28.680 | this day it is said, "On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided." And then

00:08:33.560 | the angel of the Lord calls Abraham from heaven a second time, and God through him

00:08:37.920 | swears, "Because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son,

00:08:42.120 | I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in

00:08:46.360 | the sky and as the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of

00:08:50.920 | the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will

00:08:55.360 | be blessed because you have obeyed me." That's the same blessing and promise

00:09:01.560 | that goes all the way back to chapters 12, 15, and 17. Now, it's possible to

00:09:08.640 | configure these chapters a little differently. For example, there's an

00:09:13.600 | excellent Australian scholar called Paul Williamson, whose book, "Sealed with an

00:09:18.240 | Oath, Covenant and God's Unfolding," thinks of two covenants here rather than just

00:09:22.960 | one, but the detail is not nearly as important as seeing how this Abrahamic

00:09:28.040 | covenant, or these Abrahamic covenants if you prefer, are fulfilled in the New

00:09:32.040 | Testament. This promise that through Abram's seed all the nations of the

00:09:36.600 | earth will be blessed is picked up in spectacular display, especially in

00:09:40.280 | Galatians chapter 3. And the fulfillment is found in the ultimate seed, Jesus

00:09:47.440 | Christ himself, who brings blessing to all the peoples of the earth as promised.

00:09:52.200 | So that's the Abrahamic covenant. Then a covenant is made with the people of God

00:09:59.480 | as a nation in Exodus, and this is the one that is sometimes referred to in the

00:10:05.280 | New Testament as the Old Covenant. It's the covenant that predominates in day-to-day

00:10:11.160 | existence amongst the Israelites for much of their national existence. After

00:10:17.920 | God pulls the people out of the land of slavery, that's the presupposition of the

00:10:24.000 | covenant. God saves the people first and then enters into a covenant with them.

00:10:28.440 | We're told, Exodus chapter 19, on the first day of the third month after the

00:10:34.160 | Israelites left Egypt, on that very day they came to the desert of Sinai. And

00:10:38.640 | there Moses goes up to the Mount of God. God calls him and says, "This is

00:10:45.280 | what you are to say to the descendants of Jacob, and what you are to tell the

00:10:49.120 | people of Israel. You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I

00:10:52.680 | carried you on eagles' wings, and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully

00:10:57.440 | and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured

00:11:02.440 | possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of

00:11:06.600 | priests and a holy nation. These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites."

00:11:10.640 | And the same order of things is found in the next chapter, the Ten Commandments,

00:11:17.760 | the high point of this covenantal structure. But the presupposition is,

00:11:23.160 | again, that it's imposed by God, who has brought people out of the land of Egypt.

00:11:28.960 | God spoke all these words. Exodus 20, "I am the Lord your God,

00:11:34.680 | who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. Then you begin, you shall

00:11:38.120 | have no other gods before me," and so forth. Chapters 21, 22, 23 are the so-called

00:11:45.040 | Holiness Code. And then you get to chapter 24, and the covenant is confirmed.

00:11:50.800 | So much of the Old Testament is bound up with the importance of the Sinai

00:11:58.160 | Covenant, as it's sometimes called, or the Old Covenant, or the Mosaic Covenant,

00:12:02.080 | because Moses was the mediator. And what is very clear about that covenant is

00:12:06.200 | that it is profoundly conditioned by obedience. "You will be my people if you

00:12:11.600 | obey me." And in the book of Deuteronomy, where the book is structured as a series

00:12:17.880 | of addresses by Moses to the people before he dies, and they are on the edge

00:12:22.320 | of entering into the Promised Land, the structure, the language of the book is a

00:12:27.960 | kind of renewal of the covenant. It's the establishing once more of the

00:12:32.520 | Mosaic Covenant. It's the book of the covenant in many, many respects.

00:12:36.560 | And that's all before you even get out of the Pentateuch. Then a further

00:12:41.960 | covenant is established with David and the inauguration of the Davidic dynasty.

00:12:47.720 | We'll come back to that in a later session, but that's really important as

00:12:50.960 | well, with promises that are given to David about great David's greater

00:12:55.680 | son. God will ensure that there is a David-ide, someone from the line of David

00:12:59.760 | who is sitting on the throne, and ultimately he will be called the

00:13:02.960 | wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace.

00:13:06.320 | That's from Isaiah chapter 9, of course, words we sing every Christmas in

00:13:13.920 | the glorious music of Handel's Messiah. But the base promise of that is

00:13:19.480 | found in 2 Samuel chapter 7. Then we'll skip over that to the promise of the new

00:13:25.720 | covenant, and that shows up in several Old Testament passages, not least

00:13:31.120 | Jeremiah 31, also in Ezekiel chapter 36, and elsewhere. So that already God is

00:13:39.680 | promising, centuries before Christ, that the old covenant, that is the covenant

00:13:45.600 | with Moses, won't last forever. Indeed, the writer of the Hebrews spells the

00:13:50.560 | argument out in Hebrews chapter 8 very powerfully. After quoting Jeremiah 31, "I

00:13:56.760 | will make a new covenant in those days." It will not be like the old covenant.

00:14:00.600 | It will be a new covenant, and then he spells out the particulars by

00:14:04.640 | which it will be characterized as new. Then the writer to the Hebrews says, in

00:14:09.640 | Hebrews chapter 8 verse 13, "By calling the old one old, he has essentially made

00:14:15.080 | it obsolete and passing away." He's promising a new covenant. And that's six

00:14:22.480 | centuries before the coming of Christ, when already there is promise of a new

00:14:27.640 | covenant, which raises, of course, all kinds of questions about how the old one

00:14:31.680 | will relate to the new one. What things will continue, what things won't continue.

00:14:35.640 | For example, according to Jesus in Mark's Gospel, Jesus made certain foods clean.

00:14:42.840 | That's in contradistinction to the stipulations of the old covenant. We'll

00:14:48.200 | come back to those points later in this series as well. But there are points of

00:14:51.560 | continuity between the old covenant and the new covenant, and there are points of

00:14:55.160 | discontinuity. So now with this multiplicity of covenants, you begin to

00:14:59.640 | see how they point forward to the new covenant with Jesus in different ways.

00:15:04.040 | The Abrahamic covenant points forward to the new covenant by promising a seed

00:15:10.080 | that would bring blessing to the whole earth, and by making of Abraham a

00:15:16.360 | prototypical figure of faith, he becomes the father of those who share his saving

00:15:21.960 | faith. That argument is worked out, for example, in Romans chapter 4. And the old

00:15:27.520 | covenant establishes all kinds of structures of right and wrong and

00:15:31.960 | blessing and curse and the importance of obedience, but it does not have intrinsic

00:15:37.240 | power to transform. That's not the way the old covenant is structured, the

00:15:42.040 | Mosaic covenant is structured. But on the other hand, it establishes many

00:15:47.120 | precedents and structures. For example, it's under the terms of the old covenant

00:15:50.800 | that the Ark of the Covenant, as it's called, becomes really important, on

00:15:56.440 | which the blood of bull and goat is sprinkled. And this is the place of the

00:16:01.960 | tabernacle, the meeting place between God and human beings. It's the

00:16:05.480 | organizing of the people of God into a nation-state, a covenant people, a kingdom

00:16:10.080 | of priests. And all of these things become structures that point forward

00:16:14.360 | to and anticipate the covenant people of God when Jesus says, "I will build my

00:16:20.880 | assembly, I will build my church." He comes as the messianic covenant maker. Now,

00:16:27.480 | there are some people who look at the promises of the new covenant in Jeremiah

00:16:31.400 | 31 and parallels, and say that what is promised is merely the renewal of the

00:16:36.640 | covenant. And I would say that that they're partly right. That is, there are

00:16:40.160 | some elements of the covenant that are being renewed, but nevertheless the

00:16:46.500 | language of Jeremiah 31 is very explicit. It will not be like the old covenant in

00:16:52.720 | certain particulars that we don't really have time to detail. And that's the

00:16:57.200 | language that Hebrews 8 picks up very explicitly. It's the promise of a

00:17:02.400 | new covenant that makes the old one obsolete and passing away. If the

00:17:08.400 | promise were merely of a renewed covenant, then it would be an improper

00:17:12.400 | inference to draw that the old one is becoming obsolete and passing away. And

00:17:17.360 | then, of course, when you come to the passion narrative, at the Last Supper

00:17:22.920 | Jesus takes the cup and says, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood." And

00:17:27.880 | Hebrews works this out in detail to make it clear that Jesus is the mediator of a

00:17:32.800 | new covenant, and he's entering into a better tabernacle, and his sacrifice is

00:17:38.480 | complete and once for all and doesn't have to be repeated year after year. And

00:17:42.880 | as the mediator of this new covenant, he is able to save to the uttermost all

00:17:47.520 | those who come to God by him, precisely because his sacrifice was once for all

00:17:52.200 | and does not need to be repeated, and his blood is utterly sufficient in this

00:17:57.640 | respect. Now, there are many other things that could be said along these lines.

00:18:03.960 | John's Gospel doesn't use the word "covenant," for example, but it is replete

00:18:09.120 | with covenant themes. There is the promise of land connected in the Old

00:18:13.480 | Testament covenant with Abraham, and Christians have disagreed on exactly how

00:18:19.800 | those covenantal promises are fulfilled. But one of the recent books in the New

00:18:27.640 | Studies in Biblical Theology series, the book by Oren Martin, Bound for the

00:18:31.840 | Promised Land, argues pretty strongly that the ultimate fulfillment is in new

00:18:37.120 | heaven and a new earth. It's more than just the land of Israel, not less. And

00:18:42.880 | likewise, there are some differences amongst Christians as to exactly the way

00:18:50.760 | the new covenant fulfills the old, but those debates need not detain us here.

00:18:57.640 | What is important for our purposes is that this drama of unfolding covenants,

00:19:05.680 | and I haven't listed all of them, this drama of unfolding covenants finally

00:19:10.120 | brings us to the renewal of the covenant in the Lord's Table, and the

00:19:14.880 | covenantal seal of baptism, which is held by both Baptists and Paedobaptists.

00:19:21.360 | They interpret it a little differently, but nevertheless, there is the

00:19:25.320 | covenantal seal of baptism that marks out the people of God. And so we are

00:19:32.000 | to see ourselves now as people of the new covenant, in continuity with the

00:19:37.240 | covenant of grace pronounced to Abraham, in fulfillment of the covenant of law

00:19:45.360 | that's worked out with Moses and that Sinai, with typological fulfillments and

00:19:51.520 | explicit fulfillments, now at the end of the age, in the fullness of time,

00:19:55.720 | until we finally land in the new heaven and the new earth, the home of

00:19:59.200 | righteousness, the end of all the covenantal promises. Amen, that is so good.

00:20:03.800 | From his home office, that was Dr. Don Carson, the co-founder and president of

00:20:07.280 | the Gospel Coalition. And for more on these covenants, the covenant with Noah

00:20:11.480 | and the covenant with Abraham, and then the Mosaic covenant, the Davidic covenant,

00:20:15.200 | and the new covenant, see Paul Williamson's very good essay at the end

00:20:19.080 | of the NIV Zondervan Study Bible, which was edited by Dr. Carson himself.

00:20:23.640 | Speaking of theology, on Monday we return with Pastor John, and a listener wants to

00:20:28.440 | ask this, "Is an unlimited atonement more glorious than a limited atonement?" And if

00:20:35.120 | that question seems foreign, we'll explain it a bit on Monday and Pastor

00:20:38.840 | John will answer it. Thanks for listening to this special episode of the Ask Pastor

00:20:42.400 | John podcast with Dr. Don Carson. I'm your host Tony Rehnke, we'll see you on Monday.

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