One God Two Covenants eBook: Discovering the Heart of the Old Testament

By Lyle W Lange

Is the Old Testament still significant today?Is there any modern significance to the Old Testament? Is the first half of the Bible even applicable anymore?One God-Two Covenants answers all of those questions by examining the Old Testament covenants given to Moses and Abraham. Author and pastor Lyle W. Lange shows you how the older biblical texts in Scripture are explicitly linked to the New Testament through their foretelling of God' s plan of salvation in his Son.In this book, you' ll learn how Jesus as the Savior is the central message of the Old Testament and understand what place the Old Testament has in your life today!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Northwestern Publishing House
• Release date: Jul 1, 2010
• ISBN: 9780810026391

Book preview

PREFACE

There are many today who wish to place people back under the law that God gave to Israel at Sinai. The purpose of this book is to show that God’s promise of the Savior was the central message of the Old Testament. It is impossible to understand Scripture unless we understand the covenant God made with Abraham in the Old Testament and the subservient relationship of the law covenant God made with Israel at Mount Sinai. May our study of this book lead us to a proper distinction between the two covenants so we may clearly proclaim the good news of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.

1

THE PROMISE OF THE SAVIOR IS PROCLAIMED AND PRESERVED

God’s first promise of a Savior

So the LORD God said to the serpent, "Because you have done this,

Cursed are you above all the livestock

and all the wild animals!

You will crawl on your belly

and you will eat dust

all the days of your life.

And I will put enmity

between you and the woman,

and between your offspring and hers;

he will crush your head,

and you will strike his heel." (Genesis 3:14,15)

It all started so wonderfully. The triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—made the world in six normal days (Genesis 1,2; John 1:3; Colossians 1:16). God made the heavens, the earth, and the light—day one. He made the sky that surrounds the earth—day two. God made the dry land with vegetation and gave the vegetation the ability to reproduce itself—day three. He made the heavenly bodies—day four. He made the creatures that live in the water and the birds that fly in the air—day five. Finally, God made the land animals and the reptiles—day six. To the creatures he made on days five and six, God also gave the ability to reproduce offspring like themselves.

On day six God also made the crown of his visible creation. He created the first man from the dust of the earth (Genesis 2:7) and the first woman from the rib of man (Genesis 2:18-25). He joined them in marriage, which he instituted for their good. He blessed them and said, Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground (Genesis 1:28).

God created the man and the woman in his own image (Genesis 1:27). This means that Adam and Eve knew God as their loving Creator. They had a perfect knowledge of his will (Colossians 3:10). They desired to keep God’s will, and they had the ability to carry it out perfectly (Ephesians 4:24). They were holy and righteous, without sin. To show Adam and Eve how much he loved them, God made a special garden and placed them into it (Genesis 2:8-15). God filled the garden with trees that were beautiful to look at and produced fruit to eat. He watered the garden with a river that flowed through it. God told Adam to care for the garden (Genesis 2:15). In a world where there was no sin, this work would have been a pleasure.

God gave Adam one command. He said, You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die (Genesis 2:16,17). This was not a burdensome restriction. God had given Adam and Eve permission to eat from all the other trees in the garden. God told Adam not to eat of this one tree as a way that Adam could show his love for the gracious God who had created him. Adam then related this command to his wife after God created her.

God created a perfect world. There were no defects. There was no sin. The Bible tells us, God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day (Genesis 1:31). On the seventh day, God rested. He designated this day as a time for communion with his creation (Genesis 2:2,3).

Sometime after the sixth day of creation, things went all wrong. God’s creatures rebelled against their loving Creator. It started with some of the angels. God had created the angels sometime during the six days of creation. All of them were good. They all shouted for joy as they beheld God’s creation of the world (Job 38:7). But sometime after the sixth day of creation, one of the angels proudly chose to disobey God (1 Timothy 3:6). A number of other angels followed the devil’s lead (Jude 6). The Lord then cast the devil and his followers out of heaven and consigned them to hell for judgment on the Last Day (2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6). It was after all this that the devil entered Eden to lead humankind into rebellion against God (Genesis 3:1).

Under the penalty of death, the Lord had told Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17). The devil, coming in the form of a serpent, tempted Eve to eat of the tree. With his first question, Satan attempted to place doubt in Eve’s mind about God’s command (Genesis 3:1). He wanted Eve to doubt that God actually said it or to doubt that God was good. Eve did not doubt that God had forbidden them to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. However, her reason for keeping God’s command was not out of love for God but out of fear of the consequences of disobeying God. The devil suggested that God was holding out on Adam and Eve, keeping something from them that would greatly enhance their joy in life. Satan denied they would suffer any penalty for disobeying God. In fact, he suggested that if they did eat of the tree’s fruit, they themselves would become like God. Dethrone God and enthrone yourselves was the devil’s message to Adam and Eve.

Even before she ate of the fruit, Eve showed her sinful heart. The Bible tells us, When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it (Genesis 3:6). Eve then gave the fruit to Adam, who also ate of it. The results of their sinful actions became immediately evident. Adam and Eve lost the image of God. They no longer looked on God as their loving Creator. Rather, they viewed him as their enemy. They were filled with shame and guilt. When God came to talk with them, they tried to hide from God.

However, God, as the loving Good Shepherd, sought out his lost sheep. The Lord attempted to lead Adam and Eve to confess their sins. But instead of confessing, Adam blamed the woman for giving him the fruit and also blamed God for giving her to him as his wife. The woman blamed the serpent for her sin. As we read the account in Genesis, we can imagine the hellish glee that filled the devil. He had corrupted God’s good creation. The devil believed that now God must also consign humankind to eternal torment in hell.

Instead God announced that he had an answer for sin (Genesis 3:15). God does not desire the damnation of the sinner (Ezekiel 33:11). Rather, he desires the salvation of all sinners (1 Timothy 2:3,4; 2 Peter 3:9). To rescue fallen humankind, God announced he would send someone to undo what Satan had done. He would create peace between himself and humankind. He would restore hostility to where it belonged, namely, between humankind and Satan. The Savior would crush Satan’s head, suffering his own heel being wounded in the process.

From our vantage point, we know God fulfilled his promise to Adam and Eve by sending his own Son into this world to take on human flesh. God the Son would become true man, born of a woman. He would carry out God’s will for all people. He would suffer the penalty for the sins of the whole world. In this way Jesus would crush the head of the serpent, the devil. Though this work would cause Christ great suffering, he would nevertheless be victorious over Satan. The Savior would reconcile all people to God and destroy the work of the devil (Hebrews 2:14,15). No longer can Satan accuse sinners before God (Revelation 12:10,11). We are washed clean in the blood of God’s Son (1 John 1:7).

From this point on, everything God did was geared toward preserving his promise to save Adam and Eve and all of his creation.

God preserved the promise of the Savior

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. So God said to Noah, "I am going to put an end to all people, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. I am surely going to destroy both them and the earth. So make yourself an ark of cypress wood…. I am going to bring floodwaters on the earth to destroy all life under the heavens, every creature that has the breath of life in it. Everything on earth will perish. But I will establish my covenant with you, and you will enter the ark—you and your sons and your wife and your sons’ wives with you. You are to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female, to keep them alive with you. (Genesis 6:11-14,17-19)

After Adam and Eve sinned, God drove them from the garden. He posted an angelic guard (a cherub) to keep them from eating of the tree of life and living forever in their horrible, sinful condition. Adam and Eve had to adjust to living in a world corrupted by sin. They had to earn their living through hard toil and the sweat of their brows. They also had to witness the horrible results of sin in their own family. Cain, their son, killed his brother Abel (Genesis 4). All of Adam’s descendants came into this world in Adam’s sinful image, not in God’s perfect image (Genesis 5:3).

The believing descendants from Adam’s line did pass on to each generation the promise of the Savior. They lived very long lives, which gave them the opportunity to proclaim God’s promise for a total of over 1,600 years (Genesis 5). However, as time passed the world became more and more wicked. The believing men from the line of Seth (Adam’s son who replaced the dead Abel, Genesis 4:25) married unbelieving wives from the line of Cain (Genesis 6:1,2). These fathers neglected to teach their children the promise of the Savior that God had given them. Their unbelieving wives taught their children to live according to the desires of their sinful flesh. The Bible tells us the sad results: The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time (Genesis 6:5).

The Lord determined to wipe that wicked generation from the face of the earth (Genesis 6:7). He told Noah to build an ark. Into that ark Noah was to bring his wife, his three sons and their wives, and the animals God would lead to him (Genesis 7:7-9). The Lord made a covenant with Noah to preserve life on the earth through Noah and his family (Genesis 6:17-19). We call this covenant promise of God to Noah the Noachian covenant. He also promised never again to send another universal flood on the earth (Genesis 9:15). In this way God would keep alive his promise to Adam and Eve to bring a Savior into the world.

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, God sent a universal flood that covered the entire earth to a depth of 20 feet higher than the mountains. Moses records, Everything on dry land that had the breath of life in its nostrils died (Genesis 7:22). For a year Noah and his family remained in the ark with the animals. At the end of the year, they all came out of the ark. They were the only living creatures left on the dry land.

However, God commanded Noah and his sons, Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth (Genesis 9:1). God repopulated the earth through Noah’s three sons and their descendants (Genesis 9:18,19). To protect human life, God placed the fear of man into the animals (Genesis 9:2). He gave governing authorities the right and duty to exercise capital punishment as a way of deterring murder (Genesis 9:6). God also promised that, as long as this earth remains, he will never again send another universal flood to halt the normal