Doctrine of the Covenants of God, Part 1

I've been giving a series of doctoral classes. We finished the first six on the nature of God. We have three or four more that we're going to start now on the Bible and the organization of the Bible and how the Bible is laid out and where we got the Bible from. So we've got those to go through. Then we're going to go through the angels and Satan and the demons and then humanity and what happened to human beings and do we have an immortal soul. Eventually we'll begin to discuss how God is saving humanity and the concept of salvation and justification and all these important understanding of what God is doing.

Part of that will be that we'll need to go through the various covenants of the Bible. What I decided to do was take a couple every once in a while and give a couple of the doctoral classes as a sermon. I know that this kind of material can get a little bit heavy during a sermon time, so I understand that. But I think it's important that occasionally, since many of you cannot come to the doctoral classes, you'll understand what we are covering and the depth of what we're covering.

This week and next week we'll actually be going through a couple of the doctoral classes. On the night that Jesus kept the Passover with His disciples, He told them that the wine that He gave them to drink was the blood of the New Covenant. And so when we talk about the church, we talk about baptism, all these concepts, all these things we talk about have to do with the New Covenant. The New Covenant was prophesied in the Old Testament.

But what is the New Covenant? And what does it mean to have a covenant with God? When we get to the New Covenant, which all of us are participants in the New Covenant, to understand what it actually means to have a covenant with God, what that means to your life and how this is part of God's plan. But to understand the New Covenant, we have to understand the Old Covenant. But really, to understand the Old Covenant, we have to understand that it is only one of a whole series of covenants that were made by God throughout history that would lead to the New Covenant.

And in each one of these covenants built on the one before it. In fact, there are elements of every one of the covenants that God made. When I talk about covenants here, I'm talking about salvation covenants. God made personal covenants with human beings along the way that didn't have much to do with salvation.

But there are ten major covenants in the Bible that God made with human beings that are part of His salvation plan. In fact, all of prophecy, if you want a framework to put prophecy in, study the covenants, because all of prophecy fits into these covenants. So we're going to take a very general viewpoint, because I don't want to be up here for four hours, going through some of those covenants. We'll finish them next week. And like I said, this is material that usually we don't cover in a sermon. It can be a little tedious at times, but it is important for us to understand this framework of salvation that runs through the covenants that God makes with human beings.

Now, in the ancient world, when we talk about a covenant, it is more than just a legal agreement, although it was a legal agreement. We make covenants today. We usually make that a concept of a legal agreement, and if you break the covenant, there are legal ramifications of that. But a covenant in the ancient world was legal, but it was more than that, because it governed the relationship between the individuals that were parties to the covenant and the relationship of whatever they were dealing with.

It was very, very important. And this covenant usually had a sign that went along with it that said, okay, now by doing this sign, this covenant is binding. So there was covenants between equals, where people would sit down and negotiate a covenant. Now, we could do the same thing today.

When you buy a house, there's a legal covenant, and you sit down with people, and you decide what you're going to pay for the house. You decide if they're going to do repairs. You decide what you're going to do. Both parties decide what they're going to do. They come to an agreement, they write it down, and then there's some kind of money that changes hands.

With that money, you now have a binding agreement. If one party breaks that, there's a penalty to pay. There's a legal penalty to pay. When we look at the covenants that God makes with human beings, there's some very important things to think about as we go through this. One, every covenant that God makes with a human being is an act of grace. We will see through the ten major covenants that God has made with human beings that outline His whole plan of salvation, not once did a human being say, Hey, God, I'd like to make an agreement with You.

It always was instituted by God. The stipulations of the covenant were made by God, not the human beings. In fact, the human beings never have, they never get to find print into the covenant. They never add to the covenant. God says, This is the covenant, this is the agreement, do You wish to participate? Do You wish to be part of this? Also, understand that many times the ritual that signified the binding of the covenant included blood. Many people look at it, especially the Old Testament, and they say how barbaric this is. When we get to the New Testament, you'll understand why.

When we get to the New Covenant, blood. God told them, human beings didn't come up with, Okay, we've got to kill an animal here. God could have used whatever means He wanted to as a binding sign, but He uses blood in most of the covenants, not all of them. We'll see the subsidy that He doesn't. The animal sacrifices were instituted by God. He wanted a price to be paid that was a little bit horrifying.

The killing, the taking of the life, the shedding of the blood, to watch that life bleed out. It's very interesting. There's a Hebrew idiom that you'll find a few places in the Old Testament. Usually you see it translated made a covenant, but literally it means cut a covenant. They had to cut the animal. When you cut the animal, you're saying this is binding.

Part of that they found out in the legal concept of the Hebrew society in the ancient world, when you cut an animal, you do human beings would make a covenant. They cut the animal. What they were saying is, May this happen to us if we break this covenant? May this happen to us? That's a pretty strong binding, isn't it? May I be gutted if I break this covenant?

The Hebrew cutting of the covenant, we'll see, will come up a couple of places in the Old Testament. Let's look at the major covenant. Obviously, in an hour I can only go through a certain amount of each one of these. Some of them I already mentioned, and I'll tell you the basic Scripture that's involved. A few that we'll go through in a little more detail. The first covenant God made with human beings was Adam and Eve. First agreement He made with them. Let's go to Genesis 2. Look at part of the core of that covenant. Genesis 2. It's more than this, but this is the introduction to the covenant God made with them.

Genesis 2.15. Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden, attended, and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for the day that you eat you shall surely die.

Now, it was very simple, this first covenant. First of all, I've given you this garden, and it is your responsibility to take care of it. Now, notice Adam didn't get to add anything to the covenant. First covenant is, okay, Adam, this is our agreement. I've given you this beautiful garden and all the animals and all the plants, and I'm going to give you instructions, and it's your job to take care of it. And secondly, you're supposed to do what I tell you.

And there's one tree I don't want you to eat, because when you eat that, you will disobey me. And in that action of eating that, of picking that, of eating that fruit, in that action of disobedience, you will break our covenant and you will die. So it's a pretty good thing. Now, attached to this covenant is something else, and it's sort of debated whether this is part of this covenant or separate to this covenant. It really doesn't matter, because this is still binding. There's two things still binding in this covenant.

You and I have responsibility to take care of our environment. That's still binding today. But the next part of this starts in verse 16. It goes through verse 31. Or, I'm sorry, verse 25. Verse 18-25. Verse 18-25 is the marriage covenant. And so this isn't one of the salvicic covenants that run through the Old and New Testament, but it is a covenant God made with human beings.

When we get married, it is not just an agreement between a man and a woman. It is more than an agreement between a man and a woman. It is a marriage covenant with the Creator, instituted at creation as part of the first agreements He made with human beings. That is very, very important. That's why the argument today over marriage is an argument over whether we accept God as our Creator or not, because this is one of the first instructions He gave the human beings was marriage.

So we have this first covenant. Very simple covenant, very simple instructions. It didn't take long before human beings broke the covenant. They broke the agreement. God told them, if you break this agreement, you'll die. Satan comes in, breaks the agreement, convinces them to break the agreement, and they do so. Now God has to make a new agreement with them. He has to make a new covenant, because the old covenant doesn't work anymore. All these covenants are amazing, because there are elements that keep going on.

But He had to now create a new covenant because He had rebellious children. This covenant is explained in chapter 3 of Genesis. Now, you know the story. How Satan comes into the garden, God allows him to come into the garden, and He convinces Eve to break the covenant, the agreement.

God had made an agreement with them. This was a binding agreement. By the way, there was no need for a blood sacrifice in the first agreement, because there had been no sin yet. There was a need for any blood sacrifice. It was simply the Creator saying to the children, this is how the family works. And if you don't do it this way, there's terrible consequences. They broke the agreement. Satan comes in.

He begins to have to explain to them, now because of this, you're going to have to suffer the consequences of your decisions. We have a new agreement. If we start in verse 14, God says to Satan that you are going to be punished. I want to read through this because I want you to see now the result of breaking the first covenant, and now a new agreement is being made between God and human beings.

The Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, you are cursed more than cattle, more than every beast of the field. On your belly you shall go, and you shall eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity, this is violent enemy. I will make a violent enemy between you and the woman, between your seed and her seed, and he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. Then He says to the woman, I will greatly multiply your sorrow and your conception, and pain you shall bring forth children.

Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you. Then to Adam, He said, Because you have heeded the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree of which I have commanded you, saying you shall not eat of it, cursed is the ground for your sake.

In toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you, and you shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken, for dust you are, and the dust you shall return.

If you read down through verse 24, it says, So he drove out the man, and he placed carobim at the east end of the garden of Eden, and a flaming sword which had turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life. Now, this new agreement, unless we really look at this close, leaves us with an absolute hopelessness. First agreement was broken, the new covenant is, okay, you and I were in an intimate relationship. I'm driving you out of Eden. By the way, we're still living in the consequences of this covenant, aren't we?

You and I don't live in Eden. We're driven out of a relationship with God. Unless He brings us back, we're in no covenant at all with God. The average person in the world has no covenant with God. There is no agreement with God. They may even worship God, but are they in a covenant with God? Because there is no salvation without an agreement, without a covenant. And you and I live still in the shadow of this covenant. He drove them out.

And He told women, now, here's what's going to happen to women because I've driven you out of Eden, and humanity is not in a close relationship with me. He says, your having of children will be very difficult. God did not design women to have difficulty giving birth. But, once pushed out of Eden, the deterioration was not only spiritual, the deterioration was physical. Human beings began to physically deteriorate. And He said, as you deteriorate, having a baby is going to become very difficult and very painful, and it's not what it was supposed to be.

He said, also, you will have a desire for your husband, and he will rule over you. Now, if you look at under the first covenant, which the marriage covenant is part of that, it's usually called the Edenic covenant. In other words, it happened in Eden. In the Edenic covenant, the covenant made in Eden. They were told to marry. The husband was supposed to be the leader. That wasn't the issue. You can see that from how he made man first, and that he took and made the woman from the man.

What he says here, though, is, and your men, they won't treat you the way you were supposed to be treated. They won't lead you and care for you and love you as an equal. They will rule over you. And, unfortunately, through much of history, what have men done? They have ruled over women, not supplying the proper love and relationship and not the proper leadership that men are supposed to do. So he told Eve, he said, the result of this breaking of this covenant, this new covenant we have, physically you're going to deteriorate.

Childbirth is going to become very difficult, and it's amazing throughout history how many women and babies have died in childbirth. It is amazing throughout much of history. Today because of the medical profession, it doesn't happen that often. It was very normal throughout history. And he said, and you're going to have a desire for your husband.

You're going to want a relationship that much of the time you're not going to have, and men are not going to treat you right. Then he tells Adam, and every day is going to be a struggle for you. You're going to have to work in a way that I never was going to have you work. And the ground is going to fight you, and the environment is going to fight you, and the environment is going to deteriorate, and of course you're going to be under Satan's rule. You won't be in an intimate relationship with me anymore.

You're going to be under Satan's rule. And this is our new agreement. I'm kicking you out. You're getting kicked out of the house. Now, if that's all there was to this, this particular agreement is pretty ... I mean, there's no hope to it, except for one thing that said this. I don't know much Latin. I know this word because I love this word. Proto-Evangelium. Anybody know Latin? Anyone know what Proto-Evangelium means? It's referred to ... it's a Latin word that's used to describe a certain verse that's in this passage.

You know, in that doctor's class I always give you words to write down and remember because someday I'm going to give you a test and write down Photo-Evangelium. Okay. So how do you spell it? P-R-O ... wait a minute. I can't remember. P-R-O-T-O-E-V-A-N-G-E-L-I-U-M. Proto-Evangelium. Verse 15. I will put enmity between you ...

he's talking about Satan and the woman ... and between your seed and her seed. And he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. Someday, he says, I'm kicking you out of the house. But my agreement with you ... and this is central, because by the way, this promise now becomes the central promise of every other covenant. This is the central promise that God makes in every other covenant, regardless of human interaction. It becomes even what we call the Old Covenant, the Sinai Covenant.

This was a central promise in it. We'll show you that in a minute. And in this central promise, God says, you may fail, but I will do this. I will eventually bring about a human being that conquers Satan. Proto-Evangelium in English means first gospel. It's the first good news after humanity was kicked out of Eden. It's the first good news. All the rest of us bad news. The first good news is, I will save you from this, and someday I will send a human being that will save you from this.

And that's all he says. They didn't know what it meant. They didn't know what it meant. But remember that verse. He has because it becomes the central concept, promise in every covenant. It is also the central concept of all prophecy. All prophecies have been around that verse. It's the first good news of the Bible, where God says, I will save you from this.

So Adam and Eve's descendants move forward, and they live under this covenant. Separated from God, shoved out from God. Now there's individuals God deals with, but the greater part of humanity is cut off from God. And it gets worse, and it gets worse, and it gets worse until God calls Noah. And we have the first covenant God made with Noah. The pre-flood, or anti-Diluvian covenant. Another big word is, it means pre-flood.

The pre-flood commercial covenant that God made with Noah. And what did he tell him? The world has gotten horrible. So I'm going to make a covenant with you. Now here's the stipulations. Build a big boat. I mean a really big boat. And I'm going to bring the animals, and I will save you and your family from the flood that is to come. And he followed the covenant, and guess what happened?

He was saved from what was to come. Now, Proto-Evangelium, God had to bring about someone to save humanity. There reached a point where the whole world was so messed up. He said, I only have one family I can use, so I'm going to have to kill everybody else but that one family, so I can do the promise that I gave. The covenant God made with Noah had a central reason. It was so that he could eventually bring about the seed of the woman who would call her a saint and save humanity.

And so Noah was picked. You're the one I'm going to do this through. After the flood, Noah comes out of the ark, and God makes a second covenant with him. Let's just take a look at that one. Genesis 9. Genesis 9. Because either this is true or it's a myth, and if it's true, this is very, very important.

The second covenant God makes with Noah, or the post-Diluvian, that means after flood, the after flood covenant doesn't bring humanity back yet. I want you to notice, he doesn't say, okay, I am now taking the covenant I made with Adam and Eve when I kicked him out, the Adamic covenant. The covenant I made with Adam when I kicked him out of Eden. I'm not retracting that at all.

I'm just saying that I'm going to complete what I've started. Now, I only know this means this because I'm looking backward through history. I can see what God did through all the covenants. I'm not sure Noah understood this. But look at verse 1. So God blessed Noah and his sons and sent them to the earth.

And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be on every beast of the earth, of every bird of the air and all that move of the earth, and all the fish of the sea that are given into your hand. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I give you all things, even as the green herbs, but you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, blood. Surely for your life, blood, I will demand a reckoning. From the hand of every beast I will require it, from the hand of every man. From the hand of every man's brother, I will require the life of man.

Now, this is very important because it is here where he is telling Noah, okay, human beings, you want to continue to do it this way, then I will give you the judicial power to rule over yourselves. Remember when I went through the sermon a while back on authority? And I said, why is it that Paul would say, look, submit to the authority of the government unless they tell you to do something against God? Why would he say that? It's because of this covenant. This is the foundation of Paul's argument because he said, look, if you're going to rule yourselves, I will give you the authority that if someone commits murder, you can take their life, capital punishment.

Once you give government capital punishment, you give them enormous authority. And so God said, if you're not going to listen to me, you better learn to rule yourselves. This covenant will fail. But you and I still live under this covenant, don't we? We still live under flawed, failing human government because we're still kicked out of Eden.

Notice we're saying that God spoke to Noah and to his son saying, behold, ask for me, behold, I establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you. Verse 12 says, Thus I establish my covenant with you. Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood. Never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.

Verse 12, and the sign, this is how God said, no, I'm going to make sure I went for you to understand that this covenant has been ratified and is binding by my authority.

This is the sign of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you for perpetual generations. I set my rainbow in the cloud, and it shall be for you the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

Now, I know there's a scientific reason for rainbows. I saw one last week. I just fascinated by rainbows, and I know there's a scientific reason for it, but it doesn't take away the, I don't know, the awe of seeing a rainbow. And God said, every time you see one of those, that's my sign. That is a sign from God that says, I will destroy humanity with a flood ever again. It's a promise.

You and I never have to fear that the world is going to be destroyed by a flood. Remember the movie 2012, the big special effects movie, The Whole World is Destroyed by a Flood? It can't happen because God made a covenant, a promise, and a sign. Now, He didn't say, okay, Noah, I'm going to let you rule the earth because you're the guy that I talked about in the protoevangelium. You're the guy.

He didn't tell me about that. Noah wasn't the guy. And so now we have another covenant, and time goes on. Decades go on after the flood, and God now takes the next step in making a covenant with human beings as part of His salvation plan.

Genesis 12. Genesis is real important in understanding how the covenants are set up. When we talk about the covenants, usually the arguments are between what we call the old covenant and the new covenant. You will never really understand the old and new covenant unless you understand how they fit in this context of all these covenants. Once you do, you realize that there are parts of what we call the old covenant that we no longer do today, and there are parts that we still do today. Just like there are parts of the Adamic covenant we still do or the Edenic covenant that we still do, or the pre- or especially the post-Naweic covenant.

I mean, I'm really glad the post-flood covenant is still in effect, are you? That rainbow still means something to everyone who knows what that means. And every one of these covenants keep building towards a point in which God is going to fulfill, I will send a seed that will bruise His head. I'm going to send someone that will remove Satan from being your God. I may kick you out, but I'm bringing you back again. That's the promise. If there is no promise of that, let's just eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.

The promise is I kick you out of the house, but I bring you back some day after you figure out that you don't know how to do this on your own. And Satan really can't teach you anything, except how to be miserable. So now he calls another person. Genesis 12. And the Lord says to Abram, verse 1, Get out of your country from your family, from your father's house to a land I will show you, and I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing.

And I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. I'm going to do something so great through your descendant that every human being will be blessed by your descendant. That's a pretty great promise, isn't it? Verse 1 says, So Abram departed as the Lord has spoken to him and locked with him, and Abram was 75 years old when he departed from here.

75 years old, and God comes along and says, You're a key in my next step. I'm going to bless everybody through one of your descendants, because that's the promise I made. And so, Abraham does what he's supposed to do, and Abram as he is, known now at this point. He does what he's supposed to do. He moves where God tells him to go. He waits to have a child. He doesn't have a child.

He does all kinds of different things, like with Ishmael to try to fulfill that promise. Finally, God comes to him and he reconfirms this covenant. Genesis 15. Genesis 15. So now God's going to reconfirm the covenant. Now, this is before Ishmael, by the way, when he does this. He still has no air. He has nobody to fulfill the promise. Can you imagine, year after year, going by and saying, okay, to my descendants, you're going to bless the world, and I have no descendants, and I have an old man, and my wife is beyond the capability of even having children.

But he kept saying, God said it, so it must be going to happen. Verse 1 is very interesting here. I won't read all of chapter 15. I'm just going to pick a few highlights here. But after these things, the Word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward. And, of course, what Abram says to him is, But I don't have any kids.

We've made a covenant. You told me to do this. I did it. But when are you going to fulfill your part of the bargain? Now, this whole chapter 15 is in a vision, but if you read through it, you'll see he's in different states of consciousness in this.

One point it says he goes into a deep sleep, but the whole thing is a vision. In other words, this whole experience is in a spiritual interaction between him and God. Everything that happens in chapter 15. And he's sort of in these different states of consciousness during this time.

Verse 5 says, He brought him outside and said, Look now towards heaven and count the stars if you ever to number them. And he said to him, So shall your descendants be, old man, whose wife can't have children. And verse 6 is very important. And he believed in the Lord and he accounted it to him for righteousness. He said, If you say so, it will happen. If you say so, it will happen. I don't know how you're going to do it. Then he said to him, I have the Lord who brought you out of her of the Chaldeans to give you this land to inherit it.

And he said, Lord God, how shall I know that I will inherit it? Okay, how do I know this? You said it, but what is the sign of our covenant? We made a covenant, but we don't have the sign, the sealed agreement.

So God says in verse 9, Bring me to a three-year-old heifer, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtle dove, and a young pigeon. And he brought all these to him, and he cut them in two down the middle, and placed each piece opposite the other. But he did not cut the birds in two. And when the vultures came down, or the carcasses, Abram drove them away. They cut a covenant. They cut these animals in two, and he laid them out.

God said, You want a sign? We'll cut a covenant. Take all these animals. Now, once again, it's hard to tell here whether he actually did that, or he's doing it in his vision. It doesn't matter. For Abram, he had the experience of God. He said, God, what's the something of your covenant? And God said, We'll cut a covenant here. Take all these animals, split them in two. Now, remember, the whole idea of cutting the covenant was, basically, May this happen to us if we break the covenant. And God's telling him, and this is real important, I'm going to do this no matter what.

You're going to have children, and you're going to have descendants, and one of your descendants I'm going to bless all humanity with, and this is going to happen no matter what, and I'll show you why. Now, think about the cutting of the covenant. Let this happen to me if I do not fulfill it. Right?

Look at verse 17. And it came to pass, when the sun went down, it was dark, and behold, there appeared a smoking oven in a burning torch that passed between those pieces. And on the same day the Lord made a covenant with Abram. Who's holding the torch? It's not Abram. God walks between the two these lines of animals cut in two and says, see, Abram, see, I'm showing you.

I'm walking between the two, the torch. He sees fire, he sees smoke. You're going to see lots of times in covenants what the people see in the presence of God, fire and smoke. And he says, I'm walking between the two. I'm cutting a covenant with you. I'm telling you. Now, if you were a human being, this would be like, this happened to me if I don't do it. What he's saying is, I'm showing you 100%. I'm making the covenant. I'm walking between the pieces.

This is a very dramatic thing for God to cut a covenant with him. Now, Abram knows, wow, he just didn't tell me he has sealed this covenant with his power. It's going to happen, and he believed it. He believed it. Genesis 17. When you read through the story of Abraham now, when you put these pieces together, you see the difficulty he's going to, but he always believed God. First of all, it's because God told him. Second, it was okay. You made a covenant with me, but what's the sign of the covenant? What seals the agreement? In his vision, the agreement gets sealed by God. Then he tells him something else to do. In Genesis 17, he tells him that he's going to cut the covenant in a different way. Verse 1, When Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, I am the Almighty God. Walk before me and be blameless, and I will make a covenant between me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly.

So Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying, Ask for me, behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be a father to many nations. And you shall no longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham. For I have made you a father of many nations.

And I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you and kings shall come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you and their generations, for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and your descendants after you.

He says in verse 8, he'll give them the land. And then verse 10, and this is my covenant. He says, Now, I've made a covenant with you. We cut a covenant. I'm now going to cut a covenant with every one of your descendants. But it's going to be a little different than the way human beings cut covenants. Okay? It's my covenant which you shall keep between me and you and your descendants after you. Every male child among you shall be circumcised. And he goes on and explains what circumcision is. He says, I'm going to cut this covenant with every one of your descendants. This is why throughout the history of especially the Jewish people after Israel was taken into captivity, they died rather than give up circumcision. Do you think, why would you die? I could see dying for the Sabbath or other reasons, but you have to go back to this covenant to understand. If they were not circumcised, they had no covenant with God. And when you talk to Jewish people today, they have a different viewpoint of God. They see the relationship with God as a collective, ethical, or ethical relationship.

I am Jewish and I am circumcised, therefore God has a relationship with me. You say, well, where would they get that idea from right here? Every male child in eight days cut the covenant with God.

And they do not understand the new covenant, so they still see God's primary interaction with people as coming through the Jewish people. That's why they're so set on that.

This was a covenant. This is why circumcision was so important. This is why when we get to the new covenant, you'll say, why did the New Testament Jewish people became Christians? Why did they make such a big issue over circumcision? Simple. If they weren't circumcised, they didn't have a covenant with God. They were people without a covenant. Now, we understand circumcision of the heart.

So we understand there's still circumcision that has to take place when we get into the new covenant. But we have to understand why that was such a big issue in the New Testament, because if I don't have a covenant with God, I have nothing. I can worship God. I'm still nothing.

And they cut a covenant with God, every one of them, as a child.

And they were told, you're different than anybody else. And they were. They were physically different than all other males, because they cut a covenant with God.

So now, Abraham comes along. And through the descendant of Abraham, the descendant, but a specific descendant, all the earth is going to be blessed.

So now we have this messianic theme that starts with a proto-evangelium, going right through all the covenants. So God makes this Abrahamic covenant. It's very interesting how He keeps saying, in all of chapter 17 is on the covenant, too. 15, 17, 12, He keeps telling him, I will make this covenant with your descendants. I will continue this, Abraham. He even tells him, your people are going to be 400 years in a strange land. I will bring them back to this land, and I will make a covenant with them. There is a covenant that is promised. There's actually two covenants, promised to Abraham. One has to do with the Messiah, and one has to do with his descendants. I will make this covenant with them. And then you think, Moses comes along. And people say, how cruel is God that He's going to kill Moses's sons because they're not circumcised? Moses had not cut God's covenant with his children. It was the promise of that covenant.

In other words, was Moses under the old covenant yet when God called him? No, the Sinai covenant. When we call the old covenant, it's the Sinai covenant. Sinai covenant wasn't made until Israelites got the Sinai. What covenant was he under? Abrahamic covenant.

Moses was still under Abraham's covenant. There are all kinds of elements of Abraham's covenant that are still applicable today. That covenant hasn't been erased. There are certain issues that don't apply today. We don't have to cut a covenant with God in terms of a sacrifice. You and I still have to cut a covenant with God, but we'll get into that. He was still under Abraham's covenant. And for his descendants, since his descendants were Abraham's descendants, correct? For his descendants to be part of the covenant, they had to be circumcised, and Moses had to circumcise his children. God said, you either circumcise them or I'm going to kill them. Why would God do that? Because Moses, I'm taking you to take the next step in this whole series of covenants, and you're not even doing the one you're supposed to be part of now.

That's why circumcision is so important.

For them, we'll get into the application today.

So Moses comes along. He circumcises his children. They have certain laws of understanding of God.

They've lost some of it. They have some of it. And how we know that? Because God gets angry with image in Exodus 16 because they weren't keeping the Sabbath. But he hadn't given the Ten Commandments yet. So how could he be angry with them about something he had not given them unless they already knew it? So there are all kinds of laws given to Abraham. We don't know what they were.

I'm not sure Abraham knew what the Ten Commandments were. If you ask Abraham, what are the commandments God gave you? He might have had a hundred. I don't know what order they were in. I don't know what order God gave him the commandments. But he had a bunch of them, and he kept them. But the big Ten were in there someplace. You can see by his actions the way he lived his life. And the Sabbath had to be known, or Exodus 16 is an arbitrary, strange thing. So here they come along, and God says, okay, I told Abraham I'm going to make a covenant with your descendants. And so he brings them out of Egypt, which is a fulfillment of promises he made to Abraham. He brings them to Sinai, which is a promise that he made to Abraham. And now he says, okay, I'm going to make a covenant with you. Exodus 19. This is the Sinai covenant, or what in the New Testament will read many times. It's called the Old Covenant.

You see, well, this is a lot of disjointed information. Actually, it's not. It's a central theme. Every covenant is part of a central theme. Exodus 19. I'll give you the whole history of the Bible in an hour. Exodus 19. They come to the wilderness of Sinai, verse 1, verse 2, verse 3. Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him, and on the mountain saying, Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob to the children of Israel. You see what I did to the Egyptians, how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to Myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all people, for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be a holy kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel. So Moses gathers everybody together and says, God's making an agreement with you. Remember how Moses, by the way, introduced himself to Israel? I am sent by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That was the last ones I made covenant with, and you're their descendants. You are the covenant people.

What is the main purpose of the covenant people? To bring the seed into humanity, the seed of Genesis 3.15.

This is why He's doing all this. Satan is still ruling the world. It's still a mess.

And He worked with the family, and the family got big enough that it's now a whole nation of people, 12 tribes, well, 13 tribes, actually. And He's pulling them out and saying, okay, I still have to work so that I have the right people in the right place, in the right time in history, so that when I bring that seed into the world, it's there. Why do you think Satan spent so much trouble trying to destroy Israel? When he got rid of the 10 tribes, he said, so much time trying to destroy Judah. Why does he hate them so much? Because that's where the seed comes. That's why. Because if he can foul up any one of these covenants, he wins. God loses.

And it's through these people, through this little thread, all this history going on, all this little thread, okay, you're the next step, you're the next covenant I make.

Actually, all these covenants are part of a great big covenant. Once you realize that, actually, the issue of the covenants and what things we keep and we don't keep actually become a little easier.

This is all part of a great big covenant that started with them kicking you out of the house, and I'll bring you back someday.

1st Savatas, when Moses came, called for the elders of the people, laid them before them all the words that the Lord commanded him. And all the people answered together and said, all that the Lord has spoken we will do. So Moses brought back the words of the people to the Lord.

And the Lord said to Moses, Behold, I come to you in the thick cloud, that the people may hear when I speak with you and believe you forever. And so he tells them, Now get ready, go consecrate yourself. They had to take a bath. A husband and wife could have no physical relationship for three days. They had to be clean and prepared. And after three days, God was on that mountain, thundered out, and started to talk to them.

The first time the Ten Commandments were given, we're on two tables of stone, because this is the core of the covenant. The covenant God made with Abraham is still being applied. In fact, it was long after Sinai that he said to them, By the way, you have to be circumcised. That was the Sinai made with your father Abraham, and it's still the sign hasn't changed. So circumcision was commanded to them specifically, if they wanted to stay in this covenant. God had made a covenant with a man that his children and his children, now he's making it with millions of people, saying, Okay, this is my covenant, and designed a circumcision, and you're going to have to cut a covenant, too. You're going to have to sacrifice animals.

So there was a physical cutting on the people. There was a physical cutting of the animals, still.

And he made a covenant with them. The first sign the Ten Commandments were given, everybody heard them. So this is the core of the covenant I'm giving you.

I'm giving you the ten basic building blocks of morality. Here they are.

And the people said, Moses, from now on you talk to him, he scares us to death. Right? Because we will die. If we have to listen to him anymore, it will kill us. He scares us to death.

So he says, I'm going to make a covenant with you. So it's the same covenant, I made with Abraham, but it's being expanded now. It goes back and says covenant is the basic I made with Noah, but I expanded it through Abraham. You go back, it's the same covenant being expanded each time.

And there's different elements in each one. You don't find the rainbow being mentioned here.

That's because that post-flood covenant still exists.

And so they received the Ten Commandments. What's really interesting here, if you read through all this, is that the first of the Sinai covenant was given to them. It started with God giving them the Ten Commandments. Then if you go after He gives the Ten Commandments, which is verse 18, then He says, okay, let me tell you how to build an altar because you're still going to have to do sacrifices.

You really don't understand that entirely until you get to the new covenant, but you're still going to have to do sacrifices. Then in chapter 21, He says, now these are the judgments which you shall set before them. So God tells them the Ten Commandments. Then He tells Moses, now I want you to write down some other things. I mean, they're going to have to do sacrifices, and there's other things they're going to need to know about how they relate to each other. And if you go through chapters 21, 22, 23, and 24, this is basically all that the Sinai covenant was at the beginning. It was the Ten Commandments and three chapters, four chapters of instructions. Look at verse 3 of chapter 24.

Okay, they're now sacrificing. That's part of. We've made an agreement.

God gave us His covenant. We're sacrificing to Him. This is our part of our agreement to Him. And Moses took half the blood and put it in basins, and half the blood he sprinkled in the altar.

Then, verse 7, He took the book of the covenant and read it in the hearing of the people, and they said all that the Lord has said we will do and be obedient. And He took the blood and He sprinkled it on the people, and He said, this is... Now, remember how I opened this up? Jesus hands out the wine and says, this is the blood of the new covenant. There was blood in this covenant.

He took the blood of the covenant, which the Lord has made with you according to all these things.

And He threw blood on the people.

You now have a covenant with God. A covenant has been cut, and here's the blood of these animals, because you're before the righteous holy God, and some kind of substitute for your sins had to be made. And He throws blood on them. And they have the book of the covenant, which is basically the Ten Commandments of these judgments. That's all the book of the covenant was at this point. Now, the Sinai covenant expanded. It expanded outward. The Sinai covenant ended up being, including, it's like a amendment to an agreement. Everything that we see in basically Exodus, I think it's Numbers and Deuteronomy, can be added to the covenant.

Now, that doesn't mean everything in there should be thrown out.

When we get to Galatians, we have to be very, very careful how we look at that, because you could throw out the holy days and a lot of other things.

So we'll look at that when we get to discussing the new covenant.

But the beginning of the covenant was very small. As time went on, how do we apply this covenant to daily life meant new things were added to it. God added those things. Some of them, Moses added.

The instructions about divorce were not from God. You know how we know that, because Jesus said, Moses gave you that. Right? Sometimes Moses added to it, sometimes God added to it, but it got bigger and bigger, and so that's what we have. The Torah, the instructions.

The book of the covenant. The first five books of the Bible.

And basically explains all the previous covenants and explains right up to the Sinai covenant.

And those people now were the people through whom God was going to fulfill the promise to bring a seed of the woman that would overcome Satan.

Now, there's a seventh covenant in here. We won't turn there. But in Exodus 31, 12-17, there's actually a Sabbath covenant that's made. It's very interesting. It's like a covenant within a covenant. Sort of like, you know, where we break down that God made two covenants with Noah, one before the flood and one after. I mean, okay, the might of God, that might have been one covenant. But we break these down so that we can start to see the threads, okay? But you see that the course of what happened, this sort of covenant within a covenant, the Sabbath covenant. Then you have a reconfirming of this covenant in Deuteronomy. Some biblical scholars will say this is a separate covenant. I think it's just a reconfirming of the covenant. But still, it ends up being sort of an eighth covenant in this discussion of covenants. This is where the Israelites now stand before going into the land of Canaan, which God had promised to Abraham, I will give this land to your descendants, remember? They're right there. God's fulfilling all these promises He made to Abraham. 1948, when the Jews went back to Jerusalem, was a fulfillment of the promises God made under the Abrahamic covenant.

There are so many things in history that God just put and He figured out, saying, I'll do this. Then He just lets us along. He lets Satan rule. And then He says, I'll do this. And so all these covenant threads keep going on, no matter what.

The other interesting thing about this covenant is called the Palestinian covenant.

I think it should be called the Canaanite covenant because it's right on the edge of Canaan is where they are. Palestinian is a modern word. But He tells them in Deuteronomy 29 or 27 through 30, it's a blessing in cursings chapters. He says, if you do this, you'll get blessings. If you do this, you'll get cursings. This is the covenant I'm making with you.

But it's Deuteronomy 30 that we find something so remarkable that makes this worth noticing in this relationship of God with these people. Deuteronomy 30.

Now, He just told them three chapters of, do this and you get blessings. Do this, you get cursings. This is the agreement we have. Now, they already had the Levitical priesthood. They already had all the instructions of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. They had Genesis.

You know, Moses had written all that down. They had the book of the law. They had the two Ten Commandments given by God, written by the figure of God in the Ark of the Covenant.

They are going to covenant. It's the covenant God made with them. They have the book of the covenant. They have the Ark of the Covenant. They have the Torah, which is all five books.

Well, except Deuteronomy isn't finished yet at this point.

And He says, Thou shalt come to pass, when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among the nations where the Lord your God drives you. This is amazing prophecy. They haven't even entered into the Promised Land yet. And He says, Now, when you break this covenant and I scatter you out to all the nations so you don't even know who you are, well, we haven't even gone in yet.

So, yeah, but I've got to play in here, and you're going to mess this up.

You're not going to keep your descendants—oh, you might for a while—but your descendants will not keep this covenant. You won't keep the Abrahamic covenant. You're not going to keep the Noeic covenant. And you're sure you're not going to keep the Sinai covenant. But I'm going to do what I said I was going to do.

And so, when you have failed—verse 2—and you return to the Lord your God and obey His voice according to all that I have commanded you today, you and your children, with all your heart, with all your soul, that the Lord your God will bring you back from captivity and have compassion on you and gather you again from all the nations where the Lord your God has scattered you. And if any of you are driven out to the farthest parts under heaven, from there the Lord your God will gather you, and there He will bring you. Then the Lord your God will bring you to the land which your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it. And He will prosper you and multiply you more than your fathers. But verse 6 is amazing. And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart. We're going to cut a different covenant here. There's going to be a different cutting in this covenant. The Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants to love the Lord your God with all of your heart and all your soul that you may live.

He said, you will break this covenant, but I will carry out what I have promised anyways.

You know, sometimes people will say that the new covenant and the Abrahamic covenant are covenants of promise, because Paul talks about them as covenants of promise. We'll show why. And the Sinai covenant is called the covenant of law. There's a little truth to that because of the emphasis. But there are also prophecies and promises made in the Sinai covenant.

If the old covenant is completely done away, then that prophecy is also completely done away.

Because guess what it's part of? It's part of the Sinai covenant. So when people use the argument, well, the whole Sinai covenant has been done away with, I go to all the promises of the Sinai covenant. You mean this isn't going to happen? You mean God has lied to us? He's not going to do this now? Well, if you're saying this promise still exists, then you have to say, well, you know, there are elements of the Sinai covenant that still exist. Once you agree to that, you're moving into our camp. You're moving to where we are. The Sinai covenant hasn't been entirely done away with. There are elements that no longer apply. Just like there's elements of the Abrahamic covenant that no longer apply. You and I don't have to go split an animal open and walk between it, okay?

We don't have to sacrifice. They really have sacrificed animals.

The new covenant, there are sacrifices, but they are different.

This covenant would expand out. Of course, it would include the Levitical priesthood.

But here now we have where God has done all this for thousands of years, and He set up eight different covenants. Now, there are two more covenants left, two more covenants that take us to where God's going to take us next, because the 10th covenant is the new covenants where we are now.

So, this gives us an overview. I know, like I said, some of this material, when you go through this kind of material, it's sort of hard to stay awake sometimes, but this is very, very, very important. This is not just wholesome information. This is how God promised to do certain things throughout human history, in spite of humans.

This is how God's going to fulfill what He says. This is how, and you'll remember this the rest of your life, the proto-evangelium. It'll be the only Latin word you ever know.

This is how God's doing it. It's how the first good news ends up being the last good news.

It's how the Gospel gets started in Genesis and ends up in Revelation.

And it's how we have to discuss how important it is that God has made a covenant specifically with you as a person, and how that covenant is different than all the other covenants. It has elements of all those covenants, but it is different in what it promises, and the present reality in its prophecies, and in the future.

So next week, we will talk about the last two covenants.