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Lesson 11 GODS COVENANT OF GRACE

INTRODUCTION Remembering that our goal is to identify THE COVENANT OF GRACE, and remembering also that although we have already seen four covenants made by God with human beings that are covenants of grace, none of which results in mankind receiving the gift of life, we now look at the next major covenant mentioned in the Bible. It is referred to as the Messianic Covenant. One of the passages in which it is mentioned is Jeremiah 31:31-34 (NASB). It reads: Behold, days are coming," declares the Lord, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant which I made with their fathers in the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, My covenant which they broke, although I was a husband to them," declares the Lord. 33 "But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days," declares the Lord, " I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 34 They will not teach again, each man his neighbor and each man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them," declares the Lord, "for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more." We must note that in the previous covenants that we have looked at the record is of the actual covenant being made. That is, God actually entered into the covenant with them at that time. See Gen. 9:9; 17:4-5; Ex. 20:1-2 In this case what we have is not the actual covenant being entered into. God says I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and Judah in that day. This is a covenant of promise - a promissory note is being given by God. The actual making of the covenant is yet to come. Note also that this promise is couched in a promise to restore the exiled people to the promise land. God promises to do four things for His people in the covenant that He would make with them. And here God does not require anything of the subjects in order to establish the covenant or to ensure that it is maintained. This qualifies it to be a covenant of grace. THE FOUR THINGS GOD PROMISES TO DO Refer Heb. 8:8-12 First, God declares, "I will put my laws into their minds and write them in their hearts". In essence God is making a commitment to renew the mind, to give new life or to regenerate. This regeneration will form the necessary foundation for what follows.

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Second, God affirms, "And I will be to them a God and they shall be to me a people". By this act God will be removing the enmity that presently exists, the adversarial relationship would be brought to an end and peace would be established. This would therefore be Gods act of reconciliation. Third, He promises, "All shall know me, from the least to the greatest". In this God will perform an act and institutes a process of self revelation by which the new relationship is to be sustained. By this the subjects would be enabled to serve their Master since they will be progressively transformed into His likeness by their acquired knowledge of Him. Such knowledge would produce love, trust and submission. It will be Gods process of sanctification, separating them onto Him for His peculiar service. Fourth, God concludes, "For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more. In this God is saying that the wrongs done towards Him by the people, their missing the mark in falling short of His standard of righteousness and their lawless deeds in setting up their own law for self satisfaction rather than obeying His for His glory, would all be blotted out or permanently erased from His memory. By that act God will constitute His people just or not guilty towards Him. Note, however, that this act of justification will be granted in an atmosphere of atonement. That is to say that the sins will be atoned for and not merely excused. The word translated merciful carries this meaning. A PROBLEM IS NOTED NOTE - God is promising to make this covenant with people who are at enmity with Him. This is not normal or possible since the parties to a covenant must have common ground upon which to stand in order to enter into a binding agreement. That is to say that any state of enmity must be brought to an end first. It is after an agreement to cease hostility has been reached or where the superior party has subdued his adversary that a covenant could be entered into. In this case, at the time that the promise to enter into a covenant was being made war had not yet ceased. That hostilities still existed is born our in what is written in Jeremiah. 32:31-35. The nation Israel is still being described as being in a hostile relationship with God and apart from that, the Bible teaches that man in his sin is at enmity with God. The passage of scripture reads: "Indeed this city has been to Me a provocation of My anger and My wrath from the day that they built it, even to this day, so that it should be removed from before My face, 32 because of all the evil of the sons of Israel and the sons of Judah which they have done to provoke Me to angerthey, their kings, their leaders, their priests, their prophets, the men of Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. 33 They have turned their back to

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Me and not their face; though I taught them, teaching again and again, they would not listen and receive instruction. 34 But they put their detestable things in the house which is called by My name, to defile it. 35 They built the high places of Baal that are in the valley of Ben-hinnom to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I had not commanded them nor had it entered My mind that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin. How is it possible for God to promise to enter into a covenant with people in the midst of such a hostile relationship? It appears that the two parties have no common ground upon which to stand since righteousness, which is what God is, and sinfulness, which is what humanity is, cannot agree. Going back to the beginning of time when man broke the covenant that God made with Him, the covenant of works with Adam, God judged him guilty, punished him, and sent him away from His presence. Those acts of God did nothing to change or restore the broken relationship and up to the time that this promise was being made that broken relationship still existed. You may argue that in our previous studies we have concluded that after man sinned and God banished him from His presence He entered into covenants with man on more than one occasion. That is, with Noah, with Abraham, with Israel as a nation and with David as a king. Since nothing had happened to remove mans sinfulness one may ask whether those were real covenants that God had made. We must agree that it is an indisputable fact that God cannot covenant with sinners because it is impossible for sin and God to come together. For that to happen, something must first be done to remove sin from man or to change God. SEARCH FOR A SOLUTION Let us try to work this out together and for us to do this we have to go back to Genesis and look at what God did after man sinned. This is what God did. He spoke to, judged and punished the serpent: The LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this, cursed are you more than all cattle, and more than every beast of the field; on your belly you will go, and dust you will eat all the days of your life. He spoke to, judged and punished the woman:

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To the woman He said, "I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you will bring forth children; yet your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you. He spoke to, judged and punished the man: Then to Adam He said, "Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, 'you shall not eat from it'; cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. "Both thorns and thistles it shall grow for you; and you will eat the plants of the field; by the sweat of your face you will eat bread, till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." This was the natural outcome of mans rebellion and part of what death means. It is God fulfilling the judgment that He had pronounced when He made the covenant of works with Adam and Eve. In pronouncing His judgments he confirmed that the death of man would occur when He said till you return to the ground, because from it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return". God is here fulfilling His obligation as stated in the covenant of works by instituting the penalty for the breach of the covenant. In what we have read we can see that no promise of deliverance from death, or of a reward of life is made by God. Remember, none were included in the covenant of works in the event that that covenant was breached. However, one could have a reasonable expectation that if the penalty of mans death is to be removed or if a restoration of his former relationship to God is to be addressed it could be done at this time also. They were. In the midst of passing the judgment that was stated in the covenant of works God indicated that He had enacted another covenant. He did this when He was pronouncing judgment on the serpent. This is how God stated it: I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel. With regards to this statement made by God, the following are noteworthy: 1. It is something that God will do independent of all others: He said I WILL. 2. Gods enemy, the devil, had turned His people against Him; they were now under his control. The devil and Gods people were now on the same side and together they were at enmity God. In this statement God undertakes to turn friendship to enmity. 3. One aspect of what He was going to do would take effect immediately: enmity between the serpent and the woman

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4. The other aspect was to take place in the future: enmity between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. The coming into existence of the womans seed was yet future. 5. It was a statement made to the serpent by which the friendship and alliance established with the woman would be disrupted and brought to an end (enmity between them) and in which his ruin is forecasted (his head would be crushed). 6. In the battle between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent the seed of the woman would be wounded but not defeated. His heal would be bruised. 7. The defeat of the seed of the serpent, whilst bringing an end to his existence, would also result in the liberation of mankind from bondage to the serpent and his seed, would make the seed of the woman the conquering lord and would give him the right to own and rule all who are liberated by his victory. 8. This statement made by God is the revelation of a covenant that He had made and it must be noted that the covenant was not made with the serpent, or with sinful humanity. The purpose of the covenant was to redeem man in order that he may receive the reward of life which was lost when he sinned. 9. The revelation is a promissory note of the covenant which was for mans benefit but spoken by God to His enemy. Please note that God did not say this or make any promises to Adam and Eve, that He did not make the covenant with them nor with the serpent. 10. It is a covenant of grace to mankind because in expressing it God said I will put enmity and it is God that determined the outcome of the battle between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. 11. It is a covenant of grace because man did not do anything to earn that kind of favour from God. If this is Gods initial statement of a promise to redeem sinful mankind, indicating the redemption would be accomplished through His gracious intervention in the form of a covenant, it follows that no work of any kind performed by sinful man could accomplish or contribute to his redemption. 12. By deceit the devil caused enmity between man and God but God by a covenant has undertaken to redeem and reconcile mankind to Himself. 13. Although Gods statement was not made to Adam, it being said in His hearing, gave Adam hope and an expectation of deliverance. It appears that he expressed this in the name that he gave his wife. God indicated that redemption (the reward of life) would come through the seed of the woman. Adam, therefore, called his wife the mother of all the living. Genesis 3:20 Now the man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all the living.

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Adam had become the father of all the dead: Romans 5:12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned. CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS Please note that in this account God indicated that He has covenanted to redeem mankind but He did not state with whom the covenant was made. We are certain that it was not made with sinful man. We have noted that in this account God spoke judgment to Adam and Eve and made no promises to them. He could not make a covenant with them because of their sin. That notwithstanding, we must note also that in passing judgment, God cursed the serpent and the ground but He did not curse Adam or Eve. A reasonable assumption for this is that God intended to punish but not curse the creatures that were made in His image. This is the true covenant of grace and it is on the basis of its future fulfillment that God could have entered into covenants with Noah, Abraham, Israel and David and also make the promise of a new covenant with Israel, the Messianic Covenant. This provides us with the answer to our question: How was it possible for God to have entered into those covenants with sinful men and also to make a promise of a Messianic Covenant. The passage of scripture used in our consideration of this matter is Genesis 3:14-20

Next week we will identify the person with whom God made that covenant of grace.