We end the week talking about covenants. Yes, covenants. We need to. In the words of one recent book on the topic, "The covenants are not the central theme of Scripture. Instead, the covenants form the backbone of the Bible's metanarrative, and thus it is essential to put the covenants together correctly in order to discern accurately the whole counsel of God." Those are the words of Peter Gentry and Stephen Wellam.

So covenants are a sort of skeletal structure, and we must put them together rightly. And to explain covenants and how they work, I called Dr. Don Carson on occasional Fridays to call him up as part of our relationship with our friends at the Gospel Coalition. Carson is the co-founder and president of the Gospel Coalition, and he's the editor of the NIV Zondervan Study Bible, which is the study Bible version of what we're doing in these occasional Friday podcasts.

So what is a covenant, and how do they hold our Bibles together? Here's Dr. Carson to explain. Christians know, of course, that the Bible is made up of two Testaments. They may wonder from time to time where the word "Testament" comes from. It comes from two passages in the New Testament, one in Hebrews and one in Galatians, where actually the word is properly rendered "covenant." It would be easier, it would be more accurate to speak of the Bible as having two covenants, the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.

Of course, we've inherited the term "Testament," so we'll continue to speak of the Bible having two Testaments, but the notion of covenant shapes an awful lot of how the Bible is put together, rather than "Testament." Again, we should begin in Genesis 1, 2, and 3 in the Garden of Eden.

The word "covenant" isn't used there. But one of the striking things that we've already seen part of about Genesis 1, 2, and 3 is that those chapters lay a kind of seedbed of notions that are developed in much richer detail farther on in the Bible. The Bible doesn't talk of God as King in those chapters, but he's clearly reigning.

The Bible doesn't talk about the Church in those chapters, but there's the beginning of his own elect covenant people. The Bible doesn't really talk about blood sacrifice in those chapters, but nevertheless, the covering that God provides for Adam and Eve depends on the death of an animal. The Bible doesn't talk about the Trinity, yet you have these strange expressions like "Let us make men in our image." And in the same way, the Bible certainly doesn't speak of covenant there, yet there is in some sense what some theologians have called a covenant of words.

Probably the best defense of the notion that covenant is introduced in these chapters is the book by Michael Horton called Covenant and Eschatology. In any case, there is an agreement made by a sovereign, in this case God, with human beings where there is worship and adoration on one side, and blessing and protection and privilege granted by God on the other side, on condition of certain obedience, with threat of certain judgment if there is disobedience.

That's the setup for the horrible drama of chapter 3, where human beings choose defiance and disobedience and die, die in multiple ways. I suppose, however, the first covenant that people fasten a lot of attention on is the Abrahamic covenant. But before we get there, there is the the Noahic covenant, or sometimes it's pronounced the "Noahic" covenant, the covenant with Noah.

After God destroys the world with water, with only eight human beings left alive to repopulate the earth again, he promises in grace not to destroy the world again by water. The next destruction of the world will be by fire at the end of the age. That's a theology that is picked up in 2 Peter.

But in this case, God makes a covenant that is sealed by a public sign, namely the rainbow. The rainbow takes on that covenantal significance. The Abrahamic covenant is much more complicated. It's sometimes called a covenant of promise. It turns on several chapters. First of all, Genesis chapter 12, "The Lord said to the Lord had said to Abram, 'Go from your country, your people, and your father's household to the land.

I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you. I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse. And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.'" Now the word "covenant" isn't used there, but there there is a flat-out blessing from God with promise not only to Abraham, but through Abraham to all the peoples on earth who will be blessed through him.

That's chapter 12. Chapter 15 has a dramatic scene. There, God establishes his covenant with Abram. We read, "After this the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. 'Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.'" Then there's a lot of talk about God's promise that he will provide a son and an heir and an inheritance.

And we're told, verse 6, "Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness." Then by the end of the chapter there is this dramatic scene that the first part of the chapter introduces. In this scene, in a vision, as the sun is setting, Abram falls into a deep sleep and a thick and dreadful darkness comes over him.

And the Lord promises some things that will take place in the future. And when the sun has fully set and darkness has fallen, there is a smoking fire pot with a blazing torch that appears and passes between animals that have been cut up. And this symbolism derives from curses in the day.

Sometimes a sovereign state, a regional superpower, would enter into a covenant with a vassal state. In fact, it would be an imposed covenant, but it would be cast after a sort of historical preamble. It would be cast into the mode of mutual promise. The regional sovereign promises protection and security and blessing and prosperity, and the vassal state promises obedience, paying taxes on time, not rebelling, and that sort of thing.

And then there's a mutual curse. "Let this be done to me and more also if I should break this covenant." What it means, in fact, is that the curse falls on the lower member, on the vassal state. In other words, if the vassal state rebels and tries to make a political tie with some other regional power, there will be terrible judgment that follows.

And in the symbolism of the cut animals, the two parties then are supposed to walk between the cut up animals, and implicitly they're saying, "Let this be done to me. Let my body be cut up and trashed if I were to break this covenant." But in this vision slumber of Abram, only the fire pot that represents God goes between the two animals, as if God himself takes on the entire curse all by himself.

That's chapter 15. In chapter 17, the covenant is sealed by the sign of circumcision. And then in chapter 2 of Genesis, in the the testing of Abraham, the almost sacrifice of Abram's son, after God stops Abram from killing the boy, "Do not lay a hand on the boy," the voice from heaven says.

The angel of the Lord speaks, "Do not lay a hand on the boy. I know that you fear God." And Abraham eventually calls that place, "The Lord will provide." And to this day it is said, "On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided." And then the angel of the Lord calls Abraham from heaven a second time, and God through him swears, "Because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your only son, I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore.

Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their enemies, and through your offspring all nations on earth will be blessed because you have obeyed me." That's the same blessing and promise that goes all the way back to chapters 12, 15, and 17. Now, it's possible to configure these chapters a little differently.

For example, there's an excellent Australian scholar called Paul Williamson, whose book, "Sealed with an Oath, Covenant and God's Unfolding," thinks of two covenants here rather than just one, but the detail is not nearly as important as seeing how this Abrahamic covenant, or these Abrahamic covenants if you prefer, are fulfilled in the New Testament.

This promise that through Abram's seed all the nations of the earth will be blessed is picked up in spectacular display, especially in Galatians chapter 3. And the fulfillment is found in the ultimate seed, Jesus Christ himself, who brings blessing to all the peoples of the earth as promised. So that's the Abrahamic covenant.

Then a covenant is made with the people of God as a nation in Exodus, and this is the one that is sometimes referred to in the New Testament as the Old Covenant. It's the covenant that predominates in day-to-day existence amongst the Israelites for much of their national existence. After God pulls the people out of the land of slavery, that's the presupposition of the covenant.

God saves the people first and then enters into a covenant with them. We're told, Exodus chapter 19, on the first day of the third month after the Israelites left Egypt, on that very day they came to the desert of Sinai. And there Moses goes up to the Mount of God.

God calls him and says, "This is what you are to say to the descendants of Jacob, and what you are to tell the people of Israel. You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles' wings, and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession.

Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words you are to speak to the Israelites." And the same order of things is found in the next chapter, the Ten Commandments, the high point of this covenantal structure.

But the presupposition is, again, that it's imposed by God, who has brought people out of the land of Egypt. God spoke all these words. Exodus 20, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. Then you begin, you shall have no other gods before me," and so forth.

Chapters 21, 22, 23 are the so-called Holiness Code. And then you get to chapter 24, and the covenant is confirmed. So much of the Old Testament is bound up with the importance of the Sinai Covenant, as it's sometimes called, or the Old Covenant, or the Mosaic Covenant, because Moses was the mediator.

And what is very clear about that covenant is that it is profoundly conditioned by obedience. "You will be my people if you obey me." And in the book of Deuteronomy, where the book is structured as a series of addresses by Moses to the people before he dies, and they are on the edge of entering into the Promised Land, the structure, the language of the book is a kind of renewal of the covenant.

It's the establishing once more of the Mosaic Covenant. It's the book of the covenant in many, many respects. And that's all before you even get out of the Pentateuch. Then a further covenant is established with David and the inauguration of the Davidic dynasty. We'll come back to that in a later session, but that's really important as well, with promises that are given to David about great David's greater son.

God will ensure that there is a David-ide, someone from the line of David who is sitting on the throne, and ultimately he will be called the wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. That's from Isaiah chapter 9, of course, words we sing every Christmas in the glorious music of Handel's Messiah.

But the base promise of that is found in 2 Samuel chapter 7. Then we'll skip over that to the promise of the new covenant, and that shows up in several Old Testament passages, not least Jeremiah 31, also in Ezekiel chapter 36, and elsewhere. So that already God is promising, centuries before Christ, that the old covenant, that is the covenant with Moses, won't last forever.

Indeed, the writer of the Hebrews spells the argument out in Hebrews chapter 8 very powerfully. After quoting Jeremiah 31, "I will make a new covenant in those days." It will not be like the old covenant. It will be a new covenant, and then he spells out the particulars by which it will be characterized as new.

Then the writer to the Hebrews says, in Hebrews chapter 8 verse 13, "By calling the old one old, he has essentially made it obsolete and passing away." He's promising a new covenant. And that's six centuries before the coming of Christ, when already there is promise of a new covenant, which raises, of course, all kinds of questions about how the old one will relate to the new one.

What things will continue, what things won't continue. For example, according to Jesus in Mark's Gospel, Jesus made certain foods clean. That's in contradistinction to the stipulations of the old covenant. We'll come back to those points later in this series as well. But there are points of continuity between the old covenant and the new covenant, and there are points of discontinuity.

So now with this multiplicity of covenants, you begin to see how they point forward to the new covenant with Jesus in different ways. The Abrahamic covenant points forward to the new covenant by promising a seed that would bring blessing to the whole earth, and by making of Abraham a prototypical figure of faith, he becomes the father of those who share his saving faith.

That argument is worked out, for example, in Romans chapter 4. And the old covenant establishes all kinds of structures of right and wrong and blessing and curse and the importance of obedience, but it does not have intrinsic power to transform. That's not the way the old covenant is structured, the Mosaic covenant is structured.

But on the other hand, it establishes many precedents and structures. For example, it's under the terms of the old covenant that the Ark of the Covenant, as it's called, becomes really important, on which the blood of bull and goat is sprinkled. And this is the place of the tabernacle, the meeting place between God and human beings.

It's the organizing of the people of God into a nation-state, a covenant people, a kingdom of priests. And all of these things become structures that point forward to and anticipate the covenant people of God when Jesus says, "I will build my assembly, I will build my church." He comes as the messianic covenant maker.

Now, there are some people who look at the promises of the new covenant in Jeremiah 31 and parallels, and say that what is promised is merely the renewal of the covenant. And I would say that that they're partly right. That is, there are some elements of the covenant that are being renewed, but nevertheless the language of Jeremiah 31 is very explicit.

It will not be like the old covenant in certain particulars that we don't really have time to detail. And that's the language that Hebrews 8 picks up very explicitly. It's the promise of a new covenant that makes the old one obsolete and passing away. If the promise were merely of a renewed covenant, then it would be an improper inference to draw that the old one is becoming obsolete and passing away.

And then, of course, when you come to the passion narrative, at the Last Supper Jesus takes the cup and says, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood." And Hebrews works this out in detail to make it clear that Jesus is the mediator of a new covenant, and he's entering into a better tabernacle, and his sacrifice is complete and once for all and doesn't have to be repeated year after year.

And as the mediator of this new covenant, he is able to save to the uttermost all those who come to God by him, precisely because his sacrifice was once for all and does not need to be repeated, and his blood is utterly sufficient in this respect. Now, there are many other things that could be said along these lines.

John's Gospel doesn't use the word "covenant," for example, but it is replete with covenant themes. There is the promise of land connected in the Old Testament covenant with Abraham, and Christians have disagreed on exactly how those covenantal promises are fulfilled. But one of the recent books in the New Studies in Biblical Theology series, the book by Oren Martin, Bound for the Promised Land, argues pretty strongly that the ultimate fulfillment is in new heaven and a new earth.

It's more than just the land of Israel, not less. And likewise, there are some differences amongst Christians as to exactly the way the new covenant fulfills the old, but those debates need not detain us here. What is important for our purposes is that this drama of unfolding covenants, and I haven't listed all of them, this drama of unfolding covenants finally brings us to the renewal of the covenant in the Lord's Table, and the covenantal seal of baptism, which is held by both Baptists and Paedobaptists.

They interpret it a little differently, but nevertheless, there is the covenantal seal of baptism that marks out the people of God. And so we are to see ourselves now as people of the new covenant, in continuity with the covenant of grace pronounced to Abraham, in fulfillment of the covenant of law that's worked out with Moses and that Sinai, with typological fulfillments and explicit fulfillments, now at the end of the age, in the fullness of time, until we finally land in the new heaven and the new earth, the home of righteousness, the end of all the covenantal promises.

Amen, that is so good. From his home office, that was Dr. Don Carson, the co-founder and president of the Gospel Coalition. And for more on these covenants, the covenant with Noah and the covenant with Abraham, and then the Mosaic covenant, the Davidic covenant, and the new covenant, see Paul Williamson's very good essay at the end of the NIV Zondervan Study Bible, which was edited by Dr.

Carson himself. Speaking of theology, on Monday we return with Pastor John, and a listener wants to ask this, "Is an unlimited atonement more glorious than a limited atonement?" And if that question seems foreign, we'll explain it a bit on Monday and Pastor John will answer it. Thanks for listening to this special episode of the Ask Pastor John podcast with Dr.

Don Carson. I'm your host Tony Rehnke, we'll see you on Monday.