We are in the middle of this series on the covenants, and I begin with this observation. A contractor building an apartment complex does not start with the third floor. You have to have a second floor in order to have a third floor. And then in order to have a second floor, you have to have a first floor. And in order to have a first floor, you must have a foundation. All of the covenants that we find in Scripture are built on top of each other. there is a progress of revelation from one to the next. The covenants, the promises that God makes to his people, for his people, with his people, largely have redemption in mind. There are aspects of the covenants that might not appear on the surface to be redemptive, but that's where the whole package of the covenants takes us into eternal life. Now there are three great deliverances mentioned in Scripture. Think in your mind, what would they be? The flood, the exodus, and the cross. All of those have to do with covenants. Noah, Moses, Jesus, the Noahic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the new covenant. and they're all built on top of one another. And we find at the pinnacle of the structure of the new covenant, dealing with Jesus, dealing with the deliverance of the cross, which has already been established and patterned for us in the previous deliverances. The deliverance through the flood with Noah. pictures God's rescue for us in Christ from death and destruction. The deliverance with Moses and the Exodus pictures God's deliverance from bondage and slavery that's perfectly fulfilled for us in Christ. All the covenants build on one another. Now we've so far considered these covenants in this series. We did some general overview stuff and then we talked about the covenant with Adam. We've talked about the covenant with Noah. We've talked about the covenant with Abraham. And each of these are what we might call I will covenants. They are unilateral covenants. They are God saying, I am going to do this. Now the covenant with Moses is of a different kind. Would you be so kind to pass those out? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. The three great deliverances in the scriptures? Mm-hmm. Everybody on the set got one? OK. Thank you. The covenant, God's covenant with Moses is of a different kind than the other covenants. And I want to explore this with you a little bit more. Sometimes the Mosaic covenant is called the covenant of law. And largely because of things like the Ten Commandments, there are a number of stipulations that attend this particular covenant. But it's sometimes mistakenly called a covenant of works. And here's where we've got to be careful with our language. If you remember when we started this, we talked about the covenant of works in contrast with the covenant of grace. Sometimes the covenant of works is referred to as the covenant of creation, and sometimes the covenant of grace is referred to as the covenant of redemption. Now this is language that the Westminster Confession of Faith uses, covenant of works, covenant of grace. I simply make this observation, we're gonna talk about the Mosaic Covenant and how that fits in in just a moment, but let me talk about a bit of an overview of these two covenants. This is a review for us again. The covenant of works concerns itself with Genesis 1 and 2. The covenant of grace or the covenant of redemption concerns the rest of the Bible. The covenant of works comes in place when man is innocent and the covenant of grace comes into play with man being fallen. So once Adam and Eve sin, once we get into Genesis chapter three, we are no longer talking about the covenant of works. Here, Adam and Eve were morally innocent and possessed the ability to please God in a way that was fully acceptable to him. After the fall, mankind no longer possessed the ability to please God in a way that fully pleases him. That's a part of our depraved nature. We no longer have the ability to please God. So, that being the case, after Genesis chapters one and two, taking the covenant of works off of the table here for a minute, only by grace is a person saved. And that's for the entire Old Testament. save for Genesis 1 or 2, but nobody died in Genesis 1 or 2. Adam and Eve were the only people there. They were a part of the covenant of grace as well because of their fallenness. So we can say that every person in the Bible is in this covenant of grace, covenant of redemption. And the only way anybody is saved is by grace alone, through faith alone, in God alone. Now, the reformers would use the word, we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, but members of the Old Testament didn't know the details about Jesus. So how were they saved? Well, they didn't know about Jesus. Well, they were saved by their faith in God, their trust, their hopeful confidence in the fact that God is gonna fulfill his promises. He promised to redeem mankind. We don't see how all that's gonna work out, but we know he's going to do it. And so we have confidence God. Our hope is in Him. By grace alone, through faith alone, in God alone. That's how anybody is ever saved. So back to our introduction to the Mosaic Covenant. When we talk about the Mosaic Covenant, we are accurate to say that it is a covenant of law. But it's misleading to refer to that as a covenant of works. Because no man is saved by works. That label, a covenant of works, more specifically belongs to Genesis 1 and 2. Everything after that is a covenant by grace. Now, it's sometimes, the Mosaic law is sometimes referred to as a covenant of works because there is a difference in contrast to the Abrahamic covenant, for example, or we could talk about the Noahic covenant. In contrast to these other covenants, The Mosaic Law has a definite if-then construction. Mosaic Law, Abrahamic, I'm sorry, erase that sentence. The Adamic Covenant, the Noahic Covenant, the Abrahamic Covenant, those are all I will covenants. When we get to the Mosaic Covenant, it's different. It is a if-then. then covenant, meaning if you obey, then God promises to do X, Y, and Z. Now, it does get a little sticky. Making this distinction between an I will covenant and a if-then covenant, and we'll spend some time talking about the if-then in just a moment, the covenants have a requirement for obedience. For example, in the Abrahamic covenant, God requires that the sign of the covenant be kept by all the Jews. What was the sign of the Abrahamic covenant? Circumcision. So every male had to be circumcised. Even though we call this an I will covenant, this was a unilateral covenant, this is a one-way covenant, nevertheless there is obedience that is required. Look with me over at Genesis chapter 17. Genesis 17, this is where we read about the covenant of, or the sign of the Abrahamic covenant, namely circumcision. Verse 10 of Genesis 17, this is my covenant which you shall keep between me and you and your descendants after you. Every male among you shall be circumcised. He goes on to explain a little bit. Verse 14, an uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people, he has broken my covenant. So even in this unilateral covenant, this I will covenant, this covenant that is sealed by blood, and we looked at this very sobering ratification of this covenant last time. Even in that, there is an obligation by those who are under the covenant to keep the sign of the covenant lest they be cut off. What does the cut off mean? It's not a pun on the whole idea of circumcision. It could be that the idea of being cut off means they are not going to be considered part of God's people. You will be chopped off as if the names of these people are written in a ledger and with a sword. These that don't keep that sign of the covenant, their names are gonna be chopped off of the ledger. That's one way to look at this idea of being cut off. I'd like you to look with me at Exodus chapter 4 to look at, consider maybe another way to understand this idea of being cut off. Exodus chapter 4, we find Moses marrying a Midianite woman, Zipporah, And it's here that God calls him to go into Egypt and tell Pharaoh, let my people go. And Moses gathers his two boys and his wife and they head out and they're going to Egypt. In verse 24 of Exodus 4 we read this, it came about at the lodging place on the way that the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. God sought to put Moses to death, the deliverer. There's gotta be something here that's going on here. Why would God call Moses to do this great work, to be involved in this great deliverance, and then kill him? The Lord sought his life, verse 25. Then Zipporah, his wife, took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin and threw it at Moses' feet and said, you are indeed a bridegroom of blood to me. So he let, he, that is God, so he let him alone. At that time, she said, you are a bridegroom of blood because of the circumcision. Moses did not have his boys circumcised for whatever reason. I don't know what the reason might have been, but he didn't do that. And so in keeping with the promise God gives to Abraham, if anyone, even if he's a foreigner among you, if anyone being named among the people of Israel, if there is a male among you that is not circumcised, he is cut off. So Moses' boys, not being circumcised at the time, are being cut off and God seeks to kill Moses. He seeks to cut him off because he has not been the leader in his home in this regard with regard to circumcising their boys. So is this idea of being cut off mean that you're going to be killed if you don't keep the sign of the covenant? However we look at this idea, it's serious business. And God expects that there will be obedience to keeping things like the sign of the covenant. Well, when we talk about the Mosaic covenant, there is a sign that goes, that attends the Mosaic covenant. What is that sign? Keeping the sign. The Sabbath is the sign of the Mosaic Covenant. And there was a requirement here to keep it. Look with me over at Exodus chapter 31. Exodus 31 verse 14. Therefore you are to observe the Sabbath for it is holy to you. Everyone who profanes it shall surely be put to death." Cut off. Out of here. No longer around. There is a requirement for those who are under the covenant. Okay, so we've talked about, in general terms, about some of the differences of the Mosaic Law. Let's be a little bit more specific. I've said before that it is an if-then kind of covenant. If you do this, then God says I will do this. All of the covenants begin with a sovereign declaration. God declares this is the way things are going to be. And in that declaration, God gives stipulations. He is the Lord of the covenant. He is the God of the cosmos. His way goes. He owns the bat and the ball. If we want to play baseball, we play with his rules. I put these scripture references in your notes so you can go back and look at them in detail if I go too fast or you get stumbled around trying to find them. But let's explore some of these if-then arrangements. In Exodus chapter 19, find verse five. The text tells us, now then, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, then you shall be my own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is mine and you shall be mine. a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the sons of Israel." So if you know your way around the book of Exodus, you know that in chapter 20 is when God gives Moses the Ten Commandments. That's one of those milestone chapters. And in the chapters leading up to 19, Moses is leading the people, they have been delivered by way of the 10 plagues, and they have come in their wanderings to Mount Sinai. So now they are here, Moses is up on the mountain, and God is speaking to his servant Moses, giving them instructions, and he says, okay, I'm gonna make a covenant with you. Out of all the peoples of the earth, I'm choosing this group of people. They are going to be my possession. All the earth is mine. I can do whatever I want. God says, verse 6, you are going to be to me a kingdom of priests. You will be to me a holy nation. All right. That's the beginning of this covenant. Turn over to Deuteronomy. We're gonna go back and forth from Exodus and Leviticus to Deuteronomy and back and forth. And just put this in your head. The books of Exodus from chapter 19 further following, those are spoken, recorded by Moses. while they are at Mount Sinai, as is the book of Leviticus. So half of Exodus, book of Leviticus, it all takes place there at Sinai. 40 years later, after all of their wanderings in the wilderness, they are right by the Jordan River, getting ready to enter into the promised land. It's 40 years later. Jacob, not Jacob, Joshua is the heir apparent for Moses. He's the one that has already been tapped out and anointed. He's the one that's gonna be leading the people into the promised land. And Moses declares what we have in Deuteronomy, it's a series of three sermons, and he is telling the people, again, the next generation, this is God's expectation, this is the law, this is the covenantal arrangement. So he receives it in Exodus, Leviticus, on Mount Sinai, and then he repeats it for the next generations 40 years later on the banks of the Jordan River, We call it the Book of Deuteronomy. Okay, so now I want you to turn to Deuteronomy chapter 4. When you look at Deuteronomy, here's another big chapter moment for us in the Pentateuch, in the first five books of the Bible. We find the Ten Commandments listed again in Deuteronomy 5. So Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5, we have the Ten Commandments listed for us. They're given to us twice there. And for just the reasons I just explained, he's giving it to one generation, on Mount Sinai. Now the next generation, as they're getting ready to enter into the promised land, God gives them the law, the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments again. Okay, so we are here in chapter four, the chapter before that milestone chapter of Deuteronomy 5. Chapter four, find verse 13. He declared to you, this is Moses talking to the people, He, God, declared to you His covenant which He commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments, and He wrote them on two tablets of stone. The Lord commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and judgments that you might perform them in the land where you are going over to possess. All right, same chapter, few verses later, verse 25. When you become the father of children and children's children and have remained long in the land and act corruptly, Moses is no ding dong, he knows what's gonna happen, he knows the heart of man. when you act corruptly and make an idol in the form of anything and do that which is evil in the sight of the Lord your God so as to provoke him to anger, I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that you shall surely perish quickly from the land where you are going over the Jordan to possess it. You shall not live long on it, but will be utterly destroyed. Is there anything in those two verses that I just read that is reminiscent of anything in the Ten Commandments? Maybe that commandment that says, thou shalt have no other gods before me, huh? Well, God says through his servant Moses, if you Disobey, here's one of those if-thans. If you disobey and fail to keep my covenant, my commandments, then I'm gonna kick you out of my land. There is a definite connection in a temporal, this-worldly arrangement You obey God's commandments and you will live, and you will be prosperous, and you will flourish, and you will see your children's children. If you do not obey, then you will be removed forthwith from the land. Let's see, I left off at verse 26. Let me keep reading, verse 27. The Lord will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the Lord drives you out. There you will serve gods, the work of man's hands, wood and stone, which neither see, nor hear, nor eat, nor smell. But from there you will seek the Lord your God and you will find him if you search for him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in distress and all these things have come upon you, in the latter days you will return to the Lord your God and listen to his voice. For the Lord your God is a compassionate God. He will not fail you nor destroy you nor forget the covenant with your fathers which he swore to them. So here's this hint of what God has promised to Adam, to Abraham, for example. And Moses, speaking for the Lord, says he hasn't forgotten any of these things. No, this covenant that God is making with you now has a particular role, a particular place. It's the third story, if you will, on the apartment complex. There's a reason for the Mosaic Covenant. Now there is this if-then connection. If you obey, then you can stay in the land. If not, you're out of here. Look with me over at chapter 11, Deuteronomy 11, verse 8. This rehearses the same idea. You shall therefore keep every commandment, which I am commanding you today, so that you may be strong and go in and possess the land into which you are about to cross to possess it, so that you may prolong your days in the land which the Lord swore to your fathers to give to them and to their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey. Again this if then is repeated. Now the Mosaic Covenant is not a covenant of salvation but a covenant of external privilege and blessing. Okay, now we're talking again about how the Mosaic Covenant is a different kind of covenant. It is an if-then kind of covenant. It is related to external, this-worldly privileges and blessings. Second point in your outline, it is a national covenant. National obedience is required in this covenant. Now that's not to say that personal obedience is not important. It is very important. I mean that's how the nation obeys because individuals obey. But if you know anything about the story of the Israelite people, you'll know that they were immediately, as a nation, very disobedient. And eventually, God kicked them out of his land. But we see his hand of kindness and mercy and patience over and over again because he didn't exact judgment immediately when it was deserved. He was patient toward them. I'm just going to illustrate that point. If you turn with me over to 2 Chronicles chapter 36, we're looking for the very end of the book of Chronicles. 2 Chronicles chapter 36. Verse 20, 2 Chronicles 36, 20. Those who had escaped from the sword, he carried away to Babylon. Okay, we're talking about Ezra the scribe, the priest, one of my favorite heroes in the Old Testament. He is making record of this after the exile, after the return from exile. And he's giving an account of why the exile took place. And he says in verse 20, those who had escaped from the sword, he carried away to Babylon. He's talking about the king of Babylon, namely Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar was God's tool to humble the people of Judah because they had broken his covenant over and over and over and over, generation after generation's worth. And finally, God says, time, it's done. We're out of here. You have violated the covenant generation after generation, and I am removing you from my land. The land is spewing you out. Those who had escaped from the sword, he carried away to Babylon. And they were servants to him and to his sons until the rule of the kingdom of Persia, to fulfill the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah until the land had enjoyed its Sabbaths. All the days of its desolation, it kept Sabbath until 70 years were complete. Now the sign of the covenant, the keeping of the Sabbath, had multiple layers. The Sabbath came every seventh day, what we would call Saturday. It was reflective of God's rest. That day of rest was to be observed by the Israelites throughout their generations. But there were other layers of the Sabbath law. For example, the land was to remain fallow. That is, it was to have a rest from the producing of crops every seven years. So you would work the land, till the land, cultivate the land, plant your crops, harvest your crops for six years. And then on the seventh year, you rested. and allow the ground to rest. Now, yes, there would have been seeds that were there in the soil and they would have sprouted up. And God says, you can enjoy that, eat that. But don't work the land, don't fertilize the land, don't till the land, keep the John Deere in the barn. The Israelites didn't do that. And I can see how they would rationalize that requirement away. It's hard to think about letting the land go fallow. I mean, what do you do? Those people that just are farmers by nature and they were born with dirt underneath their fingernails, they're itching. They've gotta be out there in the dirt. And God says, no. Let the land have its Sabbath. They didn't do that consistently. For generations, they didn't do that. So God says, through Jeremiah, We won't go to look at the original source, but we'll just take Ezra's encapsulation of it here in 2 Chronicles 36. God says through his prophet Jeremiah, I'm going to keep my people captive, they're gonna be out of the land for 70 years because they didn't keep the sign of the covenant, namely that of the Sabbath. They didn't allow the land to have its Sabbaths. Now they did that, so each year that they were in captivity, that was one year that they should have had, they should have allowed the land to have its rest. They were held captive for 70 years, which means how long did they not allow the land to have its Sabbath rests? I'll give you a clue. What is seven times 70? Almost five centuries. They did not allow the land to have its rest. This illustrates how patient God was with his people for five centuries almost. They failed to keep Sabbath for the land. So this Mosaic covenant is a national covenant. Look with me over at Jeremiah chapter 11. Jeremiah is a prophet of the Lord to the nation of Judah after Israel had been scattered by the Assyrians. Jeremiah served the Lord before and during the exile. The other two exilic prophets were Daniel and Ezekiel, and both of those men served the Lord from Babylon. Jeremiah, the elder of these three I just mentioned, he stayed in Judah until he was drug to Egypt, where he died. Jeremiah chapter 11, verse 10. They have turned back to the iniquities of their ancestors who refused to hear their words, and they have gone after other gods to serve them. The house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant which I made with their fathers. So here Jeremiah is simply repeating what we've already said. There has been a break, a violation of the covenant. The stipulations that God put down in the Mosaic covenant have been ignored, walked on, trampled over. violated repeatedly by both the House of Israel and the House of Judah. The House of Israel was removed from what we would call the land of the north of Israel-Palestine. by the Israelites or by the Assyrians in 722 BC. And the Babylonians, the next superpower, came into play and they removed the people of Judah in three deportations beginning in 605 BC. So just a little over 100 years later, after the northern tribes of Israel were blown out of Palestine, then the people of Israel were removed, spewed out. because of their disobedience to the covenant. Okay, we're still talking about the Mosaic covenant being a national covenant and it was a covenant of a different kind. Look with me at, we'll go back to Deuteronomy chapter seven. The Mosaic Covenant had some interesting stipulations to it, and we'll talk about those in a minute, but looking at our time, we're not gonna get too far into it. The Mosaic Covenant was given to the nation to set them aside as different and distinct. Remember what we read in Exodus, God God says I I am intending or maybe this was in Deuteronomy for I am intending That you be my own possession. You are going to be a holy priesthood You are going to be a a kingdom of priests a holy nation and a kingdom of priests So God gives them the Mosaic law that is going to set them apart as different and distinct from all of the other nations in the world Deuteronomy chapter 7 Verse six. You are to be a holy people to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. The Lord did not set his love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the other peoples, for you were the fewest of all the peoples. But because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which he swore to your forefathers, The Lord brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. Because of this, you are to be different. You are to be distinct. You are my possession, Israel. You are to be a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. And so, the sign of the covenant, the keeping of the Sabbath, the Abrahamic covenant, the right of circumcision. These said, you are different from all the other nations of the earth. The food restrictions, the clothing restrictions, the lifestyle restrictions, the worship restrictions that God put upon his people in the Mosaic Covenant marked them as different and distinct. All of this was intended to prepare the people for the coming of Messiah. Okay, I'm gonna close here and we'll talk about the details next week.