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Word of Encouragement
Vol. IV, Issue 25
God's Covenant House: A Sketch of God's Construction Project,
Pt. 1
Introduction
Today,
I want to start a new study on the Biblical teaching of covenant. I
have entitled this: "God's Covenant House: A Sketch of God's
Construction Project". We will view the covenant revealed in Scripture
from various aspects and angles. I imagine that if many in Christ's
Church have a difficult time understanding biblical eschatology, they have
an even more difficult time in understanding the biblical teaching of God's
covenant. The way I will approach this study on covenant is from the
aspect of a house, or building project, as it is laid out in the blueprint
given us in chapter 3 of the Book of Hebrews. Let's begin with a
passage from Hebrews 3:1-6 to lay a foundation for our attempt at
constructing a better understanding of what God has been "up to"
throughout history, and the practical day-to-day benefits that go along
with a better understanding of God's covenant!
Hebrews 3:1-6 (ESV) Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling,
consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, 2 who
was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in
all God's house. 3 For Jesus has been counted worthy of more
glory than Moses- as much more glory as the builder of a house has more
honor than the house itself. 4 (For every house is built by
someone, but the builder of all things is God.) 5 Now Moses was
faithful in all God's house as a servant, to testify to the things that
were to be spoken later, 6 but Christ is faithful over God's
house as a son. And we are his house if indeed we hold fast our
confidence and our boasting in our hope.
In
beginning our study on God's covenant house, notice from the above passages
some extremely important foundational truths that we need to understand
before we explore an overview of the Old and New Testaments. This
passage gives some instructions that will help us in our approach, as well
as our interpretation of the relationship between the Old and New
Covenants.
(1)
First of all, notice that God is called the builder of this covenant house (vv.3-4). It is God's
covenant promises to Abraham, to Abraham's Seed, to Abraham's people
(those of the faith of Abraham) that lays the foundation for all of
Redemptive-History (or all of God's salvation revealed progressively
throughout history). The focus in this summary passage is on God's
promises to us! God's promises of what he was going to do in
Genesis 12, 15, 17 precede, or lay the covenantal
foundation for all of God's revelation in history. This means that
God's promises always precede
his commands. The promises of God to Abraham and to His Seed came
long before the Law of Moses was given in Exodus 20, after the people of
God had been redeemed from slavery in Egypt, and called to serve
the Living God as the Nation of Israel. Read the practical
implications of God's promises from Paul's Letter to the Galatian congregation:
Galatians
3:16-26 (ESV) 16 Now the
promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say,
"And to offsprings," referring to many,
but referring to one, "And to your offspring," who is Christ. 17
This is what I mean: the law, which came 430 years afterward, does
not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise
void. 18 For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer
comes by promise; but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. 19 Why
then the law? It was added because of transgressions,
until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made....Is the
law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had
been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the
law. 22 But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so
that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who
believe. 23 Now before faith came, we were held captive under
the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. 24 So
then, the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be
justified by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no
longer under a guardian, 26 for in Christ Jesus you are all sons
of God, through faith."
(2) The second truth we notice
from Hebrews 3:1-6 is that it is not only God's building project, but it is one building project.
God has built, and is building one covenant house (vv.2-3). This
means that although we make a distinction between the "Old" and
"New" Covenants (as we should), we never
want to separate them. We want to keep them distinct, but we want to
see them as a progressive building of one covenantal house. We need
to make distinctions in the different ways God administered, or
managed this covenantal building project throughout history, but
we should never forget that there is only ONE covenant of God's grace
and salvation presented to us here in Hebrews 3:1-6 (note: some have
mistakenly thought in the past that God saved his people in different ways,
and these well-meaning people have thought that the way God saved
Israel was different from how he saved people in the Church. This
reminds us that we can make distinctions between Israel and the Church, but there is only ONE people of God, or house (cf. Heb.
3:6).
As we trace God's salvation
revealed in the Old and New Covenants, we want to pause and appreciate the different
and creative ways God revealed himself in space and time, while never
forgetting that there has always been a unity to the project as well.
As the people of God who oftentimes feel unimportant in this world, you
should feel greatly important! Rather, you should not only feel, but
know how important you are to the Living God. If you ever want to
know how important you are, just remind yourself that all of history has
gone according to God's specific plan, and his specific plan was the salvation
of His people in Christ. This means (and brace yourself) that all of
history has unfolded the way in which it has because of YOU (cf. Romans 8:28-31). YOU have been extremely
influential in the history of the world, because God has been building a
house, providential overseeing all things that have occurred in history
just to redeem YOU! Amazing Love, How can it be????
Some have mistakenly supposed
that the New Covenant has replaced the Old Covenant because it is called
"better" in the Book of Hebrews (cf. Heb. 9:23; 10:34; 11:16 et
al). I think it would be better to understand this as referring to
God's progressive revelation in history. There is certainly more
revelation and glory in the New Covenant, and in this way the New Covenant
is certainly "better". God made covenant promises to
Abraham. Many years later, through Moses, God brings in the Law as he
calls the visible Nation of Israel (Abraham's seed at this point in
history) to be his covenant people. However, during the progress
of God's redemption, there always seems to be a supplementing rather
than a supplanting.
In other words, the Law of
Moses, according to Galatians 3 was to be a "guardian" (or
"teacher") to bring us to Christ, the fulfillment of the
covenant. The Law of Moses was still the clear manifestation of God's
will to his people and the Law of God still had to be fulfilled (cf. Matt.
5:17ff). The Law was fulfilled by Christ (cf. Galatians 3:11ff), and
Christ opened up a "better" way of knowing God, but circumcision
of the heart, by the Spirit was always needed to fulfill God's Law (Deut.
30:1-6; Ezek. 36:25ff; Jeremiah 32:39). So, although there have been
a diversity of ways whereby God has communicated the covenant to his people
over time, there has also been a grand "blueprint", one unity,
one House being built. From these verses in Hebrews, we can learn to
make distinctions between God's administration of
the covenant, while avoiding separations. There is diversity in the
covenant, as well as unity, and there seems to be a supplementation of
each "story" or "floor" of God's house,
rather than a supplanting. Perhaps it is best to view the
covenant primarily from God's point of view, or perspective.
There is One God with One purpose and nothing shall frustrate his construction
project!
The good news is that as God's
covenant people, we can be assured of God's
commitment to us. Whenever we feel tired, alone, depressed,
frustrated, empty, and afraid here in this world, we can be reminded that
God's promises to us are sure. He will never fail us and we have his
great manifestation of grace revealed in the Person and Work of Jesus
Christ on our behalf! Jesus's blood paid
our debt owed to God of law-breaking and covenant-breaking, because
Jesus was the Great and Gracious Law-Keeper and Covenant-Keeper.
Thanks be to God for His indescribable Gift and
that he was faithful to Him Who
appointed Him on our behalf (cf. Heb. 3:2).
There is a third truth from
these verses we shall look at in the next few days!
To be continued...
Word of Encouragement
Vol. IV, Issue 26
God's Covenant House: A Sketch of God's Construction
Project, Pt. 2
Introduction: This is a study on the Biblical teaching of
God's covenant with his people. We will continue today by looking at
another truth revealed in Hebrews 3:1-6 concerning God's
'Redemptive-Historical' construction project. So far, we have
considered two important truths found in these six verses: (1) God is
called the builder of this covenant
house (vv.3-4). (2) It is not only God's building project, but it is one building project which reminds us to
see the unity between the Old and New Covenants, as well as appreciating
the diversity of administration of the one covenant of redemption.
Let us read the text from Hebrews, then consider
an important third truth we should consider from these verses.
Hebrews 3:1-6 (ESV) Therefore, holy brothers, you who share in a heavenly calling,
consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, 2 who
was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in
all God's house. 3 For Jesus has been counted worthy of more
glory than Moses- as much more glory as the builder of a house has more
honor than the house itself. 4 (For every house is built by
someone, but the builder of all things is God.) 5 Now Moses was
faithful in all God's house as a servant, to testify to the things that
were to be spoken later, 6 but Christ is faithful over God's
house as a son. And we are his house if indeed we hold fast our
confidence and our boasting in our hope.
(3) The third important truth is
that Christ's people are his house
(v. 6). The context of Hebrews chapter 3 is theologically nestled
between Hebrews 2:14-18 and Hebrews 3:7-4:12. Hebrews
2:14-18 speaks of Christ as God who became man (Heb. 1:3), or a
"little lower than the angels" in order to suffer and taste death
for his people, those who believe (Heb. 2:9-10). This Christ who
tasted death was the covenantal representative of those who believe.
Hebrews 2:11 says that "he who sanctifies and those who are
sanctified all have one origin", meaning that both of them are of
human origin and thus he is a perfect representative as the unique and only
one who was truly God and truly man. Since he was truly man, he
called those he represented his "brothers" (Heb.
2:11b).
The Savior and High Priest of
both the Old Testament people and the New Testament people of God is
one. He was made like his brothers in every way, tempted in every way
on our behalf, yet without sin (Heb. 2:17). And importantly, he helps the
offspring of Abraham (Heb. 2:16). Jesus Christ as representative
High Priest of the covenant lived perfectly for his people, those who
believe like Abraham believed, dying a perfect death to shed his
precious blood, to propitiate God's wrath for covenant-breakers, and
to pardon them of their sins, so that he might sanctify, or make holy a
people for himself.
In other words, Christ's people
are his house because the representative of the house (Heb. 3:6- "Christ
is faithful over God's house as a son") has fulfilled all of the
covenant demands that were revealed in God's law through Moses because he
is the Great Covenant-Keeper! (Note: The priority of truth in this
passage is that although Moses was faithful within the house, the same
Covenant-Christ, who is Son, is always over the house as representative of
his "house-people"). Also, this same gracious Christ as
representative of his covenant house-people has also taken upon himself all
of the curses for sinners (both in the Old and New Testaments), when he
laid down his life on the cross, and offered himself up once-and-for-all as
a sacrifice for sin- - thus paving the way for us to enter into a
relationship with the Living and Holy God, to be united to this Christ by
faith, so that his covenant obedience is given to us, and we can become
like him, that is conformed to the image of the Glorious Son over the
house! Consider the following New Testament verses in light of this
glorious truth:
Galatians 3:9-16 9 So then, those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the
man of faith. 10 For all who rely on works of the law are under
a curse; for it is written, "Cursed be everyone who does not abide by
all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them." 11 Now
it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for "The
righteous shall live by faith." 12 But the law is not
of faith, rather "The one who does them shall live by them." 13
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse
for us- for it is written, "Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a
tree"- 14 so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham
might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit
through faith. 15 To give a human example, brothers: even
with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been
ratified. 16 Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his
offspring. It does not say, "And to offsprings,"
referring to many, but referring to one, "And to your offspring,"
who is Christ.
From the verses in Hebrews 3:16, as well as the verses in Galatians 3,
we see that God's people are redeemed from the curse of the Law, that is the curses for covenant disobedience.
Remember, when God revealed the Law to Israel in Exodus 20-24, the Israelites
responded in a covenantal oath to God: Exodus 24:3 Moses
came and told the people all the words of the LORD and all the rules. And
all the people answered with one voice and said, "All the words that
the LORD has spoken we will do."
The Israelites covenantally promised that they would be obedient to
God's revelation in the Law. (Remember, the purpose of the law was to
point Old Testament people, as well as New Testament people to Christ! cf.
Gal.3:21-24). The Law was a "teacher", or
"guardian" at a particular time in redemptive-history, to turn
sinners away from themselves, their own works, back to the promises of God
to Abraham, and forward to the fulfillment of the Messiah, or Christ who
was to come that was prefigured in the bloody sacrifices that were offered
up to God for sin. The sacrifices of bulls and goats were not
sufficient to take away sin, because God's people are not bulls and goats,
but human beings. Therefore, Christ became man to lay down his life, a
lamb without blemish, to take away the sins of his people, once and for
all!
When the Israelites failed to
keep their covenant promises to God, that is, to keep his revealed
will in the Law, they were punished with curses for disobedience (which is
fully explained in Deuteronomy 27-28- blessings for obedience, curses for
disobedience). Therefore, when Jesus came as the SEED (singular) of
Abraham, the promise which God had made to Abraham, Jesus was the only and
True Israelite to keep God's covenant, his Law fully! Because Jesus
fully obeyed every jot and tittle of God's
commandments, and did this perfectly, he represented all of God's covenant
people, both Jews and Gentiles, who believe the promises of God by faith,
as Father Abraham! As Galatians 3 says, Jesus was cursed on a tree,
on the cross, because he represented God's covenant house-people, and
therefore he had to take the full punishment of God's wrath and curse upon
himself in order to make those who believe covenant-keepers (in Christ),
rather than covenant-breakers!
It is important that we see the
Christ-centered, or Christocentric, or
Christological unity of the Old and New Testaments. The covenant
house God has been building is his
people who believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ, the Great
Covenant-Keeper, by faith alone! All people who believe, Jew or
Gentile, are welcome as partakers of his grace! Let us therefore, in
light of this glorious truth as the people of God continue our journey by
his grace, keeping our eyes on the Author and Perfector
of our faith!
To be continued...
Next:
What is a covenant community?
Word of Encouragement
Vol. IV, Issue 27
God's Covenant House: A Sketch of God's Construction
Project, Pt. 3
Introduction- What is a Covenant Community?: In the last two studies,
we have been considering God's Covenant House and God's one covenant
house-people, as we looked at Hebrews 3:1-6. Since we are using the
metaphor of a house to speak of the covenant, we want to begin today
understanding the different "heads of household" within this one
house. As we consider the heads of God's household who served
within His Covenant House, we want to try and narrow
the focus to defining what is a covenant community. Allow me to begin with a
statement that is rich with Biblical import. Biblical faith is family faith. The
salvation of God's grace is always proclaimed and believed within the
context of the family -- the Household, or God's covenant community.
Within this context, you have those who believe and those who do not believe
(cf. 1 Cor. 10:1-14; Hebrews 3:7-4:11), yet the
promises are made known, promoted, promulgated and proclaimed in the
covenant community of the family.
I
want to start considering the covenant community, by considering first the
family, or the first
family. From here we shall proceed to discuss the formal definition
of covenant, as well as explore the significance of the covenant community
to us today. Before we do this, let us go back and consider the first
family, when God revealed himself to the climax of his creation (Gen. 1:26-28). Keep in mind
that Biblical faith is family faith.
In
the creation account (Gen. 1-2),
the family was the first community. When God taught Adam and
graciously told him what he required of him, he spoke to the head of the
human family. This is implied in several scriptures, particularly in Romans 5:12-21 where Paul speaks
of Adam as covenant representative. Adam was covenant representative
of the whole earthly family. Acts
17:26 says: "...And he made from one man every
nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined
allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they
should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and
find him." Adam failed as covenant representative, as the head
of the human family. When God made Adam, he created Adam to be his
prince, or vice-regent over creation (Gen. 1:26-28). This means Adam was to rule and
to have dominion, to be fruitful and multiply as the representative of God
over the earth. The father of the first family, or the head of the
first covenant community, failed in keeping the covenant God had made with
him. He disobeyed the Living God and followed his own will.
Because of his disobedience,
he and his family
were subjected to the curse of the fall: separation from God, the miseries
of this life, death, and the pains of undergoing God's wrath. Romans 5:12 says: "Therefore, just as sin came into the
world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to
all."
However,
God in his great and sovereign grace to his people,
also promised hope to Adam, the father of all humanity. In Genesis
3:15, God promises that one who comes from his own seed will crush the head
of the serpent who deceived him, and although the serpent will eventually
be defeated, he will produce seed as well as the woman (cf. Matthew 12:26-28; 13:24-30; 36-43).
Eventually, there would be another covenant representative to come from
Adam and Eve's seed who would restore, as well
as to fulfill the covenant Adam had broken. Simultaneously,
throughout history the same Satan (or Devil) who
tempted Adam to be a covenant-breaker, would nurture and admonish his own
seed of covenant-breakers. However, God's plans would not be
thwarted! By His grace, he covered Adam and Eve
with the coverings taken from an animal God
killed. God graciously and mercifully accepted the
slaughtered animal as a substitute for them so that they might live, and so
that they might be a redeemed covenant household in which the promises of
God would continue to be known.
When
defining covenant community, we want to start with the family, for this is
where God's hope and promises are first made known to individuals who will
hopefully hear the Word of God and His gracious promises and will respond
by faith. Adam is the first example, but although Adam made known
God's promises to his children, sadly not all of his children believed by
faith. Cain killed Abel because of his trust in the Lord and because
he obediently sacrificed what the Lord had commanded of him. Both of
these within the same household were taught the about the same God, told of
the same gracious promises, yet some did not believe. Many years
later, the whole earth would be filled with wickedness and violence, due
ultimately to the influence of the seed of the serpent. However, God
chose Noah from all the other men in the world, and Noah found favor, or
grace in the eyes of the Lord, not because of anything good or bad he had
done, but simply because the Lord wanted another family-head, or covenant
representative whereby he might continue to show forth his goodness and
mercy.
Noah
found favor and as representative of his family, he built an ark that saved
his entire family and the world of the animals
(creation). Hebrews 11:7 says: "By faith Noah, being
warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed
an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the
world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by
faith." The rest of the world, God decided to
destroy by flood because their sins deserved his
punishment. After the flood, Noah was promised by God that he would
never again destroy the earth with a flood. He told Noah, as the head
of his family, as well as the head of all the families of the earth,
to have dominion, to be fruitful and multiply, and to fulfill the task
of being obedient to God out of gratitude for what God had done in his the
life of his family. He was to teach this to his family so that his
family would know the goodness and promises of God. God continued to
show forth his grace through the head of a family, who represented God's
rule on the earth in a small covenant community known as Noah's
family (cf. Eph. 3:14-15).
Many
years later, God calls a pagan from the Land of the Chaldeans,
whose father worshipped false gods (cf. Josh 24:2), and tells him
to go into a new land. It is here where God gives promises to one of
Eve's seed (Abram is one of the fruits of Eve's womb- - her
"seed"), whereby God continues his promise to Adam and Eve and
enlarges and expands on his original promise, by promising a seed to Abram,
Adam and Eve's "seed" (read the "These are the
generations" in Genesis 2:4;
6:9; 10:1; 11:10, 27). God says to Abram in Genesis 12:3: "I will bless
those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I
will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."
God
promises to the head of a new family that he will bless all the families of
the earth through him. In other words, God would reveal his powerful
Word, and graciously promise to another family-head that he would show him
favor. Biblical faith is family faith,
and this promise was to be declared and proclaimed in the covenant
community of Abraham's family. But there was a problem! Abraham
had nothing to offer God. He was from a pagan background, who had
worshipped pagan gods, been part of a pagan family without the grace of the
LORD's Word to teach him, he was a liar and a
sneak (cf. Gen. 13-14), and he had no son, no seed to continue his
family! This was an impossible situation for a family, for a covenant
community. They had God's Word declared to them, God had promised,
but their was nothing Abram and Sarai could do to fix their problem. How was
Abram to bless all the other families of the earth, if he could not produce
his own family and teach them God's promises?
How
many times have you been in a situation like Abraham that looked
hopeless? You knew God had promised to be your guide, your hope, your
helper in times of trouble -- but how could he possibly help in this
particular situation? You think: "Perhaps, in other situations
God would be a help to me, but in this one, I have no one to blame but
myself." How many times have you been weak in the face of fear,
or given into a temptation, when you realize God's goodness to you,
and you did not want to sin against him, yet you do not believe he would
provide a way for you to escape? These are the times,
we must remember to lean NOT on our own understanding, but to trust in the
LORD with all our heart. With
man it is impossible! But with God all things are possible!
In
the next study we will continue to sketch out the covenant community revealed
throughout Scripture, and how God not only helped Abraham, but helped the
whole world through Abraham! Praise the LORD, that because God
revealed himself in households of faith, the promises of God continued
until Jesus Christ, who was Son over the
house (Heb. 3:6), and who would come to redeem those who
believed in God's promises like Father Abraham. And because of
Christ, we are no longer cold, frightened strangers, locked out
of the warm comfort and fellowship inside of God's covenant
house, but we have the great news revealed to us in Ephesians
2:18ff:
"So
then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens
with the saints and members of the
household of God, built on the foundation of the
apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows
into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built
together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit."
To be continued....
Word of Encouragement
Vol. IV, Issue 28
God's Covenant House: A Sketch of God's Construction Project, Pt. 4
Introduction- What is a Covenant Community?:
In the
last study, we learned that foundationally a covenant community is a family
community. In simple terms, a covenant community is a
place where God's Word, or his promises, are the
foundation of the life and hope of the family. In this covenant
community, the covenant-heads of the family, teach God's grace and promises
to their children. A covenant community, or
a family community was the context in which God chose and designed from
creation to work out the salvation of those who loved him and believed
his promises by faith. Salvation belongs to the LORD (Jonah 2:9), and
the secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the revealed things in
his promises are given to families (Deut. 29:29), so that they might teach
these promises, both verbally as in God's promises, and later
visually in the covenant signs he would
give to the covenant community in order to encourage
and strengthen their faith. Biblical faith is family faith.
Now back to the story of Abram.
Abram
was childless, yet as the head of his household, God had promised him that
through his seed he would bless all the families of the earth. God promises
Abram in Genesis 12:3: "I will bless those who bless
you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in
you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." This is
important to keep in mind when considering the study of the covenant in the
Old Testament. God's greater plan was for Abram's family to proclaim
his promises and bless all the families of the earth! However, at
this point in redemptive-history, Abram was concerned. How was God
going to bless him and the families of the earth if he had no seed?
How could God use this man with no children? The next time God
appears to Abram is in Genesis 15:1-6, where he has an
important dialogue with the Living God concerning the fact that he
is without a "seed", or heir.
"After these things the word of the LORD came to Abram in a
vision, "Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be
very great." But Abram said, "O Lord GOD, what wilt thou
give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" And Abram
said, "Behold, thou hast given me no offspring; and a slave born in my
house will be my heir". And behold, the word of the LORD came to
him, "This man shall not be your heir; your own son shall be your
heir". And he brought him outside and said, "Look toward
heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them." Then he
said to him, "So shall your descendants be." And he believed
the LORD; and he reckoned it to him as righteousness."
Abram
knew that if any of God's promises to him were to come to pass, it would
not be based upon his own wisdom and efforts, but it would be solely
because of the LORD's mercy, who had revealed himself to Abram and would
continue to be faithful to him. God had sovereignly
and graciously revealed himself to Abram by promising him descendants as
numerous as the stars in the sky (a lot!!), and all Abram had to do was believe.
This can be quite amazing when you think about it. The LORD, the Sovereign
Creator of heaven and earth appeared to a simple and sinful Chaldean man to bring him knowledge of himself and to
even reward him with a great inheritance and family- -all because of
Abram's faith, and God's sovereign grace!
Then
the unbelievable takes place! The LORD tells Abram to
participate with him in a covenant ceremony. The LORD was not only gracious
enough to promise Abram a great inheritance, he
was willing to show Abram just how great his grace and
promises were to him. The LORD God of heaven and earth was about
to "cut" a covenant with him in order to swear his
faithfulness to Abram, and to assure him that all of his promises to him
were "yes" and "amen". God not only gave his
promise to Abram verbally, he wanted to display it visually, which will be
important to remember later in the story!
Now, before
we continue, allow me to explain what a covenant is as clearly and simply
as possible. Genesis 15 is where God swears by himself to keep
his covenant with Abram, the head of his household and to his seed.
This is where God literally "cuts" a covenant with Abram to prove
to him by his word that he will keep his promises of grace to Abram. Brace
yourself: In these next verses, the King of Heaven, Who is
Holy and Transcendent, will not only stoop to come near and
to communicate his grace to his people, but the Mighty God will
make himself vulnerable.
Genesis
15:9-17 [GOD] He said to him, "Bring me a heifer three years old, a
female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a
young pigeon." And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and
laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in
half. And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram
drove them away. As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on
Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him....When the
sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a
flaming torch passed between these pieces.
The
covenantal form revealed in Genesis 15, in the above verses, is patterned
after other ancient Near Eastern covenants, so that Abraham, and later
Moses, and the rest of God's people could grasp what God was doing. It was
unbelievable. God was stooping to communicate to his people in a way
that they could fully understand. What is going on in the above
verses should cause us all to be stunned with wonder at God's
graciousness! When ancient Near Eastern people (Old Testament
people) wanted to promise, or bind themselves to an oath, they would
cut animals in half, then as they were making
their promise, or took their oath, they would simultaneously walk
through the bloody animal carcasses. The point in doing this was to
swear that if they failed to keep their promise, or oath, they would
forfeit their life!
The
life-blood that was poured out of the animal parts would form the pathway
on which the one taking the oath would walk, indicating that his own
life-blood would be poured out if the promise, or
oath was not kept. Amazing! God appears to Abram in these
verses as "a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch".
God himself walks on bloody ground through bloody animal
parts, so that he might graciously communicate to Abram that what he
promised, he would do, or he would die making his promise to
Abram come to pass! In Old Testament times, this covenant-making
ceremony was called "cutting" a covenant! In these verses,
in contrast to God telling his people to take off their shoes
because they stood on holy ground when he made his appearance, God is
"taking off his holy shoes" in order to walk on
"earthy-bloody" ground.
God "cuts"
a covenant with Abram affirming his promises to him! At this time in
history, when a king "cut" a covenant with his people, it was the
king's people who would have walked through the animal
carcasses, swearing faithfulness and loyalty to their king. In
contrast, what we have here is not only the unexpected, but the
unbelievable. The Great King of heaven and earth has not only revealed
himself by his grace to a sinful family-head in spite of what he
deserved; he has not only promised literally the world to Abram and his
seed; he has not only reckoned Abram righteous because of his faith and
belief in God's promises; but God covenants with Abram that if the promises
are not kept, God himself would be cut in half, God would have to die!
This is not just amazing grace, but astounding grace! This is
incomprehensible grace, but then that is the Great King in whom Abram
believed by faith! Hebrews 6:13-20 says:
"For
when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to
swear, he swore by himself, saying, "Surely I will bless you
and multiply you." And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained
the promise. For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in
all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation. So when God desired
to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable
character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so
that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we
who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to
the hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the
soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus
has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever..."
We see this
ultimate death of God not in the imaginations of atheistic and
existentialist philosophers, but in the historical reality of the
crucifixion of Jesus Christ, when God who became flesh laid his life
down for covenant-breakers! Jesus Christ took the penalty and guilt of
covenant-breaking upon himself as he suffered the curses of God in behalf
of his people, and offered life to his people in his resurrection and
ascension from the dead! God suffered and died in the Person and Work of
Jesus Christ! In fact, the Apostle would tell the Ephesian elders many years later, in order to stress
the value and importance of serving God's people: "Pay careful
attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has
made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained
with his own blood"(Acts 20:28).
Good
news: We who believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ, the Seed of
Abraham, can base our value and worth not on what we have done
for God, nor on how faithful we are to him, but on the valuable blood
of God which was shed on our behalf because of HIS faithfulness
and committment toward HIS covenant
people! What grace! What hope!
To
be continued....
Word of Encouragement
Vol. IV, Issue 29
God's Covenant House: A Sketch of God's Construction
Project, Pt. 5
Introduction- God graciously stooped
to "cut" a covenant with Abram. In today's study from
Genesis 17, God teaches Abram how he must respond to God's gracious
covenant promises. In Genesis chapter 17, God is teaching Abraham how
to respond obediently to God because of the grace God has shown to him.
Remember, Abram is already "reckoned righteous" because of faith
(cf. Gen. 15:6), his response of obedience to God
was not of works, but the evidence of his true faith. The
covenant response Abraham was to have to God's promises to his household, was the physical sign of circumcision which
would be "cut" in Abraham's flesh, as well as the flesh of those
in his household. God is so gracious in not only giving his people verbal
promises, but to give us visible signs to help nurture our weak
faith.
God
appears to Abram and gives him comfort that he and his
household have found favor with God. He reiterates to Abram, his
promises to he and his family as well as to the families of the
world! He also gives Abram a new name because of his new position the
new Father of the families of the earth:
Genesis 17:4-8- "Behold, my
covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of
nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be
Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will
make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings
shall come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you
and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an
everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.
And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting
possession, and I will be their God."
After
God's declaration of grace, God teaches Abraham how he must respond in
obedience. He tells him that his everlasting covenant in the flesh
will be circumcision. Circumcision was a visible, physical,
and outward sign, or symbol of an invisible, spiritual,
and inward reality of God's grace. God doesn't give full
details here at this point in his unfolding and progressive revelation to
his house-people, but he will later through Moses who will administer God's
gracious Law from "within the house" (Hebrews 3:2). God
says to Abraham in Genesis 17:9-13-
And God said to Abraham, "As for you, you shall
keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their
generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and
your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You
shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign
of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you
shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether
born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not
of your offspring, both he who is born in your house and he who is bought
with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant
be in your flesh an everlasting covenant."
What
should be pointed out in these important verses of God's revelation and redemption, is that God's covenant promises to Abraham
and to his seed is to be visually manifested on the bodies of Abraham's
sons. The covenant that was "cut" is visualized through the
foreskin being "cut". Also, the representative
"cutter" of the covenant is now with Father Abraham as
representative of his sons. God gave the responsibility of the
cutting of the physical covenant sign to be the Father's
responsibility, but the invisible, spiritual, inward reality of what
the sign represented was to be God's responsibility. Biblical faith is family faith.
Through
this physical sign of the cutting away of the foreskin, fathers would teach
their children of the grace and promises of the covenant promised by God to
their family, while teaching them to look by faith to the God in Whom
Abraham trusted, and remembering that the sign represented God's grace to
them and the responsibility of responding by faith to that grace within the
family! Later, in Genesis 18, God would make clearer that the sign of
the covenant in circumcision implied a responsibility of obedience because
of God's grace and promises: Genesis
18:19- "For I have chosen him [Abraham], that he
may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the
LORD by doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring to
Abraham what he has promised him."
Also,
the outward representation or sign of the covenant was supposed to show an
inward reality of the heart. Many years later in Jeremiah 9:24-26, the prophet
makes this completely clear, although at this point is not as fully
revealed.
"Thus says the LORD: "Let not the wise man
boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the
rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he
understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast
love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I
delight, declares the LORD." "Behold, the days are coming,
declares the LORD, when I will punish all those who are circumcised
merely in the flesh- Egypt, Judah, Edom, the sons of Ammon, Moab, and all who dwell in the desert who cut
the corners of their hair, for all these nations are uncircumcised, and all
the house of Israel is uncircumcised in heart."
Through
the Prophet Jeremiah later in redemptive-history, God declares
that the house of Israel were the same as all the other
"houses" of the world: Egypt, Judah, Edom, etc. because although
they have a visible, physical, and outward sign, the invisible, spiritual,
and inward reality reflects unbelief and unfaithfulness to the God of
Grace- -therefore their circumcision was of no value!
In
Genesis 17:9-13,
there are also hints of other important truths which would be
progressively developed throughout redemptive-history. We see in
verses 12-13 that God wanted all of those under Abraham's authority within his household to receive the sign
of circumcision, both those of his own blood, and those purchased with his
own money! There are at least two things that are important about
this: (1) All of those in Abraham's family (and implicitly in his
descendents to come as they grew in number) were to teach all those in
their household the truths of God's grace and promises. In other
words, the family community was to be a covenant community because the
people were exposed, as it were, to God's Word both verbally as well as visually.
Those who were inside this covenant community were not all those who
had faith, but they were a covenant community defined by God's Word and
God's sign in the flesh. (2) These verses also show the reality that all of the world was included in Abraham's
covenant, even those not of his blood.
This means that Abraham's slaves, many who would have been what would later
be called 'Gentiles', were included in Abraham's covenant promises from the
start. Yes, they were slaves, but if they believed like
"Father" Abraham, they would be called "sons" of the
covenant promises as well! Those who were "outside the covenant
promises" to Abraham, could come into the covenant community through
circumcision. Upon entering the covenant community and being
circumcised however, was implied that they had already believed by faith in
the God of Abraham. For instance, later on in Exodus 12, when slaves and
"non-Israelites" wanted to escape the angel of death, through the
blood of the covenant, they were to be circumcised first.
Exodus 12:43-48-
"And the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "This is the statute
of the Passover: no foreigner shall eat of it, but every slave that is
bought for money may eat of it after you have circumcised him. No
foreigner or hired servant may eat of it. It shall be eaten in one house;
you shall not take any of the flesh outside the house, and you shall not
break any of its bones. All the congregation of Israel shall keep it. If a
stranger shall sojourn with you and would keep the Passover to the LORD,
let all his males be circumcised. Then he may come near and keep it; he
shall be as a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person shall eat of
it."
God
wanted to communicate his promises to each generation, using Abraham's
family as the family-instrument by which God's grace would come to the
world. God never meant that only
Abraham's physical, ethnic descendants would be partakers of his
covenant. God only assigned the beginning task of passing down and
preserving his promises to the next generation in Abraham's family, but
this included both "Abrahamites" (Jews)
as well as "Non-Abrahamites"
(Gentiles)! So God continued his promises through Abraham's seed by
saying in Genesis 17:19- God said, "...Your wife shall
bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my
covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after
him." And so God's promises would continue, through Abraham's
sons, Isaac and Jacob! And like grandfather, like grandson, Jacob
would undergo a name change from 'Jacob' to 'Israel'.
And eventually,
when the times had reached their fulfillment, the Seed of Abraham came into
the world through the overshadowing and impregnation of the Holy Spirit in the
Virgin Mary. In Matthew's genealogy, we see Jesus' descendants who
are made up of both Israelite as well as Gentile women (Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba, the "wife of Uriah" the Hittite). Matthew purposely
included Gentiles in Jesus' genealogy to show that Abraham's family from
the very beginning, meant hope for all of the believing families of
the earth (cf. Gen. 12, 15). This Jesus would break down the ethnic
and nationalistic dividing lines between Jew and Gentiles, free and slaves,
men and women, to make them all ONE who believe God's promises by
grace. And this Jesus, who was circumcised on the eighth day
according to command of God (Luke 1:59), would also
circumcise his people as Colossians
2 teaches:
Colossians 2:11-14- In [Jesus] also you were
circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body
of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in
baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the
powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who
were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision
of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our
trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its
legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Before
we continue to sketch God's "House-Building Construction Project"
throughout redemptive-history, allow me to make four conclusions from
the first five studies that help define a Covenant Community even for us
today. A Covenant
Community is:
(1) A community where God's
Grace is Committed to the people and revealed in His Word, both
verbal and visible.
(2) It is a community Committed
to living by the Grace communicated by God, while trusting in the God
Who keeps the community.
(3) It is a community Committed
to one another in love while instructing one another in the privileges
as well as the responsibilities of being a member of the Covenant
Community.
(4) It is a family community, not based on
ethnicity or defined by nationalistic boundaries, but a house-family built
upon the promises of God to those who believe them. Biblical faith is family faith.
To be
continued....
Next:
Moses "in God's House" and His Tutor for the Covenant Community
Word of Encouragement
Vol. IV, Issue 30
God's Covenant House:
A Sketch of God's Construction Project, Pt. 6
Introduction- Moses
"in God's House" and His Tutor for the Covenant Community
God had promised Abraham
in Genesis 15, three important things he would do for him by grace alone:
(1) Make Abraham's name great; (2) Give him a great number of family
descendants; and (3) Give him the land of Canaan to possess for his family. In Genesis 15,
God tells Abraham that this will progressively be fulfilled, but he will
keep his promises and shows Abraham his grace by "cutting" a
covenant with Abraham. However, Abraham's family would be
slaves in a foreign land first. Genesis 15:13-14 says:
Then the LORD said to Abram, "Know for certain that your offspring
will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there,
and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring
judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out
with great possessions.
After Abraham's family
experienced slavery in Egypt, God would call His people out of Egypt to serve him and to possess the land God had
promised to Abraham. Exodus 2:24ff tells us the important truth of
why God redeemed his people from Egypt:
Exodus 2:23-25-
"During those many days the king of Egypt died,
and the people of Israel
groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for
rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God
remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God
saw the people of Israel- and
God knew."
God calls Moses to go
and rescue his people from slavery in Egypt so that they might worship him in the desert and
that he might fulfill the promises he made to Abraham and to his
descendants. Exodus 6:6-8- God says to Moses: "Say
therefore to the people of Israel, 'I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from
under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to
them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of
judgment. I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and
you shall know that I am the LORD your God, who has brought you out from
under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I
swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for
a possession. I am the LORD.'"
Once God redeemed his
people because of his covenant promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,
Moses was to reveal to the people House-Laws, or a tutor within the
house-family of God. These House-Laws would constantly remind them of
their need of grace, their dependence upon God and his promises alone,
their need for a substitute and sacrifices for sin, and to instruct them
into the holy character of God and the holiness he expected from his people
as a response for his grace, mercy, kindness and promises revealed to
them. This covenantal house-family was expected to love their
Covenant Father and God whose character was revealed in these House-Laws,
and they were to depend upon him to provide them the strength and help to
live it, as well as to have their transgressions and sins forgiven.
The covenant God made,
or "cut" with Abraham was wholly of grace, yet it implied
that Abraham was to be obedient in light of God's grace (Genesis
18:19- "For I have chosen him, that he may command his
children and his household after him to keep the way of the LORD by
doing righteousness and justice, so that the LORD may bring to Abraham
what he has promised him."). As redemptive-history progressed
and God continued to work out his promises to his house-family, he
made another covenant with the people under Moses.
This was a
House-Covenant where the family within the house, who were made a
covenant-community by God's grace to them in their deliverance from Egypt, would swear by oath to be obedient.
This House-Covenant was a two-way covenant. Whereas God's covenant
with Abraham was "one-way" (unilateral), this covenant was
"two-way" (or bilateral). In response to God's grace and
mercy, the covenant family was to hear God's requirements and swear by oath
to follow his ways and to obey his laws out of love for their great God and
Savior. Israel, as a Covenant-Community of God was to live for
God as a light before the world, out of love for what God had done for
them: Deuteronomy 6:4-7 teaches us:
"Hear, O Israel: The
LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all
your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these
words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them
diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your
house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you
rise."
After gathering at Mount Sinai for the House-Laws to be revealed to the
Covenant-Community in Exodus 19-20, the Israelites were to respond as a
family and swear by oath to God that they would keep his covenant by faith
and through love. They swore by oath to keep this covenant, and blood
and sacrifice are used in the ceremony to remind the people of their need
for atonement, forgiveness of sins, and the consequences of sin.
Because this was a "two-way" or bilateral covenant, their would be blessings for obedience and curses for
disobedience. Here is the passage which recounts this important
covenant ceremony:
Exodus 24:3-8- Moses
came and told the people all the words of the LORD and all the rules. And
all the people answered with one voice and said, "All the words
that the LORD has spoken we will do." And Moses wrote down all the
words of the LORD. He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the
foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of
Israel. And
he sent young men of the people of Israel, who
offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the LORD.
And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins,
and half of the blood he threw against the altar. Then he took the Book
of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said,
"All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be
obedient." And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and
said, "Behold the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with
you in accordance with all these words."
During the next
generation of this covenant family, some had already been punished in the
wilderness for their failure to abide by God's House-Laws and grumbled
against God despite the grace he had shown toward them in His verbal and
visible word (cf. 1 Cor. 10:1-13). The
grumbling and discontentment we learn about in their daily struggles are
still a constant threat against loving God by His grace, and a
temptation that all of those in God's family-house must remember!
Everyday, God's people must learn that we are to rest in God's Work on our
behalf, confessing our sins, and learning contentment in all of our
circumstances, by his grace! Now that Christ has come to fulfill all
of the House-Laws and to unite us to Himself by His Spirit, how much more
strength and grace we have than the covenant family had during the time of
Moses.
In fact, when the second
generation of the family of those who were brought out of Egypt were about
to enter Canaan, the promised land promised by God to Abraham, Moses, in
response to their confessed obedience, told them of a better time to come
when they would have the ability to keep God's House-Laws. In the
following verses, notice how Moses teaches the covenant community three
important truths revealed to him at this point in redemptive-history: (1)
God is gracious and is obeyed from the heart. We are to love
the LORD our God with all of our selves! (2) Israel as a covenant-community will fail the covenant
they made with God and they will be punished because of their lack of
faith. (3) The people of God are to confess to their Covenant
Father their inability to do what he requires because of sin, trust in his
promises to His house-people by faith, because
the righteousness God gives is based upon faith alone in God's work
for his house-people! Notice, before Israel even sets foot into the Promised Land, God
graciously promises that he will circumcise their hearts and the hearts of
their offspring, so that they will have the ability to love the LORD will
their whole being!
Deuteronomy 30:
"And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse,
which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the
nations where the LORD your God has driven you, and return to the LORD your
God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you
today, with all your heart and with all your soul, then the LORD your God
will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you, and he will gather
you again from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you.
If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the LORD
your God will gather you, and from there he will take you. And the LORD
your God will bring you into the land that your fathers possessed, that you
may possess it. And he will make you more prosperous and numerous than your
fathers. And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart
of your offspring, so that you will love the LORD your God with all
your heart
and with all your soul, that you may live....
...."For this commandment that I command you
today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven,
that you should say, 'Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?' Neither is it beyond
the sea, that you should say, 'Who will go over the sea for us and bring it
to us, that we may hear it and do it?' But the
word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you
can do it. "
When the fulness of the time had come, when Jesus Christ came to
fulfill the House-Law for those who believe, the Apostle Paul teaches us
that Christ is the end of the House-Law for righteousness to everyone who
believes. The righteousness God requires, he supplies by faith in
Christ alone! The House-Laws God revealed to Israel were to
ultimately show God's house-family of their utter inability to love and
keep his commandments, and that only by God's grace could we ever be
saved. Therefore, God the Great Law-Giver came in Christ to keep and
fulfill the House-Laws for all of those who believe! Christ loved the
LORD his God with all his heart, soul, mind, and strength and his neighbor
as himself, so that all of his adopted children might have circumcised
hearts by His Spirit, be conformed to Christ-Likeness, and to be able to
love God and to live God's Law by faith!
Romans 10:4-10 For Christ is the end of the law for
righteousness to everyone who believes. For Moses writes about the
righteousness that is based on the law, that the person who does the
commandments shall live by them. But the righteousness based on faith says,
"Do not say in your heart, 'Who will ascend into heaven?'"(that
is, to bring Christ down) or "'Who will descend into the
abyss?'"(that is, to bring Christ up from the
dead). But what does it say? "The word is near you, in your mouth and
in your heart" (that is, the word of faith that we proclaim); because,
if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your
heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the
heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and
is saved.
To be continued....
Word of Encouragement
Vol. IV, Issue 31
God's Covenant House:
A Sketch of God's Construction Project, Pt. 7
Moses "in God's
House" and His Tutor for the Covenant Community
Introduction: Last time we studied the House-Laws that God
gave through Moses to instruct the covenant community in the way of His
righteousness. Today, I want to continue looking at this time in
redemptive-history before we move forward to see the covenant continue to
be progressively revealed. There are many gracious aspects to God's
House-Laws that he gave to the covenant community. First of all, the
House-Laws for God's family were to reveal God's righteous and holy
character. Secondly, they were to reveal the covenant family's utter
inability to keep these Laws except by faith in God's mercy revealed in the
sacrifices he gave to them as a community. Thirdly, the House-Laws
came after the promises to Abraham, as well as after their redemption from
Egypt, so that God's house-family was never expected to be saved through
them, because the Law could not bring life (only God could bring life to
his house family- cf. Galatians 3:20ff). To take a closer look at
this point in redemptive-history, let's look at an important passage in the
Book of Deuteronomy.
The Book of
Deuteronomy is the collected last words of Moses given to God's
covenant family before they enter into the promised land, promised many
years prior to their father Abraham. It is a covenant document revealed
to the second generation of family members, who lived forty years after the
great redemption and exodus from Egypt. These last covenant words of Moses, as
well as the "last words" of the covenant family in response to
the commands of God, would be the foundation for the rest of the covenant
family's history. In fact, one of my teachers used to say that
the Book of Deuteronomy was extremely important for
understanding the Old Testament because it was the "sun around
which all the OT historical books orbited". Deuteronomy, chapter
29 is an important chapter within this important book, so today I want
to look at the passage together as we continue our understanding generally
of life in God's covenant house, and more
particularly of life during the time of Moses "in God's House".
Deuteronomy 29:1 These are the words of the
covenant that the LORD commanded Moses to make with the people of Israel in
the land of Moab, besides the covenant that he had made with them at Horeb. 2 And Moses summoned all Israel and
said to them: "You have seen all that the LORD did before your eyes in
the land of Egypt, to
Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land, 3 the great
trials that your eyes saw, the signs, and those great wonders. 4 But
to this day the LORD has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see
or ears to hear. 5 I have led you forty years in the
wilderness. Your clothes have not worn out on you, and your sandals have
not worn off your feet. 6 You have not eaten bread, and you have
not drunk wine or strong drink, that you may know that I am the LORD your
God. 7 And when you came to this place, Sihon
the king of Heshbon and Og
the king of Bashan came
out against us to battle, but we defeated them. 8 We took their
land and gave it for an inheritance to the Reubenites,
the Gadites, and the half-tribe of the Manassites. 9 Therefore keep the words of
this covenant and do them, that you may prosper in
all that you do.
From Deuteronomy
29:1-9 above, we see that this is a covenant that is related to,
yet distinct from the covenant made with the covenant community at Horeb, or at Mount Sinai (Exodus 20; 24:1ff).
This is a covenant ceremony made with the entire house family, or community
that is being held responsible to keep all of God's commandments (Deut. 5;
Ex. 20), based on God's graciousness to them (verses 29:2, 3, 5-8).
God recalls his graciousness to the covenant family and reminds them that covenant privileges implies covenant
responsibilities. However, the LORD has yet to give
them hearts to understand and eyes to see (29:4; cf. 30:6).
The hope of the covenant
people (in the future as well as in the past), is God's gracious
"stooping" to redeem them, to save them according to his power
and not their own works. Yet, because they have the sacrifices given
to them in the tabernacle (Ex. 25-40; Book of Leviticus), the sacrifices
cover their sins as they look to them by faith, believing in the future
vindication by the LORD. The sacrifices that the covenant community
had to continually offer had external, as well as internal
significance. Outwardly, the sacrifices showed the shed blood for
covenant-breakers. These animal sacrifices could not fully atone for
sins, yet God accepted them as a substitute for the sins of his house
family. Inwardly, the sacrifices were means of grace. That
means, God used the sacrifices to communicate his grace to those
members of the house family who believed God's promises by His grace, so
that they would persevere in their faith "not seeing fully what was
promised" (cf. Hebrews 11), yet passing on their faith to their
children in the nurture and admonition of the LORD. As we briefly
studied before, God's way of salvation is the same in the Old and the New
Covenant, but God administers the covenant (that is, he "manages"
the covenant) differently in time periods of redemptive-history. This
is one reason why the New Testament refers to Moses "in the
House" and Christ "over the house" in Hebrews 3. This
we will speak more about later.
10 "You are standing
today all of you before the LORD your God: the heads of your tribes,
your elders, and your officers, all the men of Israel, 11 your
little ones, your wives, and the sojourner who is in your camp, from the
one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water, 12 so
that you may enter into the sworn covenant of the LORD your God, which the
LORD your God is making with you today, 13 that he may establish
you today as his people, and that he may be your God, as he promised you,
and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. 14
It is not with you alone that I am making this sworn covenant, 15
but with whoever is standing here with us today before the LORD
our God, and with whoever is not here with us today.
In the above verses,
29:10-15 we see other important truths revealed to the covenant family at
this time through Moses. First of all, the covenant is not made with
those who fully understand all of the covenant implications (such as the
children), but with the entire family as the covenant is communicated to
the heads of the households, or families (29:10-13). Notice in verses
10-11, the covenant extends from the heads of the twelve tribes, to the
elders, to the officers, to all of the heads of the individual households,
or families. Because the covenant representation is the heads of
households, it represents the "little ones", "wives",
"strangers", and "slaves" (29:11). This entire
concept of covenant representation revealed in Scripture is contrary to any
concepts of individualistic decisions to follow the Lord. The
covenant is ratified, or promised on oath to be kept, and the heads of the
family represent the remainder of the house family. In other words,
God always reveals himself in the plural "you" because he makes
promises to His house family, not merely to individuals.
Also, this covenant God
is making with his house family is a covenant made with members of the
family, both living and yet to be born (29:14-15). This means again
the idea of representatives within the one covenant family are extremely
important to keep in mind. God was forming a community based on his
grace, and teaching them to walk in his ways. He was revealing here
in the time of Moses that Biblical faith is family faith. That
means that the covenant community was made up of families founded upon the
gracious promises of God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (29:13), with all
those who would be born into this covenant family in the future,
as well as anyone who was under the representative headship of the house
family, such as strangers outside the family or slaves, merely because they
were given the privileges of taking part of the promises of God with the
responsibilities to believe in the promises as well so that they might live.
Since the very beginning at creation, God has used family heads or
representatives to communicate his grace as we learned in our study on Adam
as the head of all the families of the earth.
16 "You know how we
lived in the land of Egypt, and
how we came through the midst of the nations through which you passed. 17
And you have seen their detestable things, their idols of wood and
stone, of silver and gold, which were among them. 18 Beware lest
there be among you a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning
away today from the LORD our God to go and serve the gods of those nations.
Beware lest there be among you a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit, 19
one who, when he hears the words of this sworn covenant, blesses
himself in his heart, saying, 'I shall be safe, though I walk in the
stubbornness of my heart.' This will lead to the sweeping away of moist
and dry alike. 20 The LORD will not be willing to forgive him,
but rather the anger of the LORD and his jealousy will smoke against that
man, and the curses written in this book will settle upon him, and the LORD
will blot out his name from under heaven. 21 And the LORD
will single him out from all the tribes of Israel for
calamity, in accordance with all the curses of the covenant written in this
Book of the Law. 22 And the next generation, your
children who rise up after you, and the foreigner who comes from a far
land, will say, when they see the afflictions of that land and the
sicknesses with which the LORD has made it sick- 23 the whole land
burned out with brimstone and salt, nothing sown and nothing growing, where
no plant can sprout, an overthrow like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which the
LORD overthrew in his anger and wrath- 24 all the nations will
say, 'Why has the LORD done thus to this land? What caused the heat of
this great anger?' 25 Then people will say, 'It is because they
abandoned the covenant of the LORD, the God of their fathers, which he made
with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, 26 and
went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they had not known
and whom he had not allotted to them. 27 Therefore the anger of
the LORD was kindled against this land, bringing upon it all the curses
written in this book, 28 and the LORD uprooted them from their
land in anger and fury and great wrath, and cast them into another land, as
they are this day.' 29 "The secret things belong to the
LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our
children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.
Finally, and there are
many truths we could derive explicitly and implicitly from this passage, we
should notice the important truth revealed in Deuteronomy 29:16-29.
The truth I want you to notice is that there were great and heavy
consequences for not believing by faith in the promises revealed to the
covenant community (29:20-28). Again, the truth revealed here is that
covenant privileges imply covenant responsibilities to believe upon the
LORD and his mercy. If the covenant is not kept, all of the curses of
Deuteronomy 27 will come upon the family. Therefore, at this point in
redemptive-history what is needed most is covenant family heads who will nurture and admonish their children in the
commands of the LORD. If the family fails to abide by God's grace,
the entire house family will be in danger of being uprooted from the land,
as well as to suffer God's terrible wrath and anger against his people
(29:25-28). Although this is a mystery why God allows this to happen,
it will come to pass in time so that the house family might again
trust in the promises of God for salvation. In fact, in Deuteronomy
30:1-6, Moses tells the people that they will fail the covenant, they will
suffer God's wrath, be removed from the land, yet God in his mercy and
grace will circumcise their hearts so that they might believe! What a
gracious God who is faithful to all of his promises.
Eventually, in the
fullness of the times, Abraham's Seed promised to him in Genesis 12 and 15 is born. He is an Israelite with which the
covenant made with God here
in Deuteronomy 29 was also made (29:15- " but with
whoever is standing here with us today before the LORD our God, and with
whoever is not here with us today"). Although those
"standing there at Moab" failed the covenant, as well as their
family members after them, Jesus of Nazareth, kept the covenant made with
God that day. Jesus perfectly kept all of God's commands, loving him
with all of his heart, soul, mind, and strength, and his neighbor as
himself (Deut. 6:4-6; cf. Matthew 22:37-40).
The sacrifices in the
Old Covenant that God accepted as substitutionary because
the family broke the House-Laws, pointed forward to the once-and-for-all
sacrifice of Jesus Christ, whose blood was able to give life, save
completely, and permanently cover all the sins of those he represented as
Head of His Household of Faith (Hebrews 2:10-18; 9:22-28). The
ultimate reason the blood of bulls and goats could not remove the sins of
God's house family, was because the members of His household are humans and
not bulls and goats. Therefore, Jesus became like us in every
way, yet without sin, so that he might suffer and die so that we might be
forgiven! Praise the LORD for his grace!
The means of grace God
communicated to His people in the sacrifices during the Old
Covenant became in the fullness of the times, means of grace communicated
in the Lord's Supper that communicates to His house family the Body and
Blood of the Lord who presented himself as a bloody sacrifice for the
permanent remission of sins. The wrath that was to come on the
covenant family for disobedience was experienced by the Lord Jesus on the
cross of calvary so that those He represented
within His Family of Faith, would never die or be consumed.
This Jesus offered
himself up as a pleasing sacrifice to God, was raised to God's right hand,
where he poured out the Spirit on His people. This Spirit was not to
consume us in God's anger and wrath as we so richly deserve, but to come and
purify us as a family so that we will be holy as He is Holy! This
great truth is still the great news to covenant households and particularly
to heads of households or families, that they might receive the promises of
the Word of God, both verbally and visually! This is the hope of the
covenant community who is the Household of Faith and inheritors of the
promises of Abraham. The Household of Faith doesn't merely receive
land, but they will "inherit the earth"!
I'm now up and running
around the room in excitement of the things God has graciously done in
Christ! (embarrassed, but grateful!!)
To be continued....
Word of Encouragement
Vol. IV, Issue 32
God's Covenant House:
A Sketch of God's Construction Project, Pt. 8
In the last study we
looked at how God commanded the covenant community through Moses to be Holy
as He is Holy. God gave them House-Laws so
that they would understand God's character and how he expected his covenant
family to live before the world. The visible covenant family responded
in Deuteronomy 29 that they would keep all God had commanded of them (cf.
Exodus 24). In other words, the covenant community made a covenant
with God that was "two-sided", or bilateral. That is, the
covenant family swore to God that they would keep his House-Laws and if
they did not, they would receive all of the curses for disobedience
revealed in Deuteronomy 27. Moses told them in Deuteronomy 30:1-6
that they would fail, and when they did fail to keep God's House-Laws God
would punish and remove them from the land, but God is so great
and merciful that he would also promise to circumcise their hearts so that
they could obey his House-Laws from their heart. Today, we will look
at the work God would do for his house-family in the future and be introduced
to the covenant prosecutors God sent to his house-family!
After Moses died, Joshua
takes over and leads the covenant family into the promised land, the land
promised to Abraham. This land was an earthly gift of God, but it
represented a greater reality that God would eventually reveal in the
future. This earthly land was just a taste of the Kingdom God would
one day reveal to his covenant family. As soon as they get settled
into the land, they begin to forget the LORD their God and Father.
They begin to look to the gods of other peoples, forget what the Lord had
said to them, and what their eyes had seen, as Moses told them to never
forget. In fact, by the time of the Judges, the covenant community
was not being obedient out of gratitude for what God had done for
them. They were "doing what was right in their own
eyes". Although the House-Laws were to be a tutor to the
covenant family so that they might rely in a greater measure upon God's
grace and mercy revealed in the sacrifices, they openly defied and
disobeyed these House-Laws turning against the LORD himself.
The house family of God
was to be obedient out of gratitude for what God had done for them, but
they continued to break the covenant God had made with them.
Therefore, God sent covenant prosecutors, or prophets to warn the covenant
family that if they did not turn back the LORD their God, and seek his
mercy, they would be thrown out of the land and out of his house for
defying his House-Laws. Back in this time period, ancient Near Eastern
kings would send warnings to the people, or vassals with whom they had made
a covenant when the covenant with the king had been broken. In the
same way, God raises us his servants the covenant prosecutor-prophets from
within the house, to warn the family of God to repent. These
covenant-prosecutors were bringing covenant lawsuits to the people of God,
and if they did not want to undergo the punishment described to them by
Moses, they had better turn from their idolatry, back to the Living God!
The covenant prosecutors
to the covenant family did not only warn the house family to turn back to
the Father of the House, but they also sent good news, gospel tidings to
them that they might cease trusting in themselves and their own works, and
turn to the LORD their God in repentance and hope in the future one God
will send as a representative for them. One of the covenant
prosecutors named Isaiah, told of a Servant who would be raised up from
within the house family to once and for all represent the family as a
Covenant-Keeper. The covenant family was to believe this by faith and
look toward this future hope who was to
come! The promise was revealed to the covenant family at this
point in redemptive-history that this Servant would be raised up and
described as One "who will be given as a covenant for the people"
(Is. 42:6).
Isaiah 42:1-10 ESV Isaiah
42:1 Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the
nations. 2 He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make
it heard in the street; 3 a bruised reed he will not break, and
a faintly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth
justice. 4 He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has
established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his law. 5
Thus says God, the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them
out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to
the people on it and spirit to those who walk in it: 6 "I
am the LORD; I have called you in righteousness; I will take you by the
hand and keep you; I will give you as a covenant for the people, a light
for the nations, 7 to open the eyes that are blind, to bring
out the prisoners from the dungeon, from the prison those who sit in
darkness. 8 I am the LORD; that is my name; my glory I give to
no other, nor my praise to carved idols. 9 Behold, the former
things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring
forth I tell you of them." 10 Sing to the LORD a new song,
his praise from the end of the earth, you who go down to the sea, and all
that fills it, the coastlands and their inhabitants.
Also, Jeremiah was raised up as a
covenant prosecutor-prophet who promised that God would make a new covenant
with the house of God. He specifically says that this "new
covenant" will not be like the covenant made with Moses at Sinai, and
the one "they broke", but it would be a new covenant where the
Law of God would not be on mere tablets of stone, but on hearts of human
flesh (2 Cor. 3:6ff). Even though God's
House suffered in losing their earthly land, many still within the House
believed God for the future and a greater and more heavenly inheritance
(cf. Hebrews 11). These who trusted God's mercy and looked to the
future did so by faith in what God had said to them and so were justified,
or reckoned righteous in God's sight as Abraham their father. God
will still be a their God and Father because of
his rich and abundant grace and mercy!
Jeremiah 31:31-34 31
"Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a
new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32
not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took
them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant
that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. 33
But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after
those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will
write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my
people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor
and each his brother, saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they shall all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will
forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more."
Eventually, because of
their covenant-breaking and sins against their God, the covenant family was
eventually thrown out of the land and sent east as Adam was once thrown out
of the garden and sent east for failing the covenant made with God.
During this time, one of the covenant prosecutors raised up from within the
house was named Ezekiel. Ezekiel was raised up to tell the
house-family how God was hurt by the fact that they broke his House-Laws
even though He had had mercy upon them and shown them his grace.
Ezekiel came to tell them, that although they had suffered the just
consequences of being thrown out of God's house, God was still merciful and
good to his family because of His own name's sake. His promise to his
house-family was that he would bring them back into the land to prepare
them for a greater blessing that shall be to all the nations.
Ezekiel 36:16-23 16
The word of the LORD came to me: 17 "Son of man, when
the house of Israel lived
in their own land, they defiled it by their ways and their deeds.
Their ways before me were like the uncleanness of a woman in her menstrual
impurity. 18 So I poured out my wrath upon them for the blood
that they had shed in the land, for the idols with which they had defiled
it. 19 I scattered them among the nations, and they were
dispersed through the countries. In accordance with their ways and their
deeds I judged them. 20 But when they came to the nations,
wherever they came, they profaned my holy name, in that people said of
them, 'These are the people of the LORD, and yet they had to go out of his
land.' 21 But I had concern for my holy name, which the house of
Israel had
profaned among the nations to which they came. 22 "Therefore
say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your
sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my
holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came.
23 And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has
been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them.
And the nations will know that I am the LORD, declares the Lord GOD, when
through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes.
Ezekiel 36:24-35 24
I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the
countries and bring you into your own land. 25 I will
sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse
you. 26 And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will
put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and
give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within
you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
28 You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and
you shall be my people, and I will be your God. 29 And I
will deliver you from all your uncleannesses. And
I will summon the grain and make it abundant and lay no famine upon you. 30
I will make the fruit of the tree and the increase of the field
abundant, that you may never again suffer the disgrace of famine among the
nations. 31 Then you will remember your evil ways, and your
deeds that were not good, and you will loathe yourselves for your
iniquities and your abominations. 32 It is not for your sake
that I will act, declares the Lord GOD; let that be known to you. Be
ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel. 33
"Thus says the Lord GOD: On the day that I cleanse you from all
your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be
inhabited, and the waste places shall be rebuilt. 34 And the
land that was desolate shall be tilled, instead of being the desolation
that it was in the sight of all who passed by. 35 And they will
say, 'This land that was desolate has become like the garden of Eden,
and the waste and desolate and ruined cities are now fortified and
inhabited.'
God promised to give his people new
hearts, hearts of flesh, when he put His Spirit within his house
family. First, an Israelite must keep the covenant with God made with
both Adam and Moses and the people of Israel at Sinai. This One must first complete the
House-Laws had given to his family, receive the Spirit of God himself, so
that He might pour this Spirit out and make a New House People!
The One who would one
day come would be the Seed of Abraham, the promise God made to Abraham when
he covenanted with him in Genesis 15. This One would also be the One
True Israelite who covenanted with God through Moses that he would keep the
House-Laws (cf. Deut. 29), and this One would come as the Great and
Gracious Keeper of the Covenant who would represent his family in his life,
death, resurrection and ascension to the right hand of the LORD. This
One who was circumcised on the 8th day, was baptized on behalf of his
family with the baptism of John, kept God's House-Laws perfectly all his
life in order to fulfill the Law and the Prophets, and was baptized with
the greater baptism of fire on the cross so that he might pour out his
Spirit upon His family (Luke 12:50), not in order to consume them, but in
order to purify them, and thus "make them holy as HE IS HOLY!
This message that he brought concerning Himself as the Covenant Keeper
brought great division within the House and opened up the Household of God
for many who were outside, far from the covenant promises, who would
believe in him by faith!
To be
continued....
Word of Encouragement
Vol. IV, Issue 33
God's Covenant House:
A Sketch of God's Construction Project, Pt. 9
Today, I wanted to send
some definitions and quotations on God's
Covenant from Christian writers. The next study in this
series on 'God's Covenant House' will be entitled: 'Christ, the Climax
of the Covenant and the Identity of His Covenant Family'. I
trust these quotations will help develop our understanding of God's
covenant house. There will also be a short bibliography for further
study.
O. Palmer
Robertson
"What is a
covenant? Asking for a definition of 'covenant' is something like asking
for a definition of 'mother'. A mother may be defined as the person
who brought you into the world. That definition may be correct
formally. But who would be satisfied with such a definition?
Scripture clearly testifies to the significance of the divine
covenants. God has entered repeatedly into covenantal relationships
with particular men [Noah, Abraham, Israel, David]...Israel's prophets anticipated the coming of the days of
the 'new' covenant (Jer. 31:31), and Christ
himself spoke of the last supper in covenantal language (Luke 22:20)....
....What then is a
covenant? How do you define the covenantal relation of God to his
people? A covenant is a bond in blood sovereignly
administered. When God enters into a covenantal
relationship with men, he sovereignly institutes
a life-and-death bond. A covenant is a bond in blood, or a bond of life and
death, sovereignly administered." -
Robertson, 'The Christ of the Covenants', pages 3-4, P&R
Publishing, 1980.
My notes: What Dr.
Robertson is teaching us is that a covenant is made up of at least three
aspects:
(1) A bond- A
bond is a transaction and commitment in a relationship between two or
more. This bond is similar to modern day covenants when we move into
certain neighborhoods, they have 'covenants' between the people in the
neighborhood to do (or not do) certain things. You sign, or bond
yourself to keep this covenant with your neighbors as your neighbors commit
themselves to you. The difference in the divine covenants is, of course,
that you have a unique situation, because you have the Living God
"stooping" to make a covenant with man, so there are not
"equal terms", no mere "contracts" between individuals.
(2) A bond in
blood- This means that the bond, or
commitment that is made is a matter of life and death, blessings or
curses. There is a covenant ceremony where blood is used (cf. Gen.
15; Exodus 24:1-6), showing that if the covenant is not kept there will be
life or death consequences (read: Deuteronomy 27-28). As Dr. Robertson
said above, God "sovereignly
institutes a life-and-death bond".
(3) A bond in blood sovereignly administered- All the
earthly covenants God makes with man is sovereignly
administered or carried out in light of the "eternal covenant"
made between the Father and the Son and Spirit from eternity past according
to Hebrews 13:20, 21.
Hebrews 13:20-21: Now
may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the
great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant,
equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that
which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory
forever and ever. Amen.
The earthly covenants
made with man build upon the eternal covenant as well as the covenant with
Noah and creation (Gen. 9) and God's promises to Abraham (Gen. 15).
There are differing administrations of God's covenant, but God administers
over them all as King. For instance, even with the covenants of
"works" or merits, such as with Adam who was told to be obedient
in light of all God had given him and created for him, and later with
Moses, when the Israelites were to obey all of the commands of God in light
of his grace from their redemption from Egypt, God is ruling and
administering over the covenants.
Meredith G. Kline
"A covenant is a
legal kind of arrangement, a formal disposition of a binding nature.
At the heart of a covenant is an act of commitment and the customary
oath-form of this commitment reveals the religious nature of the
transaction...In the case of divine-human covenants the divine
sanctioning is entailed in God's participation either as the one who
himself makes the commitment or as the divine witness of the human
commitment in his name and presence....
....There is a close
connection between divine covenant and divine kingdom. Viewed as
commitment transactions with their rituals, documents, and stipulated terms
and procedures, covenants function as administrative instruments of
God's kingly rule. Indeed, the connection is sometimes closer
than this. As we have observed, covenant in some passages denotes the
actual historical realization of the arrangement defined in the covenantal
stipulations and sanctions.
Covenant thus becomes a
particular administration of God's kingship, whether in the bestowal of his
holy kingdom as a royal grant on a special covenant people as their
peculiar inheritance or in the sovereign government of a temporal world
order whose benefits are common to all alike. It is in this sense
that covenant is used to designate the major divisions of covenant
theology." -Kline, 'Kingdom Prologue', pages 1-3, 1993 Meredith
Kline.
To be continued....
Word of Encouragement
Vol. IV, Issue
34
God's Covenant
House: A Sketch of God's Construction Project, Pt. 10
Christians, rejoice and
give thanks in your understanding of God's Covenant! We have One who
has come to be the climax and fulfillment of God's covenant promises. All of
the promises of God are "yes" and "amen" in Christ
Jesus. God promised a seed to the woman in Genesis 3:15, a Seed to Abraham, and throughout history God has been faithful to
his promises in Christ so that he would be our God and we would
be His people- - his covenant family! In 2 Corinthians 1:18-22,
the Apostle Paul assures the Corinthian Covenant family that God is
faithful throughout all generations, he is faithful always to his people
and we as his people can trust his promises to us. No matter the
situation, no matter how much suffering, doubt, trial or tribulation (the
context of 2 Corinthians 1), we can be assured
that God accomplishes his personal promises to his covenant family in
Christ. Paul teaches the Corinthians in these verses, that just as
God has been faithful in the past, he has established them strong, and has
given them a down payment, a seal on us by the Spirit, Who is the guarantee
of our future family life being lived in the presence of God in the New
Heavens and the New Earth.
2
Corinthians 1:18-22: 18 As surely as God is faithful,
our word to you has not been Yes and No. 19 For the Son of God,
Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Silvanus
and Timothy and I, was not Yes and No, but in him it is always Yes. 20
For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it
is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory. 21 And
it is God who establishes us with you in Christ, and has anointed us, 22
and who has also put his seal on us and given us his Spirit in our
hearts as a guarantee.
God is extremely
faithful to his people, and we also can "utter our
amen to God for his glory" as Paul says in verse 20. What
Paul means is that in believing the promises of God and praising him for
them, we shout "Amen"- -"Truly, Truly" as we live our
lives each day in light of this. He has provided in Christ a
once-and-for-all sacrifice for our sins, for all of our
covenant-breaking, and took upon himself our sins and transgressions,
suffering our punishments, so that we might be his family and live within
his covenant family (Isaiah 53). Whatever your need or problem today
brother or sister in Christ, know that your God is faithful. I have said it
before, but it is worth repeating over and over! God is more faithful to
us, his people than we will ever be to him. He is the all faithful One,
whose faithfulness never fails us! Notice how the Psalmist in
Psalm 100 exults in God's covenant faithfulness to his family (also read
his covenant faithfulness recalled in history in Psalm 78). In Psalm
100:5, you could translate the term "steadfast love" as
"covenantal love":
Psalm
100:1-5: A PSALM FOR GIVING THANKS. Make a joyful noise to the
LORD, all the earth! 2 Serve the LORD with gladness! Come into
his presence with singing! 3 Know that the LORD, he is God! It
is he who made us, and we are his; we are his
people, and the sheep of his pasture. 4 Enter his gates with
thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him; bless his
name! 5 For the LORD is good; his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.
Think about what God
has said to us, done for us, and shown to us in Jesus Christ, our Covenant
Head! Christ told us all
of the promises of God in the Old Covenant had pointed to him. He
said to us that we should never fear and always know that we are not alone
because he will never leave us nor forsake us. He lived a perfect
life of Law-fulfilling and Covenant-Keeping for Law-breakers and
Covenant-breakers. After Christ had lived for us as the covenant head
of his family, he laid down his life for all covenant breakers. Christ
then gave to his people the Lord's supper to be eaten by his people, which he calls the "New Covenant in his
blood". This "New Covenant" is so much better than the Old Covenant
because of the Person and Head of the Covenant being Christ, but also
because the glory of the New Covenant is so much more "glorious"
(2 Cor. 3:7-18)! God wanted to show his
love for us in Christ by not only saying words of promise to us, doing for
us what we could not do, he also wanted to show us his love in the Lord's
Supper and give this supper to his covenant family in Christ for help in
their journey to the New Heavens and the New Earth.
Luke
22:15-20 15 And he said to them, "I have earnestly
desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. 16 For I
tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God." 17 And he
took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said, "Take this, and
divide it among yourselves. 18 For I
tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until
the kingdom of God comes." 19 And he took bread, and when
he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, "This
is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." 20
And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, "This cup
that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.
As the people of God, we should rejoice that have the covenantal
privilege of partaking of the Lord's Supper (cf. Hebrews 6:4-6)! In
the early church after Jesus' ascension, this supper was called the
"Eucharist", which means 'Thanksgiving' in Greek. The
Lord's Supper, or Eucharist is our
covenant-family-thanksgiving-feast which we eat with, as well as feed upon
our Holy Lord by His Spirit. This holy supper is a memorial, a
remembrance of his death until he comes, but it is so much more.
What the signs signify (the broken body and shed blood of Christ's death on
behalf of Covenant-breakers and sinners), really, although spiritually
communicate to us by Christ's Spirit what they signify. That means
that this Lords' Supper, Eucharist or family thanksgiving feast not only
shows forth the blood shed because of covenant disobedience and curses; it
not only shows forth the body broken for sinners; it is a means by which
the Spirit of God communicates the covenantal grace of Christ to his
covenant family! When Christ completed his work for the LORD (John
17:5), earned the salvation of his people, he died, was resurrected and
ascended to the right hand of the Father. There he "sat
down" (Hebrews 10:4ff), having made a once-and-for-all sacrifice for
sin. There was no more need of a sacrifice
and the covenant demands of the Law had fully been met in Christ.
Since Christ is at the right
hand of the throne of God as the glorified God-Man, he is spatially in
heavenly places, but he is near to us by his Spirit. In the Lords'
Supper, the Eucharist, or the covenant-family-thanksgiving-feast, he truly
communicates grace to us and we spiritually, yet really and truly, are
raised up to be with Christ so as to feed upon his body and blood (John
6). You could think of this as a Holy-Spiritual
ascension to sup with Christ where the covenant family in Christ benefits
by faith as His grace is communicated to our lives. When we
partake of the Lord's Supper as the Covenant Community in Christ, we are
not merely to remember what the Lord has done in the past, but we
are presently participating by His Spirit in what HE IS DOING as he
uses the bread and wine to communicate His grace to us. Everything that
Christ earned for us in his Covenant-Keeping Life is communicated to us,
really and truly, so that we might grow in Christ and persevere in the
Christian life.
This New Covenant Community in Christ is a family made up of both Jews and
Gentiles, every people, language, nation and tribe is represented by our
Covenant-Keeping Savior (His body was broken so that he might heal and
unify all the people of the world who believe). We have everything we could
possible need because we are united by faith to Christ our covenant
head! There is nothing we should fear, nowhere in this world we should feel out of place, and no despair or sin
should fill our hearts, because we are united by Christ's Spirit to the Living
Christ, who is our Covenant-Keeper. Let us give thanks to the LORD
for his covenant faithfulness and love endures throughout each generation.
To be
continued....
Word of Encouragement
Vol. IV, Issue
35
God's Covenant
House: A Sketch of God's Construction Project, Pt. 11
Christ the
Climax of the Covenant and the Identity of His Covenant Family
Introduction: Today we will continue to look at the ministry of
Christ as the climax and fulfillment of God's covenant promises, as well as
the identity of His covenant family in this world today. What should
a covenant community look like today because of what God has said to us,
done for us, and shown to us by His grace? Let's first compare the
ministry of Moses, which was a glorious ministry, with the surpassing and
more permanent ministry of Jesus as covenant head of his family.
If you will recall from
the first two parts of our study, we considered Hebrews 3:1-6 that speaks
to us of "one covenant house" that God has been constructing
throughout redemptive-history. The one house of God's family had
Moses "within" the house to teach and communicate God's message
to the people, and the house had Jesus "over" the house as the
True and Ultimate Covenant-Head. We will begin today considering the
Apostle Paul's message in 2 Corinthians 3, where he compares the glory of
the Old Covenant with the glory of the New Covenant.
2 Corinthians 3:5 - 3:18: 5 Not that we are
sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our
sufficiency is from God, 6 who has made us competent to be
ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit.
For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. 7 Now if the ministry
of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the
Israelites could not gaze at Moses' face because of its glory, which was
being brought to an end, 8 will not the ministry of the Spirit
have even more glory? 9 For if there was glory in the
ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it
in glory. 10 Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has
come to have no glory at all, because of the glory that surpasses it.
11 For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much
more will what is permanent have glory. 12 Since we have
such a hope, we are very bold, 13 not like Moses, who would put
a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome
of what was being brought to an end. 14 But their minds were
hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil
remains unlifted, because only through Christ
is it taken away. 15 Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read
a veil lies over their hearts. 16 But when one turns to the
Lord, the veil is removed. 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and
where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And we
all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being
transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For
this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
The New Covenant is so much more
glorious than Moses for two main reasons:
(1) The New
Covenant is a more lasting, eternal covenant (Heb. 13:20, 21); whereas the Old Covenant, though glorious,
was "being brought to an end", and this reveals the
impermanence of it, as the above verses teach (2Cor. 3:7b, 11).
In the Book of Exodus, even as coming down the mountain at Sinai with
the covenant revealed in the Ten Commandments, the glory was already
passing or fading. Moses brought down the law to instruct the people in the
way of holiness. However, this external law "could not make those
righteous who drew near" because the Law is powerless to change.
In fact, Romans 8:1-4 says:
Romans 8:1-4: There is therefore now no condemnation for those
who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life has
set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For
God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By
sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he
condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous
requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to
the flesh but according to the Spirit.
The Old Covenant was a
covenant of the "letter", or outwardly revealed on tablets of
stone, but as the Prophet Jeremiah says, the New Covenant would be one
where God "puts his Law within" internally within his people, or
a Covenant of the Spirit (Jer. 31:33; cf. 2 Cor. 3:6; Romans 8:2). The New Covenant would be
a "Holy-Spiritual Covenant". As the prophet Ezekiel
promised the people of God in the Old Covenant, they would receive the
Spirit of God and be able to walk in God's Law as Romans 8:4 says: "...In
order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fulfilled in us,
who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit."
Ezekiel 36:25-27: 25 I will sprinkle clean water on
you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses,
and from all your idols I will cleanse you. 26 And I will
give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I
will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of
flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you
to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.
(2) Also, because of the
impermanent and preparatory nature of the Old Covenant, the glory was
greater in Jesus because he fulfilled all that the Old
Covenant pointed forward to in the future. The Old Covenant taught the
covenant family by God's grace in types and shadows, but God fulfilled all
of these in Christ as the fulfillment of the types and the reality of which
the shadows pointed to teach the covenant family. Notice
how the author of the Book of Hebrews speaks of the animal sacrifices that
were substitutes for sinners in the Old Covenant and the sacrifice of
Christ that was more excellent because it was the fulfillment of the
signs. Also, the author speaks of the Law being a "shadow of the
good things to come instead of the true form of these realities":
Hebrews 8:5-6: 5 [The sacrifices and gifts by
the High Priest] serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things.
For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God,
saying, "See that you make everything according to the pattern that
was shown you on the mountain." 6 But as it is, Christ
has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the
covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises.
Hebrews 10:1-3: For since the law has but a shadow of the
good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can
never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make
perfect those who draw near. 2 Otherwise, would they not have
ceased to be offered, since the worshipers, having once been cleansed,
would no longer have any consciousness of sin? 3 But in these
sacrifices there is a reminder of sin every year.
The glory of God revealed in the New Covenant is because our Mediator is
greater than Moses, because he can offer a better sacrifice than
Moses. As the Living God in flesh, he can offer a once-and-for-all
sacrifice for sinners, and he can undergo covenant curses on behalf of his
family (Deut. 27; cf. Gal. 3:13). In Galatians 3:13-14, notice the
need for a final sacrifice to be redeemed from the curse of the Law by
Christ so that the Gentiles (all of the world) might receive the promised
Spirit by faith.
Galatians
3:13-14: 13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the
law by becoming a curse for us- for it is written, "Cursed is
everyone who is hanged on a tree"- 14 so that in Christ
Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might
receive the promised Spirit through faith.
Christ is the One
who fulfills the covenant, by fulfilling the Law and the Prophets. Christ's
sacrifice of which the Old Covenant
sacrifices pointed forward, was a better sacrifice because it was
once-and-for-all on behalf of sin (Heb. 10:4ff). Christ's sacrifice was the
shed blood of God for the remission of sins (Acts 20:28).
It is vitally important to relate the Old Covenant Law and the New Covenant
Spirit together in these passages discussed above. We
should understand that the New Covenant is the fulfillment of the
eternal covenant, and the Spirit of God, the Author of Moses's Law revealed
in the Old Covenant, NOW lives within God's covenant people. Because Christ
has fulfilled the Law and the Prophets, he has ascended to the right hand
of God, and received the promised Holy Spirit from the Father (Acts 2:23ff;
cf. John 7:39).
Upon receiving the
promised Holy Spirit, he pours it out on his covenant people, so that he
could unify them, circumcise their hearts, and purify them to be Holy as
God is Holy. We should understand that as Christ came as Covenant
Head of His family, he lived the Law of God perfectly, underwent all of the
covenant curses, experiencing God's wrath, death, and separation from
God. He was raised because of his perfect covenant keeping, was
seated at God's right hand and received the Holy Spirit as a glorified
man. He received this Spirit so that he might pour it out on His
people. The fire of God has two purposes, it can consume and it can
purify. Christ sent the Holy Spirit to live within us, not to consume
us but to teach us to love and live God's Holy Law and to become pure like
Christ, the Covenant Head of the family.
Jesus underwent a baptism of fire on the cross when God's Holy Spirit was
poured out on him to undergo the full wrath of God because of covenant-breaking
sinners (Luke 7:50). He laid down his life on behalf of His people, so that they would
not undergo and experience God's wrath, but to experience peace with God
and eternal life with him. The baptism with the Spirit that God that we
receive as believers is the Spirit of purification (cf. Isaiah 11), who
makes us like Christ so that we might be holy and blameless when he returns
(Eph. 5:26-27).
This encourages us to better understand Philippians 1:6, that He who is
more committed to us in his covenantal faithfulness, will never stop His
Holy-Spiritual work of transformation in our hearts! We can be confident,
not in our own righteousness, or in our own striving toward God's favor,
but in resting in the reality of our union in Christ by His Spirit!
What he has begun to do in his covenant family, he will continue to do so
as to prepare us for the New Heavens and the New Earth, and we as his
covenant family will dwell in his presence forever. The covenant
family of God in Christ ought to be those who live by his grace as sons and
daughters of the Living God. We should be those who are ever looking
back to the completed covenant-keeping work of Christ on our behalf, while
ever keeping our eyes on the Founder/Author/Pioneer and Perfecter
of our Covenant Faith. We should remember as the Covenant Family in
Christ that we are seated with Christ in the heavenly places. We have
died with Christ, been raised with Christ in baptism. Take heart
and be strengthened and encouraged by our hope revealed to us
in Revelation 21:1-7! This is for all of those who are part of God's
Family, sons and daughters of the Living God, because of their
Covenant-Keeping Head and LORD, Jesus Christ! Allow this covenantal
identity penetrate your hearts and minds!
Revelation 21:1-7: Then I saw a new heaven and a
new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and
the sea was no more. 2 And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem,
coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her
husband. 3 And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,
"Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with
them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as
their God. 4 He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,
and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed
away." 5 And he who was seated on the throne said,
"Behold, I am making all things new." Also he said, "Write
this down, for these words are trustworthy and true." 6 And
he said to me, "It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the
beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the
water of life without payment. 7 The one who conquers will
have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son.
To be
continued....in Volume V
More on 'Christ the
Climax of the Covenant and the Identity of His Family'
End of Volume IV
Word of Encouragement
Vol. V, Issue 1
God's Covenant House:
A Sketch of God's Construction Project, Pt. 12
Christ the
Climax of the Covenant and the Identity of His Family
The covenant of God is one covenant made with Christ for His people.
Although the covenants God revealed in the Old Testament were earthly covenants
kept between God and man, they all were founded on the eternal covenant
between God the Father, God the Son and the God the Spirit. The Book
of Hebrews reveals to us this one eternal covenant between the Father, Son,
and the Spirit.
Notice in Hebrews
13:20-21 the God of peace who is the Holy LORD and initiator of the
eternal covenant, the justification of the Lord Jesus in His resurrection,
the blood that was shed in order to fulfill all of God's covenant promises
to his family, and the implicit teaching of the Holy Spirit who equips his
house-family with everything good in order to do God's will, through Jesus
Christ! What we learn from Hebrews 13:20, 21 is that all of the
promises of God to his people are completely trustworthy, that Jesus' blood
forgives and cleanses sinners, and that the Law that was Authored by the
Holy Spirit and written on tablets of stone ("everything good that you
may do his will"), has now been written in the hearts of those who
believe in the Jesus, the Head of the Covenant family!
Hebrews 13:20-21: 20
Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord
Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal
covenant, 21 equip you with everything good that you may do his
will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus
Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.
All of the earthly
covenants were revealed by God progressively in history to man, and so at
different times and in different ways God's promises were communicated to
his people (cf. Hebrews 1:1-2). Sometimes he revealed himself to
Mediator-family members such as Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Aaron and
Joshua, sometimes to a people, sometimes in external signs such as
circumcision and Passover, sometimes with external signs such as baptism
and the Lord's Supper.
At all times however,
God was the Covenant-Keeping, ever faithful God who was working all things
out for his glory and his family's good. He has built, and is continuing to
build one covenant house, appointed Christ as Covenant-Head over that
house, to show forth his grace to his covenant family within the
house. Therefore, when we look at the Old and the New Covenants
we should make distinctions between the two, but never separations, or
confusions. Rather, we should always see a progressive,
redemptive-historical development, revealed graciously by the One LORD and
King of the one Great Eternal Covenant. This is what the Apostle John
meant when he said, from his perspective of writing during the fullness of
the times when Christ had been resurrected and ascended to God's right
hand:
John 1:14-17: 14 And the
Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as
of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15 ( John bore witness about him, and cried out, "This
was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me ranks before me, because he
was before me.'")
16 And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon
grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth
came through Jesus Christ.
We never want to place a
tension between the Old and the New Covenants. There is progressive
movement forward to Christ throughout redemptive-history, from Moses to
Christ, yet there is always a supplementing
of what went before, not a supplanting. There
has always been One LORD, one faith, and one baptism, one God and Father of
all of his covenant family (more about the baptism part in a later
study). The Apostle Paul says in Ephesians writing during the
fullness of times after the resurrection and ascension of the Lord Christ:
Ephesians 4:4-6 :4 There is
one body and one Spirit- just as you were called to the one hope that
belongs to your call- 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, 6
one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.
We should never forget
that Moses was "within the house" as God's servant, Christ was
"over the house" as the Son. Again, the teaching is that
throughout redemptive-history, there was ONE construction project of God to
build his covenant house-family. You could think about the Old and
New Covenants in terms of a two-story house if you will. Both stories
of the house are founded upon the Person and Work of the Son of God for the
eternal salvation of his house-people. The upward building of the
covenant house-family illustrates our vertical, or
upward worship of the One True God and Father of his house-family.
The upward building of the two stories, illustrates that there is one
covenant house, within which are two stories, Moses and Christ.
Even in Jeremiah's
prophecy, as he writes from the perspective of the "middle point of
redemptive-history" and as a covenantal messenger-prophet, he sees a supplementing
of God's revelation to be revealed in the New Covenant. He does not
place a tension between the Old and New Covenants, rather he points the
house-family of God to the future when the Mosaic, or Old Covenant will
come to true fulfillment. He points our attention to the fulfillment of
the Law and the Prophets, or in other words, he points us to the
supplemental character of the development of God's covenant in
redemptive-history, rather than to a supplanting of the Old.
Jeremiah's prophecy
teaches us that what was revealed to God's house-family in the Law (or the
"house-laws", "tutor of the family", or
"house-rules") will come to true and full realization
in the New Covenant. You could say that at the time of Moses, the
house-family was a family "underage" and thus the reason for the Law
as Moses's "tutor" within the house
(cf. Gal. 3:25). This
is also why it was so important for Jesus to say that I have NOT come to
abolish (supplant) the Law and the Prophets, but to FULFILL them (Matt. 5:17-20). Look at Jeremiah's prophecy:
Jeremiah 31:31-40: 31
"Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a
new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32
not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took
them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that
they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD.
Notice in Jeremiah
31:31-32, Jeremiah declares that the Old Covenant was broken and there will
be a difference between the Old and New Covenants, but the differences will
not be a change, but a realization of what the Old Covenant represented in
history. The Law is the same, the God who
reveals himself to his house-family is the same. He is the Lord God
of salvation, who redeems his people in both the Old and New covenants and the declares himself the Lord and King of the Covenant
House.
33 But this is the
covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,
declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on
their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34
And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother,
saying, 'Know the LORD,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them
to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and
I will remember their sin no more."
The great news of
Jeremiah 31:33-34 is that what the Law could not do in that it was weakened
by the flesh, God did in sending his Son in the likeness of human flesh, so
that he could send us the Spirit of adoption, and write the Law upon our
hearts (cf. Romans 8:3-24). The Law was a republication of what God
had required Adam to do in the garden; it was a revelation of the eternal
covenant between the Father and the Son and the Spirit. The New
Covenant would be a fulfillment, the climax and full goal or end of the
Law: to make a house-family holy and righteous, like God so that this
house-family might fully be his people, not merely in name, but in likeness
(cf. Col. 3:5-10). The end of the Law in Christ for all who believe
(Romans 10:4), is the realization of what God has purposed and covenanted
with his son to do from the foundation of the earth for his
house-family (Ephesians 1:4-13; cf. Rom. 8:3ff).
God revealed himself in
Jeremiah's promise of the New Covenant as the One who will place the Law
within, writing it on his children's hearts, and they shall have full
knowledge of him, themselves, and they shall truly be His people, his
children once and for all (there are a great deal of insights to be
compared from these verses and Romans 8). Additionally, because of
the blood of the eternal covenant, shed by the gracious Covenant-keeper for
his house-family, God will forgive our sins, and will remember them no more
because we are united to the Son of God by faith.
As the people of God's
house-family, let us praise our Lord and Father, who has committed himself
to us in covenantal faithfulness since eternity past. If you ever
think of yourself as insignificant in this world; if you ever think that
there is something your God and Father cannot do; if you ever come to place
where you think a particular sin has overcome you; if you live many days in
discomfort, discouragement, and defeat; if you think lowly of yourself, and
cannot raise your chin up to look another person in the eyes because of
your fear of them; if you are one who feels unloved; if you are facing a
possible future of loneliness, because God has yet to grant you a
spouse…
…if you are facing
a possible future of sickness and your only hope is death; if you are
wondering at the end of each work day, what has my work to do with anything
significant or important; if you're a pastor of a church and
wondering why the congregation remains so small because you remain faithful
to God's truth; if you have been betrayed by a friend, or family member and
you wonder who upon this earth you can trust; if you carry shame for a sin
you have committed in private and now you're reminded of this sin
constantly by the consequences that followed your act; if you wonder why
God has gifted you in such a way, yet is not opening the doors for you to
pursue what you love, then know this because you are a member of God's
house-family:
God looked upon
you from an eternal scope and within this great and sovereign lens he saw
your great need of a Savior. He took care of your great need of a
Covenant-keeper, the lovely and living Lord Jesus Christ, who kept
God's House-Rules, and fully kept God's Covenant requirements so that you
might be his child and avoid his coming wrath for covenant disobedience!
If God looked upon you
from eternity past as Ephesians 1:4ff teaches to us, how much more does he
know where you are at this moment in your life, your situations, your difficulties. You have been united to His
Covenant-keeping Son, Jesus Christ, raised with him to be seated in the Heavenly Place with God. This is a Holy-Spiritual
foretaste of the day when you shall be in the presence of God, with
creation fully restored and renewed and your having a glorified body so
that you might dwell in his presence for eternity -- for all of the future
in total and divine bliss and security and holiness and joy! To God be the glory! No wonder after pondering this great
truth for most of his life, did the Apostle Paul come to the great
doxological praise in Romans 11, where he is caught up in
a Holy-Spiritual manner, to declare the wonder, absolute wonder,
majesty and greatness of our God and Father- - the Father of His
Covenant Family. Paul says:
Romans 11:29-36: 29 For
the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. 30 Just as
you were at one time disobedient to God but now have received mercy because
of their [the Jews] disobedience, 31 so they too have now
been disobedient in order that by the mercy shown to you [Gentiles] they
also may now receive mercy. 32 For God has consigned all to
disobedience, that he may have mercy on all.
33 Oh, the depth of
the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments
and how inscrutable his ways! 34 "For who has known the
mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?" 35
"Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?" 36
For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
Word of Encouragement
Vol. V, Issue 2
God's Covenant House:
A Sketch of God's Construction Project, Pt. 13
Christ the Climax of
the Covenant and the Identity of His Family
In our last study, we saw
how God has had his faithful and loving eye on his family from eternity
past. We learned how this should inform our present identity as a
covenant family in Christ! We have so much to be
grateful for in how God has made his grace known to his family
throughout all ages. His love and covenantal faithfulness never fails
us. Jesus even told us before he went to the right hand of the Father
in his ascension that all authority in heaven and earth belonged to him
as the glorified God-Man. In light of this sovereign authority at
God's right hand, he would never leave his covenant family, nor
forsake us, and that he would be with us until the end of this present
age when we shall enjoy the presence of God eternally as God's family in
the New Heavens and the New Earth (Matt. 28:18-20).
As Christ is Lord and
King over the House-Family of God, so he has given us heads of the
household here on earth. The House-Family of Jesus is a visible
community who are privileged to be partakers of his grace, hearers of his
Word, and those who wear the signs of his covenant promises. Christ,
the Head of the Family as representative of his House-Family gives to us
verbal words of promise in preaching, and visible signs that point to an
invisible reality that has taken place by His Spirit in our hearts!
Let's discuss further what this means to have covenant heads of households
and the implications for showing forth the visible signs of our
covenant-family identity.
From the beginning at
creation, Adam was a covenant head over his family and the families of the
earth (Acts 17:26). Noah was
covenant head over his family and the families of the earth, bringing forth
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with whom God renewed his covenant and made his
promises fresh to their generation. Throughout history, the head of the
family has always been the
covenant representative within the family. As representative, he is
required (among other things) to display obedience to God's word based on
his grace, to nurture and admonish his children in the same grace,
encouraging them to believe in the same God and his promises confessed by
the head of the family, and placing the external sign of the covenant
within that particular time period and administration of God's Covenant
House for all in his household, and particularly upon his children. Biblical
faith has always been family faith.
Since the House-Family
in Christ is one, so the head of the families in each administration of
God's covenant always represent the people under him (or her in light of
the New Covenant because there is neither male nor female in Christ.
This means that a single Christian woman would be the covenant head of her
home, cf. 1 Cor. 7). For example,
notice how Paul speaks of children being "holy" or "set
apart" because one of the parents is a believer in 1 Corinthians
7:14:
1 Corinthians 7:14 14
For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the
unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your
children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.
Paul does not mean that the children
are necessarily believers here when he calls them "holy".
What he does mean is that because they have a covenant head in the house,
they are "set apart" or "holy" unto the LORD. The
important principle in the Old Covenant as well as the New, is that
whenever the head of the family surrendered and submitted his household
rule to the Sovereign Lord and King of the Covenant, he did so on
behalf of all of his family (we will look at this in detail in the next
study). Remember from earlier studies how the covenant made with
Abraham was to his whole family: wife, slaves, and children. Abraham
on behalf of his entire family, surrendered and submitted to God in
behalf of the rest of his family
Genesis 17:9-14 9 And God
said to Abraham, "As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your
offspring after you throughout their generations. 10 This is my
covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after
you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. 11 You shall
be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of
the covenant between me and you. 12 He who is eight days old
among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations,
whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who
is not of your offspring, 13 both he who is born in your house
and he who is bought with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall
my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. 14 Any
uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin
shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant."
Later in
redemptive-history, as Israel stands poised to take the Promised Land, all of
the House of Israel from old to young agreed to keep the covenant God made
with them at Sinai, even if the young were too small to fully understand,
they were represented by the covenant family-heads. The heads of the
families were surrendering and submitting to God the LORD and King of
the covenant, to live as he had told them to live in the Law.
Notice Moses' words in Deuteronomy 29:9ff:
Deuteronomy 29:9-13 9
Therefore keep the words of this covenant and do them,
that you may prosper in all that you do. 10 "You are
standing today all of you before the LORD your God: the heads of your
tribes, your elders, and your officers, all the men of Israel, 11 your
little ones, your wives, and the sojourner who is in your camp, from the
one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water, 12 so
that you may enter into the sworn covenant of the LORD your God, which the
LORD your God is making with you today, 13 that he may
establish you today as his people, and that he may be your God, as he
promised you, and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to
Jacob.
Even Moses as Mediator
of God's people, before he was going to be the Head of God's House in the
Old Covenant, had to first get his own house in order. Moses had to
demonstrate his surrender and submission to God as covenant
representative of his family. Moses had not circumcised his own son
as God had commanded his house-family to do as an outward sign of his
promises to them (Gen. 17). As you will recall from earlier studies,
the circumcision represented visually the promise of God to Abraham to do
all that he said he would do. It symbolized a cutting away of the
foreskin, which was a reminder of the covenant God had cut with Abraham and
the being cut off from God that would result if the covenant was not kept
and fulfilled.
Moses was important as
mediator of God's House-Family in the Old Covenant, but it was extremely
important for him to be an obedient covenant head of his own house by
circumcising his son. Because Moses had not acted obediently, his
wife Zipporah did - - and circumcised their
son as God commanded his family to do. This is in the context when
God says to Moses that he will kill Pharaoh's firstborn son. God was
implying to Moses that his own son needed to have the covenant sign of his
blessing so as to be distinguished from those outside the household of God
such as Pharaoh and the Egyptians. In other words, in New Covenant
language, Moses' son was "holy" and "set apart" as the
Apostle Paul says in 1 Cor. 7, but he needed the
correct outward identification. In Exodus 4:22, God speaks to Moses
concerning this:
Exodus 4:22-26 22
Then you shall say to Pharaoh, 'Thus says the LORD, Israel is my
firstborn son, 23 and I say to you, "Let my son go that he
may serve me." If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your
firstborn son.'" 24 At a lodging place on the way the LORD
met him and sought to put him to death. 25 Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin
and touched Moses' feet with it and said, "Surely you are a bridegroom
of blood to me!" 26 So he let him alone. It was then that
she said, "A bridegroom of blood," because of the circumcision.
The implication of the
passage from Exodus 4:22-26 is that as parents have a
responsibility to nurture and admonish their children in the Word of the
LORD, so they have the same duty and privilege to place upon them the sign
of God's covenant (God's Visible Word) in order to set them apart
from the children of unbelievers, and thus set their own
household apart as unto the LORD (even if only one of the parents is a
Christian, cf. 1 Cor. 7).
At the Passover in
Exodus 12, Moses and the heads of the households placed blood over the door
in order that the angel of death would pass by. This is another example
of covenant household representation and may also help us to understand
Exodus 4:22ff a little better. The blood on the door was the only
thing setting the covenant family apart from the Egyptians, those
outside God's Covenant House. The sign on the door post represented
the blood shed as substitution for the covenant family; the circumcision
was the sign that represented the people of God being set apart and
"holy" unto him in a broader covenantal context. In the
Passover, the wife, servants and children would be protected, set apart
from death, because of the head of household's surrender and submission to
the LORD and King of the Covenant who was enacting curses against Egypt.
In the New Covenant, the
Apostle Paul appeals to parents as authority, covenant-heads of their
children to instruct their children in the nurture and admonition of the
LORD as their covenant heads (6:4); he encourages the children to
be represented by the parents, and so for them to be obedient to their covenant-head
parents as unto the LORD. He even encourages the children's
submissive behavior by reminding them of the promises of Sinai in the
Ten Commandments which again reminds us of the continuity of the Old
and New Covenants (6:2b; Col. 3:20; cf. Exodus 20:12).
Ephesians 6:1-4: 1 Children,
obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 "Honor
your father and mother" (this is the first commandment with a
promise), 3 "that it may go well with you and that you
may live long in the land." 4 Fathers, do not provoke your
children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of
the Lord.
Again, the important
principle to keep in mind in both the Old and the New Covenant is that Biblical
faith is family faith. God has always appointed the heads of the
individual households to represent his promises to his family and to the
world. In Acts 2:38 when Peter speaks of the great events that have happened in the
life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, he says "Repent and
be baptized every one of you for the forgiveness of sins" because this
is the promise for you and for your children [my
emphasis].
Acts 2:38-39 38 And
Peter said to them, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the
name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive
the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you
and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord
our God calls to himself."
Peter clarifies
something extremely important when speaking of covenant heads or
representatives of families. He says that the promise is for you and
your children, but reminds us that it is for everyone whom the Lord our
God calls to himself. Oftentimes, people think that because they
have an outward covenant sign upon them, then this means that they are
saved people.
Covenant privileges
of hearing the Word and having the sign of the covenant requires the
responsibility to believe what one has heard and seen in the covenant
sign by faith (cf. Hebrews
6:4-6).
The sign separates one
from the rest of the world in a visible manner. We must remember and
be warned by all of those who were part of the Old Covenant under Moses,
who heard the Word of God, who saw the Word and His promises in the
covenant signs, yet failed to believe.
The Book of Hebrews
reminds us of the great Old Covenant "tragedy" that can still
take place to a certain extent in the New Covenant for those who fail to
believe God's verbal and visible Word. Remember when you read
the Book of Hebrews to understand that one of the main purposes of the
book, if not the purpose, is to encourage mature faith and
perseverance in the light of persecution and suffering. The book is
addressed to a covenant community house church or congregation, not merely
to individuals. If you have read it in an individualistic way, then
you have probably been baffled with some of the teaching that seems to
suggest one can lose his salvation. The point of Hebrews is not to
teach that you can lose your salvation, but that covenant privileges imply
great responsibility to believe in the Christ of the Covenant Family!
Hebrews 3:14 - 4:2 14
For we share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original confidence firm
to the end. 15 As it is said, "Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts as in the
rebellion." 16 For who were those who heard and yet
rebelled? Was it not all those who left Egypt led
by Moses? 17 And with whom was he
provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies
fell in the wilderness? 18 And to whom did he swear that
they would not enter his rest, but to those who were disobedient?
19 So we see that they were unable to enter because
of unbelief. ESV Hebrews 4:1 Therefore, while the promise of
entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to
have failed to reach it. 2 For good news came to us just as to
them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were
not united by faith with those who listened.
In the next study, we
will look at how when the Lord Jesus comes in the fullness of time, whole
families devote themselves to the Lord, but it is the head of the houses
who makes the decision to surrender and submit to follow Christ as
household representative. This is the reason in the New
Testament, when the head of a household believes,
all of the household is baptized with the New Covenant sign. In John
4:53; Acts 10:2, 47ff; 11:14; 18:8; 2 Tim. 1:16; 4:19, these Scriptures
reveal the reality of covenant heads of households in surrendering and
submitting to the Lord and King of the Covenant family. We
shall look at each of these Scriptures together in the next
study.
I will end with the
hope of Jesus revealed to an earthly father because the Heavenly
Father would give his own Son so that this earthly father might have back
his own son "from the dead".
John 4:47-54 47 When
this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him
and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of
death. 48 So Jesus said to him, "Unless you see signs and
wonders you will not believe." 49 The official said to him,
"Sir, come down before my child dies." 50 Jesus said
to him, "Go; your son will live." The man believed the
word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way. 51 As he was
going down, his servants met him and told him that his son was recovering. 52
So he asked them the hour when he began to get better, and they said to
him, "Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him." 53
The father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, "Your
son will live." And he himself believed, and all
his household [emphasis mine]. 54 This was now
the second sign that Jesus did when he had come from Judea to Galilee.
To Be Continued...
Word of Encouragement
Vol. V, Issue 3
God's Covenant House: A Sketch of God's
Construction Project, Pt. 14
Christ the Climax of the Covenant and the
Identity of His Family
In this study we will look at how when the Lord Jesus
comes in the fullness of time, whole families devote themselves to the
Lord, but it is the head of the households who makes the decision to surrender
and submit to follow Christ as household representative. In other
words, the important principle in the Old Covenant as well as the New, is
that whenever the head of the family surrendered and submitted his
household rule to the Sovereign Lord and King of the Covenant, he
did so on behalf of all of his family.
This is the reason in the New Testament, when the head
of a household believes, all of the household is
baptized with the New Covenant sign (more about the different signs of the
covenant in a later study). Before we look at the New
Covenant Scriptures that help us to understand household faith, let us
go back to the "beginning covenant promise" to Abraham,
concerning the promise to Abraham including the "families of the
earth."
As we studied earlier, there is an Old Covenant
foundation for including households within the covenant. This
foundational Old Covenant promise to families is not in any way abrogated
in the New Covenant, but it does become clearer to us in Jesus
Christ. Just because the covenant, as well as the covenant signs were
given to households, this in no way means that all believed within the
household (take Isaac and Ishmael, or Jacob and Esau as two
examples). This is important to understand. In order to better
understand this, we must make a distinction between covenant and election
before we continue.
Covenant and Election
The covenant promises were made to the heads of
households who represented their entire households and placed the covenant
signs on the family members, but we should always remember that covenant is the context in which the
election of God takes place. In other words, just because
someone has the covenant privileges within a particular household where the
head of the household is a believer by faith, this does not mean that all
within the house are the elect of God. Read Genesis 12:3 and 28:14,
then compare these scriptures with Romans 9
to understand the full teaching of the relationship between covenant
and election.
Genesis 12:3 3 I
will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and
in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." Genesis 28:14 14
Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall
spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the
south, and in you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be
blessed.
Romans 9:3-16 3 For I could wish that I
myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers,
my kinsmen according to the flesh. 4 They are Israelites, and to
them belong the adoption, the glory, the
covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. 5 To
them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is
the Christ who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen. 6 But it
is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended
from Israel belong
to Israel, 7
and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring,
but "Through Isaac shall your offspring be named."
8 This means that it is
not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children
of the promise are counted as offspring. 9 For this is what the
promise said: "About this time next year I will return and Sarah shall
have a son." 10 And not only so, but also when Rebecca had
conceived children by one man, our forefather Isaac, 11 though
they were not yet born and had done nothing either good or bad- in order
that God's purpose of election might continue, not because of works but
because of his call- 12 she was told, "The older will serve
the younger." 13 As it is written, "Jacob I loved, but
Esau I hated." 14 What shall we say then? Is there
injustice on God's part? By no means! 15 For he says to Moses,
"I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on
whom I have compassion." 16 So
then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy.
Notice in
Romans 9, the Apostle Paul says that Israel "according to the
flesh" (natural descendants of Abraham) truly had covenant
privileges because adoption, glory, covenants, law, worship and promises
were given to them (9:4). In verse 8 Paul says that although the
covenant is made to heads of households, it is not the children of the
flesh (natural children) who are the children of God, but the children of
the promise (children who believe by faith) are counted as offspring (John
1:11-13; cf. 8:33-44). Even though the families take part in the
covenant promises and receive the covenant signs, they still have the responsibility to believe the
promises and what the signs represent. The author of the
Hebrews reminds us of this truth in Hebrews 4:1-3:
Hebrews 4:1-3 Therefore, while the promise of
entering his rest still stands, let us fear lest any of you should seem to
have failed to reach it. 2 For good news came to us just as to
them, but the message they heard did not benefit them, because they were
not united by faith with those who listened. 3 For we who have
believed enter that rest, as he has said, "As I swore in my wrath,
'They shall not enter my rest,'" although his works were finished from
the foundation of the world.
Belief in the
promises and what the signs represents ultimately
depend upon God's mercy, as Romans 9:15-16 teach us, but the covenant is
still given to families. The electing mercy of God may be
difficult for us to fully grasp, but it is what Scripture teaches (Eph.
1:4-13). No matter how difficult to understand from our human point
of view, as Christians we have a responsibility to submit to the teaching
and humbly ask God to help us to better understand the matter. One
way of trying to apprehend this, is for us to remember that this is God's
Covenant promises to His undeserving and sinful people, and none of us
really have the right to raise questions of justice and fairness with the
Gracious God Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth. In light of this,
we still want to understand how God's covenant was revealed to households
in both the Old and New Covenants.
Covenant Heads of Households in the New Covenant
We will look at the following Scriptures in the next
couple of studies: Acts 2:36-39; Acts
10-11; 16:10ff, and 1 Corinthians 1:14-16.
This is how we shall proceed in the next few studies: First, we shall
revisit Peter's Pentecost sermon and see the continuity between the Old and the New Covenants in
Christ. Secondly, we shall look at the discontinuity between
the Old and New Covenants by looking at the outward and external way
the signs of the New Covenant have changed. Finally, we will
summarize our study in a few points.
After Peter preaches his sermon on the Day of Pentecost
when Christ's Spirit is poured out on his New Covenant people, he teaches
the people the historical significance of the life, death, resurrection,
and ascension of Jesus as the consummation of all of God's covenant
promises (Acts 2:14-36). Notice how he does not change the way God's
covenant promises comes to his people, it is still through families.
Although Peter is speaking primarily to a Jewish audience, there are Gentile proselytes among those who hear him.
This means that Peter's message is ultimately for all families, both
"Abrahamites" and "Non-Abrahamites" who are part of God's covenant house
because of belief in the Living Christ (Gen. 17; Acts 10; cf. Eph. 2:10ff).
Read below:
Acts 2:36-39 36 Let all the house of Israel
therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this
Jesus whom you crucified." 37 Now when they heard this they
were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles,
"Brothers, what shall we do?" 38 And Peter said to
them, "Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus
Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of
the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your
children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls
to himself."
The promise is for those who heard (presumably adults if
they were celebrating the Feast of Pentecost and had traveled from
different parts of the world, cf. Acts 2:1-13), as well as for their children and for all who are far off
(this is the covenantal promise to heads of households and their families, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself
(this is the election principle within the covenant household). In
other words, Peter gives us a better understanding of the relationship
between the covenant promises to
families, and the election of some within the family by explaining that the covenant
promises, the verbal Word, and the visual Word of the signs of the covenant
come to families through the head of the household just as in the Old
Covenant, but this is for those within the family which the Lord our God
calls to himself.
This makes a distinction between our responsibility and
God's "responsibility". It is our responsibility to believe
Gods' verbal promises, take upon ourselves and our family the visual signs
of God's promises, it is God's
"responsibility" to use the verbal and visual Word to call some
within the family to himself. An additional and most important truth,
is that the New Covenant is no different than the Old Covenant insofar as
the way that God reveals himself to His Covenant family (the signs of the
covenant have changed, however, and we will look at this in a later study).
In Acts 11 and 16, there are two families who as one
family unit, receive God's promises as well as his
New Covenant signs because the head of the household believed (more about
the New Covenant signs changing later). The salvation revealed by God
through Peter to Cornelius was to be a message for Cornelius and his family (11:14).
Acts 11:13-17 13 And he told us how he
had seen the angel stand in his house and say, 'Send to Joppa and bring
Simon who is called Peter; 14 he will declare to you a message
by which you will be saved, you and all your household.' 15 As I
began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell on them just as on us at the
beginning. 16 And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he
said, 'John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy
Spirit.' 17 If then God gave the same gift to them as he gave to
us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could stand
in God's way?"
In Acts 16, the Apostle Paul speaks the message of Jesus
to Lydia and
she and her household
receive the sign of the New Covenant. This passage specifically tells
us that the Lord opened Lydia's
heart (v.14b), implying his sovereign working through God's Word.
Verse 15 says that she received the New Covenant sign of baptism and her household as well. It
does not specifically say whether all her family believed or not, rather
the implication is that she represented her family in her faith and all of
her family received the covenant sign of baptism in response.
Acts 16:13-15 13 And on the Sabbath
day we went outside the gate to the riverside, where we supposed there was
a place of prayer, and we sat down and spoke to the women who had come
together. 14 One who heard us was a woman named Lydia, from
the city of Thyatira, a
seller of purple goods, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her
heart to pay attention to what was said by Paul. 15 And after
she was baptized, and her household as well, she urged us, saying, "If
you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come to my house and
stay." And she prevailed upon us.
The Apostle
Paul in 1 Corinthians 1 speaks of baptizing the household of Stephanus with
the sign of the New Covenant. Again, there is no indication whether
the household of Stephanus were all believers, rather the focus is on the head of the
household in the phrase household of Stephanus.
1 Corinthians 1:14-16 14 I thank God that I
baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, 15 so that no one may say that you
were baptized in my name. 16 (I did baptize also the household
of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether
I baptized anyone else.)
At this point,
we should appreciate that there is a continuity
between the Old and New Covenants, particularly as we looked at Acts
2:38-39. The covenantal promises of God in Christ are to those who
believe and their children,
or their households. We might ask if the families indicated in Acts
10-11, 16, or 1 Corinthians 1 included small, or
young children. I don't see a problem with assuming this.
However, I
think the focus of our attention should be on the head of the household
representing the family as he (or she in the case of Lydia in Acts 16) believe and
represent their entire households (this would include infants and young
children if they had infants and young
children in the household). After the heads of the
households believe in all of the above Scriptures, the family, or the
household of the heads, do
indeed take part in the covenant by taking upon themselves the
New Covenant sign of baptism. The external, outward sign has
indeed changed from the Old Covenant to the New, however, the fact that
Biblical faith is family faith
is still a reality, and all the more so in Christ (Acts 2:38-39). In
the next study, we will consider the change of the external,
outward sign and the discontinuity of the Old and New Covenants.
To be continued...
Word of Encouragement
Vol. V, Issue 4
God's Covenant House: A Sketch of God's
Construction Project, Pt. 15
Christ the Climax of the Covenant and the
Identity of His Family
In our last study, we focused on the continuity between
the Old and New Covenants. Today, we shall focus on the discontinuity
between the two covenants. Even though there is a
continuity in household representation, there is a difference in the
actual covenant signs used to represent visually God's promises in the Old
and the New Covenants. The main reason is that as there are
differing historical periods, and different times the revelation of God's
grace in Christ is given to different people (Heb. 1:1-2), so there are
indeed different external signs given to the covenant family.
Today we want to look at the discontinuity
between the Old and New Covenants as revealed in the external and outward
signs of the covenant. One thing that causes confusion among the
people of God today is seeing a separation between the Old and New Covenants
because the external and outward signs of the covenant family have changed,
rather than seeing distinctions in the historical periods, and thus
distinctions in the way the covenant is revealed in outward and external
signs.
In the New Covenant in Christ,
the expansion, as well as the extension of the external and outward
covenant signs changes in 2 important ways: (1) First, the signs are
expansive or given to both men and women, because in the New Covenant
there is no longer male or female for those in Christ (Gal. 3:26-28).
(2) Second, the signs are extensive, or given to both Jew and Gentiles.
Since God revealed circumcision and the Passover meal as external signs of
the covenant family in Abraham (Jews), in the New Covenant he reveals
baptism and the Lord's Supper as external signs of the covenant family in
Christ (both Jews and Gentiles). Although the signs of circumcision and
baptism, Passover and the Lord's Supper are related, they should be
seen as different ways to show forth in external signs the covenant
family's participation in the covenant community. God gave the
covenant family different signs in particular periods of
history as he progressively revealed himself to his family
and ultimately brought his promises to fulfillment in Christ.
The signs, although distinct in the Old and New Covenants, actually
come together in Jesus Christ, and He is the One with whom we are united by
faith in the New Covenant.
The relationship between the outward and external signs
of circumcision and baptism came together in the circumcision and baptism
of the Son of God upon the cross. Jesus as a baby was
circumcised on the 8th day according to the Old Covenant way of showing
forth the sign of God's covenant promises. But the Old Covenant was
coming to an end in the ministry of John the Baptist. Jesus as
covenant representative of his people, lived
in the transition period between the ending of the Old Covenant and
the dawning of the New. Notice the finality of John's ministry as the
ministry that ends the Law and the Prophets (i.e. "the Old
Covenant"- cf. Luke 16:16).
Matthew 11:11-15 11 Truly, I say to you,
among those born of women there has arisen no one
greater than John the Baptist. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of
heaven is greater than he. 12 From the days of John the Baptist
until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence,
and the violent take it by force. 13 For all the Prophets and
the Law prophesied until John, 14 and if you are willing to accept
it, he is Elijah who is to come. 15 He who has ears to hear, let him hear.
John the Baptist was the "Elijah who was to
come" and according to Malachi 3-4, this "Elijah" would be
the forerunner to point to Messiah and turn the hearts of the children back
to their fathers. Jesus was baptized with John's baptism of
repentance on behalf of his people, not as a sinner, but as the
sinless covenant representative of his people for his work of covenant
fulfillment on their behalf. Upon completion of Jesus' ministry, he
undergoes the baptism on the cross (Luke 12:49ff), which was symbolized
both in the circumcision and baptism. Jesus was cut off from the
Father, he drank the cup of God's wrath (Luke 22:42), and was baptized with a
unique baptism that only he could endure (cf. Matt. 20:21ff), so that
he might receive the Holy Spirit and pour it out on His people.
Having been cut off from God on the cross because of covenant breakers and
sinners, he also drank deeply of God's wrath so that his people might not be
consumed. The Spirit of God can consume sinners, or it can purify
them (cf. Malachi 3:1-3).
Jesus stands in our place as the circumcised-baptized
man who fulfills all of the covenant expectations and promises of God's
family, so that his covenant family, those who believe, might not
experience God's wrath, but to undergo purification. John had said
that Jesus would baptize with the Holy Spirit and Fire. After
undergoing his trial by ordeal on the cross, Jesus rose victorious in
his resurrection, and the fire of the Spirit now purifies his
people rather than consuming them for covenant breaking. Thus, his
New Covenant family are to be baptized as a
representation of an inner circumcision done by the Spirit and not with the
"hands" of the Old Covenant. His New Covenant family are now to partake in the "cup" of
his baptism on the cross when Jesus's body was
broken and his blood was shed for sinners. In the one man Jesus
Christ, the circumcision and Passover came to fulfillment. Consider
the following verses carefully from the Apostle Paul, as he takes Old
Covenant signs and applies them to Jesus Christ. Notice how closely
he identifies circumcision and baptism with the covenant work of Jesus
Christ.
Colossians 2:9-15 9 For in him the
whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, 10 and you have been
filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. 11 In
him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by
putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, 12
having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with
him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the
dead. 13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together
with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling
the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he
set aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers
and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.
Paul teaches us in Colossians 2 above that in Jesus
Christ, we are circumcised by Christ through the Spirit of God. In
these verses, Paul brings the two outward and external signs of the Old and
New Covenant together in Christ. The discontinuity is the way the
covenant is represented in outward and external signs, but the same reality
and continuity is found in the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul also teaches
us in 1 Corinthians that Jesus is our "Passover". When we
compare this verse of Paul with Jesus' last words at the Last Supper
recorded in Luke, we find that the Old and New Covenants, while distinct
should never be separated in the One Covenant-Family-Representative, who is
Christ Jesus our Lord!
1 Corinthians 5:4-8 4 When you are assembled
in the name of the Lord Jesus and my spirit is present, with the power of
our Lord Jesus, 5 you are to deliver this man to Satan for the
destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the
Lord. 6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little
leaven leavens the whole lump? 7 Cleanse out the old leaven that
you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our
Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 8
Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the
leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and
truth.
Luke 22:13-20 13 And they went and found it
just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover. 14 And
when the hour came, he reclined at table, and the apostles with him. 15
And he said to them, "I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover
with you before I suffer. 16 For I tell you I will not eat it
until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God."
17 And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said,
"Take this, and divide it among yourselves. 18
For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine
until the kingdom of God comes." 19 And he took bread, and
when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, "This
is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me." 20
And likewise the cup after they had eaten, saying, "This cup that is
poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.
Oftentimes we allow these glorious truths for the
covenant-family to confuse and divide us as Jesus' people. One of the
great purposes of these external signs in the Old and the New Covenants is
to unify Christ's people as one. Yet we remain divided over our
understanding of these things. I imagine that one reason many of us
have a difficult time understanding the relationship between the Old and
New Covenants is because we have separated them from one another.
Rather than making distinctions and see the unity of the covenant
signs in Jesus Christ the Head of the Covenant, it is tempting to
separate them and focus merely on the discontinuities. When Jesus
comes in the fullness of the times, he comes to fulfill and undergo as
covenant-family representative all of the things the outward and external
signs signified in the Old Covenant. Jesus is our "bridge"
as it were to begin to understand the relationship between the Old and New
Covenants. We should remember a marriage principle from the creation
account when thinking of the distinctions between the Old and New Covenants:
"What God has joined together in
Christ let no man tear asunder, or divide!"
We should remember that we cannot put old wine and new
wineskins. According to Hebrews 3:1-6 there is one covenant
house-family who live either in the time of promise (Old Covenant) or
fulfillment (New Covenant). Therefore, we should expect a change in
the way the covenant-family sign is outwardly and externally
manifested. There has been a change in the way the covenant is
outwardly and externally administered by God, but this is because we have
such a better, clearer, more glorious covenant because of Christ, our
covenant-family representative. In the conclusion of our study, let
us meditate upon the truth revealed in Hebrews 9 in light of what we have
mentioned above.
Hebrews 9:13-28 13 For if the sprinkling of
defiled persons with the blood of goats and bulls and with the ashes of a
heifer sanctifies for the purification of the flesh, 14 how much
more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered
himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to
serve the living God. 15 Therefore he is the mediator of a new
covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance,
since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions
committed under the first covenant. 16 For where a will is
involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. 17
For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as
the one who made it is alive.
18 Therefore not even the
first covenant was inaugurated without blood. 19 For when every
commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he
took the blood of calves and goats, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop,
and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people, 20
saying, "This is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for
you." 21 And in the same way he sprinkled with the blood
both the tent and all the vessels used in worship. 22 Indeed,
under the law almost everything is purified with blood,
and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins. 23
Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified
with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices
than these. 24 For Christ has entered, not into holy places made
with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself,
now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. 25 Nor was
it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places
every year with blood not his own, 26 for then he would have had
to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he
has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the
sacrifice of himself. 27 And just as it is appointed for man to
die once, and after that comes judgment, 28 so Christ, having
been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not
to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.
As the covenant community, we have great promises of God
in Christ and we must believe the LORD our God who has been building a
Covenant-House-Family since the beginning of time in Adam. We have these
promises in outward and external signs because of God's grace to his
people. God was not satisfied with just verbally promising to keep
his word, he wanted to visually show us in baptism and the Lord's Supper
his great mercy and kindness revealed to all of those who believe by faith
alone in the Covenant-Representative how is Jesus. Throughout all
eternity and history, God had a plan for a people he had loved from the
foundation of the earth (Eph. 1:3-14), and in the fullness of times, he
accomplished the work and salvation of those whom he loved, his
house-family!
To be continued...
Word of Encouragement
Vol. V, Issue 5
God's Covenant House: A Sketch of God's
Construction Project, Pt. 16
In this study, I would like to answer a very good
question that was asked concerning the covenant and the signs of the
covenant. Then I would like to focus the last few studies on the
practical implications of the covenant for the family of God. Why
does God require heads of households to place covenant signs on children
who cannot understand the meaning of those signs? Why have those who
have a covenant-family understanding of the Bible baptize their
children? Shouldn't they wait on the children to make a profession of
their faith and then apply the sign? How can a baby receive Christ?
A baby cannot receive Christ, but the head of the
covenant family has always placed the sign of the covenant on the
babies throughout redemptive history as representatives of their
household. There is a relationship between the sign that God gives
graciously to his covenant family and what that sign signifies or means
according to God's teaching in the Bible. For instance, the covenant
sign of baptism is related to what it signifies by God's grace in
regeneration (Rom. 6:3ff). These two things are
extremely closely related by the Spirit of God, but we must always
remember that the sign of the covenant (baptism) and the thing signified
(regeneration in Christ) is still to be understood in relationship
to our Sovereign God who moves when and upon whom He will,
as John 3 teaches (he moves like the wind).
John 3:5-8 5 Jesus answered,
"Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the
Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6
That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of
the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, 'You
must be born again.' 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you
hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.
So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."
In light of this Scriptural reality, we must remember
that the Holy Spirit has the prerogative to move upon a person before, during, or after the
placing of the sign upon the covenant child. This means that the
Holy Spirit can regenerate sovereignly before the
baptism, during (if he pleases), or many years after -- or, in some cases,
NOT AT ALL. The covenant heads of households are called to be
obedient to God by placing the covenantal sign upon the child, then rely by faith upon the God who truly
regenerates! The same faith that offers up the child to God to have
the covenant sign placed upon the child is the same faith that trusts in
the Living God to apply what the sign represents to the child in His time
and in His way. The covenant sign of the benefits of Christ's work is
applied to the child by the head of the family, but the actual benefits of
Christ's work is applied by the Sovereign Spirit in the time of His
choosing. Notice how John speaks of how we are born by the will of
God in John 1:
John 1:10-13 10 He was in the world,
and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11
He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But
to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to
become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of
the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.
This passage in John speaks of the believing
and receiving that happens after a person's regeneration, or being united
to Jesus Christ by faith. Sometimes, people who are brought up in the
church as covenant children, do not remember their baptism, nor when
they were regenerated at a particular time, but they do remember when they first believed
upon, or trusted Jesus for their salvation. What brought them to this
point of resting and trusting by faith in Jesus was the nurture and
admonition of their parents in the faith, while the Holy Spirit was working
in their hearts what the sign of the covenant that was placed on them
signified -- regeneration. Rather than a focus on an individual
decision, it was more of an organic process, or growth like Jesus speaks of
in the parable of the Sower and the seeds (cf.
Matt. 13:1-23).
Being in the covenant community, as well as receiving the signs of the
covenant family, in no way makes a covenant child "safe and
sound" in Jesus as we have been reminded from the Book of
Hebrews in previous studies (Hebrews 6:4-6). The whole point of
the Book of Hebrews is a focus upon the importance of perseverance as a
covenant community, and a reminder that "covenant privileges in
hearing the word and having the external signs of the covenant, imply
covenant responsibilities to believe the word revealed both verbally in God's Word and visually in the external signs.
The covenant community continues through the representation of the covenant
heads of families. There is no room for individualism in the covenant
family. All are participators of the privileges of the Word and the
Signs of the Covenant, as well as being responsible to believe the Word and
Signs.
Sadly, when Jesus, the Climax of the Covenant came to his own covenant
community, they who were supposed to be awaiting him,
rejected him. In response, He left their household desolate (Mt. 13; 24),
and opened up the door for all those who would believe in Christ, the
Covenant-Head. When Christ came he laid down his life for a household, a
community, a family of people he calls "his sheep" (John 10), his
people, "those you have given to me" (John 17).
What grace that our Heavenly and Sovereign Father
might stoop to encourage our feeble faith by given us visible signs that we
can see and be reminded of his covenant promises to all those in his family
who believe in Jesus!
To be continued...
Next Study: The Practical Implications for the
Household of Faith
Word of Encouragement
Vol. V, Issue 6
God's Covenant House: A Sketch of God's
Construction Project, Pt. 17
Practical Implications for the Household of
Faith: A Visible Covenant Family
The covenant
family of God is a visible family of God. Those who meet to worship
the Living God are those who are related to one another in Christ. We have the
wonderful privilege of being called children
of God because we have been united to Jesus Christ the Covenant
Head of our family! (John 1:10, 11; Heb. 2:10-18; 1 John 3:1-3).
Although their is an invisible aspect
to Christ's covenant community, we must never forget that there is a
real and visible aspect and
presence of Christ's people who live their lives before the face of God and
before the world as salt and light.
The covenant
family is a covenant community committed to one another out of love for
Christ (1 Cor. 13:4-13). In our modern
world many people are very individualistic-minded. People do
"their thing" in "their way", looking out for
"number one" while forgetting those around them. Today
there is a focus more on individuals than on the families or groups of
which these individuals are a part. As Christians, we should pray
daily for others (Eph. 6:18-20), reminding ourselves that we are part of a
covenant family that reaches back in the past to Abraham, Isaac and
Jacob, and that reaches forward in the future to all of those who will
believe in Christ our covenant representative! We should not be
concerned merely with our own individual identity, but we should focus on
our covenant-community identity as the household of God. If by God's
grace, we could put more of our time, energy, and thoughts into the lives
of others in our covenant family as
we do our own lives, we could begin to understand our precious identity as
a member of the covenant family of Jesus Christ.
When we meet at
least once a week to worship and begin our week on the Lord's Day as a
covenant family, we visibly gather to hear the Living Word of God, partake
in the visible sacraments, pray together, and fellowship one with another
in order to meet, to encourage and to strengthen our family members in
the faith. The worship we give to God as a community is a foretaste
of what we shall do for eternity as a family in heaven (Rev. 4-5).
God provides food, strength, and his presence during our worship
to help us along our pilgrimage.
We should not
think of ourselves in terms of "Jesus and me" or "Me and my
Bible", but rather we should think of ourselves as one who has been
redeemed to belong to a covenant family because of Jesus, and He has given
to us His Word in order to promote perseverance as we travel as pioneers to
the New Heavens and the New Earth (Heb. 12:22ff). When pioneers in
the 19th century went westward, they did not go alone on their
travels because of all the dangers along their journey. Rather,
they went as a group of families committed to one another, helping one
another as they made their trek West to their new land. There is
safety, security, and success in numbers (cf. Eccl. 4:9-11). The
pioneers were a community dedicated to accomplishing one trip
together as a family. We truly need each other on this
pilgrimage! Notice how the author of the Hebrews explains the
importance of our community identity as the covenant family of God in
Hebrews 10:15-25:
Hebrews 10:15-25 15 And the Holy Spirit also
bears witness to us; for after saying, 16 "This is the
covenant that I will make with them after those days, declares the Lord: I
will put my laws on their hearts, and write them on their minds," 17
then he adds, "I will remember their sins and their lawless
deeds no more." 18 Where there is forgiveness of these,
there is no longer any offering for sin. 19 Therefore, brothers,
since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20
by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain,
that is, through his flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest
over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in
full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil
conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. 23 Let us hold
fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is
faithful. 24 And let us consider how to stir up one another to
love and good works, 25 not neglecting to meet together, as is
the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see
the Day drawing near.
The author of the Book of Hebrews encourages God's
covenant family to stir up one another
to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together...but encouraging
one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.
The author is saying that because of what God has done in our hearts and
minds as his covenant family (v.16), because of the forgiveness of our sins
(v. 17-18), and our privilege of being able to enter God's presence by
Jesus' precious blood (v. 19-22), let us come together visibly as a community to help one
another in their pilgrimage as a family. The Hebrews were undergoing
persecution and many had wanted to give up because of the difficulty and
pain. Therefore, some were not meeting together with one another out
of fear of being seen visibly as Christ's people. The author is
saying to all of the congregation that you have a
ministry and mission to one another: to stir one another up to love and
good works! The great need of these Christians was to be encouraged
on in their pilgrimage toward Heaven, and toward more love and obedience of
God in the midst of their pain.
Christians in every age need this same kind of
encouragement from one another! Some of us are undergoing persecution
because of Christ and therefore it is
a great sacrifice to meet visibly together as a covenant community.
Some of us are not
undergoing persecution and have the opportunity of going to worship
with our covenant family, yet are slothful or individualistic.
Whatever the reason for not worshipping as a visible covenant community,
whatever the sinful excuse may be, the author of Hebrews says we have a
duty because of who we are as a family member, because of who Christ has
made us by His grace, to help our brothers and sisters in the faith and to
meet with them so that we might encourage and strengthen them. It is
so easy for us all to discourage and find fault in others, and so difficult
for us to naturally encourage our family. It is so easy for us to
"go it alone", look out for oneself, and so difficult for us to
reach out to others. In any time period, the situations change, but
the sinful people of God do not.
Therefore, the author exhorts us all to be reminded of
our privileged place as Christ's covenant family, and to long to see the
growth and encouragement of others within our family. There is even
more of an urgency as we see the Day of his
returning drawing near. We must be diligent, by His grace and because
we are grateful for what he has done for us, to seek to stir up one another to love and good
works. It is hard being a united family. It is hard learning to
understand and fellowship with others who have different interests,
characteristics, personality, and quirks. Yet this covenant community
is the worshipping community of God and it is the family in which God comes
to transform so that we shall be like him and shall one day see him as he
is! Rejoice that God has not left us alone on our journey, but has provided
a covenant family with whom we can grow together in Christ-likeness until
our enthroned King and Savior returns to take us home with him forever
(John 141-6).
To be continued...
Word of Encouragement
Vol. V, Issue 7
God's Covenant House: A Sketch of God's
Construction Project, Pt. 18
Practical Implications for the Household of
Faith: A Visible Covenant Family
Every person in this world wants to belong, to be loved,
to be accepted. From the earliest time in our lives as children
when we first felt the pain of being rejected, we have all
desired to avoid this pain at all costs for the remainder of our
lives. All of us have a built-in desire for acceptance and we want to
belong to something greater than ourselves. Not only do we want to be
accepted and to belong, we also want to make a difference in this
world.
If there is one thing that I hear consistently
in young people and adults alike is that they want to matter in
this world. They want their lives to count in the big scheme of
things; they want to make a name for themselves that will be long
remembered after they are gone. But how can we truly belong and make
our lives count for something? We begin this long journey of what
many call the "meaningful" or "fulfilled" life by
finding our own identity. We seek our own identity so that then we
can find others of similar identity and be part of
a great fellowship with others so that we are not alone.
Many times in the persistent search for our
identity and our place in this world, we look to clubs,
organizations, certain magazines and publications that will
make the "mini-story" of our lives part of a greater
"meta-story". Some join various clubs such as the Kiwanis
club, some various women's clubs, and some join health clubs. Some
join academic organizations, and some strive for some great and noble cause
in this world in order to belong, to be accepted, and to make a name for
ourselves. In other words we think our lives quite insignificant so
we try to attach our name, ourselves to a greater group, a greater purpose,
a greater goal in order to be part of something larger and hopefully more
significant. Yet even after some of us accomplish all of this, we still
feel inwardly empty, alone, and rejected.
As the people of God who have looked to Jesus Christ by
faith, we have a great identity and should rejoice because we belong to the
Household of God! As a visible covenant family, God has loved and
accepted his people (from the foundation of the earth, Eph. 1:3-11) and
given us HIS NAME. He has graciously given his people a sense of
identity, a place of belonging, and an avenue to make a tremendous
difference throughout their lives in this world. He has joined us to
the most significant story in the history of man. He has joined us to
His story.
The story of God's love and acceptance of a undeserving people because of the merciful Person and
Work of Jesus Christ! How much more significant could our lives
possibly be?
Because we are Christ's family we have the potential by
his grace to make an incredible amount of eternal difference in this world
just by being who we already are in Christ. Jesus calls us
to let our lights shine before the dark world so that others will see our
good works and praise our Father Who is in heaven (Matt. 5:14)! Look
around you. Wherever you have been placed in this world, whatever
family, whatever school, whatever job, or any other "connections"
you have with other human beings (even over the Internet), you have a great
opportunity to make a huge difference in your world just by being part of
Christ's family.
We live by faith in this world, believing that God will
bless our encounters with others, the gracious and life-giving words we
speak to others, the encouragements we bring to other people. As the
old film 'It's A Wonderful Life' communicated quite well (even though it
had its share of theological problems!), we are all "George
Baileys" who want to fit in, who have great dreams of making a
difference, but we are limited or exiled in our minds to being just
"normal" and quite "insignificant" in this world.
However, just as George Bailey, we are just where we should be! We
have been placed where we are providentially for God's glory and our
good! In other words, just because of who
you are as Christ's family, wherever you are, you are there for a reason
and if
you were not where you are at this present time the
world as you know it would not be the same. According
to Acts 17:26, God has providentially placed you where you are in order for
God's covenant family to be visibly seen and to make a tremendous
difference in this world in which we live.
Acts 17:26-27 26 And he made from one man
every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having
determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, 27
that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way
toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us...
Our identity (who we are) as Christ's covenant
family, as well as our meaning in life (what we are to do in light of who
we are) should come from God's revelation to us in Holy Scripture. In
order to think upon this reality, let's look at the First Epistle of
Peter. In 1 Peter 1, Peter teaches us about the hope that is to come
in Jesus Christ for his family (1:3-9). He teaches us as his people
that this hope in Jesus was spoken about through the prophets long ago
showing how great this story is! (1:10-12). Then he goes on to teach
God's people how we are to be identified: "Be Holy as He is Holy"
(1:13-17), and encourages us to remember that we have been forgiven by
Christ's precious blood and born again by the imperishable Word of God that
will endure forever (1:18-25).
In chapter 2:1-10, Peter teaches Christ's people how we
are to grow up and mature into our identity as the family of the Living
God. Additionally, he teaches us that we do belong to God as the
family of his own choosing in Christ. No matter how out of place
God's people feel in this present age, we are to reflect upon the fact that
we have a greater identity, an unbelievable "meta-story"
to define all of our "mini-stories" as the people of
God. We should reflect upon this truth in Peter's epistle in order
that we might grasp how accepted and precious we are to the Living God!
1 Peter 2:1-10: 1 So put away all malice and all
deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. 2 Like newborn
infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up to
salvation- 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. 4
As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God
chosen and precious, 5 you yourselves like living stones are
being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer
spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
6 For it stands in
Scripture: "Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen
and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame." 7
So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe,
"The stone that the builders rejected has become the
cornerstone," 8 and "A stone of stumbling, and a rock
of offense." They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were
destined to do. 9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood,
a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the
excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous
light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God's
people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Peter teaches us that we are maturing in Christ as we
feed upon his Word and taste that he is good (2:2-3). He says that
Christ's covenant family members are chosen and precious and being built up
as a spiritual house of God. As his household people, we are to
obediently respond in gratitude to his accomplished work on our behalf (1
Pet. 1:18-25),
by offering spiritual sacrifices to God through Jesus as a holy
priesthood.
For the many times in this world, you may feel out of
place, there is hope in Jesus Christ! For the number of times you
have desired to belong to something greater than yourself and you have
longed to define your individual life by a greater "meta-story",
there is the hope of being a chosen and precious people of God. For
all of the rejections you have experienced in your life, before and after
you became a Christian, there is the heavenly acceptance of the Living
God! You have been chosen to be in his family since the foundation of
the world! How much more acceptance can you get than this? As
the Apostle Paul says in Romans 8:31: "If God be for you, who can be against you?"
Having become a spiritual house in Christ, a
holy priesthood of God, how could we receive any greater acceptance, any
greater meaning or fulfillment in this life or in the next, than being
called the people of God who are chosen and precious? It even gets
better than this! Peter goes on in verses 9-10 to describe us as a chosen
race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession.
Because you have trusted in Christ the covenant head, because you are
united to him by faith and have been made part of His Spiritual
House-Family, you are chosen, accepted, his own possession! The dear
words with which Peter uses to describe those in Christ's New Covenant
family are the same descriptions of Christ's Old Covenant family, revealing
yet another continuity between the Old and New Covenant and revealing the
unity of Christ's House-Family!
What defines us as God's people should motivate us to
live a certain way as God's House family in Christ.
Peter says that we are called to reflect God's character, we are called to
resemble our Heavenly Father by being holy as he is holy and to
"proclaim the excellencies of God" because he called us out of
darkness and into his marvelous light! At one time, we truly had a
need to belong, to join clubs and organizations with hopes that we could be
more than a mere individual, but now in Christ we truly are called God's
people! We once were not a people, but now we are God's people.
There are none who are insignificant in Christ's family,
for all of his family have been set apart, called, loved, accepted in the
beloved, chosen from the foundation of the earth! In all of your sins
and shortcomings, God looked upon you with gracious and merciful eyes of
compassion, united you by faith to Jesus Christ and is now committed to
transforming you into the glorious image of His Beloved Son! God
wants the people in his family to have a Christ-centered community identity
so that they will not have needs to belong, to be accepted, to long for the
wrong kind of love, or to fear being rejected!
He wants us to be who we are in Christ Jesus as his
family, reaching out to others selflessly as we compassionately look to
them through the eyes of faith and sincere love that Christ has granted to
us in our regeneration. He wants us to cease trying to make a name
for ourselves, but instead to proclaim in our lives and deeds the Name that
is above every name -- the Name of Jesus who is to be forever praised, and
is the only Name whereby men might be saved and delivered from a life of
trying to "fit in" and belong and to be loved in a world that is
passing away. The real and true love is the Love God has for his Son
and the love of God expressed to His Son in the giving to Him a
People, a Church, a Family, an inheritance, and one day a spotless and
pure Bride!
And that's a very SIGNIFICANT LIFE that when understood
will cause you to cry louder than George Bailey: "It IS
(indeed) A WONDERFUL LIFE!" And this is indeed
what Covenant Theology is all about!
End of God's Covenant House: A Sketch of God's
Construction Project
Bibliography for Further Reading on
God's Covenant
Westminster Confession
of Faith (specifically chapter 7, but
covenant is the "architectonic" principle of the entire
confession of faith according to B. B. Warfield)
Institutes of the Christian Religion- John
Calvin (specifically, Book II, chapter 10 and following)
Covenant and Creation-
William Dumbrell
Exodus [NIV Application
Commentary]- Pete Enns
Kingdom Prologue-
Meredith Kline
By Oath Consigned-
Meredith Kline
God's Design: A Focus on Old Testament Theology-
Elmer A. Martens
I Will Be Your God- T. M.
Moore
The Christ of the Covenants- O.
Palmer Robertson
Redemptive History and Biblical Interpretation:
Essays of G. Vos, Edited by Richard Gaffin
Grace and Glory- Geerhardus Vos
Biblical Theology- Geerhardus Vos
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