Hebrews 13:20-21
"Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, Make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen," Hebrews 13:20-21. We have been looking at who God is, and we will continue that today. Our desire today is to learn about the God of covenants. How does God deal with people? He deals with all people through covenants. A covenant is a mutual agreement or mutual promises on mutual conditions. Two come together and make a covenant with one another. One promises to do this while the other promises to do that. We see this in our marriage vows. A man and a woman come together making a promise to one another. The covenants that mankind makes are usually broken. We see this by the divorce rate in America. I am thankful that God doesn't break His covenants.
Here is what the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith says regarding God's Covenant. This is from chapter 7, paragraph's 1-3. "The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience to Him as their creator, yet they could never have attained the reward of life but by some voluntary condescension on God's part, which He hath been pleased to express by way of covenant. Moreover, man having brought himself under the curse of the law by his fall, it pleased the Lord to make a covenant of grace, wherein He freely offers unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in Him, that they may be saved; and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life, His Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe. This covenant is revealed in the gospel; first of all to Adam in the promise of salvation by the seed of the woman, and afterwards by farther steps, until the full discovery thereof was completed in the New Testament; and between the Father and the Son about the redemption of the elect; and it is alone by the grace of this covenant that all the posterity of fallen Adam that ever were saved did obtain life and blessed immortality, man being now utterly incapable of acceptance with God upon those terms on which Adam stood in his state of innocency."
Each covenant that God made with man pointed to the everlasting covenant that the Father made with His Son before the world began. If we were to stop and ponder upon this, our minds would be radically transformed. The Father made a covenant with the Son before He spoke anything into existence. Both perfectly kept this covenant. Let us turn to John 17 and look at verses 2, 6, 9, 11, and 24. Notice all whom the Father gave to the Son belonged to the Father from before the world began. These were His covenant people. These belonged to God before they ever came into existence. "According as he hath chosen us in him, before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love," Ephesians 1:4. Here is another verse. "Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began," II Timothy 1:9.
Each covenant that God made with man upon a condition that man must do, man broke that covenant. Yet we see God being faithful in performing what He said He would do. If us receiving blessings from God depended upon our faithfulness, we would never receive any blessings. How many times must we break a covenant before it is officially broken, only once?
We thank the Lord for the Law. Would you believe there are people who actually think they are able to keep the whole law? The religious crowd of Jesus's day thought they were keeping the whole law. Yet in the sermon on the mount Jesus deals with the sins of the heart. Mankind are by nature covenant breakers. In-spite of man, God keeps His covenants.
We understand in the Sinai Covenant there are blessings for obedience and cursing's for disobedience. Yet we see God blessing even though Israel was disobedient. Stop and look at your own life. Can you take credit for your blessings? No. To say you earned a blessing is to say that God owes you a blessing. Only a prideful person would say that God owed them a blessing. In the covenant God made with Noah in Genesis 9, God promised that He would never again destroy the earth by a flood. Did Noah earn this promise? No. Does this world deserve to be destroyed by water again? Yes. God doesn't destroy it by water because He said He would not destroy it by water. God is merciful, God is gracious, God is loving, God is longsuffering, and God blesses us because that is who God is, not because we have earned these things. Aren't you thankful that God doesn't give His covenant people what we deserve? On the flip side of this, gaining all the earthly blessings of God without the presence of God would be a cursing (Exodus 33:14-15).
Let us look at the everlasting covenant in Hebrews 13:20-21. Jesus Christ is that great Shepherd of the sheep. It is through Christ that the God of peace makes us perfect in every good work to do His will, working in us that which is well pleasing in His sight, or according to His own will and purpose, through Jesus Christ; to Whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. He does this through the blood of the everlasting covenant. "Blood" in this verse speaks of the blood of Jesus Christ which He shed on the cross. "Everlasting" in this verse means eternal, perpetual, denoting those things which are not transitory, or temporary. This is an eternal agreement. Guess who is left out of an eternal agreement? All of mankind. We had no insight and no input. This was a covenant between the Godhead. The Eternal Son of God shed His blood on the cross. This was the purpose of God from the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8). Before the fall ever took place, God had already made provision to redeem His covenant people. The fall did not take God by surprise. "Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain," Acts 2:23. This "determinate counsel" took place in eternity's past.
Sin entered the world when Adam fell. Adam was in a state of innocence, and when he sinned all of mankind sinned with him (Romans 5:12). In Genesis 3:15 we first see a glimpse of the eternal covenant. God made this promise to all who were there; Adam, Eve, and satan. None of them were all-knowing, so none of them knew when this would come about, or how it would happen. But, within the Godhead, everything was already exactly worked out. God has never had to respond to mankind. After the first proclaiming of the promise, God made more covenants which disclosed more of His eternal covenant. This revealing was gradual, and over thousands of years. From the beginning of time until the end of time as we know it, everyone who has ever been saved has been saved by grace through faith in the promise of God.
It is very important that we understand that the covenant made with Eve in Genesis did not have any stipulations with it. Regardless of what Adam, Eve, satan, or anyone else would do, Christ was coming to shed His blood on the cross for His covenant people. "According to the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord," Ephesians 3:11.
Lord willing we will pick up in Hebrews 7:22 next week. Soli Deo Gloria.
