Covenant, Part 2
Change and unity. Think of how you are growing and changing and yet you are the same person today as you were a year ago and five years ago. When we think of God’s covenant throughout history there is both unity and change.
Gen. 12:1 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. 2 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. 3 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.”
Abraham was 75 when God made this covenant with him. Twenty-four years later, God gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision. This was not an entirely new covenant but rather a way for the covenant to be administered. Through the covenant sign of circumcision God was giving to Abraham and to all of his descendants a very visible sign of what God promised to do and what was to be in response their duty. At this time God also promised to Abraham all the land of Canaan.
God’s dealing with Abraham is of supreme importance. As Robert Reymond has summarized: “Once the covenant of grace had come to expression in the spiritual promises of the Abrahamic covenant, the Abrahamic covenant became the picture or model of God’s continued work of salvation leading up to the coming of Christ.”[1]
Now later as the descendants of Abraham were brought out of Egypt by God’s mighty power, Israel was given what has been called the Mosaic Covenant. Again this was not an entirely new covenant, it was a new way for the covenant to be administered. Israel was given many laws and ceremonies. Israel was never to earn her salvation by keeping God’s Law. Rather God gave to Israel the law as part of His covenant dealings with His people. God always deals with people in terms of covenant.
With David, the covenant of grace reached another important stage. The Davidic covenant formally established the manner in which the Lord would rule among his people. The climax of the OT is found in 2 Samuel 7. O. Palmer Robertson writes: “Prior to this point, God certainly had manifested himself as the Lord of the covenant. But now God openly situates his throne in a single locality. Rather than ruling from a mobile sanctuary, God reigns from Mt. Zion in Jerusalem. In a climatic sense, it may be said that under David the kingdom has come.”[2]
All the OT covenants made with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Israel, and David point the way clearly to the coming of Christ and the New Covenant of which He would be the mediator.
Hebrews 12:24 and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
We will consider this New Covenant in our next study.
[1] Robert L. Reymond, A New Systematic Theology of the Christian Faith.
[2] O. Palmer Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants, 229.