Opening Prayer
Father, we are grateful for your mercies, which are like you, from everlasting to everlasting. We're not worthy of them. They're conferred upon us. They were granted to us in Christ Jesus before the world began, promised in the Old Testament, brought to actual accomplishment. by the Lord Jesus and His sufferings and entrance into glory, applied to our souls in space and time on the earth by the blessed ministry of the Holy Spirit, bringing the fruits of Christ's redemption from heaven, from the mediator to our souls, and making us new people, men and women, who repent, believe, are united to Christ, justified, adopted in the process of sanctification, and because he's glorified, we're glorified and as good as glorified.
And we pray that you'd help us to get our little minds around this massive subject of covenant theology and that we would go away from here better understanding your word, better able to put the parts together, better able to praise and honor your son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the center of all of your special revelation inscripturated in the Bible, and better able to defend and proclaim the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. So bless us. We need help. We acknowledge we need it.
We ask in Jesus' name. Amen. If you didn't bring a Hebrew or Greek text, that's good, because I won't be using any Hebrew or Greek. So if you have questions about that, you can ask your pastor.
Introduction
Covenant theology is a massive subject. It is a privilege, on the one hand, to be able to address the issue. And yet it's humbling, sobering, because I have three sessions. two today and then one for Sunday school tomorrow. And there's just no way to cover anything in real depth.
So what we have to do is we have to do a flyover. We're going to fly over the Bible, looking at the high points of the Bible's teaching on the covenants. And I want to justify why we're going to do that and how we're going to do that. And the phrase covenant theology, I'm going to justify the use of that phrase in the process of these lectures.
And the way I'm going to approach this is this. I'm going to ask five questions and answer as many as I can along the way. So in one sense I'm asking the questions. You guys don't have to ask questions later because I'm asking them.
Actually the questions are simple. The answers are not simple. But here are the questions in case you're taking notes. What is a divine covenant?
We need to know what we're talking about when we're talking about covenant theology. Second, what is covenant theology? Third, what is the new covenant? Fourth, why is the new covenant necessary?
And fifth, what are some practical considerations in light of our study? So the first thing I want to do is ask and answer the question, what is a divine covenant? And I have three points under this. A basic definition. the specific concern, and for lack of a better word or phrase, further delineations.
Question 1: What Is a Divine Covenant?
So what's the basic definition of a divine covenant? I think it was yesterday I told Pastor Butler, if you had 10 books on covenant theology and you're looking for a definition, how many definitions might you find? He said 10, which should cause me to be very careful in trying to define Covenant. I think that sometimes when you read books on covenant theology, you might hear a teacher or a preacher, a teacher preach on the subject.
Quite often in defining covenant, they try to be all-inclusive. where you can take that word covenant and their definition and apply it to every single instance in the Bible where the word or concept covenant is used. That's not helpful to me, because the Bible doesn't use the word covenant or the concept covenant always in the same way. For instance, Old Palmer Robertson has a book that in many ways is very helpful, The Christ of the Covenants, which was the first book on covenant theology that I read in 1988, I think. Steve remembers those days.
You were a year older than me back then. And you still are. And you always will be. O.
Palmer Robertson, whose nephew was a fellow seminarian of mine, O. Palmer Robertson defined a covenant something like this, a sovereign oath and bond between God and man formally inaugurated through blood. And I used that for a while until you start reading the Bible and you realize, wait a minute, covenant is broader than that. Marriage is a covenant.
And though some of us have bloody marriages, we didn't formally inaugurate our wedding through the shedding of blood. The blood came later. So I think that's too restricting, too narrow. So what I have done is tried to be very careful in defining covenant.
And here's my attempt to define covenant in the sense I'll be addressing in this series of messages is a relational arrangement initiated by God's sovereign dispensing of his kindness, goodness, and wisdom toward man. In other words, divine covenants start with God, and they come to man. In the language of our confession, it's the language of condescension, God comes down, the creator is going to bridge the gap between himself and his creatures. And the way he does that is this relational arrangement that the Bible calls covenant.
They come from God, they come to us. So in that sense, they are not contracts or packs between two equals. In the sense that I'm using covenant and covenant theology, there are no negotiations between God and man. Some of you have probably signed covenants between you and another man or woman.
You've signed something, and it has covenantal language, and it puts you in a bond or a relationship with that person, and there are stipulations maybe on both sides. But in order to get to the point where you actually sign the covenant, you sign the paperwork, There were negotiations. There's give and take. There is, hey, we'll provide this.
And you say, well, could you provide this? And the other party gives and takes. And then you guys go away and fight on the email or tweet against each other or however that goes to try to convince the person, we need to change the elements of the covenant. That's not the way the Bible presents God as enacting and delivering covenants to man.
So that's the basic definition. a relational arrangement initiated by God's sovereign dispensing of his kindness, goodness, and wisdom toward man." Now, what is the specific concerns or specific concern of divine covenants? And this is where I borrow from a writer, a book that is on the bibliography. The writer's name is Nehemiah Cox. Some, maybe most, maybe all of you have heard of Nehemiah Cox before.
He's probably the senior editor of the 1689 Confession, which was first published in 1677. He wasn't a signatory at the assembly of the particular Baptist or Calvinistic Baptist or Reformed Baptist churches in the 17th century, because he died before they had that big meeting where all those pastors were, and they all signed their name on it. 12 years before, he was at least a co-editor and probably the senior editor of our Confession of Faith. And if you're going to understand chapter 7, which I think your Sunday school class, the adult Sunday school class, is that chapter 7 in the Confession. If you're going to understand chapter 7, you need to understand Nehemiah Cox on the covenants between God and man.
Here's what he says about the specific concern of divine covenants. He says, divine covenants are concerned with the benefits God will bestow on man, the communion man will have with God, and the ways and means by which this will be enjoyed by man. So he's got three aspects of the specific concern of divine covenants. They're concerned with benefits that God will bestow, the type of communion that man may have, and the means to obtain these things.
That's a broad enough, I think, definition and particular specific concern of divine covenants that's helpful. At least it's helpful for me. And since I'm the speaker, it doesn't matter if it's not helpful for you. But I hope it is.
It's helpful. The more you know the Bible and might have studied covenant theology and sat under Pastor Butler's preaching, you're probably putting two and two together and applying those kind of concepts to various covenants that you know of in the Bible. By the way, I was going to address the covenant of redemption, but Pastor Butler preached on it last Sunday, so I can't do that. That was my best lecture. by far.
So I said I had three sub points to this answer. What is a divine covenant? The
Further Delineations of Divine Covenants
third is further delineations upon the divine covenants. A divine human covenant, I'm calling this a divine human covenant because it comes from God and comes to man, is a bond between God and man sovereignly conceived and sovereignly bestowed by God for man's benefits. They come from God, they're imposed upon man, they're designed in some way to benefit man, and they contain ways and means to obtain those desired or designated benefits. Let me illustrate that and actually open the Bible and read Holy Scripture to try to illustrate that.
I don't know if you remember where that came from, but John Gershner, who was a scholar of Jonathan Edwards, and R.C. Sproul's mentor, came to our seminary in the 1980s. And he never opened his Bible. He even preached a sermon once without opening his Bible.
You know how R.C. Sproul talks like this? Well, John Kirshner talked like this as well. And he never opened a Bible.
He had his Bible, a Q&A session. He was hard of hearing. Back then, we didn't have cordless things. We had a mic up there with a cord.
And so we wanted him to answer the questions in the mic so we could record them. And because he was hard of hearing, he'd often walk down the aisle and say, what did you say? Well, he did with this one question. Pissed the cord off.
So the question was this. Dr. Gersher, you've been here for three days, and you haven't opened your Bible. And he comes back to the microphone.
The question is? Dr. Gerstner's been here for three days. He hasn't opened his Bible.
How do you answer the question? He said, young man, I did my exegesis 40 years ago. We're doing theology. Well, in one sense, there's not a lot of exegesis in my presentation as well.
It assumes a lot of exegesis, OK? So
Old Testament Illustrations
let's look at some examples of divine covenants that I think illustrate, at least begin to illustrate what I'm trying to get at. Two Old Testament examples, Exodus chapter 19, the old or Mosaic covenant, called the Mosaic covenant by men, called the old covenant by God in his word. But Exodus chapter 19, four through six, If you yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians and how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself, now then, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, this is God's covenant imposed upon the ancient nation of Israel, then you will be my possession among all the peoples for all the earth is mine. You see that if, then, there are benefits to be bestowed, here's the means whereby you can gain those benefits.
Obey. You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel. In Exodus 24, 1 through 8, we see the formal inauguration of this covenant enacted through the shedding of blood.
I'm not going to read that passage I did in my exegesis many years ago. 24, 1 through 8 is an interesting passage because it shows the actual formal inauguration of the covenant through the shedding of blood. So here you have the establishment of it through the shedding of blood. But these two texts, Exodus 19, 4 through 6, Exodus 24, 1 through 8, illustrate that the Mosaic or old covenant was sovereignly imposed by God upon ancient Israel. It's not like they sat there saying, hey, would you make us a peculiar people?
Would you make us a special nation? Would you come into covenant with us? And here's the deal. Here's the stipulations.
Here are the conditions that we have for you. It's the other way around. God sovereignly imposed this upon them. It had conditions that had to be met in order to attain its promises. which Nehemiah Cox was hinting at in his definition.
Elsewhere, we are told that this covenant could be and actually was violated or broken, Jeremiah 31, 32, the covenant which they broke, and elsewhere in the Old Testament. So we see that the old covenant as well, Exodus 24, I didn't read the passage, it was formally established through the shedding of blood. which is just kind of like a side note, but very interesting to consider, in light of the new covenant formally inaugurated through the shedding of blood in an exodus. I'm getting off into other things. Let's look at the second Old Testament illustration, 2 Samuel chapter 7. 2 Samuel chapter 7.
This is the passage that deals with what we call the Davidic covenant. And there's something interesting about this in 2 Samuel chapter 7, verses 12 through 16. Well, there are many things interesting about this. But one thing that's fascinating when you do a study on covenant theology is you will not find the word covenant in 2 Samuel 7, 12 through 16.
But if you ask most Bible scholars and hopefully Bible students and many here, hey, where's the Davidic covenant first revealed in the Bible? They're going to say 2 Samuel chapter 7. Have you ever heard somebody say, there can't be a covenant there, the word's not there. The word is not there.
We're not going to read it there. However, there are at least two other places, 2 Samuel 23.5, which comes chronologically, historically, after 2 Samuel 7, and Psalm 89, where the writer, David, in the psalm, looking back to this historical point, 2 Samuel 7, in fact, calls this a covenant. So it's like, God, through the human author David, is commenting after the fact on his previous revelation to David. He didn't use the word covenant in 2 Samuel 7, but it is defined as or called a covenant later by a later biblical writer, who happens to be in this case.
David, so here's a principle of hermeneutics that I'm sure Pastor Butler's taught you, maybe not in these words, but ladder revelation often makes explicit what was only implicit in antecedent or prior revelation. The Bible is organically related, okay? It's progressive. It goes from seed to full flower.
You might see something coming up out of the ground. You know what it is because you planted it. But a neighbor comes by and sees it coming up and they don't know what that is. They just say it could be a weed for all they know.
You know that it's an acorn tree or it's a peach. You guys don't have peach trees up here. And they don't have peach trees in Georgia either. Peach trees are in California.
Are there some here? They probably have heaters and stuff like that. No, they do that. Anyway, you might know what it is because you planted it, okay?
But then the neighbor comes and doesn't know. But as the tree grows, as it matures, as it develops, as it finally bears its fruit, things become obvious and clear. But until all of that happens, the essence of the thing is there, okay? But the form takes a while to grow and develop and be able to be easily discerned by the human eye.
Same thing with the Bible and covenant theology. And we see it here. Anyway, let me get to the text. 2 Samuel 7, 12 through 16. When your days are complete, God to David, and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant I have the New American Standard, and it has a footnote here next to descendant.
Your seed. Now, that should trigger something, okay? When the concept of descendant or seed, and here we have a male seed, a royal male seed. is going to be, something's going to happen with this royal male seed through the line of David in the future, that should not only cause us to ask the question, oh, who's that? What's he talking about?
But we need to start connecting dots. The concept of a descendant, a male descendant, a seed, doesn't start here. It's got tap roots that go back a lot farther. And it goes farther back than Abraham as well.
Where does it go back to? Genesis, yeah, which we'll get to at some point. Who will come forth from you and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
I will be a father to him and he will be a son to me when he commits iniquity. Look at this condition. Iniquity. What is iniquity?
Sin. Sin is the transgression of the law. So law keeping is a condition not only of the Mosaic Covenant or Old Covenant, but here of the Davidic Covenant as well. Somebody's got to keep the law.
When he commits iniquity, I'll correct him with the rod of men and the strokes of the sons of men. But my loving kindness shall not depart from him as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom shall endure before me forever, your throne shall be established forever." Now, the concept of a seed, a male descendant, ultimately of the woman, promised in Genesis 3.15, goes through Abraham, goes through the Mosaic world, and then here it is picked up by the Davidic covenant. Something else is connected here, a house for my name.
The church is the house of God. It's the temple of the living God. So a temple builder is going to come. A house of God builder is going to come, as God promises here.
But as we know, it wasn't fulfilled in any of David's immediate sons. They all sinned. God didn't bless him with an eternal throne, at least Solomon or any other immediate descendants there. But the New Testament picks that up, this is beyond the scope of our study, and says, you want to know who David's son is?
Great David's greater son, as the hymn says, it is the Messiah. And at his exaltation upon the resurrection and ascension, that's when he sat down, he assumed the posture of David's royal son in fulfillment of many things in the Old Testament, but one of them was this. So this text in 2 Samuel illustrates that the covenant with David was sovereignly imposed by God. It had conditions to be met in order to enjoy its benefits, similar to the Old Covenant.
The conditions to be met in the Mosaic or Old Covenant and the Davidic covenant were based on the law of God, and they were non-negotiable. So that's our two Old Testament illustrations of this definition of a covenant. And then
New Testament Illustration: Hebrews 10
turn to one New Testament example in Hebrews chapter 10, verses 15 to 22. Hebrews chapter 10, verses 15 through 22. And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us For after saying, this is the covenant that I'll make with them after those days, says the Lord, I will put my laws upon their heart. And on their mind, I will write them." Now, my translation of the Bible has capital letters for verse 16.
The reason is that's a quotation of the Old Testament here. It happens to be a reference to Jeremiah chapter 31. He then says, and their sins and their lawless deeds, I will remember no more. Now there now, now where there is forgiveness of these things, lawless deeds, there is no longer any offering for sin.
Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which he inaugurated for us through the veil that is his flesh. And since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a sincere heart and full assurance of faith. having our hearts already sprinkled clean from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. This is obviously a reference to the New Covenant, called so by the New Testament, that was promised in Jeremiah chapter 31, verses 31 through 34. I'm sure you're familiar with that.
We'll look at it a little later today. In Jeremiah 31, 32, we are told that this covenant is not like the covenant which Israel broke. The covenant which Israel broke was the old, or Mosaic, covenant. We read about it a little in Exodus chapter 19.
That covenant was breakable. It was violable. It could be violated. In this new covenant, the law of God is written on the hearts of all in the covenant.
You can see that in verse 16 of Hebrews 10, this is the covenant that I will make with them after those days. Here is this sovereignly designed relationship with man that God is imposing upon man, this covenant I'll make with them after those days, says the Lord. Here it is. I will put my laws upon their heart.
I will do something. God is going to sovereignly do something in connection with this covenant. Obedience to the law is not a condition. for either entrance into this covenant or remaining in this covenant. It's very important for us to see that.
Obedience to the law in this covenant is actually a blessing of the covenant, not a condition. We'll see this a little later. In this new covenant, there is forgiveness of sins for all in the covenant, verses 17 and 18. Their sins and their lawless deeds I'll remember no more.
What sinners need is provided for in this covenant, and it's not due to their obedience to God's law. This is God who says, I'm enacting a relationship with men. I am doing this. This is a work of God.
The blessings of the new covenant are attained through faith, and not works. Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the holy place by a new living way, look at verse 22. Let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith. We have faith, so we're connected to this covenant through faith, having our hearts already sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies already washed pure with water.
The blessings of the new covenant are attained through faith, not obedience, not works. In other words, faith is the condition, I put the quotes over that, of this covenant. It is the means through which one enters the covenant, and it is the means through which one enjoys all the benefits of this covenant. And as we learn elsewhere in the Bible, for instance, Ephesians 2.8, faith itself is also the gift of God.
So the new covenant provides all that it requires. Whatever those benefits are, whatever those blessings are to be had by members of the New Covenant, the New Covenant itself, the arrangement of relationship that's imposed from heaven to earth by God to us, all those benefits come freely and sovereignly and are a part of the covenant itself. The benefits aren't ours if we meet the conditions Its blessings are not conditioned on what we do in relation to God's law, but wholly upon what Christ did, and receiving them through faith apart from work. So a divine human covenant is a bond between God and man, sovereignly conceived and bestowed by God for man's benefits, with ways and means established by God to obtain the designated benefits.
That is the first question answered.
Question 2: What Is Covenant Theology?
The second question is this. What is the study of the divine covenants normally called? What is the study of the divine covenants normally called? If you go in your pastor's study and you walk right to the back, in the back little inner sanctum, there's some books there.
And on the right, the second row, I think, had a lot of good stuff. Well, it starts on the top row in second. All the stuff on covenant theology, that's what the, my, yeah, my book's on the top row. I noticed the order, you got John Owen, then he has Gerardus Vos, then he has me trying to explain those guys.
But I told him, I said, look, my dissertation has a wonderful cover. It does. Have you seen the cover? It's a nice cover.
You don't have a copy of it? Oh, I would have brought you one. You can go on the internet and see the cover. It's a nice cover.
You can get a copy of it. Anyway, the study of the divine covenants is normally called covenant theology. But why is it called covenant theology?
Justifying the Term Covenant Theology
Covenant theology is an attempt to put the pieces of the Bible together around the concept of covenant due to the Bible's overarching structure. Now, I was trained in dispensational theology. I was told that covenant theology is a system of doctrine imposed over the Bible so that you read the Bible through the grid of this system of doctrine, presupposed, not proved exegetically, and then put over the Bible, and then you read it through there. That's what I was told.
Now, I think it'd be worthy, if it's not worthy of our time, sorry, I made a bad judgment call. We're going to use our time this way. to kind of justify this whole notion of covenant theology, taking the concept of covenant and trying to see it throughout redemptive history and the progress of revelation. How can we justify it? Can we justify that?
I think we can for a few reasons. Let me just say this. If you notice, the Bible is thick, and there's an Old Testament And there's a New Testament, right? The fact that our Bibles has two testaments, I think, in part, justifies covenant theology.
The Old Testament basically corresponds with the covenant God made with ancient Israel at Sinai. We're going to look at that in a minute. The New Testament corresponds with a covenant that was inaugurated by the shedding of Christ's blood, the new or eternal covenant, as Paul or whoever wrote Hebrews says in Hebrews 13.20, borrowing from Isaiah, the eternal covenant. So the Old Testament is basically connected to the Old Covenant.
The New Testament is connected to the New Covenant. So I want to explore that a little, and I think it'll help you, hopefully it'll help you put together the Bible, justify covenant theology, and see the process of revelation, which I'll explain in a moment. So
Old Testament as Covenantal Document
the Old Testament is vitally connected to the Old or Mosaic Covenant. It's important to see this, and it's important to think through this. It's important also to realize that the written Word of God before the coming of Christ is connected to Israel and the covenant God made with them at Sinai. So God acts, God reveals himself, God purposes to enter into covenant with Israel.
All that happens before we can read about it in the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses. Except for Job and possibly a psalm or two, there was no written word of God. prior to Moses writing the Pentateuch, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Pentateuch, five book scroll. There was revelation.
God revealed himself prior to the writing of the Pentateuch. He revealed himself in creation. He revealed himself in special revelations to particular individuals, Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, and then Moses and others. But there was no inscripturated revelation.
There was no Bible or the bud of the Bible starting to form. Moses wrote Genesis through Deuteronomy for Old Covenant Israel. From all we know, prior to Moses' death, Before Joshua, the Lord saves. The Hebrew name, the Greek is Jesus.
Before Joshua actually takes the people into the promised land, Moses dies. But Moses finishes writing the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch was written for the old covenant people of God. It was written to connect them with God's creation and God's plan of redemption.
And it gave them particular laws for them in the promised land. So it was for them in that sense. The nation of Israel was chosen by God to bring the Messiah into the world. And its worship and its ordinances were types and shadows of the substance which is found in Christ alone.
So the written word of God starts with Israel as God's old covenant nation. Okay, so that's the Pentateuch. Now, the subsequent books of the Old Testament all imply, all presuppose, the theology that's in Genesis through Deuteronomy. For instance, when you read the prophets, what do they do?
They do at least two things. They scold the old covenant people of God. And why? Because they violated the covenant.
What covenant did they violate? The old or Mosaic covenant. How did the prophets know they violated the old or Mosaic covenants? Because the stipulations for it were written down by God's messenger Moses.
And they had them, and they read them. And the prophets were God's prosecuting attorney. the whole thing depending upon God's covenant with Israel. So even the prophetic books, in one sense, in a real sense, are connected to the Old Covenant. The whole Old Testament is connected to the Old Covenant.
The Old Testament, then, is a covenantal document for God's covenant people. So it doesn't, to me, it doesn't take a rocket science to say, oh, then covenant theology seems to be based on the way God has actually revealed himself in his word. And here's something else that's happening. You know, if you read Genesis, for instance, you've got the creation.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now, I don't think I ever thought this way, okay? But I didn't used to think rightly about that. Does anyone think Moses was sitting there going, wow, day one.
And then he saw day two, and day six, wow, Adam, a man, this is great. And he's writing, he's recounting the facts of creation as God speaking them into existence. That's not what happened, okay? What happened was the revelation of God in creation happens first.
And then subsequent to God's act on the earth, in this case, creation, he uses penmen, he uses writers to record the fact and to draw out theological implications of God's, in this case, creative acts on the earth. But the same goes for redemption as well. The exodus from Egyptian bondage occurred prior to Moses writing about it. God acts, then God interprets his acts through the writers of scripture.
God acts in inaugurating this old covenant, and then God explains it and records it through the writing of Moses. And the pattern is all throughout the Old Testament. The redemptive historical acts of God occur first, and then God explains and interprets and applies the redemptive historical acts of God enacted on the earth in space and time. He then applies them.
He interprets them. He tells us what it means through the writing of scripture. So the Old Testament is a covenantal document connected to the covenant people of God. And though the new covenant in Christ's blood was only promised in the Old Testament, not fully and formally realized until Christ shed his blood, the Old Covenant, the Old Testament itself, ends with a lot of wrong things.
There's a lot wrong. When you read the Old Testament, you should end going, where's the conclusion? This is open-ended. This is just sitting there.
There's promises. There's hope. There's strands of truth that the prophets talked about that goes way back to the, actually, to Genesis 3.15 that haven't been brought to their fruition. The peach tree stopped in mid-season.
We need a completion. We need the harvest. Well, that's what the New Testament is.
New Testament as Covenantal Document
The New Testament is that to which the Old Testament looked to, centered around Christ. But just like the Old Testament has foundational documents, the Pentateuch, the New Testament has foundational documents as well. If the Old Testament's foundational documents, the Pentateuch, record for us God's acts of creation and the major acts of redemption in the New Testament. By the way, the redemption in the Old Testament is the exodus from Egyptian bondage.
That's like the big act of God where his mighty hand of power goes down. His people are in bondage in a foreign land. He takes them out of that place. He slaughters their enemies.
He transfers them to another place in which they have relative peace and security by a mediator, Moses first and then Joshua. But the New Testament has the same kind of a process. We have great redemptive historical acts of God on the earth. And what is the greatest one ever?
It's the incarnation and the sufferings and glory of Christ. So Christ comes on the scene. John the Baptist points to him, the disciples are lost and they get saved, or however that goes. Maybe some of them who were believing in the Messiah.
By the way, there were people at the time of Jesus that were hoping for and anticipating the Messiah when he came on the scene. What's his name? Simeon says, now I can go, and now I can die. I've seen the Lord's salvation.
How did he know that he saw the Lord's salvation? Why was he even looking for the Lord's salvation? The Old Testament pointed forward to somebody that was going to come and take the people out of bondage again, a second exodus, a greater exodus, that the prophets actually talked about. But that happens first.
Jesus comes. The second person of the eternal Godhead becomes one of us. He assumes human nature, body and soul. He obeys and suffers and in the consummation of his obedience and suffering on the cross, he dies.
He rises from the dead, entering into glory. He was glorified at the resurrection and then assumes the posture of enthronement at the right hand of the Father, fulfilling the Davidic promise, sitting on the throne of David's kingdom and ruling forever and forever. That happens first. Then what happens?
Then the human authors of Scripture record this for us. So like the Pentateuch is the foundational documents recording the great creational and redemptive acts of God on the earth that were done first and then written about, so the Gospels functioned that way in the New Testament. The foundational records of the great redemptive historical and creative slash redemptive historical Acts of God in Christ. Then you have like the Book of Acts.
The Book of Acts is a record of the continued work of Christ when he went into heaven. In Acts chapter 1, 1 and 2, Luke wrote both the Gospel of Luke and Acts. And he tells his audience that the Gospel of Luke was written by me about what Jesus began to do and teach. The implication is this second volume Luke chapter, Luke volume 2, Acts, it continues the story, Luke, the gospel, what Jesus began to do and teach, the Book of Acts, what Jesus is continually doing and teaching from heaven as the exalted mediator by the ministry of the Holy Spirit through primarily the apostles themselves.
So the Book of Acts is not the Acts of the apostles, It's not the Acts of, if it was, it'd be the Acts of Peter and Paul because those are the major figures as far as the Apostles go, but I don't think it is. I don't even think it's the Acts of the Holy Spirit. If it had a title, I think it'd be something like this, the Acts of the Risen Lord Jesus, okay, through the designated ministers that he appointed while he was on the earth through the Apostles. But there you have the record of what Jesus continued to do after the events recorded for us in the Gospels.
And then what are the epistles? The epistles are similar, in one sense, to the prophets. The apostles of Christ are drawing out theological and practical implications of the redemptive, historical, covenantal acts of God on the earth through Christ. The apostles are drawing out the implications, theological and practical, for the church of the new covenant.
So the Old and New Testaments are very similar. The Old Testament? vitally connected to the Old Covenant. The New Testament, vitally connected to the New Covenant. The Old Testament, a covenantal document for the covenantal people of God.
The New Testament, a covenantal document for the covenantal people of God.
The Bible's Covenantal Structure
How do we justify covenant theology? The Bible itself is covenantally structured. The Old Testament revolving around the Old Covenant. The New Testament revolving around excuse me, the new covenant.
And then the book of Revelation points to whatever your pastor says it points to. So covenants, only after I leave though, so covenants form the framework, okay, the structure around which God reveals his plan of salvation in Christ. I think that's obvious. The documents of the Old Testament are vitally connected to the Old Covenant.
The documents of the New Testament are vitally connected to the New Covenant. The unfolding of God's revelation to us is consummated in Christ. The unfolding of the peach tree is consummated in mature peaches that we eat and enjoy. The consummation of biblical revelation is is consummated in Christ, Hebrews 1, 1 through 3, and many other places in the New Testament and the Old Testament as well.
But God spoke to us at various times in various ways, but now. There's a consummate spokesman for God. Is it disconnected to everything that was spoken before? No, it's that which was revealed before, that which it was pointing to.
Matter of fact, reading the book of Acts, there's this motif going on in the book of Acts, where Peter, for instance, looks at something happening. People are arguing about what's going on. And he says, hey, this, what we're now experiencing, is that. What the prophets said would happen when the servant of the Lord, the specially anointed servant of the Lord, Messiah, would come on the earth.
This is that. That motif is all over the Book of Acts. It's all over the Gospels, the Gospel of Matthew. You preach through the Gospel of Matthew.
It's in the Gospel of Matthew, too. You know, if you're in the first century and this guy's claiming to be the Messiah, And you have people that are going to be asking a lot of questions over and over and over. The apostles go, hold on, this isn't like plan B. Plan A, Israel didn't work.
Plan B, we're going to have the church. This is what has always been spoken of from the foundation of the world. This is the seed, the descendant of the woman that was going to be a blessing to the nations, as God revealed to Abraham. who would be David's son sitting on a throne building a house for God. This is him.
This is that which was spoken of by God through the prophets already. This is just the fulfillment. So the Bible's not only covenantally structured. It is Christocentric.
Or there's a word. I might have made it up. I don't know. Christotelic.
Christo-climactic, okay? The Old Testament is leaning in a direction, okay? Not just forward, but Christward. And the New Testament, it is that, it's the black and white of the Old Testament shadows and types in full living color.
So
Scripture Is Christocentric and Christotelic
it's not only covenantally structured, it's Christocentric. So if we're gonna understand the Bible, we have to understand it covenantally and Christocentrically, or else we're gonna lose the forest for the trees. The Bible's not a manual on which color shoes to wear. Pastor, would you pray for me?
Why? I want to know the Lord's will on shoes. I think the Lord wants you to buy warm shoes up here. You can be foolish and make sure nobody wears them.
Somebody's got them. I saw socks on some... Oh, that was at your house this morning. It's probably my own socks.
The Bible is not principally a book on how-tos Monday through Saturday. It's a book that seeks to gain glory for God. And how is God gaining glory for himself? Through what he does in the skull-crushing seed of the woman, the Lord Jesus Christ, in bringing many sons to glory. while destroying all their enemies.
That's what I think the Bible's ultimately about. God's going to be famous. He is. But because of sin, we don't acknowledge it.
But he's going to be acknowledged as the all-glorious potentate, the eternal one, the one worthy of praise. Even though the devil and his cronies have infected the souls of men who are in the image of God, and tinkered with the earth, God is going to overcome that through the last Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. So if we're going to understand the Bible, we've got to understand it covenantally and Christocentrically. And if biblical revelation is consummated in Christ and formulated around covenants, then it is about Christ and must be interpreted in light of Christ and the covenants.
Cox and Owen on Biblical Interpretation
Listen to what Nehemiah Cox says. So in all our search after the mind of God and the holy scriptures, we are to manage our inquiries with reference to Christ. Well, if it's ultimately about God getting glory through what he does through Christ, then that has to filter all of our interpretation, all of our study of Scripture. Then he adds these very important words, therefore, the best interpreter of the Old Testament is the Holy Spirit speaking to us in the New.
John Owens put it this way, the only infallible interpreter of the Holy Scriptures is the Holy Spirit in the Holy Scriptures. If God commenting on God's own word. God, in the Bible, often interprets his own word for us. Probably the best illustration of that is the various ways that the New Testament uses the old.
But by the way, authors of scripture interpreting and applying previous inscripturated revelation, that doesn't wait until the New Testament. Just like I said, the prophets, what do they do? They assume the revelation that God gave through Moses and the Pentateuch, and they interpret and apply it to the given situation they're writing to. So it's God, through the prophets, interpreting and applying his own word.
When God, through the prophets or the writers of the New Testament, interprets and applies his own word, it's infallible interpretation, okay? It's what God intended, ultimately, all along. And we can't fight with that. So listen what Nehemiah Cox continues to say.
Therefore, the best interpreter of the Old Testament is the Holy Spirit speaking to us in the new. There we have the clearest light of the knowledge of the glory of God shining on us in the face of Jesus Christ by unveiling those counsels of love and grace that were hidden from former ages and generations. Unquote. The Old Testament points to and leans toward Christ with its promises and types of him who has to come.
The New Testament presents Christ in his sufferings and glory. It both interprets the Old Testament in light of his sufferings and glory, and the New Testament applies the implications of his sufferings and glory to the new covenant church and to the future. The Old Testament contains the bud of redemption, the new, the full flower. The old is but a shadow.
The new is its substance. In the Old Testament, Christ is revealed, though clothed in promises and types. In the new, that which was promised and typified is unveiled. And all of this is vitally connected to covenants imposed upon man by God.
So if we're going to understand the Bible, we had better understand Christology and covenants together. So I'm almost finished. All this to say that the Bible is a covenantally structured book centering itself on the Lord of glory, the Lord Jesus Christ, in his sufferings and glory. I got a few more minutes.
Sufferings and glory. Some of you older brothers, Steve, you ever heard of those concepts before? Speak up. I said, have you ever heard of those concepts before?
Yes. Sufferings and glory. Sufferings and glory. I think those two concepts are put together at least three times in the New Testament.
Listen to 1 Peter 1 10, as to this salvation, the prophets, the salvation that the first century Christians were experiencing, as to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you, these prophets prophesying the prophets, the writing prophets of the Old Testament. They made careful search and inquiries, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating, notice, the spirit of Christ. Here is the mediator between God and men functioning prior to the incarnation and bringing, as a prophet, speaking on behalf of God through his spirit through the prophets. The mediation of Christ predates the incarnation of Christ.
That's for another sermon, or that's for your sermons. Seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. Sufferings and glories, as the Spirit of Christ predicted through the prophets of Christ prior to his incarnation, the prophets of the Old Testament, the sufferings and the glory of Christ. Sufferings and glory.
It's not just a New Testament concept. Sufferings and glory has its roots in the Old Testament. But it's not fully explained what that looks like and means until the New Testament. Remember, the Old Testament's kind of in black and white, a little fuzzy.
It's not real clear at times. There's mysterious stuff there that needs further explanation. The New Testament says, I'm going to show you what all that meant. Christ comes on the scene.
The writers of the New Testament explain the redemptive historical acts of God. They record the facts of them, the Gospels, and they explain the theological and practical and eschatological implications in the subsequent rest of the New Testament. So what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to say this. The clearest light we have on the covenant theology and Christology in the Bible is the New Testament.
So in the next session and tomorrow, we're going to study covenant theology backwards, historically. We're going to go from the New Testament all the way back to the Eternal Councils. Well, we have to stop there because your pastor already rained on my parade. We're going to go from the New Covenant and start asking some questions.
What is the new covenant? Why was it necessary? That's when we'll go backwards. Why was the new covenant necessary?
We'll go backwards all the way through the covenants in the Old Testament, not all of them, and end up at the covenant of creation or works and other things. So if we're going to understand the Bible correctly, we have to understand it Christologically or Christocentrically and covenantally. In order to do this, I will go to the New Testament first, where Christ and the covenant theology of the Bible are explained to us most clearly.
Method: Reading New Testament Back to Old
So our study of covenant theology work backwards, historically speaking, but theologically and canonically, we will work from the standpoint of a completed canon, a full and finished theological revelation from God, allowing the later writers to shed light on the former. We're going to allow God, through the penman of Scripture, over here in the New Testament, to help us understand what God, through the penman of the Old Testament, meant. That's the safest place to start. in terms of a big study like this. What does God say about the Old Covenant?
What does God say about the New Covenant? What does God say about Abraham? What does God say about Adam? Well, you can start at Genesis if you want, but we don't have that kind of time, okay?
We're gonna start over here and see what the mature revelation of the New Testament says, reflecting back on the earlier revelation. So we have divine light on divine light to help us try to put these things together. So this will give us the divine interpretation of divine revelation, in our case, Christological covenant theology. That's it.
So, that's not it. Covenant theology, then, is man's attempt to put the Christologically and covenantally structured revelation of God and his written word together in a logical, somewhat comprehensive fashion, showing the organic relation of all the parts of the Bible Just like the roots are connected to the fruit in the tree illustration, the organic relations of all the parts of the Bible, the progress of revelation, and its Christocentric, Christoclimactic consummation, or the nature of its consummation in Christ, as revealed to us in the New Testament. That's what covenant theology is, and that's my justification for it. Let's eat donuts and drink coffee.