documents, which not only parallel one event like the flood, or something like that, but you have documents, for example, like one known as the Australasisepic, which includes that whole outline, so what we have in Genesis 1 through 11 is something that is found in other ancient texts, and so this whole question comes up, which one was first, and there are some striking similarities between the biblical account, let's say, of the flood, and the account of the flood that you get in something like the Gilgameshepic and the 11th tablet, is the Bible borrowing from the Gilgameshepic, you know, the Bible's, the biblical account is later one. Once again, I think the only way to treat it is to recognize that these events really happened, let's say, and here's the creation of man, the alienation of man, here's the flood, events after, but these things really happened, and there was a true pristine account of those things that were handed down, and finally you come to Moses, and he records them in Genesis 1 through 11. Meanwhile, meanwhile, there were all kinds of perverted versions of this real history that were circulating in the world, and some of these happened to be available to us because we come upon these documents, and some of these perverted versions are earlier than Moses, so how do I explain them is Moses, and with some of the language even strikingly similar, as Moses has borrowed it from that, and therefore is it just useless mythology? No, I think the way to see it is that these accounts, like this one, are per versions of the true version, which was being handed down among God's people until finally it finds its deposit in Genesis 1 through 11. They are perverons of it, but nevertheless, the essential outline of human history is the essential outline of the alienation of man from God, and the development of the city of man and the flood, and that basic outline wasn't lost from race memory, but it was picked up and formulated in these other documents, so that the basic outline is the same, and along with the basic similarity, however, what we should notice is the tremendous, of course, theological differences between the two. So the fact that a biblical text is a little later than something that's going on in the world out there, and it has certain evidence that even of reflecting the language of it doesn't mean that that's the ultimate source of these things, though God and his true tradition here is the elder. So I, in other words, that kind of question keeps coming up all over the place, and you're well taken, you're positioned to remind us that God originated the covenant form back then. Other things relating now to this pattern maybe for, OK, along then with the documents that were so strikingly like those in the Bible, the ceremony of ratification was also then very, very similar. The text would be read, and there would be sacrifices, animals would be slain, as we said last time, so much was the oath, and the curse of the covenant, an essential part of the arrangement, that the
particular ritual of dramatizing the curse whereby you took an animal and killed it, became
the idiom for making a covenant, and so that in Hebrew, Karat Barit, that to cut a covenant is the way you would say to make a covenant because the slaying of the animal was part of that. And so in these rituals, in these rituals, that's the kind of thing that would be taken, an animal would be taken. One, the interesting detail that you might find helpful, because it is a little pattern in Messianic prophecy later on, in one text that comes from the site of Mary and the R.I. on the upper Euphrates. Thank you very much. From the site of Mary on the upper Euphrates from about the 18th century, we see there is a text where an officer of the King is reporting back to him that he has been engaged in the ratification of a treaty between a couple of subordinate parties. And what is interesting is that his description of the cutting up of the animal symbolizing the curse that would be fall, the either party to the covenant that broke their oath, the covenant oath, and he says that they sacrificed a particular kind of a donkey in Hebrew, it's an Ayurah, Ben Attenot, a cold son of the Shies. But it was a particular breed of donkey, that was the one that would serve to make the covenant. And not just any animal, but this was the one that you would have to use. Now, what's interesting about that is that striking little expression, that particular description of that particular breed is found in Genesis 49 and in Zachariah 9, and the account then
translated form of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. In Genesis 49, it appears in Jacob's blessing on Judah, where he's speaking about the Messianic line, it's going to be in Judah. And in mysterious closing verses of that, or on verse 11, I guess it is, he makes mention that in the Messianic age there will be this equivalent Hebrew expression. This particular kind of a donkey will be tethered to the divine. And then you come to Zachariah 9, which is an exposition of Genesis 49. And here
is where then you read about this same kind of a donkey and behold your king, the Messianic king come, he rejoiced Jerusalem, behold your king comes and describes him loathe and afflicted and so on, riding upon, and here is this covenant donkey, the kind of a donkey that would be used to ratify a covenant. That's the significance of it, so that when you come to the story of the triumphal entry and you're preaching, and you're trying to explain to why is it that Jesus comes riding into Jerusalem when a donkey, the point is not at least not simply that the donkey is a peaceful animal and it expresses humility is over against proud arrogance of someone riding on a horse. The magnificent point is that Jesus comes riding, he's the lamb of God and he comes riding on the donkey of God, the covenant donkey. This is the donkey that is going to shed its blood to be sacrificed and that's exactly what Jesus is doing and that's what the donkey says in that passage. So here's a kind of little detail that just part of the continuing parallelism that some illumination of scripture you wouldn't be looking for in an ancient text and lo and behold, something like that. Well, yes, that's the only place that I'm familiar with that one text speaking about covenant ratification mentions that the only reference to it out familiar with outside of the Bible. There's no significance to the fact that it's something that is related to treaty diplomacy. So along with the documents then there were rituals in each case that were similar. Then this parallel, again it brings up the same problem, is God dependent upon things that are out there in his own dealing with his own people and in the way we're describing. We're saying yes, he sovereign, he makes instruments available and he uses them. Now let me just go on. Here a treaty relationship is made between the great king and his vessel. Now that the relationship is established, how does it work itself out? From time to time there would be need for these covenants to be renewed. They'd have to be renewed. And one occasion for a covenant renewal was that a vessel might break the covenant and you have to be dealt with but then after he'd been dealt with maybe then there'd be a possibility of renewing the covenant. Another occasion that would call for a renewal of the covenant was when one of the two principles, here you have the great king and he's making the covenant with the vessel king who of course represents his people. But when one of these two parties would die then obviously there was a need to renew that covenant. And this is very important when we come to the book of Deuteronomy. Someone's going to die as the occasion for the book of Deuteronomy as Moses. The last year is the last day of his life. And God's about to take him up the mountain. He's going to die. God's going to take him. And Moses is that one who in the opening section of Deuteronomy, of course, is the one who represents the Lord. They're the great king. And now the Lord's official representative is about to die. And before he dies and so that there shouldn't be turmoil and chaos about the succession, God as a selected Moses successor of course was Joshua who has been Moses minister these years and Joshua's to be the successor. And that is the central point in this covenant renewal which we have in the book of Deuteronomy. It is to assure that Israel will be ready to accept Joshua as Moses successor. And that's the explanation to some key things in the book like the 27th chapter of the location of that and so on. And what's going on there is reflected in one of the ancient treaties. This one does happen to come from the Assyrian empire. But we have a treaty where the Vessar hadn't where he no, so he's not got long to live. And so he gets as vassal people together and he exacts from them a commitment to the one of his sons when he has selected to be his successor. And the key line in the thing is that when he the king of Assyria dies, then this succession arrangement will be enforced. Then of course the treaty commitment to accept his appointed successor will take place. But it's when the king dies and the treaty becomes the effective. Now the whole thing in Deuteronomy then Moses is about to die. It sets things up so that Israel will accept Joshua. And then you come to chapter 34. And of course this is the puzzler when you talk about the mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch of Goal. Moses didn't arrive at the account of his death. Did he know he didn't? But why then is that account of his death tacked on there? Because that's the thing that sort of notarized this whole deal. And whoever added it whether Joshua or the high priest or someone takes this treaty and depends the notice that shows that now it is effective because the king, the representative of the great king has died. And now it's time to accept Joshua as a successor. So the not just the original documents show parallelism but the ongoing administration of a biblical covenant shows parallels to what's going on over here. And finally there's something in treaty diplomacy that explains the whole phenomenon of biblical prophecy. When we have a course of prophecy, hopefully we'll have a course in the prophets here for too long. That's one of the things that I try to emphasize is that the role of the biblical prophets fits into this whole scheme of covenant administration where we find that when vassals broke their terms of the covenant, that they were not immediately clobbered. But there would be a lawsuit that would be instituted that would go through a couple of stages. And the first stage would be where the great king would send his ambassadors, his representatives, his lawyers, to remind the people that the danger that they're in because look, they have violated the stipulations. And now they are in danger of the curses which they themselves have by solemn oath and in oath upon themselves. So mend your ways. And if you don't, then of course the lawsuit is going to move into its second stage which will be the rendering of the word of doom and will be followed up by the troops that will come. And so forth. Now you read the prophets and you find that so very much, so very much in the pages of the prophets is precisely that. The prophets are God's lawyers. Israel has broken the covenant and he sends them and you'll see that they're like the two stages and in the early stages warning them in this sort of a call to repentance and so on. And then at last like you come to the closing pages of a second Chronicles 36 which is summing up this whole history of God's lawsuit through the prophets and it says how God sent to them continually through his messengers, his angels, his messengers, his prophets calling to them to repentance and they would not until there was no remedy, very tragic language there. There was no longer God's forbearance and so on. I reached this limit there was no more remedy and then he sends the forces from the east to exactly the curses of the covenant. But the whole function of the prophets corresponds to what's going on in the Near Eastern world and a lot of the language of the law suit of the Near Eastern ambassadors can be reconstructed and again we find a lot of close literary parallels with a language in the biblical prophets. So this is a whole area you could I try to see where the study of ancient ancient Near Eastern sources and particularly the treaties, just said a tremendous light on the Bible. Okay I think I'll let that go. I won't get into the higher critical, I said something earlier at that thing. The forms of the second millennium treaties are the ones that correspond to the treaties that the Bible says come from Moses which is what we they expect. Whereas if you've come now down to the the the first millennium treaties, there are big differences. They no longer have the historical prologue. They no longer have any blessing sanctions, only curse sanctions. There's no appeal to gratitude or anything like that. It's just raw, rude to strength. There's a completely different spirit about them as well as certain differences in the outline. So it's rather significant than that exodus that we call the Ten Commandments, the Book of Deuteronomy. Car is born to the early second millennium forms of the treaty, not to the first millennium form, which completely contradicts the tons of stuff that the modern Old Testament critics have been turning out on the origin of these books. I don't know what time it is, but maybe since different among us resorting to the coffee pot. Why don't we just take five minutes and do that? With the glory of the kingdom and the people for whom the sun came into the world and indeed what the sun basically committed himself to do was to enter into the world as a second atom and to fulfill the task that the first atom failed to accomplish. As the sun was incarnation as victory over Satan and so on, to fulfill that and then as a resurrection ascension he began to receive the reward of his obedience. Part of that, of course, was then that he should receive the Holy Spirit by whom he should win through history and elect people for himself and that process whereby he shares his glory with the people whom he calls out of the world by his Holy Spirit through the years is then the covenant of grace. It's the covenant of the Lord with the church and so these two are related in that way that it is as a reward for his service as a sun and in that eternal covenant the sun is a servant and so because he fulfills his servant probationary task he now receives the honor of functioning as the Lord the Lord now of this covenant which he administers through history and which we then put together as theologians and call the covenant of grace although as we read through the Bible we find it's being administered in a whole series of covenants from the fall to the consummation of the world as we as we follow that then well let's follow this thing. Here is that eternal covenant. Here now is the covenant of grace in history whereby God's kingdom is being administered and then to fill out our art chart along with the covenant with Adam before this to fill out our art chart between the fall and the consummation we would also want to include then the covenant of common grace so this is the covenant of saving grace and then there's the covenant of common grace that is found within this that we're going to tonight then going to be dealing a lot with that but then just to explain it this is an arrangement as we noted when we were talking about definitions of covenant that do not involve God's setting aside a holy family from the midst of the earth nor does it envisage that in terms of this covenant that God's holy kingdom is going to be bestowed on anyone that happens under the covenant of grace and the covenant of grace God is setting aside a particular holy people for himself and what is envisaged is that they should at last inherit the kingdom of glory in heaven the covenant of common grace is not something that gets consummated that way the covenant of common grace is something that gets terminated and it's the terms of the covenant there in Genesis 9 where you do find that this arrangement covenantalized is that as long as long as the earth endures the part of the arrangements of common grace involve the stability of nature that the seasons will follow one another in an appropriate way there will not be such a devastating disaster as the flood again and so on and this is an arrangement and that God says will endure these particular guarantees of the stability of nature along with the other benefits especially involving the institution of the state that God sets up as a place of common political coexistence of believers and unbelievers together that whole arrangement will continue it will serve its purpose as sort of a platform on which the history of redemption can work its way out but it's only an interim arrangement it's only an interim arrangement it provides instead of all hell breaking loose at the fall and the the stars falling from their courses and the sundok instead of that God keeps the ultimate curse of hell and check and how does he keep it in check he keeps it in check by means of his common grace by his common grace he provides some historical space a chunk of space an opportunity within which his eternal purposes then can work themselves out and so the common grace arrangement is a theater it's a platform it's a space in which common grace can make its way but but common grace itself doesn't bring in the kingdom it when the time comes gets terminated and the earth and the works that are therein that the man has produced in the city of man by virtue of God's common grace all of this will be destroyed in order to make way for the kingdom of heaven to come in to consummate and to crown the history of the covenant of grace so that's the the overall pattern that of covenants and as we move along we'll be dealing with them separately this is the spirit the sphere of the holy into the the fall and profane world outside of Eden Eden itself is holy outside of Eden it's profane not holy Adam and Eve are driven out of the holy place obviously therefore they're not putting another holy place right there they afforded that that they're disqualified and so the outside of Eden needs to which is the whole world now that's common that's profane by means of his redemptive program God intrudes I'll be using the word intrusion and connection with this one time to time God God intrudes into the common world this principle of holiness and that's what characterizes that's fear the common what do we mean by common by common for one thing we mean the non holy that's not the equivalent of evil or illegitimate or something like that just non holy and what happens in this sphere which is the whole sphere cultural activity therefore is a non holy and this of course has large implications then for how we understand what is the nature and the functions of the state and all kinds of other such things but that's the nature of this this common grace era it is the common in the sense that it's shared by believers and unbelievers and secondly it's common in the sense that it is the sphere of the non holy you and I are engaged in both of these things we are engaged in the church huh in the covenant community the holy we are also engaged in this common not just unbelievers it's believers believers and unbelievers so we are engaged in this area the area of culture the area of say of the state and the family and so on and although it's non holy
we do it as unto the Lord but that doesn't change it that this area is still non holy but to recognize that then keeps us from projecting upon our cultural activities are upon the state that we belong to utopian expectations the kingdom of God is not going to come through this sphere of general culture that's the old liberal gospel that the kingdom of God is coming through what's going on out there in the world apart from Christ oh no the kingdom of God the holy kingdom of God is coming only through this and we shouldn't therefore be expecting or as I say projecting a kingdom of God utopian identifications and expectations upon what's going on out there in that sphere this is not the kingdom of God we we shouldn't be talking about our our activities outside of the church as kingdom activities as for it goes on of course all the time in our circles where for example you have run a school an educational program and you're told that's kingdom activity this is not kingdom activity this is common grace activity and that the kingdom of God the holy kingdom of God is developing only in terms of this everything you do you service you do as a service for the king because Christ is the king over all of these around time in ultimate reality and so everything you do whether in the holy or the non holy you do as a a service for the king but not everything you do is a developing of the kingdom this is the developing of the king okay so these are some of the themes then that we want to address as we move along but now for now let that suffice as this is an overview of the whole covenant scheme and now we come back to a major problem that we got to at the end of our discussion last time to the covenant with Adam here which we called a covenant of works covenant of works with the first Adam and as a matter of fact there then there was another covenant of works as we said between the father and the son and visaged as coming into the world as a second Adam and one other place along the line where we're at this principle of works he emerges let's take again that line that we were just tracing between the fall and the consummation the line of the covenant of grace now here is Christ then administering his blessings to his people calling them out of the world by his Holy Spirit he comes into the world that is incarnation and then the fullness of time and yet his administering of the covenant of grace is bestowing of the Holy Spirit his winning of a people for himself is establishing of a covenant community on the earth already has begun back there right after the fall and throughout history and as we said this overarching covenant of grace gets subdivided to a whole series of covenants leading up to the new covenant but preceded by the old covenant receded by the Abrahamic covenant the way of covenant and so on along the the line now here is a whole series of ways in which Christ organizes the covenant people that are being called out of the world to faith in him either as the Messiah to come or as the Messiah who has come and what we find let's pick it up after the flood from the flood on and this is all ultimately leading to the the great eternal theocratic kingdom of God where it will not just be a matter of God's spiritual presence and reign within the hearts of people but it will involve the whole cosmos the new heavens and the new earth the kingdom of God will take shape as a geophysical political entity huh it has this physical cosmic context to it is that the case now during the church age here's the first coming of Christ here's the second coming of Christ there is no millennium after that second coming the millennium happens to be now but we can discuss that later but after the second coming of here is the eternal kingdom of God here is the church age now does the church exist as a geopolitical entity now know it doesn't it is not identified with earthly turf it is a time when Christ is the king and he is ruling but he's ruling by his holy spirit within our hearts but here here is a church building and so on we we as the covenant community do not constitute an earthly kingdom our our nation our we shouldn't have pretensions along the line we shouldn't be making it attempts along that line we are a purely cultic community we don't have we don't possess geographical terrain as being the ultimate jurisdiction in any such thing and so we don't exist as an earthly kingdom right now but there in nor did Abraham in his day now here's the patriarchal period Genesis 12 through 50 when Abraham has the promises of a kingdom but meanwhile he is a pilgrim he practices pilgrim politics he he he doesn't act as if he is an earthly power and and and proceed to dispossess the king and I simply because God said that this land is ultimately going to be yours no he functions in terms of common grades huh hmm during this this period Abraham is functioning in a way where he recognizes that he belongs to the time of common grace and time of common grace the unbelievers have the same economic political rights as you so Abraham needs a piece of land to bury his wife he just can't go up to effort on the headtight and and and and say off with your head I you have the land I want I'm going to take it from you it doesn't work that way this is he has to deal in terms of of common grace and and dickering and bargain and and so on for a piece of land he practices pilgrim politics if he's engaged in the military affair he makes covenants with the the military forces around him to expel the kings who have come from the east the Genesis 14 see that this is the nature during this period then all of a sudden you get beyond kingdom prologue when you move beyond the book of Genesis now we come to the book of Exodus now the kingdom comes now the Abrahamic promises the the God's promise to Abraham of a kingdom people land king they all come to pass and they come to expression in the form of an earthly kingdom such as we we said we do not have no any longer in the church but that's precisely what you had in the in the form of a Israel the kingdom of God in the land of Canaan here the kingdom of God was identified with a specific geophysical reality the land of Canaan from the River Euphrates to the Brook of Aegis and so on as as the promises to Abraham did define that particular land and with a mandate now of conquest you no longer you no longer make covenants so with your Amorite and came Canaanite neighbors you go in and you wipe them out you destroy them if it's you you may not make covenants so with them any longer you don't you need a piece of land you don't buy it from effort and they hit tight you kill them and take it this is the conquest this is the holy war that's what happens at the end of history in intrusion with a vengeance common grace up to that point up to that point unbelievers are are allowed certain rights within this world they can have their property they have their their political rights and so on until God says the door is closed and that's what final judgment is that's what the return of Christ is all about that's the the ending of common grace that's the end of all rights that belong to those who do not God and believe not the gospel now Jesus comes taking vengeance against all of those destroying them sending them to hell that's the way in which the eternal theocracy gets established by the introduction now of final judgment which is the opposite of what's going on in terms of common grace you see and the amazing thing is now that here in Israel this is precisely what was going on that God pedagogically is presenting an historical parable before the eyes of all people of what he intends to do through Jesus Christ at last and so this gets intruded into history in the form of the Israelite nation canon wasn't heaven but there was a prototype of heaven and so for that time being the covenant community was organized as a geopolitical as an earthly nation and just as the eternal kingdom is introduced by Messianic final judgment so the old kingdom the prototype kingdom likewise was introduced by an act of Messianic judgment in which God took away the common grace rights not of the whole world but within that particular spear that he defined God said this is mine he carves out by eminent domain he carves out a piece of territory that he says now this is going to be my kingdom this is holy to me and in order to take it I deny the normal common grace rights of the canonites who were there in there so you shouldn't try to justify what the Israelites did to the canonites in terms of common grace procedures such as might be going on in the united nations are so on in terms of united nations procedures Israel or the aggressors the murderers and so on in that thing but Israel was not murderers and they were not aggressors because common grace ethics situation had been annulled at that point by just as God is the sovereign one and he can decide when permanently universally he's going to annulled common grace he can and he's going to do that you shouldn't argue with him about that there's nothing you're ready to argue with the ethics of God and nor should you argue with him then if he has seen fifth to anticipate that in this typological situation in Israel and that's the explanation of the so-called ethical problems in the Old Testament and you shouldn't try to white wash them and say nothing different is going on it's totally different what's going on there is totally different than what God's people should normally be doing the normally we should be praying for our enemies not killing them all right but here the unbelievers are killed off because this whole thing is a typological situation so it's yes right yeah well I mean this continues to be and this is an administration of the covenant of grace just as the final judgment an introduction of heaven will be an administration of the covenant of grace even though it involves the fact that the judgment the judgment of our enemies is part of our redemption we're not just redeemed from the wrath of God we're redeemed from the coils of the devil and the hostility of the hordes of the devil and he thrusts against the church and he cries God and may God and so on that that's part of our our redemption that's part of the covenant of grace that would you hear Matthew I guess we're still in the background today yeah what I'm saying is that our situation today is in many respects much more like the Abrahamic covenant than it is like the immediately preceding a Israelite situation yes that's right the normal common grace are in exactly that's nicely put yeah only this eschatological reality is is still typologically it wasn't heaven actually of course it came came in as Hebrews 4 points out it was not the real Sabbath land it's only a prototype but in terms of the principle that's involved it's an abrogating of the the normal common grace arrangements in order to express this eschatological reality as you're saying all right but now what I'm trying to get at then especially is that this is an utterly unique thing that's going on in Israel not going on today it wasn't going on before that and just while we're at it if we use squares to represent theocracy there's the eternal new heavens and new a big cosmic universal square okay in Israel there's another one the kingdom of God the covenant community organized as a kingdom of God the kingdom of God intruded into history there's one other such intrusion and history that's why I said let's start after the flood the flood was a one year intrusion now the this intrusion Israel represents you know hundreds of years when when that situation existed under it and now the flood is exactly the same thing all the the same principles about intrusion and final judgment and the establishing of God's kingdom also come to expression in the episode of the flood remember we talked about how Peter described the whole history of the world the world that then was so it came to the point where it had a typological fulfillment and now we're in the history of the world at now is the world that then was culminated in an experience where once again the common grace rights of all the peoples of the world were at least for the flood of blood were denied them they were all destroyed and there was a life only within the ark and the ark itself in terms of its architectural form etc etc it's a symbolic of God's cosmic temple we have discussed it later on so there's another example of of the kingdom of God coming in the form of an outward kingdom namely the ark but otherwise apart from that little one year exception far from Israel God's people are organized not as an external geopolitical entity all right so here we are in Israel now we're talking about works and we said there was a covenant of works with Adam there's this eternal covenant of works of the father and the son and here's the third place now where we encounter this in the Torah covenant in the law covenant in the mosaic covenant in the old covenant whichever of these terms you want we encounter this complex reality where yes here's the bottom line this is the covenant of grace this is how Christ is winning individuals to himself how they are earning the right to heaven namely by faith in Christ so how do individuals how do individuals get to the ultimate heaven over here it's in terms of Christ and the cross and faith and that's the bottom line of the mosaic covenant isn't that the mosaic covenant is just this outward typological kingdom and of course includes the the ongoing one-way of salvation through Christ which which is always the case between the fall all right so we're not denying that we're emphasizing that we're covenant theologians we believe in the unity of all covenants all redemptive covenants we do not believe in the unity of all covenants we in fact insist and that's one of the points we'll be making we're going to be insisting on a big difference between the covenant of works with Adam and the covenant of grace that follows but we believe in the unity of all covenants all redemptive covenants and they are all unified by having one way of salvation which is Christ now however you come to this strange thing where God anticipates heaven with this typological kingdom and so here is that here is that typological kingdom and in connection with it we have the principle of verse introduced so that you might say that there are three features that when you're thinking about Israel this whole phenomenon of the old covenant there are three things that belong to this period they're mutually conditioned you know they're a package you don't have one without the other you always have the these things go together the first is the national election of Israel
Israel as a nation is elected to this particular historical privilege involved in they're representing God and and possessing the land that God claims for himself and having his temple and presence among them Israel experiences a national election now this is not the same as individual election individual election is functioning here on this bottom line of course with the covenant of grace but this is the national election of Israel this is a a corporate the election this is not election to heaven this is election to this particular experience that lasted from Moses to Christ so that's the first feature national election the second feature then is that the national election is as I just said election to enjoy the typological kingdom not to inherit heaven but to possess the typological kingdom now we come to the third one and what is the principle whereby this nationally elect people are going to continue to in