God of Covenants

Life is complicated sometimes. As much as we would like to live simply, oftentimes, -well, most of the time-, we find ourselves fulfilling a variety of roles. Just as we have roles, God has roles in his relationship with the world He has made. God is bigger than a single role. We must understand God’s differing roles to understand the fullness of God.

A man might fill the role of a local peace officer by day but return home to be husband in another role when “off duty.” Our lives never go “off-duty,” but we change our roles by the hour to that of a child, a parent, a professional, a husband or wife. A person who has matured well is able to manage these roles in a well-balanced life. A spiritually mature adult will also fulfill these roles with integrity, truth and faith.

We should never allow ourselves to create multiple ethical systems or differing personalities that vary with the roles we must fulfill. Our roles may change but our ethics do not change.

There must be a mature character in our person. Jesus told the parable of a king’s servant who mismanaged funds. He pled for mercy from the king to avoid jail time. After the king showed mercy, the servant treated those who owed him money harshly when his roles were reversed. Jesus said there will be a judgment made for the servant’s unwillingness to give mercy to the same degree as he had received mercy. Roles may change but in a Christian’s life the ethics of the kingdom of God should not waiver.

In this study, let’s delve into the revelation of God as a God of covenants. In His role as a participant in a covenant God accepts a role as a legal person who has committed himself to uphold his part of an agreement between two parties.

A covenant does not require that both parties be equal, but only that they are legally separate persons. Sometimes in theology the term “suzerainty treaty” is used to represent the overwhelming inequality of the two sides, as with God and men. Although unequal, God has chosen through the ages to establish relationships with mankind on a covenantal basis. This helps us to know Him better and clarifies to us our responsibilities to our Maker.

God’s covenants are very serious business. When establishing a covenant God expresses that the terms of the relationship will extend to many generations. The covenant confirmed with Abraham was much more than a handshake between God and a single man within his lifetime.

And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. Genesis 17:7 ESV.

A single role in a covenant relationship does not define the full nature of God anymore than the peace officer is limited to his role as enforcer of the law when he returns home to be a father or husband. God’s covenant role is real and reveals the nature of God.

God, being perfect, will not change his ethical core when he commits to a covenant. Also, we must not assume how God may act outside the covenant (Exodus 34:6). God’s promise to punish the sinful acts of men does not negate his covenantal love and forgiveness within a covenant. Some people have stumbled on this truth and claimed that a God of love would not condemn sinners to eternal punishment. This is because they do not understand that God makes covenants. The love God expresses within a covenant simply does not apply to those outside his covenant.

The first covenant God made with Adam and Eve was simple. “I give you life, so go and multiply in the Earth and master it. Do not disobey Me by eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or else you will die” (Genesis 1:28,2:17). Although the word “covenant” was not specifically used here, God clearly stated the establishment of the terms of blessings and curses related to the actions of two parties within a covenant.

God offers a covenant relationship for our sakes. He is complete within Himself without us. The offer of a covenant is always an act of his grace.

That first covenantal relationship was broken by Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:6). I will not speak more of that in this session. I have a full-length book on the subject entitled The End of Death that describes in detail the spread of sin and death that followed Adam’s sin, and God’s work to end death.

The first specific mention of a covenant is found in Genesis 6:18. The covenant mentioned there is future. It is multi-generational.

But I will establish my covenant with you, and you shall come into the ark, you, your sons, your wife, and your sons' wives with you. And of every living thing of all flesh, you shall bring two of every sort into the ark to keep them alive with you. They shall be male and female. Genesis 6:18-19 ESV.

After the flood a covenant was specifically ratified (Genesis 8:20-9:1). The flood of Noah was a judgment so nearly universal that the human population was reduced to only eight persons. It was as though the world began again.

God’s judgment by the flood was extremely thorough but not absolute. The apostle Peter wrote that the world “perished.” Noah and his family survived as the descendants of Adam while the entire geology of the Earth was smashed to pieces and completely redeposited. The lush forests and shallow seas teeming with life became coal beds and oil deposits buried deeply below the surface. Some mountains were formed from thousands of feet of gravel pulverized in the cataclysm and heaped up by tidal waves. Geologists describe the oceans basins as all being younger than the continents as the seams of the Earth bled molten rock. The world was turned inside out, yet Noah’s family survived, and mankind did not have to be re-created.

God was not starting creation over again, although the parallels to creation were strong. During the creation week, on the third day, God divided the dry land from the world-wide sea as Pangea arose as the only continent. In Noah’s day the flood of waters retreated from the land into the deepening sea beds as the modern continents moved to their current locations (Psalm 104:8). It was like a new baby emerging from the waters of the womb.

Another parallel occurred when God repeated the Adamic mandate to Noah: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the Earth.”

Two significant modifications to the first Adamic covenant were made. Firstly, instead of protecting the murderer from vengeance, God mandated a death sentence for the murderer (compare Genesis 4:15 with 9:6). This institution of a universal law of capital punishment was designed to suppress the lawlessness of the “might makes right” attitude that led to overwhelming violence among men before the flood. God invoked the creation of mankind in his own image as the basic reason to punish murderers (Genesis 9:6). Again, God was giving a parallel to creation week in this new start for humanity after the flood.

Secondly, the cursing of the ground for Adam’s sin was reversed after the flood (Genesis 3:17-18).

Then Noah built an altar to the LORD and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the LORD smelled the pleasing aroma, the LORD said in his heart,

I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of ma's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease. Genesis 8:20-22 ESV.

The curse on the productivity of the ground given to Adam was re-affirmed to Cain (the first man born of a woman) as a punishment for murdering his brother Abel (Genesis 4). Before the flood nomadism was the norm because of the difficulty of farming. The end of the curse on the ground meant that large scale framing was now possible. A greatly modified world ecosystem came into place after the flood. As agriculture flourished, the modern economic system developed as the rising city-states urbanized, job specialization arose to concentrate wealth building.

Thirdly, God promised the environment would remain basically stable. This meant that cities grew larger over time and united into empires.

Civil governments were better able to enforce the new law establishing civil capital punishment. God providentially used this development to prevent a return to the chaos of pre-flood society. God knew that sin was now in-bred in mankind. A recurring cycle of world-wide flood judgments for sin was inevitable unless God directed mankind into social stability. Civil governments could function to keep sin in check.

Therefore, the covenant of Noah was necessary. God laid out his plan in Genesis 9:11-15 and confirmed the stability of the current ecosystem we live in still today. This is confirmed by archeological evidence of the almost instantaneous rise of complex societies, with little evidence of a slow rise of civilization over a hundred thousand years, as evolutionary models require.

As the last great judgment of sin on the earth, the apostle Peter referred to the great flood as a harbinger of the final judgment for the sins of man that is yet to come. Although God vowed not to destroy the Earth by flood in his Noahic covenant, He did not excuse the sin he knew would arise from the descendants of Adam. God was giving human government and the prosperity of seasonal agriculture to the world for the stabilization of human society. In this stable world He could plan for the completion of Christ’s saving mission.

In this light Paul could claim that God established human government for the general good despite the sins of dictators (Romans 13:1-7). The pre-flood human debacle had already shown that corrupt government was better than a world full of Lamech-like tyrants (Genesis 4). Of course, it has been revealed that Satan will try to use God’s allowance of government to bring all the world under his control at the end. He perverts everything. Paul’s advice was for the churches to pray that government will be as good as possible (I Timothy 2:1-4).

Under the terms of the environmental stability given in the “rainbow covenant”, civil punishments and a growing economy provided opportunity for development of an uninterrupted cultural history for the world. From the day Noah exited the ark extending to the time when the Earth and the heavens will be dissolved by fire (2 Peter 3:1-13. Revelation 21:1), history will be one continuous event played out on the surface of the Earth.

Those who do not believe in the great flood think the world has always been like this, but it was the covenant of God at work that made it possible (2 Peter 3:4). Into this growing world-wide culture, God spoke to men and women to prophesy of the final judgment to come and to foretell God’s plan of forgiveness of sins through the coming of Jesus Christ as Savior of sinful men.

In closing let me briefly touch upon God’s continuing commitments to covenants after the rainbow covenant.

The history of the Earth may be understood in the flow of the covenantal moving of God. From one viewpoint, there are many covenants. From God’s viewpoint it has been his sovereign choice to pursue a single everlasting covenant with all humanity that will endure, despite all the infidelity of the progeny of the sons of Adam.

Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Jeremiah 31:31-33 ESV.

We have seen the everlasting covenant that began with Adam and was passed on like a baton in a relay race to Noah where God re-confirmed it like a second creation event. Every time man broke it God has taken those pieces, melted them, and re-cast a new covenant from the pieces of the old.

The original covenant(s) were renewed with Abraham (Genesis 17:7) and Jacob (Genesis 32:12) and through Moses to the nation of Israel. And although God himself said Israel broke it, he just prophesied through Jeremiah a new covenant that would arise out of the old. When we take a step back to look at history, we can see that God has been pursuing a single covenant all along.

When Jesus came, he announced the new covenant sealed with the life of his flesh by the shedding of his blood (Matthew 26:28). It is the same offer of covenant relationship that God has always made, and He will not be denied until it is accomplished. But truly, as I live... all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD (Numbers 14:21 ESV).

Some people make a special theology out of the rejection of Jesus by national Israel. But Israel’s rejection nationally was just one of many failures at living in a covenant with God from Adam until today. Even as Israel failed to receive Jesus at his first coming, Jesus had to warn the early church at Ephesus (the apostle John’s own home church) to repent lest he remove their lampstand! (Revelation 2:5). Paul gave the same warning to any gentile believer who became arrogant at the rejection of Israel (Romans 11:21).

Notwithstanding the failures of all men to stay in covenant, God has established his covenant once for all in the blood of his own Son. He will have a faithful remnant to be his own people. Jesus secured it at the end of his life by laying down his life as he cried out, “It is finished.” Paul called it a once-for-all sacrifice that secured the covenant blessing (Hebrews 8:13).

This is the once-for-all affixing of a covenant that cannot be taken away or altered, for it was based upon the sinless life of Jesus Christ (Hebrews 9:26).

Therefore, there is no alternative way for us to be reconciled to God except being found in Him by faith in Him, our Lord and Savior. Paul wrote, I want to “be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith—” (Philippians 3:9 ESV).

This righteousness is bound within us as God’s covenant gift to all who believe in Him, fulfilling the terms of a covenant for all eternity because He has changed our minds and hearts by the covenant that cannot be denied or broken. It is based on the righteousness of Jesus Christ. “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6 ESV).

Amen.

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