The Old Testament Covenants

Another great topic from last week was that there are five Covenants in the Old Testament.  This post will review each covenant and discuss how it is a type and shadow of what Jesus would do later in redemptive history.  As we have said often, every word of the Old Testament is about Jesus in much the same way that every word or the New Testament is also about Jesus.  The Old Testament presents types and shadows of the New Covenant in Christ.  What does this phrase mean?

 

Let’s look for a moment at cars.  The regrettably named Smart Car is a type of thing in the group that we call cars.  Yes, this is debatable, but that helps make the point.  There are other types of cars that we place in this group that we call cars.  Let us take for example the Lamborghini Aventador LP 700-4.  This even sounds like a more impressive car.  Look how impressive the name of the car is.  Now, let’s look at the car itself.   Now that’s a car!  It has a 396 cu. in. V12 engine with 700 horse power.  It goes from 0 to 60 m.p.h. in only 2.9 seconds.  To give you some perspective, the Smart Car comes in blue; the Lamborghini comes in red.  While the Smart Car was a type of car, it was only a shadow of the Lamborghini, and a poor shadow at that.

In much the same way, we can say that Jerusalem is a type and shadow of heaven.  It was meant to give us a vague idea of what heaven might be like.  The Jewish people were a type and shadow of what God’s people would be like.  The Old Testament goes a step farther than this.  It compares a wagon or a skateboard to a Lamborghini.  The type and shadow is so vastly inferior to the real thing that we sometimes do not realize that the skateboard was actually pointing towards the Lamborghini.  And yet, some people mistake chapters and verses and even books of the Old Testament wanting to talk about skateboards instead of Lamborghinis.  Every word of the Old Testament is pointing forward to Jesus Christ and His redeeming work for His people.

Now, let’s move on to the Covenants.  All five of these Old Testament covenants point forward to an aspect of the New Covenant in Christ, but each has a different purpose in redemptive history.  Some of them are still intact and some have been broken.  Let’s start with a table and then fill in some details as we go.

Covenant	Lesser King	Blessings	Curses
Creation	Adam	Remain in Eden	Banishment from Eden; Sin; Death
Noah	Noah	No further cataclismic distruction	More trouble
Abraham	God	People the planet	?
Moses	Jewish people	Land promise	Destruction of Temple; dispersal
David	God	King will come from his line	?

The Creation Covenant, Genesis 2-3 is unlike all other covenants in the Bible in one aspect.  This covenant is not specifically spelled out as such in the text.  The covenant is understood.  We know that it is a covenant because it has the characteristics of a covenant.  There were blessings, curses and conditions.  This conditional covenant had the provision that Adam should never eat of a particular fruit.  He broke this covenant and suffered the consequences of that action.  The curse of this covenant was that sin and death entered the world.  The curses of covenants remain intact, while the blessings are lost.

At this point in redemptive history, God looks at His creation and it is doomed.  His creation is totally incapable now of passing judgment.  Since I am handling the doctrine of original sin elsewhere, I will not belabor the point here.  For our purposes, God needs to create a scheme by which He can save some of His creatures for the Age to Come.  We are not told why He chose progressive revelation or why He didn’t just wipe us out and start over.  We are given a series of covenants that point to the New Covenant in Christ.

When we come to Noah, the situation is that God was angry again and had just wiped the slate nearly clean.  Notice Genesis 6:5.  I would ask what is different now.  Paul’s answer is that nothing has changed.  It is interesting that man sort of receives a second punishment for the creation covenant here.  God saves Noah and then he makes a new covenant with Noah.  In Genesis 6:9, Noah is accounted as righteous, blameless in his Age.  By what means was Noah accounted as righteous?  Was Noah accounted righteous based upon his works?  Noah was still in Adam.  We are given his genealogy in chapter 5 to prove this.  His condition was still of sin.  He was included in the statement of God in Genesis 6:5.  Why was he accounted as righteous by God?  Noah believed in the promise of God.  He believed in the flood and the promise of God to deliver him from this peril.  Noah was accounted righteous based upon his faith in the promise of God.  In Genesis 8, we see that while God had decided not to punish the whole earth again on account of man, the condition of man has not changed.  The intension of man’s heart is evil from his youth.  We still have a sin problem.

Let’s examine the actual covenant in Genesis 9.  First, what are the conditions?  There are two.  Don’t eat live animals.  Don’t murder.  What are the blessings?  God promises never again to use a flood to wipe the earth clean.  The issue and imagery of water both here, in the Exodus and with Jonah makes for an interesting issue, but I will return to that later.  Remember that everything here is a type and shadow.  What are the curses?  If you violate this covenant, you will die by the hand of man.  One can also argue that the curses came first in the form of the flood, but that line of thinking is fairly thin in my view.  With whom is this covenant made?  Noah’s offspring and all living creatures are included in the covenant.  The sign of the covenant is the rainbow.  Now, for the tough question: is this covenant still intact?  Of course it is.  We have empirical evidence of this in the sky.  Has man violated this covenant?  Absolutely.  But as we have said before, God never breaks covenants.  Man is the one who breaks covenants.

At the end of the first two covenants, here is the situation.  God has cursed man through Adam and his sin.  This curse is the remnant of that covenant and it is intact.  God has not flooded the whole earth again and we still have rainbows, but man commits murder with alarming regularity.  Both the blessings and the curses are intact for this covenant, although man continues to violate it.  God is indeed merciful.  But man still has a problem: man is still evil in his heart and not worthy to stand before God in judgment and receive a verdict of righteousness.  With Abraham, God will get the ball rolling in the righteous direction.

Abram was deemed righteous before God.  The Abrahamic Covenant sort of tumbles out over 7 chapters and has several parts.  I will ask the covenant questions and then go get the answers.  By what means was Abram accounted as righteous?  From Genesis 15:6, we see that it was due to Abram’s belief in the promise of God.  This is an enormously important point.  Abram had already deceived Pharaoh concerning his wife.  This was not exactly righteous behavior.  His righteousness is specifically attributed to his belief in the Promise.  Who guarantees this covenant?  This is the most amazing section of Genesis, and perhaps the most important of the whole Old Testament.   The smoking fire pot representing God passes through the pieces first, as usual.  However, the flaming torch, representing the Son of God passes through second.  They are both fire, of the same substance.  One, the torch, comes from the fire pot, the father.  The guarantor of the covenant, therefore, is God!  The blessings and the curses will therefore fall upon God Himself.  He creates the covenant in Abraham through which Salvation will finally be possible.  He does all it.  He takes all the responsibility on Himself.  He demonstrates infinite Mercy and Grace.  Who benefits?  Clearly, there is a land promise that has to do with Abraham’s offspring.  Read this part of Genesis 13.  Now, it will be Paul who will spiritualize this land promise both in terms of the land itself and the beneficiaries.  That discussion will be in the Progressive Revelation series, part 2.  Who carries the curses if the covenant is violated?  The torch does. 

Now for the confusion, let’s go to Genesis 17. “Walk before me and be blameless.” The grammar of this sentence is a declaration.  There is no work of Abraham involved in this declaration of righteousness.  We already know that Abraham is adjudged righteous based upon his belief in the promise.  What do we make of verse 4?  Do we take this at face value?  Will Abraham be the direct patriarch of a multitude of nations?  Perhaps.  Paul will answer this question.  Now, we move to verse 10 and circumcision.  The male will have the covenant seal on his body.  I will make mention of a modern Jewish commentary on Paul and circumcision in the Part 2 post to which I have referred above.  In the lines of Genesis, the seal of circumcision is required for covenant benefits.  Again, Paul will have much to say on this topic.

Now, let us move on to Moses.  The problem is that God’s chosen people, the Israelites, do not realize that their behavior is an affront to God.  God needs to teach them the meaning of sin.  God needs to spell it out for us.  Moses was deemed righteous before God.  As another aside, I will come back to the Passover when we discuss the water issue of the Red Sea.  God gives Israel the Law through Moses.  The Covenant of Mount Sinai is sealed with the blood of a sacrificial animal.  Notice upon whom the blood is poured in Exodus 24.  Half is poured out on the altar and half is sprinkled upon the Book of Law and the people themselves.  This is not just a random ceremony.  The burden of obedience to the Law is attached to the people of Israel through the blood of the ceremonial sacrifice.  The curses of the Covenant will fall upon them if they break the Covenant.  The blessings of the Covenant were deliverance from captivity in Egypt and a new homeland.

Notice at this point something vastly important.  Circumcision is associated, not with Moses, but with Abraham.  Many Jewish scholars throughout time have viewed the Mosaic Covenant as the fulfillment of the Abrahamic Covenant, and that the Mosaic Covenant supersedes or replaces the Abrahamic Covenant, but this cannot be the case for two very important reasons.  First, a Covenant that involves different parties than the original cannot supersede the original.  It wouldn’t make any sense.  Secondly, the terms of the Mosaic Covenant have clearly and obviously been broken by Israel, bringing about the curse portion of the covenant, while the Abrahamic Covenant is still completely in force at this point, unbroken by either party.  The purpose of the Covenant of Law is to demonstrate to Israel that they cannot possibly keep the Law, and they should therefore be repenting and begging God for Mercy.  Unfortunately, man doesn’t see things as they are intended.  Israel actually believes that they can keep the Law.  They create more and more rules to protect the actual Law from being in danger.  They do not see or understand the spirit of the Law, much less the letter of the Law.  But this was the purpose of the Law: to teach man of his sinful nature.

David’s Covenant was similar to that of Abraham.  David, whose highlights include arranging the death of Uriah and taking Bathsheba as his own although after the covenant is made, is reckoned righteous.  Look at the actual Covenant blessing in 2 Samuel 7.  The key word is the word “offspring.” In many places, this is read as meaning a collective noun implying family.  It is often translated as such.  But the Hebrew is in the singular number, not plural.  There is one seed, one offspring.  Notice the language of the rest of the passage.  I will establish the throne of His Kingdom forever.  I will be to Him a Father, and He shall be to Me a Son.  This is all singular.  We are talking about one man in this passage, one king, one messiah.  It is clear that David believes that Israel is ethnic Israel over whom he is king.  But Paul will, again, take this in another direction, spiritualizing this Covenant as well.

In summary, we have looked at the five Covenants of the Old Testament.  I have hinted at some of the types and shadows that we will find in the Old Testament.  In order to fully understand what it is that Christ did for us, in His life, in His death and in His resurrection, we must fully understand what it was that God did in redemptive history in the Old Testament.  Although we are in Covenant with God through Christ and His blood, we are still the wild vines, grafted into a Jewish family by adoption.  It behooves us to learn about our adoptive family.

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