A Word in Season: The Covenants of Promise (Ephesians 2:12)

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Do you have some great and glorious sense of the overarching trajectory of the

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Word of God? Do you understand how God has carried out his purposes of salvation from the very first, those purposes which are rooted in his eternal counsels, and begin to come to light in time and space in Genesis chapter 3 and verse 15, where there is that glorious promise, the diamond shining in the dung of the curse against the serpent and Satan, that the seed of the woman will come forth and bruise the head of the serpent.

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In Ephesians chapter 2 and verse 12, the apostle reminds the believers in Ephesus of the great privileges into which they have come.

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He wants them to remember that you, once Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision made in the flesh by hands, that at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

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But now, in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

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It's a glorious phrase in there, the covenants of promise, or perhaps more specifically, the covenants of the promise, those great acts of God, those determinations that he had made, those engagements of God with man, those sovereign acts by which the

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Lord purposed to bring about his great promise, so that having said that he would provide this champion for lost mankind, that by this series or succession of vehicles, these various covenants of the promise, the

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Lord God would be pleased to advance his saving purposes. And those covenants of the promise primarily had to do with the people of Israel.

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You've got the Noahic covenant. You've got the determination by God that he will no longer bring these judgments against the world in the way that he has, but will preserve things, a sort of a cosmic covenant by means of which things will be secured.

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The world will continue as God sustains it. And then in that world that God is sustaining, you've got the covenant that he makes with Abraham, and then with Moses, and then with David.

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You have this succession of promises, each one providing something else, zeroing in on some aspect, providing a framework, a structure within which

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God is carrying out his purposes. And the promise which comes to fulfillment in the new covenant is therefore preserved and endures all the way through.

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And those covenants belonged primarily to the old covenant people of God.

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But the new covenant in Christ is one that embraces both Jew and Gentile.

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And when the fullness of time had come, the purposes of God were gloriously accomplished in the person of his son,

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Jesus Christ. And so the non -Jews, the

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Gentile nations, the Ephesians, and many of us who'll be listening to these things today, we can say that, yes, once we were without Christ, aliens or strangers from the

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Commonwealth of Israel, strangers from the covenants of promise, we had no hope and we were without God in the world.

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But God was still working out his purposes. And now in Christ Jesus, even though once we were far off, we have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

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The blood of the new covenant, which was advanced and secured by the outworking of God's purposes all through history, have now been accomplished.

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And in Christ and by his blood, we are made children of God.

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He is our peace. And now the nations of the world, as well as the people of God under the old covenant are brought in together and reconciled not only to one another, but to God himself so that there is created this new humanity, this one great spiritual unity, the people of God, so that nothing else is allowed to divide or destroy that sweet reality.

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We praise God for that big picture. We praise him for that glorious accomplishment, for the covenants of the promise, which were his means of securing his great salvation, that all who trust in Christ might be brought together to him.