Some of you, maybe most, I'm not sure, were there yesterday. And if you weren't, I'm sorry. I do think it'd be good to review. So Pastor Butler asked me to come and address the issue of covenant theology.
So I had a title, Covenant Theology, a brief overview, because that's all you can do in three sessions. And having given The two sessions yesterday, if you were there, you remember there were five questions I was asking and trying to answer. And we got through three questions and answers. The first question is, what is a divine covenant?
If we're going to talk about something, anything, especially theological, we're going to use terms and phrases. And we need to understand what the speaker is talking about when he uses a term or phrase. So I sought to define a covenant like this It is a relational arrangement initiated by God's sovereign dispensing of his kindness, goodness, and wisdom toward man. So God starts, or covenants start with God and they come to man, at least in the sense that I'm talking about in these messages.
And it is God's initiation of a relationship with man, It's not a negotiation. It's not a pact between equals. We don't sit at the table and God proposes, and then we counter-propose, and then we hire somebody, lawyers for us, to go to the table with God's lawyers, or God himself, and then we have an agreement between two equals. It's not like that at all.
God is the sovereign. God is the creator. God is the providential ruler. If He's going to have communion with man, it's going to be based on His terms, and we just receive it and either comply with it or don't.
There was a specific concern of divine covenants that we focused on yesterday. In the words of an old writer, Nehemiah Cox, he says that 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 communion will be enjoyed by man. So I concluded that divine covenants are concerned with the benefits God bestows, the type of communion man may have with God, and the means to obtain these things. We looked at two Old Testament examples, the Older Mosaic Covenant, and saw some of these elements illustrated there, and what we call the Davidic Covenant 2 Samuel 7, and then we looked at the New Testament as the New Covenant as an example and drew out various conclusions.
I'm not going to say everything I said. yesterday. The second question was this, what is the study of the divine covenants normally called? It's normally called covenant theology. And some people, especially in the last 50 years, don't like the phrase covenant theology.
They don't view the Bible as covenantally structured. They don't view the framework through which God reveals himself to his people via covenants. They might use the concept of kingdom, or older dispensationalists used the word dispensation. But the Bible, I argued yesterday, is actually covenantally structured.
The Old Testament is basically a covenantal document delivered by God through his servants, the prophets, including Moses, to the covenant people of God. God enacts a covenant with them in space and time in history prior to the writing of the Old Testament and then God, through the writers of the Old Testament, explains what he did in the Exodus for instance, at Mount Sinai for instance, which both happened historically prior to the writing of the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Those are God's divine commentaries on God's divine acts in space and time on the earth. So he acts first and then he explains his acts.
He acts, he interprets his acts through the writing of the prophets of the Old Testament. And that is all done in vital connection to the enactment of the Old or Mosaic Covenant. So stipulations are given, conditions are given, promises are given, and explained. And then the subsequent part of the Old Testament all depends upon Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy as an explanation of the covenant God entered into with ancient Israel.
And you'll read the prophets and they'll do at least two things. They'll act as God's prosecuting attorneys. They'll scold the people of God they'll point out the people of God's sins and the consequences of those sins, but they'll also hold out hope for the future, that God, who has done a great deed in the past by extending his almighty arm, figure of speech, his power by exerting divine power in saving his people from Egyptian bondage and enacting a covenant with them, taking them into the promised land. God is going to do something like that but even greater in the future through the servant of the Lord, the Messiah.
So the Old Testament itself is a covenantal document. connected to the covenant people of God under the Older Mosaic Covenant. The New Testament's very similar. It's a covenant document, covenantal document, connected to the new covenant people of God. God acts in space and time on the earth, his greatest act ever, the incarnation, the sufferings and the glory of the Messiah.
He comes, he assumes human nature, born of a woman, born under the law, nor that he might redeem those who are under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons, He's resurrected from the dead as a reward for his obedience. He enters into glory and then he ascends into heaven. And then the New Testament is written after his ascension. The Gospels recount the great redemptive historical acts of God in the incarnation, life, and death, and resurrection of Christ.
The Book of Acts is an explanation of what Jesus continued to do Immediately subsequent to his exaltation at the right hand of the Father, he continued to teach and do things on the earth through the proclamation of his word and through the ordained servants, primarily the apostles. And then the epistles explain the theological and practical implications of what God did in Christ, which is recorded for us in the Gospels, the epistles explain that and apply that to the New Covenant Church in the first century. So similar to the Old Testament, the New Testament is a covenantal document for the covenant people of God explaining and interpreting a divine explanation, a divine interpretation of that which God did for redemptive purposes in space and time on the earth. So that's the justification for a covenant theology.
The two parts, major parts of our Bible are covenantally connected to these two great covenants and are also something else that I pointed out yesterday. They're also Christ-centered. The Old Testament predicts him who would come. The New Testament says that which they said would come or he who they said would come has come.
So there's this two-fold element of studying the Bible. It's both covenantally structured and Christologically centered and so We try to put those two things together. So the study of covenant theology is, I think, justified by the structure of the Bible. But we're not going to understand the covenants properly unless we understand Christology as well.
I tried to make that point yesterday. And then the third and final question that we covered was, what is the new covenant? Yesterday I said we're going to study covenant theology, historically speaking, backwards. We're going to start with a new covenant in the New Testament and then go backwards.
And we started to do that by defining the new covenant and various things were said about that. The New Covenant was obviously promised in the Old Testament, the phrase New Covenant used once in the Old Testament, but the concept is in many, many passages in the Old Testament, especially in the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and elsewhere. The New Covenant promised in the Old Testament was inaugurated formally by the ministry of Christ, by the death of Christ, and we saw that in the New Testament. It is a covenant in which all the benefits, all the blessings, even the communion to be had with God are gifts.
They're not conditions that we have to fulfill to obtain these benefits. These benefits were obtained by somebody else namely the Lord Jesus Christ, and they're given as gifts to us. The forgiveness of sins, the saving knowledge of God, the law written on our heart, the justification before God, adoption into God's family, even sanctification and obedience to God's law, and ultimately glorification. These are all part of those I wills that we looked at yesterday.
God says many times in the prophets, I will do this, I will do that, I will do the other, and he's going to do this for everybody that's in this covenant. And so that the only condition, remember I said that yesterday, is faith. is believing the promises of God as offered in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. And even faith itself, we learn elsewhere, is also a gift of God. So unlike the older Mosaic covenant and other covenants in the Old Testament, the conditions for entrance into this covenant are actually given by God and the benefits to be found or had and enjoyed in this covenant are actually gifts of God and not requirements of God.
So it's holy of grace. And somebody asked yesterday, I guess I made a statement, once you're in you can't get out in the new covenant. And then they asked something about Old Testament believers. And I didn't say this yesterday publicly, but I said it privately.
And Pastor Butler hit on it really quickly. He said, well, they were in the New Covenant. The Old Testament believers were in the New Covenant. Now, they weren't in the New Covenant in the sense that the New Covenant was formally inaugurated by the blood of Christ already.
But the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sins. The law could not make anyone perfect. So the benefits of the New Covenant that would be enacted were delivered to the souls of all the elect. of all time, there's only one way of salvation from beginning to end, it's always faith in the mediator. Either the mediator, the promised seed to come, or the one who has already come.
So the New Covenant is God's one and only way and means through which sinful man comes into saving relationship with God, has communion with Him in an unbreakable covenant, because the conditions ultimately of that covenant were all met by the perfect, sinless representative of the elect, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Introduction: Why the New Covenant?
Now, this morning, I want to ask the fourth question. I don't think we'll get to the fifth. But the fourth question is this, why is the new covenant necessary? Why is the new covenant necessary?
And I have six reasons.
Reason One: The Mosaic Covenant Cannot Save
The first reason is this, because the old covenant, or Mosaic covenant, could not save of itself and was never designed to. The older Mosaic Covenant has an if you do this, then I will do this motif in it. All over the place. If you do this, I'll do this.
We're told clearly in the book of Hebrews 7.19, the law made nothing perfect. Hebrews 10.4, it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to actually take away sins. Now, the blood of bulls and goats in the sacrificial system could typify, could point to something, some greater work of God that would actually do, take away sins, absolve God's wrath, exhaust God's justice, but they could not of themselves take away sin. So this older Mosaic covenant was a temporary covenant with national Israel.
It could be broken and it was broken. It could become obsolete and as we read in Hebrews 8.7 and 8.13 it did become obsolete because that to which it pointed had come, namely the Lord Jesus Christ. The Old Covenant pointed to the New through its typological sacrifices and its priesthood and their acts, but it was not the New Covenant and it did not save anyone. I didn't say nobody under the Old Covenant was saved.
I said that the Old Covenant, in and of itself, you could obey it till you're dead. It didn't, in and of itself, have the means of justification, expiation of our sins, and glorification promised to it. Now, that's kind of radical, so let me lean on John Owen. John Owen is, I think, is now the Mount Everest in most people's minds, of all the Puritans.
Not because he wrote the most, I don't know if he wrote the most of all the Puritans, but because of his known intellect at the time, and subsequent to that, all the published writings of Owens are, you know, it's massive, 23 volumes, big, fat, 3, 4, 5, 600 pages. One of them's 800 pages, but it's large print. So not just because he wrote a lot, but because of the content. of his writings. He's known as the Mount Everest of the Puritans.
There was a Scottish guy, and it wasn't a Scottish guy, it was a continental European scholar who said in the 18th century that Owen was so well respected that some of our divines, continental reformed divines, German, Dutch, whoever they were, learn the English language in order that they might read Dr. Owen. Here's what he said. This covenant, old Mosaic or Sinai covenant, thus made, did never save nor condemn any man eternally.
All that lived under the administration of it did attain eternal life or perish forever, but not by virtue of this covenant as formerly such. It did, indeed, Revive the commanding power and sanction of the first covenant of works. Do this and live. That is a principle that is in the older Mosaic covenant, but it predates the older Mosaic covenant.
It goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden, which we'll look at in a minute. Second Corinthian, excuse me. And therein, as the Apostle speaks, this Older Mosaic Covenant was the ministry of condemnation, because it reminded the people of the requirement of perfect, perpetual obedience to the law of God, in order that you might attain to inviolable, unbreakable communion with God, a principle that was first revealed to man in the Garden of Eden. The Older Mosaic Covenant reminded the people of God of that very thing.
And as sinners, They could not meet up to that standard or that requirement. So it was in that way, it was a ministry of condemnation. For by the deeds of the law, no flesh will be justified. Sinful flesh is what he's talking about here.
And on the other hand, it directed also under the promise. So he says, the older Mosaic covenant has echoes of Eden in it. You can hear the principle of works righteousness by a sinless representative of others, by the way. to attain unto life. You can hear that in the Mosaic Covenant.
But since they're sinful, they're not like Adam when he was created, but they're in Adam. But since they're sinful, they can't fulfill the requirements. But the Mosaic Covenant reminded the people of God of that principle. If you're going to get to glory, you've got to provide righteousness perfectly.
So even though it reminded them of that, it also reminded them of something else. He says, on the other hand, it directed also unto the promise. This would be the promise of salvation. And where is the promise of salvation first revealed?
Anybody that was there yesterday or anybody, you want to guess. If you're wrong, Genesis 3.15. You're right, so that's good. If you're wrong, I was going to lop your head off.
No. I was going to email Pastor Butler up tomorrow. Hey, that brother or that sister. They need work.
We all need work, don't we? Some of us more than others. The promise predates, just like the curse. for law-breaking predates the old covenant. The promise of salvation predates the old covenant as well.
So here's what Owen's doing. He says, this covenant did direct also unto the promise, which was the instrument of life and salvation unto all that did believe, but as unto what it had of its own. It was confined unto things temporal. Believers were saved under it, but not by virtue of it. sinners perished eternally under it but by the curse of the original law of work." So this older mosaic Sinai Covenant promised temporal blessings in the land of promise for Old Covenant Israel.
Blessings like long life, rain, fruitful crops, but it did not in and of itself affect the justification or adoption or sanctification or glorification to the Israelites upon condition of their obedience. It did not deliver that. It pointed to that through its sacrificial system, priestly offerings, and other things, but it didn't in and of itself effect those things. Now this is one reason why the New Covenant is called a better covenant, because the New Covenant does deliver those redemptive blessings to the souls of all its members.
But that's not true of the Old Covenant. So, the necessity of the New Covenant, first of all, is due to the nature and temporary nature of the Old or Mosaic Covenant. But
Reason Two: The Abrahamic Covenant Only Promised Christ
the necessity of the new covenant predates the old covenant with ancient Israel. Here's my second reason for the necessity of the new covenant. Because the Abrahamic covenant only promised Christ. You know, there's those massive texts in Genesis 12, Genesis 15, Genesis 22.
Next time you read Genesis, Note that the first 11 chapters covers a lot of historical ground, and there's a lot of people there, genealogies and all sorts of things. And then at Genesis 12, it stops. And Genesis 12 through 50, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. And those promises originally given to Abraham about him having a seed and a land and the blessing to the nations of the world are not only stated in Genesis 12, 15, 18, and 22, but as you subsequently read the entire Old Testament, you'll even hear the later prophets going all the way back there.
There's something very important about what happened through Abraham. Abraham, the Abrahamic covenant and promises, promised that there would be a seed coming from Abraham that would be a blessing to the nations. Christ was promised in the Abrahamic covenant, but Christ was not presented to the world in it, okay? The Abrahamic promises and covenant looks forward to Christ, the seed of Abraham, but does not present the Messiah to us.
It paved the way for the Messiah. For instance, Paul in Galatians says this, Now the promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. He does not say, and to seeds, as referring to many, but rather to one and to your seed, that is, Christ. So this is a, the Abrahamic covenant is a promise of Christ to come.
Christ is going to come. That promise given in many places in the Old Testament, but in our present concern through the Abrahamic promises or Abrahamic covenant. So that Messiah has the way paid for him through this promise. This promise also to Abraham created a nation through which the Messiah would come, but the Abrahamic covenant is not in and of itself the new covenant.
It's not the covenant of grace. It serves the covenant of salvation or grace or redemption. It serves the new covenant and points to it, but it is not in and of itself it. Everything prior to the new covenant is preparatory and anticipatory.
Pointing to, tending toward.
Reason Three: Genesis 3:15 Points to the New Covenant
The third reason for the New Covenant is because the first promise of a mediator in Genesis 3.15 pointed to the New Covenant and the person and work of Christ, but like the Abrahamic promises or covenant, did not present Christ. Why do we need the New Covenant? Well, because in Genesis 3.15, by the way, we should read the text. You probably know it well.
You remember God created all things, created the apex of creation, the Mount Everest of creation, man in the image of God, male and female, he created them. And Adam is created outside of a garden, put in the Garden of Eden, told to till the ground to work it, using priestly language that's used after that for priests in a temple. The language in Genesis 2 of Adam's responsibility in the Garden of Eden, which is the first special dwelling place of God on the earth among men. It's the first earthly sanctuary.
It's the first temple. Ezekiel 28 calls it a high mountain of God, a sanctuary. God is specially present with man, Adam, in the Garden of Eden, Adam's God's son, Luke 3.38. Adam is a priest, Adam is a prophet, he speaks to other men on behalf of God.
God gave him this requirement to subdue the earth and fill it and be fruitful and multiply. The implication is that Adam would have spoke that to others, he would have been a prophet. He would have represented God. He would have spoke to others.
He was also a king. Rule the earth. Isaiah tells us that God, the Lord, created the earth to be inhabited. Have you ever had this view that God made Adam, put him in a garden, the most sanctified, the most holy vocation on the earth is gardening because Adam was put in a garden.
I actually had a guy tell me that. Pastor, shouldn't we all be gardeners? We really want to get back to the garden. Now, here's a radical statement.
I don't want to go back to the garden, do you? You know why? Because the garden, as wonderful as it was, was a state in which man existed in communion with God, where that communion could be lost. through his sin. And that's exactly what happened.
The first prophet, priest, and king sinned, violated God's, we'll see later, covenant, and was exiled, was kicked out of the house of God. That's the first church discipline there. He was kicked out of the special dwelling place of God on the earth, which was the garden. And what he was supposed to do was extend that culture of image bearers in communion with God all throughout the earth through his seed.
He was supposed to, in other words, he was supposed to make out of the earth, the entire earth, the special dwelling place of God among men all over the earth. If you read the last two chapters of the Bible, that's what happens. But you know who brings us to that point? It's not Adam the first, it's Adam the last.
So, the New Covenant is necessary due to this promise of a mediator in Genesis 3.15, which points ultimately to the New Covenant and the person and work of Christ, but it doesn't present Christ. It's a promise. It says, in the future, He's going to come. In the presence of Adam and Eve who had just sinned, and prior to speaking to them, In Genesis 3.15, God is actually speaking to the serpent.
He announces the doom of the devil through a skull-crushing seed of the woman. So this skull-crusher, this devil-conquering seed of the woman is going to come from a woman. It's going to be a man. There's the incarnation, at least implicitly.
Nehemiah Cox again. says this, for in the sentence passed on the serpent there was couched a blessed promise of redemption and salvation to man. This was to be worked out by the Son of God made of a woman, there's Paul Galatians 4, 4, and 5, and so her seed and man was to receive the promised salvation by faith and a hope in it. When John Owen says that the older Mosaic Covenant pointed to or remembered the promise. This is the promise that he's talking about.
This is the first promise of redemption. I have read articles where, on the one hand, great scholars deny that there's any promise of redemption here. How could they know it? And then you read other articles of scholars that have studied the concept of skull crushing and the demolition of the devil throughout the entirety of the Bible, and their conclusion is what Nehemiah Cox said, and historically Protestants have said, and certainly Reformed theologians have said, this is the first promise of the gospel.
Of course the word gospel is not used, but you have a lot of things here. You have a woman giving birth to a to a male seed who would demolish the devil. There's the incarnation. There's the humanity of Christ.
There's 1st John 3.8, the Son of God appeared to destroy the works of the devil. There's the divine interpretation of the incarnation through the Apostle John in 1st John 3.8. I think he's going all the way back to Genesis 3.15. This was to be worked out by the Son of God, made of a woman, and sow her seed.
And man was to receive the promised salvation by faith and hope in it, in this implied promise. was laid the first foundation of the church after the fall of man, which was to be raised up out of the ruins of the devil's kingdom by the destruction of his work by Jesus Christ." And he references 1 John 3.8. So the new covenant is necessary due to the promise of redemption through the seed of the woman in Genesis 3.15. And then others have argued, and I think rightly, that this was a promise to be believed. Okay, so it was through the means of faith in this promise and its ultimate fulfillment that all believers, from the giving of this promise all the way to the end until Christ comes, it is the means of faith in this promise, whatever it looks like later developed in the Bible, it was through the means of faith that one obtained the salvation that would come through this promise.
Salvation has always been by grace alone, through faith alone, in either the promised one Genesis 315, or the fulfillment of that promise, the Lord Jesus Christ, who was born of a woman born under the law. So
Reason Four: Adam's Failure and Christ's Obedience
a fourth reason why the new covenant is necessary is because Paul teaches that what Christ did for us has something to do with what Adam failed to do. Paul teaches us that What Christ did for us, bringing the blessings of the new covenant to us, has something to do with what Adam failed to do. So the first reason for the... New Covenant was because of the nature of the Old Covenant.
The second was, though promised by the Abrahamic Covenant, Christ wasn't delivered by it. The third was, the first promise of redemption has to do with the incarnation of the Son of God and the demolition of the devil. That's only a promise, that doesn't actually affect it. It's going to be affected in the future, that's just the promise of it.
Now the fourth reason, going back even farther, is because Paul teaches us that what Christ did for us in the New Covenant has something to do with what Adam failed to do. I'm sorry, I should have been going this way because we're going backwards. Romans 5, a classic passage on Adam and Christ, very important to understand the the relationship and the antitheses between Adam and Christ. Romans 5.12, I'm not going to read the whole passage, but just as through one man sin entered the world and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned for until the law sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed where there is no law.
Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offensive Adam, who was a type of him who was to come. but the free gift is not like the transgression for if by the transgression of Adam of the one many the many died much more by the grace of God and the gift by and and the gift by the grace of the one man Jesus Christ abound to the many the gift is not like that which came to the one who sinned Adam for one For on the one hand, the judgment arose from one transgression, resulting in condemnation. But on the other hand, the free gift arose from many transgressions, resulting in justification. For if by the transgression of the one death reigned through the one, much more those who receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness, law-keeping, will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.
Adam as Type of Christ
Note that Adam was a type of him who was to come, that is Christ, Romans 514, right at the end there. In the likeness of the offensive Adam, who is, that is, Adam is a type of him who was to come. Now how was Adam a type of Christ? Did Adam become a type of Christ when Paul wrote this letter?
Suddenly Adam's a type of Christ. Why? Because the Apostle says he was. Or does Adam's typological function predate the writing of the Book of Romans?
I think it predates. And since I have both of your pastors doing this, if you disagree, they're going to come down heavy on you. I don't think Christ became a type simply because Paul calls him a type. I think he was already a type.
He was stationed in the Garden of Eden as a type. Well, how was he a type? Well,
Adam and Christ as Son and Public Person
like Jesus, Adam was God's son. Luke 3.38, that long genealogy, at the end of the genealogy, it says, Adam, the son of God. So Adam was the first son of God on the earth, and the Lord Jesus comes on the scene, the son of God appeared. Okay, there's the quintessential and eternal son of God.
But like Jesus also, Adam was a public person who represented others. Adam was a federal or covenant head in the garden representing all others. Jesus comes on the scene, same thing, in Adam all die, in Christ all shall be made alive. So both were sons and yet of course Christ's sonship is different in many senses and much more glorious than Adam's.
And like Jesus, Adam was a public person. So like Jesus, Adam was also required to obey God's law. How was Adam a type? He was a son.
He was a public person who represented others. He was required to obey God's law. In the fullness of time, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law. So the eternal son assumes human nature and human duties.
He's born of a woman, human nature, body, and soul. He assumes human nature, human duties, born under the law. In order that, he might redeem those who are under the law. So Jesus was, like Adam, was God's son. public person who represented others, required to obey God's law, but Adam, as we know, failed.
Adam sinned. Adam transgressed God's law, which is what sin is, 1 John 3, 4. Adam brings condemnation upon us all. Adam disobeyed and brought judgment and condemnation upon all.
Christ obeyed and brings justification to all. Christ's obedience becomes the grounds upon which we, or sinners, can be pronounced as law-keepers before God. In 1 Corinthians 15-22, I think I already said that, in Adam all die, in Christ all should be made alive. So the necessity for the New Covenant in Christ's blood is born out of Adam's sin in the Garden of Eden.
Reason Five: Adam Broke the Covenant of Works
But fifth, The fifth reason for the new covenant is because Adam, our representative, broke a covenant that God had placed him under in the Garden of Eden. And most of you probably know this is called by theologians a covenant of works, covenant of nature, covenant of obedience. Now turn over to Isaiah 24, because there's an interesting passage here, and I've been mentioning this several times, yesterday especially, but Isaiah chapter 24, 5 and 6. This is interesting because, you know, Isaiah is toward the end of our Old Testament.
Isaiah is a prophet, certainly lived after Moses and Joshua and David and many others. And Isaiah has all this, has the Pentateuch. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and various other portions of what we have in one book called the Old Testament. He has that as written revelation from God already.
So he's assuming all that. and as a prophet, writing prophet, he's under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he's bringing the Word of God to the people of God, and he has all this theology, it's already been revealed, that he presupposes, and he oftentimes uses it in his writings. Listen to
Isaiah and Hosea on Covenant Breaking
Isaiah chapter 24, verses 5 and 6. The earth is also polluted by its inhabitants, for they transgressed laws, violated statutes, broke the everlasting covenant. Therefore, a curse devours the earth, and those who live in it are held guilty. Therefore, the inhabitants of the earth are burned, and few men are left." The curse, which extends to the earth, came about due to a violated covenant.
Isaiah tells us. Since the earth was cursed, when was the earth first cursed? Thank you. Since the earth was cursed due to Adam's sin as our representative, Adam broke covenant as our representative with God in the Garden of Eden.
You can turn over to Hosea chapter 6 verse 7 as well. There's another prophet who assumes the theology that's already revealed. Look what he does in connecting Israel's covenant breaking with Adam. Hosea 6-7 says this, but like Adam, they have transgressed the covenant.
There, the place they transgressed the covenant, they have dealt treacherously against me. Now I know there's a lot of debate about the translation and all that stuff, but I think the best understanding of this is that both Adam and Israel broke a covenant imposed upon them by God. Israel is likened unto Adam as a covenant breaker. Therefore, Adam must have been in covenant with God and he violated the covenant.
Both covenants were conditional, requiring the obedience of those in the covenant to enjoy the benefits of the covenant. And it's also interesting to note that according to Exodus 422, Israel was God's son and firstborn. I think I mentioned that yesterday. And in Luke 3.38, Adam is called God's son.
And both God's primal son, Adam, and God's national son, Israel, were brought into covenant by God, imposed upon them, put in a place, put under his law, and required to obey to secure, maintain and secure benefits. in the covenants, respective covenants, that God put them in. Who else, by the way, in the Bible is called both God's son and God's firstborn? The Lord Jesus, right? You know at the end of Luke, the genealogy in Luke, remember I already mentioned that?
Adam, the son of God. Luke chapter 4 is about the temptations in the wilderness. Now, you didn't preach those the wrong way when you went through Matthew, did you? Hopefully not.
Did you beat the people over the head for not memorizing Scripture and being able to fight the devil off by quoting Scripture whenever he tempts you? You didn't do that? I think there's a side, I think there is, but I don't think that's what Matthew and Luke had in mind here. Here we have the Son of God, okay, the firstborn, coming onto the earth and being driven out by the Spirit of God to the wilderness to be tempted.
This is not just merely our example. What a great example of fighting the devil off Jesus was. He quoted the Bible. He used the Navigator's press cards.
He had whatever, you know, whatever memory system somebody might be using. That's not why they wrote that. What they wrote that for was us to marvel at the hero of redemption conquering the devil and not being like the national son and firstborn of God, Israel, out in the wilderness sinning. This one gets driven out into the wilderness, unlike the first Son of God, the first individual Son of God, the first sinless Son of God, who was Adam.
He was placed in a nice, wonderful environment, and yet he succumbed to the temptations of the devil. Now the Son of God, the quintessential Son of God, the eternal Son of God, is driven out by the Spirit of God to be tempted for 40 days. You ever heard of 40 days and 40 years and all that stuff? I think there's some typology in the Old Testament that was pointing toward this.
This Son of God, this firstborn is gonna conquer the evil one on behalf of others. And I think that's what he's doing there in Matthew chapter 4, Luke chapter 4. It's the Son of God who assumed human nature in order that he might destroy the works of the devil. So Adam, as our representative, broke the covenant God placed him under.
Isaiah sees the curse of the earth coming due to a violated covenant. The curse was pronounced. upon the earth through the sin of the first sinless Son of God on the earth, Adam. Adam violated covenant just like Israel. Israel, like Adam, broke the covenant.
They dealt treacherously with God. Adam was under a covenant. Also, if you read Genesis chapter 1, the word for God is Elohim, Elohim, Elohim, Elohim. If you read Genesis chapter 2 beginning at verse 4, the writer Moses says, Lord God, Lord God, Lord God, Yahweh Elohim, covenant name of God, Yahweh.
So it looks to me like an old Jewish reader back then would have known the change from just Elohim to Yahweh, covenant keeping God, Elohim. which implies this, that there's some sort of covenantal relationship between God and Adam that's being depicted by Moses, I think, by the change from just Elohim to Elohim Yahweh or Yahweh Elohim. So I think that indicates a covenantal status of man at creation.
Covenant of Works and Its Conditions
Also man's relationship with God is dependent upon his obedience You want the benefits of this covenant sovereignly dispensed, conceived and dispensed and given by God to man? You want the benefits? Here's the condition, obedience. He didn't meet the condition, he didn't get the benefits.
Christ comes, meets the conditions, we get all the benefits. These factors, I think, taken together, argue that God brought Adam into a covenant relationship with him at his creation. Adam's covenantal relationship with God or his communion with God as a sinless image-bearer depended on obedience to God's law. This is why they call this the covenant of works or the covenant of obedience.
And works is just a synonym for, in this context, for obedience. But Adam sinned. Adam failed to uphold the requirements of the covenant of works or creation. We read that in Genesis chapter 3.
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Sin brings about the falling short of the glory of God. What does that mean? That if Adam didn't sin, he'd become glorious like God?
He would assume God would communicate eternal, divine attributes? and Adam would become God? All of sin would fall short of the glory of God. Who was the first sinner? It was Adam.
Therefore, Adam fell short of the glory of God. Did Jesus sin? No. Was he a sinless image-bearer?
Yes.
Glory Forfeited and Regained in Christ
Adam was a sinless image-bearer who fell short of something. The glory of God. Jesus was a sinless image-bearer who suffered because Adam fell short of something. And then what did Jesus do upon his sufferings?
He entered into his glory. Does that mean his divine glory? He became God again? Remember, in the Incarnation, He became what He was not, never ceasing to be what He ever was and ever shall be, namely, the Eternal Son of God.
So when it says that He suffered, that's because of Adam's sin, and Jesus is a representative of others. He's representing us. He's obeying the law of God, even by taking the sanctions upon Himself and exhausting divine wrath. But when it says he entered into glory, what does that mean?
Adam was the first sinner and fell short of the glory of God. Jesus became one of us, didn't sin, and entered into his glory. I think what Paul's talking about there is that the human nature of Christ entered into a glorious status. I think not only the body of Christ, but the human soul of Christ was exalted to a position it was not in the state of humiliation between the incarnation and the resurrection.
Human nature was brought to a point that Adam did not attain to. Adam fell short of bringing human nature to an inviolable status of relationship and communion with God, where he couldn't fall out of it. That's what Jesus takes us to. That's the glory that I think he's talking about.
As a matter of fact, if you turn over to 2 Thessalonians, you'll get another divine commentary on this. 2 Thessalonians happens to be the Apostle Paul. who, by the way, is the theologian, besides Jesus, of the New Testament, in explaining the redemptive historical acts of God in Christ, in the humiliation, in the sufferings, and in the exaltation of Christ. Paul, like nobody other, explains the implications of that. But listen, in verse 14 of 2 Thessalonians chapter 2, it was for this He, God, called you through our gospel, that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now I don't think that means that you may gain divine glory, divine attributes.
You're going to become God. I think it means the humanity of Christ was glorified upon His resurrection and that place that Christ took human nature in his own person is the same place or same status that all who are in Christ are going to get ultimately when our bodies are transformed. we're going to gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Hebrews 2.10, He's bringing many sons to glory. That's why I said before, I don't want to go back to the garden.
Salvation doesn't put us back at the starting point where Adam and Eve were. Adam fell short of something that was preferred or put out there before him. If Adam would have, as a sinless image bearer of God, produced seed through his wife, shared the Genesis 128 commission to subdue the earth as sinless. image-bearers. If Adam would have obeyed that, assuming he would have, and the earth would have been populated with sinless image-bearers, there would have been a time when it was finished.
The earth would have been full of the glory of God, and God would have been in communion with these sinless image-bearers, but still Adam wouldn't have entered into glory yet. Adam could have still fallen short. Adam could have at any time still sinned So what God put out there for him was what Christ ultimately attains for us. Namely, through obedience, get through this probationary period, and you'll arrive at a point where I will glorify you.
That happened to Christ on our behalf. That's going to happen to the rest of us. In part, now, we get our souls, we get forgiveness of sins, and we get new life. But at the resurrection, we become like We don't become like the first Adam, we become like the last Adam.
We don't become like the first Adam was in his incarnation, we become like the last Adam as he was at the incarnation. We become like the last Adam as he was when he entered into glory. Jesus did not sin, did not fall short of the glory of God, and if you're in Christ, He's taken you to glory with Him. That's why He came.
He came. He came to take many sons to glory. And what is glory? It's the earth, heavens and the earth, with sinless image bearers all over the earth in communion with God in an unbreakable relationship.
So the end is better than the beginning. And the end is that to which the beginning pointed to, and Adam could have taken us to that point, but he sinned. So you see how Christ, as the antitype or fulfillment of Adam, is much greater, isn't he, than the first Adam. The failure and then the conqueror.
The sinner and the righteous one. the one who sinned and fell short of the glory of God, and the one who not only entered into glory himself, but will bring many sons to glory. So the covenant with Adam required sinless obedience that would have issued in Adam's glorification along with the inability to sin and die. And Christ is the only other possible sinless candidate to bring us to God. And that is exactly what he does.
He does not sin. He enters into glory and he brings others with him.
Reason Six: God's Eternal Purpose
A sixth and final reason for the new covenant is this, because this was God's plan from before the foundation of the world. Now, Pastor Butler preached on the Covenant of Redemption recently, so I won't go to all the texts. But I'll assume that you do know your Bibles well enough that, you know, he chose us in him before the foundation of the world. There's this plan of redemption that ends up finding as its apex on the earth the work of Christ and the inauguration of the new covenant and all this.
All that's in the mind of God prior to the creation of all things. Salvation is due to God's purpose and grace granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity." 2 Peter 1.9. Eternal life was promised before times eternal. Titus 1.2.
And turn over to Hebrews chapter 10. Hebrews chapter 10 verses 4 through 7. This is a wonderful passage. It is impossible, verse 4, for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.
Therefore, When He, the Son, comes into the world, He says... So here's the Son becoming incarnate, and at some point, here's what He says. He says this, "...sacrifice and offering you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for Me." In whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sins you have taken, no pleasure then, I said, behold, I have come in the scroll of the book it was written of me to do your will, O God." Isn't that an interesting verse, verse 7? Here's John Owen's view of verse 7.
When it says, in the scroll of the book it is written for me, he kind of translates that word, in the scroll of the book, in the head of the book, in the beginning of the book. Genesis 3.15, it is written of me. You can study that out if you like. After saying above sacrifices and offerings and whole burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin you have not desired nor have you taken pleasure in them which are offered according to the law.
Now, when the Son of God came into the world, he realized that his father had prepared a body for him for the purpose of obedience to his father in giving himself up as a sacrifice for sin in order to establish the new covenant, Hebrews 10, 9. And then he said, behold, I have come to do your will. He takes away the first in order to establish The second, what Jesus did for us was planned by God from before the foundation of the world. When the Son assumes human nature, He knows that that body was prepared for Him by His Father.
How did He know that? Because of the counsel of redemption before the world began.
Summary of Six Reasons
So those are the six reasons for the necessity of the New Covenant. The incarnation itself was necessary so Christ could live and die as one of us. This was God's plan before the foundation. of the world. And the new covenant is the last stage in the drama of God's purpose to save sinners and bring them as his sons to glory.
The tap roots of all this is the eternal purpose of God. And its necessity is due to Adam's sin as our covenant head. Its first revelation came in the Garden of Eden in the form of a curse upon the devil. It is revealed in farther steps to Abraham and through the types of Christ in the Mosaic Covenant and other places in the Old Testament.
It is given further specification in the covenant with David, but it's all finally realized in the person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ recorded for us in the New Testament. That's why when you read the Gospel of John, for instance, when John says, Behold the Lamb of God, which takes away the sins of the world, that word behold is pretty strong. It's like maybe in the vernacular. Stop!
Check this out. This is very important. Okay? It's not like, huh, the little lamb of God takes away the sins of the world.
No, for John to say that, John is starting to put things together in his mind. He's drawing conclusions. It's basically, this is it. He is here, the hero of redemption.
Not just the example for Christian ethics, okay? Which he is. Follow me as I follow Christ. But even more so, the last Adam is here, the devil conquering seed of the woman here, is here, David's great, David's greater son is here.
The king of both creation, providence, and redemption, he has arrived. God has clothed himself in human nature, assumed a body, lived and suffered, died a horrible death. And what was the most horrible aspect of his death? The deepest stroke that pierced him was the stroke that justice gave, exhausting the wrath of God on the cross.
That's what I think he means when he says, it is finished. Damnation has been exhausted. And then God highly exalts him. enters into glory. He attained through obedience that which Adam failed to attain.
Well, there's a fifth question, but I just looked up and we're over time. So I hope that was helpful. For some of you, you might be going, how many times is he preaching today? It is great to be here.
Let's pray. Take our break.
Closing Prayer
Father, we thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you for the scriptures, the written word of God. We thank you for what you have done throughout history and creation and providence and great redemptive acts and especially in the incarnation. the sufferings, the glory of Christ. We thank you for the written record that explains all this for us in the Bible and pray that this little exercise this morning might help nudge people along in better knowing Christ, who he is, his person, his work, what he's taking us to, why it's all necessary, and be able to praise better and speak on his behalf to those who don't know him.
We pray in Jesus' name.