Covenant and Baptism: Parts 7 - 9


Introduction

The Bible is basically one story – one ongoing, progressive story of God’s covenant which manifests itself through many stages of history and which culminates in the person and work of Jesus Christ. You can say, really, that the Old Covenant is the Older Covenant, and the New Covenant is the Newer Covenant. The Old Covenant is Old in the sense of being the Older Covenant, but not in the sense of being an old and therefore irrelevant or obsolete covenant. The Old Covenant reveals Christ to us in shadows and types. Luke tells that Christ, after His resurrection, on the Road to Emmaus, expounded to the two disciples the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures, beginning with Moses and the Prophets.

God had promised to Abraham that His seed would multiply into a great nation. All of God’s redemptive purpose for the world would center on God’s faithfulness to that promise. God was indeed true to His promise. It came to fruition when the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob dwelt in Egypt and multiplied so much that the pharaoh rose up who knew not Joseph and began to fear their great numbers. He enslaved them in order to control them. They languished, enslaved in Egypt for over 400 years. Had God forgotten His promise after all?

Exodus 2:24-25 gives us the answer. God remembers His covenant He made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He calls Moses in Exodus 3 and introduces Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God is moved by the plight of His people, and He resolves to rescue them, in faithfulness to His covenant promises. In Exodus 3:7-8 we see Yahweh inaugurating the next phase in His redemptive plan.

God brings Israel out of Egypt and leads them to Mt. Sinai. They people camp at the bottom of the mountain, and Moses ascends to the top. There at the top God repeats his promise that He had made to the Patriarchs and expresses His love for Israel. Exodus 19:3-6 weave together God’s promises He had made to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob centuries before with His chosen people’s future direction and calling.

God’s covenant with Israel emphasizes several things, each of which builds on the next.

Emphasis 1: Grace

God’s grace infuses the Mosaic covenant and grounds it and colors it through and through. We can see how God’s covenant emphasizes grace in a number of ways.

First, God’s covenant with Israel emphasizes grace by highlighting the two major gracious events standing behind it – God’s covenant with Abraham and the Exodus. God’s call and covenant with Abraham was an act of sovereign election and grace. The Exodus becomes the model of salvation by grace, its goal being the fulfillment of the promises to Abraham in the promised land. If the Exodus means anything, it means freedom from bondage. The law at Sinai could not be another form of bondage after Israel was rescued from bondage in Egypt. God was making a people for Himself purely on the basis of grace.

A second way the Mosaic covenant emphasizes grace is through what is often called the covenant formula, which is the statement the Lord makes, “I will be your God, and you will be your people” (Lev. 17:26). Here we have the foundation of the relationship God makes with His people, a relationship of love in which He binds Himself to His people as their God and makes His people His own. By dwelling in their midst, God seals the fact that they are in a covenant relationship of love.

Emphasis 2: Grace and mission

Israel was adopted by grace, and with that thoroughly unearned grace comes great responsibility – a call, a mission. God called Israel to be a special treasure, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation (19:5-6).

First, God calls Israel to be a special treasure. Does this mean that God has no care for the rest of the nations? Does this negate what God said to Abraham when He promised that through God’s blessing on Abraham’s descendants blessing would come to rest on the other nations? God calls Israel a special treasure not because He cares for Israel alone. Instead, God is saying that if Israel obeys God’s Word and lives according to the terms of the covenant, then it will enjoy a special relationship to Him and have a special status among the nations of the world. In Exodus 19:5 the Lord says that all the earth is the His. God is King over the nations and claims them as His own. God has separated Israel from the other nations for the sake of the whole. Israel is not an end in itself. God directs His attention and focus to Israel uniquely as a means to God’s greater end in the world of establishing His kingdom.

Just like with Abraham, God is causing His redemptive purpose directed to all the peoples of the earth to hinge on Israel’s obedience. God is not a local deity of one people. He is the King of all the earth, and He chose one people out of all the peoples of the earth for their sake. He elects one and blesses that one for the sake of the blessing of all.

The call to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation tells Israel how to be a blessing to the nations. Israel would represent all the nations of the earth before God. Israel would mediate God’s covenant blessings to the rest of the peoples of the earth. Yahweh is summoning an entire nation to the priestly role of intercessor for the nations. Israel would be responsible to pray for, love, minister to, and witness to the rest of the peoples of the earth. Israel had to be pure and free from defilement in God’s sight if it will fulfill its role as priest to the nations. Israel was called to be a holy people. This is in many ways the most fundamental call of Israel – to be holy as the Lord is holy, to manifest His holiness in the world.

Emphasis 3: Grace and mission and law

God calls His people to mimic His ways in the world, in response to God’s ways He has revealed to them. In response to the grace of redemption, Israel is to obey God by living out the precepts of His law. By doing so, Israel would imprint God’s character onto the world. Here we have the most profound purpose for the law – by obeying the law Israel would imprint the character of a Holy God onto the world.

First, keeping the law is not an alternative way to get to God. In other words, God did not deliver Israel entirely by grace and redeem them from the hand of pharaoh through the Red Sea, giving a paradigm for all ages of salvation by grace, so that He could bring them to Mt. Sinai and give them a legalistic works salvation. That is nonsense. With Israel we witness the same relationship between grace and obedience that we have seen throughout the administration of God’s covenant. First grace, then obedience by the power of grace to the glory of God.

Second, revealing the law advanced the covenant beyond all previous administrations. What I mean is that when God gave the law, He was not putting a great burden on His people. Instead, He was advancing His covenant purpose and redemptive favor. God was moving the covenant forward, not taking a step backward in legalistic bondage. The law reveals the extent of sin and humbles and prepares to receive more grace. Paul describes this function of the law in Galatians as the law acting like a school master to lead us to Christ. We are humbled by what the law reveals to us of our sin, and so we come to receive more grace. So it was gracious of God to give the fullness of the law to His people in order to humble them and give them more grace.

Third, obeying the law was God’s means of nourishing the covenant and putting a hedge of joy around relationship with God. The law shows the conduct and attitudes fitting for God’s covenant community. When Israel obeys the law of God, they embody the joy and peace and love of the covenant of God in human life.

Finally, the consummation of the law and the Mosaic covenant is Christ. In Matthew 5:17 Jesus said that He did not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it. By His coming, Jesus Christ consummated all of God’s purposes in the giving of the law.
 
~~~


Introduction

Israel’s unceasing idolatry, compromise, and disobedience point back to the covenant and to the law so graciously given and so presumptuously spurned. But Israel’s plight and their repeated deliverance by the Lord point forward to a future hope and anticipate the One who is yet to come and who is Prophet, Priest, and King.

In the Older Testament we see these three offices develop in Israel and fill out the covenant relationship. In the story of Israel’s king we see true grace. A rebellious people rejected the Lord as their king and asked for a king like all the peoples around them. But how does Yahweh respond? The Lord responds by giving them the king they demand, but it will be a king with a novel job description. The king will be covenant representative for the people. The king will point to the Messiah, who is the final and greatest King of Israel. But God would reserve sovereignty for Himself alone. He would still rule Israel. So in other words, with the office of king in Israel we see God incorporate Israel’s demand for a king into His sovereign purpose and transform it into something of which, because of its fulfillment in the Messiah, they never could have dreamed.

It is in God’s covenant with David that we see the Lord’s full incorporation of the monarchy for His covenant purposes.

Through the prophet Nathan in 2 Samuel 7 the Lord now makes a series of wonderful promises to David, and these promises unfold for us the continuing story of God’s covenantal kingdom that will be consummated in Jesus, whom we now find out will be the Messiah and the King of Israel.

We will examine God’s covenant with David from three perspectives.

First, God’s Covenant is continued with the Davidic covenant.

How do we see continuity from the covenant God made with Adam after the fall? The Philistines are the seed of the serpent, and David is the seed of the woman. Through David's many battles with the seed of the serpent, God finally gave him and the people a period of rest from their enemies.

How do we see continuity from the covenant God made with Abraham? David himself understood that God’s coming to him and making this kingly covenant with him was a continuation of the covenant He had made with Abraham. See Psalm 105:7-11. God did indeed give Abraham a son and a land and a blessing, but only partially. It was not until the next phase of the covenant – that is, with Israel – that we saw further fulfillment of the promises.

Finally, how do we see continuity here in the Davidic covenant from the covenant God made with Israel? God honored the promises He had make to Abraham when He took the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob out of Egypt and victoriously carried them on eagles’ wings through the Red Sea and placed them in the land of Canaan. God constituted the people of Abraham as a nation and gave them a commission to be a blessing to the nations. Now we see those purposes continued through the kingly line of David. This covenant in 2 Samuel 7 is another step in God’s plan to fulfill this purpose of establishing His covenantal kingdom in the world. It will accomplish the redemption of a great number of His lost wayward and corrupt creation, and it will hinge on the faithfulness of the seed of David, as the seed of the woman continues to crush the head of the serpent, and as the son of Abraham rules in the midst of the peoples and as the king of Israel prepares the way for the Messiah to step into the regal line of the king and rule over the Israel of God.

Second, the Old Covenant climaxed with the Davidic covenant.

What is God’s kingdom? One very simple but profound definition of God’s kingdom I read is this: God’s kingdom is His people in His place under His rule and blessing. Viewed from one angle, the story of the Bible is the story of God’s kingdom – the kingdom created, the kingdom lost, the kingdom restored, the kingdom consummated in Christ. God’s covenant, by which God comes into relationship with His creation, is the inner workings of the kingdom in history. The covenant is the constitution of God’s kingdom. God is a great king, and His purpose has always been to show His glory and to establish His good and perfect rule in the world by establishing His kingdom.

But in God’s great work of reclaiming His kingdom after the fall of man and the ruin of His creation, we see that the kingdom of God comes not all at once but in stages, through historical development in time and space. In the Older Covenant God’s kingdom came through Israel. It was Israel who was God’s people in God’s place (Canaan) under God’s rule (His leaders and His law) and blessing.

The Davidic covenant truly is the climax, the high point, of the Older Covenant because under the Davidic covenant we see the full extent of God’s kingdom coming to Israel. You can really say that under the kingship of David in Israel the kingdom of God came on earth. There are three points of climax for the Older Covenant here in the Davidic Covenant:

1. These words of the Lord through Nathan reveal, first, that it will be through the Davidic house that God will fulfill His promises to the patriarchs to establish and protect His people.

Name, land, seed, blessing – these are the same promises given to Abraham, now related specifically to David. Those promises previously given to Abraham now hinge on God being true to David and his kingly sons and line.

2. God promises to establish David’s house forever.

David expressed a desire to Nathan to build the Lord a house. David wanted to replace the portable tent with a stone temple in Jerusalem to be a permanent dwelling place for the Ark of the Covenant.

But God declares exactly the opposite: instead of David building Yahweh a house, Yahweh will establish the house of David. When David says “house” in vv. 2 (see vv. 5-6), he means “temple.” But when Yahweh says “house” in v. 11 He means “dynasty.” David says, “Lord, I want to build you a house,” but the Lord says, “Hear me, David, before you can build me a house, I have to build you a house.” The two things are linked together.

O. Palmer Robertson wrote,

God shall establish David’s dynasty, and David’s dynasty shall establish His permanent dwelling-place. But the order of grace must be maintained. First, the Lord sovereignly establishes David’s dynasty, then the dynasty of David shall establish the Lord’s dwelling place.

3. God promises to be a father to David’s descendants.

In one sense this is just a promise of God’s protection and adoption of David’s son, Solomon, and Solomon’s sons. God promises to be with David’s sons as they rule. But in another sense David’s reign symbolizes the reign of Israel’s heavenly King, Yahweh. The son of David will be the son of God (v. 14). This is true of Solomon and the other kings of Judah, but this is preeminently true of the Messiah.

Ultimately, the kingship of David and the kingship of God are one kingship in Jesus Christ.

Finally, we see the Davidic covenant consummated in the New Covenant.

Many passages of Scripture show how the Davidic covenant is consummated in the New Covenant in Jesus Christ.

Psalm 110; Isaiah 9:6-7; Isaiah55:3; Ezekiel 36:23-24; Luke 1:32-33; Luke 1:68-75;

Luke 20:41-44; Acts 2:29-36

Conclusion

Four summary statements for application.

1. Jesus Christ reigns as King now, sitting on the throne of David.

2. Disciples of Jesus Christ are those who live under the rule of Jesus Christ.

3. King Jesus is establishing His kingdom in the world.

4. Disciples of King Jesus are called to press for His crown rights in every realm of life, in every human endeavor, and in every corner of creation.

~~~
 

Introduction

God’s covenant has unfolded through time in many stages, but God’s covenant with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Israel, and David were all preparation for the final and most glorious stage of the covenant – the New Covenant in Jesus Christ. The New Covenant in Jesus Christ is in every way the covenant of consummation. All the Old Covenant promises are realized in the central person of the New Covenant: Jesus Christ, who fulfills all the messianic expectations of God’s people and who is Himself the embodiment of the foundational promise of the covenant – “I will be your God, and you will be my people.”

The prophets in Israel consistently reminded Israel that God would curse their covenant breaking. The prophets were the conscience of the nation, constantly preaching that Israel was breaking covenant with God and calling them to repent. Israel was idolatrous and lawless and therefore disloyal to their covenant head, Yahweh. So God sent prophets like Jeremiah, Isaiah, and Ezekiel to give them the news that curses awaited them if they did not change their sinful ways. But the prophets delivered another message in the middle of the pronouncements of judgment.

As Israel entered a phase when judgment was inevitable, after they had passed the point of no return with their sin, the prophets declared hope beyond the devastation that was sure to come to them. Though Israel had failed in their covenantal responsibilities before the Lord, the God of Israel would not fail to establish a great people and a great nation to glorify His name. The Lord’s plan to redeem a people for Himself among fallen men and to establish His kingdom on the earth would not be thwarted.

It is in the context of this mercy in the midst of wrath that promises come from the prophets of a new covenant. God, the prophets declared, will make a new and unbreakable covenant with His people, and through this covenant God will bring to fruition His redemptive plan. All of God’s past dealings with His people had taken the form of the covenant, so it might have been anticipated that God’s restoration of His relationship to His people would also assume covenantal form. And indeed, by a new covenant relationship, God’s original purpose to redeem a people for Himself would find realization. The New Covenant, then, announced by the prophets is the covenant of consummation because it is the final manifestation of God’s covenant that gathers together all the previous administrations of the covenant and supersedes them and realizes all the promises made in them throughout history.

There is only one place in the prophets where the New Covenant is called “the New Covenant,” and it is the classic text on this final covenant of consummation that we are focusing on – that text is, of course, Jeremiah 31:31-34. When we come to the New Covenant passage, in the midst of a complex of promises, we find a wonderful assurance of an entirely new work of God. Yet we also hear echoes of the previous covenants here as well. There is continuity and newness in tension in the New Covenant.

The prophets often spoke of the Lord doing a “new” thing in His dealings with His people. See Is 42:9, 43:19; Ezek 11:19-20. Yet in the newness here will accomplish the same goal that God has always had – “I will be your God, and you will be my people.” The newness of the New Covenant certainly implies a break with the past. God will act to redeem and restore His people in a way unfamiliar to them. Look at how Jeremiah emphasizes that the New Covenant the Lord will make with Israel will be a totally different experience from what they knew formerly. See 31:32. Yet consider how Jeremiah phrases this – he does not speak of the Old Covenant as the one that God made with Israel at Sinai (that is what he would have said if he were trying to be technically accurate.). Instead, he refers to the covenant God made with Israel on the day when he took them by the hand like a little lost child and led them out of Egypt. That intentionally gathers up the covenant God had made with Abraham because it was under the provisions of the Abrahamic covenant that God rescued Israel from Egypt. Jeremiah is intentionally tying together the Abrahamic, Mosaic, and Davidic covenants and saying that God is going to make a new covenant that is like these in that it is a covenant yet is also different because it will accomplish things that these older covenants did not and could not accomplish.

So the newness of the New Covenant must not stand in absolute contradiction to the previous covenants. There is continuity here. Jeremiah has nothing condemning to say about the older covenant. He does, however, have very condemning things to say about the people of Israel for breaking the covenant. Man, Jeremiah is saying, is radically unable to keep God’s covenant, so no lasting purpose will be served to keep re-establishing the same covenantal relationship. A new relationship will be established instead, one that will be everlasting and unbreakable and unshakeable. Fundamentally, what God is doing here is renewing the covenantal relationship that already existed, but He is making a break with the old covenantal history and beginning a new covenantal history.

1. The New Covenant will fulfill all that began to do in His covenants with Abraham, Moses, and David. Through the New Covenant God will fulfill His plan for blessing the nations (Abraham). Through the New Covenant God will call out a special people who serve as a royal priesthood and imprint God’s character on the world through their obedience to God’s law (Mosaic). And through the New Covenant God will place a king on His throne forever who will mediate the blessings of the covenant to God’s people (David).

2. The law is another point of continuity. God will place His torah on the hearts of His people in the New Covenant, the same law that God gave to Israel in the Old.

3. The New Covenant is a covenant of redemption, just as the Old Covenant was. The New Covenant will accomplish redemption fully and finally in a way that the Older Covenant never could. The New Covenant will unite Christ to God’s people so that He will be their God and they will be His people.

4. There will be final and complete forgiveness of sins in a way that the Older Covenant, with its priesthood and sacrifices and temple, could only foreshadow. This forgiveness that the prophets foresaw and that the sacrifices prefigured is in the shed blood of Jesus Christ and His atoning work on the cross.

But Jeremiah’s New Covenant prophecy emphasizes the newness of the New Covenant. Even in the continuity it is the new thing God is doing in the New Covenant that Jeremiah accentuates. Look again at 31:32. The New Covenant is not according to the covenant God made when He took Israel’s fathers by the hand and led them out of Egypt. Why? Because that old covenant is a covenant that Israel broke. The New Covenant will not be a covenant that the people of God will break, like God’s people did under the Old Covenant. The Hebrew word for “broke” here is parar, and it means “to make null and void” or “to annul.”  This word is used of vows in the Old Testament. For example, Numbers 30 says that a wife may commit herself to keep a vow, but the husband may void the wife’s vow. The husband does not “break” the vow, because that is something that only the wife could do. Instead, he “nullifies” the oath that his wife has made.

In Deut 31:16, 20 God predicts the day when Israel will annul the covenant that He is making with them. It is not simply that Israel will violate the terms of the covenant and break it. The curses of the covenant provided for its terms being broken. The idea instead is that Israel will nullify the covenant. The covenant will be made null and void. It will be cancelled.

Jeremiah is saying that the New Covenant will not be like the covenant that Israel’s fathers nullified by their unrelenting and aggravated disobedience to the Lord. The New Covenant will be different. God was casting the people of Israel out of the land. They will be considered like Abraham was before he was called out of Ur of the Chaldees. Israel was no longer under God’s covenant blessing. That blessing was revoked because Israel annulled the covenant. An entirely new covenant history must begin. A people to be God’s own must be constituted afresh. This is the newness of the New Covenant.

God is starting fresh in order to continue His gracious and redemptive purpose He began with Abraham and Israel and David. God will raise up the Seed of Abraham to be a blessing to the nations. God will raise up the true Israel to be the people of God under His rule in the world. God will raise up the Son of David to sit on His throne in His heavenly city. Jew and Gentile alike will come to this holy mountain and be constituted afresh as the people through whom God will continue His purpose in the world.

God’s covenantal purpose can now never be annulled again. Never again can God’s covenant be made null and void by persistent disobedience. God will pour out the gift of the Holy Spirit on His church. God will write His law on the hearts of His people. They will all know Him, and their sins will be forgiven. Therefore, the New Covenant is a perpetual covenant. It is eternal and final and irrevocable.

Meditating on the newness of the New Covenant should cause us, New Covenant believers, who have begun to know the fullness of the New Covenant blessings in Jesus, to sense how great our privileges are. We know the Messiah Jesus. He dwells in our hearts. He has forgiven all our sins and called us to follow Him on the Calvary road. It is a path of self-denial and identifying with His persecution and hungering and thirsting for righteousness and fighting with sin within. But it is a path of privilege. It is a path of joy and satisfaction. We know Jesus, from the smallest to the greatest. By our union with Christ the Living and True God has become our God and we have become His people. What privilege! What favor our Father and King has shown us to place us in Christ in an unshakeable and eternal covenant bond of love, a bond that cannot be revoked as Israel’s was.