So I have two warnings. Well, first of all, a greeting. Good morning. Happy Lord's Day. It's good to be here. It's been a while. It was a very productive summer, but it is good to be back. Two warnings. I've given this warning before, particularly at CVP, and some people didn't pay attention and they were shocked. And so I don't want you to experience that this morning. we are not gonna read the Bible passage first. And so some of you, that's going to just really be difficult, because you're used to that. We stand, we rise, and I promise I won't forget. So if you're one of those people who, we know how this works, and you're like, is he ever gonna read this thing? Yes, we're gonna get there, and so please, I've been duly warned, some of you are still gonna be shocked. Secondly, this is gonna be a two-part sermon, and so I'm gonna preach today, and then you'll have a well-earned break next week from me, and then I'll be back the following Sunday. With that in mind, what is it that we're gonna be talking about today? Well, there's a subject that has the unique ability to make any Presbyterian's heart flood with excitement. You're wondering, what is it? Ah, Calvinism. No, no, our Baptist brothers share their, oftentimes, their love for that. The list could be long, but what it is this morning is the word covenant. Yes, if you haven't spent much time around Presbyterians, you will quickly find that we slap everything with the label covenant, covenant of grace. Covenant worship. Covenant people. One of my favorites, covenant love. The word has said covenant love. Covenant casseroles. Covenant board games. Covenant everything. You know, if I were to give a three year old a hammer, everything would suddenly become a nail. Yes, some of you tried that, and you found that out pretty quickly. Well, it's the same thing with Presbyterians and the word covenant. They just seem to be just as enthusiastic about this word, and they slap it onto everything. Why is it that we seem to turn everything covenantal? Most Christians rarely even think about this idea, and those... There's a whole denomination, the covenant denomination, and if you were to ask people in that denomination, what is a covenant, they would start to stutter. And that's not necessarily a criticism. I mean, probably should fix that, but, you know, there's lots of things that we should know that we don't. So that's not really a criticism, just a recognition. It's something that is fundamental, and yet... Could you describe the covenant? Could you define it? Well, my job here this morning is to help you do that. So, we should understand it, why? Why should this be so important to us? Well, it's a concept that actually structures some really fundamental parts of the human experience. It's fundamental to human relationships, actually. It's fundamental to all human history, and it's how the, listen to this, the covenant is the way that the transcendent, timeless, immutable God has chosen to interact with finite, time-bound, changing creatures. If you wanna understand how does that happen, well, it's done through covenant. So if you're interested in human relationships, human history, or how God interacts with humanity, this is an important subject and deserves our sincere attention this morning. But it's hard, this particular subject is really difficult for us for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that we live in a culture that struggles to understand any relationships. This has become really, really obvious. our culture has progressively sought to erase all lines, all distinctions. God created the world, he set boundaries in it, and he set its rules, like a cosmic basketball court with all the rules and all the lines on the court to make the game possible. That's what God did. We live in a cosmic basketball game, as it were. But in our infinite folly, We moderns have convinced ourselves that we have a better way. And so we've jettisoned most of all that, jettisoned the rules, we've replaced them with others, we've told the players, you know what you can do? You can just draw the lines wherever you want, whenever you want. So now there are so many lines on the court that they mean nothing. So many conflicting rules that the game has simply turned into a war of antagonistic wills. We are not heeding the warning of scripture toward humility. Proverbs 14, 12 says this, there is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death. James 3, 16, for where envy and self-seeking exists, confusion and every evil thing are there. We've sought our own way. in envy and selfishness, and now we live in some of the most confused and evil times of the past 500 years. Nowhere is this confusion more prevalent than in our relationships. The grasping usurpation of our first mother is at a toxic level in our women, and the whiny and soft abdication of our first father, Adam, has left us a city without walls. But for the grace and unbelievable mercy of God, we would be, well, we would complete what we seem hell-bent on accomplishing, tearing down our entire culture, every last brick with our own hands, scratching and devouring one another in a race to the dark bottom with every relationship destroyed. But for the grace of God, that's where we would go. Our young men, and this room is chock full of a bunch of them, our young men enter into relationships without any clarity as to exactly what kind of a relationship it is, with no understanding of its purpose, and they wonder why there is so frequently ruin, misery, confusion, and drama along the way. we must have boundaries, we must have definitions, we must seek for clarity. And so it is with our most important relationship, the relationship that we have with God, our creator and the ruler of all things. So one of my hopes this morning is that in the next two sermons, well, this week and then two weeks from now, that they will act as the needed, define the relationship talk. What is this relationship that we have with God? But there's a warning. I, like you, am trying to recover something that has been lost for many generations. This means I'm seeking to approach this subject with great humility. And we all must be ready to stretch our brains and our hearts to receive a way of thinking and a way of living that in many ways aggressively contradicts our modern sensibilities. So if you go away and you're struggling to understand, it's possible I didn't communicate clearly. It's also possible that something was communicated clearly and it's just challenging. So receive it with humility, we'll do that together. So let's define the relationship in the hopes that we can flourish in a garden again. So maybe it'd be helpful as we think about our relationship to God to look at some of our horizontal human relationships or some sort of analog, some sort of metaphor or analogy to the relationship that we're supposed to have with God. And there's a long list of various kinds of relationships that we can have in this world. Think about some of them. We can have transactional relationships like a business partnership, okay? And a covenant does bind two people together, or two parties together, but that analogy, I think we can all go, that's too weak. That doesn't do justice, okay? So how about healthcare? We have healthcare relationships. We have relationships to physicians and nurses. This seems... helpful as well, but also really lacking in its ability to adequately describe the uniqueness of our relationship to God. So yeah, there's a partnership, okay, weak. Healthcare, doctor, okay, that's a little bit better, but still weak. We have legal relationships, like that to a judge or to a lawyer. And God is our judge. And Jesus is a defense attorney. These are true things. But these two, I think you can realize, okay, we're, we're kind of taking all these things and we're getting a better sense of the different kinds of relationships that we have to one another, but also to God, but that seems in itself also sorely lacking. Well, how about God is our teacher? Okay, yeah, that's a kind of relationship, but that's, that doesn't work either. How about God is our friend? Well, yeah, that's true, but also he's more than our friend. And so whether viewed separately, We see the weakness there, or even kind of piled together like a Voltron monster. It just, none of this seems to adequately capture the kind of relationship that God has established with us. The way that God has chosen to reveal the kind of relationship that he has established, the structure of that relationship is within the context of the ancient Near Eastern relationship of a covenant made between a sovereign and his subjects. 4,000 years ago, this sovereign-vassal relationship was commonly understood. But separated by 40 centuries in the midst of a democratic stew, it makes sense that we would struggle to understand this concept. Sovereign to vassal? What the heck is a vassal anyway? A sovereign? I mean, look at our president. Do we really consider him a sovereign? It's just, we live at a time and a place so different. It's a very challenging concept to wrap our head and our hearts around. You know, all horizontal analogies, even this one, are going to be inadequate to describe this relationship that we have with God, but this ancient kind of relationship between a sovereign and his vassal subjects called a suzerain treaty is the type of relationship that God chose, as limiting as it still may be, to describe what kind of relationship he has with us. In the ancient Near East, during the time of Abraham, if a king conquered a people, This new sovereign would establish a covenant relationship with his new subjects. We actually have historical records of examples of these kinds of covenants, and there were features that were common to them. And so we're going to talk about some of those features. And I'm going to use O. Palmer Robertson. This has been done in a variety of different ways. I found him useful when I was first thinking through this about 30 years ago. And so he does what I would call a noteworthy job of taking an enormous subject and giving us a helpful definition. So I'd like to encourage you, if you're taking notes or this is interesting to you, get your pens ready. I'd encourage you to write down and begin to understand the definition that he gives. It comes in a number of different parts. And this isn't because it's perfect, but I think it's helpful. So he describes a covenant Obama Robertson in this way, slightly modified by me, a bond, so that's number one, a bond in blood, and I'm gonna explain all of this, but a bond in blood, sovereignly administered with sanctions, sealed. Okay, so five parts. A bond in blood, sovereignly administered with sanctions and sealed. So let me break this down for you. A bond, a bond indicates what most of us would immediately start thinking of when we think of a covenant. It's a promise that establishes a relationship. But it's a promise that establishes a specific kind of relationship. It's a kind of commitment that binds people together in a way that's explained by the rest of the four points. So it's a bond, it's a relationship that's established, a commitment in blood. In blood means that it's shorthand for summarizing that it's a life or death kind of commitment. So your relationship to your doctor is not, well, okay, it might be life or death in one sense, but the relationship isn't life or death. Your relationship to a lawyer, although yeah, that might be life or death, now that I think about it, that relationship isn't life or death. Your relationship, even your friendships are not fundamentally life or death. but a covenant of this sort establishes a life or death relationship. This means that the, a relationship of such significance that it is one that's characterized by blood. Okay, so a bond, in blood, sovereignly administered. It's not a contract. If you think of a covenant and you think immediately of a contract, I'd encourage you to shove that off to the side. Not really helpful. Why? Well, it's sovereignly administered. Its implementation is unilateral, uni meaning one. It comes from one direction. The authority comes top down. A contract involves two people negotiating, coming to mutually agreed upon terms, but the kind of covenant God establishes with us is not negotiated. This makes Americans bristle. We do not like authority imposed, ever. And yet, that's exactly the character of the kind of relationship that God establishes with his people. It is unilaterally, unilateral, sovereignly imposed. Remember what I said earlier, that this kind of covenant was common It was commonly used by a sovereign ruler, conquering a people and making them his subjects. A conquered people, think about that, a conquered people are in no position to negotiate. The king asserts this new authority whether they like it or not. If this is a righteous king, then the only right thing to do is to change allegiance and to bow the knee genuinely to this new sovereign. We see the sovereign and unilateral nature of the covenant in the whole unfolding of the Abrahamic narrative. So think about Abraham's life. In chapter 12 of Genesis, we hear these words. God to Abram, go. Go. No please, no negotiation, just go. And then we hear this, and I will bless you. And all the peoples of the earth will be blessed through you. Notice that God did not ask. He told Abraham to go sovereignly and unilaterally. And then, that's chapter 12. By chapter 15, this new relationship is formally solemnified, and listen to the character of that. We're gonna be focusing on this a little bit later on today, but just a little bit of an appetizer. Abraham is told, leave your country, and your people, it's not negotiated. God establishes himself as Abram's shield and reward without his permission. God is not courting or negotiating, he is imposing the authority he has every right to impose as the king of the universe. God commands a sacrifice in chapter 15, he doesn't ask. He puts Abram to sleep without permission. God lays out the next 400 years of he and his progeny's life without once asking for permission, including ordaining that his descendants would be enslaved for a vast majority of that 400 years. Sovereignly imposed. And then two chapters later, in chapter 17, God reminds Abram of that relationship and gives him a token or a sign to seal and remind him. He says, I am God Almighty. Walk before me faithfully and be blameless. It's just required by the sovereign. God changes his name without permission. God demands Abraham keep the covenant. God commands him to engage in a painful, bloody, and permanent right and threatens to cut off he and his descendants if he refuses. None of this is agreed to by Abraham or negotiated. It is sovereignly, unilaterally administered. It's not a contract. So it's a bond, okay. In blood, kind of get it. Sovereignly administered, I don't like it, but I see that. With sanctions. This life or death relationship comes with blessings or cursings, sanctions. These are the conditions that must be kept upon pain of death. Obedience resulting in blessing. Disobedience met with curses. This sort of covenant could only be ended by death and would result in death if one of its members was unfaithful. What does that sound like to you? Sounds like a different kind of covenant that you're familiar with every once in a while. People get dressed up. They make commitments to one another until Death do us part, right? So there's some similarities and some differences between that kind of a relationship, that kind of a covenant, but it is a covenant because it is until death. The only thing that can end a marriage is death. Blessing is when God's favor and his generosity is bestowed in such a way that he brings joy and happiness and growth, protection, well-being, prosperity, and peace. Curse involves the pronouncement of divine judgment because of God's disfavor, resulting in suffering, judgment, and separation from his blessing. J.R.R. Tolkien understood this covenantal way of thinking We hear this covenantal relationship of sanctions being lived out in Denethor's words to Pippin in the Lord of the Rings. And for those of you who are familiar with the story, it'll make a little bit more impact. Denethor is a steward acting on behalf of the king. Pippin is coming under his sovereignty in this relationship as it's being established. And Denethor says to Pippin, do you swear to serve me and the land of Gondor? You hear the oath that's being taken? Now therefore I will not lay on you a charge heavier than your strength can bear. Do you swear to abide by my will in all matters? Then I will take you into my service and you shall be as one of my vassals, a soldier of Gondor in the wars that shall come. And if you keep his oath, you keep this oath, you shall have my thanks. Here are the sanctions. If you obey, keep the oath, you will receive my thanks. But if you break it, then you shall feel my wrath. It's a covenantal relationship that's being established. So in a covenantal relationship, there are sanctions conditioned upon obedience or disobedience. And then lastly, a bond in blood, sovereignly administered with sanctions and sealed. Covenants typically came with signs. Examples in the scripture would be, and listen to these, some of these are really interesting. Signs that a covenant has been made. The granting of a gift. the eating of a meal, there's all biblical examples of this throughout the scriptures, the setting up of a memorial, the sprinkling of blood, the offering of a sacrifice, this is an interesting one, the passing under a rod, or as we see in today's passage, the dividing of animals. So with this covenant structure in mind, again, a covenant is a bond, a particular kind of relationship binding persons together. Number two, a life or death relationship in blood. Number three, sovereignly administered unilaterally as a sovereign king. Number four, sanctions with the blessings and cursings that must be kept upon pain of death, and number five with signs or tokens symbolizing the type of relationship being established. It's time to stand. Please stand and turn to Genesis chapter 15. We're gonna read the first 21 verses. If that's too long, some of you might have trouble standing, then please feel free to stay seated. It's fine. But let's pray. Father, we ask as you as you've been gracious to give us your word, and you've been gracious to give us your spirit to understand it, we do ask that you would bless our reading, bless the exposition, bless us as we seek to know you better and to apply what you have for us this morning. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Okay, so starting at verse one, Genesis chapter 15. After this, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. Do not be afraid. Abram, I am your shield. your very great reward. But Abram said, sovereign Lord, what can you give me since I remain childless? The one who will inherit my estate is Eleazar of Damascus. And Abram said, you've given me no children. So a servant in my household will be my heir. Then the word of the Lord came to him, this man will not be your heir. but a son who is of your own flesh and blood will be your heir. He took him outside and said, look up, look at the sky and count the stars, if indeed you can count them. And then he said, so shall your offspring be. Abram believed the Lord and he counted it to him as righteousness. He also said to him, I am Yahweh. who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land, to take possession of it. But Abram said, Sovereign Lord, maybe you hear yourself in this. I hear your promises. How can I know? How can I know that I will gain possession of it? Verse nine. So the Lord said to him, bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon. Abram brought out all these things to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other. The birds, however, he did not cut in half. Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away. As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. And then the Lord said to him, know for certain that for 400 years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with a great possession. You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. In the fourth generation, your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure. When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking fire pot with a blazing torch appeared and passed between the pieces. On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, to your descendants, I give this land from the wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmizzites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites, and Jebusites. Thus ends the reading of God's word. Let's pray. Father, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight. Oh Lord, our rock and our redeemer. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. Please be seated. Okay, so in this account, we see clearly God asserting a new and special relationship with Abraham to be both his shield, that's shorthand for sovereign, and his reward, his very great reward. This new bond is sovereignly decreed. Abraham simply needed to respond, and did he? He did, he responded in faith. Likewise, we see blood very graphically displayed. But what does this bloody process signify? What does it point to? What does it all mean? In response to Abraham's question, how can I know? You've made this promise, but it's already been years. It hasn't unfolded. We know he's trusting, he's responding in faith, and yet he says, how can I know? So in response to that question, God graciously condescends to answer in this vivid picture. So imagine the scene. A cow, a heifer, cut in two. If you were to go to your refrigerator right now, you might have a gallon of milk in your refrigerator. And I can hold two gallons on one shelf in the door. I've got three shelves, that's six gallons. If I took four more gallons and put them in the refrigerator, and then my, let's say when Josh was little, he came and he grabbed each of those milk cartons and he opened it up and he poured it on the floor. Ten gallons of milk all over the floor. It'd be a sea of milk. It'd cover the entirety of my kitchen. Ten gallons of blood from that one animal. On the ground. A goat. cut in two, two more gallons of blood. A ram cut in two, two more gallons of blood. That's a total of 14 gallons of blood, a gory swamp of muddy blood. This was purposefully grisly. The pieces are set in two rows, so you've got blood in this trench, and you've got the animals that had produced the blood cut in half and set up, creating a blood-drenched path between them. And here's the interesting thing. We're sitting here going, huh, that's weird. Abram would not have been thinking that. He would have known exactly what was going on. He would have known exactly what to do. Imagine for a moment you're at a baseball game, and the national anthem comes on. What do you do? You don't have to ask every time it comes on. You know exactly what needs to happen. You stand up, take your hat off. If you have one on, you put your hand over your heart. You look for the flag. Where's the flag? You know exactly what to do. It's part of our culture. Well, this was part of his culture. He knew what was going on. God, who had called him out of Ur, was formalizing himself as Abram's divine king. So he would have known what was coming next. He would need to stand up, walk over to the gauntlet, that alley of bloody gore, he would have to take off his shoes, his sandals, and he and God would walk through the pieces together, barefoot, through that bloody path. It was a vivid way of the two parties of this new relationship taking on a self-maledictory oath, promising that if they were unfaithful to this blood, that this bloody scene would be recreated in their own blood. There would be life in the relationship, or there would be death out of it. But something happened. Something strange. Actually, something didn't happen that was strange. God did not immediately initiate the passing through those pieces. He waited. I wonder what Abram would have been thinking. What are you waiting for, God? How many hours would have passed with Abram wondering what was to come next? When would it begin? And while he's waiting, wondering. Would I be able to keep this oath? As the Genesis narrative of Abram's life up to this point, at chapter 15, has clearly demonstrated, Abram had already shown his weakness of faith. Yes, he had faith, but it was weak. His weakness of commitment. How difficult it was for him to follow through completely. And yet here, before him, stood the bloody declaration of perfection that was about to be required of him. Walk before me and be blameless. That must have been echoing in his heart as the bloody scene before him declared the consequences if he failed. So, what did he do? He distracted himself by keeping the carry-on birds from disturbing the elements of this sober ceremony while he waited for his divine king to arrive. But then something even more strange happened. upside-down nature of God's kingdom, a kingdom that would be enfleshed in Jesus 2,000 years later, was prefigured, displayed in the middle of the very establishment of this new relationship. Abraham did not have to make that walk. God put him to sleep. And while he was in that dream state, God made promises to Abram. And then God, all alone, contrary to the expected pattern, walked through the pieces all by himself, alone. Why? Why would he do this? Why would God do something so strange? Well, I think the answer, in part, is that actions speak louder than words. Within our kind of modern, rationalistic assumptions, we're oftentimes just looking for explicit commands or arguments. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. The kind we might expect to be given to a computer or a robot. But God knows who he's dealing with. He's dealing with humans, made in his image, not with machines. God sometimes gives us explicit direction, but he also often shows us. He gives us pictures to make his point. He speaks in parables and stories and expects us to connect the dots. A flaming torch and a smoking pot, with all their symbolism, pass through the pieces alone. This picture is designed to be far more potent than a simple, logical statement of fact. This action demonstrates God's sovereign, gracious love. It palpably shows that God understood fully Abraham's inability to keep covenant. God had watched as Abraham had already proven his half-hearted and impartial obedience to leave his people and to remain in the land. Abraham had already proven the weakness of his faith in running to Egypt and lying. And we'll find out if you're to read on, you find out that there's more inconsistency to come. I know you can't do it. This is what God is declaring in this performance. I know you can't do it, but I'm willing to do it for you. I know you can't walk before me blamelessly, so I take upon myself the malediction. the curse that you would have to bear. Do you see Christ in this? Do you see the mercy of our covenant king who, knowing we were weak and sinful, unable to stay true to our covenant obligations, chose to take on our guilt and our burden and to experience the covenant curse that we would undoubtedly earn? This cannot be properly understood simply as a holy God hating sin. We trivialize God and we trivialize sin if we don't take it in the context of the covenant. Our Jesus passed through the bloody gauntlet of the cross and died so that we might be constituted covenant keepers. based not on our righteousness, but based solely on an alien righteousness given to us by grace. Greater love has no one than this, that a man would lay down his life for his friends. By God walking through those pieces, he was declaring, I love you, and I love your descendants to come And he was saying two things as a result of that love. Number one, let what you see splayed out in gore before you happen to me if I am not faithful. And number two, let this happen to me if you are not faithful. Thus, God, Abram's covenant king, took on the obligations of both parties. This is all grace. Grace from start to finish, promised in seed form in Genesis 3, brought to greater fullness in Genesis 15, finished 2,000 years later in Christ, and ready to be consummated when this Christ returns in glory. And what was Abram's response to all of this grace, to these unbelievable promises? His response is the only response God has ever wanted from his people. Abram believed the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness. Adam was supposed to respond in faith. Abraham needed to respond in faith. We need to respond in faith. Our children need to respond in faith. All of the nations need to respond in faith. Faith is not new or novel to the New Covenant. It has always been the way God deals with His people. We see in Abram the covenantal pattern that God expects from all His people for all time. God graciously and sovereignly called Abram, who in faith believed God, and that trust was counted or reckoned by God as righteousness. Abram then, and his whole family with him, because they were represented by him, were ushered into a very special relationship with God. This relationship was a blessing to Abram because it was received in faith. And though his whole family entered into this special covenant relationship, only his posterity who likewise responded in faith were ultimately blessed by this relationship. Isaac and Jacob are examples of this. Inconsistent though they were, they responded in faith and none of God's covenant blessings are truly received except by faith. Thus, all his other unbelieving, faithless, and untrusting posterity, though often blessed externally because of their connection to this covenant of grace, Ishmael, for instance, is a good example of this, all of them who lacked faith ultimately suffered greater condemnation because of their rejection of the special relationship that God had established with them. Anything not of faith is sin, after all, and to whom much is given, much is required. Their lack of faith in their covenant God did not make the covenant unreal. It did, however, bring the curses of that covenant down on their heads. So faith is the fundamental condition for a sinful son of Adam to come into a right relationship with God, because our faith is a return to what God always required from all his creatures, whether human or celestial or angelic. Because of our covenantal connection to Adam, he represents us and we fell when he fell. We inherit his nature, as rebellious as it is, his rebellious nature of disbelief, and apart from the gracious intervention of God, we are rebels in our heart from the moment of conception. We need a new covenant head. So that we might receive a new nature of believing, eager faith. So that having been washed, we might remain so. And this is exactly what Jesus came to do. He is our covenant head. And when we respond in faith, with a Godward orientation of trust, God is pleased. As any loving father would be. So we see in summary that the character of the Abrahamic covenant is deeply and fundamentally gracious. It's sovereignly initiated, it's received by faith, which itself is a gift from God, Ephesians 2, and it's representative in that his whole household enters into a special kind of relationship, a covenant relationship, in that his whole household enters this relationship because Abraham is their covenant head. This covenant relationship is not synonymous, and we'll be talking about this the next time that I preach here, but it's not synonymous with salvation, but it is the means through which salvation can be received if done by faith. The faith we exercise is the same faith our father Abraham exercised. Grace and faith are not new. The apostle Paul was aggressive in pushing against anyone who would seek to blend merit of any sort with the grace of God received by faith alone. Paul doesn't say, we've now moved away from the covenant with Abraham. That's old. No, he points back to this covenant to show how it is we are made right with God. Paul points us to Abraham not to say how different it was, but to help us understand the essence or the substance of the new covenant. It's the same as that of the covenant made with Abraham. Romans 4, Paul points very clearly to this fact when he says that Abraham is the father of all who believe. In fact, I didn't know it today, but we see that in the text that was read in the time of confession, the giving of the law. Abraham is the father of all who believe, not fundamentally those who were circumcised or kept the law, but those who trust God. What did Abraham discover, we are asked by Paul? Not that through the law-keeping he could be reconciled to God. Rather, Abraham discovered that he could only be justified before God by trusting in God and not the works of the law. We, you and I, sitting here today, are sons of Abraham by faith precisely because we are following in Abraham's footsteps. We are made righteous by faith in the same way that Abraham was made righteous by faith. There's plenty of newness to the New Covenant. We'll be covering that the next time I preach as well. We'll be talking about that in two weeks, but one of the things that was not new at all was the necessity of personal faith. Why do I keep emphasizing this? You're like, okay, I get it. You've beat the poor thing to death. It's because when I get into conversations with people about this subject, I find those who know, they know better. slipping into this assumption that, well, yeah, but the differences that exist in the new covenant are because now personal faith is required. Can you see why I'm trying to emphasize that? So that if there is an area of disagreement, it becomes over what we should be disagreeing about and not what we shouldn't. It's always been by faith. Paul drives this home with an aggressive and rigid logic in both Romans 4 through 7. You also see it in Galatians. Chapter 3, he begins the chapter by arguing according to an assumption that he doesn't believe can even be contradicted. We're all supposed to know that a covenant once established cannot be set aside. He just assumes everybody knows this. I don't think we all do. But he, in speaking to his audience, knows, you all know that, this is obvious, once a covenant has been ratified, it cannot be set aside. The blessing of the new covenant that we experience now, the blessings, are actually the fulfillment of that covenant with Abraham. It's not new entirely, it's something old, fulfilled. So if I promised you a car, and I give you a picture of it ahead of time, It wouldn't make sense for you to be surprised when I drove up with that actual car and handed you the keys, as if something really unexpected had happened. It may be better than expected, but it was still expected. New. and yet not completely new. Totally different in that you can't drive a picture, but not totally new. The picture was an accurate facsimile of the real thing that you now have in your possession. This is how Paul describes it in Galatians 3, starting at verse 15. He says this, he says, to give a human example, brothers, even with a man-made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it's been ratified. No one annuls it, gets rid of it. You can't even add to it, it's fixed. Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. And then verse 17, this is what I mean. The law, which came 430 years after the promise to Abram, does not nullify a covenant previously ratified by God so as to make the promise void. For if an inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise. Moses can't be about being justified by the law, because that would have undone the promise that came before it. This is the argument that he's making. In verse 21, he says, is the law then contrary to the promise of God? Is Moses contrary to Abram? Certainly not! I don't know if there's an exclamation mark, but there is in the ESV, so I said it appropriately. For if a law had been given that could give life, speaking of Moses, then righteousness would have indeed been by the law. But the scripture imprisoned everything under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Some of this we'll be explaining more in two weeks. But for this morning, how should we respond to this? First, Be thankful. God loves sinners. He did from the beginning. Grace began at the moment it was needed. God didn't hesitate, but made a promise to Adam that we see formalized with Abraham, realized in Jesus, and ready to be consummated one day. It's always been purely of grace, and that is something that sinners must be thankful for. So as we seek to understand the differences between the Old and the New Covenant, which we'll be talking about more next time, what the work of Jesus changed, which are many and profound, we must not slip into the belief that grace is new. This is helpful theologically as we investigate God's unfolding plan of salvation for the world and seek to know his world accurately, but it's also something to be thankful for personally. God demonstrated his love for Abraham and all those represented by him in that vivid and bloody ceremony depicted for us in Genesis chapter 15. God loves you. He proved it. He proved it to Abraham by committing himself to death and he actually did it. He did it in Jesus by fulfilling his covenant promise to you. We can be thankful by remembering that the covenant structures history and our relationship to God. If you seek to understand the Bible without the word covenant ringing in your mind, then you are doomed to misunderstand the Bible and the kind of relationship that you have with him. The only way to receive the blessing of the covenant is through faith. So what do we do with this this morning? Receive it all by faith. Look to God and trust in Him. This too is not a new requirement. Do not depend on anything but the person and work of Jesus to save you. Not your law keeping, not your baptism, not your church membership, not your family. Humbly come to the God with whom you are now in covenant and either say, thank you, for the salvation that he has given you, or come in repentance, asking for the faith to live out the terms of the covenant in a way that will honor your King, and that will bring you and the world the blessing of that amazing covenant relationship that God has so graciously drawn us into. Let's pray.