Dr.
Meredith Kline, Kingdom Prologue, Lecture 9
© 2012, Dr. Meredith Kline and Ted Hildebrandt
The ancient Near Eastern texts parallel to Genesis
There
are documents which not only parallel one event like the flood or something
like that but you have documents, for example, like the Atrahasis Epic which
includes that whole outline. So what we have in Genesis 1 through 11 is
something that is found in other ancient texts. This whole question comes up:
which one was first? There are some striking similarities between the biblical
account, let’s say of the flood and the account of the flood that you get in
something like the Gilgamesh epic in the eleventh tablet. Is the Bible
borrowing from the Gilgamesh epic? The biblical account is the later one.
Once again I think the only way to treat it is to recognize that
these events really happened. Let’s say that here is the creation of man, the
alienation of man, and here’s the flood. These things really happened and there
was a true pristine account of those things that was handed down. Finally, you
come to Moses and he records them in Genesis 1 through 11.
Meanwhile, there were all kinds of perverted versions of this real
history that were circulating in the world. Some of these happened to be
available to us because we come upon these documents. Some of these perverted
versions are earlier than Moses. So how do we explain them? With some, even the
language is strikingly similar. Has Moses borrowed it from that and therefore
is it just useless mythology? No, I think the way to see it is that these
accounts, like this one, are perversions of the true version which was being
handed down among God’s people until finally it finds its deposit in Genesis 1
through 11. They are perversions of it but nevertheless give an essential
outline of human history. This essential outline of the alienation of man from
God and the development of the City of Man, and the flood, that basic outline,
wasn't lost from the race’s memory. But it was picked up and formulated in
these other documents. So the basic outline is the same. Along with the basic
similarity, however, what we should note, of course, is the tremendous
theological differences between the two.
So the fact that a biblical text is a little later than something
that is going on in the world out there and has certain evidence even of
reflecting the language of it doesn't mean that’s the ultimate source of these
things though God and his true tradition here is the ultimate sign. In other
words, that kind of question keeps coming up all over the place and taking your
position reminds us that God originated the covenant form.
Other things relating now to this pattern maybe okay. Along then
with the documents that were so strikingly like those in the Bible, the
ceremony of covenant ratification was also very similar. The text would be read
and there would be sacrifices, animals would be slain. As we said last time,
so much was the oath and the curse of the covenant an essential part of the
arrangement that the particular ritual of dramatizing the curse whereby you
took an animal and killed it became the idiom for making a covenant. So in
Hebrew karat berit meant to “cut a covenant” is the way to say “to make
a covenant” referring to the slaying of an animal that was part of that. So in
these rituals that’s the kind of thing that would be taken, an animal would be
taken.
Covenant donkey and cutting a covenant
Here
is one little interesting detail that you might find helpful because there’s a
little pattern in Messianic prophecy later on. In one text that comes from the
site of Mari on the upper Euphrates from about the eighteenth century B.C. there
is a text where an officer of the king is reporting back to him that he has
been engaged in the ratification of a treaty between a couple of subordinate
parties. What is interesting is his description of the cutting up of the animal
symbolizing the curse that would befall either party to the covenant that broke
their covenant oath. He says that they sacrificed a particular kind of donkey
it’s a colt of a she-ass. But it was a particular breed of donkey that was the
one that would serve to make the covenant, and not just any animal, but this is
the one you would have to use.
Now what’s interesting about that is that striking little
expression that particular description of that particular breed is found in
Genesis 49 and in Zechariah 9 and in the account that in translated form is
reflected in Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. In Genesis 49 it appears in
Jacob’s blessing on Judah where he’s speaking about the Messianic line that is
going to be in Judah and in mysterious closing verses of that around verse 11,
I guess it is, he makes mention that in the Messianic age there will be this
equivalent Hebrew expression of this particular kind of a donkey will be
tethered to the vine. Then you come to Zechariah 9 which is an exposition of
Genesis 49. Here is where then you read about this same kind of a donkey “and
behold your king,” the Messianic king comes and “you rejoice, O Jerusalem,
behold your king comes.” It describes him lowly and afflicted and so on, “riding
upon,” and here is this covenant donkey, the kind of a donkey that would be
used to ratify a covenant. That’s the significance of it. So that when you come
to the story of the triumphal entry and you're preaching and you're trying to
explain why is it that Jesus comes riding into Jerusalem, the point is not
simply the donkey is a peaceful animal and it expresses humility against proud
arrogance of someone riding on a horse. The magnificent point is Jesus comes
riding, he's the lamb of God, and he comes riding on the donkey of God, the
covenant donkey. This is the donkey that is going to shed its blood to be
sacrificed and that’s exactly what Jesus is doing. That’s what the donkey says
in that passage.
So here’s that kind of little detail part of the continuing
parallelism, some illumination of Scripture you wouldn’t be looking for in an
ancient text and low and behold something like that.
Student question
Kline’s
response: That’s the only place that I’m familiar with that one text speaking
about covenant ratification that mentions the donkey. It is the only reference
I’m familiar with outside of the Bible.
Student question.
Kline’s
response: Yes, it is something related to treaty diplomacy. So along with the
documents then there were rituals in each case that were similar. Then you know
this parallel again brings up this same problem: Is God dependent on things
that are out there in his own dealing with his own people in the way we are
describing. What we’re saying is, yes, he sovereignly makes the instruments
available and he uses them.
Covenant Renewal
Now let me
just go on. Here a treaty relationship is made between the great king and his
vassal. Now that the relationship is established, how does it work itself out?
From time to time there would be need for these covenants to be renewed. They’d
have to be renewed. One occasion for a covenant renewal was that a vassal
might break the covenant and he had to be dealt with. Then after he’d be dealt
with maybe there was a possibility of renewing the covenant.
Another occasion that would call for a renewal of the covenant was
when one of the two principals, here you have the great king and he's making
the covenant with the vassal king who, of course, represents his people. But
when one of these two parties would die then obviously there was a need to
renew that covenant. This is very important when we come to the book of
Deuteronomy. Someone’s going to die as the occasion for the book of Deuteronomy
is Moses. It was his last year, this is the last day of his life and God’s
about to take him up. He’s going to die and God’s going to take him. Moses who
is in the opening section of Deuteronomy the one who represents the Lord, the
great king. Now the Lord’s official representative is about to die and before
he dies, so that there shouldn't be turmoil and chaos about the succession, God
has selected Moses’ successor. Of course, it is Joshua who has been Moses’
minister over these years. Joshua’s to be the successor. That is the central
point of this covenant renewal which we have in the book of Deuteronomy. It is
to assure that Israel will be ready to accept Joshua as Moses’ successor.
That’s the explanation to some key things that are in the book like
the 27th chapter. What’s going on there is reflected in one of the ancient
treaties. This one does happen to come from the Assyrian empire but we have a
treaty where Esarhaddon doesn’t have long to live. So he gets his vassal people
together and he exacts from them a commitment to one of his sons whom he has
selected to be his successor. The key line in the thing is that when he, the
king of Assyria, dies then this succession arrangement will be in force. Then,
of course, the treaty commitment to accept his appointed successor will take
place. But when the king dies is when the treaty becomes effective.
Now the whole thing in Deuteronomy is Moses is about to die. It
sets things up so that Israel will accept Joshua. Then you come to chapter 34
and, of course, this is the puzzler when you talk about the Mosaic authorship
of the Pentateuch. Moses didn't write the account of his death did he? No he
didn’t. But why then is that account of his death tacked on there? Because
that’s the thing that sort of notarized this whole deal. Whoever added it
whether Joshua or the high priest or someone else takes this treaty and appends
the notice that shows that now it is effective because the king, the
representative of the great king has died. Now it’s time to accept Joshua as
his successor. So now not just the original documents show parallelism but the
ongoing administration of biblical covenants show parallels to what’s going on
over here.
Covenant
and the Prophets
Finally,
there’s something in treaty diplomacy that explains the whole phenomenon of
biblical prophecy. When we have a question of prophecy, hopefully we will have
a course on the prophets here, that’s one of the things I try to emphasize is
that the role of the biblical prophets fits into this whole scheme of covenant
administration where we find that when vassals broke their terms of their
covenant that they were not immediately clobbered but there would be a lawsuit
that would be instituted that would go through a couple of stages. The first
stage would be where the great king would send his ambassadors, his
representatives, or his lawyers to remind the people of the danger that they’re
in because they had violated the stipulations. Now they are in danger of the
curses which they themselves by solemn oath invoked upon themselves. Then mend
your ways and if you don't then, of course, the lawsuit is going to move into
its second stage which will be the rendering of the word of doom and will be
followed up by the troops that will come and so forth.
Now when you read the prophets and you find so very much in the
pages of the prophets is precisely that the prophets are God’s lawyers. Israel
has broken the covenant and he sends them. You’ll see that there are like the
two stages and in the early stage he’s warning them and there’s this call to
repentance and so on. Then at last I come to the closing pages of 2 Chronicles
36 which is summing up this whole history of God’s lawsuit through the prophets.
It says how God sent to them continually through his messengers, his angels,
his prophets, “calling to them to repentance and they would not until there was
no remedy.” Very tragic language there. There was no longer God’s forbearance he
had reached his limits. There was no more remedy. Then he sends his forces from
the east. He’s enacted the curses from the covenant. But the whole function of
the prophets corresponds to what’s going on in the Near Eastern world. A lot of
the language of the lawsuit of the Near Eastern ambassadors can be
reconstructed. Again we find a lot of close literary parallels with language in
the biblical prophets. So this is a whole area you can see where the study of ancient
Near Eastern sources, and particularly the treaties, sheds a tremendous light
on the Bible.
Okay, I think I’ll let that go. I won’t get into the higher
critical theories. I said something earlier that the forms of the second
millennium treaties are the ones that correspond to the treaties that the Bible
says come from Moses which is what we would expect. Whereas if you come now
down from the first millennium treaties there are big differences. They no
longer have the historical prologue. They no longer have any blessing
sanctions, only curse sanctions. There’s no appeal to gratitude or anything
like that, it’s just raw brute strength. There is a completely different
spirit about them as well as certain differences in the outline. So it’s rather
significant then in Exodus which we call the “Ten Commandments.” Look at the book
of Deuteronomy, it corresponds to the early second millennium forms of the
treaty not to the first millennium form. This completely contradicts tons of
stuff that modern Old Testament critics have been turning out on the origin of
these books.
I don’t know what time it is but maybe some among us can resort to
the coffee pot. Why don’t we take five minutes and do that.
Covenants of Grace and Common Grace
The
glory of the kingdom and the people for whom the Son came into the world, indeed,
what the Son basically committed himself to do was to enter into the world as a
second Adam and to fulfill the task that the first Adam failed to accomplish. As
the Son whose incarnation is victory over Satan and so on he fulfilled that. Then
in his resurrection and ascension he began to receive the reward of his
obedience. Part of that, of course, was that he should receive the Holy Spirit
by whom he should win through history and elect people for himself. That
process whereby he shares his glory with the people whom he calls out of the
world by his Holy Spirit through the earth is then the Covenant of Grace. It’s
the covenant of the Lord with the church. So these two are related in that way.
It is as a reward for his service as the Son. In that eternal covenant the Son
is a servant. So because he fulfills his probationary task he now receives the
honor of functioning as the Lord--the Lord now, of this covenant which he administers
through history and in which we then put together what theologians call the Covenant
of Grace. Although as we read through the Bible we find it’s being administered
in a whole series of covenants there from the fall with the consummation of the
world.
Now as we follow that then, well let’s follow this thing. Here is
this eternal covenant. Here now is this Covenant of Grace in history whereby
God’s kingdom is being administered. Then to fill out our chart, along with the
covenant with Adam before this, between the fall and the consummation we would
also want to include the Covenant of Common Grace. So this is the Covenant of Saving
Grace and then there’s the Covenant of Common Grace that is found within this.
Now we’re not going tonight then to be dealing a lot with that but just to
explain it. This is an arrangement as we noted when we were talking about
definitions of covenant that does not involve God setting aside a holy family
from the midst of the earth. Nor does it envisage that in terms of this
covenant that God’s holy kingdom is going to be bestowed on anyone. That
happens under the Covenant of Grace. In the Covenant of Grace God is setting
aside a particular holy people for himself. What is envisaged is that they
should at last inherit the kingdom of glory in heaven.
The Covenant of Common Grace is not something that gets consummated
that way. The Covenant of Common Grace is something that gets terminated. The
terms of the covenant there in Genesis 9 where you do find this arrangement
covenantalized is that as long as the earth endures. The part of the
arrangement of common grace involves the stability of nature that seasons will
follow one another in an appropriate way there will not be such a devastating
disaster like the flood again and so on. This is an arrangement then that God
says will endure. These particular guarantees of the stability of nature along
with the other benefits especially following the institution of the state that
God sets up as a place of common political coexistence of believers and
unbelievers together. That whole arrangement will continue, it will serve its
purpose as sort of a platform on which the history of redemption can work its
way out. But it’s only an interim arrangement. It provides instead of all hell
breaking loose at the fall and the stars falling from their courses and the sun
darkening. Instead of that, God keeps the ultimate curse of hell in check. How
does he keep it in check? He keeps it in check by means of his common grace. By
his common grace he provides some historical space, a chunk of space, an
opportunity within which his eternal purposes then can work themselves out. So
the common grace arrangement is a theater, it’s a platform, it’s a space in
which common grace can make its way. But common grace itself doesn't bring in
the kingdom. When the time comes it gets terminated. The earth and the works
that are therein that man has produced by the City of Man by virtue of God’s
common grace, all of this will be destroyed in order to make way for the
kingdom of heaven to come in, to consummate and to crown the history of the
covenant of grace. So that’s the overall pattern then of covenants and as we
move along we will be dealing with them separately.
This is the sphere of the holy coming into the fallen, profane,
world outside the Eden. Eden itself is holy. Outside of Eden it’s profane, not
holy. Adam and Eve are driven out of the holy place obviously therefore they’re
not going to be put into another holy place. They’ve forfeited that, they’re
disqualified. So they’re outside of Eden, east of Eden which is the whole world
that’s common, that’s profane. Then by means of his redemptive program God
intrudes. I’ll be using the word “intrusion” in connection to this from time to
time. God intrudes into the common world, this principle of holiness and that’s
what characterizes that sphere.
What do we mean by common? By common for one thing we mean the non-holy.
That’s not the equivalent of evil or illegitimate or something like that. It’s
just non-holy. What happens in this sphere which is the whole sphere of
cultural activity therefore is non-holy. This of course, has large implications
then of how we understand the nature and function of the state and all of kinds
of other such things. That’s the nature of this common grace era. It is common
in the sense that it is shared both by believers and unbelievers. Secondly, it’s
common in the sense that it’s the sphere of the non-holy. You and I are engaged
in both of these things. We are engaged in the church, in the covenant
community--the holy. We are also engaged in common grace. It is common not just
unbelievers, it’s shared by both believers and nonbelievers. So we are engaged
in this area, the area of culture, the area say of the state and the family and
so on. Although it’s non-holy we do it as unto the Lord but that doesn't change
it.
This area is still non-holy but to recognize that then keeps us
from projecting upon our cultural activities that are upon the state that we
belong to utopian expectations. The kingdom of God is not going to come through
this sphere of general culture, that’s the old liberal gospel that the kingdom
of God is coming from out there in the world apart from Christ. Oh no, the
kingdom of God, the holy kingdom of God, is coming only through Christ. We
shouldn’t therefore be expecting, or as I say, projecting on the kingdom of God
utopian identification and expectations on what’s going on out there in that
sphere.
This is not the kingdom of God, we shouldn't be talking about our
activities outside of the church as kingdom activities as goes on, of course,
all the time in our circles. For example, you run a school, an education
program and you're told that’s kingdom activity. This is not kingdom activity
this is common grace activity and that kingdom of God, the Holy kingdom of God,
is developing only in terms of this. Everything you do you do as a service for
the king over all of these realms, in ultimate reality. So everything you do
whether in the holy or the non-holy you do as a service for the king but not
everything you do is a developing of the kingdom. This is the developing of the
kingdom. Okay, so these are some of the themes we address as we move along.
Covenant of Works: Adam and Christ
But
now let that suffice as an overview of the whole covenant scheme. Now we come
back to a major problem that we got to at the end of our discussion last time.
The covenant with Adam here which we called a Covenant of Works. The Covenant
of Works with the first Adam. Then, as a matter of fact, there was another Covenant
of Works as we said between the Father and the Son envisaged as coming into the
world as a second Adam as one other place along the line where this principle
of works emerges. Let’s take again that line we were just tracing between the
fall and the consummation, the line of the Covenant of Grace. Now here is
Christ then administering his blessings to his people calling them out of the
world by his Holy Spirit. He comes into the world at his incarnation in the
fullness of time here and yet his administering of the Covenant of Grace, he’s
bestowing of the Holy Spirit, he’s winning a people for himself, his
establishment of a covenant on the earth, already has begun back there right
after the fall and throughout history.
Covenants of Grace
As
we said this overarching Covenant of Grace gets subdivided into a whole series
of covenants leading up to the New Covenant preceded by the Old Covenant
preceded by the Abrahamic covenant and the Noahic covenant and so on and so on down
the line.
Now here is a whole series of ways in which Christ organizes the
covenant people that are being called out of the world to faith in him either
as the Messiah to come or as the Messiah who has come. What we find--let’s pick
it up after the flood, on then this is all ultimately leading to the great
eternal theocratic kingdom of God where it will not just be a matter of God’s
spiritual presence and reign within the hearts of people but it will involve
the whole cosmos--the new heavens and the new earth.
The kingdom of God will take shape as a geophysical and
geopolitical entity. It has this physical cosmic context to it. Is that the
case now during the church age? Here’s the first coming of Christ. Here’s the
second coming of Christ. There is no millennium after that second coming. The
millennium happens to be now but we’ll discuss that later. But after the second
coming, here is the eternal kingdom of God, and here is the church age now.
Does the church exist as a geopolitical entity? No, it doesn't. It’s not identified
with earthly turf, it is a time when Christ is king and he is ruling but he's
ruling by his Holy Spirit within our hearts. But here is a church building and
so on. We, as the covenant community, do not constitute an earthly kingdom or
nation. We shouldn't have been pretentious along that line, we shouldn't have been
making attempts along that line. We are a purely cultic community. We don’t
have, we don't possess, geographical terrain as being the ultimate jurisdiction
in any such thing. So we don't exist as an earthly kingdom right now.
Nor did Abraham in his day. Here’s the patriarchal period, Genesis
12-15. Abraham has the promises of the kingdom but meanwhile he is a pilgrim
and he practices pilgrim politics. He doesn't act as if he has any earthly
power and precede to dispose the king simply because God said this land was
ultimately going to be yours. No, he functions in terms of common grace. During
this period Abraham is functioning in a way where he recognizes that he belongs
to the time of common grace. In the time of common grace nonbelievers have the
same economic political rights as you. When Abraham needs a piece of land to
bury his wife, he just can’t go to Ephron the Hittite and say “off with your
head, you have the land I want I’m going to take it from you.” It doesn't work
that way. So he has to deal in terms of common grace and bargain and so on for
a piece of land. He practices pilgrim politics.
The Kingdom’s intrusion into the Covenant of Grace
If
he’s engaged in a military affair he makes covenants with the military forces
around him to expel the kings who have come from the east (Genesis 14). See
this is his nature during this period. Then all of a sudden when you get beyond
kingdom prologue when you move beyond the book of Genesis, now we come to the
book of Exodus. Now the kingdom comes. Now the Abrahamic promises God’s promise
to a kingdom people, land, and king; they all come to pass. They come to
expression in the form of an earthly kingdom such as we said we do not have though
any longer in the church. But that’s precisely what you had in the form of
Israel, the kingdom of God in the land of Canaan.
Here the kingdom of God was identified with a specific geophysical
reality--the land of Canaan from the river Euphrates to the brook of Egypt and
so on, as the promises of Abraham define that particular land and with a
mandate of conquest. You no longer make covenants with your Amorite and
Canaanite neighbors. You go in and you wipe them out. You destroy them. You may
not make covenants with them any longer. You need a piece of land you don’t buy
it from Ephron the Hittite you kill him and take it. This is the conquest, this
is the holy war. That’s what happens at the end of history—an intrusion with a
vengeance, common grace up to that point. Up to that point unbelievers are
allowed certain rights within this world. They can have their property, they
can have their political rights and so on, until God says the doors are closed.
That’s what final judgment is, that’s what the return of Christ is all about, and
that’s the end of common grace. That’s the end of all rights that belong to
those who know not God and believe not the gospel. Now Jesus comes against all
of those taking vengeance and destroying them and sending them to hell. That’s
the way in which the eternal theocracy gets established by the introduction now
of final judgment which is the opposite of what’s going on in terms of common
grace. The amazing thing is now that here in Israel this is precisely what was
going on.
God pedagogically is presenting a historical parable for the eyes
of all people of what he intends to do through Jesus Christ at last. So this
gets intruded into history in the form of the Israelite nation. Canaan wasn’t
heaven but it was a prototype of heaven. So for the time being the covenant
community was organized as a geopolitical, as an earthly nation. Just as the
eternal kingdom is introduced by the Messianic final judgment, so the old
kingdom, the prototype kingdom, likewise was introduced by an act of Messianic
judgment in which God took away the common grace rights, not of the whole world,
but within that particular sphere that he defined. God said, “this is mine.” He
carves out by eminent domain, a piece of territory that he says now this is
going to be my kingdom. This is holy unto me. In order to take it, I deny the
normal common grace rights of the Canaanites who were there. So you shouldn’t
try to justify what the Israelites did to do to the Canaanites in terms of
common grace procedures such as might be going on in the United Nations or so
on. In terms of United Nations procedures, Israel is the aggressor, the
murderers and so on in that thing. But the Israelites were not murderers, were
not aggressors because common grace ethics situation had been annulled at that
point. Just as God is the sovereign one and he can decide when permanently
universally he’s going to annul common grace. He can and he’s going to do that
and you shouldn’t argue with him about that unless you’re ready to argue with
the ethics of God.
Nor should you argue with him then if he has seen fit to anticipate
the kingdom in this type of local situation in Israel. That’s the explanation
of the so called ethical problems in the Old Testament. You shouldn't try to
whitewash them and say nothing is different and nothing is going on, it’s
totally different. What’s going on there is totally different than what God’s
people should normally be doing. Normally we should be praying for our enemies
not killing them. But here the unbelievers are killed off because this whole
thing here is a typological situation
Student question.
Kline’s
response: Well this continues to be an administration of the covenant of grace
just as the final judgment and introduction of heaven will be an
administration of the covenant of grace. Even though it involves the fact that
the judgment of our enemies is part of our redemption. We’re not just redeemed
from the wrath of God, we’re redeemed from the coils of the devil and the
hostility of the hoards of the devil that he thrusts against the church. The
antichrist, Magog and so on that’s part of our redemption, that’s part of the
covenant of grace. Is that what you’re asking?
Student question.
Kline’s response: What I’m saying is that our situation today is
in many respects much more like the Abrahamic covenant than it is immediately
preceding Israelite conquest.
Student question
Kline’s response: Yes, that’s right--the normal common grace. Exactly,
that’s nicely put. Only this eschatological reality is still typological, it
wasn’t heaven actually, of course. It came in as Hebrews 4 points out not as the
real Sabbath land. It was only the prototype but in terms of the principle
involved it’s the abrogating of the normal common grace arrangements in order
to express this eschatological reality
Now what I’m trying to get at then is that this is an utterly
unique thing that’s going on in Israel. It’s not going on today, it wasn’t
going on before that. Just while we’re at it, if we used squares to represent
the theocracy there’s the eternal new heavens and new earth--the big cosmic
universal square. In Israel there’s another one, the kingdom of God, the
covenant community organized as a kingdom of God. The kingdom of God intruded
into history. There’s one other such intrusion in history that’s why I said
let’s start after the flood. The flood was a one year intrusion. Israel
represents this intrusion for hundreds of years when that situation existed on
earth.
The Flood as an Intrusion
Now
the flood is exactly the same thing, the same principals about intrusion and
final judgment and the establishing of God’s kingdom. This also comes to
expression in the episode of the flood. Remember we talked about how Peter
described the whole history of the world that then was? So we came to the point
of typological fulfillment. Now we’re in the world that now is and the world
that then was culminated in an experience where once again the common grace rights
of all the peoples of the world where at least the flood applied were denied
them. They were all destroyed and there was life only within the ark and the ark
itself in terms of its architectural form etc. etc. is symbolic of God’s cosmic
temple. We’ll discuss it later on. So there’s another example of the kingdom of
God coming in the form of an outward kingdom namely the ark but otherwise apart
from that little one year exception, apart from Israel, God’s people are
organized not as an external geopolitical entity.
Unity and Diversity of the Covenant
So
here we are in Israel. Now we’re talking about works and we said there was a
covenant of works with Adam. There’s this eternal covenant of works with the Father
and the Son. Here’s the third place now where we encounter this in the Torah
covenant, in the law covenant, in the Mosaic covenant, in the old covenant--
whichever of these terms you want. We encounter this complex reality where here’s
the bottom line, here’s this covenant of grace. This is how Christ is winning
individuals to himself, how they are earning the right to heaven, namely by
faith in Christ. So how do individuals get to the ultimate heaven over here?
It’s in terms of Christ, of course, and the cross and faith. That’s the bottom
line of the Mosaic covenant. It isn't that the Mosaic covenant is just this
outward typological kingdom. It, of course, includes the one way of salvation
through Christ which is always the case after the fall.
So we’re not denying that. We’re emphasizing that we’re covenant
theologians. We believe in the unity of all the redemptive covenants. We do not
believe in the unity of all covenants. We in fact insist and that’s one of the
points we’ll not be making. We will be insisting on a big difference between
the Covenant of Works with Adam and the Covenant of Grace that follows. But we
believe in the unity of all redemptive covenants. They're all unified by having
one way of salvation which is Christ.
Three features of Israel’s Covenant
Now,
however, we come to this strange thing where God anticipates heaven with this
typological kingdom. So here is that typological kingdom and in connection with
it we have the principle of works introduced. So that you might say that there
are three features when you’re thinking about Israel and this whole phenomenon
of the old covenant.
There are three things that belong to this period. They’re are
mutually conditioning. They’re packets you don't have one without the other. You
always have these things together. The first is the national election of
Israel. Israel as a nation is elected to this particular historical privilege.
They’re representing God and possessing the land that God claims for himself
and having his temple and his presence among them. Israel experiences a
national election.
Now this is not the same as individual election. Individual
election is functioning here on this bottom line, of course, with this covenant
of grace. But this is the national election of Israel. This is a corporate
election. This is not election to heaven, this is an election through this
particular experience that lasted from Moses to Christ. So that’s the first
feature, national election.
The second feature then is that the national election is as I just
said, election to enjoy the typological kingdom. Not to inherit heaven but to
possess the typological kingdom. Now we come to the third one and what is the
principle whereby this national elect people are going to continue to enjoy
God’s blessings.
Transcribed by Kimberly Sandiford
Rough edited by Ted Hildebrandt