John 7:19-23 (The Christ Of The Covenants)

The Shepherd's Church

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There are many things in our English Bibles that weren't in the original manuscripts that we found.

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For instance, those John MacArthur study notes that many of you have. They weren't in there when

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Paul wrote it. The preface, the table of contents, the maps.

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Luke wasn't sketching out the map section as they were going on their journeys. That section was added later. Verse numbers, columns, cross references, spaces, punctuations, and even capital letters.

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None of that was in the original manuscript. Now, I gave you an example of this just so we could see what scripture looked like.

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Probably the most famous verse in America today is John 3 .16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

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Now this is great because we've got periods and spaces and capital letters. And all of that looks nice and pleasant to our eyes.

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But this is what it would have looked like in the ancient world. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

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And I accidentally added a period. I'm sorry for that. That would have been the entire

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New Testament. Line after line after line of letters spaced together.

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And we know why they did that. Because it was expensive to create these manuscripts.

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Paper was sparse. We've even had study that the

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Book of Romans, with this method of writing, was about the modern equivalent of about $10 ,000 just to produce it.

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So it was very expensive to make Bibles and they would have eliminated all of the unnecessary things and they would have crammed these texts together.

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But they're difficult for us to understand in an era when paper is plentiful and we just don't read this way.

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They wrote letters this way. They wrote correspondence this way. Everything that they wrote looked like this. And it would be very difficult for us to understand this.

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So what we have is we have a long tradition of scholars who've taken these original texts and they've studied them.

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And they've translated them, not only translating the words of the text into English, but also putting it in an

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English sort of way with all the English grammar so that you and I can understand it. With capital letters and with punctuations and with parentheses, for instance.

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And that's what I want to talk about just for a moment as we get started is the parentheses. A parentheses in English is for a couple different reasons, but in the

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Bible it's mostly to add additional information. So whenever you have someone who is speaking in a certain way and they want to add just a little bit of information that's extra, that's additional, that doesn't quite flow with the sentence, they'll add it in with parentheses.

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And I'll give you a couple examples of this in John, in John's Gospel. John 4, 9 says,

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Therefore the Samaritan woman said to him, that's Jesus, How is it that you, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a

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Samaritan woman? For the Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. You see it in parentheses. What the translators are saying here is that the woman's quote ends with the word woman.

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She's saying, how is it that you, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman? That's the end of her quote.

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And what the translators are keying us into is that John is the one who added this statement for our benefit.

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Because if you lived in Jerusalem or in the land of Judea in the first century, you would have known that Jews and Samaritans hated each other.

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But what if you were from Rome? Or what if you were from Galatia? Or what if you lived 2 ,000 years later and you don't exactly know all of the inner conflict between the

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Jews and the Samaritans? John added a statement for our benefit, additional information that our translators have put in parentheses.

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Does that make sense? Let's look at another example. John 6, 1.

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After these things, Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, or Tiberias.

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Now without the parentheses, that's a really confusing statement. Jesus either went to the Sea of Galilee or he went to the city of Tiberias or this place called

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Tiberias, which is a very nonspecific statement by John if there's no parentheses. But with the parentheses, we understand what

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John is saying. See, the Sea of Galilee was a Judean way or a Jewish way of saying the exact same sea that was known as the

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Sea of Tiberias to a Greek -speaking person. So John, who's writing, is writing to both

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Jew and Greek audience. He's saying Jesus went to the Sea of Galilee. And if you don't know what that means, it's the Sea of Tiberias.

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Because he wanted them to understand where the miracle happened. Now we can say that things that are inside of parentheses are supplemental information.

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They're not essential. When you get to heaven, God's not going to give you a quiz on which sea, according to the

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Greek -speaking audience that Jesus did these miracles at in John 6. It's supplemental. It's there for our help and it's there to guide us.

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But the passage that we're in today actually has a parentheses in it that I think is extremely important.

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And the reason that I wanted us to do a part two of this same passage this week is because I think that the parentheses there is so important that we need to take a moment to look at it.

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So if you will, turn with me to John 7, verses 22 through 23.

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And I want us to look at this particular parentheses that's there in the text.

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Jesus says, So the law of Moses will not be broken, you're angry with me because I made an entire man well.

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What Jesus is working at here is he's juxtaposing two covenants that are happening in real time.

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He's saying, you, if a man receives circumcision, that's the sign of Abraham's covenant in the

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Old Testament. If you, if a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath, that's the sign of the

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Mosaic covenant. So Jesus is comparing these two signs together and he's saying that one of them is more important than the other because one of them is getting ready to end.

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Jesus, and we learned this last week, the people were accusing Jesus of being a lawbreaker. Jesus proved that he was not a lawbreaker, that he was a law keeper.

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And Jesus is showing us that the entire Mosaic covenant is about to come to an end.

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And Jesus is going to open up for us a new covenant, the covenant of Abraham. Now before we get too involved in all of this, we have to stop where we're at.

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We have to go back into the pages of the Old Testament. I hope all of this will make sense at the end.

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This is about 10 sermons crammed into one. So I ask you to be patient with me. It's not like most books

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I read. Most books I read, you read three chapters and you could have just stopped reading because that's the book.

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This sermon could be a whole sermon series. So I hope that this makes sense as we go.

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We're going to go back into the Old Testament now, and we're going to examine what covenants are. And then at the end,

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I think we will see it. So let's pray, and then let's go back into the pages of the Old Testament. Lord, thank you so much that you're a covenant -making

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God. Lord, thank you from the very beginning of your word, you make covenants. You make promises with your people.

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And Lord, you're faithful in the fact that you always stay true to your promises. So Lord, I pray that as we examine these things today, that we would see how you are a covenant -faithful

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God. And Lord, that we would see what Christ is actually doing in this passage that is so glorious that we had to take an entire week to look at a parenthesis.

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In Jesus' name, amen. What is a covenant? We talk too little about covenants in the

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American church, or in church in general. We talk too little about it. What is a covenant? A covenant is a relational contract between two people who agree to do certain things.

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It's an agreement. So in the ancient world, I can give you some examples of covenants. A man and his neighbor would agree to sell their ox.

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One would purchase it, one would sell it. They would come up with terms, the stipulations. They would come up with blessings if the transaction worked out well.

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And they would come up with curses if the transaction worked out poorly. Like, I'll kill you if you sell me a fake cow or a sick cow.

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Seriously, these sections are in every covenant. And there are so many examples of human -to -human covenants that we could give.

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Marriage is a covenant. Marriage is a lifelong covenantal partnership between two people who are going to live together for the glory of God.

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And there will be great blessings if they do that. There will be curses if they don't. So there's human -to -human covenants.

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But what I want us to focus on today is the five major covenants of the Old Testament that are between God and man.

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Not between human -to -human, but between God and man. And I believe that the whole Old Testament story can be told through the lens of these five covenants.

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Now, before we begin, every single covenant has five different elements.

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So if you were to reduce a covenant down to a piece of paper and say, What five things must be in every single covenant?

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The five things are, and these are biblical things. It must be transacted on a mountain.

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That's a shocking one. We'll show how that works. It must have stipulations between the two parties that they agree to follow.

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It must have a well -defined set of blessings that will happen if they follow the stipulations.

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It must have specific curses that will happen if you do not follow the stipulations.

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And it must have a sign that proves that it's true. Those are the five covenantal elements.

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Now, the first covenant was made between God and Adam. And I told you already that it has to start on a mountain.

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And you're thinking, my goodness, but Eden doesn't start on a mountain. Oh, wait just one second. Let's look at what it says in the

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Bible. Does Eden actually begin on a mountain? I think it does. Genesis 2, 8 through 10 says,

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Then the Lord God planted a garden towards the east in Eden. And there he placed the man whom he had formed.

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Out of the ground the Lord God caused every tree to grow that is pleasing to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was also in the midst of the garden, the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

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And a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden. And from there it divided and became four rivers.

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Well, rivers don't flow out of lower elevation. They flow out of higher elevation.

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So Eden, at a minimum, right now, we can say that it was a higher elevation than the surrounding regions. It was at least a hilltop.

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And I think it was a mountain. So let's keep going. Ezekiel in the prophets says this in chapter 28, 13 through 14.

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You were in Eden, the garden of God. Every precious stone was your covering. The ruby, the topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, and onyx, and jasper, the lapis lazuli, the turquoise, and the emerald, and the gold, the workmanship of your settings and sockets was in you.

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On the day you were created they were prepared, and you were anointed cherub who covers, and I placed you there.

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You were on the holy mountain of God. You walked in the midst of the stones of fire.

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You were in Eden, the holy mountain of God. Isn't that interesting? Have you ever heard that Eden was on top of a mountain?

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There it is. Revelation 21 .10 and Revelation 22 .1 make this clear as well.

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21 .10 says, And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great high mountain. And he showed me the holy city

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Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. And he showed me a river of life, or water of life, clear as crystal, coming from the throne of God and of the

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Lamb, and in the middle of its street. On either side of the river was the tree of life bearing twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit every month.

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The leaves of the tree were there for the healing of the nations. This is John's picture of what heaven is going to look like, and heaven looks a lot like the garden of Eden.

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The tree of life is there, the river that's flowing out of it is there, and it's on a great high mountain. I think

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God is saying that mountains are important to the story of the Bible, and we'll see how this works out.

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Let me just give you a brief explanation of why this is true. In the ancient world, when you look up to the heavens and you pray to God, a mountain would seem the closest place on earth to God.

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So you would go up to the mountains to worship Him. All of the idolatry that happens in the

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Old Testament happens in a high place. Because they put their worship temples and their altars and their pagan statues on top of mountains.

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Worship in the Old Testament just happens on mountains, and God draws up His very first covenant with man on a mountain called

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Eden. That's the first thing. God wrote His covenant with Adam in a garden mountain.

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The second part of a covenant is the stipulations. What is God requiring

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His covenant partner to do? He says to Adam, you can eat of any tree in the garden except one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

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That's the stipulation. God created Adam to be in relationship with Him. God created

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Adam to walk with Him. God was promising certain things to Adam, but the one thing that Adam could not do is eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

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That's the stipulation of the covenant. Now, if Adam obeyed that,

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Genesis 128 says that he would be fruitful. That's the blessing of the covenant. He would be multiplied.

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That's a blessing. He and Eve would spread out to the ends of the earth, and they would have lots of children, and those children would have children, and eventually the whole world would be filled with worshipers.

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That's a blessing. So the blessings of the covenant, if they obeyed it, was a global humanity who loved and worshiped

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God to the ends of the earth. Now, what if they disobeyed? This is the curses of the covenant. If you disobey in that day, you will surely, and the curses were very interesting because they died instantly spiritually, and eventually they died physically.

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They experienced death two ways. Spiritual death so that they could no longer know God, that was the ultimate curse of the covenant.

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It wasn't that they were gonna die. It's that they can't know God. God covenanted with them to be with them and be their

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God and be in relationship with them, and the punishment for breaking that covenant was not just death.

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It was removal of God's presence so that they could no longer know him. The sign of this covenant is the

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Sabbath. Every seventh day, God says, God's given them a tangible sign.

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He's given them a sign to show them how they are to live their life. He's given them a sign to show them how he did it.

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He created the world in six days, and then he rested on the seventh. So that's the sign of this covenant, and that's the sign that Adam and Eve, every seventh day would have celebrated, and they would have worshiped

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God, and they would have said, praise God for such a wonderful relationship that he's given us on this garden mountain.

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Now, I don't even know if they made it to their first Sabbath. The Bible doesn't tell us that, but I know that they broke the commands.

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They broke the stipulations of the covenant, and because they broke the stipulations of the covenant, instead of the blessings of the covenant, they inherited the curse, and in that curse, they fell.

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They fell relationally with God. They fell out of God's presence, and as a result, all of us, as children of Adam and Eve, have fallen out of relationship with God as well.

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You see, the curse and the blessing didn't just affect them. It affected all people.

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It was a universal covenant. Now, as a result of this, instead of Adam and Eve being fruitful and multiplying and spreading out to the ends of the earth, they ate the wrong fruit.

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They didn't multiply. They were divided against each other whenever they were blaming each other for their own sin. They were cast off the mountain of God, and then right after this happens,

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Cain, you see, killing his own brother. We see humanity falling into deeper and deeper types of sin.

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We see the sin multiplying instead of God's presence multiplying so severely that by the time of Genesis 9, where God is gonna make a new covenant with Noah, it says that God regretted that he even made human beings in the first place because sin, it said, had multiplied over the face of the earth.

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So then we get to the covenant of Noah, which is an act of grace by God, if you think about it.

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God didn't have to make a new covenant with humanity. He could have left them in their sin. He could have left them in their rebellion, and he would have been perfectly just and holy to do that, but yet God is not finished with humans.

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So he comes and he makes a covenant with Noah. Now, he does destroy the world. He washes it with a global flood, with water, and guess what happens next.

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As soon as Noah's boat strikes land, it's on top of a mountain, the mountain of Ararat, where God began his second covenant.

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The stipulations of this covenant were that God was not gonna ask anything from Noah whatsoever.

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This is one of those covenants where there are no stipulations for the human. God himself is the one who takes on the stipulations, and he says in Genesis 9 -11,

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I will establish my covenant with you, and all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood, neither shall there ever again be a flood to destroy the earth.

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So God is the one who's making the stipulations, and he's the one who's gonna keep the stipulations. If there's blessings in this covenant, then

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Adam or the Noah would be fruitful. He would multiply. He would do all of the things that were already true for humanity, but if the curses were to fall, they would not fall on Noah.

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They would fall on God. God hung his bow. Think about it. A rainbow is in the shape of a warlike object, a bow.

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And if you look at the way that the bow is pointed, it's not pointed at us. It's pointed back at God. God's saying if he did not fulfill the covenant that he made with Noah, he would be pierced.

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We know ultimately that that ends up happening in Christ, but that is the covenant that God is making. The sign, of course, is the rainbow.

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Now, what happened? Noah lived all of his life blamelessly. He never sinned again, and he was so thankful to the

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Lord. It says that Noah was a farmer, which means he's a man of the soil, just like his father,

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Adam. Adam, who ate the tree of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, and when he ate that fruit, became naked and ashamed.

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Noah planted fruit in the ground, drank the fruit through wine, and became naked and ashamed. He's having the same thing happen to him that happened to Adam.

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Even so much as so, Adam's son, Cain, was cursed. Noah's son,

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Canaan, was cursed. The sin of humanity is so deep in us, we can't help but sin, even if God does extraordinary things, like a global flood.

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Human beings, instead of gathering on a mountain to worship God, they assemble in the plains, in a place called

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Babel, and they make this massive tower, because they're not gonna climb up to the mountain of God to know

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God. They're gonna build a tower to be like God, very similar to what Satan does.

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He ascends to try to be like God, and in that tower, God comes down. It says that, this is such a humorous statement.

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Whenever you read it, I hope you see the humor in this. It says that God had to come down to see it.

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That's how insignificant their little anthill was, that God had to come down in order to see it.

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And when God comes down to see this great statue that they had built to their own idolatry, he confuses them.

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He confuses their language, and he causes them to babble. Now, what's interesting about this is that the command originally was to be fruitful, multiply, and spread out to the ends of the earth.

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They refused to do that. They gathered together in one place instead of scattering, so God forced them through their incoherent babbling to scatter and to do what he had told them to do.

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Nations began forming there because different languages were present, and in one of those nations was a nation named

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Ur where God started his third covenant. And he started his third covenant with a man named

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Abraham, or Abram. And he called him out of the land of Ur, and he called him to the land of Israel, and that was

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God's method of now restarting this covenantal structure. God's not finished with humans.

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He's going to make a new covenant. Now, most covenants, like I said, begin on a mountain.

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Abraham's covenant will end on a mountain, so we'll see that in just a moment, but let's look right now at the stipulations of this covenant.

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Abraham was called first and foremost to leave his land, to leave the land that he had grown up in.

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He was called to go wherever God told him to go, and he was called to walk blamelessly, like we talked about earlier, before his

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God. So the first day of Abraham's relationship with God is leave your home, sell all your property, go to where I'm telling you, and do it right now.

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And the theme of Abraham's life is not perfection. It's he believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.

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So he believed God, and he left his land, and he was certainly blessed. The blessings of the

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Abrahamic covenant is because he believed God. It was counted to him as righteousness, a human being who could not stop sinning, like we've talked about.

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Adam couldn't stop sinning. Noah couldn't stop sinning. Abraham, he sells his own wife to a wicked ruler and says, oh, it's my sister.

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That's not, he's not husband of the year when he does that. But yet for this man who could not stop sinning,

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God himself was being gracious to say, if you believe me, I will count it to you as righteousness.

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This is what God says in Genesis 12, 2 -3. And I will make you into a great nation.

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And I will bless you and make your name great. And you shall be a blessing.

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And I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse you, and the one who curses you

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I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. So the covenant that God is making with Abraham is if you will believe me, and you will trust me,

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I will use you to not just be a great nation, I will bless you to be a father of many nations, and from you the entire world will be blessed.

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Think about this whole worldwide paradigm that we've seen. Adam and Eve were told to spread out to the ends of the earth and be a blessing.

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Noah was told to spread out to the ends of the earth and be a blessing. Abraham, now God is promising that, I know you can't do that,

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Abraham, so I'm gonna guarantee that it's gonna happen, that you will bless the world. Worldwide blessing will come out of the covenant of Abraham.

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Now what I find so fascinating about this is that in Noah's covenant, he wasn't required to do anything.

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God was gonna do everything. Abraham was required to believe, but the curses would not fall on him.

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This is the only covenant where the curses don't fall on the human being. God himself is gonna take the curses upon himself.

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I wanna show you this. God is gonna promise him to make him a huge family.

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God is gonna do this when Abraham himself was like 90 years old. His wife was well past childbearing.

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Think about the pressure it would be to say, gosh, I don't know if this God is true or not. This is what

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God says. Chapter 15, Genesis. After these things, the word of the

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Lord came to Abraham in a vision, saying, do not fear, Abraham, I am a shield to you, and your reward shall be very great.

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But Abraham said, Lord God, what will you give me since I am childless? I want you to know something. Between Genesis 12 and Genesis 15, there's about 10 years.

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God made promises to Abraham 10 years ago, and none of them have happened yet. It's an obvious question.

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God, what are you gonna give me? I was 80, now I'm 90. My wife clearly is beyond the age of giving birth to any children.

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What can you give me, God? He says, Lord God, what will you give me since I am childless?

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And the heir of my house is Eleazar of Damascus. And Abraham also said, since you have given me no son, one who was born in my house shall be my heir.

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And then behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, this man shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir.

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The covenant with Abraham is that he was gonna be a great nation. You can't be a great nation if you don't have a single child.

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You can't be a massive worldwide family if you have no kids. It kind of starts there.

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So Abraham's like, let me get this guy in my house. I'll make him my heir. God says, no.

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And he took him outside and he said, I want you, and he said to him, so shall be your, oh,

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I skipped, I'm sorry. I'm getting excited. And he took him outside and said, now look toward the heavens and count the stars if you are able to count them.

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And he said to him, so shall your descendants be. And then he believed in the Lord and God credited to him as righteous.

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This is the second time he's believed the Lord and it was credited to him as righteousness. And he said to him,

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I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you the land to possess it.

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But he said, Lord God, how can I know that I will possess it? I mean, I think he was probably looking around and saying there's big nations with a lot of people, and God, I still don't have a kid.

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Then the Lord said to him, bring me a three -year -old heifer, a three -year -old female goat, a three -year -old ram, a turtle dove, a young pigeon.

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And then Abraham brought all of these things to him and he cut them in two and he laid each half opposite each other, but he did not cut the birds.

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This is a strange passage. If I make a deal with someone today,

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I'm not cutting any animals in half. That's just, that's not happening. Maybe if we go to a steakhouse,

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I'll cut some animals then, cooked. Just saying.

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I'm not vegan. In those days, what would happen is if you made a deal with someone, especially someone of exceeding authority, like a king, then that covenant would require cutting an animal in half laterally like this.

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And you'd put one half of the animal on this side and you'd put one half of the animal on this side and you would create sort of a walkway or a pathway where you would walk through it together.

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You and the other person would walk through this pathway together and the clear and the obvious point of this is that when you look down and you see the severed animal, you are realizing that if you're unfaithful to the terms of the covenant, then you are gonna end up just like that animal.

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You will be the one that's split in half. During Abraham's time, this is how they did covenants, especially important ones.

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Now it says, And the birds of prey came down upon the carcasses and Abram drove them away.

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Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram. That word deep is the exact same word used in Genesis where God puts

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Adam in a deep sleep and he pulls his wife out of him through his rib. So covenant is happening right now.

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And behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him just like chaos fell upon creation. See the parallels?

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Then God said to Abram, Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed for 400 years.

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That's an interesting message to wake up to. But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many possessions.

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As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You will be buried at a good old age.

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Then in the fourth generation, they shall return here. Your people, he doesn't even have a son yet.

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Your people are gonna come back here. And now it came about when the sun set that it was very dark.

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And behold, a smoking oven and a flaming torch appeared which passed between these pieces. And then the

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Lord made a covenant with Abraham. What's happening here is that before Abraham could get to his feet,

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God himself, this is called a theophany, which means God is appearing in the form of something, a smoking oven and a fire pot.

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Before Abraham could get to his feet, God by himself walked through the split animal pieces.

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And Abram is probably looking with bewilderment. How is this possible? God is essentially saying,

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Abraham, you can trust me. You're gonna have a son, and your son's gonna have sons, and you're gonna be a mighty nation.

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And if that does not come true, may I be ripped apart. That's what

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God is saying. If I don't follow through on what I've promised you, Abraham, may I be ripped to shreds.

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Talk about a promise from God. I'm not requiring you to do anything. Sit down, live in your sort of after -nap haze.

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We all know what that's like on Sunday. And watch me be the one who enacts this covenant for you.

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Watch me be the one who makes the promise that if I don't fulfill this, I will be ripped apart. It's unbelievable.

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Unbelievable promise from God. In Genesis 17, this is one of the only covenants that spreads out over decades of time and one of the only covenants that spreads out over multiple chapters.

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So the covenant of Abraham really happens in Genesis 12 and Genesis 15 and Genesis 17 and Genesis 22.

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All of the five elements are scattered through those four or five chapters. The sign that all of these things are gonna come true is the sign of circumcision.

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This is what it says in Genesis 17. Now, when Abraham was 99 years old, the

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Lord appeared to Abraham and said, I am God Almighty. Walk before me and be blameless.

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I will make my covenant between me and you and I will multiply you exceedingly. Abraham still doesn't have a son yet, by the way.

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It's like 20 years into God's promises. Abraham fell on his face and God talked with him saying, ask for me, behold, my covenant is with you and you will be the father of a multitude of nations.

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No longer shall you be called Abraham, which means father of one nation. Your name shall be

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Abraham because you will be the father of many nations. For I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.

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I will make you exceedingly fruitful. She hearkens back to the promise

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God made to Adam. I'll make you fruitful and multiply you. God's repeating these same promises in all of his covenants.

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And I will make nations of you and kings will come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your descendants after you throughout their generations as an everlasting covenant.

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Say that, everlasting covenant. That means as long as the earth is spinning, this covenant applies.

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This covenant never ends. It says, I will be their

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God. God says further to Abraham, now as for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout their generations.

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This is my covenant, which you shall keep between me and you and your descendants after you. Every male among you shall be circumcised and you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskin and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you.

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So here we have all of the elements of the covenant are coming together just like the rainbow was the sign of God's covenant with Noah.

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Sabbath was the covenant sign of the covenant with Adam. Now there's this really interesting, intimate sign for the covenant with Abraham.

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So much so that I think this is the reason probably why we don't talk about it because we came, we're in New England, we came from the

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Puritan era and this might be a hard topic to talk about, what circumcision is.

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We talked about it a little bit last week. Circumcision is when an eight -year -old boy, only a boy, there's no gender confusion in the ancient world, only a boy, the flesh of his foreskin is cut off, discarded and it's meant to symbol the fact that God is going to give him a new flesh.

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Now, think about why this is such an intimate symbol. Abraham has no child, he's 99 years old, his wife is in her 90s, they have no child and God is not going to do what he does with Jesus where he supernaturally creates a pregnancy out of a virgin woman.

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He's going to do a miracle through the natural processes of wedded union. So Abraham is circumcised, the sign of the covenant.

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He goes into his tent and I don't need to explain marriage to you, he shares the sign of the covenant with his wife and in that natural union, they celebrate the sign of God's covenant together and in that, a child is going to be born.

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God is going to fulfill his covenant through this simple sign and what I find so fascinating about it is that every male child afterwards, this miracle was so significant that they were going to all have that same sign applied to them throughout all generations because one of the things that we don't have time to get into, again, this could be 10 sermons, is that this covenant promises that Abraham will have a seed.

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It doesn't promise that Abraham's going to have, that he's going to have many seeds at the heart of why this covenant is a blessing to the earth is a single heir that's going to come from Abraham and it's not

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Isaac and it's not Jacob and it's not Judah and it's not David. It's eventually going to be seen that Jesus Christ is the true seed of Abraham and he's going to do what this covenant says and that he's going to have a family that blesses the nations.

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You and I exist today as the family, the church of Jesus Christ, the seed of Abraham who are now existing to bless the nations.

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So this symbol is important and it showcases the radical grace that God gives to this elderly man named

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Abraham. Now remember I said that every covenant is enacted on a mountain.

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Abraham's finishes on a mountain. This is what it says in Genesis 22. Now it came to pass after these things that God tested

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Abraham. So Abraham now has had his child. That's Genesis 21. The child was circumcised just like God said.

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He believed God, it's credited to him as righteousness. There's about 13 years gap, 15 years gap.

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However old you think Isaac was, in Genesis 22 he's now a teenager, Isaac the son of promise.

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And he said, take your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah.

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That's modern day Jerusalem. That's a mountain by the way. And offer him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which

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I will tell you. So Abraham got up early in the morning and saddled his donkey. Gosh, I wish we had many more weeks.

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Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem. Abraham rode a donkey to the same mountain that was gonna be Jerusalem. This is, it's amazing.

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And the two of his young men with him and his son Isaac and he split wood for the burnt offering and set out and went to the place which

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God had told him. On the third day, you hear that?

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Abraham raised his eyes and he saw the place from a distance. And then Abraham said to his young men, stay here with the donkey and I and my boy will go over there and we will worship and we will what?

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We will return to you. Abraham's already showing that he believes God's promise that this child, even if killed on that mountain, will resurrect from the dead.

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Because God has already walked through the severed animal parts. He's already made promises through this covenant sign called circumcision.

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He knows that both of them are gonna come back and that God is not capricious and mean that God is true to his word.

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Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and he laid it on his son Isaac. And he took in his hand the fire and the knife so that the two of them walked together.

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Isaac spoke to his father and he said, my father, and he said, here I am, my son. And he said, look, the fire and the wood, but where's the lamb for the burnt offering?

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Abraham said, God will provide for himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son. So the two of them walked on together and then they came to the place on which

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God had told them. And Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood. And he bound his son

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Isaac and laid him on the altar on the top of the wood. And Abraham reached out with his hand and he took the knife to slaughter his son.

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But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven and said, Abraham, Abraham. And he said, here

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I am. He said, do not reach out your hand against the boy and do not do anything to him for I now know that you fear

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God. Three times he's believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Since you have not withheld your son, your only son.

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Then Abraham raised his eyes and look and behold behind him was a ram caught in the thicket by its horns.

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And Abraham went and he took the ram and he offered it up as a burnt offering in the place of his son. And Abraham named that place the

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Lord will provide. And it is said to this day on the mountain of the

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Lord will that be provided. Then the angel of the

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Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven and said, by myself I have sworn declares the

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Lord because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son. Indeed, I will greatly bless you. And I will greatly multiply your seed as the star seed singular, as the stars of the heavens and as the sand, which is on the seashore and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies.

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And in your seed, all the nations of the earth shall be blessed because you have obeyed my voice. So Abraham returned to his young man and they got up and they went together to Beersheba and Abraham lived in Beersheba.

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Now let's just take a moment and let's just explore the obvious. Jesus is all over this covenant.

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He says, I want you to move to the land which I have shown you, the land of promise. And he does it and he's blessed.

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And then he sees this moment where the animal is ripped apart and he walks between the, he sees God walking between the animal parts.

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And that sign is showing that God himself would bear the symbol of the curse if God was not going to accomplish what he said he was going to accomplish.

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Look at what happened to Jesus on the cross. On the cross, he bore our curse.

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He was ripped apart like an animal, whipped like any old animal.

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He was put on the cross, bleeding with open wounds and cuts. He did that for us. He took our curse so that we could be made well.

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On the mountain of Jerusalem, the same mountain that Isaac was going to be sacrificed and God says, no, the father said, do not strike your one and only son.

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God, the father in Jesus Christ did not withhold his hand. His hand of wrath came down on his one and only son, his one and only son on the third day.

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And because of what God did to Jesus Christ, now we can be made just like Abraham, friends with God.

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We can be declared righteous. Abraham himself can be declared righteous because of what

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Christ did on the cross. And on the third day, he rose from the dead. All of the events of Abraham's life point forward to Jesus, who on a mountain hill called

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Calvary was crucified for our redemption. Every part of this covenant is bound up in Christ.

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The stipulations, the blessings, the cursings, the mountain, all of it. Now I want you to tuck

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Abraham away just for a moment because here's what happens in the story of the

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Old Testament. God wasn't ready to send his one and only son. So Abraham lived a long life and he died.

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God repeated the promises to Isaac. Isaac lived a long life and he died. God repeated the promises to his son

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Jacob. Jacob lived a long life and he died. And then God set aside 12 sons from Jacob who would be the nation of Israel.

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And the nation of Israel would end up going down to Egypt because of a great famine and they would find themselves enslaved because as Exodus...

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Now we turn the page to the second book of the Bible. We've done 50 chapters so far. Isn't that amazing? Exodus 1, it says, and the people of Israel were fruitful and they multiplied.

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God's hand of blessing was on them. And then Pharaoh gets nervous and he gets scared and he says, I need to do something about these

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Israelites because eventually they're going to grow so big that they're going to completely overpower me and our empire. So they put

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Israel in slavery. And the Israelites cry out to God and say, God, deliver us from our slavery.

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And God sends Moses, the mediator figure, who brings them out of the land of Egypt, brings them through the

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Red Sea. And where do they end up? At a mountain, the mountain of Sinai. And at the mountain of Sinai, they get the stipulations for the covenant.

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God gives the people the law so that they will be a holy people. God gives the people a tabernacle so that they can live in the presence of God.

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God gives the people sacrifices so that if they fall short in their devotion, they can be forgiven on a temporary basis.

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God gives them priests that are going to represent them before God. God gives them a tabernacle where they can do all of this stuff.

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All of these things were temporary solutions. Remember, Abraham's covenant is everlasting.

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So Moses' covenant was never meant to be an everlasting covenant. It was meant to be a placeholder.

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It was meant to be a thing that held the people of Israel until Jesus came. And how rebellious they were.

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They didn't live according to the covenant. They didn't follow the laws of Moses. They didn't worship

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God rightly in the tabernacle and in the temple. Eventually, they had to get their own king, which is the final covenant.

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We won't go into it today. It's the covenant with David. But at every single point, the people of Israel did not follow this temporary covenant that God had given them called the

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Mosaic covenant. So by the time we get to John chapter 7, we've gone through all of this now, from Genesis to Malachi, the story of five covenants where God has promised that he's going to live with people, but they sinned.

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So because of their sin, he's going to choose a family called Abraham. And he's going to guarantee that it happens, not based off Abraham's obedience, on his obedience alone.

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And until that happens, he installed a temporary covenant that by the time we get back to John chapter 7, they worshipped the covenant instead of God.

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They worshipped their temple instead of God. They worshipped their sacrificial system instead of God. They loved their priest, and they loved their traditions, and they loved all of the trappings of the

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Old Testament religion. But when God in the flesh, the true seed of Abraham, showed up in their midst, they didn't know him.

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They didn't recognize him. They were more in love with their religion than they were with God. So in the time we have remaining,

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I want us to look back again at John 7, and I want us to see what Christ is signaling to us.

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Remember a couple weeks ago, I said the times, they are changing in this passage. Moses' covenant is going away.

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Abraham's covenant is opening up, and that means something really significant for all of us in this room. So let's look at John 7.

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I promise, by the way, the introduction won't be in equal time to the sermon. The sermon's actually going to be short.

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Did God not give you the law? This is Jesus talking to people in the crowd. And yet none of you carries out the law.

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Why are you seeking to kill me? The crowd answered, you have a demon who is seeking to kill you.

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And Jesus answered them, I did one deed, and you were all astonished. For this reason,

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Moses has given you circumcision, not that it was from Moses, but from the fathers. And even on the Sabbath, you circumcise a man.

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As we saw last week, the people of Israel are accusing Jesus Christ of being a lawbreaker.

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They're accusing him of doing what should not be done so that Jesus, they were saying, deserved to die.

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But instead of Jesus being a lawbreaker, as we saw last week, he proved that he was a lawkeeper and that he was the only one and that he ultimately is the one who came to fulfill the covenant with Moses.

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And you ask yourself, how is he going to do that? Well, the beginning of John's gospel says that he came and he tabernacled among us.

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He's the one who brought back the presence of God to earth outside of the temple. Jesus walking in Jerusalem was

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God's presence unbound from the temple. He's coming to set the law of Moses free.

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He lived every minute of his life in obedience to God, perfectly fulfilling the demands and the stipulations in the law of Moses.

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He died on the Passover as the Passover lamb, showing that he is a better sacrifice, so the

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Mosaic covenant is no longer necessary. He died as a true high priest, mediating a better covenant with you and I, so there's no more need for a high priest.

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Jesus on a mountain in Jerusalem worked out a new covenant for you and I, and that new covenant was, believe and it will be counted to you as righteousness.

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Do you hear how that's Abrahamic? We're going back to the Abrahamic covenant, believe God and it will be counted to you as righteousness.

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What's the blessings of the covenant? If you believe, you'll have eternal life. The greatest blessing that's ever been offered to human beings.

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What's the curse of the covenant? If you don't believe in Jesus, you'll spend an eternity in hell.

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What's the sign of the covenant? The Lord's Supper and Baptism. Every single week we gather together around the table of grace and we celebrate the broken body and blood of Jesus Christ at the table.

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When we baptize people in this church, which hasn't happened yet, but I pray that's gonna happen. When we baptize people in this church, we are participating in the death, burial, and resurrection of the body through Jesus Christ.

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Jesus is bringing a superior covenant. He's finished with the Mosaic covenant.

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He's shown in the verse with the parentheses. Calvin, will you throw it up? Not because it's from Moses, but it's from the fathers.

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He's signaling and foreshadowing that their covenant's not enough. That he has to bring a better covenant, the covenant he's gonna fulfill, the covenant of Abraham.

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And let's just finish with this. How does that apply to you and I? If you're a Christian today and you believe God, it's been credited to you as righteousness.

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Don't believe any longer that you're still living under a curse because you are not. Jesus Christ did what the law demanded that you could not do, and because of that, now you are set free.

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You've got the blessings of Christ poured out upon your head so that you are no longer cursed. You are righteous if you're in Christ.

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If you're not in Jesus Christ, that is when you need to worry. And that is when you need to repent and turn to Jesus because you cannot save yourself.

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The Mosaic law proves it. If you're not in Jesus, you're bound to the law. And if you're bound to the law, you can't obey it.

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And if you can't obey it, you'll die and go to hell. You have to have a mediator. You have to have Jesus. You have to have the one who fulfilled the law for you.

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And think about it this way. This is the last point I'll end with. God chose Abraham to be a family that would bless the world.

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What is the church? The church is the chosen family of God that's to live under the blessing and the canopy of Jesus Christ who leave this place and scatter to the nations and bring the gospel blessing to the world.

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That is who we are. So when we talk about end times theology, for instance, we're not talking about a pessimistic theology where the world's gonna continue to get worse and continue to get worse and continue to get worse until Jesus just comes and rescues us out of it.

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No, we are the church. We are the people of God. We are the people who've been given the blessings of God and we are the people who are to take the blessings of God to the world.

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We cannot be silent. We cannot be stagnant. We cannot be lazy about that. We must do what

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God has told us to do because Christ did everything for us. Amen? Let's pray. Lord, I know that one sermon is just not enough to dive into all that we tried to cover today.

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But Lord, I do pray that a couple things would stick with us. That you're a covenant -making

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God who gives covenants to your people and you don't break your promises. And that the covenant you gave with Moses has now been finished.

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We are not required to keep the law perfectly. We can't. Only Christ can do that.

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And Lord, I pray that we would understand who we are now in Christ. We're the blessed children of Abraham who are to go out to the ends of the earth sharing the gospel.

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Lord, I pray that we would have an optimistic view of the church. Lord, I pray that we would have a passion for the church as God's unique family.

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Lord, I pray that this little church would be a family. That we wouldn't be just an event where we gather.

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That we would be a body of people who love one another, who care for one another, and who share the light of Christ with the nations.

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Lord, I pray that we have seen those things and Lord, I pray that you would stir our hearts for these things in Christ's name.