BIBLICAL COVENANTS

Transcript:

0:00 Intro

Behold the dwelling of God is with man. He will be their God and they will be His people. 

Today's video is on the topic of Biblical Covenants. Looking for some answers Kyle and I went to Trinity Reformed Church to get Pastor van Eyk's thoughts on the subject. This is Faith to Film.

Basically, a covenant is a relationship that God establishes with his people. But the thing that you want to guarantee and underscore with biblical covenants, that is, the covenant between God and his people is that it's not a negotiated settlement. It is a sovereignly established one. God sets the terms and we respond to those terms in faith and obedience 

0:45 What is the old and new covenant?

So, the new covenant in the new testament is the covenant that is inaugurated by Jesus Christ. Remember at the Lord's supper he says "this is the new covenant in My blood and the old covenant then is the covenant of grace established in the garden of Eden when God announced the first gospel promise. And all the covenants, the biblical covenants the mosaic covenant, the davidic covenant, that flow from that first covenant and reach their climax in the coming of Jesus Christ and His death and resurrection. 

1:23 What are the elements of God's covenant? 

If you look in the bible there are four characteristic elements that belong to the covenant. In fact, you can see these four elements in the ten commandments that God gave at Mount Sinai, which are in exodus 34 called the "words of the covenant" so it's appropriate to look at that. So first place there is a list of the respective parties of the covenant. And so God speaks to the Israelites who are gathered around him on mount Sinai and he says to them "I am the Lord your God." So, he establishes himself as The Sovereign. He is the Lord their God and they are his subjects. So the second element of the covenant is a historical prologue in which The Sovereign recounts to His subjects why they owe Him their allegiance. And you see that in the ten commandments as well as God tells them that he is the Lord their God and that he brought them out of the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery. So He reminds them that in grace He brought them to Himself and therefore they owe their allegiance to Him. The third element of covenants is the stipulations of the covenant life and so you see that in the ten commandments that follow. Because of who God is as The Sovereign, because of what God has done in redeeming them, this is how they are to express their loyalty to Him. They are to keep His ten commandments. And the fourth element in the covenant is that God promises that blessings will follow faithfulness, but curses will follow failure to keep the covenant. 

3:04 How is God's covenant displayed throughout scripture? 

So, not only is covenant a theme that runs through scripture but the language of covenant relationship also runs throughout scripture. The language of "I will be your God and you will be my people." You see it hinted already in Genesis 17 where God promises to be Abram's God and the God of his offspring. It's scattered throughout the old testament in the first five books of the bible, in the prophets as well and it finds its crescendo in Revelation 21: 3 where the apostle John records that he "heard a loud voice from the throne" so this is God himself speaking, it says "behold the dwelling of God is with man." He will be their God and they will be His people and He will be with them as their God. So this is the grand promise of the covenant, the grand realization of all of God's promises which are fulfilled in Christ Jesus, eternal fellowship in the presence of God for all eternity.