Well, as some of you know, we recently welcomed home a new baby, Josiah David, a couple weeks ago. Originally, my wife's due date was May 12th. And so when Dr. McGraw said, can you substitute teach on May 13th today? I said, well, I'd love to do it, but I don't know if I'm going to be there or not. If she gives birth that morning, I'm going to have to bail and get a substitute for the substitute. But in God's providence, he came two weeks early, and so I'm here. And for full disclosure, I am sleep deprived and heavily caffeinated, but I'm here, and I'm excited to be with you again. Last time that I had the privilege of teaching, we talked about covenant language, the language of promise, command, and warning, and how we should respond to those forms of language based on where we stand in covenant history. And in the midst of that discussion, in the Q&A time, there was a helpful suggestion, and that was perhaps we're assuming too much knowledge of covenant theology. And that got me thinking, are there certain points that we assume too much knowledge, or assume too much agreement, where it would be helpful to go back and ask very simple, very basic questions, and work ourselves through the thought process of answering them once again. And so this morning, I'm going to address a deceptively simple question. And the question is this, what is a covenant? What is a covenant? What is it? And just to start things off, I'm going to tell you what I'm not going to do. I am not planning to give you a generic catch-all definition for each and every covenant in the Bible. That would be kind of beyond the scope of this class. Opalma Robertson mentions that there are three basic kinds of covenant in the Bible. There are covenants made by man with man, where Jacob and Laban come together as relatively equal parties and form a pact. There are covenants by man with God, For instance, in the case of Josiah, where he renews covenant with the Lord. And then there's that third type, covenants made by God with man, we could call divine covenants. And it's that third type, covenants made by God with man, divine covenants, the covenants that we have with Adam, with Noah, with Abraham, with Moses, with David, prophesied in the prophets and then consummated in Jesus, those divine covenants are going to be our focus. So really, what is a covenant? What is a divine covenant will be the question that we have this morning. And just to give you an agenda, what we're going to do is we're going to survey the proposed definitions to that question. And to be honest with you, it's sort of a mess in church history. There's all sorts of different perspectives on this question. We'll survey those. Then we'll turn to the Bible and look at some biblical descriptions of God's covenant. And then finally, if you're still awake and I still have breath, we're going to attempt to define and answer the question. And from there, we'll basically take an inductive approach. We'll work toward a definition. The definition should emerge from our studies. But before we do that, I'm gonna read a passage of scripture that really encaptures the heart of God's covenant promises, then we'll pray, and then we'll get going. So if you have your copy of God's Word, turn to Revelation 21. Revelation 21. This is the close of the canon, this is the apex of God's revelation to us, and here we find a form of language that comes throughout the whole Bible, and it's here at the end as well. Revelation 21, beginning in verse 1, Then I saw a new heaven. and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. Let us go to him now in prayer. Father, as we attempt to raise and answer this question, what is a covenant, we pray that you would protect us from error and protect us from coldness. Help us to do this with a clear mind and with a right spirit. and that as we grow in our covenant consciousness, that we will be growing in our love and adoration of Jesus Christ. In whose name we pray. Amen. What is a covenant? I said, we're going to look at some proposed definitions, but first, To get our minds going for kind of initial exercise, I'm going to throw the question out to you all. What do you all think a covenant is? And if you get the right answer, we'll just stop class, have the shortest Sunday school in history, and call it a day. Maybe. What do you all think? There's no wrong answers. What is a covenant? Sure. An agreement that's binding and can't be broken. Okay, that's good. If I had a whiteboard, I'd write them up, but I don't. Any others? One word, two word definitions, anything. A what? A promise. We have an agreement. Promise. Yes. Speaking as a former lawyer, it's a unilateral contract. A unilateral contract. Right. Okay, unilateral with conditions. Yes. Pastor Ellis is steeped in the work of O. Palmer Robertson, a bond in blood, sovereignly administered. We might have to go home now. No. That's good. Any other? I think one more. Those are all fantastic. We have promises, agreements, contracts, a bond in blood, some differences. We'll see in a moment that those differences do show up in church history. So I'm going to start not at the very beginning. Covenant theology is as old as the Bible. We see it in the work of Irenaeus in the early church, but it picks up steam. It becomes codified and systematized in the 17th century, that great century of confessions, consolidation. I'm gonna draw your attention in the 17th century to a definition given to us by Hermann Witzius in his work, The Economy of the Covenants. And this is really a standard for that time period. He says, a covenant is an agreement between God and man about the way of obtaining consummate happiness." And he goes on to say that this agreement has conditions, promises, and then penalties for violation. That's basically the consensus of the Reformed Orthodox in the 17th century. Skip 100 years. 18th century. marrow controversy. Thomas Boston writes two treatises on the covenant, and he essentially says the same thing. He says it's an agreement or a bargain between parties with those different components. Another 100 years, we're moving very fast. 19th century, old Princeton, Charles Hodge, he says a covenant is a mutual contract between two or more parties. So the prevailing consensus from the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries is a covenant is an agreement, a contract, a compact, a pact in which there are conditions, promises, penalties for violation. Something happens in the 20th century. big bombshell. It's called Karl Barth and Neo-Orthodoxy. And Karl Barth, he was basically a liberal who grabbed hold of existentialist philosophy and became the founder of Neo-Orthodoxy. And he says, this is very wrong. The classic covenant theology, starting with Vitsias, through Boston, to Hodge, and all the rest, is basically legalistic. This language of contract is wrong, and one of his disciples, J.B. Torrance, actually wrote an essay called Covenant or Contract, and said, no, a covenant is not a contract. Rather, a covenant has grace that is completely unconditional and completely universal. Reform theology has been wrong for the last 300 or so years, 400 or so years. That's Karl Barth, and he's obviously not an evangelical. He's not in our circles whatsoever. But if you look at other Reformed, conservative, evangelical scholars in the 20th century, there is a divergence of opinion on what a covenant is. I'm going to go through these pretty fast. On the one hand, you have a number of Reformed theologians who basically echo the Reformed consensus. Michael Barrett, to give an example, teaches at Puritan Theological Seminary, and he defines a covenant as a mutually binding agreement between two parties. Same idea as Vitsios and the rest. On the other hand, there is a growing number of theologians who say the word contract and agreement is too cold. It's too impersonal. Rather, we need to stress the relational aspect. And so, for instance, a controversial figure in the OPC a number of years ago, Norman Shepard, said, a covenant is a divinely established relationship. relationship. And a number of advocates of the so-called federal vision movement, if you've ever heard of that, have grabbed onto this idea and Jeff Myers will define it as a formal, personal relationship. And that has become more and more common in reform circles. On the other hand, to kind of change up the game a little bit, some Reformed theologians in the 20th century wanted to emphasize the conditional or the bilateral nature of the covenant, that it's two-way. There's two sides. Both parties have obligations. And one example of that would be Meredith Klein. Meredith Klein was an OPC minister who really studied ancient Near Eastern culture, and his definition of a covenant was a commitment with divine sanctions between a lord and a servant. A commitment with sanctions. It's conditional, it's bilateral between the lord and the slave. On the other end of the spectrum, you have other Reformed theologians wanting to stress the unconditional and unilateral nature of the covenant, that it's one way. So we get John Murray, another OPC minister, who defines it as a sovereign dispensation or administration of grace. A little different tone. And to make matters even more complicated, if you're still with me, a number of evangelicals have said, no, this is wrong. We need to split them into two different types of covenants. And so, to give an example, Andreas Kurstenberger, an evangelical scholar, says, on the one hand, there are conditional covenants called suzerainty treaties. On the other hand, there are unconditional covenants called Royal Grant Treaties, and Moses is conditional, and Abraham is unconditional, and it's basically a split. In the midst of all that, go back to Pastor Ellis's quotation, there is what has in some ways become the classic definition in modern times given to us by O. Palmer Robertson, which I think tries to do justice to various elements of church history and the biblical data, and he defines it as a bond in blood, sovereignly administered, a bond of life and death, sovereignly administered. Okay. It's a lot of different definitions. Can the Westminster Standards help us? These are our confessional documents. Can we go to them and find a really helpful, pithy definition that cuts through all of this jargon? And we actually cannot. The Westminster standards, confession, shorter, larger catechism, have no definition of covenant. And to make matters worse, if you go to the Child's Catechism, which is based on the Shorter Catechism, there are different editions. And in the earlier editions, it says a covenant is an agreement between two or more persons. Okay, that's the traditional view. But the newer one that's on my Children's Catechism CD that we play 24-7 in our household says it's a relationship that God establishes with us and guarantees by his word. I find myself singing that. sometimes in the morning. So, in summary, we have an agreement, the older view, a relationship, a commitment, a dispensation, a treaty, a bond. Do we have covenant confusion? Now obviously some of these definitions overlap and they're in some ways synonymous. There's not a whole lot of difference. It's really just shades of meaning. But there are some differences in tone and some differences in emphasis. And so I think it's helpful when we find a variety of views to always go back to the source of all truth, which is the scriptures themselves. So those are the proposed definitions, a whole bunch of them. You don't have to remember those. Just kind of file that away as background. Now we're going to turn to the Bible itself. And when we do that, I want to turn to three biblical images, three biblical ways that God himself describes the covenant relationship. And we find there are three ways. The first is that of a father and a son. When the Bible wants to talk about a covenant, it talks about it in terms of a father and a son, fatherhood and sonship. We see this in the Old Testament. In the book of Exodus, Yahweh is pictured as a father, and Israel, the nation, is pictured as his firstborn son. Exodus 12, the Passover. God passes over the firstborn of Israel as a nation. If you keep reading, you realize that that sonship idea is targeted and concentrated in a particular individual. 2 Samuel 7, Yahweh is pictured as a father. The Davidic king is pictured as a son. I will be to him a father. He will be to me a son. And ultimately, that Davidic king is pointing to whom? To the Messiah, to the Lord Jesus Christ. And we see that ultimately, God is a father and the Messiah is his son. Indeed, his only son, his only begotten son. Hosea 11.1, out of Egypt, I have called my son. It's a reference to the Exodus. But the writer of Matthew's gospel, Matthew himself, says that applies to Jesus because he is the true Israel, the son of God. The Psalm, Psalm 2.7, This day have I begotten thee. Speaking of the Davidic king, but the apostolic preaching applies that directly to the Lord Jesus Christ because he is the new David. Father, son, filial, familial, covenant. Second image, not just a father and a son, but the image of a husband and a wife. a groom and a bride, the second biblical image that we have. And to begin with, going back to the Old Testament, we see that Yahweh is pictured as a husband and Israel is pictured as his bride. That great prophecy of a new covenant, Jeremiah 31, it says that Israel broke the covenant, although I was a husband toward her, that marital relationship. To give you another example that's very explicit, in Ezekiel 16, Verse 8, it says, when I passed by you again and saw you, behold, you were at the age for love, and I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness. I made my vow to you and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Lord God, and you became mine. Yahweh's the husband, Israel's the bride. But it keeps going. As we read through the Psalter in Psalm 45, we see that the Messiah is the husband. And then the church is his bride. In that Psalm 45, we see that the Davidic king, the Messiah, is both identified with God and then distinguished from God. And we take this into the New Testament in Ephesians 5, and it's full-blown. Christ is the husband, the church is the bride. And just to give you a historical note on this marriage metaphor, this husband-wife relationship, and how central it is to the Bible, I'm gonna quote for you Jonathan Edwards, who said, the spouse of the Son of God, the Lamb's wife, is that for which all the universe was made. Heaven and earth were created that the Son of God might be complete. In a spouse, he goes on, and God created the world for his son that he might prepare a spouse or bride for him to bestow his love upon so that the mutual joys between this bride and the bridegroom are the end of creation. Father, son, husband, wife, this marital union, This familial metaphor, this reality. There's a third image. And the third image is that of a lord and a servant. If you look at the Bible in toto, it's really almost like a three-dimensional portrait. Father, son, husband, wife, now lord and servant. And this imagery really picks up in the prophet Isaiah. In Isaiah 41 and 42, there's a couple places where it's very clear that Yahweh is pictured as the Lord, the King, the Sovereign, and Israel as a nation is pictured as a disobedient servant. If you keep reading in Isaiah, it's clear that there's a particular individual within Israel A messianic figure who is ultimately the servant of the Lord. You have those four servant songs in Isaiah 42, 49, 50, 52, 53. In those songs, we see a suffering servant. Yahweh is the Lord. His anointed one is the servant. And ultimately, this is God and Christ, where Christ takes upon himself the form of a servant and is made in the likeness of men. And yet that same Christ is the Lord of glory, and we are his servants. And so you keep stretching this image out, and eventually it comes full circle. Christ, the servant of the Lord, Christ, the Lord of glory, and we, his disciples, his servants. So in summary, when we look at the Bible, we don't just get a scientific textbook. We get a narrative with propositions. But in this book, we see three major images, father and son, husband and wife. Lord and servant. How does this data, how do these metaphors, how do these images inform our definition of covenant, and how do those definitions stack up against this portrait? Well, I'm gonna make a couple points. And in saying this, I'm not saying that this language is necessarily wrong. But I'm gonna caution you that some of the ways people have described covenants is at least unhelpful and potentially misleading. And if we're gonna use this language, we need to be very, very careful that we know what we mean and we know what we're communicating. And the first is the language, which is very traditional, of contract. Couple potential problems with that language, given this imagery we've been looking at. I don't know about you, but when I think of a contract in today's culture and time, a lot of contracts are two things. One, they are impersonal. They are cold. They are business deals. They are two men who don't care about each other, sitting down at table and striking a bargain. And if that's what comes into your mind when you think about covenants, this is a cold, impersonal, calculated, mechanical business deal with fine print. What does that convey to you about God? What does that convey to you about the relationship you have with Him? Well, no, a covenant is definitely personal. So if we're gonna use that language, we need to be very careful. Second problem, potentially with the language of contract, is that a contract often is negotiable. It's negotiable. You have two people sitting at table, relatively equals, and they negotiate terms. They say, okay, I'll compromise a little bit. I'll throw in this perk. If you take that out of the contract, and they come to an agreement, They strike a deal, and how does that jive with the Bible, in which we have a Lord and a servant, where the Lord dictates the terms. There's no negotiating. And where there's this husband-wife, father-son relationship, which is anything but cold and impersonal. And so I'm not saying that the language of contract is wrong. We need to be careful that when we use that language, we don't mean something that is impersonal and something that is negotiable. And in case you think I'm stepping out on a limb and being very, very edgy and controversial, I'm going to give you two quotes by people that I consider stalwarts of the reform faith. One is John Murray who says, the notion of compact or agreement is alien to the nature of the covenant constitution. It is not compact or contract or agreement that provides the constitutive or governing idea. I actually think Murray's going way too far here and probably throwing out the baby with the bathwater, but he is pressing against some of the potential problems, the impersonality, the negotiability of often how we think about contracts. Another stalwart, Sinclair Ferguson. says this, it has often been unhelpfully stated up front that a covenant is a contract. In the better writers who speak thus, these words are quickly qualified to distinguish divine covenants from commercial or business contracts. But a clear distinction should be made between the two concepts. Contract does not necessarily imply either a sovereign action or a gracious disposition. Conditions are written into a contract following negotiations. A covenant is made unconditionally. And so he goes on, but just to, I'm not saying that language is wrong, but if we're gonna use it, be careful. A covenant is not impersonal, and we don't negotiate terms with God. Second potential problem. This is a more modern one. The language of relationship. I don't know about you, when I hear the word relationship, I sort of warm to it. This is not the cold, business-like contract. This sounds much more intimate, much more personal, and it is. But a couple potential problems with this term. One, a relationship, if you just say a covenant is a relationship, that can be a little bit vague, a little amorphous. What kind of relationship is it? Is it informal? Does it have conditions, you know? We have relationships all over the place in the modern world. What kind of relationship is it? The other difficulty with this definition is that it's probably a little imprecise. Richard Phillips, in a lecture that he gave a few years back, I think helpfully pointed out that technically, technically a covenant is not a relationship, but it provides the basis or the foundation for a relationship. It might sound like you're splitting hairs, but think of it this way. When I got married a few years back, we had a marriage covenant. We signed it. We took vows formally in a wedding ceremony. But the wedding ceremony was not the whole life relationship. Rather, the wedding ceremony and the vows and the covenant compact that we signed provide a foundation, a basis for the married life that continues up to the present day. So again, is relationship a bad word? No. Is contract a bad word? No. But given what we know from the Bible, if we're going to use this language, we need to be very careful and qualified. So I've been pretty critical, and I've thrown out a lot of terms. And most of you are still awake. So let's actually answer the question that we started with. We've seen the proposed definitions. We've seen the biblical images. Let's attempt. a definition. And in true Westminster fashion, I want to give you both a shorter definition and a larger definition, because that's what Presbyterians do. I've always wondered why it's not shorter and longer, but shorter and larger. We'll just go with it. First, the shorter definition. If you've been asleep, wake up. This is the one thing, if you can remember this and get this then you're good. You take this one thing away, it'll be okay. The short definition is this, a covenant is a sovereignly administered bond. A sovereignly administered bond, a bond sovereignly administered. It's something that binds God to us and binds us to God. And this is something that God himself establishes. So that's the shorter definition. Now for the longer, the larger definition. I'm going to say it a couple times. It's a bit of a mouthful, but here it goes. A covenant is a bond of union and communion in mutual love and loyalty, sovereignly administered. A covenant is a bond of union and communion, in mutual love and loyalty, sovereignly administered. We're going to break that down into three parts. First, a covenant is a bond of union and communion. It is a bond. It is that which binds people together. solemnly and formally. In the Bible, we have a number of things that bind people together. We have oaths that are taken. We have blood sacrifices that ratify relationships. We have covenant meals where people enjoy fellowship. And we have signs of the covenant that confirm that bond. So we have in Noah's time, the rainbow. Abraham, circumcision. New Covenant, baptism in the Lord's Supper. All of these are things that solidify and help establish this binding where God is bound to us and we are bound to God. I think the language of bond is helpful because it points to a relationship that is both personal and formal. I think we all know what it's like to have relationships that are personal but informal. So I have a lot of casual friends and casual acquaintances, and I have their contact info in Google Contacts, and if I see them on the sidewalk, I'll wave to them and say hi, but there's a personal relationship, but not a formal one. I might not talk to them for the next 10 years, and no one's gonna care. On the other hand, there are some relationships that are formal, But impersonal. So Donald Trump. My relationship with Donald Trump is not personal. He doesn't know me at all. He doesn't know me from Adam. And yet there is a formal relationship. I am a citizen of this country. He is the president. I salute the office. I pay my taxes. There's a formal relationship. Well, in the Bible, both of those come together. so that this bond where God is bound to us and we are bound to God is both personal and formal. But it's not just any sort of bond. It is a bond of union and communion. It's a bond of union. In this covenant, in this bond, we are united to a federal head. We're united to a representative. This is what we realize from the scriptures, that all men are covenantally related to God. Romans 5, either you are related to God as a covenant breaker in union with Adam, or you are related to God as a covenant keeper in Christ. But you're either in one federal head or the other. You're in this bond of union with Adam or with Jesus. To quote Cornelius Van Til, he says, the covenant idea is nothing but the expression of the representative principle applied to all reality. So this idea of representation, where we are in union with a representative, is at the heart, at the dead center of God's bond with his people. which, oh, Van Til's? Okay, I can read that again. Van Til says, the covenant idea is nothing but the expression of the representative principle applied to all reality, in Adam, in Christ. And that's why in the book of Isaiah in particular, in Isaiah 42.6 and 49.8, we have this language where the Messiah is actually identified with the covenant, where God says, I will give him to you as a covenant. We realize that Jesus, as the mediator, as the head, as the surety of the covenant, embodies all of the covenant in himself, in his person, so that it is appropriate. And Isaiah would echo this to say that Christ is the covenant. He is the bond of union that we have with the Lord. And we have this wonderful dynamic where we have both representation and participation, where it is Christ for you, but also you in Christ. It's a bond of union. But it's not just a bond of union, it is a bond of union and communion. By virtue of union with Jesus, you then have communion with the Triune God. which is staggering. And I love the way John Owen puts it. He says, because we are in union with Jesus, we have communion with the three persons of the Godhead. And he says this, primarily, or especially with the father in love, the Son in grace, and the Spirit in consolation or comfort. Obviously, we have that communion with all of them, but in particular, the Bible puts its stress, puts the spotlight on the love of the Father, on the grace of the Son, and on the comforting ministry of the Holy Spirit. And because you're in union with Jesus, you have that special, that particular communion with each member of the Trinity. And really here we're treading on holy ground. We need to take off our sandals and realize that this is at the heart of God's promises and purposes, not just for redemption, but for creation. Michael Morales, up at Greenville Seminary, likes to put it this way, man was created, not just redeemed, but made and fashioned from the dust of the ground to dwell with God, in the house of God, on the mountain of God, forever and ever. That's your reason for being. to dwell with God, in the house of God, on the mountain of God, forever and ever. And that's where we come to that pulse beat of God's promise all throughout the scriptures. Leviticus 26, 12, and Revelation 21 that we read at the very beginning, that threefold promise which really just captures it all. I will be your God. You will be my people. I will dwell in your midst. Through union with Christ, you have communion with the triune God. And here we come to that first metaphor, that first image of a father and a son. That's really what we're dealing with. The eternal communion, the mutual indwelling, the intimacy, the relationship of father and son. the glory that Christ had with His Father before the world began. And in the covenant, God is saying, I want to invite you into that fellowship. You remain a creature. You remain finite. But through union with Christ, I invite you in. We will make our home in you. This filial, this familial, this giving and receiving, this bond of union, and communion. But it continues. This bond of union and communion is in something. It is in mutual love and loyalty. The second component of our definition, in mutual love and loyalty. T. Desmond Alexander wrote a helpful book on the Pentateuch, and in that book, when he's talking about Deuteronomy, he says that the twin pillars of any good marriage are love, and loyalty. Without them, whatever formal structure you have, the marriage itself begins to wither and die. And so it is in God's covenant with us. And these two terms are really captured in one word, the Hebrew word chazeth, which means steadfast love or loyal love. And these two concepts appear paired together throughout the Psalter and also in the book of Deuteronomy. I'm going to read to you from Deuteronomy 7. Deuteronomy 7, verses 9 and 10, where it says, know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations, and repays to their face those who hate him by destroying them. He will not be slacked with the one who hates him. He will repay him to his face. And so on the one hand, we see God's initiative. He pours out unconditional love and loyalty upon his people. But note in that passage the mutuality. That then calls from us, it solicits from us, what? A reciprocal response of love and loyalty to God. God says, I love you, I'm faithful to you. And that calls from us as his spouse, as his bride, a reciprocal, a mutual response of love and loyalty to him. And this sense of commitment, this sense of obligation, this sense of vow, this oath, is so strong in the biblical narrative that it really has life and death intensity and significance. That's why when you have a divorce, it's the splitting up of two people who've been joined together like a living organism, and it feels like a kind of death. That's why, throughout the Bible, you have this, perhaps to you, mysterious phrase in the Hebrew. It says, to cut a covenant. That language of to cut a covenant takes us to Genesis 15, where God literally cuts a covenant with Abraham. And here we see life and death intensity in this commitment on full display. Because in Genesis 15, what does Abraham do? He takes animals, he cuts them in two, he puts one on one side, one on the other side, splits them up, sheds blood, and God himself, in a theophany, passes through the pieces. It sounds barbaric, it sounds tribal. What does it mean? It means this. When those animals have their bodies torn asunder and God passes through the parts, it means may the same thing happen to me if I break this vow. May I be torn asunder. May I be split in two. May I call down upon myself a maledictory oath. May I take upon myself all the curses of this covenant if I break it. That's why in Deuteronomy 30, Moses can say, I set before you life and death, choose life. That's the sort of commitment. That's how serious the loyalty and the love of God and his people is. It's life and death. And that's where it can be a little tricky at times. People talk about, is a covenant unconditional? Or is it conditional? Well, there's a sense in which there are always both aspects. There's always both aspects. There is the unconditional love of God poured out upon sinners whom he's chosen. That unconditional love solicits, it calls for a response of love and loyalty in return. And just to drive this home in two ways, think about Jesus. If you have doubts about whether there's a conditional aspect to the covenant, Jesus, as the second Adam, kept all the conditions of the covenant as they are expressed in God's law for you. Of course, the covenant has a conditional aspect, and Jesus has kept all the conditions. And you may not feel comfortable calling this a condition, but there's also Equally true, the fact that individual believers, we participate in the blessings of the covenant. We enjoy its privileges in the way of faith and obedience, in the way of imperfect but sincere love and loyalty. Thomas Boston did not want to call faith a condition of the covenant. He stressed it's an instrument. But it's still true that without holiness, we shall not see the Lord. And without faith, it's impossible to please God. Unless we believe God and rest upon Him, we will not possess the inheritance. And so at the end of the day, we're drawn to the image again of husband and wife. Unconditional love, with expectations, and obligations, and commitment. I love my wife. I'm called to love her unconditionally. I'm called to love her on days when I feel like it, and days that I don't. But at the same time, with that marriage relationship, is there not a sense of expectation, and obligation, and, in a right sense, duty? I think my wife expected me to remember it was Mother's Day today. And by God's grace, I remembered, and I did something special. If I hadn't, would she still have loved me? I hope so. But it would have hurt. It would have been a failure to meet expectations, obligations, and duties within this relationship. And so we realize that these things really come together. and kiss each other in the covenants. Unconditional love with expectations and obligations, which Christ has met for us, and then by his grace, by the power of his spirit, he assists us to walk in the way of love and loyalty. So we've seen a bond of union and communion, and mutual love and loyalty, third component, last component, sovereignly administered. Sovereignly administered. And here we're taken from the image of father and son, husband and wife, to finally Lord and servant. Sovereignly administered. Genesis 15, take you back to that image. Who passes between the pieces? What's the picture? Abraham is actually dead asleep. At that point, almost completely passive, and God himself walks between the pieces. He sovereignly administers, dispenses, establishes the covenant, and Abraham is totally unconscious. Yes, there's a mutuality, a reciprocity, a call for Abraham to believe the promises, but at the point of covenant initiation, God himself must sovereignly administer. And we see that not just in the image of Genesis 15, but in the language of Genesis 17, where God says, I will make a covenant. I will be to you a God and to your children. I will do this. And so we see there is a unilateral, a sovereign, a divine establishment, which is in keeping with the image of a Lord and a servant. So what is a covenant? Short definition, it's a sovereignly administered bond. It binds God to us and us to God and God does it. Larger definition, it's a bond of union and communion and mutual love and loyalty, sovereignly administered. It's a bond of union with Christ as our representative, by virtue of which we have communion with the triune God. It's maintained in the way of love and loyalty, with Christ himself doing it for us and doing it in us. And all of this as good Calvinists, is by God's sovereign administration and initiation. That is a covenant. So if someone asks you and you don't have much time, you can say, well, it's a bond sovereignly administered. And if you can remember, and you have another hour to explain and parse it all out. It's a bond of union and communion and mutual love and loyalty, sovereignly administered. And realize that as we deal with these things, we're not just trying to answer a definition on a test or trying to sound smart with our friends. We're trying to grow in covenant consciousness and awareness of who we are and who God is. And when we really get this, this impacts our prayer life. When you realize that God is your Father, you're going to come to Him as a child. And you're going to come with a sense of boldness. And when you realize that God is a Lord, a King, you're going to come with a sense of reverence and a sense of respect. It's going to impact the way you view worship. When you come to worship and you realize that you're meeting with God and having communion with God and the fellowship of his people, that will dramatically change the way you view worship. Lord willing, we're gonna see a baptism of my child soon, that we just had. And in that baptism, we'll see God formally binding himself to this child, but also calling for that child to be bound to him. When we understand what a covenant is, it impacts everything. We use those images of husband and wife, father and son, lord and servant. Well, you today, what are you? Are you husband? Are you a wife? Are you a father? Are you a mother? All of you are somebody's children. Are you an employer? Are you an employee? Begin to think about not just your relationship with God, but think about all of your relationships that you have across this church, across your neighborhood, across your workplace, think of them in terms of covenant. And as you do so, you'll learn more and more how to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. This is a covenant. I wish we had time for questions, but our time is gone, so I'm going to go ahead and close us in prayer, and we'll prepare for morning worship. Let us pray. Father, we come to you in the name of Jesus Christ, our representative, our mediator, and we thank you that in union with Jesus, we can call you Father. We can call Christ our elder brother. We can call the Spirit the bond of union and communion between us. Lord, we praise you. as an infinite creator, you have condescended to make covenant with us and with our children. Lord, by your grace and with your Spirit's help, help us to walk in all the ways of love and loyalty to you until we see you in the person of your Son, face to face. We ask all this in his name, amen.