Covenant and Baptism: Parts 4 - 6


Introduction

The Bible is a story. The Bible is God’s story. It is a true story, and every verse of the story is true and is truth. But it is a story nonetheless. God’s story is His gift to us to reveal who He is, who we are, how we can know Him and please Him, and what the meaning of history is.

How should we think about God’s story? God’s story is certainly a covenantal story. That is our point in this sermon series. It is the story of the unfolding covenant of God that culminates in Jesus Christ. The covenant is an intimate relationship of love that ties people together in the bonds of promises for the other’s good. The special covenantal bond that God made with man is the core around which God’s story develops.

Douglas Jones in his little book Why and What: A Brief Introduction to Christianity shows how God’s story unfolds through three distinct episodes: creation, fall, and redemption. He writes that we can think of these three periods in terms of the covenant relationship gained, the covenant relationship lost, and the covenant relationship regained. Paradise gained, paradise lost, and paradise restored, “paradise” being defined as “a peaceful [covenant] relationship between God and humans.”

This entire story of creation, fall, and redemption filling the whole Bible is really found in microcosm in Genesis 1-3. Genesis 1-3 is creation-fall-redemption in small scope. It is the foundation, the seed bed for the rest of the story. When God first created all things, He created covenantally. So Genesis 1-2 is the story of covenantal creation. Then when Adam sinned, he lost the paradise of covenantal union with God. Genesis 3, then, is the story of a covenantal fall. And then Adam is immediately promised that paradise will be regained. The promise of redemption is a covenantal promise of redemption. So we see in Genesis 1-3 the story of covenantal creation, covenantal fall, and covenantal redemption.

Covenantal Creation

Many modern people want to ask scientific questions about the creation narrative. But I believe the Bible’s own way for explaining these chapters is covenantal creation. “Covenantal creation” refers to three things.

First, covenantal creation means that creation was by its very nature a covenantal act of God. From the beginning the world was created as His kingdom in covenant relation to Him.

Second, covenantal creation means that the account of creation was delivered in a covenantal context.  Moses was writing for the newly redeemed nation of Israel. Israel had been delivered in a wondrous, miraculous, dramatic way from Pharaoh and the Egyptians. Then when Israel went into the desert to be constituted as the people of Yahweh, they needed to know who this God was who delivered them. Genesis is the story of creation and beginnings as a covenantal prologue, an explanation of where God’s covenant, God’s covenant people, the covenantal God Himself came from.

Third, covenantal creation means that God’s creation of man in particular created a covenantal bond. Just as the ultimate understanding of the physical world must be covenantal, so our ultimate understanding of man, too, must be covenantal. Man is given a position of great authority in the world by God; it is clear that he is accountable to God as Lord. His position is one of covenanted responsibility.

Covenantal Fall

We have spent a good deal of time establishing that creation was a covenantal act of God that brought all of creation into a covenantal bond with God. Man is certainly included. Man was created in covenant with God. If that is the case, then we would expect to see the five points of covenantalism clearly displayed in Genesis 1-3, just as we saw them in Deuteronomy. And sure enough, we do.

The fall was a covenantal fall because it was a fall from the original status of covenantal love and favor bestowed on Adam and his race of divine image bearers.

The covenant was – and only can be –  a gift of love and grace. At the time of creation it was not redemptive grace, of course, for there was no sin at the beginning, but grace considered as "unmerited favor" does describe the original relationship. In the words of Michael Williams, the covenant was based on “the fatherly favor of God.” We should emphasize the graciousness and love that are the essential nature of the covenant.

What may be called the “legal element” in God’s covenant, the emphasis on obedience to God's commands, is not “legal” in the sense that obedience to law obtains merit and becomes the basis for blessing. Obedience to God's commands and sincere worship are simply the loving response of the creature to God's covenant love.

Understanding the fall this way magnifies how awful it truly was. A covenantal fall is disobedience to the terms of the covenantal relationship established by God. It is a favored son’s fall away from the love of a gracious Father God. It is a spurning of the grace and goodness of God. It is heinous and wicked because it is a covenantal fall. And note well: it is a fall that affects not Adam alone but all of Adam’s race. The fall of Adam was a fall of man. The fall of Adam was a fall of a covenantal head. Adam was given law from God not just for him to obey but for him to obey as the representative for the entire race.

Covenantal Redemption

Genesis 3:15 is mother of all redemptive promises. It is also called the protoevangelium.

There is great redemptive grace in this promise – here is a promise of victory for the man and woman coming in the context of a curse on the serpent. God promises conflict between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. The seed of the woman is the people of God, out of whom will come the Son who will conquer the serpent. But until then, there will be constant conflict between the two seeds. This is the promise that brings about the “antithesis.” There is conflict between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman both individually and also culturally.

God is graciously promising a Savior. He is mercifully promising to undo what Adam began with his sin. God will do this even through His own Son and the blood of His cross, as He had planned from before the creation of the world. God is beginning a gracious renewal of His covenant with Adam, with the gracious purpose of providing One who will fulfill what Adam failed to do.

So the old covenant given in the Garden is broken by Adam, but God graciously renews the covenant and gives man a new start. The original covenant with Adam is the basic covenant for the entire era from the creation until the incarnation of Christ. Paul points to this when he explains the whole history of the world in terms of two men--Adam and Christ. Adam was the head of the old covenant. Christ is the head of the new covenant. Adam was the vice-regent of God who failed and led his sons into sin. Christ is the vice-regent of God who keeps God's covenant and wins the blessing, both for Himself and for His seed (Is. 53:10-12).

With the coming of Christ, as promised in Gen 3:15, God granted a wholly new covenant, but not until the demands of the old covenant had been fulfilled in Jesus' death. Thus Jesus had to be born under the law and satisfy the demands of the law in order to save us from sin, ending the sacrificial system.

Now that the world has been renewed and man has been saved by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, man may inherit the glory originally intended by the Heavenly Father. In the person of Christ, a glorified man sits at the right hand of God ruling the world until “he has put all enemies under his feet.” Only then, when the church, His body, will have conquered all the nations through the preaching of the Gospel, may Jesus return in glory for final judgment.
 
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Introduction

God had promised that the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent would be in perpetual conflict (Genesis 3:15), and the story of Genesis 4 and 5 is the story of the development of these two bloodlines. At the beginning of Genesis 6 we have a picture of sin in full flower. The sons of God – these were the descendants of righteous Seth – began to intermarry with the daughters of men – these were the descendants of unrighteous Cain – and they multiplied on the earth – both biologically by procreation and spiritually in terms of wickedness. Here in Genesis 6 is a sinful, wicked civilization speeding toward judgment.

God acts in covenant faithfulness to mete out the promised curse on sin. God promises to utterly wipe man and every living creature from the earth. God purposes to exact judgment on creation because of the critical mass of sin that provoked the fury of the Creator.

But in the midst of condemnation God was merciful. He remembered His promised made to the woman in the Garden. God graciously remembered Noah and his family. As O. Palmer Robertson writes, “From among the mass of depraved humanity, God directs His grace toward one man and his family.” Noah, we read, found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

Parallels

The text intentionally draws out direct parallels between the covenant God had made with Adam in the Garden and the covenant God makes with Noah.

First, in God’s covenant with Noah, as with Adam, God covenants with all of creation.

Second, in God’s covenant with Noah, as with Adam, God’s covenant purpose centers on humanity in particular.

Third, in God’s covenant with Noah, as with Adam, God preserves man’s place as covenant representative.

Fourth, in God’s covenant with Noah, as with Adam, God covenants with family heads so that the whole family may receive the blessings of the covenant.

Paradoxes

We see important truths about the covenant by exploring its paradoxes. God seems often to delight in paradoxes in His Word. God’s covenant with Noah is no exception.

Paradox #1: Destruction and preservation.

In the middle of this downward spiral toward a totally corrupt culture, God is provoked to utterly destroy man and his world.

The lessons are clear: sin defiles everything it touches. When man loses his relationship with God, every other relationship goes wrong. When man loses the blessing of God, he himself becomes a curse on everything he touches. But we also learn a lesson about God’s holiness. Sin requires the judgment of God. A holy God can do no less.

We see in the destruction of the earth the purpose of God to preserve the earth and His image bearers inhabiting it. The higher purpose of the destruction was preservation. In fact, God’s covenant with Noah has rightly been called “the covenant of preservation.” I am using preservation in two senses:

1) Through God’s covenant with Noah, God preserved the godly seed of the woman.

God’s judgment in history is never an end in itself. God’s judgment is not the childish outburst of a selfish deity. Judgment is the settled purpose of a Sovereign to bring about His gracious covenantal purpose. Judgment is not an end in itself. It is a means to the end of bringing God’s peace to the earth through His covenant mediator. God’s judgment serves the higher purpose of bringing deliverance.

Consider the words of Genesis 8:20-22. Verse 21 in the NKJV reads “although.” The NASB, KJV and ESV all read simply “for.” This is the most straightforward reading of the Hebrew. But if you think about it, it appears that that reading at first sight does not follow logically. “I will never again curse the ground for man’s sake, for or because every imagination of his heart is evil.” Because every imagination of his heart is evil, I will never destroy the earth again. You would think that God would say that because every imagination of his heart is only evil, therefore, I will repeatedly destroy the earth in the days to come. Why the apparent disconnect?

Did God not know that judgment won’t ultimately solve the sin problem? God in His infinite wisdom certainly knows that repeated judgment will never really solve the sin problem. It will punish and display his curse. But it will not change men’s hearts. Men are corrupt and polluted, and sinful men will persist in their corruption even when they know they will be judged for their corruption.

So the obvious question, then, is why did God judge the earth, if He knew it would not cure the situation? Did God miss the point? God certainly knew the limitations of judgment, but He also knew where history was headed and how redemption would be consummated in Christ. God judged the earth through the flood in order to set up in history a one-time, massive demonstration of his opposition to sin and the ultimate destination of the world under sin. The flood is a picture of hell. It is an object lesson for eternity about the wrath of God. Here is the model for divine judgment that man can look back to and see that God punishes sin, but God preserves a remnant for Himself by grace. The flood is a message of God’s intention to be true to His promise to preserve the righteous seed so that man will be delivered.

2) Through God’s covenant with Noah, God committed Himself to preserving the natural order of the world by common grace.

God commits Himself to maintain a universal witness to Himself through the created order. He commits to display the glory of His unseen nature and His longsuffering and His eternal power by the regularity of the created order of the world.

Paradox #2: God’s judgment and God’s grace.

The most brilliant display of grace in the story of Noah is undoubtedly the rainbow. In Genesis 9:12-16 God is saying that whenever a storm cloud appears and echoes the destruction of the flood and God’s judgment on the earth is brought to mind, yet there will be the rainbow to signal God’s grace. The rainbow is thus a sign of grace in the midst of judgment. It is a reminder that God judges for the sake of grace. Man’s sin necessitates covenant wrath, but God, in His abounding mercy, declares that He, and not man, will have the final word. God declares that grace will prevail toward His chosen ones and not wrath.

For whom is the rainbow a sign? Well, it certainly is a sign for us. Whenever we see it, it guarantees to us the permanence of the covenant. But the text says that the rainbow is a sign for God as well. The rainbow reminds God of His promise. It is not that God needs to be reminded, as if He can forget His promise like we forget where we put down our keys. But when God remembers, He affirms the relationship He has established and the promises He has made in the past. So God looks to the rainbow and pledges His divine obligation.

According to Revelation 4:1-3, at the throne of God – the place where judgment is meted out, at the place where our eternity is dealt with and determined by Almighty God – at the throne of God, there is a rainbow. What a joy it is to share in the covenantal grace of God in Christ and know that arching over the throne of God is the sign and seal of His grace. In judgment God remembers mercy. At the throne of God, there is mercy and grace and peace and promise.

The paradox of grace in judgment is the story of God’s covenant with Noah. This paradox is the same great paradox of the cross. In the cross of Jesus Christ, there was judgment. On Christ fell all the wrath of a holy God. When Christ was bruised and flailed and pierced and crucified, the wrath and anger of God was raining down. But in the flood of wrath God remembered mercy and sheltered us. When God was judging Christ Jesus, He was showing grace to you and me. The cross is the ultimate example of grace in judgment.
 
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Introduction

The Old Testament is not a bank of illustrations for how to live out New Testament ethical principles for individuals who love Jesus. The Old Testament is the story of God’s covenantal kingdom coming in the world. It is the story of God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule and blessing. It is the story of the preparation for Jesus Christ, who is the fulfillment of all God’s covenantal purposes in the world. The right way to think about Abraham is to think about him not simply as an example of faith (though undoubtedly it is good to do this rightly). The right way to think about Abraham is to see him in the unfolding story of God covenantal kingdom – to see Abraham as a chapter in the advancing plan of God to accomplish His Christ-centered and redemptive purpose in the world.

Foundations

God moved to enter into a covenant relationship with Noah in order to further His redemptive purpose first promised to Adam in Genesis 3:15. Now with Abram, we see the same thing once again. God’s covenant purpose of redemption is being furthered once more as He enters into covenant with Abram. Genesis 1-11 is not just a warm-up to get us to Israel’s beginning point with Abraham. Genesis 1-11 is foundational for God’s whole covenant enterprise in the world. Here are the fundamentals for the story of God’s unfolding plan of redemption.

The call of Abraham is a response to what God did when He confused the languages and scattered mankind after the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11. The civilization that united to build the Tower of Babel was a civilization in revolt against God. This was a search for a purely human greatness apart from God. The men who built Babel were trying to reach heaven itself and make a name for themselves. It was purely egotistical. It was godless pride run amok. It was humanistic arrogance on a civilization-wide scale. So God cursed that effort of the Babelites by scattering mankind over the earth. But there is a problem there. In Genesis 9 we saw in God’s covenant with Noah that God has a covenant concern that reaches to the entirety of creation. His covenant is a covenant of life, a covenant with all creation, and if that is so then the scope of God’s redemption must be as wide as creation itself.

How, then, can a particular, personal God, a God who has a name and a character, who means to be known personally and in definite relationship, how can this God now achieve His covenantal purpose on a worldwide scale when men are so scattered and divided?

The call of Abraham is the answer. The call of Abraham establishes the mission that will address the mess that Babel made. Through Abraham, God is mopping up the humanity spilled out by Babel. Notice in Genesis 12:2 that God promises to make a name for Abraham. The name given to Abraham, the fame he is to acquire, the reputation that his posterity will achieve, all are an intentional response by God to the godless aspirations of the men builders of Babel (11:4). They sought to make their name great and so to build God right out of their world in their nation building. But God Himself will build a nation who will represent Him in the world. God’s decision to include Abraham in His redemptive purpose is God’s solution to the dilemma. God’s call to Abraham was a missionary commissioning service, as was every call to constitute the people of God ever since. It was a call to build an outpost of the city of God in the world, where God’s redemption in His covenantal kingdom will be manifested in the world. Abraham’s descendants would further that kingdom in the world until the day when the kingdom fills the whole earth and un-does what was done at Babel once and for all.

With the Abrahamic covenant, God is creating a particular people who will carry forward God’s gracious purpose for all creation and serve the whole of humanity. The election of Abraham, a particular man who will father a particular people, is not God turning His back on the peoples of the earth in favor of one people. It is God pursuing the peoples of the earth by favoring one people of His own making. Neither is the election of Abraham God turning His back on the redemption of the whole creation by narrowing His focus to the salvation of human souls. Rather, the election of Abraham is God’s forwarding His covenant purpose to redeem all creation. Now God has done just that by reconciling all things to Himself by the greatest Son of Abraham, Jesus Christ.

Relationships

A covenant is at its heart a relationship. It is a bond established between two parties that commits them to the good and mutual service of the other. We see God entering into relationship with Abraham in Genesis 12. God did so by means of election.

God chose Abraham out of all the men of the earth, and He set all His grace and covenant love on Him. God channeled all His redemptive purpose on Abraham alone. What we see here is something we see all over the Bible: we see God exercising His indisputable freedom and right to make choices. We see God as sovereign here; indisputably and unstoppably and undeniably sovereign. “Election” is not a theological term but a biblical one. God’s freedom and right to choose drip from the pages of Scripture. And we see that sovereign freedom of God clearly here in the story of Abraham. God comes to Abraham, the son of an idolater, perhaps even an idol maker. God comes and chooses Him out and enters into covenant relationship with Him. God set His redemptive favor on Abraham merely because it sovereignly pleased God to do so. Isn’t this how God covenants always begin?

Texts such as Deuteronomy 7:6-8 and 10:14-15 are specifically hearkening back to God’s choice of Abraham for redemption, when God sovereignly lavished His love and grace on him and his family out of all the families of the earth. Indeed, God was lavishing His love on Abraham for the sake of the other families of the earth. Biblical history is this story played out again and again. God chose the line of Seth and not Cain. God chose the line of Shem and not Ham. God chose Abraham and not Abraham’s neighbor in Ur. God chose Jacob and not Esau. God chose Israel and not the Philistines. And yes, God chose us, not another people, so that He could lavish His covenant love on our families. But like Abraham, He has done so not out of spite for those still in their sin, but for the sake of those still in their sin and in need of the redemption of Jesus Christ. We are inheritors of Abraham’s call to be a blessing to the nations.

What we find in God’s election of Abraham is God’s absolute, supernatural power put to work to accomplish the things promised. God began with nothing – Abram the idolater – and God makes promises to Him – “I will make your name great” – and then God acts with absolute, supernatural power to accomplish it. God gave a son to a man whose reproductive capacities were at an end and to a woman whose womb was closed after a long life.

God accomplishes what He promises by His sovereign will. That is the lesson of Abraham’s call. From the beginning point with Abraham’s election, to the end with God delivering on His promises simply by His supernatural power, we see God’s sovereignty as the driving force.

Nations

The Hebrew word berith, the Old Testament word for covenant, does not appear until Genesis 15 when God actually cuts a covenant with Abraham. However, God’s call in Genesis 12:1-3 expresses the heart of the Abrahamic covenant.

Verse 1 begins with an imperative. Then verse 2 is a string of three statements of divine intention. “I will…” God says what He will do. But the end of v. 2 is critical. The NKJV somewhat obscures the force of the last clause of v. 2 by using the word “and.” The ESV does a better job of giving the point of the statement: not “and” but “so that.” The purpose of what God will do for Abraham is so that Abraham will then be a blessing. So then the three promises are really God’s divine enabling and provision to equip him for his mission of being a blessing. The point is clear: God provides for what He commands to His people. This is the graciousness of grace – God giving the power to do that which He requires. God never places burdens on us with grace. He requires, and He commands, and He rules, but by grace the demands are provided for. The power to obey is available through the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. This is what God was graciously doing with Abraham. Verse 3 demonstrates the same pattern as in v. 2. God makes two statements of divine intention this time, followed up by a purpose clause. These two purpose clauses are the two primary clauses in the text: “so that you will be a blessing…so that in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.”

When God narrowed down His covenant purpose to Abraham and his family, God was not turning His back on creation or on the rest of the human race. God’s choice of Abraham and the covenant promises He made to Abraham were for the sake of the creation and for the sake of all God’s image bearers who stand in need of grace and redemption because of Adam’s sin. God is still king over the human race. God is still covenant head of all men by creation. God still intends for all humanity to reflect His character and be stewards and vice-regents of His creation. Only now, in Genesis 12, when God calls Abraham, the relation between God and all the families of the earth will depend on Abraham and his seed mediating the blessings of the covenant to them. God calls Abraham and his descendants to serve the wellbeing of all, by being the people of God, by being the kind of community that all men are called to be by their Creator.

In Genesis 12 God promises Abraham three things: seed, land, and blessing. When God promises a seed, He promises a great nation will come from Abraham (12:2). God promises land. The patriarchs never saw that promise fulfilled, but many centuries later, under Joshua the nation of Israel conquered the land and inherited it as promised. But the land was not an end in itself. Finally, God promises His blessing for the descendants of Abraham. Here is an unconditional promise of covenant blessing. God did indeed give His covenant protection to Abraham and the other patriarchs.

God is revealing to Abraham that the purpose of His promises of seed, land, and blessing was to bless the nations. God’s purpose for Israel, the nation who descended from Abraham, was to make them a light to the nations. All nations would be drawn to them so that they could be in right relation with their Creator. That is God’s purpose for us as well.

Many well-meaning Christians believe evangelism begins with the Great Commission, that the first words about evangelism in all the Bible are in Matthew 28:18-20. But in fact evangelism begins way back here in Genesis. Evangelism begins in Genesis 3:15 when God announces the gospel to Adam and Eve, and then reiterates His gracious purpose to Noah, and then narrows down His redemptive purpose to Abraham. God intended that all the nations be drawn to Israel so that they could be redeemed by His grace. The blueprint for the Great Commission is laid down here with Abraham. God is concerned that the nations be blessed, and God intends to bless believing Abraham so that the nations will be blessed with salvation.

Think once again about what God promises Abraham: God will make him a great nation with a great name. A great name? That is an echo of the dark period of Babel in which the builders sought to make a name for themselves (11:4-5). Babel shows how radically wrong the human race was off track. They sought self-aggrandizement on a massive scale, in stark contrast to the beginning of God’s covenant at creation, when God made the human race by saying, “Let us make man in our image.” Created to reflect God’s ways in the world, the people of Babel sought a world that bore only the name and reflection of man. God’s purpose to give Abraham a great name contrasts vividly with God’s opposition to human attempts to make a name for themselves. Abraham’s greatness will be a gift of God’s grace; it won’t be wrested from the world. It will be given by God’s Word.

So, in short, God promises to Abraham the very things that the men of Babel coveted – a name, a family, a land, and blessing. But these are not the end of the matter with Abraham, of course. They are only instruments toward the real goal of the covenant. The Babelites were idolaters. They coveted security and a city and a name because these were their love, their object of desire and their object of worship. Abraham saw the Lord Himself as His reward (15:1). God was Abraham’s goal and chief possession. The seed, the land, the name were not the substance of the covenant. They were the means to receiving the substance of the covenant – which is God Himself.

The goal is the joy of relationship with God. To be in covenant with God is its own reward. God gave Abraham a name so that a great innumerable host, more than the eye can see and the mind can number, a great host outnumbering the sand on the seashore and the stars in the sky, could have God as their great reward. Abraham believed God and obeyed God, and as a result, we have the joy of knowing God. God gave Himself to Abraham so that many more could receive this same supremely precious gift. God is Himself the goal of the covenant.