I don't believe he is. James always. Starts out his special Wednesday night Sunday night sometime by reading an email that he's gotten and so not to be out done. I too got an email from a friend of mine. And he was kind of bringing me up to date on what was going on. He says, after my retirement at the company I worked for for 50 years, I look forward to some relaxation time and putting my feet up. But my wife had other ideas. She insisted I take her to the local shopping center every day. So like most men, I found shopping boring and preferred to get in and out. She's like most women, however, loves to browse and leaves me with endless time to fulfill. So yesterday, my dear wife received the following letter from the local shopping center and says, Dear Mrs. Harris, Over the past six months, your husband has caused quite a commotion in our store. We cannot tolerate this behavior and have been forced to ban both of you from the store. Our complaints against your husband are listed below and are documented by our video surveillance cameras. On July 2nd, he set all the alarm clocks and housewares to go off at five minute intervals. July the 19th, walked up to an employee and told her in an official voice, code three in housewares, get on it right away. This caused the employee to leave her assigned station and receive a reprimand from her supervisor that in turn resulted with a union grievance causing management to lose time and costing the company money. we don't have a code three. August 4th went to the service desk and tried to put a bag of M&Ms on layaway. August 14th moved a caution wet floor sign to a carpeted area. August 15th set up a tent in the camping department and told the children shoppers he'd invite them in if they would bring pills and blankets from the bedding department to which 20 children obliged. August 23rd, when a clerk asked if they could help him, he began crying and screamed, why can't you people just leave me alone? EMTs had to be called. September 10, while handling guns in the hunting department, he asked the clerk where the antidepressants were. October 3rd, darted around the store suspiciously while loudly humming the theme from Mission Impossible. October 18th, hid in the clothing rack, and when people browsed through that rack, yelled, pick me, pick me. October 22nd, when an announcement came over the loudspeaker, he assumed a fetal position and said, oh no, it's those voices again. And last but not least, on October the 23rd, he went into the fitting room, shut the door, waited a while, and then yelled very loudly, hey, there's no toilet paper in here. One of the clerks passed out. Well, that's my email for the evening. All right, well, it's good to have everybody on here, and we're gonna start a series of studies about the covenants. And you might ask, okay, well, why study the covenants? There are a number of reasons, but I'd say the number one reason is because covenants illustrate and confirm the way God's plan for mankind has played out up to this point in history. And they also establish what we can expect in the future. We know what the future holds. We just don't know when it's going to happen. So it was a covenant with Adam and Eve. I'm just going to kind of do a quick summary of the covenants or a quick mention of them. And then tonight we're going to concentrate on the first three. That's the Edenic covenant, the Adamic covenant, and the Noach covenant. It was a covenant with Adam and Eve that led to the first sin, and of course, we've been living with that sin ever since. After they sinned, it was a covenant with God and mankind in general, Adam in specific, but mankind in general, that established certain patterns of life that we all take for granted. The difficulty of childbirth, the necessity of work, dying, to name three of the most basic ones. Fast forward to somewhere around 2400 BC, we have the flood, where all but eight people are removed from the face of the earth, and God promised never to do that again. We're still relying on that promise because of all the things that we have to be concerned about today. I doubt that any of us are really worried about the entire earth floating, although the people of Eastern Kentucky might disagree with that, because they've certainly had their share of water. But speaking of which, we certainly want to keep remembering those people. I don't remember what the death toll was, It seemed like it was up in the 30s, so they're really in a bad way up there. So after the Noahic covenant comes the covenant with Abraham, which established the Jews as a race of people and promised blessings to all people of the earth. And all of us are beneficiaries of that promise. After that comes the Mosaic covenant, which established the law, which had a major influence on us today for several reasons. which we'll discuss when we get to that. Then there's the Palestinian covenant, which God promised the nation of Israel a certain area of land, which as we speak today, they have yet to possess. They've possessed a small part of it, but not all of it. And then there's the Davidic covenant, which is God's promise that the king who would rule the universe would come through the line of David. And we know that Jesus came from the line of David. So that covenant is kind of in the process of being fulfilled. You know, all the pieces have been put in place for that to be fulfilled. And then of course, there's the new covenant, which is a promise to the nation of Israel. And that is still to come. So the course of mankind has been defined as a result of God's covenants. You'll not find anything in history that is inconsistent with these covenants. Not only have these covenants defined history, but there are many facets of the covenants that offer us a blueprint for the future. As I said earlier, the Bible tells us what's gonna happen, it just doesn't tell us when. It's a fascinating subject. A little word about covenants in general, there are a total of eight. A covenant is a sovereign pronouncement by God by which he establishes a relationship of responsibility in kind of one of four ways between himself and an individual. Adam is an example of that, between himself and mankind in general. The Adamic conditions by which man now lives, the promise of a Redeemer under the Noahic covenant, the promise never to flood the earth again, and between himself and a nation of Israel, that's the Mosaic covenant and the New Covenant, and between himself and a specific human family. That's the Davidic covenant. Some of these covenants can overlap. Another one, some of them obviously signal the beginning of a certain dispensation. Sometimes the dispensations overlap the covenants. And I'm not gonna talk, I'm gonna talk very little about the dispensations going through this, but hopefully you'll find this discussion of the covenants interesting. So we're gonna start with the Edenic covenant, and you'll find the essence of that in Genesis 2, verses 16 and 17. That's Genesis 2, 16 and 17. And this is often called the life of man in innocence. And I wanna read that verse. It says, and the Lord God commanded the man saying, of every tree of the garden thou might freely eat, But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. And so the elements of the Edenic covenant basically was to propagate the human race, to subdue the earth for man, to have dominion over the animal creation. to care for the garden and eat its fruits and to abstain from eating that one tree on penalty of death. So the first part of that covenant is found in the first part of Genesis 1, 28, when God's speaking to Adam and Eve says, and God blessed them and God said unto them, be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth. So God gave mankind a means to populate the earth And, you know, we all know the man has been very good at doing that. God gave every living creature a way to recreate itself. Animals instinctively know how to find a mate and how to recreate. Years ago, when I was a kid growing up, I spent quite a bit of time in the country over in Garrett County which is only about 3540 miles from here. And then all the time that I spent running around in the country and I'm talking about being on a farm and out of the fields and, you know, as kids we kind of had the run of the place. I never ever saw a deer running wild. They just weren't around. And the reason that they were not around was because there were no restrictions on hunting deer and they had just been hunted out and were almost extinct. So, but as soon as they took those restrictions off and deer became protected, they began to multiply. And as you know today, They're everywhere. And so that's just one example of how things can recreate themselves and how quickly that happens. God designed every living thing in this world to be able to recreate itself. Everything from the smallest living cell to the largest animal and everything in between, everything from the smallest plant to the largest tree They all have the ability to recreate. It's just one of the fascinating facets of God's creation. So the second part of verse 28 in Genesis is, and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea or the fowl of the air, over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. So, you know, man's dominion was not just limited to the garden, it basically covered the entire earth, the whole planet. Of all God's created beings, man and man alone has the ability to make things happen. All other created beings, all animals, plants, everything that's living other than mankind simply react to their circumstances and their instincts. God makes provision for their food in verse 29. And reading again from verse 29, and God said, behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth and every tree yielding seed to you, it shall be for meat. So Adam and Eve were the original vegetarians because at this point they were certainly not eating meat. That would not happen until after the flood. And so not only man, but the animals were all eating herbs and vegetables. And if you substitute the word food for meat in verse 29, it shall be for food. It makes a little more sense. And if you look at Genesis two verse five, that's an interesting verse, I think, because I want to read that and it says, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth and every herb of the field before it grew, For the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground, but there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And this tells us that God didn't create the earth, and then wait a few years for all the plants to grow. The earth came fully stopped, because God simply created it all in the phase before it grew, means just what it says. God made plants on the earth fully grown. They didn't grow into mature plants. God just put them there. So it also tells us there was no rain, but rather a mist that came up out of the ground. And this is kind of an important point to remember, I think, when we get to the story of Noah and the Noahic covenant. The last part of the Edenic covenant is found in Genesis 2, verses eight and nine. And the Lord planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put man whom he had formed, and out of the ground made the Lord to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. So God put Adam in this ideal place, garden of Eden, everything was there that he needed to live. Then he put man in a, a situation where he really had to make no decisions, no choices to be made except one. And here we see the power of choice being put into play. And I think that's probably what I'm gonna speak on Sunday night, and that is the power of choice. So we see in the last part of verse nine, God put all kinds of plants and trees that were edible, but he also put one other thing there, and it is the tree of life. also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil." So we come to the heart of the Edenic covenant, Genesis 2, 15 verse through 17, and 15 says, and the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to dress it and keep And then 16, and the Lord God commanded the man saying of every tree garden thou mayest freely eat. And then verse 17, but the tree of knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it. For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die. So you know what happened at this point? They made the choice, they ate of the tree, and that set the stage for the course of human history that followed. They suffered immediate spiritual death, eventual physical death, and remember, God never breaks a covenant, he never lies, so the minute Adam ate of the fruit, there were dire consequences. Their disobedience leads to the next covenant, which is the Adamic covenant. So the Edenic covenant was short-lived. Now, one of the questions that I've kind of been mulling around in my head, I don't know that there's an answer to it, is exactly how long were they there before this took place? Was it like immediately, a year, you know, the Bible says to God, you know, a day is like a thousand years. So I don't guess we have an answer to that, but that's just an interesting kind of academic question that I've wondered about. So we know the age of the fruit, so here we, we get to the Adamic covenant, which of course is as a result of their having eaten of the forbidden tree. And you'll find that, the heart of that in Genesis 3 verse 15. So it does a couple of things. It conditions the life of fallen man, tells how that fallen man's gonna live. And it also is a promise of a redeemer. There's a lot of information in that little verse. So I'm gonna read part of that and it says, and I will put enmity. It's a hard word to say. Between thee and the woman. Now the thee that he's talking about is between Satan, the serpent, and the woman. So he's saying that he's gonna make the serpent an enemy of the woman. And between thy seed and her seed, and it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel. And as I say, there's a lot of information in that one little verse. So the elements of this covenant is that the serpent is cursed, It's God's graphic warning of the effects of sin. It's the first promise of a Redeemer. It changed, obviously, the manner in which man and woman lived. Women had pain and childbearing, subject to the man. Man, the earth is cursed and he is required to work. It established the inevitable sorrow of life. You know, when you're gonna get old, you're gonna die. and the brevity of life in the sense that man was destined to live forever, and then after sin, not only is he destined to die, but all of his descendants. So, important thing to remember about the Adamic covenant is that God establishes the format of human existence for the next thousand years, however long that's been, from then right until now. So, Let's kind of break that down, talk about the first part of that, and says I'm gonna put enmity, that's a hard word for me to say, enmity, between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed. So here, God classifies Satan as the enemy. The word thee, as I said, or he's referring to Satan. So he is an enemy to God, he's an enemy to mankind, and in general, an enemy to the Jewish people in particular. Remember, the Jews didn't exist at this point. Throughout history, Satan has been particularly intent on destroying the Jewish nation, because if he can do that, then the whole Bible falls apart. If there are no Jews left on the earth, then there's much of the Bible that becomes meaningless. So if he could destroy the Jews, that's a major victory, but we know that's not gonna happen. If you'll look at Matthew 24 verse nine, it says, then, and then refers to when the tribulation comes, shall they, that is the rest of the world, and he's talking to Jews here now, shall they, that is the rest of the world, deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you, and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake. You cannot find a race of people throughout history that have been more persecuted and more hated than Jewish people. For a while after World War II, because of what Hitler did to the Jews, there was a period of worldwide sympathy for the Jews, even to the point of allowing them to have their own country. And believe me, that was a struggle for them to have their own country. But even that brought about a lot of dislike between the Jews because of the Palestinian uproar, and we'll talk about that some more when we get to the Palestinian covenant, but the nation of Israel as it exists today is only a small part of the land that God has promised them, and we'll see that when we get to the Palestinian covenant. So the reference in Genesis 3 verse 15 of the seed of the woman where it says shall bruise thy head and again thy head is referring to the serpent refers to the wound inflicted upon satan which occurred at the cross in which Jesus was victory over Satan, the enemy. And notice the wound inflicted on Satan was a head bruise and the wound inflicted by Satan on mankind was a heel. So now, you know, if you compare those two, what is more deadly, a wound to the head or a wound to your foot? And I think those two statements kind of are reflective of the running battle that It's an ongoing thing between God and Satan. And they also tell us who's gonna officially emerge victorious, and we know who that is. So there's an age old debate over who is ultimately to blame for the fall, Adam or Eve. After all, Eve ate first. There are all kinds of theories about that. But I think the one that's most accurate is even though Eve ate first, she was not responsible for Adam's actions. She didn't realize what she was doing. She was caught in a moment of weakness. In all probability, she was deceived. It's possible she didn't even know what was wrong. definition that I like to use for deception is you don't know what's happening to you. In other words, you don't understand the fact that you're being lied to or what you're believing is not the truth. And that's kind of, you know, there is a strong argument that she was deceived and didn't know what was wrong. And if you look at Genesis 2, 17, 18, God told Adam not to eat from the tree in verse 17, And in verse 18, and whether or not that happened in the chronological order of the verses in Genesis, but he created Eve in verse 18. So the admonishment was to Adam, not necessarily to Eve. And so Adam was the one who knew that he wasn't supposed to do it and who made the conscious decision to disobey. And so for that reason, which is a strong argument that Adam brought about the curse, not Eve. So all you women out there, you can breathe a sigh of relief. It wasn't your fault. But the woman doesn't escape punishment. It says in Genesis 3, 16, unto the woman, he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, and sorrow thou shalt bring forth children. So, you know, all the ladies out there who have had babies kind of know how that's played out. I know it's easier for some women than others, but most women will tell you that the process of labor and delivering a child is not necessarily a picnic and it's painful. So that brings up an interesting observation and that's childbearing during the thousand year reign. So if this particular curse is lifted, which based on information that I believe it will be, having children during the thousand year reign will be a pleasant experience. And over a period of a thousand years, millions will be born and they'll live forever. So if we think back a thousand years from now, that takes us all the way back to 1022 A.D. And so think about the number of children that have been born during that thousand years, folks, is a long, long time. We have a tendency to look at it in the Bible and it's, you know, two short words, a thousand years. But when you think about the actual time that it takes for a thousand years to go by, It is a very, very, very long time in terms of human history. In God's eyes, again, there's a scripture, I think it's in 2 Peter, it says the day is like a thousand years. So anyway, if they're a child, if the Jewish people are having kids on earth during a thousand year reign, there are gonna be a lot of them. So second part of the consequences to Eve, is the last part of Genesis 3.16. It says, and thy desire shall be to the husband and he shall rule over thee. Now, obviously there's been a movement over the last 50 years or so for equal rights for women. Traditionally, the man has been in a more dominant position than the woman. And as we know, for years and years and years, for hundreds of years up through history, women had very little, if any, rights. And even today in parts of the Middle East and a lot of Arab countries, in India, in some of those, in a lot of third world countries, women still don't have any rights. And so, you know, this is where it all started. And this is why Paul writes some of the things he does. Ephesians 5, 23, for the husband shall be the head of the wife. 1 Timothy 2, 12, that I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man. And one of the more interesting verses in 1 Timothy 2.14, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. So it kind of goes back to what I said about, okay, who's at fault here, Adam or Eve? And he said, and there's Paul writing that Adam was not deceived. He made a conscious choice is what that means. The woman was deceived, she still did wrong, but, It's a difference. Verse 15 says also, we're still talking about 1 Timothy 2 and 15, is also interesting because, notwithstanding, she shall be saved and childbearing. So that's a reference to the fact that a woman will bear the Messiah, the Christ, and through Jesus Christ, Mankind can be saved. But she was still destined to die. They both were destined to die physically, although physical death was not immediate. I mean, they lived a few hundred years, I think, after the initial sin, but the dying process began almost immediately. And Romans 8, verses 18 through 23, is also a good place to kind of confirm the results of the Adamic covenant. And Romans 18 says, for I reckon that the suffering of this present time are not worth to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. So question is, what is this glory that's gonna be revealed? Well, you know, it's what follows in eternity. What do we know about that? Well, not much. The Bible reveals a sequence of events, which is gonna take place. You know, we're gonna have the rapture, which is the conclusion of, as it mentions in Romans 11, the time of the Gentiles, the fullness of the Gentiles. So we know that's gonna end with the rapture. We know that tribulation then is gonna follow that, and that during that time, a remnant of Jews will rise to prominence. We know that there's gonna be a thousand years in which the Jews will live on a, not a new earth, but a earth in which the curse is lifted. And so we know all that, but what the details of that glory that Paul refers to, we just don't know. And, you know, there's a, I have a word or two to say about that right here at the end. we do know it's going to be beyond anything that we can imagine. So in the meantime, interesting use of the word vanity appears in verse 20. This is again in Romans 8 verse 20, which says, for the creation was made subject to vanity. Now the word vanity here, means that part of the curse that keeps man being truly satisfied with life. If you think about all of us, if you think about humanity, most of us, mankind in general, including us, are continually seeking something, more money, Better house, better car, more clothes, a better job, better furniture, better something. Most of us are always seeking after more of something. We live on this earth. Some people live better than others. But at the end of the day, Solomon as he so eloquently wrote in Ecclesiastes 12, verses seven and eight, then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it. Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is vanity. Just interesting how many times the word vanity shows up. How many people can claim to be truly happy or satisfied with their life? Most of us would probably say, well, yes, I'm happy. But deep down, there's, you know, for most of us, there's one little thing out there that we probably are kind of holding back. So well, you know, yeah, I'm, I have a good life. I'm happy. But there's always a but there. But if I just had this one other little thing, then I think life would be better. Ecclesiastes 6.4 says, for he cometh in with vanity and departeth in darkness and his name shall be covered with darkness. In verse seven, he goes on to say, the labor of man is for his mouth, and yet his appetite is not fulfilled. So we're always constantly striving for something, and we just never quite get it. Romans eight, verse 22, Paul writes, for we know, and we means you and I as believers, that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. So everything on the earth is under the curse. Everything on the earth suffers because of it, including us. He goes on in verse 23 and says, and not only they, that is all creation, but ourselves also, that includes you and I as believers, which have the first fruits of the spirit. So he's saying as believers, we have the spirit, which is salvation through God's saving grace, but, He goes on to say that even we ourselves grown within ourselves, waiting for the adoption to wit, the redemption of our bodies. So even if everything else is right in our lives, we're perfectly content with everything that we have, we still are yearning for that heavenly body, that release from this earthly body. So, On the other hand, that promise of eternal redemption, on the other hand, people who are not believers, they don't have a whole lot to look for. They're waiting on death. That's what's gonna happen to them. And there's no, I mean, after that, they don't like to think about what it is, or they are in denial about what it is. But we know that if you die and you're not a believer, then hell is waiting on you. And hell is certainly not the place that anybody is gonna admit that they wanna go. So as if all that suffering and striving is not enough, the end result, as long as we're on the earth, is the same for everybody, and that is we're all going to die. The only way that we escape physical death is if the rapture occurs before we die. So I think that's about all I'm going to say about the Adamic Covenant. I'm going to move on to the Noahic a hard word to say too, Noach Covenant. And that basically is in Genesis 9. The heart of it is in verse 16, where God says, or where it says in the scripture, and the bow, and he's talking about the rainbow, shall be in the cloud, and I will look upon it that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. Some of the elements of this covenant is that man is made responsible to protect the sanctity of human life by orderly rule, and it also ushers in the dispensation of government. That includes protecting the life of the individual man, and it also brings capital punishment onto the scene. There's no additional curse upon the ground, which means man never has excuse me, fear and other universal flood, and the order of nature is confirmed. Other things that happen as a result of this covenant is the flesh of animals is added to man's diet. So up until this point, man has been a vegetarian and now he becomes a meat eater. And there's some prophets involved in this as well, and you can't ignore them. There are three of them, actually, that deal with Noah's sons and descendants of Canaan. One of Ham's sons will be servants to their brother, so they're going to be subservient in some fashion. Shem will have a unique relationship with the Lord, and from Japheth will descend the enlarged race of government, science, art, and all those things have been deemed to have been derived from the Jaythetic line. And history has proven the accuracy of those prophecies. So God has just wiped mankind from the face of the earth, except for eight people. Noah, his wife, three sons, and three wives. Eight people are left to start over. By all accounts, it's been somewhere around 1600 years, maybe longer, I don't know whether that's for sure, since the garden. And we tend to minimize how many people that may have been on the earth during that period of time. I think everybody kind of assumes that the earth was more or less sparsely populated, but some people put the S on as high as 4 billion people that may have been on the earth at the time of the flood. One part of the Edenic covenant Mankind has always taken very seriously, and that's that part about propagating the human race. So if we think back 1600 years from today, we go all the way back to the year 422 AD, and that's about the time of the fall of the Roman Empire, and the beginning of what history has often labeled the Dark Ages. So just think about how many people have been born from 422 to now. So at the time of the flood, mankind had existed at least 1600 years, maybe longer, without any form of human government and without any kind of established religion. So, you know, both of those things, that is human government and religion are instrumental in maintaining any kind of social order. By that, I mean that if you don't have those things, it's gonna be chaos, anarchy, every man for himself and no rules. And so, our systems of government, our system of religion, tend to establish a system of right and wrong. And so the people of Noah's day had neither, and it had been that way for a long time. So they had nothing to curb their sinful nature. It got so bad that God decided it was time to start over, and that's exactly what he did. So he picked out eight people, and everybody else perished in the flood. So let's look at some of these scriptures, starting with Genesis 8, 22. It says, while the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. So in other words, God is confirming that the order of nature will resume and remain undisturbed. In Genesis 9, 2, God reestablishes man's dominance over all other creatures and he says, and the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth and upon all the fishes of the sea. Into your hand are they delivered. So God is again reaffirming that man's in control. You know, all the animals are gonna be scared of him. All of them are gonna be naturally shy away from mankind because man is superior to all the living animals. And then Genesis 9, 3, he establishes the fact that mankind can now eat the flesh of animals, where he says, every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you, even as the green herb have I given you all things. Now, this is different from before because, you know, we can slam up until this time they were vegetarians. And do you ever wonder why, when an animal is killed for meat? Firstly, I don't know how many of you have ever witnessed that process, but back when I was a kid, I used to watch my family. I had a lot of family members that lived on farms and in the country. So I used to watch my family kill hogs. It was kind of a, a annual event that happened every year around Thanksgiving. And the reason it was so late in the year is they had to wait till the temperature got cool so the meat wouldn't spoil. And so I remember seeing that and, you know, the first thing they do when they kill an animal is they hang it up and they basically cut the throat of the animal so all the blood in the body could drain out. And, you know, I never really thought about it too much as to why they do that, but, and I'm sure there's practical reason like preserving the meat, but it's also a biblical mandate. In Genesis 9, 4, it says, and flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof shall ye not eat. So, We are not supposed to God himself. And this is not, you know, some part of the mosaic law or anything like that. This is just a natural mandate from God that we are not to eat the flesh of animals with the blood still in it. You know, the blood of animals and men represents life. I mean, none of us, no animal, no human being can live without blood. And so, There's a clear mandate from God not to eat the flesh of animals with the blood still in it. Verse five, he says, and surely your blood of your lives will I require. At the hand of every beast will I require, and at the hand of man, at the hand of every man's brother, will I require the life of man. So here sits kind of the sanctity of human life. And if your animal or you as a human being are responsible for taking the life of another human being, then you pay for it with your life. In any society, we go to great lengths to protect ourselves from dangerous animals killing human beings, whether domesticated or wild, and we have laws that prohibit one man from taking the life of another. So here we see that God establishes a rule or an order that puts a value on human life. So verse six establishes the biblical authority for capital punishment. who shedeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. For in the image of God made he man. So, you know, it's established in here that we are made in the image of God. We can't go around killing people. And if we do, they're gonna kill us. And so, you know, there is a clear, in my mind, at least a pretty clear biblical mandate of capital punishment. I know some people would disagree with that, but clearly by the Bible, the first time man is authorized by God to take the life of another man. So this is the beginning of human government in its simplest form. The ultimate purpose of human government is the protection of human life, And this is kind of where it starts, the beginning of the third dispensation of human government. We have to understand that up until this time, as we read in Genesis, there was no rain. There was a mist that came up. I don't know if there was a growing season or things just kind of always were grown. I don't know what that might've looked like. but we do know that it had never rained. And so it's no wonder that when Noah started proclaiming or prophesying that it was going to rain and building this huge boat, it's no wonder that people looked at him like it's crazy because nobody had ever seen rain. And so this basically takes us up through the first three covenants. As I said earlier, there are seven covenants. Well, there's eight, but there's seven that deal with starting with Eve up through there in force today. Seven is generally considered in biblical circles as being a number that represents completion. And you'd be amazed at, the frequency in which the number seven is used in the Bible, and I'm kind of working on a lesson that talks about that. And by that, I don't mean there's any like magic quality or any of that kind of nonsense to the number seven, but it does certainly appear to be one of God's favorite numbers because there's so many things that happen. There's seven covenants. Eight is generally considered to be a number representative of new beginnings. And so we have seven covenants that are in play now. The new covenant would be covenant number eight, and it will represent a new beginning, a whole new deal. for the Jewish people because it will be put in play at the beginning of the thousand year reign. And so it'll be a whole different set of rules for those people. And so it's very interesting. Next week, the next covenant is the Abrahamic covenant. And it's probably, the benchmark covenant of the entire Bible. If you take away the Abrahamic covenant out of the Old Testament, there's not much left. Everything kind of revolves around that. And so, that of course marks the beginning of the nation of Israel. And, you know, here lately, For the last couple of years, I've just been fascinated by the part that the nation of Israel plays in history, the part it will play in the future. And so we'll be talking about some of those things as well. So it's about two or three minutes till eight. That's all I have on the covenants. If anybody has any questions. I know everybody's just got dozens of questions. Don't be bashful, but if anybody has any questions, well, I'd be happy to discuss them with you. As a matter of fact, I would welcome some questions. So anybody out there got questions, comments? All right, guys, I need at least one question or comment. Paula loved your jokes. She thought it was hilarious. Yeah, that was pretty good. Oh, I... Didn't you... You said something about how long they were in the garden before they left? Yeah. The only thing I've ever seen on that was Genesis 5.3 where it says, basically, Adam was 130 years old when he had Seth. So it had to have been less than that. Yeah. And they lived, didn't they live like 900 years or something? Yep, he lived another 800 years after Seth, so. You know, one of the things that I find maybe a little more fascinating than the average person in Bible study is I like timing and history. For instance, you know, the Jewish nation came into being, God seems to, and this is just an observation, I'm not prophesying or making predictions here, so don't get the wrong idea, but God seems to operate a lot of these major periods in biblical history in 2,000 year increments. From Abraham to the birth of Jesus was roughly, And, you know, the coming of the Messiah was roughly 2000 years. And so now the Jews, and we'll talk about this, obviously, as we go through some of this stuff, but the Jews have kind of been put on the shelf, for lack of a better term, as a nation. That happened A lot of people believe that, I mean, the actual event, where it's like, you know, up until a certain point, they could have still accepted Jesus as Messiah. And then there was a point or an event after which they were done. And a lot of people think that was a stone in the steep. And that's what makes the most sense to me. So we don't know that for certain, but if that is the case, the signing of Stephen, I think that happened somewhere around between 40 and 45 AD, maybe a little later than that. And so it was at that point that God called Paul and made the gospel available to the Gentiles. And so that period of time has been real close to 2000 years. I mean, we're at 2022. So I'm not sitting here predicting that the fullness of the Gentiles will be coming in at 2047 or whatever. But what I am saying is that it's interesting that we are coming up on that, depending on exactly when it all happened, we are coming up on that 2000 year benchmark. So just an interesting scenario. Yeah. Anybody else? Comments? Questions? Yeah. Hi, Brother Billy. Hello. How are you? I'm great. Good. So I caught most of this. I've got home from work. So we're on covenant. So I don't even know whether this comment or question is going forwards, backwards, or right now. So is the body of Christ, in your opinion, under any kind of covenantal, mental agreement with God or no? Are we under a covenant at all with God today? I don't think so, except to the extent that we are, except to the extent that the entire human race benefits from some of the covenants of God. You know, for instance, the curse that he put on Adam and Eve. Well, you know, we're under that curse, whether you want to call it being under a covenant or not being under covenant, but obviously we're under that pronouncement. We are under the pronouncement of God's covenant to Noah that there will not be a flood. But once the Jewish nation comes into being, then all the covenants, beginning with Abraham, are made specifically with the Jewish nation. I don't think there are any of those covenants that apply to us today. Now, You know, the age-old argument and discussion that goes on is, okay, well, what about Abraham? I've been in discussions with a few people that believe that we're in the New Covenant, which I do not, because if you read the New Covenant, it's in Jeremiah 31 and Hebrews 8. It is very, very, very specifically the nation of Israel. I mean, there's just no question that that's the case. Now, people argue, well, you know, the church has replaced the nation of Israel. I don't believe that. Church is the church. And so, there are no promises or no covenants after Abraham except those made to the children of Israel, to the Jews, and the Abrahamic covenant. So you say, well, what about that part of the Abrahamic covenant that says all nations of the earth will be blessed? Well, I don't, that's a covenant with Abraham. That's not a covenant with us. And I think that we are a beneficiary that covenant. We are blessed through descendants of Abraham because Jesus was one of those descendants and because of what he did on the cross making salvation available to us. But the kind of salvation that we have you will not find prophesied anywhere in the Old Testament. You know the Old Testament prophets In all their prophecy, they see the coming of the Messiah, the suffering Messiah, the death of the Messiah, and then shortly thereafter, the second coming. They do not see this 2,000 year period, this intervention between the death of Christ and the second coming. You won't find that in prophecy. And if you look at Acts, when the original apostles, they thought, that Jesus was coming again very soon. And they had no idea that Paul was gonna come on the scene and all of a sudden there's gonna be a 2,000 year gap between the death of Jesus and the second coming. They thought it was right away. So the answer to that is no, I do not. Anybody else wanna comment on that? Alright guys, are we done? Anybody else have a comment?