So we're going to be in Ephesians
once again. I was here two weeks ago. We were in Ephesians 1 verse
3. I think the week before that
we were in Ephesians 1, 1 and 2. So we're going to be in verse
3 again. And then we're going to be in
verse 4 as well. So let's read Ephesians 1, 1
through 14. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus
by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful
in Christ Jesus, grace to you and peace from God our Father
and the Lord Jesus Christ. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with
every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. even as he chose
us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us
for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ according to the
purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which
he has blessed us in the beloved. In Him we have redemption through
His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the
riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us in all wisdom
and insight, making known to us the mystery of His will according
to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for
the fullness of time to unite all things in Him, things in
heaven and things on earth. In Him we have obtained an inheritance,
having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works
all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we who are
the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory.
In Him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel
of your salvation, and believed in Him, were sealed with the
promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance
until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of His glory. Let's pray. Father God, we worship you and
we praise you for the work that you have done in Christ. God, we pray that you would open
our eyes to the truth of your word. And tonight, as we survey
large passages of your word and look at the grand narrative that
you have given to us through your word, God, I pray that we
would receive it and that it would give us peace and comfort
and joy, and that it would exhort us on to praise you more and
more and to glorify your son. God be with me as I teach these
things, that you would protect me from error, and God pray that
you would protect us all from the error that we can so easily
walk into. God, we know that your word is
sure, and it is true, and it is a light in our dark world. God, show us this light every
day. God, we thank you, and we praise
you, and we pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. So we are going to talk tonight
about covenant. What we're going to do is I'm
going to give us a definition of covenant, and I'm going to
do it in a way that is going to find itself repeated. So when I define covenant for
us, it's going to give us sort of an exercise that we can walk
through together several times as we look at several different
covenants that we see in scripture. And I promise this has everything
to do with Ephesians 1, 3, and 4. But we'll get there. So first I want to give you a
definition of covenant. If you're taking notes, write
this down. This is sort of going to be the
model for everything we do as we go through tonight. A covenant
is a promise given from one party to another, upon which are imposed
stipulations or conditions. And these stipulations or conditions
are signified or sealed by some sort of token, symbol, or ceremony. And so in this, we have four
principal parts, okay? Covenant has four parts that
make something into a covenant. It has, first, parties. It has, second, promise or promises. has third, a stipulation or a
condition, things that must be satisfied in order for the promise
to be fulfilled, and fourth, it has some sort of seal. The
seal can be a ritual or ceremony that represents the covenant.
So we're gonna break down each of these in a generic way first.
So in general, we're gonna look at how these four principal parts
of a covenant work together, and then we're gonna use that
as a model for looking at several other covenants in scripture.
So first we have the parties. The parties are further broken
down into two different parties. First we have the mediator. Every
covenant has a mediator. The mediator of the covenant
is the one who dispenses the promise, who makes the promise,
and it's the one who sets the stipulations or conditions. And
then on the other hand, we have the subjects or the partakers
of the covenant. The subject is the person or
persons to whom is applied the promises and the stipulations. And an interesting thing that
we'll see show up in scripture as we look at some of these covenants
is that a lot of covenants are made to one person initially
and then promised to that person's offspring, their posterity. So
we have parties that consists of a mediator and subjects. All right, the next principal
part of a covenant are the promises of the covenant. There are different
types of promises that we see throughout the covenants of scripture.
First, there are natural promises. And these are promises that are
physical, they're natural, and they are temporary. And we'll
get into examples of these as we go through. So we've got natural
promises and then we have supernatural promises, right? You've got natural
and then the other side of that is supernatural. These supernatural
promises are going to be spiritual promises. They're going to be
eternal promises, okay? And these supernatural and eternal
promises may not see their fruition or their fulfillment immediately
in the same way that some of these natural promises do. And
a third point about promises. These promises are dispensed
at the behest of the mediator. The mediator decides when to
fulfill the promise. And it will be the case with
some of these covenants. We will see that the mediator
gives the promise or fulfills the promise before the stipulations
or conditions have been satisfied. And that is up to the mediator
to decide. The third principle part of covenant, we have stipulations
or conditions. These are obligations entered
into by the subjects or partakers of the covenant. All subjects
of the covenant are in that way obliged to comply or to fulfill
or satisfy these stipulations or conditions. As I said before,
the mediator can apply these promises prior to the fulfillment
of these stipulations without negating the obligation of the
subject. We'll see in some of the covenants
of scripture, God fulfills his promise to his people before
his people have even taken steps toward fulfilling their end of
this obligation. But God fulfilling this promise
for them does not negate their obligation to the conditions.
And then fourth principal part of a covenant, we have a symbol.
This is a symbol or a seal or scripture, even some translations
of scripture even use the word token. It's something that represents
the promises and the fulfillment of the stipulations. The covenant
is ratified or established by the seal that comes with it.
And this seal reveals to us, the purpose of this seal is to
reveal to us something that is true about the stipulations,
about the promises, or both. And so that sort of framework
is how we're going to proceed forward looking at several different
covenants. I have eight pages of notes tonight,
but I managed to get through the first page pretty quickly. First covenant we're going to
look at. I chose this one first because it is sort of the most
familiar to most of us. We can look at the covenants
of scripture and we can see what scripture teaches about them.
But in this particular covenant, we have the most organic relationship
with this covenant. It has the most bearing on our
everyday lives, our natural lives. And that is the covenant of marriage. And so what we're going to do,
we're going to look at marriage and we're going to break it down
into the four principal parts of the covenant that I gave before.
So first principal part of covenant is what? Parties, right? So in
marriage you have two parties, okay? And it might be a common
mistake to, uh, to think that the parties entering this covenant
of marriage are the husband and the wife. This is not the case. There are only two parties. The
mediator of this covenant is God. God is the mediator of the
covenant of marriage. We'll get into how God mediates
this covenant. And then the subjects of the
covenant of marriage are who? The husband and wife. Okay, the
husband and wife enter into this covenant together as one of the
parties and God mediates this covenant between him and the
husband and wife. Okay, so that's the first principle
part of the covenant of marriage. Second, we have the promises. Okay, we're gonna go to Genesis
because that is where marriage is defined. Genesis defines marriage. So if you want to know what marriage
is, we just look at Genesis. We're going to start in Genesis
1, verse 28. We have the first promise given. And God blessed them. So this
is right after God has created man, male, and female. Verse
28 of Genesis 1. And God blessed them. And God
said to them, be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth,
and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and
over the birds of the heavens, and over every living thing that
moves on the earth. And God said, behold, I have
given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all
the earth, and every tree with seed and its fruit, you shall
have them for food. And to every beast of the earth,
and to every bird of the heavens, and to everything that creeps
on the earth, everything that has the breadth of life, I have
given every green plant for food, and it was so. And God saw everything
that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was
evening, and there was morning the sixth day." So this is the
first promise of the covenant of marriage, dominion over the
earth. So God promised Adam and Eve
in their covenant of marriage dominion over the earth. And
then in Genesis 2, we have a recapitulation of this creation story, and we
have more promises for the marriage covenant. Let's see, Genesis
2, 18. Then the Lord God said, it is
not good that man should be alone. I will make a helper fit for
him. And so in this way, one of the
promises of this covenant of marriage is a helper fit for
the man. And then we have one More promise
associated with the covenant of marriage, and that is in Genesis
2, 24 and 25. It says, Therefore a man shall
leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and
they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were
both naked and were not ashamed. And so we have this third promise
with the covenant of marriage, and that is the promise of intimacy. There's the promise of oneness,
one flesh. There's the promise of nakedness
without shame. These are the promises for marriage. But marriage is not without its
stipulations and conditions. A lot of people misdefine or
incorrectly define a covenant as just a contract. And covenant
is sort of a contract. It does have terms and conditions
like a contract does. And so in this way, we can imagine
stipulations as the terms and conditions of the contract, of
the covenant. So the stipulations of the covenant
of marriage. First, this is just a list, not in any particular
order. Obviously, what? Love. Ephesians 5. the husband is commanded to love
his wife. And this particular command is
really associated to all believers, right? We are all commanded to
love our neighbor. And husbands and wives, who is
your closest neighbor? It is your spouse. We're gonna
go to Ephesians 5 and look at some of these promises. The next
The next promise that I have associated to the covenant of
marriage is actually death, right? Let's see. We're going to start
at 5, verse 22. Ephesians 5, 22. Wives, submit
to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the
head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church, his
body and himself its savior. Now as the church submits to
Christ, so the wives should submit and everything to their husbands.
And so here we see the stipulations for the wife explained, right?
The wife is to submit to the husband as the church submits
to Christ. And then for the husband, husbands
love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up
for her. So in what way did Christ give
himself up for the church? He died. He died and took responsibility
for the sins of the church. So in this way, one of the stipulations
of the covenant of marriage for the man is death. He must die to himself and die
for his wife. And now, there seems to be, especially
in our culture, there's some trouble with with looking at
these particular obligations that we see in the covenant of
marriage. Our culture does not like that God has defined marriage
in such a way that the man is to die for his wife and the wife
is to submit to him. But if we look at marriage in
the way that it is a covenant between God and the spouses,
then we see that fulfilling these obligations, you're not fulfilling
your obligation for your spouse, okay? I do not die for my wife
out of obligation to her. I die for my wife out of obligation
to God. My wife does not submit to me
out of obligation to me. My wife submits to me out of
obligation to God. And so we've talked about this
a lot and she has told me. She finds comfort in knowing
that she can submit to me even when I am not loving her because
her submission is not about me. Her submission is about her relationship
with her father in heaven. The submission for the wife is
about submission to Christ. And this loving of the wife by
the husband is not about him. It's not about his wife. It's
about loving Christ as Christ has loved the church. Loving
your wife as Christ has loved the church. We have some more
stipulations for this covenant of marriage. There's sexual faithfulness. We see this in the 10 commandments. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Okay, adultery is a sin exclusive to married people. Unmarried
people cannot commit adultery. And so this command not to commit
adultery, it elevates marriage as a covenant and gives this
stipulation, be faithful to your spouse. Now we have some other
stipulations in the other vows you make to your spouse, right?
I made lots of vows to my spouse on our wedding day. And then
in Genesis 2, we see another particular condition here. The man is commanded to leave
his father and mother. And then we have one more condition
seen in Genesis 1, 28 again, be fruitful and multiply. Now, these are all the conditions
that I thought of when I was working on this. There's probably
more. And so the idea behind this covenant is that If you
fulfill all of these obligations to God, then you will have all
of these promises. So husbands, if you die to yourself
and love your wife as Christ loved the church, if you are
faithful to your wife, your wife will be a helper fit. You will
have intimacy with her. And wives, If you love your husband,
if you submit to your husband as the church to Christ, if you
are faithful to your husband, then you will be a helper fit
for him and you will have intimacy and unity. But what's the problem?
And this is something that we're going to highlight throughout
our talk of covenants tonight. A human has never successfully
satisfied the conditions of any covenant he's ever been in. Man
can never satisfy the conditions of covenant. We see this in every
single covenant described in scripture. We see this in our
marriages. I am not upholding my vows perfectly. I am not a perfect husband. My
wife is not a perfect wife. Man has never been able to satisfy
the conditions of covenant. So that's the third principle
part of the covenant of marriage. What's the fourth principle part?
The seal or the symbol or the token, okay? And these seals
give you a picture or they teach us something about the conditions
and the stipulations and the promises of the covenant. What
is the seal of the marriage covenant? Sexual intimacy. Sexual intimacy
is representative of the oneness that there is in marriage. It
is representative of the love you and your spouse have for
each other. So in this way, it represents the covenant and it
seals the covenant. So that's the covenant of marriage. So I wanted to go through this
exercise first with the something that's not really the focus of
what we're doing and I get you comfortable with this the idea
of doing this exercise we're gonna go through another one
we're gonna look at one of the covenants described in the Old
Testament now okay we're gonna look at the Abrahamic covenant
this is the covenant that God made with Abraham if you don't
know Abraham was a pagan living in the middle of nowhere worshiping
the moon and God called him okay So we're gonna go to Genesis
chapter 12. We're just bouncing all over the place today. Old
and New Testament. Genesis 12. Genesis 12 is gonna
describe for us the party. So we're gonna look at the four
principal parts of the covenant that God made with Abraham, okay? So Genesis 12, verses one through
three. Now the Lord said to Abram, Go
from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the
land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great
nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that
you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless
you, and him who dishonors you I will curse. And in you all
the families of the earth shall be blessed." So who are the parties? You've got God. God is the mediator
of this covenant. God is the one who has given
these promises to Abraham. So God is the mediator of this
covenant. And then you have the subject, the partaker, who is
Abraham. And not only Abraham, God has
promised to Abraham these promises for his posterity as well, his
children. And we'll see this in the promises. We're gonna go to Genesis 15
now. Genesis 15, this covenant gets more fleshed out versus
Let's see, there's three promises here. First, God promises Abraham
a natural heir. Abraham didn't have a son, his
wife was barren, and God said, your wife is gonna have a son.
Genesis 15 verse four, and behold, the word of the Lord came to
him, this man shall not be your heir, your very own son shall
be your heir. Okay, and then in verse 18 of
Genesis 15, we've got the promise of a land for Abraham and his
family. 15, 18, on that day the Lord
made a covenant with Abram saying, to your offspring I give this
land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river
Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites,
the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Rephaim, the Amorites, the
Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites, all the ites.
And then back in Genesis 12, we had another promise for Abraham. And that is that he would be
the father of a great nation. So that's two principal parts. One more thing about these promises.
One of the key identifying characteristics of this covenant is that these
promises are natural promises. These promises are temporary
promises. The land that God gave to Abraham
was a temporary promise because Abraham's children ended up in
Egypt, right, enslaved by the Egyptians. These are natural,
temporary promises. So now we've got the stipulations
and the seal. The conditions of this covenant
and the seal of this covenant are actually the same thing,
okay? And that is circumcision. Okay,
we're gonna be in Genesis 17 now. This is where we see circumcision
given to Abraham as the seal of this covenant. So first of
all, circumcision is a sign of the covenant God makes with Abraham.
Genesis 17, 11, you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your
foreskins and that shall be a sign of the covenant between me and
you, okay? And then we also see that this
circumcision is mandated, is mandatory. Okay, 17, 10, This
is my covenant which you shall keep. God commands Abraham to
keep this covenant, the sign of which is circumcision. And
then, even more importantly than being mandated, it is indispensable. Violating it is not good. 1714, any uncircumcised male
who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be
cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant. And
so this circumcision, this seal, communicates truth because it
is the sign. It communicates truth to us about
the conditions and promise of this covenant. First of all,
it communicates to us that it is natural. Circumcision is a
natural thing. Not meaning that you're naturally
circumcised. I mean, it has to do with your flesh, right? It
represents the separation of flesh from flesh. God said to Abraham, I will make
you the father of a great nation. That nation is the nation of
Israel and through circumcision, representing separation of flesh
from flesh, the nation of Israel is separated from the surrounding
nations. Okay? Abraham is the father of
this particular nation, the flesh that has been separated from
flesh. So that is one of the biblical
covenants. We're going to come back here and we're going to
learn how to view this covenant in light of the New Testament.
Finally, we can go back to Ephesians 1. Back in Ephesians 1. I'm going
to read verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with
every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. In verse four,
we see the phrase, even as he chose us in him, okay? And so we see this phrase twice
in these two verses, in Christ, in verse three, and in him, where
the him is Christ, so in Christ, in verse four. Okay, in verse
three, God has blessed us in Christ. So this speaks of how
we relate to the us. Or how God relates to the us.
We are the us. This speaks to how God relates
to us. How does God relate to his people? Through way of covenant. So what we have here is another
covenant. And this covenant is, for right
now, the picture we're going to paint of this covenant is
that of a shadow. It's going to be a shadow of
what will be revealed later. Okay. So we're going to call
this the covenant of grace as a shadow. And so we're going
to go through that exercise we did with marriage and with Abraham.
We're going to look at the four principal parts of a covenant
in order to see how it all breaks down and how it works. Okay. So we have the covenant of grace
as a shadow. The parties are, We have a mediator who is God
walking in the garden. Okay, let me convince you. We're gonna go to Genesis 3 now. Let's see, Genesis 3. So in Genesis
3, the serpent deceives Adam and Eve, they eat of the tree,
and then they hide themselves, right? They know they sin, their
eyes have been opened up to evil, And so they hide. Then the eyes
of both were open and they knew that they were naked and they
sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. Okay. Genesis three, verse eight. They
heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the
cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid
themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of
the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to
him, where are you? And he said, I heard the sound
of you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked, and
I hid myself. He said, who told you that you
were naked? Have you eaten of the tree which
I commanded you not to eat? Then the man said, the woman
whom you gave to me to be with me, she gave me the fruit of
the tree, and then I ate. Then the Lord God said to the
woman, what is it that you have done? The woman said, the serpent
deceived me and I ate. The Lord God said to the serpent,
and here we have the establishment, the first revelation of the covenant
of grace. And ironically, it is God speaking
to the devil. God gives, this is often called
the first gospel, the proto-evangelion. The first gospel and it's God
speaking to the devil. He says because you have done
this cursed Are you above all livestock and above all beasts
of the field on your belly? You shall go and dust you shall
eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you
and the woman in between your offspring and her offspring He
shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel And then he He speaks to Adam
and Eve, gives them their curse. So we have here the parties,
the parties of this covenant. We have the mediator, God walking
in the garden. And then we have the parties.
We really sort of have two parties here. I'm not going to say God
made a covenant with the devil, but the devil is certainly the
subject of God's wrath in this covenant. But the subjects are
who? Her seed. I will put enmity between
you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring. Okay, the seed of the woman. This is the seed of the woman
in the first half of verse 15. In contrast, with being a child
of the devil, so you have children of Eve by her seed, and then
you have children of the devil by her seed in First John chapter
three. just to convince you that not
everyone born of Eve is a child of Eve. Let's see, 1 John 3,
10, whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep
his tongue from evil and his, let's see. That's not where it was. Oh well,
don't have the reference there. There, Cain is described as a
child of the devil, specifically, okay? So we sort of have a contrast
here between children of Eve and children of the devil, and
not everyone who is actually born of Eve is actually a child
of Eve, they are children of the devil, okay? So now we've
got the promises of this first covenant of grace given in the
garden. We see it in Genesis 3.15, in between the offspring
of the serpent and the offspring of Eve. Who are the offspring
of the serpent? The serpent is obviously the
devil, and so there are some who are children of the devil. If you go to John 8, 8.44, Let's see, you are of your father,
the devil. And this is Jesus speaking to
the Pharisees. He says, you're of your father,
the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. The
Pharisees claimed that they were children of Abraham, and Jesus
said, no, you're children of Satan. And so one of the promises
here in this covenant is that there will be enmity between
the offspring of the serpent and the offspring of Eve, whoever
they happen to be. We'll figure it out in a minute.
So here God promises that there exist people who are sons of
the devil. And there is always enmity between
the sons of the devil and Christ. OK? In case you didn't figure
it out yet, Christ is the seed of the woman in 315. We've got
another promise. He shall crush your head and
you shall bruise his heel. So the head of the serpent represents
sin and death. Christ will crush sin and death
in his resurrection. And then sin and death kills
Christ, leaving their marks on his body. And so here in these promises,
we have this first establishment of this covenant of grace, but
it has not been fully revealed yet. By mentioning Christ here,
I've sort of shown you some of the cards I'm holding because
we're going to get to how Christ really fits into this. For the
stipulations of this covenant, they actually remain unrevealed. When God saves Adam and Eve here,
He doesn't put any conditions on. He doesn't say if you keep
obeying me now like they couldn't obey when they were good. How
are they going to obey when their eyes are open to evil when they've
tasted evil? So there are really no conditions
put on this covenant. God just gives the seal. God
kills animals and closed them. And so this seal reveals that
God closed them in his righteousness and this seal requires blood. And so this blood is going to
be a shadow of these conditions that we haven't seen yet. The
conditions on this covenant are there. There are conditions.
God has not revealed them yet. So that is the covenant of grace
first revealed in Genesis chapter 3. So now there is another covenant. It's not really another covenant,
it's the same covenant. It is this covenant of grace,
but this covenant of grace is fully revealed in the gospel
of Christ. So what we've got here is we've
got this covenant of grace given in Genesis 3, and then we go
through the whole Old Testament, we're just gonna skip it for
now, and we've got the covenant of grace fully revealed in Christ. Okay, we're gonna fill in the
middle at the end, I promise. And so I'm gonna call this the new
covenant, and I'll explain why in a little bit. The Covenant
of Grace and the New Covenant are the same covenant. So let's
go through this exercise again of breaking down the four principal
parts of the covenant. First, we have the parties of
the covenant. The mediator of this new covenant,
this covenant of grace fully revealed is Christ. Jesus is the mediator of this
new covenant. Hebrews chapter 8 verse 6, but
as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more
excellent than the old, than the old as the covenant he mediates
is better since it is enacted on better promises. Christ is
the mediator of this new covenant. Now, who are the subjects or
partakers, the other party in this particular covenant? For
now, I'm going to call them the elect. I'm not going to define
it yet. We need more before we can define
elect. We're going to get to it in Ephesians
1. So for now, we're just sort of taking for granted the elect,
some people who are partakers of this covenant of grace. Now
we have the promises of this new covenant. Eternal salvation
is one of the promises of this covenant. Eternal communion with
Christ is a promise of this covenant. The manifold grace of God is
a promise of this covenant. And then we have the conditions,
and I'm gonna define these conditions in kind of a weird way. It's
not going to seem like a condition. The condition for this covenant
is that God is consistent with his own nature in the covenant
transaction. That seems weird. God is consistent with his own
nature in the covenant transaction. This means that God's justice
must be satisfied against the sins of the partakers of the
covenant. So if God has promised eternal salvation to this elect,
God's justice must still be satisfied against them because they have
sinned. So the condition of this covenant
is that God's justice is satisfied. And then we have the seal. The
seal of this covenant is special in contrast with some of the
other covenants that we've seen. This particular seal is special
because this seal is effectual for bringing about the fulfillment
of the stipulations and the promises. The seal of this new covenant
of grace, fully revealed in the gospel of Christ, is the cross. The cross of Christ represents
Christ's work in satisfying the conditions of this covenant.
On the cross, God's justice is satisfied. We see in Romans 3
that Christ is put forward as propitiation by his blood. God's wrath is satisfied by the
blood of Christ. So the cross is the seal of this
covenant. So why are we calling this the
covenant of grace? It's because man, as with all
other covenants, but particularly this one, man cannot satisfy
the stipulations of this covenant. Man is wholly unable to satisfy
the stipulations of this covenant. For God's justice to be satisfied
against man, man must rest under God's wrath and judgment forever. Forever means God's justice is
never satisfied against them. They must rest in judgment forever.
So man is unable to satisfy this covenant. So we call it a covenant
of grace because Christ comes from heaven to live as a man. He satisfies the righteousness
of God by being perfectly obedient to the law. And then he goes
to the cross and dies and endures the wrath of God for the sins
of everyone he died for. He satisfies the conditions of
this covenant on their behalf. So for this reason, we call it
the covenant of grace, fully revealed in the gospel of Christ. But Christ satisfies the conditions
for us and we enjoy the promises. We enjoy the fulfillment of these
promises while Christ enjoys death on the cross. And at this point, I need to
point out that faith is not a stipulation of this covenant. Faith is not
a condition of this covenant. The work of Christ in satisfying
God's justice is the only stipulation of this covenant. Faith is a
promise of the covenant. Faith is promised to the partakers
of the covenant because Christ satisfies all the stipulations. And we saw this in Ephesians
1 3 last time I was up here. God has blessed us in Christ
with every spiritual blessing. Faith is one of these spiritual
blessings that we have been blessed with in Christ. So faith is not
a condition. Faith is a promise. Now, there's some more important
characteristics of this covenant. Remember the generic definition
of a covenant promise, it goes to everyone that it goes to,
right? And so the promises of this covenant
are communicated to all the elect in all ages. And so because we
saw that the mediator can dispense the promises whenever he wants,
even prior to the fulfillment of the stipulations, we see that
the promises of this covenant of grace are given to God's people
before Christ satisfies the conditions. So the elect prior to the work
of Christ are saved by God's grace and administering this
covenant on account of Christ's work, which had not even happened
yet. And we're going to get to how this works out. It's going
to be really cool, I promise. And so we're calling this new
because it is established. This covenant is new because
it is established and revealed fully and finally on the cross
of Christ. So this is why we call it a new
covenant, not because it's a covenant that didn't exist before, but
because we see its full revelation in the life, death, and resurrection
of Christ. So I know it seems like a distinction
between the covenant of grace fully revealed and the covenant
of grace as a shadow in Genesis three, but it is the same covenant. Okay. one covenant of grace. We call it new because we don't
see the full picture and it is not established with a seal until
Christ on the cross. Now, we can go to Ephesians 1.4
and I'm only going to get to the first little bit of Ephesians
1.4, which means next time I'm up here I have to finish Ephesians
1.4. So, Starting in three, blessed be
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed
us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,
even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world,
that we should be holy and blameless before him. See, before we go on, there's
one other thing I want to point out to you. that was sort of,
whoa, to me. Remember we said when we were
looking at the covenant of grace as a shadow, who was the mediator
of that covenant? God walking in the garden. And
then we looked at the covenant of grace fully revealed in the
gospel, who was the mediator of that covenant? Jesus Christ. But we have established that
these are the same covenant. So this is consistent with what
we expect from our Old Testament Christology, that when God appears
to men, it is God the Son. God walking in the garden is
God the Son appearing to Adam and Eve. Okay, on to Ephesians
1.4. So I said in Ephesians 1.3 we
see that we are blessed in Christ and we talked about in Christ
in covenantal terms. Okay, we're gonna do the same
thing now in Ephesians 1.4 because we see the same language. God
chose us in him. And so we see the choosing of
us as a relation between God the Father and God the Son, a
covenant. And so, before we go through
the exercise again, I must establish that this covenant is actually
a covenant, and then we'll define how this covenant works. We're
gonna be in Psalms. Go to the Psalms, the 110th.
So in Psalm 110, the Lord says to my Lord. The Lord is speaking
to David's Lord, sit at my right hand until I
make your enemies your footstool. The Lord sends forth from Zion
your mighty scepter. Rule in the midst of your enemies.
Your people will offer themselves freely on the day of your power
and holy garments from the womb of the morning. The dew of your
youth will be yours. The Lord has sworn and will not
change his mind. You are a priest forever after
the order of Melchizedek. And then in Hebrews chapter seven,
we see these words echoed by the author. See, starting in
verse 21 through 28, really, this gives the full exposition
of everything I'm about to tell you, but I'm gonna tell you anyway.
starting in verse 20. And it was not without an oath.
In verse 17, the author quotes that Psalm 110. You are a priest
forever after the order of Melchizedek. This promise is not without an
oath. For those who formerly became priests were made such
without an oath. But this one was made a priest with an oath
by the one who said to him, the Lord has sworn and will not change
his mind. You are a priest forever. This
makes Jesus the guarantor of a better covenant. The former
priests were many in number because they were prevented by death
from continuing in office, but he holds the priesthood permanently
because he continues forever. Consequently, he is able to save
to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since
he always lives to make intercession for them. So we have a covenantal transaction
between God, the father and God, the son, the Lord said to my
Lord. So this covenant, we are going
to call it the covenant of redemption or the Messianic covenant covenant
of redemption. So the mediator of this covenant
then is God, the father. Okay. The Lord said to my Lord,
And the subject, the partaker of this covenant is God, the
son, my Lord. And so we have a promise here
in Psalm 110, the promise of this covenant, what the Lord
swore to my Lord, that he would be made the high priest eternally
of an eternal covenant, an eternal holy order, an eternal priesthood,
the order of Melchizedek. But there's another promise associated
with this covenant, that the members of this holy order, this
order of Melchizedek, are given to Christ, the high priest of
this order. Go to John 6. Your pastor was dying to get
to John 6 while he was in John 5. I don't blame him, because
John 6 is awesome. We're going to be in John 6,
37. Jesus speaking now, he says, all that the Father gives me
will come to me. And whoever comes to me, I will
never cast out. For I've come down from heaven
not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. That
sounds like stipulations. And this is the will of him who
sent me that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me,
but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my father
that everyone who looks on the son and believes in him should
have eternal life. I will raise him up on the last
day. This is the promise of the covenant. God makes a promise.
God, the father makes a promise to God, the son, that he would
be made the high priest of this holy order, this eternal covenant. Flip over to John 17. Since Jesus is being made the
high priest of this holy order, it behooves us to read something
from his high priestly prayer. John 17, when Jesus had spoken
these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father,
the hour has come. glorify your son, that the son
may glorify you. Since you have given him authority
over all flesh to give eternal life to all whom you have given
him. And this is eternal life that
they know you the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have
sent. I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work
that you gave me to do. And now father glorify me in
your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the
world existed. we have another covenant promise. God the Father
promises to glorify God the Son in the salvation of the people
that He has given Him. So we've got two parties in this
covenant, God the Son, God the Father, and then we've got the
promises made between the parties of this covenant. There are stipulations
now. And we see these stipulations
here in John 17. I'll just say it. The stipulation
of this covenant of redemption is that Christ would come and
establish the covenant of grace and satisfy those stipulations
on behalf of the elect. The condition of this covenant
of redemption made between God the Father and God the Son is
that God the Son would come to earth and fully reveal and establish
and fulfill and complete the covenant of grace. Christ fulfilling
the covenant of grace on our behalf is Christ fulfilling the
covenant of redemption on his own behalf. So now we can define the elect
that we talked about in covenant of grace. Who are the elect?
Okay, if you're taking notes, this is a good definition to
write down. Elect, those whom God has given to Christ by his
decree, who Christ then saves through satisfying the covenant
of grace, which he established in the garden and completed on
the cross. So this is what it means when
Paul says he chose us in Him, in Him, in Christ. So we have a covenant inside
a covenant. We've got the covenant of redemption,
wherein God the Father promises to God the Son, glory and a people. And then we have the conditions
of this covenant, the covenant of grace, wherein God promises
to the people salvation and eternal communion with Christ. and the conditions of this covenant
being that Christ would satisfy God's justice against them. So we've got one more part for
this covenant of redemption from these four parts, right? There's
four principal parts for a covenant. We have what? The seal. And remember, what does the seal
do? It points to, it teaches us, it represents something about
the covenant made. The seal of this covenant, the
symbol, the token, is the Old Covenant. The Old Covenant, the
Old Testament, these covenants that God made with Israel that
were natural and temporary promises. The covenants of the Old Testament
establish and reveal the truth of Christ's fulfillment of the
covenant of grace, thereby pointing to Christ's fulfillment of the
covenant of redemption. So we're gonna do a quick review
of these old covenants and see how they point to Christ's fulfillment
of this covenant of redemption. So we're gonna start with Noah's
covenants. Noah gets two covenants, all the way back in Genesis chapter
six. Genesis 6, 18. Let's see, but I, this is God
speaking, I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall
come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, your sons' wives,
with you. So God makes a covenant with
Noah to enter the ark. So what does this reveal? We're
not gonna go through the whole four-step process with all these
covenants. We're just gonna look at what these covenants reveal
to us about Christ in this covenant of redemption. God in the covenant
redemption saves a select people from among the wicked of the
earth. In the same way, in the covenant of Noah, God saves a
select people, Noah's family, out from the wicked of the earth. And then in the covenant of redemption,
God saves his elect people and he condemns the rest to judgment
in their wickedness. just as in the covenant of Noah,
God condemns the rest of the world to judgment in their wickedness. We're gonna go back to the covenant
of Abraham. Gotta find my page of notes on
that one. Let's see, here it is. So we've got the promises. God promised Abraham a land,
right? We'll see this promise repeated
in the next covenant, the covenant of Moses. There's one particular
promise that we didn't look at before in the covenant of Abraham
that I wanna just read to you. Because even some of these natural
temporary covenants have divine eternal significance. In Genesis
22, 18, God says to Abraham, In your offspring shall all the
nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.
So this idea of all the nations, we know from Revelation that
in heaven, every tongue confesses, right? There are elect from all
nations in heaven praising God in the pictures we see in Revelation.
So in this way, we see a divine foreshadowing of this elect from
every people. Then we've got the Mosaic Covenant. First we see a promise, and this
promise is first revealed before the satisfaction of the stipulations.
And that is salvation from slavery in Egypt. So first God gives
grace, He satisfies a promise to the people of Israel in pulling
them out of Egypt. And this is before God even establishes
this covenant with them. And this reveals to us that Christ
saves His people out of slavery. And this salvation for Israel
came before their compliance with the covenant. This salvation
was unconditional. The salvation from Egypt for
Israel was without condition. And then we see another promise. After they come out of Israel,
God promises that they would be preserved while they wander
around in the desert for years and years and years. And what
do we see? God feeds them. God gives them water to drink.
and they are preserved in the wilderness for 40 years. What
does this reveal? Christ preserves His people. What did He say in John 6? It
is the will of my Father that all He has given me will never
be cast out. And then there was another promise
in the covenant with Moses, the inheritance of the land of Canaan. This reveals to us finally that
Christ is united with His people in eternal communion. And so what are the stipulations
of this covenant of Moses? The law, right? God gave the
law. And what does this law do? It
reveals the righteous character of God. It reveals his justice. And so in the law, we see that
God reveals to us the necessity of Christ satisfying God's justice
on our behalf. Because the law condemns us.
Paul teaches us this in Romans 3. The law stops every mouth. The law condemns us and then
so reveals to us the necessity of Christ satisfying God's justice
on our behalf. So this law, this justice must
be satisfied as the stipulation of the covenant of grace. And then in the covenant God
made with David, we see the promise of God to Christ
proclaimed. Remember, what was the promise?
God the Father promises to God the Son to glorify Him. Psalm 89, verses three and four,
you have said, I have made a covenant with my chosen one, I have sworn
to David, my servant, I will establish your offspring forever
and build your throne for all generations. Who is the offspring
of David? He is Jesus Christ, the son of
David. He is glorified forever. His
throne is established for all generations eternally. And so
what we have seen here as in In these old covenants, these
temporary, physical, fleshly, earthly covenants God made with
his physical people, Israel, we see, as you go through the
timeline, this covenant of grace and this covenant of redemption
revealed to us, piece by piece, until it is fully realized in
the incarnation of Christ. God the Son comes down and sets
into motion the fulfillment of these two covenants wherein he
lives a perfect life, perfect obedience, satisfying God's justice,
satisfying God's law. And then he goes to the cross
and on that cross he endures the wrath of God against his
people. And in that, Christ satisfies
the covenant of grace on our behalf. And then God does what? Jesus is buried, and by the power
of the Holy Spirit, Jesus is resurrected. And we see he has
a glorified body, and he sits now at the right hand of the
Father in glory. And we will soon see the full
fruition of all of these covenants in Christ's return, wherein he
judges the nations and his people are unified with him forever
in eternal communion, which is the last promise of that covenant
of grace. And so there is no question that
any of this is going to happen. Because all of these things,
this covenant of redemption, Ephesians 1.4 tells us when it
happened. If you want to know when the covenant of redemption
was made, go to Ephesians 1.4. What does it say? He chose us
in Him before the foundation of the world. This covenantal
transaction between God the Father and God the Son was before the
foundation of the world, wherein God decreed and promised to give
to the Son and elect people. And he obliged the Son to then
satisfy another covenant on their behalf. And Christ comes and
satisfies this covenant, securing for us all of its promises, salvation
and life with Christ forever. Let's pray. God, we thank you for your word
and what it teaches us about how you relate to us. God, we thank you for your word
and that it is complete and that it is clear and that it fully
reveals your glory and the glory of your son in Jesus Christ. And God, we praise you for making
us to be the partakers of your covenant. God, we praise you
for choosing us before the foundation of the world. God, we thank you
for satisfying that covenant that we could not satisfy. When
we were guilty with respect to the law, God, you came down and
your son, Jesus Christ, satisfied the law. and he satisfied your
justice on the cross, and he saved us. God, go with us, give
us peace in our spirits, give us comfort in our hearts, and
give us a hunger to read your word and to know you more. God,
we thank you and we praise you. And we pray these things in Jesus'
name, amen.