Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Covenants in General

We begin this morning a new study, a series of new messages dealing with a new topic. We completed last week a several-month set of messages dealing with the poor in society and our obligations in terms of social action. And today we begin a series of studies dealing with the covenant of Reformation Covenant Church—the covenant confessional statement. That confessional statement is two pages long, contains a number of doctrinal positions, and ends up with an actual statement where the person signing the covenant, becoming a member of this church, affirms certain things and agrees to abide by the terms of the covenant.

I thought that in light of this new series, it would be good the first Sunday to talk just about what covenants are. And so today’s talk is on covenants in general, or the nature of covenants.

Now, we are in this church theonomic men, which is to say that we understand the theology of Cornelius Van Til—reflects this teaching of the scriptures—to say that we understand things in light of God’s revelation of himself first and foremost. So if we’re going to try to understand what covenants are and the implications of covenants for us today, we’ve got to start with what the scriptures tell us about covenants. God reveals himself in the scriptures. We are creatures created by God. We can only understand ourselves and all things that we do in relationship to the God who reveals himself to us in his revelation in the Holy Bible. So we’ll start with talking about the Bible.

Now this is particularly true, of course, when we deal with the question of covenants. The scriptures are, after all, divided into two portions: the Old Testament or covenant and the New Testament or covenant. And so it’s important to recognize that covenant is a very important concept to God. So we’ll start with a brief discussion of covenants from God’s perspective—basically what we’ll do here is we’ll talk about covenants in general and what God shows us about his covenants in the scriptures.

We’ll try to draw some distinctions between the old covenant and new covenant, covenant of works, covenant of grace, and those sorts of things. After that, we’ll talk about four aspects of God’s covenant that we find in Deuteronomy 29 and other things that we talk about that are important for us in terms of our covenants with other people.

So first we’ll talk about covenants in general. Many of you probably know that Judge Bahnsen used to tell the story of a man who goes to a lumber yard to buy some wood. He goes in and says, “I need some 4x2s.”

And the man behind the counter says, “You mean 2x4s?”

He says, “No, no, I need 4x2s.”

So the guy says, “Well, okay. How long do you need them?”

The guy says, “Well, I’ll be right back.” He goes out to his truck, consults with his brother, comes back, and he says, “We’re going to need them a real long time. We’re going to build a house with them.”

Now, we have Judge telling that story on a videotape of a talk he gave. And you have to understand—when I think of that story, I think of Bahnsen and I think of the twinkle in his eye as he told it. But I also think of the seriousness with which he addressed the subject of words and how we use them. And that was the point of the story: words can be deceptive. We have to be very careful how we use words. Many of us used to come under the interrogation of Judge Bahnsen when we used words incorrectly. And that wasn’t because he was cranky. That was because he wanted us to understand that our words are important. And so he would do this to show us sometimes that we use words wrongly and incorrectly, and therefore communicate incorrectly.

Words are important. After all, God reveals himself to us in a word, in the words of scripture. And so, analogically, our words are important as we understand God and as we communicate his truths to other people.

There’s a lot of confusion over the use of the word covenant today, I think, and particularly among those of us who have come out of non-reformed or non-reformation-oriented churches. We know, as I said earlier, that we talk about the covenant of works, the covenant of grace. We talk about the fact that there’s an old covenant and new covenant. We talk about the fact that there’s an Old Testament and a New Testament.

And it’s easy when we talk about these things to start equating things. It’s easy, and indeed it happens all the time, where people equate the old covenant and the old testament with the covenant of works, and the new testament with the covenant of grace. That is not the correct use of those words.

In reformed teaching and with the teaching of the scriptures, the covenant of works deals specifically with the covenant that God made with Adam prior to the fall. When you hear the word “covenant of works,” if people are using the terms correctly and not saying “4x2s,” what they’re saying is the covenant that God made with Adam before the fall. When they talk about the covenant of grace, that is the covenant that God made with Adam’s posterity post-fall. Those are the two uses of the term: covenant of works, covenant of grace—pre-fall and post-fall. It does not talk about the Old and New Testament.

Now, even in that it’s important to understand this distinction in scripture between the covenant of works that God made with Adam and the covenant of grace he made with Adam and his posterity after the fall. Even then we have to be very careful in trying to draw that line too heavily between those two covenants. Even after all, when we say the covenant of works, we could very incorrectly think that Adam somehow merited this favor by God that he received from him by his works. But just a little bit of cursory thinking shows that is not the case.

Adam did nothing to merit creation. That should be obvious. Adam did nothing to merit being placed in the garden of God’s pleasure—a holy garden, a perfect garden. Adam didn’t do anything to merit that. God placed him there. Adam didn’t do anything to merit a wife. God gave him a wife as a helpmate. Okay? God created Adam to exercise dominion over the world, over the created order. God created Adam as a king. Adam didn’t do anything to merit being a king. God graciously provided him with those elements of his relationship to him.

Now, for this reason, Meredith Kline, and we’ve talked about Kline’s books, *Promise and Deliverance*, quite a bit—Kline prefers to use the term about the first covenant, covenant of works, rather as a covenant of favor, and emphasizes the fact that it wasn’t as if God was some sort of thing saying “You have to do certain such and such or I won’t do anything for you.” Rather, God, even in the covenant of works, demonstrates that he is a gracious God, that he has given benefits to mankind. He has given favor to man. And so the covenant of works, maybe a better term would be the covenant of favor.

Now the covenant of works, of course, speaks in terms of the works that God required—works on the part of Adam and cessation from works of disobedience to merit eternal life. And that’s certainly true. And that is a difference between the old covenant—the covenant of works rather—see there I go again—between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. But even there I think it’s important to recognize that it’s not as if God had done entirely a new thing with the covenant of grace.

R.J. Rushdoony’s *Revolt Against Maturity* quotes from a man named Schaeffer—his book *Heaven*—what it’s talking about the covenant of works, and he talks about the fact that the term covenant of works was applied in retrospect in contrast with covenant of grace. And the very covenant of grace adds depth and meaning to the concept of covenant of works:

“It is evident that the covenant of works must not be looked upon as merely temporary. It is rather the original, fundamental, and therefore irrevocable covenant. The sequence of events must be explained by their beginning if we would see whether they tend. If we proceed from the covenant of grace as starting point, we go astray. But when we see the covenant of works as basic to all covenant relationships, then we’re on the right track.”

That’s real important to understand—that it wasn’t as if God tried one way, it didn’t work, and he started something new. The covenant of grace is more gracious than the covenant of works because God himself becomes the covenant keeper who keeps those works.

The fall of man necessitated the need for a mediator between God and man. And the covenant of grace involves two parties as the covenant of works did. But it also involves a third: the mediator, Jesus Christ. The mediator kept the works that were originally required of Adam, the first Adam. And that’s why he’s called the second Adam—he keeps those works. The covenant of grace flows out of the covenant of works where God graciously becomes the keeper of the covenant of works so that we enter into the covenant of grace.

Now, just briefly to talk about the terms used in the scriptures for the word covenant. In the Old Testament the word covenant is *berith*, which means in its literal translation to cut—to cut something or to set it apart. And so we know that when God made or reinstated his covenant with Abram, the sacrifice used there was actually literally one of cutting animals in half. God would sever these animals apart. And then, rather than Abram walking through the midst of those animals, which was the normal practice, Abram saw a light, a fire, going through there.

Okay? That represented to him that God was going to be the mediator so that there would be this covenant of grace. God would go between the two parts. And so the covenant that God reinstituted with Abraham, or reinforced as it were with Abram, was one of grace again. But this isn’t really different than what God did with Adam and Eve either, is it?

Immediately upon their fall and upon God’s coming to them, he tells them there will be one to come who will fulfill the sacrificial death required on the part of the covenant of works. He talks about the one who will come who will bruise Satan’s head. And of course God also instituted the death of animals and the covering provided by animals for Adam and Eve. So the covenant of grace flows out of the covenant of works and is a result of God himself keeping the works that are required in that covenant.

Now there’s more confusion in the use of the word covenant today because a lot of people talk—correctly, that is—that there are various covenants in the Old Testament: the Davidic covenant, the Noahic covenant, the Abrahamic covenant. But the thing that people fail to realize, either through ignorance or through willful sin, is that all of those manifestations of the covenant are part of redemptive history where the covenant of works and the covenant of grace are being developed by God and being explained to man in the context of history.

History is redemptive history, and the covenant manifestations of these various covenants in the Old Testament are manifestations of the covenant of grace applied. They teach more things about it. Okay, so there’s covenantal history there, and we can’t get into that redemptive history in great detail this morning. After all, we’re trying to do an overview here of covenants and some of the things that’s important to recognize about them.

Now we know then that the covenants of the Old Testament are indicative of the covenant of grace. The covenant of grace flows out of the covenant of works. The covenant in the New Testament also is the covenant of grace, of course.

Now here’s another word that tends to confuse the issue sometimes. We talk about the New Testament and the scriptures divided into the Old Testament and the New Testament. And people want to know what’s the difference between a testament and a covenant. And technically there’s some difference in the terms, but I want you just to look briefly now at a couple of scriptures. And we’ll see that these terms are used interchangeably by God in the New Testament.

The word for testament in the New Testament is *diatheke*, which also, by the way, has its origins in a root word that apparently meant to separate or to put in two. It doesn’t actually mean to cut—it’s not the same sort of literal understanding of *berith* in the Old Testament. But still it has that implication to it. And so right away in the actual etymology of the word we see some continuity there.

Now in 2 Corinthians 3:14, and I don’t know if you’re going to want to take the time to look up these, but you can jot them down anyway and look them up later. 2 Corinthians 3:14 says this: “But their minds were blinded, for until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament, which veil is done away in Christ?”

And the word there, *diatheke*, is translated testament in the King James version. And yet it’s clearly talking about the Old Testament or the old covenant in the sense of the prior administration of the covenant of grace—under the old administration, the old covenant. So the word there, testament, by the way—*diatheke*—is translated two ways in the scriptures in the New Testament: as testament and as covenant. And so you can see there again the interchangeability of these words.

But anyway, 2 Corinthians 3:14 tells us definitively that the old covenant was a testament as well as the New Testament was.

In Hebrews 8:10 we read the following: “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, sayeth the Lord, I will put my laws into their mind and write them in their hearts, and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people.”

And here that same word *diatheke* is used for the covenant that God was promising in the old covenant to fulfill in the new covenant. The Old Testament references to the coming new covenant—testament—had that same word used in the New Testament using that same word *diatheke* as the word testament in terms of the new testament. So again we have correlation there that the new covenant to be made with the nation of Israel was also a testament, as it were.

Now finally in Hebrews 9:15 we see both terms used, referring to the old covenant and to the new covenant but the old testament and the new testament. Hebrews 9:15: “And for this cause he”—talking about Jesus Christ—”is the mediator of the New Testament, that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament, they which are called may receive the promise of eternal inheritance.”

So there in one verse we have the word testament being applied to both the old covenant and testament and the new covenant or testament. So don’t let the word testament throw you here as you begin to think about the covenant of grace and what that means. There’s really no difference.

Now the word testament in the New Testament has maybe a little stronger emphasis upon the fact that there’s an inheritance. We know about testaments and wills, and Hebrews 9 develops this at some length—that with the death of the testator, or the one who makes the testament, the inheritance is given to those written up in the testament of the will. So it has this idea of inheritance in it, and some people say that’s one of the elements of the new covenant that particularly stresses the idea of inheritance. But we know also just from a cursory reading of the old covenant, the old testament, that the old administration of the covenant of grace also provided for inheritance.

There was, after all, land promised on the basis of fulfillment of the covenant of grace, and we know that the old testament through many typological references referred to the coming mediator of that covenant and the benefits that would occur to us on the basis of his death. So both old and new covenants, old and new testaments, have this element of inheritance to them.

Now this is important to go through just briefly, as we just did, because when we find things out about God’s covenant in Deuteronomy 29, we understand that we’re talking about the covenant of grace here and not the covenant of works that God made with Adam. It flows out of the covenant of works, but there is differentiation. And it’s okay to look at Deuteronomy 29 to understand things about the New Testament as well because there is basic continuity between them.

When we look at passages like Deuteronomy 29, covenant passages in the Old Testament, we should remember that these are, after all, indications of the covenant of grace under the old typological administration. That’s the way to think about it, okay? A covenant of grace under the old typological administration. But it’s the same covenant.

After all, we’re told in the New Testament that we have the faith of Abraham. That was his righteousness before God. And the covenant was his faith—justification by faith was taught in that covenant as well. In the historical setting of Deuteronomy 29, it’s rather obvious that it’s a covenant of grace. Of course, because after all, Deuteronomy 29 follows the exodus of God’s people from the land of Egypt. God is dealing with his people by grace.

Because it was by grace that God delivered them from Egypt. It was by grace that God provided the substitutionary atonement of the Passover lamb, to put on the doorpost of their house, so that God would pass over their sins. Grace was demonstrated in his deliverance from Egypt. No works occurred that produced that deliverance by God from Egypt. God did it graciously.

The law was given. This particular portion of the covenant law is stipulated and given after deliverance. Okay? It was by grace that God had given them these laws. And after all, these laws we know are holy, just, and good. The very fact that God gives laws to those that he’s brought into covenant relationship to him is by grace—a demonstration of God’s grace and love.

Is it by God’s grace that he gave the nation of Israel civil laws? Graciously? Obviously, yes. God said the other nations of the world would look at the laws that they had and say, “Where is the nation that has such good laws in terms of civil government?” The civil laws given to Old Testament Israel were graciously given as a blessing to them and to be a source of envy for all the nations around them.

And it was by grace, pointed out again in Deuteronomy 29 and the last couple verses or the first two verses of Deuteronomy 30, that he would be restored after repentance or falling away from the terms of the covenant. Deuteronomy 30:2 says: “If you return to the Lord your God and obey him with all your heart and soul according to all that I command you today, you and your sons, then the Lord your God will restore you from captivity and have compassion on you.”

If this was a covenant of works and not of grace, then if they broke that covenant, they would be cut off forever. They would have fallen forever. But as part of the conditions of this covenant, in the very giving of this covenant to these people, God says that if you fall away, but if you repent and turn back to me and bring forth fruits of your repentance, then I’ll restore you.

So we can understand clearly that Deuteronomy 29-30 is talking about a covenant of grace. And of course we know that part of that entire administration of the covenant talked about in Deuteronomy 29 were typological sacrifices that taught them the needs of the mediator—that taught them the coming Messiah, the coming mediator of that covenant, the one who would be their covenant keeper for them and who would provide the required death they could not provide.

So Deuteronomy 29 is a covenant of grace.

Now, having gone over that briefly and understanding that we talk about the two covenants in scripture, you have to make sure that the person you’re talking to understands what two covenants he’s talking about. Is he talking about the covenant of works with Adam? The covenant of grace with post-fall posterity? Is he talking about the old covenant—the old dispensation of the covenant of grace—or is he talking about the new covenant—the new dispensation of the covenant of grace?

These are confusing terms, but if you understand that distinction, you’ll avoid the error of equating the covenant of works and the covenant of grace with the old covenant and the new covenant. That is clearly not taught in scripture.

So once we avoid those sorts of errors, let’s talk a little bit about Deuteronomy 29 and try to glean out of this passage some elements of the covenant that are models for us as we enter into covenant relationships with other people and also with God in various things.

There are some elements here that are common and provide a model for us. These four elements will be: the fact that the covenant of God is representational in nature; the covenant is binding; the covenant has objective evaluators; and the covenant permeates all of God’s dealings with man. Okay, so those are the four points we’ll be discussing.

The covenant is representational. The covenant is binding. The covenant has objective evaluators. And the covenant permeates all of God’s dealings with men.

First of all, the covenant is representational. Verses 10 and 11 of Deuteronomy 29 tell us: “You stand today, all of you, before the Lord your God, your chiefs, your tribes, your elders, and your officers, all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and the alien who was within your camp, from the one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water.”

God is saying that all those groups are included in the men present before him at that time. But not only that, because in verses 14 and 15, it says: “Now, not with you alone am I making this covenant and this oath, but both with those who stand here with us today in the presence of the Lord our God and with those who are not with us here today.”

The people that stood before God were representational of a larger group. Now I think it’s likely that in Deuteronomy 29 we didn’t actually have all the little ones, all the mothers, all the hewers of wood. Rather, they were represented in their leaders. And so the covenant of God is representational.

Now we know in various times of covenant retaking—for instance, in the book of Nehemiah, when the people of God retake the covenant and pledge themselves back to being covenantally faithful to him who is always covenantally faithful to us—in Nehemiah 9, when that covenant is retaken, the people that actually sign the covenant, there are three groups listed: leaders, priests, and Levites. Okay, those are the three groups that are given. Additionally, the governor signed the covenant. So there’s civil magistrates, religious magistrates, and the Levitical order. Those people signed the covenant, but they signed it for everybody else.

It goes on in Nehemiah 9 to say that all the people—all again, the wives, the little ones, the hewers of wood—all these people were included in the representation of those leaders when they signed that document.

In Joshua 9, when the people of Israel make a big mistake and make a covenant with the Gibeonites, whom they were to destroy, the Gibeonites deceive the nation of Israel. They enter into covenant with them. And then it also says that Joshua made a covenant with the Gibeonites. And it says specifically that the leaders of the congregation signed that covenant and made it with them. And yet also there they were doing that on behalf of the larger group. Okay, it was representational.

Now it seems real obvious that that’s the case with the covenants of God, and as a result it should be that way with us as well. But it’s important to re-stress that today because in our country today there’s a big movement away from a representative form of government, a republic, more toward a democracy. A pure democracy is not taught in scripture. Scripture teaches representational leaders representing other people, and they can enter into binding contracts for the rest of those people if they’re in their delegated authority.

There are many implications for this idea of the representational nature of covenants in dealing with political matters and personal matters. Well, let’s use a couple of examples here. I’m a purchasing agent by vocation. So I do 40, 50 hours a week writing purchase orders. And in those purchase orders I represent the company I work for in that transaction, and my signature on the bottom of that purchase order binds the company, not just me. Okay? It’s representational.

All of society has built into it this understanding that God’s covenants are representational and ours are as well. We’re going to image God, after all, because we’re creatures of God. We’ll try to get rid of that over time, and as people begin to manifest their sinfulness, we’ll probably start seeing the end of those sorts of contractual obligations. But ideally, and in the practice of this country, covenants that we make are representational.

Now it’s also true that when that purchase order goes to the person I’m buying the thing from, they sign an acknowledgement copy. Somebody there does—they sign their name to the other part of that agreement. And by the way, that issuing of a purchase order is frequently called cutting an order. Again, showing the model for that being in the scriptural perspective of covenant—that cutting apart of the two animals. You cut a purchase order.

Well, they signed this acknowledgement and they sent it back, and they represented their company now. And we have a binding agreement. We’ve got both parties represented. We’ve got some laws there in that purchase order. We’ve got some requirements placed upon both parties. We have a covenant. Okay. And it’s representational in nature.

Now it’s important there just to point out a difference. We’re talking about how God’s covenant in Deuteronomy 29—the statement of that covenant—and the covenant of grace in Deuteronomy 29 shows us certain things about covenants. But it’s also true that there are differences, obviously, between God’s covenants and our covenants. And one of the primary differences is the fact that God’s covenant is not an agreement between equals.

When I again want to issue a purchase order, you have a couple of equal parties there contracting mutually to obligate themselves. That is not the case with the covenant of grace. God is above us. He’s the creator. We are the creature. God condescends toward man to cut a covenant with us. Okay? There’s no mutual binding as it were because we’re equals. We’re not equals.

It’s easy when you start talking about covenants and start explaining to your children what you’re talking about in terms of these agreements to give them the impression—if you don’t be careful—not to. We’re talking about that God and man are equal somehow in this contractual obligation. The point is that God’s covenant originated because he’s the creator and we’re the creature. And the Westminster Confession says that he condescended to deal with mankind through the covenant. It’s the only way man understands God. There’s a difference.

But even in that, it’s representational. And so it is with our church covenant that we’ll be talking about over the next few months. When people, when families covenant into Reformation Covenant Church, the head of the household signs for that household representatively and so seals that household to that covenant. They can’t come back and say, “Well, we didn’t really mean it after all. We never should have let this guy represent us.” Because, see, they were represented in that kind of household.

God’s covenants are representational and so should ours be.

Now it’s also important here to point out, by the way, that God’s covenant again is somewhat different than ours in that the representation for our side is provided through the second Adam. It’s representational in that way as well. There’s the doctrine of the federal headship of Adam, and we won’t go into any detail, but Adam stood for the whole human race in that covenant with God. Okay. The whole human race at that time was his own family, and the head of the household represented the whole family in that.

And so the whole family fell—in terms of the covenant of works, fell from God’s grace. The second Adam comes along. Jesus Christ keeps those works. He gives us the covenant of grace as our mediator. And in that also Jesus Christ is federally representative of all those who come into that covenant of grace that he calls to himself. Okay? It’s representative also in Christ representing all his people. That’s why, by the way, the covenant signs teach identification with Jesus Christ.

It’s not as if we autonomously, apart from Christ, apart from our representative, enter into that covenant of grace. No, we do it through identification with Jesus Christ. We’re going to have a baptism a little later on. And in that baptism, what’s being taught there is identification with the covenant keeper, the mediator, Jesus Christ.

God’s covenants are representational.

Second, God’s covenants are binding. In verse 12 of this passage we read that “you may enter into the covenant with the Lord your God and into his oath.” Into his oath. When they walked into covenant relationship with God, they were binding themselves—when God called them into that, actually by calling forth a people to himself, they’re being bound by God to the terms of that covenant. There was no way out.

Now the terms of that covenant had both blessings, and it had cursings—for obedience and disobedience. And understand when I say that disobedience, sin, which is unavoidable for the creature, is provided for in that covenant of grace by means of repentance of the party involved, showing fruits of repentance, and therefore ameliorating the curses that would normally come upon you. But the point is that there were terms to this thing. If you reject the covenant keeper, the mediator Jesus Christ, if you sin willfully and don’t make use of that covenant mediator and don’t come back to repentance, to a place of wanting to keep those covenants, cursings come upon you.

And we talk—you know, the bigger part of this passage talks about those cursings. Covenant is binding upon us. It’s not as if when you fall away from that covenant you’re excluded from the covenant or just sort of kicked out. You’re under the terms of that covenant still.

If I make a purchase order, okay, again, for a part and I write into that purchase order conditions—what happens for non-performance—on the part of the person contracting to provide that part? That’s running in blessings and cursings. If he says, “I can’t do it,” that doesn’t relieve him from the cursings of that contractual obligation. If we sin, it doesn’t remove us from the covenant. It puts us under that particular set of terms of the covenant—the curses.

God’s covenants are binding.

Again, in the Gibeonite matter where Joshua made the covenant with the Gibeonites, the nation of Israel did. They were tricked, and yet they were bound by their oath and by the covenant they made with those people to walk in obedience to the terms of that covenant. Now Saul, later in the history of Israel, broke that. He decided, you know, Saul was zealous in an unbiblical way. He was zealous to do what he thought was right. But remember the thing: there’s a way that seems right to man, but the ends of the ways of death.

Saul ended up dead. And not only Saul, but seven of his sons ended up dead as well, particularly for him breaking that covenant with the Gibeonites. He killed a lot of the Gibeonites in the land. David, when he took over, said, “We have to make it right with these Gibeonites.” And the Gibeonites required seven sons of Saul to be killed. David did it. These are Israelites, right? Covenant people being tricked into a covenant relationship with non-Israelites.

And here we are sometime later in the flow of history. You think we’d just have forgotten about that covenant. But no, that covenant was binding upon the parties. They had broken that covenant with the Gibeonites. They weren’t kicked out of the covenant. They came under the curses of the covenant. And so seven sons—the men who did that—were required to die at the hand of the Gibeonites.

The Reformed Presbyterian Church, the Scottish Covenanters, still are talking about the perpetual binding obligation of the Scottish covenants—the covenants made in Scotland in the 1600s. They understand the binding, perpetual nature of covenants entered into with man and in the light of, in the name of God.