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Tonight and next Sunday night I’m going to do kind of a couple follow-up messages on from our series on dispensations and I want to talk tonight about biblical covenants You have an outline in the back of your bulletin you can kind of follow and then a week from tonight By the way, that’s Mother’s Day evening, but we have service that evening We’re taking a Sunday night off in Memorial Day weekend anyway So we’ll have service next Sunday night and I’ll wrap up this series kind of with a comparison of what’s called covenant theology With dispensational theology and and why we lean one way or the other so we’ll do that next week and so these are just two brief messages on those things.
We’re going to start out in in In Genesis in just a minute, but before we get there let me explain a few things Of course, there are covenants in the Bible if you if someone asks you name name a biblical covenant What would you say? You’d almost say Abraham yeah, there’s Abraham there’s the David’s or the Davidic Covenant and so forth so there are covenants in the Bible we know that and we should recognize them kind of put them in place and when they happen and what happened because of these covenants a covenant is an agreement between two parties So biblical covenants though there were agreements between individuals From time to time in history.
Those aren’t the biblical covenants that we’re talking about we’re talking about when God makes a covenant with someone And he could make that covenant with an individual with a nation or with all of mankind And that’s kind of what we’re seeing in these in these covenants Generally covenants are divided into two kinds conditional and unconditional But we really only have one Conditional covenant and that’s the mosaic covenant the law of Moses But I’m reserving that to the last one that we’ll talk about tonight All of the others are unconditional in that God Makes these pronouncements and says this is what I will do and regardless of how people receive that or what they do God will do those things and that’s why we still look forward to the future when Christ will return and finish some of these covenants and finish what he said he would do So only the mosaic is conditional which means the unconditional ones are the Abrahamic the Palestinian the Davidic and the new covenant and Then the three I divided these into three minor covenants that are made with all of mankind God makes these with all people
Well the first one the identity covenant he really made with Adam and Eve in the garden but the failure of that applies to all of us and Then God makes covenants with Israel and those are his unconditional covenants So to begin with let’s go to Genesis one and as a matter of fact all three of these first ones are in Genesis and by the Edenic covenant what Writers have meant by that is that in the Garden of Eden God made a covenant with Adam and Eve to do certain things They had to fulfill their part he would fulfill his part and So in Genesis one verse 26 to 28 I have there it could act I could say to verse 31 to the end of the chapter God says let us make man in our image after our likeness Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fall of the air You notice now how God is pronouncing what things are going to happen over the cattle over the earth over the Creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth so God created man in his own image and the image of God created He him male and female and that’s all by the way Created he them and God blessed them and God said unto them now do this be fruitful Multiply replenish the earth subdue it have dominion over the fish the sea and over the fall of the air over every living thing that move it upon the earth and the rest .
Now there are a few things that that he has said here that that we should understand that he said to Adam Eve number one is Propagate the race Replenish the earth really the word is simply fill up the earth and so they were supposed to reproduce Of course they would have and they did but they did in a fallen state had they not fallen They would have done that in an unfallen state which would have been a blessing to us all But they didn’t they’re also supposed secondly to have dominion or subdue the earth we see that in verse 28 as well and Dominion back in verse 26 also so subdue the earth have dominion over it so human beings were created to Be in control of the earth As a matter of fact some have called Adam the king of the earth and he literally was he was in control of it all It was his to-do of course God is the owner and he has sublet it so to speak to Adam But Adam had dominion over everything which means over The animal kingdom and all of those kinds of things of course as well and then God told them to take care of the garden in chapter 2 verse 8 He says the Lord planted a garden eastward and Eden and there he put man whom he had formed and so All of the trees are there and they have there to till the ground They are to take care of the trees and eat of all the trees And so they’re to take care of the garden. But then lastly in chapter 2 verse 17 is the instruction versus the Tree of good and evil verse 16 says the Lord God commanded the man saying of every tree of the garden now may us freely eat But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat thereof when the day thou eatest thereof Thou shalt surely die in this sense this Identity covenant is conditional it is it’s conditioned upon upon what they would do But this is what they are supposed to do in the garden.
Did they succeed or fail? Well, they failed and of course they Disobeyed this one last command of God and yet God said if you do this you will surely die and They did and so God fulfilled and is still fulfilling his part of the identity covenant that way it applies to all of us we die because of what they did in this garden and How they disobeyed God in this covenant? Well, then secondly as we move to chapter 3 there is what some people call the Adamic Adam the Adamic Covenant and that is now that they have sinned and they’re going to be cast out of the garden God is going to tell a few Certain things to them now the word covenant is not used here But this this is given in a strict sense and we still live with the consequences of all of this so in chapter 3 verse 14 He begins Talking to the serpent God said unto the serpent because thou has done this thou art cursed above all cattle above every beast of the field Upon thy belly shout thou go and dust shall thou eat all the days of thy life We were talking about snakes last night and how much you know, we just naturally love snakes, don’t we? When we see one we’re just attracted to it want to pick it up and cuddle it Well God cursed this animal put him on his belly and there’s been kind of an animosity But especially between the woman you know and her seed and these serpents so Here is the curse upon the serpent and then verse 15. There’s a promise though of a redeemer I will put in the tea still speaking to the serpent between The and the woman between thy seed and her seed that becomes important because the seed Beginning with her seed all the way through Abraham then David all the way down to Mary and finally Christ is born Shall bruise thy head and now shall bruise his heel so of course here is the first promise of Messiah given in this Adamic covenant a promise of a redeemer to bring things back to the way God created it to bring Back to the way it was before sin came Then there is the curse if you will or at least the penalty upon the woman in verse 16 The woman unto the woman he said I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception And sorrow shall t’al bring forth children and thy desire shall be to thy husband But he shall rule over thee and so here’s the pain of childbirth given to the woman and then to Adam verse 17 through 19 really Adam he said unto Adam because thou hast Parkened unto the voice of thy wife and has eaten of the tree which I commanded thee saying thou shall not eat of it Cursed is the ground for thy sake and sorrow shall t’al eat it all the days of thy life Thorns also at this old shall it bring forth unto thee. I’m glad that I’m fulfilling this covenant in my garden a lot And thou shall eat of the herb of the field in the sweat of thy face shall thou eat bread till thou Return unto the ground out of it was thou taken unto dust our art until dust I shall return Maybe he’s reinforcing to Adam here Yes, you died in your spiritual walk with me Spiritually they had died but physically they had not died yet And he’s saying you know, what is death you will be you will go back to the dust out of which you remain Then there is the mention then of the physical death in verse 19 from dust Our art to the stuff shall return And then the removal of the garden from verse 20 through verse 24 He puts them out of the garden Where might have still been a place to come and meet with God but they cannot live there And an angel keeps them from coming back into the garden Some people believe that maybe they could have come they could come back to that place and worship the lord But they can’t live there anymore others believe that they were not allowed to come in at all either way That’s part of the penalty. So here is the covenant given in Eden and then the covenant given to adam and Eve and the serpent and therefore to all the rest of us So this is a covenant with all of mankind and you and I suffer these things to this day Because of what happened Well, then we go all the way up to chapter 9 to the days of Noah Of course, you know what happened that Now that sin had entered into the world It contaminated things very quickly. And so when when Noah comes along In the genealogy of chapter 5 and then in chapter 6 He were we talk about Noah and we know that he builds the ark and God floods the world And starts again so to speak because of the the sin that was in the world at that time By the way, as it was in the days of Noah so shall it be in the coming of the Son of man So things will be worse in our day and why Jesus Christ will come back And why there will be a tribulation of God’s judgment upon the earth Not by water anymore But by fire and so that judgment is yet coming. But as you look at chapter 9 Really, beginning in verse 1, this covenant goes all the way almost through the entire chapter, but at least through 17.
Let me show you a few things. They are now to replenish the earth in chapter 9 verse 1. Just as the same command was given to Adam and Eve, now it’s given to Noah. Well, the earth is empty again, at least of people, and the animals are going to replenish, and so are human beings. For the first time, they’re allowed to eat the animals. Verse 3 says, Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you, even as the green herb. Have I given you all things? And so they were probably not meat-eaters up until this time.
Now they are. So I guess if a person chooses not to eat meat, that’s your own choice, but there’s certainly nothing that makes you holier than anyone else. If you do that, as a matter of fact, God gave us meat to eat, and we’re instructed in the New Testament to be thankful for it when we have it to eat. Then there is the instruction of human government, and you know that it is verse 6 that we have put in these words about capital punishment, who so shedeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed. And your reason you’re going to do that is because in the image of God made he man, rather than God running down every violator and dealing with every murderer, now you are going to do it. You’re going to do it collectively.
You’re going to do it in a governmental sense. And so even when we get up to the letters of Paul, Paul reminds us that government and the law enforcement, they are ministers of God for this reason. And there’s no contradiction, by the way, between government taking a person’s life as a penalty and the command to not kill. Because as a matter of fact, one of the penalties for not obeying the Ten Commandments was that you’d be put to death. So God never saw a contradiction here.
That’s why you’re not to kill, because if you do, that’s what will happen to you. And that’s never been rescinded. So governments have that authority.
So here’s that. And then in verse 11, he reminds Noah that he will never again flood the earth. And so in verse 11, I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood. Neither shall there be any more of a flood to destroy the earth. You’ll never do that again.
So don’t worry about it. Although our neighbors down in southern Missouri might have thought that God forgot last week or two. It’s been pretty bad down there. And of course, you know, flooding happens, but not a universal flood like Noah’s Day, of course. And then so that they are reminded of that, verse 13 says, I do set my bow in the cloud and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And evidently, because of the water that was above the earth in the canopy before the flood, rainbows were not possible because of that.
But now that that canopy of water has collapsed and I’m on the earth, and now we have an open sky up to the heavens, the reflection of the sun and the earth and the water in the air can cause a rainbow. And you say, well, you know, isn’t God kind of taking advantage here of the natural thing? God created everything, didn’t He? He created the circumference of the earth and He created the water cycle and He created the rotation around the sun. And He did it for a lot of reasons. And one of those was to create a rainbow, which He did starting in Noah’s Day.
And you could look at that rainbow and say, you know, there’s always a rainbow during the rain, promising that that will never happen again. There’s also a curse at the end of this chapter in verse 25 upon Canaan because after these things, Noah became drunk after planting a vineyard and using it to create intoxicating beverage. And then his children could not handle that properly and especially Ham’s son Canaan.
And so he is cursed above the others. And by the way, the Canaanites then in the time of Joshua and the conquest of the land, the Canaanites were exceedingly sinful. And when you read about how God said, go in and destroy them and wipe them out and you wonder how can God do such a thing? It begins here with Canaan’s sin and those of his descendants to the place where God said, then I will wipe them out. If God made them, God can do it.
And we can’t ask him why. So we have these three lesser covenants or minor covenants, but we want to talk more about the major covenants. And so if you’ll look at those and just go a little further to Genesis chapter 12 and we have the first one we call the Abrahamic Covenant. Now a few chapters after the life of Noah, Abraham comes along. And by the way, just a few hundred years is not that long between Noah and Abraham. And you can read the genealogy of it in the chapter before.
But in chapter 12, at the end of chapter 11, he is called out of earth, the Caldees, he’s brought into the land and then God says to him, the Lord God said into Abraham, get the out of thy country from thy kindred, from thy father’s house into a land that I will show thee. Remember that word, land. I will make of thee a great nation.
Remember seed. I will bless thee and make thy name great. Thou shalt be a blessing. And then thirdly, I will bless them that bless thee and curse him that curseth thee and end these shalom families of the earth be blessed. So as you’re looking at that list that I made for you, I could have broken it down further, maybe I should have. So you have the major covenants and you have the Abrahamic Covenant and then it’s followed by three, the Palestinian, the Davidic and the New Covenant. Now if you drop off the mosaic at the bottom, then all of those major covenants are unconditional covenants made by God with Israel.
And by the way, these are made with Israel and no one else. These covenants are theirs, they’re really not even ours, but we’re going to benefit from them in certain ways. Remember Romans 9.4 says of the Jews, who are Israelites, to whom pertaineth the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the service of God, Paul is saying. Or in Ephesians 2.12 he says that at that time you Gentiles were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope without God in the world. So these covenants, these promises belong to Israel. So though we’re looking at the Abrahamic Covenant first, I pointed out to you that the Abrahamic Covenant consists of a land, a seed and a blessing. In other words, this covenant with Abraham is threefold.
I’m going to do these three things for you. I’m going to give you a land and that land will belong to Israel forever. I’m going to give you a seed and that seed will culminate in the Lord Jesus Christ, who will rule in that land. And I’m going to then give you a blessing whereby all nations of the earth will be blessed and we see that in the new covenant. So the next three are outgrowths of the Abrahamic Covenant.
These are all unconditional. You can draw a line then before the mosaic because that’s a conditional covenant and it’s not necessarily an outgrowth of the Abrahamic Covenant. Well, here we have this covenant made with Abraham and a few significant things happen. It’s in chapter 15 verse 6 that Abraham believes God and it’s counted to him for righteousness. You remember that verse?
He believed in the Lord and he counted it to him for righteousness. That’s the apostle Paul’s favorite Old Testament verse. Paul quotes this verse all the time. And he quotes this verse to show to us that salvation is by faith because Abraham believed.
Believed is to have faith and when he believed God, it was counted to him for righteousness. And then Paul takes us up to chapter 17 of Genesis and verse 10 and following where Abraham is given the right of circumcision for all of his male posterity and Paul uses that to show which came first, the work of circumcision or the act of faith. Faith came first followed by the circumcision. So faith comes before works, Paul says.
And that’s true. So Abraham believed these things. Now, that Abrahamic Covenant, we’ll talk more about next Sunday night also in relation to how we believe about covenant theology and so forth. But this is probably of all of these covenants, the Abrahamic Covenant is the largest, the biggest. This is the one that has to be fulfilled and it’s not been fulfilled yet.
They don’t have the land, the seed and the blessing yet. All of these things are to come in the future. Well, the next three covenants are an outgrowth of that, first of all. And by the way, notice the scriptures. So here you have God speaking to Abraham all the way back to Genesis, chapter 12. And then we go up to Deuteronomy 30 and then 2 Samuel 7 and then Jeremiah 31. So all of these covenants come in time. Abraham has this covenant, this promise, but God is going to reiterate the Abrahamic Covenant. I told you I’d give you a land, a seed and a blessing. And so now in the days of Moses and Deuteronomy, God re-institutes or re-emphasizes, might say, the Palestinian Covenant in Deuteronomy 30.
So go up there with me to Deuteronomy 30. Israel has crossed the desert. They’re ready to enter into the land. And God is going to give them this covenant. Some people point out different verses, but basically verse 1 through 10 of Deuteronomy 30 is the Palestinian Covenant. Some people include everything from chapter 28 through chapter 30, but we see it in these 10 verses. Let me point out a few things that happen in this Palestinian Covenant. And let me put a footnote here. They’re about to go into the land and conquer the land under Joshua.
That’s not going to be the fulfillment of this. Even though they go in and they live there, it’s never entirely theirs and it hasn’t been entirely theirs to this day. God is going to promise them a land that goes from the Mediterranean Sea to the Euphrates River.
Saudi Arabia. It’s all going to be theirs and that has never been fulfilled yet. Well, first of all, in the first three verses of chapter 30, they are scattered due to their unfaithfulness. He says it shall come to pass when all these things are come upon thee, the blessings and the curse, which I have set before thee and thou shall call them to mind among all the nations whither the Lord thy God hath driven thee.
and shall return unto the Lord.” Notice, when were they scattered among all the nations? Well, the Assyrian captivity and the Babylonian captivity, and those won’t be for a thousand years after this.
And so he is speaking entirely into that future. After I scatter you among the nations, after that I’m going to gather you into this land. So it wasn’t fulfilled by Joshua, who wasn’t fulfilled by the kings of Israel either. Verse 2, and shall return unto the Lord thy God, and shall obey his voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children with all thine heart, with all thy soul.
And of course they’ve never done that either. Then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee. All of this is going to happen when Jesus returns in glory.
This is one of the great things about his glorious return to the earth. And when he sets up this millennial kingdom, he is going to gather these Jewish believers from all over the earth, bring them back to the land of Israel, reestablish them as a nation and be king over them in that land. And this is why, of course, that we as a Christian nation, or a nation that recognizes Christian principles, recognizes this, that there is a future for Israel. That land over there belongs to Israel.
God deeded it to them, and he’s not done with it yet. And when he says, I’ll bless them that bless thee and curse them that curse thee, we better be careful about that. Well, as we read on, all the way down to verse 6, there’s going to be this future repentance. The Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart and the heart of thy seed to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, with all thy soul that thou mayest live. There will be Messiah among them. He will come, as we’ve seen already, but the Lord thy God put all these curses upon nine enemies.
Let me, well, I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Israel will be restored in verse 5 into the land. Verse 6, Israel will be converted or repent. And then in verse 7, the enemies will be subdued. Let me ask you this, have the enemies of Israel been subdued in the Middle East?
So this has not been fulfilled yet. And then there will be full blessing upon them. Verse 9, the Lord thy God will make thee plentious in every work of thine hand, the fruit of thy body and the fruit of thy cattle and the fruit of thy land. For good, the Lord will again rejoice over thee for good as he rejoiced over thy fathers.
And so we see all of these promises given to Israel for this land, and it’s important. So we find the New Testament in Acts chapter 7. Stephen, before he was stoned, is giving the history of Israel, and he says, then came he out of the land of the Caldean, speaking of Abraham, and dwelt in Caron. And from thence, when his father was dead, he removed into this land wherein you now dwell.
And he gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on, yet he promised that he would give it to him for a possession to his seed after him when he had no child. If we went back to Exodus 6, 4, God said it like this to Moses. And I have also established my covenant with them, with Israel, to give them the land of Canaan and the land of their pilgrimage wherein they were strangers. So these covenants are made with Israel for this land. That’s called the Palestinian Covenant. Then we have the next covenant, which is the Davidic Covenant, which relates to the seed of Abraham. And we have to go to our right a little farther to 1 Samuel, or 2 Samuel, chapter 7, where we have this covenant. Because David now is old, he’s going to die, and he’s wondering whether he should build the temple or not.
No, your son will do that. And so in that process of explaining this to David, this covenant is made. So notice these things. 2 Samuel 7, beginning in verse 12, When thy day shall be fulfilled, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, and I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. David will have a son. Notice the emphasis on the seed again. We began with the woman, right? With Eve, being promised that it was her seed through which the earth would be blessed. Then we came to Abraham, and he’s going to bless Abraham’s seed. Now we’re to David, and he’s going to bless David’s seed. The Son will build the temple.
He’s speaking partly of Solomon here. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom. But notice forever, there’s always this mixing of what’s going to happen with Solomon, but what’s going to happen forever. His throne will be forever in verse 13. Also, God will chastise him. Speaking of Solomon, I will be his father, and he shall be my son. If he commit iniquity, I will chase him with the rod of men and with the stripes of the children of men. But my mercy shall not depart away from him as I took it from Saul whom I put away before thee. But then, notice verse 16, thy house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee.
Thy throne shall be established forever. Now Solomon couldn’t have fulfilled that. He did it in his lifetime, but no further. There has to be a further seed of David that can accomplish this. So, for example, we have David saying in Psalm 89, 2 and 3, For I have said mercy shall be built up forever. Thy faithfulness shall thou establish in the very heavens. I have made a covenant with my chosen. I have sworn unto David my servant, Psalm 89, 34. My covenant I will not break, nor alter the thing that has gone out of my lips. Once I have sworn by my holiness that I will not lie unto David, his seed shall endure forever, his throne as the sun before me.
It shall be established forever as the moon, as the faithful witness in heaven. And even again, Peter at Pentecost in Acts 2.30 says, Therefore, being a prophet, speaking of David, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his loins according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne. David understood, being a prophet, that this reference to the seed is not just to Solomon, but is to the Messiah himself. David knew that, prophesied often, though I will die and my body will go back to the dust, when that Messiah dies, his body will not even be corrupted. David understood all of these things, that this was God’s covenant with him. So you have here a Davidic covenant, and there are many things to this covenant too, as David’s throne will be there in the millennial kingdom. Christ will be sitting on a throne, but David will be there in the kingdom. They will have their place in the promised land, and David will rule, and Christ will rule in that millennial kingdom.
It will be a great time, because God will keep his promise to David, a promise that has not been totally fulfilled yet. He doesn’t have that throne, and it’s not forever yet. And we disagree with our covenant friends, when they say, well, it’s being fulfilled now, because Christ ascended to the right hand of the Father, and is sitting on a throne now.
That is not David’s throne, and it’s not in Israel. He’s at the right hand of the Father, yes. And he is God’s Son, yes.
He’s the Creator of everything, yes. But these promises are for the land of Israel, and for David’s throne there. And that has to be fulfilled yet. Then, beyond that, there’s the new covenant. If you’ll go much farther now to Jeremiah, in chapter 31, there is a new covenant.
Now, Jeremiah then lives all the way down to the captivity times. So we have come from Abraham in roughly 2000 BC. We skipped over Moses, we’ll come back to him in 1400 BC. We’ve gone to David, or we’ve gone to Moses’ day in the Palestinian Covenant in 1400. Then we went to David in 1000 BC. Now we’re jumping down to Jeremiah in 600 BC. And Jeremiah in his prophecies says what God wants him to say, and he says in Jeremiah 31, 31, Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. These verses are quoted in the New Testament, especially in the book of Hebrews. And so they’re not unfamiliar to us. Also, there’s a reference to the new covenant and a description in Ezekiel 36, but we’ll not turn there right now.
So there are benefits here. In this whole chapter, I read 31 because that’s where the name of the new covenant is stated. All the way back to verse 8. Again, there is the promise that this will be done in the land of Israel.
I will bring them from the North country and gather them from the coasts of the earth. Also, there is a national conversion seen in verse 11. The Lord hath redeemed Jacob and ransomed him from the hand that was stronger than he. And verse 33, again, where we were a minute ago, but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts. And we’ll be their God and they shall be my people. There is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Now we would have to go to Ezekiel 36 for this, but in Ezekiel 36, and I will turn there.
You’re welcome to turn with me if you can real quickly. But in Ezekiel 36, there’s also a further explanation of the new covenant. So in verse 25, then I will sprinkle clean water upon you and you shall be clean from all your filthiness, from all your idols. I will cleanse you. Verse 26, a new heart also will I give you and a new spirit will I put within you. And I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and I will give you a heart of flesh. And so when this happens, all Israel will be saved, Romans chapter 11, and they will be regenerated by the Holy Spirit in the land of Israel, God’s people, and the number one nation on the earth.
That’s not happened yet, obviously, but it’s coming. The land will be restored totally. Verse 28, again, you shall dwell in the land that I give to your fathers and you shall be my people and I will be your God. And then Christ will reign even personally. And in verse 23, I will sanctify my great name which was profaned among the heathen, which you have profaned in the midst of them. And the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, sayeth the Lord God, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes.
And how many times in the rest of the prophets do they prophesy that there’s a time coming when Christ will be with them there in that kingdom of God. So all of this has to happen. Now, I don’t want to take much time to this. I have kind of a footnote.
I’ll pass over it quickly because of the time. But among good men, they kind of differ as to how this new covenant is applied to us today. Because we speak of an old covenant and a new covenant only we use the word Testament. And we say the Old Testament and the New Testament. And that we use that terminology because some have believed strongly that parts of this new covenant are fulfilled in us. And others say no, no part of it is fulfilled in us.
It’s all for Israel. And so we kind of have an in-house discussion. If you heard one person saying it one way and somebody else another, it’s not at all heresy.
It happens all the time. As a matter of fact, in our dispensational understanding, if you always carried a Schofield reference Bible as a boy as I did, about 100 years before Schofield, a man named John Nelson Darby kind of put legs to the dispensational movement and said, no, these things only apply to Israel. It’s own these the new covenant will only be fulfilled.
And in no other way, when Jesus returns one day and sets up his kingdom. And there are still many fundamental Baptist, I know some personally good, very good men and defend it very well and still believe that view. Then Schofield came along at the turn of the 19th or 20th century. And in the old Schofield Bible, if you have that old Bible, he says, matter of fact, I took a couple quotes out of it. In that he says of this new covenant, these chapters constitute a kind of summary of prophecy concerning Israel as a nation, looking especially to the last days, the day of the Lord and the kingdom age to follow. He says also the new covenant secures the perpetuity, future conversion and blessing of Israel. But he would say that the our universal salvation comes to us because of this covenant.
We are saved today because God made a new covenant with Israel. Now later, if you have a news Schofield reference Bible that was published in the 60s, they expand that a little more. I like the new Schofield Bible. And they say, all those certain features of this covenant have been fulfilled for believers in the present church age. The covenant remains to be realized for Israel, according to the explicit statement of verse 31, which it hasn’t been yet.
So I said all of that just for record to say that I think it’s a good possibility to look at it this way. There is a new covenant for Israel and it’s not been fulfilled yet, and it’s going to be fulfilled when Jesus returns. But in that Abrahamic covenant, when he said, in these shall all nations of the earth be blessed, that blessing, which is seen in the new covenant, has kind of, can I use the term spilled over onto us?
Do you know that the Bible says, you know the phrase, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved? Right. Where is that? There you go. Romans 1013, right? We all know Romans 1013. Do you know that that is first given by Joel describing the kingdom of God?
Because in the kingdom of God, whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And Peter uses it at Pentecost and Paul uses it later in Romans. So he borrows an expression from the new covenant time and says, this can apply to you and this only.
So you might say the only part of the new covenant that applies to us today is this blessing through Abraham and through this covenant that when you call on the Lord, you will be saved too. But for us, it’s kind of like we’re pilgrims and strangers, we’re traveling, and there’s a time coming when we need to stop up ahead. So we’re going to call ahead and make a reservation. And our reservation isn’t going to take place until we get there. And when you die, if you’ve called on the name of the Lord, you have a reservation in the kingdom of God.
And it will be given to you at that time. So in that sense, we participate, I think, in this part of the new covenant. Well, again, it’s kind of fun to hear people talk about the different things. I want to point out one more thing. And that is the Mosaic Covenant, which is the only unconditional covenant, excuse me. And we see it if we can go all the way back to Exodus 19, when God had brought them out of Egypt to the Mount Sinai, and He’s going to give them the land. And these things are being spoken to Moses when he’s up on the mountain with God. And we see it especially in verses five through eight, but really in chapter 19 from verse one all the way through, that they must do these things and be his people. But in verses five through eight, you see this especially. Now therefore, if you will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant, notice the word covenant, then you shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which shall also speak unto the children of Israel. Notice the if and the then in verse five. That makes it a conditional covenant. If you will obey my voice, then this will happen.
If you do this, then I will do this. That was always the case with the law. We’re looking at the book of Samuel this morning in the time of the judges. And so when they disobeyed, God punished them.
them. When they cried out to God and did right, God blessed them. Then they disobeyed, God punished them. Then they called out to God, God blessed them. It was, if you’ll do this, then I will do this.
And it was a conditional thing all the way through, of course. And in verse 8, they agree. Verse 8 of chapter 19, all the people answered together and said, all that the Lord has spoken, we will do. And Moses returned the words of the people unto the Lord. So they agree to do this and to have this conditional relationship with the Lord.
Of course, they try to keep it up. And this is in 1400 BC. And it will, they’ll be good and bad about it all the way down to 600 BC. And then God will scatter them.
And they’ve been scattered ever since. Now, also, you know that most of the Old Testament is written under this time of the Mosaic Covenant. So from the writings of Moses, and when he begins in the book of Exodus, describing how they came out of Egypt, all the way through Malachi and into Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, it’s all under the Mosaic Covenant. It’s all under this law, under this part of the Old Testament. There are three parts of the law. There’s the moral part, which involves the Ten Commandments in chapter 20. There’s the civil part of the law where this is what’s going to happen from the civil authorities if you don’t obey me.
They can do this to you. And then there’s the ceremonial or religious part where here’s what the priests do. Here are the sacrifices. Here are the feast days.
Here are all of these kinds of things. This was a, this was a theocracy, a union of church and state. It is the only one that has ever existed, although Islam promotes by Sharia law a theocracy today, but of course it’s not of God.
They think it is, but it’s not. This was the only theocracy that God ever gave, and it was pretty tough to live under. There were stonings for various things. There were punishments that were glad we’re not under today, but that lasted until the time Jesus came, and were not under the law. As a matter of fact, you know, there are multiple verses about this, Galatians 319.
Wherefore then serveth the service the law. It was added because of transgressions until the seed should come. It was added in the days of Moses until the seed who is Jesus Christ came. The law lasted from Moses to Jesus Christ, not before it, not after it. It was just during that time, Galatians 325.
But after that faith has come, we are no longer under a school master. Galatians 5 1. Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free. Be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage, because that law was a yoke of bondage.
Hebrews 712, for the priesthood being changed, there must of necessity be also a change of the law, and there was. And so some things have continued just because they always continue. Moral things like telling the truth, those kinds of things will always be reiterated in every dispensation. Some things do not continue. Sabbath keeping does not continue.
As much as our seventh day Adventist friends might think it does, it does not. It didn’t start until the law, and it has not continued since the law. It started and stopped with the Mosaic law, that Saturday worshiping. So we don’t do that. We don’t do the sacrifices anymore. We don’t have priests anymore. We don’t have a temple anymore, all of those kinds of things. So what is the church?
The church is a parenthesis. Remember God gave 70 weeks through Daniel’s prophecy, and between the 69th and the 70th week there’s this gap of unknown amount of time? That’s the time we live in.
We live between the 69th and the 70th week. We live in the times of the Gentiles, and the times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled. And I like what the way Paul describes it in Romans 11.
I’ll close with this. He says, I say then, Romans 11 and 11, I say then, have they stumbled that they should fall? That is, did Israel stumble and they will no more be a nation?
God forbid, he says. But rather, through their fall, because they crucify their Messiah, salvation has come unto the Gentiles, praise the Lord for that, to provoke them to jealousy. Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentile, how much more their fullness? If you think God has blessed us now in the age of grace, because we have salvation through a crucified Messiah, think of the blessing we’re going to have when we have a reigning Messiah on David’s throne, and we will be there.
And then in verse 15 he says, for if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? And we’ll live with them in those. So we will, we are going to be blessed and we benefit from all of these covenants God made with Israel. Okay, so that is a quick overview with a lot of information, but I know that you love your Bible and you love to study these things, and it gives you an outline here, and you can look those verses up again and read it again.
It helps you with your understanding, not only of the dispensational times, but also then of these promises and covenants that God made with his people. All right, stand with me if you will. And we’ll pray. And I picked a song tonight that will just kind of remind us of God’s promises and faithfulness. We’ll sing that in a minute.
Father, thank you now for reminding us of these things in your word. As we have sat here tonight and thumbed through our Bibles and tried to look at this, we’ve said a lot in a short amount of time, I know, but help us, Father, to have the mind of Christ and the illumination of your spirit. May we understand and benefit from these things, and we’ll thank you in Jesus’ name. Amen.
We’re going to start out in in In Genesis in just a minute, but before we get there let me explain a few things Of course, there are covenants in the Bible if you if someone asks you name name a biblical covenant What would you say? You’d almost say Abraham yeah, there’s Abraham there’s the David’s or the Davidic Covenant and so forth so there are covenants in the Bible we know that and we should recognize them kind of put them in place and when they happen and what happened because of these covenants a covenant is an agreement between two parties So biblical covenants though there were agreements between individuals From time to time in history.
Those aren’t the biblical covenants that we’re talking about we’re talking about when God makes a covenant with someone And he could make that covenant with an individual with a nation or with all of mankind And that’s kind of what we’re seeing in these in these covenants Generally covenants are divided into two kinds conditional and unconditional But we really only have one Conditional covenant and that’s the mosaic covenant the law of Moses But I’m reserving that to the last one that we’ll talk about tonight All of the others are unconditional in that God Makes these pronouncements and says this is what I will do and regardless of how people receive that or what they do God will do those things and that’s why we still look forward to the future when Christ will return and finish some of these covenants and finish what he said he would do So only the mosaic is conditional which means the unconditional ones are the Abrahamic the Palestinian the Davidic and the new covenant and Then the three I divided these into three minor covenants that are made with all of mankind God makes these with all people
Well the first one the identity covenant he really made with Adam and Eve in the garden but the failure of that applies to all of us and Then God makes covenants with Israel and those are his unconditional covenants So to begin with let’s go to Genesis one and as a matter of fact all three of these first ones are in Genesis and by the Edenic covenant what Writers have meant by that is that in the Garden of Eden God made a covenant with Adam and Eve to do certain things They had to fulfill their part he would fulfill his part and So in Genesis one verse 26 to 28 I have there it could act I could say to verse 31 to the end of the chapter God says let us make man in our image after our likeness Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fall of the air You notice now how God is pronouncing what things are going to happen over the cattle over the earth over the Creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth so God created man in his own image and the image of God created He him male and female and that’s all by the way Created he them and God blessed them and God said unto them now do this be fruitful Multiply replenish the earth subdue it have dominion over the fish the sea and over the fall of the air over every living thing that move it upon the earth and the rest .
Now there are a few things that that he has said here that that we should understand that he said to Adam Eve number one is Propagate the race Replenish the earth really the word is simply fill up the earth and so they were supposed to reproduce Of course they would have and they did but they did in a fallen state had they not fallen They would have done that in an unfallen state which would have been a blessing to us all But they didn’t they’re also supposed secondly to have dominion or subdue the earth we see that in verse 28 as well and Dominion back in verse 26 also so subdue the earth have dominion over it so human beings were created to Be in control of the earth As a matter of fact some have called Adam the king of the earth and he literally was he was in control of it all It was his to-do of course God is the owner and he has sublet it so to speak to Adam But Adam had dominion over everything which means over The animal kingdom and all of those kinds of things of course as well and then God told them to take care of the garden in chapter 2 verse 8 He says the Lord planted a garden eastward and Eden and there he put man whom he had formed and so All of the trees are there and they have there to till the ground They are to take care of the trees and eat of all the trees And so they’re to take care of the garden. But then lastly in chapter 2 verse 17 is the instruction versus the Tree of good and evil verse 16 says the Lord God commanded the man saying of every tree of the garden now may us freely eat But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat thereof when the day thou eatest thereof Thou shalt surely die in this sense this Identity covenant is conditional it is it’s conditioned upon upon what they would do But this is what they are supposed to do in the garden.
Did they succeed or fail? Well, they failed and of course they Disobeyed this one last command of God and yet God said if you do this you will surely die and They did and so God fulfilled and is still fulfilling his part of the identity covenant that way it applies to all of us we die because of what they did in this garden and How they disobeyed God in this covenant? Well, then secondly as we move to chapter 3 there is what some people call the Adamic Adam the Adamic Covenant and that is now that they have sinned and they’re going to be cast out of the garden God is going to tell a few Certain things to them now the word covenant is not used here But this this is given in a strict sense and we still live with the consequences of all of this so in chapter 3 verse 14 He begins Talking to the serpent God said unto the serpent because thou has done this thou art cursed above all cattle above every beast of the field Upon thy belly shout thou go and dust shall thou eat all the days of thy life We were talking about snakes last night and how much you know, we just naturally love snakes, don’t we? When we see one we’re just attracted to it want to pick it up and cuddle it Well God cursed this animal put him on his belly and there’s been kind of an animosity But especially between the woman you know and her seed and these serpents so Here is the curse upon the serpent and then verse 15. There’s a promise though of a redeemer I will put in the tea still speaking to the serpent between The and the woman between thy seed and her seed that becomes important because the seed Beginning with her seed all the way through Abraham then David all the way down to Mary and finally Christ is born Shall bruise thy head and now shall bruise his heel so of course here is the first promise of Messiah given in this Adamic covenant a promise of a redeemer to bring things back to the way God created it to bring Back to the way it was before sin came Then there is the curse if you will or at least the penalty upon the woman in verse 16 The woman unto the woman he said I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception And sorrow shall t’al bring forth children and thy desire shall be to thy husband But he shall rule over thee and so here’s the pain of childbirth given to the woman and then to Adam verse 17 through 19 really Adam he said unto Adam because thou hast Parkened unto the voice of thy wife and has eaten of the tree which I commanded thee saying thou shall not eat of it Cursed is the ground for thy sake and sorrow shall t’al eat it all the days of thy life Thorns also at this old shall it bring forth unto thee. I’m glad that I’m fulfilling this covenant in my garden a lot And thou shall eat of the herb of the field in the sweat of thy face shall thou eat bread till thou Return unto the ground out of it was thou taken unto dust our art until dust I shall return Maybe he’s reinforcing to Adam here Yes, you died in your spiritual walk with me Spiritually they had died but physically they had not died yet And he’s saying you know, what is death you will be you will go back to the dust out of which you remain Then there is the mention then of the physical death in verse 19 from dust Our art to the stuff shall return And then the removal of the garden from verse 20 through verse 24 He puts them out of the garden Where might have still been a place to come and meet with God but they cannot live there And an angel keeps them from coming back into the garden Some people believe that maybe they could have come they could come back to that place and worship the lord But they can’t live there anymore others believe that they were not allowed to come in at all either way That’s part of the penalty. So here is the covenant given in Eden and then the covenant given to adam and Eve and the serpent and therefore to all the rest of us So this is a covenant with all of mankind and you and I suffer these things to this day Because of what happened Well, then we go all the way up to chapter 9 to the days of Noah Of course, you know what happened that Now that sin had entered into the world It contaminated things very quickly. And so when when Noah comes along In the genealogy of chapter 5 and then in chapter 6 He were we talk about Noah and we know that he builds the ark and God floods the world And starts again so to speak because of the the sin that was in the world at that time By the way, as it was in the days of Noah so shall it be in the coming of the Son of man So things will be worse in our day and why Jesus Christ will come back And why there will be a tribulation of God’s judgment upon the earth Not by water anymore But by fire and so that judgment is yet coming. But as you look at chapter 9 Really, beginning in verse 1, this covenant goes all the way almost through the entire chapter, but at least through 17.
Let me show you a few things. They are now to replenish the earth in chapter 9 verse 1. Just as the same command was given to Adam and Eve, now it’s given to Noah. Well, the earth is empty again, at least of people, and the animals are going to replenish, and so are human beings. For the first time, they’re allowed to eat the animals. Verse 3 says, Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you, even as the green herb. Have I given you all things? And so they were probably not meat-eaters up until this time.
Now they are. So I guess if a person chooses not to eat meat, that’s your own choice, but there’s certainly nothing that makes you holier than anyone else. If you do that, as a matter of fact, God gave us meat to eat, and we’re instructed in the New Testament to be thankful for it when we have it to eat. Then there is the instruction of human government, and you know that it is verse 6 that we have put in these words about capital punishment, who so shedeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed. And your reason you’re going to do that is because in the image of God made he man, rather than God running down every violator and dealing with every murderer, now you are going to do it. You’re going to do it collectively.
You’re going to do it in a governmental sense. And so even when we get up to the letters of Paul, Paul reminds us that government and the law enforcement, they are ministers of God for this reason. And there’s no contradiction, by the way, between government taking a person’s life as a penalty and the command to not kill. Because as a matter of fact, one of the penalties for not obeying the Ten Commandments was that you’d be put to death. So God never saw a contradiction here.
That’s why you’re not to kill, because if you do, that’s what will happen to you. And that’s never been rescinded. So governments have that authority.
So here’s that. And then in verse 11, he reminds Noah that he will never again flood the earth. And so in verse 11, I will establish my covenant with you, neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood. Neither shall there be any more of a flood to destroy the earth. You’ll never do that again.
So don’t worry about it. Although our neighbors down in southern Missouri might have thought that God forgot last week or two. It’s been pretty bad down there. And of course, you know, flooding happens, but not a universal flood like Noah’s Day, of course. And then so that they are reminded of that, verse 13 says, I do set my bow in the cloud and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And evidently, because of the water that was above the earth in the canopy before the flood, rainbows were not possible because of that.
But now that that canopy of water has collapsed and I’m on the earth, and now we have an open sky up to the heavens, the reflection of the sun and the earth and the water in the air can cause a rainbow. And you say, well, you know, isn’t God kind of taking advantage here of the natural thing? God created everything, didn’t He? He created the circumference of the earth and He created the water cycle and He created the rotation around the sun. And He did it for a lot of reasons. And one of those was to create a rainbow, which He did starting in Noah’s Day.
And you could look at that rainbow and say, you know, there’s always a rainbow during the rain, promising that that will never happen again. There’s also a curse at the end of this chapter in verse 25 upon Canaan because after these things, Noah became drunk after planting a vineyard and using it to create intoxicating beverage. And then his children could not handle that properly and especially Ham’s son Canaan.
And so he is cursed above the others. And by the way, the Canaanites then in the time of Joshua and the conquest of the land, the Canaanites were exceedingly sinful. And when you read about how God said, go in and destroy them and wipe them out and you wonder how can God do such a thing? It begins here with Canaan’s sin and those of his descendants to the place where God said, then I will wipe them out. If God made them, God can do it.
And we can’t ask him why. So we have these three lesser covenants or minor covenants, but we want to talk more about the major covenants. And so if you’ll look at those and just go a little further to Genesis chapter 12 and we have the first one we call the Abrahamic Covenant. Now a few chapters after the life of Noah, Abraham comes along. And by the way, just a few hundred years is not that long between Noah and Abraham. And you can read the genealogy of it in the chapter before.
But in chapter 12, at the end of chapter 11, he is called out of earth, the Caldees, he’s brought into the land and then God says to him, the Lord God said into Abraham, get the out of thy country from thy kindred, from thy father’s house into a land that I will show thee. Remember that word, land. I will make of thee a great nation.
Remember seed. I will bless thee and make thy name great. Thou shalt be a blessing. And then thirdly, I will bless them that bless thee and curse him that curseth thee and end these shalom families of the earth be blessed. So as you’re looking at that list that I made for you, I could have broken it down further, maybe I should have. So you have the major covenants and you have the Abrahamic Covenant and then it’s followed by three, the Palestinian, the Davidic and the New Covenant. Now if you drop off the mosaic at the bottom, then all of those major covenants are unconditional covenants made by God with Israel.
And by the way, these are made with Israel and no one else. These covenants are theirs, they’re really not even ours, but we’re going to benefit from them in certain ways. Remember Romans 9.4 says of the Jews, who are Israelites, to whom pertaineth the adoption and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the law and the service of God, Paul is saying. Or in Ephesians 2.12 he says that at that time you Gentiles were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope without God in the world. So these covenants, these promises belong to Israel. So though we’re looking at the Abrahamic Covenant first, I pointed out to you that the Abrahamic Covenant consists of a land, a seed and a blessing. In other words, this covenant with Abraham is threefold.
I’m going to do these three things for you. I’m going to give you a land and that land will belong to Israel forever. I’m going to give you a seed and that seed will culminate in the Lord Jesus Christ, who will rule in that land. And I’m going to then give you a blessing whereby all nations of the earth will be blessed and we see that in the new covenant. So the next three are outgrowths of the Abrahamic Covenant.
These are all unconditional. You can draw a line then before the mosaic because that’s a conditional covenant and it’s not necessarily an outgrowth of the Abrahamic Covenant. Well, here we have this covenant made with Abraham and a few significant things happen. It’s in chapter 15 verse 6 that Abraham believes God and it’s counted to him for righteousness. You remember that verse?
He believed in the Lord and he counted it to him for righteousness. That’s the apostle Paul’s favorite Old Testament verse. Paul quotes this verse all the time. And he quotes this verse to show to us that salvation is by faith because Abraham believed.
Believed is to have faith and when he believed God, it was counted to him for righteousness. And then Paul takes us up to chapter 17 of Genesis and verse 10 and following where Abraham is given the right of circumcision for all of his male posterity and Paul uses that to show which came first, the work of circumcision or the act of faith. Faith came first followed by the circumcision. So faith comes before works, Paul says.
And that’s true. So Abraham believed these things. Now, that Abrahamic Covenant, we’ll talk more about next Sunday night also in relation to how we believe about covenant theology and so forth. But this is probably of all of these covenants, the Abrahamic Covenant is the largest, the biggest. This is the one that has to be fulfilled and it’s not been fulfilled yet.
They don’t have the land, the seed and the blessing yet. All of these things are to come in the future. Well, the next three covenants are an outgrowth of that, first of all. And by the way, notice the scriptures. So here you have God speaking to Abraham all the way back to Genesis, chapter 12. And then we go up to Deuteronomy 30 and then 2 Samuel 7 and then Jeremiah 31. So all of these covenants come in time. Abraham has this covenant, this promise, but God is going to reiterate the Abrahamic Covenant. I told you I’d give you a land, a seed and a blessing. And so now in the days of Moses and Deuteronomy, God re-institutes or re-emphasizes, might say, the Palestinian Covenant in Deuteronomy 30.
So go up there with me to Deuteronomy 30. Israel has crossed the desert. They’re ready to enter into the land. And God is going to give them this covenant. Some people point out different verses, but basically verse 1 through 10 of Deuteronomy 30 is the Palestinian Covenant. Some people include everything from chapter 28 through chapter 30, but we see it in these 10 verses. Let me point out a few things that happen in this Palestinian Covenant. And let me put a footnote here. They’re about to go into the land and conquer the land under Joshua.
That’s not going to be the fulfillment of this. Even though they go in and they live there, it’s never entirely theirs and it hasn’t been entirely theirs to this day. God is going to promise them a land that goes from the Mediterranean Sea to the Euphrates River.
Saudi Arabia. It’s all going to be theirs and that has never been fulfilled yet. Well, first of all, in the first three verses of chapter 30, they are scattered due to their unfaithfulness. He says it shall come to pass when all these things are come upon thee, the blessings and the curse, which I have set before thee and thou shall call them to mind among all the nations whither the Lord thy God hath driven thee.
and shall return unto the Lord.” Notice, when were they scattered among all the nations? Well, the Assyrian captivity and the Babylonian captivity, and those won’t be for a thousand years after this.
And so he is speaking entirely into that future. After I scatter you among the nations, after that I’m going to gather you into this land. So it wasn’t fulfilled by Joshua, who wasn’t fulfilled by the kings of Israel either. Verse 2, and shall return unto the Lord thy God, and shall obey his voice according to all that I command thee this day, thou and thy children with all thine heart, with all thy soul.
And of course they’ve never done that either. Then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all the nations whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee. All of this is going to happen when Jesus returns in glory.
This is one of the great things about his glorious return to the earth. And when he sets up this millennial kingdom, he is going to gather these Jewish believers from all over the earth, bring them back to the land of Israel, reestablish them as a nation and be king over them in that land. And this is why, of course, that we as a Christian nation, or a nation that recognizes Christian principles, recognizes this, that there is a future for Israel. That land over there belongs to Israel.
God deeded it to them, and he’s not done with it yet. And when he says, I’ll bless them that bless thee and curse them that curse thee, we better be careful about that. Well, as we read on, all the way down to verse 6, there’s going to be this future repentance. The Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart and the heart of thy seed to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, with all thy soul that thou mayest live. There will be Messiah among them. He will come, as we’ve seen already, but the Lord thy God put all these curses upon nine enemies.
Let me, well, I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Israel will be restored in verse 5 into the land. Verse 6, Israel will be converted or repent. And then in verse 7, the enemies will be subdued. Let me ask you this, have the enemies of Israel been subdued in the Middle East?
So this has not been fulfilled yet. And then there will be full blessing upon them. Verse 9, the Lord thy God will make thee plentious in every work of thine hand, the fruit of thy body and the fruit of thy cattle and the fruit of thy land. For good, the Lord will again rejoice over thee for good as he rejoiced over thy fathers.
And so we see all of these promises given to Israel for this land, and it’s important. So we find the New Testament in Acts chapter 7. Stephen, before he was stoned, is giving the history of Israel, and he says, then came he out of the land of the Caldean, speaking of Abraham, and dwelt in Caron. And from thence, when his father was dead, he removed into this land wherein you now dwell.
And he gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on, yet he promised that he would give it to him for a possession to his seed after him when he had no child. If we went back to Exodus 6, 4, God said it like this to Moses. And I have also established my covenant with them, with Israel, to give them the land of Canaan and the land of their pilgrimage wherein they were strangers. So these covenants are made with Israel for this land. That’s called the Palestinian Covenant. Then we have the next covenant, which is the Davidic Covenant, which relates to the seed of Abraham. And we have to go to our right a little farther to 1 Samuel, or 2 Samuel, chapter 7, where we have this covenant. Because David now is old, he’s going to die, and he’s wondering whether he should build the temple or not.
No, your son will do that. And so in that process of explaining this to David, this covenant is made. So notice these things. 2 Samuel 7, beginning in verse 12, When thy day shall be fulfilled, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, and I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels, and I will establish his kingdom. David will have a son. Notice the emphasis on the seed again. We began with the woman, right? With Eve, being promised that it was her seed through which the earth would be blessed. Then we came to Abraham, and he’s going to bless Abraham’s seed. Now we’re to David, and he’s going to bless David’s seed. The Son will build the temple.
He’s speaking partly of Solomon here. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom. But notice forever, there’s always this mixing of what’s going to happen with Solomon, but what’s going to happen forever. His throne will be forever in verse 13. Also, God will chastise him. Speaking of Solomon, I will be his father, and he shall be my son. If he commit iniquity, I will chase him with the rod of men and with the stripes of the children of men. But my mercy shall not depart away from him as I took it from Saul whom I put away before thee. But then, notice verse 16, thy house and thy kingdom shall be established for ever before thee.
Thy throne shall be established forever. Now Solomon couldn’t have fulfilled that. He did it in his lifetime, but no further. There has to be a further seed of David that can accomplish this. So, for example, we have David saying in Psalm 89, 2 and 3, For I have said mercy shall be built up forever. Thy faithfulness shall thou establish in the very heavens. I have made a covenant with my chosen. I have sworn unto David my servant, Psalm 89, 34. My covenant I will not break, nor alter the thing that has gone out of my lips. Once I have sworn by my holiness that I will not lie unto David, his seed shall endure forever, his throne as the sun before me.
It shall be established forever as the moon, as the faithful witness in heaven. And even again, Peter at Pentecost in Acts 2.30 says, Therefore, being a prophet, speaking of David, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that of the fruit of his loins according to the flesh, he would raise up Christ to sit on his throne. David understood, being a prophet, that this reference to the seed is not just to Solomon, but is to the Messiah himself. David knew that, prophesied often, though I will die and my body will go back to the dust, when that Messiah dies, his body will not even be corrupted. David understood all of these things, that this was God’s covenant with him. So you have here a Davidic covenant, and there are many things to this covenant too, as David’s throne will be there in the millennial kingdom. Christ will be sitting on a throne, but David will be there in the kingdom. They will have their place in the promised land, and David will rule, and Christ will rule in that millennial kingdom.
It will be a great time, because God will keep his promise to David, a promise that has not been totally fulfilled yet. He doesn’t have that throne, and it’s not forever yet. And we disagree with our covenant friends, when they say, well, it’s being fulfilled now, because Christ ascended to the right hand of the Father, and is sitting on a throne now.
That is not David’s throne, and it’s not in Israel. He’s at the right hand of the Father, yes. And he is God’s Son, yes.
He’s the Creator of everything, yes. But these promises are for the land of Israel, and for David’s throne there. And that has to be fulfilled yet. Then, beyond that, there’s the new covenant. If you’ll go much farther now to Jeremiah, in chapter 31, there is a new covenant.
Now, Jeremiah then lives all the way down to the captivity times. So we have come from Abraham in roughly 2000 BC. We skipped over Moses, we’ll come back to him in 1400 BC. We’ve gone to David, or we’ve gone to Moses’ day in the Palestinian Covenant in 1400. Then we went to David in 1000 BC. Now we’re jumping down to Jeremiah in 600 BC. And Jeremiah in his prophecies says what God wants him to say, and he says in Jeremiah 31, 31, Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. These verses are quoted in the New Testament, especially in the book of Hebrews. And so they’re not unfamiliar to us. Also, there’s a reference to the new covenant and a description in Ezekiel 36, but we’ll not turn there right now.
So there are benefits here. In this whole chapter, I read 31 because that’s where the name of the new covenant is stated. All the way back to verse 8. Again, there is the promise that this will be done in the land of Israel.
I will bring them from the North country and gather them from the coasts of the earth. Also, there is a national conversion seen in verse 11. The Lord hath redeemed Jacob and ransomed him from the hand that was stronger than he. And verse 33, again, where we were a minute ago, but this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel. After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts and write it in their hearts. And we’ll be their God and they shall be my people. There is an outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Now we would have to go to Ezekiel 36 for this, but in Ezekiel 36, and I will turn there.
You’re welcome to turn with me if you can real quickly. But in Ezekiel 36, there’s also a further explanation of the new covenant. So in verse 25, then I will sprinkle clean water upon you and you shall be clean from all your filthiness, from all your idols. I will cleanse you. Verse 26, a new heart also will I give you and a new spirit will I put within you. And I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and I will give you a heart of flesh. And so when this happens, all Israel will be saved, Romans chapter 11, and they will be regenerated by the Holy Spirit in the land of Israel, God’s people, and the number one nation on the earth.
That’s not happened yet, obviously, but it’s coming. The land will be restored totally. Verse 28, again, you shall dwell in the land that I give to your fathers and you shall be my people and I will be your God. And then Christ will reign even personally. And in verse 23, I will sanctify my great name which was profaned among the heathen, which you have profaned in the midst of them. And the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, sayeth the Lord God, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes.
And how many times in the rest of the prophets do they prophesy that there’s a time coming when Christ will be with them there in that kingdom of God. So all of this has to happen. Now, I don’t want to take much time to this. I have kind of a footnote.
I’ll pass over it quickly because of the time. But among good men, they kind of differ as to how this new covenant is applied to us today. Because we speak of an old covenant and a new covenant only we use the word Testament. And we say the Old Testament and the New Testament. And that we use that terminology because some have believed strongly that parts of this new covenant are fulfilled in us. And others say no, no part of it is fulfilled in us.
It’s all for Israel. And so we kind of have an in-house discussion. If you heard one person saying it one way and somebody else another, it’s not at all heresy.
It happens all the time. As a matter of fact, in our dispensational understanding, if you always carried a Schofield reference Bible as a boy as I did, about 100 years before Schofield, a man named John Nelson Darby kind of put legs to the dispensational movement and said, no, these things only apply to Israel. It’s own these the new covenant will only be fulfilled.
And in no other way, when Jesus returns one day and sets up his kingdom. And there are still many fundamental Baptist, I know some personally good, very good men and defend it very well and still believe that view. Then Schofield came along at the turn of the 19th or 20th century. And in the old Schofield Bible, if you have that old Bible, he says, matter of fact, I took a couple quotes out of it. In that he says of this new covenant, these chapters constitute a kind of summary of prophecy concerning Israel as a nation, looking especially to the last days, the day of the Lord and the kingdom age to follow. He says also the new covenant secures the perpetuity, future conversion and blessing of Israel. But he would say that the our universal salvation comes to us because of this covenant.
We are saved today because God made a new covenant with Israel. Now later, if you have a news Schofield reference Bible that was published in the 60s, they expand that a little more. I like the new Schofield Bible. And they say, all those certain features of this covenant have been fulfilled for believers in the present church age. The covenant remains to be realized for Israel, according to the explicit statement of verse 31, which it hasn’t been yet.
So I said all of that just for record to say that I think it’s a good possibility to look at it this way. There is a new covenant for Israel and it’s not been fulfilled yet, and it’s going to be fulfilled when Jesus returns. But in that Abrahamic covenant, when he said, in these shall all nations of the earth be blessed, that blessing, which is seen in the new covenant, has kind of, can I use the term spilled over onto us?
Do you know that the Bible says, you know the phrase, for whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved? Right. Where is that? There you go. Romans 1013, right? We all know Romans 1013. Do you know that that is first given by Joel describing the kingdom of God?
Because in the kingdom of God, whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. And Peter uses it at Pentecost and Paul uses it later in Romans. So he borrows an expression from the new covenant time and says, this can apply to you and this only.
So you might say the only part of the new covenant that applies to us today is this blessing through Abraham and through this covenant that when you call on the Lord, you will be saved too. But for us, it’s kind of like we’re pilgrims and strangers, we’re traveling, and there’s a time coming when we need to stop up ahead. So we’re going to call ahead and make a reservation. And our reservation isn’t going to take place until we get there. And when you die, if you’ve called on the name of the Lord, you have a reservation in the kingdom of God.
And it will be given to you at that time. So in that sense, we participate, I think, in this part of the new covenant. Well, again, it’s kind of fun to hear people talk about the different things. I want to point out one more thing. And that is the Mosaic Covenant, which is the only unconditional covenant, excuse me. And we see it if we can go all the way back to Exodus 19, when God had brought them out of Egypt to the Mount Sinai, and He’s going to give them the land. And these things are being spoken to Moses when he’s up on the mountain with God. And we see it especially in verses five through eight, but really in chapter 19 from verse one all the way through, that they must do these things and be his people. But in verses five through eight, you see this especially. Now therefore, if you will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant, notice the word covenant, then you shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people, for all the earth is mine, and you shall be unto me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which shall also speak unto the children of Israel. Notice the if and the then in verse five. That makes it a conditional covenant. If you will obey my voice, then this will happen.
If you do this, then I will do this. That was always the case with the law. We’re looking at the book of Samuel this morning in the time of the judges. And so when they disobeyed, God punished them.
them. When they cried out to God and did right, God blessed them. Then they disobeyed, God punished them. Then they called out to God, God blessed them. It was, if you’ll do this, then I will do this.
And it was a conditional thing all the way through, of course. And in verse 8, they agree. Verse 8 of chapter 19, all the people answered together and said, all that the Lord has spoken, we will do. And Moses returned the words of the people unto the Lord. So they agree to do this and to have this conditional relationship with the Lord.
Of course, they try to keep it up. And this is in 1400 BC. And it will, they’ll be good and bad about it all the way down to 600 BC. And then God will scatter them.
And they’ve been scattered ever since. Now, also, you know that most of the Old Testament is written under this time of the Mosaic Covenant. So from the writings of Moses, and when he begins in the book of Exodus, describing how they came out of Egypt, all the way through Malachi and into Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, it’s all under the Mosaic Covenant. It’s all under this law, under this part of the Old Testament. There are three parts of the law. There’s the moral part, which involves the Ten Commandments in chapter 20. There’s the civil part of the law where this is what’s going to happen from the civil authorities if you don’t obey me.
They can do this to you. And then there’s the ceremonial or religious part where here’s what the priests do. Here are the sacrifices. Here are the feast days.
Here are all of these kinds of things. This was a, this was a theocracy, a union of church and state. It is the only one that has ever existed, although Islam promotes by Sharia law a theocracy today, but of course it’s not of God.
They think it is, but it’s not. This was the only theocracy that God ever gave, and it was pretty tough to live under. There were stonings for various things. There were punishments that were glad we’re not under today, but that lasted until the time Jesus came, and were not under the law. As a matter of fact, you know, there are multiple verses about this, Galatians 319.
Wherefore then serveth the service the law. It was added because of transgressions until the seed should come. It was added in the days of Moses until the seed who is Jesus Christ came. The law lasted from Moses to Jesus Christ, not before it, not after it. It was just during that time, Galatians 325.
But after that faith has come, we are no longer under a school master. Galatians 5 1. Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free. Be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage, because that law was a yoke of bondage.
Hebrews 712, for the priesthood being changed, there must of necessity be also a change of the law, and there was. And so some things have continued just because they always continue. Moral things like telling the truth, those kinds of things will always be reiterated in every dispensation. Some things do not continue. Sabbath keeping does not continue.
As much as our seventh day Adventist friends might think it does, it does not. It didn’t start until the law, and it has not continued since the law. It started and stopped with the Mosaic law, that Saturday worshiping. So we don’t do that. We don’t do the sacrifices anymore. We don’t have priests anymore. We don’t have a temple anymore, all of those kinds of things. So what is the church?
The church is a parenthesis. Remember God gave 70 weeks through Daniel’s prophecy, and between the 69th and the 70th week there’s this gap of unknown amount of time? That’s the time we live in.
We live between the 69th and the 70th week. We live in the times of the Gentiles, and the times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled. And I like what the way Paul describes it in Romans 11.
I’ll close with this. He says, I say then, Romans 11 and 11, I say then, have they stumbled that they should fall? That is, did Israel stumble and they will no more be a nation?
God forbid, he says. But rather, through their fall, because they crucify their Messiah, salvation has come unto the Gentiles, praise the Lord for that, to provoke them to jealousy. Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentile, how much more their fullness? If you think God has blessed us now in the age of grace, because we have salvation through a crucified Messiah, think of the blessing we’re going to have when we have a reigning Messiah on David’s throne, and we will be there.
And then in verse 15 he says, for if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be, but life from the dead? And we’ll live with them in those. So we will, we are going to be blessed and we benefit from all of these covenants God made with Israel. Okay, so that is a quick overview with a lot of information, but I know that you love your Bible and you love to study these things, and it gives you an outline here, and you can look those verses up again and read it again.
It helps you with your understanding, not only of the dispensational times, but also then of these promises and covenants that God made with his people. All right, stand with me if you will. And we’ll pray. And I picked a song tonight that will just kind of remind us of God’s promises and faithfulness. We’ll sing that in a minute.
Father, thank you now for reminding us of these things in your word. As we have sat here tonight and thumbed through our Bibles and tried to look at this, we’ve said a lot in a short amount of time, I know, but help us, Father, to have the mind of Christ and the illumination of your spirit. May we understand and benefit from these things, and we’ll thank you in Jesus’ name. Amen.
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