Summary and Conclusion

Summary

We have seen how God has entered into five distinct but related covenants with humanity:

• 1. Noah

  Through His covenant with Noah, God shows us four important principles:

  1. That God is serious about righteousness and justice, and that He will not be slow to punish the wicked when He assesses that the time is right;

  2. That He is merciful to the innocent, and that He will do everything that He can to protect them in the day of judgement;

  3. That relationships with men and women are important to Him, and that He is willing to commit Himself to them at a personal level;

  4. That when a righteous man is willing to believe God and to obey Him, that righteous man will not save himself alone, but also those who belong to him (in this case, Noah’s family) and also those who are prepared to come under his protection (in this case, the animals).

  So the covenant that God made through Noah prefigures the covenant that He would make much later through Jesus Christ, which demonstrates those same four principles.

• 2. Abraham

  In His covenant with Abraham, God singles out a particular man – a man whose only attribute that makes him stand out for the crowd is that, like Noah before him, he is prepared to trust God, take Him at His word, and obey Him without question.

  In this way, God highlights the type of men and women that He is looking for to build His household and His kingdom.

  Abraham is known as ‘the friend of God’ (James 2:23) and ‘the man of faith’ (Galatians 3:9).

  In this covenant, those who benefit from it are only those who are direct descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (or Israel), and also those who choose to bless Abraham and his descendants (Genesis 12:2-3).

  Interestingly, unlike Noah, who was righteous in his generation and walked with God BEFORE God made His covenant with him (Genesis 6:9), God has to instruct Abraham, AFTER the covenant has been made, to “walk before Me and be blameless” (Genesis 17:1), but did not give him any guidance relating to how he ought to go about that.

  That guidance would not come for some 400 years, when God entered into the third of His covenants.

• 3. Moses

  The Covenant of Law, through Moses, is effectively an extension of His covenant with Abraham.

  The law applies only to (a) those who are descendants of Jacob, or ‘the children of Israel’, as they are often called, and are true to God’s covenant by having been circumcised, as God commanded Abraham (Genesis 17:9-14; Leviticus 12:3; Joshua 5:2-9); (b) those who are their bondservants and have been circumcised (Exodus 12:44); and (c) any gentiles who desire to convert to Judaism, and have done so by being circumcised (Exodus 12:48).

  It’s obvious from this that Judaism is very much a patriarchal system, and that no woman can be a Jew unless she is the wife or daughter of a circumcised man.

  The Law defines, in detail, what it means to “walk before God and be blameless”, both in the worshipper’s approach to God at the Tabernacle or the Temple, and in the exercise of their daily lives. Every aspect of normal existence was regulated – trade and commerce, war and military service, courtship and marriage, sickness and death, crime and punishment.

  The Law makes provision for the appointment of a king (Deuteronomy 17:14-20), including the important stipulation that the king is every bit as much subject to the Law as anyone else in Israel (Deuteronomy 17:20). In those days, where kings were viewed as semi-divine and their will was equated with the will of the gods, it was a revolutionary principle that no-one is above the Law, and it remains an essential principle today for any just and sensible society.

• 4. David

  For many generations after Moses, Israel was ruled by men and women known as ‘judges’ (refer to the book of Judges and 1 Samuel 4:18; 7:6,15-17), but the people wanted to be like the nations around them and have a king “to go before us and fight our battles” (1 Samuel 8).

  God raised up David, a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14), and made a covenant with Him, and his descendants after him, that he would never fail to have a man to sit on the throne of Israel (2 Samuel 7:16; Jeremiah 33:17). More specifically, He promised that a son of David would build a house for God’s Name, and that the throne of his kingdom would be established forever (2 Samuel 7:12-16).

  David’s son Solomon, who erected the first stone-built temple in Jerusalem, was the immediate fulfilment of that prophetic promise, but God had in view another Son of David, who would establish an even greater temple than that.

• 5. Jesus

  In Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Mark 1:1), we see the drawing together of all of these covenants.

  Like Noah, He was a righteous man in His generation, who walked with God, who obeyed God in everything, and who provided salvation not only for His own (Matthew 1:21), but for all who would come to Him (John 6:37).

  Through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob came the people of Israel, through whom, eventually, came the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, through whom all the people of the earth will be blessed (Genesis 12:3).

  Through Moses, God brought the Covenant of Law, but, unlike all of the other covenants, this one was not everlasting but temporary. The Covenant of Law has been superseded and replaced by the Covenant of Grace (Hebrews 8, espec. v13).

  In this connection, it is important that we understand what the apostle Paul means when he says that we are not under law but under grace (Romans 6:14-15). Does he mean, as is commonly supposed, that being ‘under grace’ we no longer need to observe God’s laws, or abide by the Ten Commandments?

  Paul says elsewhere that we uphold the law (Romans 3:31), and he appeals to the law to support his argument (1 Corinthians 9:9; 1 Corinthians 14:34; 1 Timothy 5:18). Jesus Himself says that He did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfil it (Matthew 5:17; Luke 24:44; John 15:25).

  Is there a contradiction here?

  Of course not, because when Paul says that we are not under law but under grace he clearly means, as the letter to the Hebrews explains in detail, that we are not under the COVENANT of the Law, but under the COVENANT of Grace.

  If, like me, you are a gentile, then you have never been under the law of Moses, because only Jews and converts to Judaism have been.

  So the Covenant of Grace has done away with the Covenant of Law, but the principles laid out in the law of Moses still stand, and always will do, and anyone who is walking according to the Covenant of Grace will find that they are, de facto, abiding by the tenets of the Law of Moses, but without the need to be circumcised – i.e. without the need to enter into that old, and now obsolete, covenant.

  And finally, Jesus Christ fulfils God’s promise to David that one of his sons would sit upon his throne forever and that he would build a temple for God’s name.

  That temple was not one made of stone and wood and overlaid with gold by human hand, but one built of living stones, each one of which is a temple in itself (1 Peter 2:4-6; Ephesians 2:19-22; 1 Corinthians 3:16-17; 1 Corinthians 6:19-20).

Conclusion

There are many religions in the world today, and they all have one thing in common – their aim is to bring about a better life for those who follow them, whatever the understanding of that 'better life' might be. With the exception of Christianity, the way to attain to that 'better life' is through personal effort, either by doing good works, or meditating, or denying oneself, or obeying the rules.

The gospel of Jesus Christ differs from all of these other ways to a better life in that it makes it clear to us that:

• The basic problem is that our sins have separated us from our Creator God, who is the author of life; which means that we are cut off from the source of life, and are therefore wedded to death.

• There is nothing that we can do to save ourselves. All of our good works and self denial and meditation are worthless in God’s sight. Our sins must somehow be atoned for.

• What Jesus Christ accomplished through His crucifixion and resurrection is the only basis for us to be able to come back into relationship with God.

• It is through faith in the finished work of Christ at Calvary that our relationship with Almighty God is restored. There is no other way.

• By accepting that Christ died for me personally, and that His shed blood has the power to wash away my sins, I enter into a covenant relationship with God whereby He is committed to saving me and I am committed to obeying Him.

• Having entered into that New Covenant relationship with God, He then gives us the grace – that is, the ability and all of the help that we need – to live the life of righteousness, purity, and holiness that He requires of us.

This is summarised for us beautifully in Psalm 50:

Amen and amen.

Prayer

If you have not already made a commitment to follow Jesus Christ (i.e. to be a Christian) or you have done, but you know that you have not followed through as you ought to have done, why not take a few moments now to open your heart to God and make that covenant with Him by the sacrifice of Christ, exchanging your life of sin and selfishness, which leads to death, for a new life of love and faith, which leads to eternal life?

All you have to do is pray, from your heart, a prayer like this one:

Dear God, I acknowledge that up until now I’ve been living for me and my plans. Even my ‘good works’ have had a personal agenda behind them.

But right now, Lord, I’m bringing all of my plans and agendas and hopes and ambitions, and I’m laying them at the foot of the cross of your Son, my Lord Jesus Christ, and I’m leaving them there.

Today, Heavenly Father, by the power of the blood that Jesus shed for me on that cross, I’m turning away from my selfish, sinful life and I’m entering into a New Covenant relationship with You, according to Your Covenant of Grace.

Thank you, Father, for forgiving my sins and for accepting me into Your family as Your son/daughter. By a simple act of faith in You, in Your word, and in the blood of Your Son, my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, I receive Your forgiveness, Your cleansing, and the grace that I need to live as a Christian from this day forward.

Let Jesus Christ be honoured in and through my life for the rest of my days on this earth and throughout eternity.

Amen.