The Covenant

Our reading this morning comes from the book of Genesis chapter 17, and I'll be reading from verse one. When Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, I am God almighty. Walk before me and be blameless that I may make my covenant between me and you and may multiply you greatly. Then Abram fell on his face, and God said to him, behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be a 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. And God said to Abraham, as for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. And 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 your offspring, both he who is born in your house and he who was bought with your money shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant.

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. Thank you. And I'd like us to continue reading from the book of Hebrews, chapter 10 where we will read verses 19 to 25, which are our text for this morning. Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened up for us through the curtain, that is through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean of an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir one another to love and good works, 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. Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, last time I was here, I started a series with you on reformed distinctives. What is there about reformed theology that is sometimes unique or sometimes something we share with other churches, but what makes us well, identify as reformed. And if I said to you, one of these things is federal theology, you might say, what is that? Well, we live in a country called Australia, and we have a federal government because we had a federation.

What does that mean? Well, the word federal comes from the Latin word foedus, which means covenant, and it means that our various states have covenanted together to let us be one and work together. So that's what the word federal means. But if you don't like the word federal, just use the word covenantal.

Reformed theology is covenantal or federal. Now there are some people who say, oh, you reformed people, that federal theology, that covenantal theology is something invented by reformers in the sixteenth century, and it's something you can ignore. It's not really part of scripture. Well, how wrong can you be? Because from the very beginning of the Christian church, we see how theologians, how leaders ran with this covenant theology, and you find it especially in nearly all the epistles of Paul, and certainly you find it in the book of Hebrews.

But also outside the Bible, in early Christian literature, there is a so called epistle of Barnabas, which comes from the first century, and he explains in there that the covenant that God had made with the nation of Israel was now a covenant between God and the spiritual Israel, the Jews. Justin Martyr, second century, he said, we now enter the new covenant not by being physically circumcised, but by the spiritual circumcision of our heart. And Tertullian, also in the second century, says we can divide the Bible into two bits, the bit dealing with the old covenant, and he spoke Latin. So he said the old testamentum, and then there's the bit dealing with the new covenant or the new testamentum. And of course, we all use the word Old Testament, New Testament today, but probably forgot that it means covenant.

Now there were many words used for covenant in the early church, not only the word testament and covenant, but also in the Bible when you read the word promise or pact or oath, all of these stood for the covenant with God. The word oath is interesting because the Latin word for oath is the word sacramentum. So our sacraments are actually where we remember God's covenant. Baptism, which is of course how we enter the covenant, and the Lord's Supper where we celebrate how Christ gave us a new covenant by giving his blood to ratify the covenant. So strictly speaking, baptism and Lord's Supper are not covenants in themselves, but they are signs and seals of the covenant.

They point to the new covenant that we have in Christ. Now these two celebrations of baptism and Lord's Supper were central to the early worship of the church. You read about any early literature. It'll tell you how they came to celebrate the breaking bread together, how new people were entered through baptism, and how they centred on the word of God. And unfortunately, these sacraments began to be misunderstood and were no longer linked to the covenant.

And in fact, the Roman church added five more sacraments, sacraments like confession of sin to the priest, the holy orders, the last rites. Marriage was seen as a sacrament, and these were all additions which had nothing to do with the covenants, which was of course the point of the original two covenant feasts that we had in scripture, the two sacraments of baptism and Lord's Supper. Now the reformation did away with those five sacraments that were not taught by scripture and went back to the original two sacraments, and they again began to see it as a celebration of the covenant. And but here there was a difference between the Lutheran and Swiss reformers. Lutherans, on the whole, did not take aboard much covenant teaching. Mainly they said the Abrahamic covenant was for the Jewish people, and now we have Christ.

But in Switzerland and Lower Germany where the reformed reformation took place, Bullinger said this covenant is central, is a central organising principle for all theology. It's what brings all our beliefs into one bundle. In the covenant, we see clearly how there is a unity between the Old Testament and the New Testament, how the two come together. And so whether Luther spoke in terms of you either follow the law or the gospel, the reformed people like Bullinger and Zwingli said, no. We have the law and the gospel.

They are like two sides of a coin as we sing in the song, trust and obey. So the covenant then gave grounds also for the baptism of the children of believers. Now this wasn't an issue in the Lutheran reformation because nobody there questioned it. You will remember I said last time, Lutherans continued in the Roman tradition, except they threw out everything that was contrary to the word of God. The reformed went one step further and said, we will continue with everything that we can affirm by the word of God.

But then there were also Anabaptists who said, no. We throw out all that Roman stuff, and we start anew from scripture. And the Anabaptists went so far as to say, when we were baptised in the Roman church, it didn't count for anything, so we have to be baptised again in a true church. And then they went one step further and said, but we won't baptise children because there's no verse in the Bible which says you must baptise children. Well, the Anabaptists failed to recognise the importance of God's covenant that we will see in this message this morning.

And so we see that in the reformed churches, we continued with the baptism of infants because this was explained in covenant theology, and we do believe there's a lot of scriptural evidence besides evidence of baptism of households and so on, but I don't want to go into that question this morning. We want to study how the covenant helps us understand our salvation. And now it took me a while to find a text because there are so many passages in scripture that talk about the covenant. So I thought, which one shall I choose? And I thought, what I'll do is I'll give you a bit of a summary of how scripture deals with the covenant.

Now we read chapter 17 of Genesis this morning. We could have also read chapter 15 where there's the first mention of the covenant that God makes with Abram, and you will remember that was where Abram fell asleep, and then he had his vision of the smoking pot passing between the animals that had been divided in half. If you know the story, that was the old way in which people made covenants. They cut animals in half, and they walked between the halves and said, if we break the covenant, may we be cut up like these animals kind of thing. And then we read that Abraham believed God, and God counted that as righteousness.

Very important verse. And then we had chapter 17 that we read this morning where we see that circumcision was introduced as the sign and the seal of the covenant. And this included not only Abraham himself, but all future generations, all the offspring. And then we find that when Israel eventually ends up in Egypt in slavery, that it says that God remembers the covenant that he made with Abraham and his seed, and so he liberates Israel from Egypt. And then in Exodus chapter 20, we see that Israel is told they will enter into covenant and become a kingdom of priests.

And of course, then in the next chapter, we see how God comes down to earth on Mount Sinai in flames of fire, and he gives the law as the conditions for the old covenant. Now you have to keep reading because in Exodus 24, you then find how this covenant was ratified when Aaron offers up some bulls, and he takes the blood of the sacrifice, and he sprinkles it over the people and says, this is the blood of the covenant. So that became the sign of the covenant. Now I've got a question for you. Which Old Testament festival was instituted to remember that God made a covenant with Israel?

I'll give you a hint. This covenant took place fifty days after the Passover when they left Egypt. So what's the festival? Pentecost.

Pentecost means fifty days. And in the Pentecost, which was a feast of first fruits, it remembers how God said to Israel, you are my first fruit. You are my firstborn. And all the time, he'd been telling Pharaoh, let my firstborn go because they are my people. And Pharaoh said, no.

Finally, God said, if you won't let my firstborn go, I'll kill your firstborn, and that's of course what led to the exodus. Well, let me come to the book of Deuteronomy where Moses, at the end of the forty years in the wilderness, sets out all the blessings and the curses of the covenant. Now if you keep the covenant, these are your blessings. But if you don't keep the covenant, you can expect this to happen. In fact, if you continue to disregard the covenant, the land will spew you out.

You will leave Israel. You will go into exile. And well, then we get the history of Israel. From Joshua to Nehemiah, we have all those historical books, and they all show the ups and downs of how Israel sometimes kept the covenant, sometimes wandered away from the covenant. We see some highs under David, and you find a number of psalms where David praises the covenant.

King Josiah had a reformation when they rediscovered the book of Deuteronomy in the temple and said, hey. This is how we should keep the covenant of God. But we see that Israel sinks more and more into unbelief till finally, the prophets start warning Israel, if you don't pull up your socks, if you don't reform, you will go into exile. Read Isaiah 24, for example, where he gives this strong warning. And then finally, we see that the full curse of Deuteronomy is indeed enacted upon first Israel and then Judah as they are taken into exile.

But then the prophets begin a new prophecy. They prophesied that there will be a new covenant, one that they will be able to keep or rather will be kept for them. It will be a better covenant. You read about it, for example, in Isaiah 42. If you know Isaiah, you have from chapter 40 on, you have the servant speaking, and he believed that servant stands for Jesus Christ.

And then it says to the servant, I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness. I will take hold of your hand. I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for my people and a light to the Gentiles. In Isaiah 61, we see how the servant will bring in the poor and the weak into an everlasting covenant. And in Jeremiah 31:31, we read, the time is coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah written on their hearts, not written on tablets of stone.

And Ezekiel says much the same. Ezekiel 36:24 following, for I will take you out of the nations where they were in exile. I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back to your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean. I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from your idols, and I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

My friends, I wanna ask you, when did all this come true? When did the Spirit come in a new covenant way? And again, the answer is at Pentecost. Now it's very interesting that in the first century, if you read books like Josephus or some of the Jewish scholars at the time, when they described Pentecost, they said the fire of God came down on Mount Sinai and then split up into 70 flames, which gave the Ten Commandments in the 70 languages of the world. Now I don't know if that's scripture or I don't find any scripture, but that's what first century Jews believed.

So can you imagine when they were there and they saw these flames of fire on the heads of the apostles there, and these apostles were speaking in the languages of the world? They knew what was happening. This was a new Mount Sinai event. This was the new covenant, the covenant where God would put His Spirit on people. And so we see that indeed, there was the sprinkling of water to make people clean, the baptism of 3,000 souls.

And by the way, I don't wanna say sprinkling is the method of baptism. If you look at the book of Hebrews, it refers to sprinklings and washing and complete immersion. They're all called baptisms. I don't think that's important. But what we do see is that this indeed is a fulfillment of prophecy.

And then we see that Peter preaches at this occasion, and he says to the people, for the promise, and promise is another word for covenant, alright, throughout scripture. The covenant promise is for you and for your children. Notice children still continue in the covenant as before and to all who are afar off. Now that was new. It was not true in the Old Testament where it was just for Israel, but now all who are afar off are included.

And Peter, as he preached this in obedience to Old Testament scripture, he himself wasn't aware yet of what this was all gonna mean. He didn't realise what this meant until he was called to preach the gospel to Cornelius and then saw that in Cornelius' household, they had a little Pentecost too with speaking in tongues and so on. And he realised, wow. The Gentiles are also included. They are the ones who are from afar who are now entering into the covenant.

And so we see that a new church comes together, and they celebrate a new covenant by having Lord's Supper. They people enter the church through baptism, and Pentecost is the time when we move from the Old Testament to the New Testament. You know, strictly speaking, the four gospels are not really New Testament. They still occur in Old Testament times. They bring the new covenant, the New Testament.

Yes. But strictly speaking, and that's why when you try and understand some of these stories, remember it's still Old Testament when you read those stories. The New Testament didn't come until after Christ died, was resurrected, ascended into heaven, and then ten days later, meaning fifty days after His death, the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost. But then we see that in the rest of the New Testament, there's lots of teaching again about the covenant, especially in the writings of Paul.

Look at Romans 11, for example, where Paul says, you Gentiles, you enter the covenant the way that people graft branches into an olive tree. You take a wild olive, and you make a place for it in the healthy tree and stick it in, and then you graft. You become part of that tree so that you can bear fruit for God. And in Ephesians 2, he goes to show that there's now no difference between Jew and Gentile anymore because the wall of hostility has been broken down. Hang on.

What's that wall of hostility? Well, when archaeologists were digging up the temple, they came across this sign which said, Gentiles, do not pass this point on pain of death because that sign was fixed to a wall inside the temple where it separated the Gentiles from the Jews. Jews were allowed to enter the whole temple, but the Gentiles could only go into the outer court, and a wall separated them. And Paul said, now this wall is broken down. Jews and Gentiles can all come before God.

Then in 2 Corinthians 3, he says many unbelieving Jews fail to see that they're a new covenant. Why? Because they have a veil in front of their eyes, so they can't see the glory of God of the New Testament. And of course, he's referring to how Moses had to veil himself when he, after making that covenant on God's behalf, glowed with radiance. In Galatians 4, we have that allegory where he says, well, in a sense, you can say that the Old Testament was like Abram's wife, the servant Hagar that Abram had a child with.

That was like the Old Testament, but Sarah herself was like the New Testament. The Old Testament is Mount Sinai, but the New Testament is Mount Zion. And the Old Testament was a time of slavery, but the New Testament is a time of freedom. But it's especially in the book of Hebrews that we see the covenant fully explained. Chapters 7 to 9 begin to argue that Jesus was a superior priest to Melchizedek.

Melchizedek was a great priest, greater than well, any of the priesthood like Aaron because Abram sacrificed through Melchizedek and gave a tithe to Melchizedek, so he must have been greater than Abram and his offspring. And then he goes to show that the superior priest was Jesus Christ and that he became the guarantor of a superior covenant, a better covenant than what the Old Testament had. Now the question I have is, so what? What does all this mean for us? And sorry.

It's been a lot of teaching up to now, but I thought it would help for us to see the whole picture because it's a great way in which we see all of scripture come together in the theme of the covenant. And the author of Hebrews begins to answer the so what with the word therefore. Because you have a better priest, because you have a better covenant, therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Christ, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is through His flesh, and remember that curtain was torn from top to bottom, the curtain that separated the holy of holies. And since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart full of assurance of faith. With our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water, let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir one another up to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another all the more as you see the day.

That's the day of judgment drawing near. So what is this telling us? Because of this new covenant, we have access to God. The Jews never had that. The Jews could go as far as the temple.

They could even enter the inner court, but they could not enter the holy place. That was only for the priest. And certainly not the holy of holies, that was only entered once a year by the high priest. And now we are told the curtain that separated this holy of holies was torn in two because we are allowed to approach God. We have access to Him.

We can come to Him directly in prayer, although it's good still for us to pray in Jesus' name because he is the priest who made it possible. And we, who are baptised, can come to God in full confidence through the blood of Jesus Christ that cleansed us from all our sins so that in God's sight, we are like His son Christ, holy. When he sees us, he sees Christ. And that's why it says in verse 22, we have our hearts sprinkled clean and our bodies washed with clean water. And this shows that in God's sight, we are fully sanctified already, what we call definitive sanctification.

Sanctification is often spoken of as something we do every day. We keep improving and improving. Yes. And that's of course what we must do. But there is a sense in which we are already holy in God's sight through Christ, and it's this Christ who is the great high priest of this new covenant.

And remember, the priest is one who intercedes for his people. And that's why we pray in Christ's name because Christ is there at the throne of God. And every time the deceiver, Satan, comes up and said, look what he did. Look what she did. Christ had already taken care of it. It has been paid for, and this person is not guilty.

Christ offered up the perfect sacrifice, His body. And when he gave His body well, just before he gave His body, he instituted that feast of the Lord's Supper, and then he lifted up the wine and said, this is the blood of the new covenant. We celebrate the covenant that was opened by the blood of Christ. And so baptism and Lord's Supper remind us that we are God's covenant children sprinkled clean so that we can come into His presence. And every time Satan accuses us, we need not worry because Christ is representing us and pleading our case.

And so in Romans 8:34, we read, who is to condemn? Who can condemn us? No one. Christ Jesus is the one who died more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. And friends, if we sin, it's good that we are sorry, but we can also be thankful that we know already that that sin is forgiven, that Christ is interceding for us.

And that's why it says we can have full assurance of salvation, and that's something I hope to speak of, I think, once in the series, assurance of salvation and the richness of hope that we have in reformed theology. We have this assurance because we are God's covenant children, and our Father is not gonna abandon us. And His promise through us is that He will take care of us, and this assurance belongs to all those who profess Jesus as their saviour and know God as their father. They are the true children of Abraham, those who believe. And so that makes us part of God's family.

That's why we are brothers and sisters. And maybe you don't always realise what a privilege it is to have such a big family. I think in times of trouble, when our Christian friends draw near to us and help us and support us, that reminds us again what a great privilege it is to belong to a family like that. My wife and I have had the situation where we've always gone to new places, new countries with new languages and customs even. But you know, every time we came to the church, we felt at home.

Somehow, even where we couldn't understand the language, and we were squashed in with I don't know how many other believers in this huge church. We knew we were home, and the people treated us like one of them because we were one in Christ. And as fellow believers, we must encourage one another, stirring one another up to good works. How often have you gone to one of your brothers and sisters here and said, brother, sister, I think you would be good at that. You should consider doing this.

Maybe God called you to the ministry. Let's stir one another up because we are brothers and sisters in Christ. And lastly, it says we must hold fast to this profession without wavering. It is so important that we hold on to these truths. There are all kinds of ways in which we're being attacked today.

We've seen just recently in all this woke and Black Lives Matter and all the various lies that have come to us, not only in America, but here in Australia, the things about genders and everything like that. Let us hold fast to what we know to be true without wavering. Don't follow the ways of the world. And the best way to hold fast is by coming together like we are doing now, encouraging one another. And we are warned, don't neglect this.

Alright? And if you're online watching this, great to have you with us. But if you can join us here, I think we pray for you. We think of you. We'd love it if you could be here with us, especially as we see the day drawing near.

Now this of course is talking about the day of judgment, but there's another sense in which the day of our departure from this world is near to all of us. Well, the teaching of the covenant goes hand in hand with all the doctrines of grace that we love as reformed people. It enriches it by pointing to the unity, how it shows us how all God's actions come together on this central theme that God chose a people to love as His children, and He did everything that was needed to make this possible. There's no room for dispensationalism here, this kind of idea that God said, well, this didn't work. Let me try another plan.

No. This didn't work either. Let's have another plan. And finally, let them have some time out. The Jews will let them stew for a while, and I'll work with the Gentiles for a while for a dispensation until the Jews get jealous.

There's nothing like that in the Bible. There is just a one theme that comes together in this covenant structure, and it really enriches our understanding of God when we realise how God, through all eternity, has planned to make this reality. And of course, all of this points to Jesus Christ. In the old covenant, it pointed towards Him. In the new covenant, we see it points back to Him.

Christ is at the centre of all these events, and it's through Christ that all of this was accomplished that we became children of God, expressed in this promise that we know as God's covenant with us, that this great God wants to be our God. Isn't that wonderful? And He made this possible by sending His son to take our place where we fail so that we may have success in Him. Amen. Let us pray.

Father in heaven, we give you thanks for this great teaching, how you work with your people through a promise that we know is the covenant, how we see it throughout history enacted through all your saints, New Testament and Old Testament alike. We thank you, Lord, that where we as humans fail, both under the Old Testament, but also today, you have sent your son, Jesus, to fulfil the commandments and to bring us into a new life of promise with you. Thank you for the assurance that we can have in Him. Thank you that we may know that we belong to our Saviour and need not fear because you love us and care for us in Christ. Amen.