Do you know what a covenant is? A covenant is a contract or an agreement. In the Bible, covenants are made between God and His people.
There are eight covenants in the Bible. Understanding these covenants is the key to understanding the entire metanarrative of God's purposes and ultimate will for His people. Let's take a look. The Edenic Covenant. The key word here is the word rule.
In Genesis 2.15, right after God had created man, he put him in the garden and told him to care for it. From the very beginning, God's eternal purpose for man was to rule and enjoy him forever. Psalm 8 says, You make him to rule over the works of your hands. You've put all things under his feet. David was saying, You've made something from nothing.
You're powerful, and you've made man ruler over your creation to show your glory. But man rebelled and forsook his position. We all know the story.
Adam ate from the tree that God told him not to eat and brought sin into the world. The penalty for sin was death because God would not let man live eternally in his sin. So man lost it. We will need a second Adam to reclaim God's original purpose for man to rule, but only after he redeems man from his sin, which brings us to the next covenant.
Number two is the Adamic covenant. The chief word here is the word redemption. So because of Adam's sin, God curses man, animals, and the earth so it will yearn for his redemption.
So immediately after sin occurs, God tells us how he will deal with it. Genesis 3.15, God reveals his unconditional covenant and his curse upon the serpent by saying, I will put enmity between you and your seed, meaning Satan, and the woman's seed, meaning Jesus. He will crush your head and you will strike his heel.
Satan will inflict minor damage on Christ through crucifixion, but Christ will inflict major damage on Satan by defeating the curse of death. Jesus is the only one who can accomplish this, because he will be born of the Holy Spirit, incarnated, going around the curse, born without man's sin. As time went on, man's newfound sin deteriorated into a sick and depraved wasteland of evil until every intent and thought on his heart was wicked.
And God said, I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created. And that took place in Genesis 6, verse 7. Number three is called the Noahic covenant. The key word here is the word restraint.
This covenant shows an attribute of God that we can be grateful for, and that is his restraint. For instead of blotting out the entire human race, he preserved Noah and all the animals in the ark and restrained his wrath, partly because of his mercy, but also partly because of his covenants, which he cannot change. Then in Genesis 8.21, God makes a covenant that he will never again destroy all living creatures and gave Noah and the earth the rainbow as a sign of that covenant promise. But man would soon turn back to sin in an effort to make a name for himself at the Tower of Babel.
where we see the introduction of other gods. So God scattered them among the nations to begin a new nation for himself. Our fourth covenant is called the Abrahamic covenant.
The key word here is the word restore. In Genesis 12, 1, 2, and 3, God chooses one man through whom he will restore his people to himself, Abraham. And in that covenant, God promises him three things. In verse 1, he promises him land. In verse 2, he promises him a people.
And in verse 3, he promises him blessing. The land was Israel. The people were the Jews. And the blessing is they will be the touchstone of God towards all the people of every nation to know of him through them, to bless those who bless you and to curse those who curse you. And God made good on His promise too, because as the nation grew greatly, Egypt enslaved them, and God saw their affliction and cursed Egypt greatly through Moses and brought them safely out in the Exodus.
Our fifth covenant is called the Mosaic Covenant. Key word here is the word reveal. Now that Israel had grown into a great multitude of people, God brought them to Mount Sinai to make a covenant.
This covenant was to serve as a temporary supervisor, teaching the righteous standards of God and reveal man's sin until the coming of Christ. In Leviticus 26, God tells Israel in verse 1, Have no other gods. Verse 2, Keep the Sabbath.
Verse 3, Keep his laws and commandments. So while the first four covenants were only up to God, The Mosaic Covenant has conditions for man, and through those conditions man will have his sin revealed and he will see the need for a sacrifice. The Mosaic Covenant was temporary until Christ fulfilled every requirement of it. Living perfectly and dying is the perfect sacrifice for the sins of all who believed.
The sixth covenant is called the Palestinian covenant. Its key word is return. Well, the old guys died and the young guys forgot the Mosaic covenant and didn't keep God's laws. So in Deuteronomy 29, God tells them that they will not keep his covenant.
And in Deuteronomy 30, verse two and three, he tells them, come back to me because when they do in verse four and five reminds them of what God promised in the Abrahamic covenant, land, seed, and blessing. In verse 6, something more, a new heart, which hasn't happened yet until Christ returns and gathers them to a new land. The seventh covenant is called the Davidic covenant.
The key word here is the word reign. After 500 years of judges chaotically administering God's law, God appointed a king named David. King David loved the Lord with all of his heart.
And in 2 Samuel 7, 12-16, God makes a covenant with David. that he will give David's son Solomon three things. Number one, a throne.
Number two, a house. And number three, a kingdom forever. After David died, Solomon received the benefit of this covenant with the most prosperous kingdom in Israel's history.
But the covenant promise was forever, and Solomon eventually died. So this covenant had a second meaning, to reveal David's greater son of another nature, Jesus Christ, who would be from David's royal line, 490 years later. The eighth covenant was called the new covenant. Key word here is the word regenerate. After David and after many evil kings in Israel and Judah, God sends Israel into exile under Babylon.
But before he does, he promises them in Jeremiah chapter 31, verse 27 through verse 34, that he will bring them back one day and give them, and God invents a term here, he will give them a new covenant. In verse 32, God says they have been like babies needing their hand held. But in verse 33, one day they will be sons with new hearts, like a Jewish boy going through bar mitzvah, becoming a man. This is Israel's bar mitzvah. The law was for babies, teaching them about their sin.
Grace is for sons of God, with the law written on their hearts. John the Baptist said, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. It hasn't happened to Israel yet.
But Jesus spoke of this new covenant at the Last Supper for the church as we were grafted in. So we got their king and their covenant. And in verse 34, God will forgive everything they've done. The Christian's purpose doesn't cast aside Israel, but makes Israel jealous until the second coming of Jesus, when all the covenants will be fulfilled and God's purpose from the very beginning for his children to rule and enjoy him forever will be accomplished once.
and for all. And those, ladies and gentlemen, are the covenants of God.