A Unilateral or Bilateral Covenant?

Grab a Bible, something to write with, and we're going to get started. We'll note that last week we didn't get too far. Our text launched us into a conversation that seems to have taken up most of the class.

So we'll do a little bit of review as to what we read last week that was so inspiring as far as our conversation is concerned. But let's pray and then we'll get started. Eternal God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, grant us your Holy Spirit who writes the preached word into our hearts, so that we may receive and believe it, and be gladdened and comforted by it in eternity.

Glorify your word in our hearts, make it so bright and warm that we may find pleasure in it, and through your inspiration think what is right. By your power, fulfill the word, for the sake of Jesus Christ your Son, our Lord.

Amen. Alright, standard operating procedure. Were there any questions that popped up in your mind as a result of the sermon? Either it was too confusing and you guys were being polite, or I was really crystal clear and somehow it stuck the line.

The work on the apparatus was a little jittery, but that's okay. We're back in Exodus 23 today, Exodus 23. Verse 23, we'll pick up where we started last week and then keep moving forward. We were talking about idolatry and how God himself does not permit idolatry, and does not consider worship of men through false gods to actually be worship, and that God's people are called to not be idolaters.

This is all first commandments, we'll have no other gods before me. Exodus 23 .23, when my angel goes before you and brings you to the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, the Hivites, the Jebusites,.

And of course you always have to throw in the Malaikites and the Amortites,.

And I've blot them out, you shall not bow down to their gods, nor serve them, nor do as they do, but you shall utterly overthrow them, break their pillars in pieces, you shall serve Yahweh your God, and He will bless your bread and your water, and I will take sickness away from among you.

Now note, this is a very important aspect of the Mosaic Covenant, is that the Mosaic Covenant is not a covenant of grace, it is a covenant of works. It is a bilateral, not a unilateral covenant. And so, God's blessings in the Mosaic Covenant are contingent.

So God has promised to take sickness away. The contingency though is, you have to obey me, and first commandment, first order of business, you worship other gods and serve them, I'm in no obligation to banish sickness.

So God has made conditions, prosperity, health, and other things like this, are promised in the Mosaic Covenant, but it's not a covenant of grace, it's a covenant of works, so they have to keep their end of the bargain.

And you're going to note then, that as we work through the other details of the Exodus, in the broader sense, not just in the book of Exodus, but like when we get into numbers, that the children of Israel in their wilderness wanderings, and you think of like the fall of Jericho, once they get into the promised land.

Fall of Jericho. The next battle was Ai, a small place. The children of Israel lost the first battle of Ai.

Why?

Why did they lose?

We're in Joshua, and I think we're going to be in chapter, maybe six. It's a great story by the way, the weirdest battle plan ever, and the archeology of Jericho is one of those things that is quite fascinating,.

It supports the biblical narrative.

But Joshua chapter six, Jericho was shut up inside and outside because of the people of Israel. None went out, none came in. Now this is at the tail end of their wilderness wandering. So they've crossed the Jordan, they're now in the promised land, and the first town to go is Jericho.

And there are certain things that they have to do with the first battle.

He says,.

See, I have given Jericho into your hand with its king and mighty men of valor. You shall march around the city, all the men of war, going around the city once. Thus shall you do for six days. Seven priests shall bear seven trumpets of ram's horn before the ark.

On the seventh day you shall march around the city seven times. And the priests shall blow the trumpets. And when they make a long blast of the ram's horn, when you hear the sound of the trumpet, then all the people shall shout with a great shout and the wall of the city will fall down flat.

And the people shall go up, everyone straight before him. So Joshua the son of Nun called the priests and said to them, Take up the ark of the covenant and let seven priests bear seven trumpets of ram's horn before the ark of the Lord.

And he said to the people, Go forward. March around the city. Let the armed men pass on before the ark of the Lord. And just as Joshua had commanded, The people, the seven priests, bearing seven trumpets of ram's horn before Yahweh, went forward, blowing the trumpets with the ark of the covenant of the Lord following them.

The armed men were walking before the priests who were blowing the trumpets, and the rear guard was walking after the ark while the trumpets blew continually. But Joshua commanded the people, You shall not shout or make your voice heard, neither shall any word go out of your mouth until the day I tell you to shout, then you shall shout.

So he caused the ark of Yahweh to circle the city, going about it once. And they came to the camp and spent the night in the camp. Day one. Then Joshua rose early in the morning, and the priests took up the ark of Yahweh, and the seven priests, bearing the seven trumpets of ram's horn before the ark of the Lord, walked on, and they blew the trumpets continually.

The armed men were walking before them, and the rear guard was walking after the ark of Yahweh while the trumpet blew continually. On the second day they marched around the city once, and returned to the camp, so they did for six days.

On the seventh day they rose early at the dawn of the day, and marched around the city in the same manner seven times. It was only on that day that they marched around the city seven times. And at the seventh time, when the priests had blown the trumpets, Joshua said to the people, Shout, for Yahweh has given you a city.

And the city, and all that is within it, shall be devoted to Yahweh for destruction. Only Rapha, the prostitute, and all who are with her in her house, shall live, because she gave the messengers whom we sent.

But you keep yourselves from the things devoted to destruction, lest, when you have devoted them, you take any of the devoted things, and make the camp of Israel a thing of destruction, and bring trouble upon it.

So you know, the fall of Jericho, everything is devoted to destruction. Nobody gets no plunder.

It's a terrible grammar, but you get the point.

You don't get to keep nothing. Everything devoted to destruction. And I would argue, that based upon what we see here, and considering the timeline, this is now the children of Israel triumphantly going into the promised land, that the fall of Jericho is, in type and shadow, a picture of Jesus' return.

This is a picture of the angels of God encircling the globe, and blowing their trumpets. You know, fast forward to the last day, that Christ will descend with the shadow of the archangel, with the trumps, with the trumpets, right?

So what we're seeing here, in type and shadow, is like a human reenactment, or dress rehearsal, for the day of judgment. And on that day, the whole earth is destroyed. And so you're going to note that there's a circling language there, circling the city, just like the planet itself is a big circle, ball in space.

So this is a type and shadow of what it looks like on the day of destruction. And the only people who survive, the only people who survive then, are Rahab and her family. She has a scarlet cord hanging out of her apartment,.

Which is built into the wall.

She is a prostitute. And her and her family, they survive. And because they gave the spies, they welcomed them into their house. So think of it this way. When a pastor, a preacher, or in the ancient world, the apostles, were sent out, they were like the spies, sent out to spy the promised land.

And when somebody receives them, and listens to them, and protects them, and hears them, and believes in the one God that they are bringing tidings from, that's like, you know, it's like what Rahab did with the spies.

You kind of get the picture. There's a connection then between the spies and the preachers of the Gospel today. So, you keep yourselves from the things devoted to destruction,.

So everything's got to go,.

Lest when you have devoted them, you take any of the devoted things, and make the camp of Israel a thing for destruction. But all the silver, the gold, every vessel of bronze and iron are holy to Yahweh, they shall go into the treasury of Yahweh.

City number one, everything belongs to God. So the people shouted, the trumpets were blown, as soon as the people heard the sound of the trumpet, the people shouted a great shout, the wall fell down flat, so the people went up into the city, every man straight before Him, and they captured the city.

And they devoted all in the city to destruction, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkeys with the edge of swords. But to the two men who had spied out the land, Joshua said, go into the prostitute's house, bring out from there the woman and all who belong to her, as you swore to her.

I love this picture, always worth pointing out. When you read the genealogies of Christ, and the New Testament, and the Gospels, guess whose name shows up in that list? Rahab the prostitute. Isn't that interesting?

Rahab the prostitute shows up. She was the mother of Boaz. And Boaz is the man who married Ruth. So keep that in mind.

So a good way to think of it then is that,.

Remember we're following the scarlet thread, the genealogy of Christ through the Old Testament. A good way to think about it is with the fall of Jericho, the prostitute becomes the bride of Christ. She marries the man who is the direct descendant of Jesus Christ.

She marries into the lineage. She marries the forerunner of the Messiah himself. So it's a beautiful picture, a type of shadow. And we learn all of this through the genealogies, as well as the story of Ruth and Boaz.

So go into the prostitute's house, bring out from there the woman and all who belong to her,.

As you swore to her.

And so the young men who had been spies went in and brought out Rahab and her father and mother and brothers and all who belonged to her.

And they brought all of her relatives.

And put them outside the camp of Israel. They burned the city with fire, everything in it, only the silver and the gold and the vessels and the bronze, finally put into the treasury.

Of the house of the Lord.

But Rahab the prostitute and the father's household and all who belonged to her, Joshua, stayed alive. And she lived in Israel to this day because she hid the messengers whom Joshua sent to spy out Jericho.

Joshua laid an oath on them that time, saying, cursed before Yahweh be the man who rises up and rebuilds the city of Jericho. At the cost of his firstborn, shall he lay his foundation.

At the cost of his youngest,.

He shall set up its gates. And this is fulfilled later in the Old Testament,.

By the way, somebody does decide to rebuild Jericho.

And it does cost him these things.

So Yahweh was with Joshua, his fame was in all the land. I mean, it just sounds like a total victory, the end, moving on to the next town.

See, there's a blood.

And the blood comes in chapter seven.

But the people of Israel broke faith.

In regard to the devoted things.

For Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah of the tribe of Judah,.

Took some of the devoted things in the anger of the Lord,.

Burned them against the people of Israel. Now, oh, whoa, whoa, hang on a second. Who's responsible, who did this? Achan, Achan, Achan did it. Who's being punished for his sin?

The whole people.

So this is what you kind of have to get about sin, is that no sin is committed by anybody in a vacuum. Achan is the only fellow, out of all of the people of Israel, one guy decided that he was gonna sin, and so all of the people of Israel are seen by God as having broken the covenant.

Now, this starts to create a magnitudinal factor when it comes to obedience. And remember, the Mosaic Covenant, the Mosaic Covenant is a covenant of words. And so as we're reading in Exodus about God saying, if you obey my voice, he's not talking about you as an individual,.

Or you as an individual,.

He's talking about you as a people, and if anybody among you as a people breaks this covenant, despite the fact that it's one individual, everybody will be seen as being disobedient to the Lord. Such is the nature, because God didn't make it with individuals.

This covenant is not made with individuals. This covenant is made with a group of people, the people of Israel, the descendants of Abraham.

So at any time,.

Could we say the children of Israel really, truly, perfectly obeyed all of the stipulations of this covenant? And that was not why it was given. It was given for a specific purpose. Now, I mention all of that for a reason, because if you ever watch Trinity Broadcasting Network, you look at somebody like a Benny Hinn, or a Kenneth Copeland, they will invoke passages of Scripture like we were reading in Exodus 23, where it talks about how, if you obey my voice, then I will banish sickness.

And so the issue here was, hang on a second here,.

That didn't work out right,.

I'm being speedy, and I want you to announce. So, so he says, I will take sickness away from among you, none shall miscarry or be barren, I will fulfill the number of your days. So all these promises, what they do, this is how the prosperity gospel works,.

And it's a false gospel. They say to you,.

God promises in Exodus, He promises in the book of Deuteronomy, He's going to take sickness away from you, He's going to make you prosperous, He's going to make your crops multiply, there will be no blight, or insects,.

Or diseases,.

Or mold,.

Or mildew, and you will fill out your days. See, this is what God wills for you. And they leave out all of the fine print. Number one, these promises were not made to you and I, these were promises that were made to the people of Israel, and they weren't promises.

They were God's part of a bilateral covenant that He promised to do His part, if they did their part. And their part required them to obey, and they don't. And so as you look at the history of the people of Israel, you get into the book of Judges now, after the conquering of Canaan by the Israelites in the book of Joshua,.

You get into the book of Judges,.

And it has this constant refrain, it's like every story kind of launches into a cycle that you keep hearing over and over and over again, all the way through, not just in Judges, but all the way through 1st and 2nd Samuel, 1st and 2nd Kings, 1st and 2nd Chronicles.

The people of Israel did what was wrong.

In the sight of the Lord.

They worshipped the Baha 'is,.

They sacrificed their children to Moab,.

They worshipped the starry host, they did this, they broke covenant. So God sold them into slavery to Midian, He sold them into slavery to the Hittites. And then God raises up a judge, and the judge is given the assignment of releasing them from slavery, becoming the hero who releases them from bondage.

He judges Israel for a short amount of time, and then the whole cycle starts again. And in the case of the monarchs.

Of the kingdom of Israel,.

David's your high watermark, and it just keeps tumbling down from there. And in the midst of their moral spiraling down, kind of culminating then into Babylonian captivity, Nebuchadnezzar conquering Israel and taking a remnant, only 10 of them lived,.

Through God's judgment,.

Into captivity in Babylon.

All during the spiral,.

God is sending prophets. Prophets like Isaiah, prophets like Micah and Amos, all of the Old Testament prophets, the major and the minor, these are the guys God has sent to make an appeal. Repent, God will forgive you.

Turn away from these worthless idols. These idols are nothing. This is their constant refrain. They're in a sense kind of like God's spokesmen calling them back into the covenant, calling them back to be forgiven, telling them of the mercy and grace of God,.

And what do they do?

No.

We want our idols.

What God says. Finally enough is enough.

And the last in that group then is Jeremiah, who wrote Jeremiah and the Lamentations. And Jeremiah is the guy who was given the unenviable task of preaching the word of God, and God told him ahead of time at his commissioning as a prophet that he would preach the word, and it would result not in their repentance, but the further bargaining of their hearts.

This is why we call him the weeping prophet.

He was sent out to preach the word and told that that word would not result in revival.

If it would result in God's judgment.

And on Jeremiah's watch, Nebuchadnezzar sacks Jerusalem.

He takes the people.

We don't even know how he died. We honestly do not know what happened to Jeremiah. Some people say he, after the fall of Jerusalem, he survived,.

And then he made it to Egypt.

There's something in the text.

That kind of hints at all that,.

But we don't know what happened to him. He just kind of disappears off the pages of history. So you kind of see the pattern there. So, Mosaic covenant, bilateral covenant, and then we'll do a little bit of cross-reference work here in the book of Galatians, which is vital.

The Purpose and Conditional Nature of the Mosaic Covenant

Galatians chapter three, Paul writing to the churches in Galatia, spends chapter three and four then explaining why the Mosaic covenant, why the law, why the Torah, what was the purpose that it was given.

You see, because the Judaizers in the time of the apostle Paul, they had come back into the churches that Paul had planted, and told the people in the churches, unless you are circumcised, you cannot be saved.

You have to keep Torah. You've got to keep the commandments of the Mosaic covenant. And watch what Paul does here. We'll start in chapter three because we want to grab our context. He says, oh foolish relations,.

Who has bewitched you?

It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified. So let me ask you this. Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law or by hearing with faith? What do you think the answer to the question is?

By hearing with faith. So are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit? And you're going to note here that the apostle Paul makes it clear when in his epistles he's talking about doing things by the Spirit, that is a synonymous phrase with believing by faith.

To do things by the Spirit is to believe by faith. Those are two synonymous phrases. And it doesn't mean that you're supposed to babble in coherently like so-called charismatics do.

That's not what it talks about here.

So are you so foolish, having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain? Indeed it was in vain. Does He who supplies the Spirit to you and work miracles among you do so by works of the law.

Or by hearing with faith?

Which is it?

It's the second, by hearing with faith. Just as Abraham believed God and was counted, or you can say credited,.

To Him as righteousness,.

So know then it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. And the Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify, now a big word there,.

Dikayaho,.

Justify means to declare righteousness. That's that phrase we keep coming back to. It's the judge putting the gavel down and saying, not guilty. That's what justify means. God who justified the Gentiles by faith, He preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, in you shall all the nations be blessed.

So then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. All who rely on works of the law are under a curse. Now, an important thing, it doesn't say all who obey the Ten Commandments are under a curse.

That's not what it says. It says all who rely on works of the law. Rely is to say, I'm saved by being a good boy. I'm saved by being a good girl. I'm saved by following the rules. You're relying on works of the law.

For your salvation. And everybody who is relying on works of the law, they're under a curse. For it is written, cursed be everyone who does not abide by all the things written in the book of the law and continually do them.

The Ten Commandments are not part of a checklist that you can say, okay, I've done it now. I've done my salvation. Who rely on them have to keep doing them and keep doing them and keep doing them. They're under a curse.

There's no freedom there.

Now it is evident. No one is justified before God by the law. Does it get any clearer than that? No one is justified before God by the law. Abraham wasn't.

David wasn't. Moses wasn't.

Nobody is justified before God by the law. For the righteous shall live by faith. The law is not of faith. Rather, the one who does them shall live by them. Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.

For it is written, cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree. So that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles. So that we might receive the promised spirit through faith. Not by works.

So to give a human example, brothers. Even with a man-made covenant, and you can say contract here. Deotheke could be a contract. Contract and covenant are kind of the same idea. Even with a man-made contract, no one annuls it or adds to it once it's been ratified.

In other words, once you have the contract signed and the ink is dry, you can't go back and change it. That's the idea. So to give a human example, even with a man-made contract, no one can annul it or add to it once it's been ratified.

Now the promises, they were made to Abraham and to his offspring, singular, Zerah. It does not say into offsprings, referring to many, but referring to one, and to your offspring. And that offspring, by the way, is Christ.

So this is what I mean. The law, the Mosaic covenant, which came 430 years after Abraham, does not annul a covenant that was previously ratified by God so as to make the promise void. For if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by the promise.

But God gave it to Abraham by a promise. You see how the argument is developing and unfolding. All who rely on works of the law under a curse, the law which was given 430 years after the promises were made to Abraham and salvation was promised to Abraham as a gift by grace through faith in the Abrahamic covenant, which was not a bilateral covenant, it was a unilateral.

God promising everything. Abraham was sound asleep while God walked between the split pieces of the animals in that covenant. God is the one making the promises. And so that covenant cannot be overthrown by the Mosaic covenant.

So this is why we as Christians, because Paul teaches us to do this here in Galatians as well as Romans, the covenant that we look to as the precursor to the new covenant that we are in, is the Abrahamic covenant and that covenant is a covenant of grace purely as a gift based on the promises of God and Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness.

Which means Abraham was saved by grace through faith. David was saved by grace through faith. Moses was saved by grace through faith.

Joshua, the same.

Then you get to all of the good kings of Israel, Hezekiah and others, they were saved by grace through faith. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, saved by grace through faith because the Mosaic covenant could not overturn the Abrahamic covenant.

Which then begs the question, okay, God, we get it. The Abrahamic covenant cannot be added to or taken away from and salvation is given as a promise, as a gift by you in the Abrahamic covenant. So why'd you give the Mosaic covenant?

What's the purpose of that thing? Because nobody was keeping it and it seemed like quite a burden to those who were under it or who were in it. That's the question that's kind of before us and we'll get to that in a second.

So if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by a promise. God gave it to Abraham by a promise. Verse 19, so why then the law? It was added because of transgressions until the offspring, that's Jesus, should come to whom the promise had been made.

It was put in place through angels by an intermediary. Now an intermediary implies more than one,.

But God is one.

So is the law then contrary to the promises of God? No, certainly not. For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the scripture imprisoned everything under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

So now before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith.

But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. For in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ, you have put on Christ. Another great text giving us the promises regarding our baptisms.

So there is neither Jew or Greek. There's neither slave nor free. There is no male and female. You're all one in Christ. And there's that one theme again that we heard in our epistle text today regarding the fact that we are a one body.

And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring and you are heirs according to promise. Now that's quite the statement. When we think of Abraham's offspring today, we think of those who are genetically Jewish.

No, being a genetic Jew does not give you an in with God.

You are Abraham's offspring,.

Children according to the promise. If you believe in the one whom Christ, whom the Father has sent, that's Christ. You are saved by grace through faith and you've been grafted into Israel. You guys are the ones who are Abraham's offspring.

Chapter four makes the point a little bit finer. So I mean that the heir, as long as he is a child, is no different from a slave. Now this is where it gets interesting. The picture changes a little bit to that of a guardian.

And we've seen the movies or we've heard the stories. A story of a kingdom where the king and the queen are tragically killed or they die. And the heir to the throne is only five years old. And of course all kinds of intrigue and political machinations occur in a situation like that where the monarch is too young to reign.

So what happens then to that young monarch? He's put under guardians. And so the way the stories always go, he goes from being five years old to maybe 13. At 13 he's learning how to use his sword. And then something terrible happens.

Somebody usurps and takes over the throne and this kid has to flee for his life. And then the way the story always resolves, at least the fairies tale story version of it, is that the rightful king finally returns.

He's no longer under the guardians. He is old enough and mature enough and wise enough and has suffered enough.

To be a good monarch.

And he defeats the bad guy, comes back to the throne, and they live happily ever after. So you're going to note then that the way this is talking is that all of humanity, and specifically the Jews, the Torah, the Mosaic Covenant, was the guardian.

It was the tutor.