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Pastor Lars Larson, PhD                                                                                          FBC Sermon #642
First Baptist Church, Leominster, MA                                                                      January 1, 2012
Words for children: covenant, grace, Israel                                                               Text: Matthew 26:26-30

The Gospel of Matthew (106)
Excursus: A Synopsis of Redemptive (Covenantal) History (Part 2)

Our current progress through Matthew:

  I.  Prologue (chs. 1, 2)
 II.  The Kingdom Comes (chs. 3-7)
III.  The Works of the Kingdom (chs. 8-10)
IV.  The Nature of the Kingdom (chs. 11-13)
 V.  The Authority of the Kingdom (chs. 14-18)
VI.  Kingdom Blessings and Kingdom Judgments (chs. 19-25)
VII.  Passion and Resurrection (Chs. 26-28)
        A.  Betrayal and Arrest (26:1-56)
                1.  Preparing for Jesus’ Death (26:1-16)
                2.  Last Supper and Gethsemane (26:17-56)

*****************

        I would like us to read again the passage that we was before us the last time we were in Matthew’s Gospel--Matthew 26:26-30:

        26Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.”
        27And He took a cup, and when He had given thanks He gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, 28for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.  29I tell you I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father’s kingdom.”
        30And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

        Two weeks ago (before Christmas Sunday) I drew our attention to the significance of the event that is conveyed in our Lord’s words of verses 27f, when He said, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is My blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”  We focused on the central idea of this verse, “the covenant.”  We sought to show how this theme brings into view one of the most important teachings of Scripture that underlies all of God’s historic (as well as future) dealings with the human race, whether they are Christians or not.  We had sought to first define and describe the idea of covenant as the manner in which our holy infinite God enters and maintains a relationship with finite human beings.  Unfortunately due to the limited time to address a difficult and complex matter, I was unable to explain fully what I would have preferred to have presented.  Several folks encouraged me to take up the matter and take it further.  And so, we will do so today, and perhaps one more Sunday.  This is in imporatnt matter and it will help us to be able to see the scope of the entire Bible, indeed, the whole of human history as the stage in which our God is revealing Himself and glorifying Himself to and through His people. 

        The nature of the subject necessitates me reviewing briefly the groundwork that we have already covered.  We will attempt to be brief and to the point.

I.  God created the human race in covenant relationship with Him and one another.

        Because of the great gulf between an infinite God and human beings, God established the covenant as the means by which He would relate to His creatures.  If we were to know God and have fellowship with God, it would be by covenant relationship, defined and delivered to us by God Himself.  Our Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689 states this fact clearly in article 7, paragraph 1, which reads:

The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience to him as their Creator, yet they could never have attained the reward of life but by some voluntary condescension on God's part, which he hath been pleased to express by way of covenant.

        What is a covenant?  When we say that God relates to us based on a covenant, we are saying that because God is so vastly different in essence and glory from His finite creatures, He must come to us of His own will and He must reveal Himself to us and set the terms or grounds by which we may approach Him, know Him, and relate to Him. 

        God created us in covenant relation with Himself through the head of our race, Adam, who represented us as a race before God.  God initially established a covenent relationship between Himself and Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, which was a covenant of works.  This covenant was made to the entire human race through its federal head or representative, Adam, the common father of mankind.  When God made this covenant with Adam, God bound the entire human race through all of history to this covenant.  Every child born into this world comes into the world relating to God based on a covenant of works that God made with the human race.
                        What is the nature of this covenant of works and what are the terms of the covenant?  God established His covenant relationship with Adam and his descendants conditioned on Adam keeping God’s law, by which Adam would either earn eternal life for himself and the entire human race he represented or bring them ruin and damnation.  When God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden He had said to them,

15The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.  16And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”  (Gen. 2:15-17)

        The requirement God placed on Adam in his covenant was obedience.  The failure to keep this covenant, that is, to break God’s law, would result in death.  Adam’s obedience to God’s law, gained access to life from God and before God.  God required complete obedience.  The least infraction of God’s law would result in death.  Adam earned or merited God’s favor toward him and because he represented all people it would have been extended to them also.  This is what distinguishes the idea of a covenant of works: by Adam’s obedience, he would have earned everlasting life by keeping works before God. 
        Of course we read that Adam failed his test when he sinned.  And when Adam sinned, because he was our federal head, we all sinned in his sin.  “Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Rom 5:12).  His sin brought the sentence of death upon the entire human race.  “For the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23a).
        Adam’s sin also resulted in Adam and Eve losing their righteousness.  They became sinners by nature.  And the entire human race that was born to them thereafter was born into this world sinners by nature, at heart alienated and in rebellion to their God.  The entire world, therefore, is guilty before God on a multiple of fronts.  (1) Every human being is guilty before God for Adam’s sin, which is counted as everyman’s sin.  (2) Every human being is guilty before God because he is born with a sinful nature, a propensity and preference for sin against God.  (3) Every human being is guilty for every act of sin that he commits throughout his life, for transgressing God’s prohibitions in His law.  (4) Every human being is guilty for failing to do all that God positively commanded;  every human being is guilty and damned for he does not have the righteousness that God requires if he were to have a relationship with Him.

        But thanks be to our God, beside a covenant of works, God also made a covenant of grace with the people He has determined to save from their sin.  In the covenant of grace God does for man that what man could not do for himself; God Himself brings His salvation to His people.  This covenant of grace was formulated, if we can use that term, in “the covenant of redemption”, which had been devised and committed to by the three persons of the Holy Trinity, even before creation.  In that covenant of redemption, God made provision to save guilty sinners.  Each of the persons of the Trinity was committed to work out this covenant of grace.  Based on this eternal covenant of grace, God decreed creation and has ordered all the events of history.  The Father had chosen a people whom He purposed to save.  The Son of God committeed to become one of and one with His people to save them through His life and death.  The Holy Spirit was committed to apply the results and benefits of Christ to the people whom the Fathe had chosen to save and had given to His Son.

II.  The history of the Bible is a record of God’s dealings with mankind; God relating to man based on these two covenants--the covenant of works and the covenant of grace.

        We stated last time that when Adam was serving God in the Garden of Eden, he was on probation, relating with God according to a covenant of works.  Had Adam been successful in obeying God, his work of obedience would have earned for him and his posterity eternal life with his God.  He was laboring to enter into what might be described as “rest”, which was displayed by God Himself, having rested after His 6 days of work in creation.  The Sabbath rest became a symbol or the goal of mankind; rest is an emblem of eternal life, an eternal Sabbath rest with God.  This is reflected in Hebrews 4.

        1Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear lest any of you seem to have come short of it.  2For indeed the gospel was preached to us as well as to them[1]; but the word which they heard did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.  3For we who have believed do enter that rest…” (Heb. 4:1-3)

        After Adam had sinned, and the curse of God came upon him and his posterity, God graciously announced His promise of His intention to deliver a people for Himself from their sin.  God Himself gave the first mention of the gospel in Genesis 3:15.  God said to the woman: "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel" (Gen. 3:15). God declared that He would destroy what the devil had succeeded in doing--deceiving Eve and enticing Adam to sin.  God would see to it that He would have a people that He would save for and to Himself, who would be separate from all others who continue in their lost and damned condition.  Moreover, the day would come when God Himself would strip the devil of his power and deliver His people from their damned condition. 

        The story and themes of what had transpired in the Garden of Eden is repeated in events and episodes that are found throughout the Old and New Testaments.  In fact the entire history of Israel can be regarded as a duplication of what unfolded in the garden. 

        A.  The Abrahamic covenant as a covenant of grace 

        The clearest example of this is with the entire history of the nation of Israel.  It began with God’s gracious call of Abraham who would become the father of the nation of Israel.  God called Abraham and gave him many great promises, all promises of grace, things that God committed that He would do for him and his descendants.  God entered into covenant with Abraham based on the covenant of grace; nevertheless, Abraham did have covenantal obligations; Abraham was to walk in faith and in obedience to His God.  When God had first appeared to Abraham, God had said to him,

        1When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless.  2And I will make My covenant between Me and you, and will multiply you exceedingly.”  3Then Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying:  4“As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, and you shall be a father of many nations.  5No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you a father of many nations.  6I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you.  7And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and your descendants after you.  8Also I give to you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting possession; and I will be their God.”  (Gen. 17:1-8)

        Later God would say this of Abraham.  In Genesis 18 we read,

        17And the LORD said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing, 18since Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him?  19For I have known him, in order that he may command his children and his household after him, that they keep the way of the LORD, to do righteousness and justice, that the LORD may bring to Abraham what He has spoken to him.” (Gen 18:17-19)

        Take note that although Abraham stood in covenant relationship with God, he still had covenantal responsibility to walk with the Lord and lead his family and his entire household to “keep the way of the LORD, to do righteousness and justice.”  Abraham’s performance of these works was not meritorious; he was not relating to God according to a covenant of works, but his works were covenantal expectations that God required of him within a covenant of grace.  His works of righteousness were not the ground of his relationship with God, grace was.  His works were not the means by which Abraham stood in a righteous relationship with God, his faith in God’s Word was.  We read this back in Genesis 15:

        1After 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.”
        2But Abram said, “Lord GOD, what will You give me, seeing I go childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?”  3Then Abram said, “Look, You have given me no offspring; indeed one born in my house is my heir!”[2]
        4And behold, the word of the LORD came to him, saying, “This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir.”  5Then He brought him outside and said, “Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.”  And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.”
        6And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness.
        7Then He said to him, “I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to inherit it.” (Gen. 15:1-7)

        B.  The Mosaic covenant as a covenant of grace 

        Later we read of the time when God brought Israel from Egypt, God established His covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai.  This was a manifestation of God’s covenant of grace in that God had graciously saved Israel out of bondage in Egypt.  God gave His law to His people as the standard by which they were to order their life after entering the Promised Land that God gave them by way of His promise to their Fathers. 
        We should understand the Mosaic covenant as a covenant of grace .  The gracious nature of this covenant may be seen when Moses rehearsed the history of God establishing His covenant with Israel, just before the people entered the Promised Land.  I have emboldened the words that reveal clearly that God was not dealing with His people according to the merit of their works--according to the covenant of works, but rather because of His dealing with them according to His grace--according to the covenant of grace.

        1“Hear, O Israel: you are to cross over the Jordan today, to go in to dispossess nations greater and mightier than yourselves, cities great and fortified up to heaven, 2a people great and tall, the sons of the Anakim, whom you know, and of whom you have heard it said, ‘Who can stand before the sons of Anak?’
        3Know therefore today that He who goes over before you as a consuming fire is the LORD your God.  He will destroy them and subdue them before you.  So you shall drive them out and make them perish quickly, as the LORD has promised you.  4“Do not say in your heart, after the LORD your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the LORD has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is driving them out before you.  5Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the LORD your God is driving them out from before you, and that He may confirm the word that the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.  6Know, therefore, that the LORD your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people.
        7Remember and do not forget how you provoked the LORD your God to wrath in the wilderness.  From the day you came out of the land of Egypt until you came to this place, you have been rebellious against the LORD.  8Even at Horeb (another name for Mount Sinai) you provoked the LORD to wrath, and the LORD was so angry with you that He was ready to destroy you.  9When I went up the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that the LORD made with you, I remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights.  I neither ate bread nor drank water.  10And the LORD gave me the two tablets of stone written with the finger of God, and on them were all the words that the LORD had spoken with you on the mountain out of the midst of the fire on the day of the assembly.  11And at the end of forty days and forty nights the LORD gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant. (Deut. 9:1-11)

        When Moses rehearsed God’s dealings with His people, forty years after the event at Mount Sinai, he told them that they were not to think that God had dealt with them according to their righteousness (9:4).  If God had given them the land based upon their righteousness, then it would have been according to a covenant of works, not of grace.  God makes it clear that their possession of the land was not according to a covenant of works (9:5).  Rather, God gave them the land according to His grace, fulfilling what He had promised to the Patriarchs--Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (9:5).  If God had been dealing with them according to their works, they would have not been granted entrance (9:6).  Their “works” warranted God’s wrath, not favor, for they had been rebellious from when God had taken them out of Egypt until the day that Moses was rehearsing these words before them (9:7-8).  Nevertheless, throughout this time of sin and rebellion, they had the two stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments, the covenant graciously granted them by God.  God had given His law with them and had established a relationship with them according to His grace.
        That Israel related to God based on a covenant of grace rather than a covenant of works may also be seen in the following ways.  First, the first generation failed to enter the Promised Land due to unbelief.  You will recall that the first generation of Israelites failed to enter the promised land, and then due to God’s judgment, died in the wilderness; God brought the second generation into the land.  The reason that first generation forfeited entrance into the land and the victory that was assured to them, is they failed to believe God.  We read in Hebrews 4:19, “So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.”  Now it is true they had disobeyed God, but their disobedience was the manifestation of their unbelief, their lack of faith to believe God to secure for them His promises.  Faith was what was required, which is a prinicple of grace, not works.   And secondly, God did not require perfect obedience of Israel to his moral law in order to keep their covenant with God.  The nature of the covenant of works, which involved law-keeping as one’s righteousness, required perfect obedience.  But transgressions of the law was the common and frequent experience of the Israelites.  God provided a priesthood and a sacrificial system for the occasions when they sinned; therefore, the Mosaic covenant was not of works, but of grace.   

        C.  The Mosaic covenant as a republication of the covenant of works

        But though the Mosaic Covenant was a manifestation of the covenant of grace, there was also an aspect of the covenant of works in the giving of God’s law at Sinai.  This is a difficult matter to sort through, but it is important.  This aspect of God giving His law to Israel at Sinai has been sometimes called a republication of the covenant of works.  This was expressed by one recent writer in the following way:

        The Westminster divines (those who wrote the Westminster confession and catechism) also believed that the Mosaic covenant looked back to Adam’s state in the garden.  The divines explain, “God gave to Adam a law, as a covenant of works, by which he bound him and all his posterity to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience” (West. Confession, 19.1).  They go on to say in the next paragraph, “This law” referring to the law that was  given to Adam, “after his fall, continued to be a perfect rule of righteousness, and, as such, was delivered by God upon Mount Sinai, in ten commandments, and written in two tables” (West. Conf., 19.2).  In this regard, the divines saw that the law given to Adam was of a piece with what that given to Israel at Sinai.  In other words, in some sense, the covenant of works was republished at Sinai.  It was not republished, however, as the covenant of works per se, but as a part of the covenant of grace, which pointed to the person and work of Christ.[3]

        In other words, even though God had given His law, His Ten Commandments, at Mount Sinai to His people as a manifestation of His grace toward them, instructing them to order their national life in faith and love by keeping God’s commandments, at the same time that law served to show them their need for a Savior as it displayed before them that God would require total and perfect obedience, if the law were seen as a covenant of works.  God set forth the law in this form in order…

1.  that God by all means might stir up men to perform obedience.
2.  that every mouth might be stopped, and all the world might be made subject to the condemnation of God for not performing perfect obedience (Rom. 3:19).
3.  that He might manifest man’s sin, and naughtiness (Rom. 3:19-20; 7:7-11).
4.  that He might thrust us forward to seek to be restored in the covenant of grace (Gal. 3:22; 5:23).[4]

        I came across these words from Herman Bavinck which reflects the understanding that the Mosaic Covenant was a manifestation of the covenant of grace, as The Westminster Confession asserts, and yet it is also in a manner a republication of the covenant of works, in that it set before Israel the need for keeping God’s law perfectly, or else the need for sacrifice to prevent their own death.  It was designed to lead Israel to look beyond themselves and their system to the Savior who would come and do for them that which they could not do for themselves. Bavinck’s words:

        This covenant (i.e. the covenant of grace) with the ancestors continues, even when later at Sinai it assumed another form...  The covenant with Israel was essentially no other than that with Abraham.  Just as God first freely and graciously gave himself as shield and reward to Abraham, apart from any merits of his, to be a God to him and his descendants after him, and on that basis called Abraham to a blameless walk before his face, so also it is God who chose the people of Israel, saved it out of Egypt, united himself with that people, and obligated it to be holy and his own people.  The covenant of Mount Sinai is and remains a covenant of grace.  “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exod. 20:2) is the opening statement and foundation of the law, the essence of the covenant of grace...
        Just as Abraham, when God allied himself with him, was obligated to “walk before his face,” so Israel as a people was similarly admonished by God’s covenant to a new obedience.  The entire law, which the covenant of grace at Mount Sinai took into its service, is intended to prompt Israel as a people to “walk” in the way of the covenant.  It is but an explication of the one statement to Abraham: “Walk before me and be blameless” (Gen. 17:1), and therefore no more a cancelation of the covenant of grace and the foundation of a covenant of works than this word spoken to Abraham.  The law of Moses, accordingly, is not antithetical to grace but subservient to it and was also thus understood and praised in every age by pious men and women.  But detached from the covenant of grace, it indeed became a letter that kills, a ministry of condemnation.[5]  Another reason why in the time of the Old Testament the covenant of grace took the law into its service was that it might arouse consciousness of sin, increase the felt need for salvation, and reinforce expectation of an even richer revelation of God’s grace.  It is from that perspective that Paul views especially the Old Testament dispensation of the covenant of grace.  He writes that Israel as a minor, placed under the care of the law, had to be led to Christ (Rom. 10:4; Gal. 3:23f.; 4:1f) and that in connection sin would be increased and the uselessness of works for justification and the necessity of faith would be understood (Rom. 4:15; 5:20; 7:7f; 8:3; Gal. 3:19).  On the one hand, therefore, the law was subservient to the covenant of grace; it was not a covenant of works in disguise and did not intend that humans would obtain justification by their own works.  On the other hand, its purpose was to lay the groundwork for a higher and better dispensation of that same covenant of grace to come in the fullness of time.  The impossibility of keeping the Sinaitic covenant and meeting the demands of the law made another and better dispensation of the covenant of grace necessary.  The eternal covenant of grace was provoked to a higher revelation of itself by the imperfection of the temporary form it had assumed in Israel.  Sin increased that grace might abound.  Christ could not immediately become human after the fall, and grace could not immediately reveal itself in all its riches.  There was a need of preparation and nurture. “It was not fitting for God to become incarnate at the beginning of the human race before sin.  For medicine is only given to the sick.  Nor was it fitting that God should become incarnate immediately after sin that man, having been humbled by sin, might see his own need of a deliverer.  But what had been decreed from eternity occurred in the fullness of time.”[6]

        Bavinck speaks of the Mosaic law once “detached from the covenant of grace”, in other words, when Israel viewed the Mosaic covenant as a covenant of works rather than of grace, the law became a condemning letter to them.[7] Once Israel viewed the law, either in their very possession of it as their righteousness, or their keeping it as their righteousness (which Paul addressed in Romans 10:2-4), then it condemned them as a covenant of works. 

        Throughout the administration of the Mosaic covenant, the people were reminded of the holiness of God, the need for absolute obedience to His law, and that death was the sentence they deserved, which was played out before them every time they had to lay their hand on an animal and slay it in place of their own execution.  This covenant showed them they needed a greater king to lead them in the way of righteousness, who was greater than just an ordinary Davidic king (like that of the other nations), for their Davidic kings had failed them.  Even the best son of David as king had failed to deliver them and lead them into their rest.  God would provide them that King (Isa. 9:6, 7).  The Mosaic covenant/law showed the people of Israel that they needed a better prophet to teach them for their own prophets had failed them.  God would send them that Prophet (cf. Deut. 18:15; Acts 3:22).  The Mosaic covenant showed them they needed a far better priest to represent them before God for their own priests had failed them.  God would send them this better Priest (Psa. 110:1-4).  The entire system pointed them to their guilt, their helplessness, their need for God’s provision for a Savior, and their need for a better covenant which would obtain their pardon and enable them to live faithful lives in faith and obedience without sin.

        D.  Replication of the Garden of Eden theme

        Throughout the history of redemption, the recording history of God’s covenantal dealings with the human race, God repeats the themes of the covenant of works and grace through His dealings with His people.[8] 

                1.  Adam and Israel

        Throughout the story of the Bible there is a replaying or repeating of the experience of Adam before God in the Garden of Eden.  This may be seen in God’s dealings with the nation of Israel. 

(1)  God had “created” Adam as his “son” (Luke 3:38); God “created” Israel his “son” (Hos. 11:1).
(2)  God established a covenant (of works) with Adam; God established a covenant (of grace) with Israel
(3)  God had given His law to Adam;  God had given His law to Israel.
(4)  Adam had his experience in an ideal paradise, in which he had no need before him but all things were readily available before him; Israel began its pilgrimage in a wilderness, in which nothing was available except for God’s bare provision.
(5)  As Adam, Israel would go through a trial or probationary period, which took place in the wilderness from Mount Sinai as they traveled to the promised land. 
(6)  God promised fellowship with Adam while he kept his covenant; God promised His presence and blessing to Israel based upon it keeping its covenant.
(7)  God had promised paradise confirmed to Adam upon completing his probation; God promised blessing in the Promised Land to Israel upon keeping the covenant.  Israel initially journeyed through the wilderness to the Promised Land, a land that flowed with milk and honey, which was in a manner a return to paradise, a place of Sabbath rest for the people of God.
(8)  God excluded Adam and Eve from the Garden--Paradise; God eventually ejected Israel from the Promised Land-paradise.
(9)  Adam had forfeited enjoyment of his Sabbath rest in paradise; Israel forfeited its enjoyment of its Sabbath rest before God in the land that God had given it.
(10)  God promised Adam and Eve a Redeemer to save them; God promised a Redeemer to Israel who would bring a new covenant relationship between God and His people.

                        Next week, Lord willing, we will consider the replication of the covenant in the life of Jesus and the experience of the church.