The Divine Covenants
Foreword
The following material is a study of the Divine Covenants presented by Bill Johns, a ruling elder at the First Presbyterian Church in Rome. Georgia, to his Sunday School class, beginning in early 2006.
The material was originally presented in weekly segments but it has been reorganized slightly for the benefit of the individual reader. This course of study dwelt heavily on references to Scripture and Scriptural passages have been identified by being printed thusly.
The teacher leaned very, very heavily on the commentary, “The Divine Covenants”, by Arthur Pink, who seemed to have a most amazing spiritual ability to interpret this very difficult subject of the covenants which God made from time to time with certain of Old Testament patriarchs, concluding with the “New Covenant” of Jesus.
Other texts used in this teaching included “Covenants” by O. Palmer Robertson; “The Two Covenants” by Andrew Murray; “By This Standard” by Greg H. Bahnsen and various commentaries by William Barclay.
The “Divine Covenants” is a study of the gradual unfolding of God’s plan of grace, through various covenants, of the Eternal Covenant made by God with Jesus prior to creation as to the advent and role of Jesus as the Messiah.
Finally, grateful thanks are offered to the participants of this class for their encouragement, attendance, willingness to dive into the deeper things of God’s Word, and for their growing willingness to question the things being taught and to seek answers that arise out of the class study.
Introduction
The covenants occupy a very special place in God’s Word. The word “covenant” is found twenty-five times in the very first book of the Bible; and occurs dozens of times in the other books of the Pentateuch, the Psalms and in the Prophets. The word is found prominently in the New Testament as well. When Jesus instituted the great memorial to His death, He said in Luke 22:20, In the same way, after the supper He took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.”
When listing the special blessings which God conferred on the Israelites, Paul declared that to them belonged the “covenants”. To the Galations he spoke on the “two covenants”. The Ephesian saints were reminded that in their unregenerate days they were “strangers to the covenants of promise”. And the entire message to the Hebrews is an exposition of the “better covenant” of which Jesus is the mediator.
Salvation through Jesus is according to “the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God”, and it pleased Him to make known His eternal purpose of mercy, to the fathers, in the form of covenants, which were of different characters and revealed at different times. These covenants show the very nature and system of God’s truth. They have an intimate connection with each other and a common relation to the unfolding of God’s scheme of divine grace. And they are placed in the Scriptures in a particular order. They speak of the divine side of things, disclosing the source from which all blessings come to men and the channel through which they flow. Each one reveals some new and fundamental aspect of truth and as we study them in their Scriptural order we will see the progress of revelation which they represent. They show the great design of God which was to be accomplished through the redeemer of His people.
We will be looking at the following covenants:
· The Everlasting Covenant
· The Adamic Covenant
· The Noahic Covenant
· The Abrahamic Covenant
· The Sinaitic Covenant
· The Davidic Covenant
· The Messianic Covenant
It has been pointed out by others that “it is obvious that because God is an intelligence He must have a plan. If He is an absolutely perfect intelligence, desiring and designing nothing but good; if He is an eternal and immutable intelligence, His plan must be one that is eternal, all-comprehensive and immutable; that is, all things from His point of view must constitute one system and sustain a perfect logical relation in all its parts. And like all other systems, it contains a number of subsystems. In other words, it is like the heavens that He created; it is one system but contains a number of subsystems. That “one system” or the eternal “plan” of God was contained in the “everlasting covenant”; the many subordinate systems are the various covenants God made with different ones at different times.
The everlasting covenant forms the basis for all of God’s dealings with His people. There is much evidence of this in the Bible. Over and over again we read that “He remembered His covenant.”
The same truth is present in the New Testament that the covenant is the foundation from which all the gracious works of God proceed. In other words, this is the reason for sending Jesus into the world.
· Luke 1:70-73 (as He said through His holy prophets of long ago) salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us---to show mercy to our fathers and to remember His holy covenant, the oath He swore to our father Abraham.
· Hebrews 13:20 May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep…
The same principle is found in Hebrews 10:15,16, The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First He says:
· Hebrews 10:15,16 “This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.”
The good which God does to His people is grounded in His covenant. Anything in the Bible which is said to be done to us “for Christ’s sake” signifies it is done by virtue of that covenant which God made with Jesus as the head of His mystical body. In the same way, when God is said to bind Himself by oath to the heirs of the promise, it is on the ground of His covenant commitment that He does so.
· Hebrews 6:17 Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of His purpose very clear to the heirs of what was promised, He confirmed it with an oath.
In Scripture covenanting is often sworn to.
· Deut. 29:12,14 You are standing here in order to enter into a covenant with the Lord your God, a covenant the Lord is making with you this day and sealed with an oath….I am making this covenant, with its oath, not only with you who are standing here with us today in the presence of the Lord our God but also with those who are not here today.
· 1 Chronicles 16:15,16 He remembers His covenant forever, the word He commanded, for a thousand generations, the covenant He made with Abraham, the oath He swore to Isaac.
· 2 Chronicles 15:12-14 They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their fathers, with all their heart and soul. All who would not seek the Lord, the God of Israel, were to be put to death, whether small or great, man or woman. They took an oath to the Lord with loud acclamation, with shouting and with trumpets and horns. All Judah rejoiced about the oath because they had sworn it wholeheartedly. They sought God eagerly, and He was found by them. So the Lord gave them rest on every side.
A true knowledge of the covenants is essential to a correct understanding of the Gospel, because if we are ignorant of the basic difference between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace, we are left with only a portion of the knowledge we need as Christians. If I were to ask you to explain the difference between the two, how would you respond, and how would you explain the difference to others. At the same time we may be unable to explain the relations of the covenants to each other and therefore their bearing on the design God had for Jesus as the Redeemer.
The covenants are important to the very basic understanding of the doctrine of Jesus, that is the teaching about Jesus. There are some questions that could be asked that would reveal the lack of knowledge concerning the covenants. Here are a few examples. Think about them and see how you would score. (I will not be testing you on this.)
· What did David mean when he said in, 2 Samuel 23:5 “Is my house not right with God? Has He not made me an everlasting covenant, arranged and secured in every part? Will He not bring to fruition my salvation and grant me my every desire?
· And what is meant by Psalm 25:14 The Lord confides in those who fear Him; He makes His covenant known to them?
· And what does God intend when He says in Zech. 9:11 As for you, because of the blood of my covenant with you, I will free your prisoners from the waterless pit?
· In another example, what does Paul mean when he says in Gal.3:17 What I mean is this: The law introduced 430 years later, does not set aside the covenant previously established by God and thus do away with the promise?
We will answer these questions, but before we get into that, let’s discuss the nature of a covenant. “A complete covenant is a voluntary agreement between distinct persons about the dealings of things in their power, to the mutual advantage of each.” Three things are involved: the parties, the terms and the binding agreement. Or to simplify it further, a covenant is the entering into a mutual agreement, a benefit being assured upon the fulfillment of certain conditions. God’s dealings with men are all based on His covenant agreements with them---He promising certain blessings upon their fulfillment of certain conditions. After all is said and done there are only two kinds of covenants possible between God and men---a covenant founded on what man shall do for salvation, and a covenant founded on what God shall do for him to save him. In other words, a Covenant of Works and a Covenant of Grace.
So we will look at the covenants in the rest of this study, starting with the Everlasting Covenant or the covenant of grace, which God made with His elect in the person of their head, Jesus. Then we will look at the covenant of works. Following that we will look at the covenant God made with Noah; the one He made with Abraham. Then we will look at the more difficult Sinaitic Covenant. We will also look at the Davidic covenant.
Finally we will consider how the everlasting covenant has been administered under the old and new covenants.