Diving In Session 3 Crises and Covenants

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Last week we viewed the Big Story of the Bible as a series of events or crises which led to changes in the relationship of God and Man. As we said, none of these crises took God by surprise, so another way of looking at the story is that God uses Satan’s attempts to usurp God’s authority and Man’s complicity in rebellion, in order to advance His revelation of Himself and His purposes.

In other words, if last week we were looking at discontinuities between the stages in the story, this week we will be looking at the continuities as we map the Covenants into our Big Picture.

The Epochs of Time

God is working to a plan and He has revealed it to us in the Scriptures. He has told us ‘the end from the beginning’ as we saw earlier (Isa. 46:10). This plan is being worked out and implemented through God making covenants which gradually reveal Who He is and what He is doing.

Let’s now map them into our understanding of the Ages

Without digging too deeply at this time(!), we will take the eight ‘Covenants’ that many people recognise as significant and which we will be discussing. We have looked at the context of the covenants in terms of crises that develop in Man’s relationship to God. Let’s move on to consider the duration of each Covenant, and its scope in terms of who are the parties to each Covenant and what is mandated by the Covenant.

Edenic

The first two are often considered as Covenants, due to the similarities with Covenantal relationships and we shall discuss them as Covenants when we dive in in more detail.

Edenic: God provides for Adam and Eve to enjoy God’s Creation in Eden before the Fall (including all aspects of the 6 days of creation? Psa.8:6-8), for them to work tending the garden and to cultivate the earth beyond the Garden, and supplying them with what they needed for that (food and authority – Common Grace). However, there was a restriction on eating from a specific tree with a penalty or sanction if they did. This is therefore considered a conditional covenant. They are sinless because they haven’t (yet) sinned and are under probation.

Parties

God, and Adam and Eve. Only 2 people but they represent all of humanity Rom. 5:12,18; 1 Cor. 15:22,28 where Adam is considered as the head of the human race.

Mandates

Spiritual – fellowship with God in the Garden and in His work in creation

Social – to multiply in the context of intimacy and family Gen. 1:28; 2:24

Cultural – to work tending the garden and to cultivate the earth beyond the Garden Gen. 1:28; 2:5

The same mandates will apply in Adamic and Noahic, although with modifications, as these are God’s intentions to be fulfilled by mankind, and He continues to supply Common Grace.

Duration

If we include the idea that creation ordinances are part of this covenant, Jer. 33:20,25 suggests that parts of the covenant cannot be broken – made with day and night. But in Hos. 6:8 Adam is said to have broken the Covenant, or at least the part of covenant made with Man. Although Adam and Eve messed up their side of it, the basic provisions from continue, albeit qualified by the subsequent Covenants with Adam and then with Noah. Best before date of the end of time?

Adamic

The results of Adam and Eve disobeying the restriction in the Edenic Covenant (the Fall) and God’s provisions for Adam and Eve and their offspring outside Eden after the Fall. God provides coverings and gives an unconditional promise of a coming Redeemer in the provisions of this ‘covenant’. Death was brought in following their disobedience and continues to rule over mankind to this day (Rom. 5) so this ‘covenant’ still has application today.

Parties

Again made with just the two but governing all their progeny 1 Cor. 15:22 “As in Adam all die” (see also Rom. 5:12).

Mandates

Repeated from the Edenic Covenant with new conditions:

Spiritual Gen. 3:15 the woman’s Seed will bring victory; v.21 God made them coats of skins; 4:4-3 they brought offerings to the Lord; v.7 if you do well, shall you not be accepted?

Social Gen. 3:16 bring forth children but with pain now, ‘one flesh’ but one ruling over and in conflict with the other. Gen. 4:12b Cain will be a fugitive and a wanderer

Cultural Gen. 3:17b-18 The earth will now produce thorns and thistles and it will take hard work to wrest their food from the ground; Gen. 4:2 farming and livestock keeping; v.12 ground cursed for the sake of the blood of Abel – it will no longer yield its strength.

Duration

Until the end of time – death entered through one man’s sin and rules over all until it is finally destroyed at the last judgement. It’s unconditional so man can’t break it!

Noahic

The first covenant, recorded as such in the Bible, that God made with His people was through Noah, the last man standing who was faithful to the Adamic covenant (Gen. 6:18 God says that He has confirmed or performed His covenant with Noah – past tense not future as in most translations; He will make a Covenant, but that’s ch.9).

Noah followed God’s instructions to build an ark that ultimately saved him and his family when God flooded the earth (Gen. 6-7). In Gen. 8 & 9, God extends the covenant to give some basic principles for humanity to live by. Most Bible scholars consider that these still apply today.

The Noahic Covenant is unconditional (Royal Grant) in that God gave Noah His unconditional promise to not destroy the earth with a flood again, and that He would preserve summer and winter, seedtime and harvest (Gen. 8:21-22; 9:11).

Parties

Made with Noah initially (Gen. 9:9) but incorporating every living thing on the earth (Gen. 9:16-17); now regulating all human activity with a new sanction – government (Gen. 9:5-6)

Mandates

Spiritual Gen. 9:12-16 the rainbow as a sign of God’s faithfulness

Social Gen. 8:17 be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth

Cultural Gen. 9:2-4 vegetation as food with the addition of animals; v.5-6 a murderer’s life is forfeit at the hand of a human agency (human government);

Duration

Gen. 9:16 everlasting, i.e. to the age of the ages

These covenants cover all humanity for all time and represent what theologians call ‘common grace’. It’s interesting to note that all aspects of God provisions under these covenants are under attack today:

  • God promises that summer and winter, seedtime and harvest will not fail – mankind is trying to control the climate due to ‘climate change’ causing mass famines
  • God promises that He will not flood the earth again – we are warned that much of the earth will disappear under water as the ice caps melt
  • Man is to work with God subduing and caring for the environment – the earth has been raped for financial gain, but the current green agenda is a cloak for enabling control of the masses by the few
  • God instructs mankind to be fruitful and multiply – the world now apparently has too many people so birth control, abortion, sterilisation via sex change and non-reproductive lifestyles are being promoted
  • God intended fruitfulness to be via intimacy between husband and wife – sex has been reduced to a fruitless transaction but there are attempts to create babies through genetics (creating a zygote from stem cells has now been achieved – without a human egg or sperm)
  • God’s plan is for His kingdom to be extended through the nations via families – national boundaries (decided by God Acts 17:26) are being eroded and the family is being attacked and demolished

The default stance of mankind is that ‘we will not have this man (Jesus Christ) to rule over us”!

Although we are thinking of continuity today, we must note that there’s a seismic change in God’s dealings with mankind at this point. There is continuity of the revelation of God. But, if he chose Noah and his family and destroyed the rest of mankind for their wickedness, now he will chose one man and his family and make them a demonstration of His kingdom to the rest of mankind (who will now be left to go their own way while nevertheless still enjoying ‘common grace’).

He will also use that man’s descendants as the mediators of His blessing to rest of mankind and the line through which the promised Seed will come. Gen 12:2-3

The Abrahamic Covenant

God gave an impossible command to Abraham when he told him to leave all that he knew and follow God to a land He would show him. That land that would eventually be inhabited by Abraham’s lineage (Gen. 12:1-3). Abraham responds in faith and goes. In Gen. 15 & 17 that covenant is extended and God requires the response of circumcision in the males of those who identify with the covenant people.

This covenant could be considered as a combination of both types of covenants, although principally unconditional as God promises to make Abraham and his lineage a great nation and give them countless blessings (Royal Grant). He does ask Abraham to leave his home and follow the Lord to the new land He will give him, and subsequently to circumcise all his male offspring, which creates the agreement of actions by both parties but these actions are more a response than a condition.

Abraham believed God – what a statement considering where he had come from! But now God can start to work. And He will show, through the succession of the Covenants starting with Abraham, how He will recover all the things that were lost previously.

Parties

God and Abraham, and all his descendants after him

Duration

Everlasting Gen. 17:7,8; 1 Chron. 16:17. It is the basis for ALL the following covenants, which will expand and confirm it. Much of it still awaits fulfilment as we will see.

Mandates

Change to a family (eventually a kingdom) of priests who will represent God to the kingdoms of the earth, and the kingdoms of the earth to God,

Sinaitic/Mosaic

God gave Moses the Law in order for them to be governed properly (Exod. 19:5-7). If they responded well to the commandments given by Moses, God would richly bless them as His chosen people (Suzerain-Vassal).

Parties

God and the whole nation of Israel   (Gen. 24:3)

Duration

Until Christ Gal. 3:24-25

The Land Covenant

(unfortunately known as the Palestinian Covenant as the Land was known as Palestine when these Covenants were named by theologians!): (Deut. 29 & 30) God affirms Israel’s title deed to the Promised Land, and He promises unconditionally to regather them to it after He has scattered them due to their disobedience. (Royal Grant)

Parties

God and Israel – the same as the Siniaitic Covenant (Deut. 29:1)

Duration

Eternal – called the everlasting covenant Psa. 105:10.

The Davidic Covenant

God promises unconditionally (Royal Grant covenant) to ensure King David and his lineage would rule over Israel forever (2 Sam. 7:8-11), pointing forward to the Messiah and the Messianic Age.

Siniatic/Mosaic, Land and Davidic covenants do not bring restoration Isa 26:18 “We were with child; we writhed in pain; but we gave birth to wind. We have given no salvation to the earth, nor brought any life into the world.”

Parties

David and his descendants

Duration

Everlasting 2 Sam. 7:16; 23:5

The New Covenant

Based on Jesus’s sacrificial death on the cross to save people from all nations freely without works (Royal Grant). The people of God simply accept that by faith (salvation is by faith alone, through Grace alone, in Christ alone, as the Reformers expressed it) First expressed in Jeremiah 31:31-34 as being with the House of Israel and the House of Judah, but extended to include all nations by Yeshua Himself (John 10:16) and Paul (Rom. 11:11, 17, 25-26). Called the Eternal Covenant in Heb. 13:20.

New Covenant – promised to an earthly people firstly but fulfilled in a heavenly people:

Peace – peace with God though our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom. 5)

Access to God – let us draw near, the veil is rent! (Heb. 9 & 10)

Choosing good – zealous for good works (2 Tim. 2; Eph. 2:10)

Relationship – household of God (Eph. 2)

Possession – no longer strangers and foreigners (Eph. 2)

So:

  • elements of the Sinaitic Covenant point forward to a greater fulfilment (the message of the book of Hebrews)
  • the fulfilment of the Land covenantal promises are delayed (as defined in Deut. 29-30)
  • the Davidic Covenant is partially fulfilled in the coming of the promised King, but He is rejected by His earthly people. So waits for a future full fulfilment, which happens at His Second Coming (Acts 2/3; Heb. 10:13; Rev. 19)

As we saw in the first session, at one level (probably the highest level) the Bible is the story of God’s rest – disturbed by His creatures’ sin but recovered by His own sovereign action and Self-sacrifice. This is the story that the succession of the Covenants is instructing us in.

All is fulfilled in the New Covenant, but in 3 stages. Only the New Covenant will fulfil all that God has intended since the beginning.

New Covenant -> New Creation -> New Heavens and New Earth

2 Cor. 5:17 new creation

1 Cor. 15:20-23 resurrection – new creation seen in Christ’s resurrection then resurrected saints in the Kingdom

1 Cor. 15:24 Then comes the end when Christ delivers up the kingdom to the Father and death is finally defeated – end of time

God’s plan for all humanity

We note that God works with three divisions of the human race (1 Cor. 10:32) and that this is also a structure in the Bible’s story:

  • Whole human race – Gen. 1 to 11 – failed at Babel and so suspended when God calls Abram in Gen. 12 but taken up again at the end of time
  • Israel – from Gen. 12 to the end of the Old Testament, God deals with Israel as His representatives but they ultimately failed to be a light to the nations and the curses of the Sinai covenant came into force, starting with the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities and ultimately, the Roman dispersion.

A New Covenant was promised but little detail given in OT. Main passages are Jer. 31-33 and Ezek. 36. Prophecies of future blessing in a Messianic era are given in many OT prophets but nothing is said about the hiatus between the failure of the nation and its restoration other than the curses listed in Lev. 26 and Deut. 27-28 accompanied by warnings in the prophets.

Jewish hopes looked forward to the Messianic era and there was some understanding that the Gentiles would somehow be blessed but they didn’t know how (still very anti-Gentile in Jesus’ and Paul’s time – mention of the message going to the Gentiles generated huge anger!). Even the disciples thought that restoring the kingdom to Israel was on God’s agenda after Jesus’ resurrection (Acts 1:6).

  • With the rejection of Messiah by the Jewish nation, God calls out a new thing – The Church – started at Pentecost with the Jewish disciples and converts but soon extended to incorporate Gentiles (Acts 15:14).

This was a mystery hidden in God in OT times, Eph. 3:5-6. Paul elaborates on this is Eph. 2:11-16 and in Rom. 11:17-24 shows how the Gentiles were to be included, not just as recipients of blessings mediated by Israel, but as full participants, grafted in against nature.

As Arnold Fruchtenbaum puts it:

God made four unconditional covenants with Israel: the Abrahamic Covenant, the Land Covenant, the Davidic Covenant, and the New Covenant. All of God’s blessings, both physical and spiritual, are mediated by means of these four covenants. However, there is also a fifth covenant, the conditional Mosaic Covenant. This was the middle wall of partition.

Essentially, it kept the Gentiles from enjoying the spiritual blessings of the four unconditional covenants. For a Gentile to begin receiving the blessings of the unconditional covenants, he had to totally submit to the Mosaic Law, undergo circumcision, take upon himself the obligations of the Law, and, for all practical purposes, live as a son of Abraham. Gentiles, as Gentiles, were not able to enjoy the spiritual blessings of the Jewish covenants; hence, they were strangers from the commonwealth of Israel. They did not receive any of the spiritual benefits contained in the covenants.

However, when the Messiah died, the Mosaic Law, the middle wall of partition, was broken down. Now by faith Gentiles, as Gentiles, can enjoy the spiritual blessings of the four unconditional covenants.

This is so radically new that Paul has to coin three new words in Eph. 3:6 to describe it – all beginning with the Greek word for ‘together’:

sungklēronomos – fellow heirs, joint heirs

sussōmos – fellow body, joint body, body together with

summetochos – fellow participant, joint partner

What he otherwise describes as being ‘grafted in’ in Romans 11.

But what of the promises for the restoration of the kingdom to Israel? The disciples weren’t wrong with their question, just their timing! Paul goes on in Romans 11 to say that when the full number of Gentiles have been saved, then all Israel will be saved (Rom. 11:26) and recalls the covenant promises to Israel in Isa. 59:20-21, and Jeremiah 31:31-34; 32:38-41, which look forward to the Messianic era with Messiah as King reigning from Jerusalem with the nation of Israel restored to their land.

This shows that the Church will be completed when at Jesus’ Second Coming. God’s work with the Church is completed (Phil. 1:6) and He can now turn His attention to Israel, and He will finish His work with that nation, His Firstborn nation, before He completes His purposes for the whole human race and Creation. The whole human race is reunited in eternity (Rev. 21:1-8) and God’s original purposes and plans are fulfilled to His Glory for ever!

So what are we to make from all this? And is it important?

It must be important if it is revealed in God’s Word! For the following reasons (at least!)

  • We need to recognise that the Bible gives us progressive revelation about God’s ways and we need to do our best “to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.” (2 Tim. 2:15) – rightly handling = orthotomeo – to make a straight cut, to dissect correctly – think carpentry or butchery.
  • All Scripture has to be understood in context and the framework of the ‘epochs’ or ‘ages’ provides the overarching context for the message of the Bible
  • It is very important for practical holiness:
    • In view of what God has revealed about His purposes for the ages, Peter encourages us to live peaceful, pure lives (2 Pet. 3:14)
    • In the light of the revelation of future events given to Daniel, he is told that the people who know their God shall be strong and take action (Dan. 11:32)
    • Paul expects us to grow in sanctification as he speaks of the grace of God coming, working on us now and looking forward to the coming of Yeshua (Titus 2:11-14)
    • John describes the hope of Yeshua’s return as a motivation for holiness (1 John 3:2-3)

Not knowing about, or even thinking about, these things can lead to disaster in the Christian life (see 2 Pet. 3:16). I believe that many Christians are led astray and caught up in deception because they haven’t understood that God works differently at different times.

Whole movements and denominations are built upon not understanding that. For example, the wonderful truth of the priesthood of ALL believers got buried from the earliest times of the Church, with a priestly system that owes almost all its vestments, modes of worship and religious paraphernalia to the Mosaic rituals and regulations, resulting in well over 1000 years of suppression of God’s people and His truth!

Today, people are sucked in by the so-called Prosperity Gospel, which takes promises made to an earthly people for material blessings, and applies them to Christians, whose blessings are spiritual and heavenly, as Yeshua and Paul went to great pains to point out. The habit of plucking promises out of the Scriptures with no regard for context is a pernicious habit and can lead to unfulfilled expectations and disappointments, which can cause people to make shipwreck of their faith.

Covenant, Diving In!