I'm starting this morning by quoting from Karl
Barth, B-A-R-T-H, the great
Swiss-German theologian, died about 1986, whose 13
or 14 volumes of Church Dogmatics is the
summary of his lifetime thought, and a great
figure, and this is one of those volumes.
And he speaks of covenant out from creation.
He goes back to the point of earliest
beginning, that creation and covenant are inextricably linked.
That if God had no other reason to
create, but to establish a format and a
framework for the establishing of covenant, that would
be sufficient ground.
Because the heart of covenant is, I will
be your God, and you will be my
people.
So there needs to be a necessity of
people, and there needs to be a necessity
of God who can honor that promise.
And in the declaration of this covenant, and
its fulfillment, is the revelation of God himself,
as he in fact is.
If you don't see God in covenant, you
don't see God.
So, I'll quote, and we'll see where it
leads us.
He speaks of creation as an incomparable act.
We mustn't presume for the created order as
if it's a matter of fact, and has
necessarily to come.
It's God's divine initiative.
He had no need for it.
It only opened him to a whole assortment
of problems and aggravations for which he could
have been spared.
Because he knew that with the advent of
creation and of man, there would be fallenness,
there would be sin, transgression, and that his
son himself would have to be the expiation
of that sin.
And yet, he did not hesitate.
So we need to respect the act of
creation, which is under fire now, in all
of the fervor about intelligent design and evolution.
The modern world wants to deny God as
creator.
But we need to cleave to this foundational
concept, because everything issues from it.
It's an act of God out of his
own love and out of his own initiative,
and makes possible covenant and all of the
reality that follows.
Though he is wholly self-sufficient, and absolutely
glorious and blessed in his inner life, he
did not have such will to be alone.
Covenant is relationship.
Covenant is not a contract.
I'll do this for you, and then you've
got to do this for me.
It's the establishing of a relationship, and out
of the appreciation of the relationship, and the
love that it engenders, you keep the covenant.
But your keeping of it is not its
condition.
You're not being rewarded for your keeping.
So, it's establishing a relationship between God and
his people, in which he reveals himself as
the faithful God of promise.
I will.
This is the freedom of his love, an
act of the overflowing of his inward glory.
It says of the world that it received
through an act of God, the reality, existence
and form, which it did not have and
could not therefore give itself, because it did
not exist at all.
This is not creation out of an accident,
some collision in the heavens and some haphazard
physiological thing with spectra.
This is God's act.
It's the absolute gift of God.
It is his good pleasure, free omnipotence of
the divine love.
The reality, elected and posited by this divine
good pleasure, established and determined and limited by
this omnipotence of his love.
God is love, and that love required creation.
That he would not be alone.
That there would be relationship and fellowship with
his creatures.
And that that would be in a bond
of covenant, by which he takes the initiative.
Israel is only on the receiving side.
The terms are stated by God.
He initiates covenant as he has initiated creation.
We have only to accept it or to
reject it.
And we know that the rejection in the
history of Israel has been costly and is
costly to this day.
It's a slight against his love.
So in the chapter on creation and covenant,
he wants to make possible the history of
God's covenant with man, which has its beginning,
its center and its culmination in Jesus Christ.
The history of this covenant is as much
the goal of creation as creation itself is
the beginning of history.
So it's not an exaggeration to say, God
established creation in order to establish covenant.
If he went that far, how significant the
phenomenon is covenant, how much ought it to
be esteemed, if it required the whole bringing
into being that which was not, and opening
to God all of the problems and weight
of things that he need not have suffered,
if he continued to choose to be alone.
But the creation as the basis for covenant
is the act of his love.
It's a first work.
It's the covenant of grace for partnership in
which he has predestined and called man.
Man had to be created to be the
object of covenant, and therefore to miss that
identification and to live in independence of that
covenant and the God who calls men to
it is to live a fractured life, to
be out of sorts, to be out of
joint.
This is the normative intention of God, created
man that he should be in covenant relationship
with him, with a great promise, I will
be your God, you will be my people.
And at the end of the age, in
Jeremiah 30, 31, this is exactly the statement
that is reiterated in the new covenant that
is everlasting.
Creation sets the stage for the story of
the covenant of grace.
It has everything to do with the triune
Godhead and the agreement of the Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit to God's enterprise with man
in the world.
So, there's a collaboration in heaven, so to
speak, within the Godhead itself, about the fact
of creation and its object, namely covenant with
man, and that the Son himself will one
day have to come as the mediator of
that covenant and the bearer of the curse
of the covenant.
But knowing that, God did not withhold, nor
did the Son, nor the Holy Spirit, so
there's an agreement in the Godhead itself from
the beginning for creation and its purpose.
We need to get back, you can't go
back further than creation, but we need to
go back to it in a sense of
appreciation and esteem, or else it's dismissed as
if it's a fact of life that has
come in and of itself.
No, it's a chosen act of God with
the intention of blessing man.
And the ultimate blessing, that I will be
your God and you will be my people,
is that we will be in union together
and you will even share in my divinity
and in my spirit and in my life.
And that will be the ultimate expression of
the covenant blessedness for which you are intended.
Of course, Israel is the first nation selected
the first creation of God, and therefore the
first work of his word was light and
its separation from darkness.
Only in its separation from light is darkness
also created and therefore the creature of God.
The subject is natural light and natural darkness.
Natural darkness as that which declares the reality
which was rejected by God and has therefore
vanished.
And natural light as that which proclaims the
will of God opposed to it.
It is natural light as such which is
the irresistible and irrevocable declaration of life.
So he goes back to creation and in
the beginning God said, let there be light.
And light came before the establishment of the
luminaries.
That's the fourth act of God, is the
creation of the moon and the stars which
are just vehicles for the continuation of the
expression of light.
But light is God and that was invoked
from the beginning.
The first act of God, let there be
light.
And light challenges the darkness.
And it's in that light that we're called
to live and walk and have our being.
And even that, the creation of light is
an act of grace, is a covenantal blessing
for man.
That we should not wallow in darkness and
have the light of life.
The light that came upon Paul on the
road to Damascus was brighter than the noonday
sun.
It was the original light that came with
the first act of creation.
And in that light, Paul caught a glimpse
of the Lord whom he had formerly persecuted
and experienced a total revision of his understanding
that made everything of the past to be
as death and dust.
It blinded him.
And I'm fond of saying that anyone who
has received so superb an entree into the
faith by which he became the chief apostle
and to whom was given the great revelation
of the mysteries of God and the mystery
of Israel and the church, that we need
to dwell on that revelation and that man
as the source for the church of the
profoundest kind for the last days.
Because he began in a light greater than
the light of the noonday sun.
It did not come by his speculation, by
the operation of his own brilliant mind.
It came by a flash of light from
heaven in which he saw such things as
as affected everything for his apostolic and eternal
future.
So what issues from him from that light
should be for us the most commendable source
of guidance for the last days.
So Paul is suffering a kind of neglect
as if he's some kind of strange creature
and has his own thoughts and having no
more credibility than others.
No, he's foremost.
Because to no other apostle came such revelation,
such apprehension on the road to Damascus as
what he experienced.
It's a light that we could ask for
ourselves although we may at first have to
suffer a blindness and languish for three days
neither eating nor drinking as his life was
reviewed beforehand and he forsook all the things
that he had previously submitted as the leading
student of the Rabbi Gamaliel.
Talk about conversion.
The man was controverted.
He was completely turned inside out and his
whole understanding he saw in the face of
Jesus the light of the glory of God.
One glimpse of that face and that light
changes everything.
We can't do more than to ask some
measure of a revelation of that kind.
Well I think we ought to look at
the classicus locus which means the classic text
on the subject of covenant is the Abrahamic
covenant.
Every covenant from the Noah right through to
the new covenant is in some way an
adumbration or development of what was initially given
Abraham.
That's the centerpiece and in it are all
the quintessential constitutive factors of covenant.
So in Genesis 15 we need to dwell
on that giving and see what it will
teach us because there also is an issue
of darkness and of light.
I'm reading from the Amplified After these things
the word of the Lord came to Abraham
in a vision saying Fear not Abram I
am your shield, your abundant compensation and your
reward shall be exceedingly great.
And Abram said Lord God what can you
give me since I am going on from
this world childless and he who shall be
the owner and heir of my house is
the steward Eliezer of Damascus.
And Abraham continued Look you have given me
no child and a servant born in my
house is my heir and behold the word
of the Lord came to him saying this
man shall not be your heir but he
who shall come from your own body shall
be your heir.
So everything begins with God speaking God taking
the initiative God the creator and so the
Lord said the word of the Lord came
to Abraham Abram in a vision Fear not
and then again in the fourth verse the
word of the Lord came to him saying
this man shall not be your heir and
he brought him outside the tent into the
starlight and said look now toward the heavens
and count the stars if you are able
to number them then he said to him
so shall your descendants be Abraham believed and
trusted and relied on remained steadfast to the
Lord and he counted it to him as
righteousness, right standing with God and he said
to him I am the Lord who brought
you out of all the coldies to give
you this land as an inheritance but Abram
said Lord God I will inherit it and
he said to him bring to me a
heifer three years old, a she-goat three
years old a ram three years old a
turtle dove and a young pigeon and he
brought him all these and cut them down
the middle into halves and laid each half
opposite the other but the birds he did
not survive when the birds of prey swooped
down upon the carcasses Abram drove them away
when the sun was setting and the fear
of great darkness assailed and oppressed him and
God said to Abram know positively that your
descendants will be strangers dwelling as temporary residents
in a land that is not theirs and
will be slaves there and they will be
afflicted and oppressed for four hundred years but
I will bring judgment on that nation whom
they will serve and afterwards they shall come
out with great possessions so this text is
interspersed with a covenant through pieces cut in
half and then references to Israel's future history
it's like a weave in a tapestry and
we need to graciously, gently move through the
fact that the sun went down and that
Abraham was greatly afraid and a terror came
over him what do you suppose that designates
why would the establishment of the classic covenant
which will be the pattern the template of
all covenants including the concluding everlasting covenant invoke
immediately a terror, a fear, a darkness birds
falling on of prey falling on the carcass
this is a remarkable drama this almost needs
a Wagnerian musical backdrop to get the full
drama of this this is not some light
transaction this is if the heavens themselves are
pulsating and trembling because something is being struck
with the father of faith that will affect
all subsequent generations and the interesting thing is
that Abraham himself does not pass through the
pieces in a covenant of the classic kind
where the word brith the name brith means
a cutting there's a word for covenant the
two partners who are in agreement pass through
the cut pieces indicating that if either party
fails they are making a bond unto death
and they invoke upon themselves the death that
is symbolized or expressed by these cut animals
and yet God does not require Abraham to
move through these pieces in fact as we
learn he sleeps through the occasion and God
himself alone walks through the pieces and that's
already predictive of the everlasting covenant that I
will make with you in those days and
put my law in your hearts and every
man will know me from the least to
the greatest as if this is all my
baby your failure at covenant keeping is notorious
but I'll establish a covenant that will be
everlasting because I who give it will also
keep it and I'm symbolizing and signifying that
by walking through these pieces now but how
can God himself then be a candidate to
suffer the curse of a failed covenant what
he's doing is implicating his son who will
come as the mediator of the covenant to
bear its curse and to fulfill the vengeance
of the covenant by his own death and
the shedding of his own blood that's why
Jesus said at the Passover table at the
Last Supper this is my blood given in
the new covenant for you so dwell on
this text the details of it are out
of tune with our age so in verse
17 when the sun had gone down and
a thick darkness had come on lo, a
smoking oven and a flaming torch passed between
those pieces now on the same day the
Lord made a covenant promise a pledge with
Abram saying to your descendants I have given
this land from the river of Egypt to
the great river Euphrates the land of the
Canaanites the Amorites the Canaanites so we need
to note that the very first establishment of
the covenant is not some airy and ethereal
spiritual blessing although it is that but a
concrete specific giving of land the land is
a covenant provision of God for Abraham and
for his descendants but the heck of it
is you can't pass that land except as
being in covenant with God if you're out
of covenant you're candidates for expulsion and that's
the expulsion that we anticipate and must necessarily
come because in 1948 with the establishment of
the state of Israel through secular and socialist
men there was not a fig of understanding
of their own land and the political factors
operative that they could go in and begin
to establish that only God could give and
what could only be kept in covenant bond
but we mustn't assume that because God works
in history to enable a return of a
sort that that is the fulfillment of his
covenant purposes rather it's to show Israel in
its failure cannot succeed independent of covenant relationship
because in covenant relationship is the grace given
to be to the stranger what we ought
who is in the land and the treatment
of the Palestinian is a clear indication that
secular Israel was incapable of any relationship of
that kind in fact their treatment was so
harsh and often so unjust that they think
that their children that their children being living
bonds is a just sacrifice there's a vehemence
and a bitterness among the Palestinians for a
history of slight being uprooted being mistreated having
their lands taken misappropriated and various other intimidating
acts by which Israel sought to maintain a
control but could not be to the stranger
in their midst what only a covenant grace
would enable it's one thing to be to
your own but to be to the stranger
gracious and kind requires a grace from God
and that grace is the expression of God
given a covenant relationship with him he has
seen to it that you cannot succeed independent
of that covenant and so there's a short
duration and maybe the intention of God is
to indicate to Israel because what are we
Jews but supreme humanists that you cannot succeed
independent of me you took a brave stab
at it you transformed the malarial swampland you
established a high tech civilization but in the
end you precipitated your own destruction and now
you will be cast out of the land
and in your being cast out you may
consider and repent and find your God and
turn to him and he'll restore you to
covenant and to the land as a covenant
keeper so this is a drama of such
proportions of course we desire a quick and
easy solution the state has established it's not
doing too well but it will improve but
the issue of improvement is exactly the issue
of humanism improvement implies that by human thought
and ability prowess man can succeed in gradually
altering his circumstance but what Israel has got
to see is that the best of our
intentions will come back into our teeth and
that we are reaching a humanly insoluble condition
that without God we cannot remain in the
land so he's this is a circuitous long
route of a momentary historic return getting established
in a way in which you think it
a pity that those great cities have to
be tumbled and the great towers of Tel
Aviv have to come down and the great
numbers of Ethiopian and Russian immigrants will be
among the casualties of the devastation of the
last days but so is the great cost
that when Jesus comes two thirds of Israel
have already perished and the one third must
necessarily pass through the fire and be to
him a restored remnant so this this touches
last night's conversation how far will God go
and what is at stake here is God's
provision of Israel for the nations that you're
called to be a nation of priests and
a light unto the world you're not called
to be a success in yourself and to
say look my no hands you're called to
minister to the nations but only out of
a brokenness of a people who learn their
own sin and come to a place of
contrition and are able to come to their
former enemies and bring the knowledge of the
mercy of God which they themselves have received
after they have experienced his judgments so it's
a costly training for a priestly nation but
there's no shortcut and there's no shortcut for
us and we we all we have a
comparable calling and a comparable requirement to know
the Lord through dealings that we can minister
the reality of God not just as a
correct doctrine but a reality tempted in our
own life and experience because that's what priesthood
is the world is dying the world is
in a substandard condition for the want of
Israel's presence among the nations as a priestly
nation you need to know that the great
profanation that is sweeping the world the ugliness
of culture the universality of its low taste
is all a statement of the absence of
a people called to teach the nations the
difference between the sacred and the profane but
the heck of it is that there's hardly
a more profane people on the earth today
than Israelis themselves they are tattooed pockmarked engraved
earrings stomach ring tongue ring nose ring they're
freaking out their youth their generation everything that
God says that Jews should not do should
not be tattooed they do they're into the
worst aspects of culture and even in America
the leaders of the rap music industry are
Jews the entertainment industry all of the kinds
of things that are degrading somehow have their
emanation from us in our genius in our
ability to find profit in it so we're
functioning exactly in an opposite way to the
divine intention and the world is paying the
price I even have a secret theory about
the root of anti-Semitism that it's an
unconscious resentment on the part of the world
of Israel's failure to be to the nations
what we ought that somehow the world senses
something wanting in that failure and it issues
a resentment against that people and that will
never be met again until Israel fulfills its
destiny but to go from its present condition
to that of a true priesthood will be
through the road to Calvary and Isaiah 53
is not only the description of the Lord's
suffering it's a description of the suffering of
the nation that will be marred more than
any man and that they will have no
beauty that any should desire them when they
are expelled out from Israel and elsewhere in
the nations and are hated and pursued they're
going to experience and measure what came upon
the Lord himself and in that suffering there'll
be a recognition a glimmer oh for our
transgressions he was stricken oh he went to
the Lamb as a slaughter silently we're complaining
and bellowing so what Israel has rejected because
Isaiah 53 is not even included in the
Shabbat uh Haftorah readings the Shabbat prophetic readings
it's eliminated of course because it is so
Christological that when I read it to my
mother the first time she said where in
the she couldn't believe I was reading out
of a classic Old Testament text and so
we have lost that text and lost its
great meaning and as I said what we
have not received by the word we must
receive in our experience so there's a road
to Calvary ahead for the nation and in
that suffering as they pass through and have
no beauty that any should desire them if
we don't meet them by the grace given
us in covenant because they will be despicable
they will be unclean they will be stinking
they will not have had access to showers
their clothes are running on their back their
sores are mollifying and fly infested they're in
pathetic condition they have no beauty that any
should desire them how should we desire them
except the grace of God by our covenant
relationship with him enables us to be to
them what he himself is so the issue
of covenant is the critical factor in the
consummation of the age for the church toward
Israel and that Israel itself might be saved
through it and brought into that everlasting covenant
so on the same day in verse 18
the Lord made a covenant a promise a
pledge it began by speaking it ends by
speaking the God who creates is the God
who speaks his speaking is an event and
it's on that event of his word and
promise that we are to cast ourselves Abraham
cast himself on that although his body was
as good as dead looking upon himself he
had no descendants he was near a hundred
years old as was Sarah and God said
look at the stars in the sky so
great will your your progeny be and he
believed God despite every appearance of the contrary
God said he believed so this is our
classic father of the faith and the one
with whom God makes the classic covenant that
becomes the pattern of all subsequent covenant and
in 17 we have another visitation of the
Lord when Abraham is 99 years old the
Lord appeared to him and said I am
the almighty God walk and live habitually before
me and be perfect blameless wholehearted complete that's
that's an invitation to be a son of
a covenant there's no way you're going to
be that by human resolve God gives an
ultimate like mount of beatitude requirement be thou
perfect and walk thou before me only possible
by someone with whom a covenant has been
made who can draw on the grace of
God to be this one
because how dare we speak of circumcision and
having no confidence in the flesh when we
speak of it out of the flesh that
would be a patent contradiction in terms so
of necessity the subject itself must be presented
in its own context and that's why the
Lord has got me in my hands
to the depth and significance of that which
is not made with hands and we're still
waiting for the fulfillment of that great mystery
and the expression of that fruit to come