Word of Salvation – Vol. 37 No. 04 – January 1992

 

The Covenant Of Grace (I)

 

Sermon by Rev. W. Wiersma on Lord’s Day 27c

Reading: Deuteronomy 6:1-19, Galatians 3:6-22

 

Dear congregation, beloved in Christ,

Our subject this morning is the Covenant of Grace and that comes to our attention in connection with Lord’s Day 27 – the 3rd question and answer of L.D.27 of the Heidelberg Catechism – where the question is asked whether infants too, should be baptised.  And the answer of the Catechism is: ‘Yes, infants, as well as adults are in God’s Covenant and are His people.  They, no less than adults are promised the forgiveness of sin through Christ’s blood and the Holy Spirit who produces faith.  Therefore by baptism, the mark of the covenant, infants should be received into the Christian church and should be distinguished from the children of unbelievers.  This was done in the Old Testament by circumcision, which was replaced in the New Testament by baptism.’

Dear people of God,

The question that we are to think about this morning is this: How does God want us to see and to treat the children of believers – of believing Christians?  Are the children of Christian believers part of the church, are they part of the people of God?  Or are they not part of the church?  That is the question behind the question of infant baptism or rather the baptism of the children of believers.

Another way of asking this question is: Does God deal, in His plan of salvation, only with individuals or does the Lord deal with us in the context of our families?

There is still another approach to this question of how God’s Word teaches us to view the children of believers.  When do you get involved with God and His people?  Is that when you decide to get involved or is it when God places you in that situation?  I am for instance thinking here of young people who have grown up in the church and who act as if the church, and as if God Himself even, doesn’t concern them till they decide to get involved by their own choice.  There is a spirit of individualism these days which leads people to think they can actually make all the decisions of life for themselves and by themselves.  There is an attitude which is expressed in the thought that if I cannot be bothered with something then that doesn’t concern me.  Only those things concern me that I decide to get involved with.  The truth of the matter is that lots of things concern us whether we like it or not.  It is utter foolishness to think that we are little individuals who are floating free and unattached to anything or anyone.  It is foolish to think the only connections we have are those we decide to make ourselves.

So back to the point – ‘How does God teach us to see and to treat the children of believers in Jesus Christ’?

The Catechism gives a very straight-forward answer and it is this: ‘Infants as well as adults are in God’s covenant and are His people’.  The Catechism means that the children of Christian parents are included in God’s covenant and are therefore to be seen and treated as part of the people of God.  That is the heart of our churches’ reason for baptising the children of believers.

Which brings us to the question: What is this Covenant of God which the Catechism is talking about, and how does that affect us and our children?

The covenant referred to here is the arrangement by which God has decided to save a people for Himself; a people who will inherit the earth, a people who will manage God’s creation to God’s glory and delight.  I have described the covenant of God here in terms of its ultimate aim and fulfilment.

God has decided to save the world, that is, the earth and its people which by the wickedness of the devil and the unbelief and disobedience of man, have come under the power of sin and death.  God has decided and promised to save His creation.  That is the grand purpose of God in salvation.  Not just individuals, but a people and the whole of creation which is ruled by the Prince of Darkness through the unbelief and disobedience of mankind.

The apostle Paul talks about that (just as an aside) when he writes that the whole creation is waiting for the revelation of the children of God.  That is the ultimate aim, when God will be all in all again, when God will be served by a people who serve Him and love Him with all that they are.

Now the first hint of that plan and arrangement of salvation is given almost immediately after the fall of man into sin, which happened in Paradise.  Then God came to Adam and Eve, remember, and God said that He would ‘put enmity between the seed of the woman and the serpent’.

But the first clear spelling out of God’s plan of action for the salvation of mankind is given to Abraham who lived around about 2,000 BC.  God made an arrangement with Abraham.  God gave Abraham all sorts of promises.

For instance, God promised Abraham a son in his old age.  He promised him a family and many descendants.  And God said ‘they will be as innumerable as the stars in the sky’.

God also promised Abraham a country for himself, a place to live with his family.  The land of Palestine, or the land of Canaan.

But perhaps, the most remarkable promise which God gave to Abraham was: ‘And in you all the families of the earth shall be blest’ Gen.12:3.  This suggested that God’s arrangement with Abraham was going to have worldwide implications.  We will come back to that later.  Just now I want to refer you to the heart of God’s promise to Abraham, which we find in Genesis 17 vs.7, but I’ll read with you Genesis 17 vs 1-8.  [read together]

Now the New Testament tells us that this covenant promise of God was the basis of God’s relationship with His people in Old Testament times.  In Galatians 3, we read that Israel and Israel’s covenant relationship to God was based on the promise given to Abraham rather than on the giving of the law to Moses.  Time and again in the Old Testament we read of saints and prophets appealing to this covenant relationship when they addressed God as the Father or the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  That was the basis of their relationship with God.  Now the New Testament also teaches that because this covenant was essentially based on what God promised He would do through and for Abraham and his seed, Israel’s relationship with God from their side was a matter of faith rather than meritorious works.

What I am saying is, the Old Testament saints were saved by faith, just the same as New Testament saints are saved by faith, and nothing else.

And therefore, it is not completely unexpected to find that the covenant promise made to Abraham is in fact the basis of God’s relationship with His people in the New Testament situation.  It is the same covenant.  The New Testament teaches us that Christians are the spiritual descendants of Abraham.  Abraham is called the ‘Father of all Believers’.

But there is something else, something more basic and something more important.  The New Testament teaches us that God used Abraham to bring the Saviour into the world.  The heart of God’s promise to Abraham or should I say, the heart of God’s covenant with Abraham was in fact God’s covenant with Christ.  I’ll say that again.  The New Testament says it.  That God made His covenant with Abraham and his see.  Seed – not many but one seed, that is, Christ.  The heart of God’s covenant with Abraham was God’s covenant with the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Old Testament people may not have seen that very clearly but we, New Testament Christians, should see that clearly.  You might say it was as if God was speaking to Christ through Abraham, his father.  So when God gave Abraham promises, He actually was giving Christ promises.  And Christ was the one who kept the bargain, if you might put it that way, for man’s side of this covenant.  And that is the only basis on which that covenant can stand.

But when God promised Abraham things, He was in fact promising Christ these blessings.  God promised Christ many offspring.  God promised Christ, the world!  All things.

And Abraham was to benefit by God’s covenant with Christ because Abraham believed God’s promises and God, in the words of Psalm 25, shared His secret with Abraham as far as Abraham the believer could understand that.

The point I am making is this: the covenant promises which God made to Abraham long ago were closely related to and actually dependant on what God would give and do in and through the Lord Jesus Christ.

And that is the basic link between the Old and the New Testament.  The same covenant, the same Seed of the covenant or the same parties to the covenant, God and Christ and in Christ, His people.  So there is one people of God, not two.  The Old Testament saints and the New Testament saints are one church, one people of God, saved by God’s grace in the Lord Jesus Christ.  What God would do and has done through Christ, the seed of Abraham, that is the basis for any relationship between God and His people, in the Old and New Testament.

And that is why the blessings of the covenant and the sign of the covenant are essentially the same in the Old Testament and in the New Testament.

It is true that Abraham received, you might say, temporal blessings for himself and for his immediate descendants.  He got Isaac but he also got Christ, and Christ got His people and that’s why we are here.

It is true that Abraham got the land of Canaan which God had promised him, if only on a promise because it was not till the time of King David, nearly a thousand years later that the people of Israel, the descendants of Abraham, fully occupied the land that God had promised them.  But the New Testament tells us that in Christ, Abraham actually had been promised the whole world.  You read that in Romans 4:13 if you want to check that out.  Abraham had not just been promised ‘a land’, but Christ had been promised the world.

So there we have it, the people, the land, the church, the whole earth – in Christ.  They were the blessings of the covenant.  They are the intended result of the whole covenant arrangement.

But now for a people to be the people of God there is need for forgiveness and cleansing.  Because, as descendants of Adam, as members of the human race, Abraham and his children, and all of us, are sinners.  That is why Christ Jesus is central to the whole covenant scheme.  Abraham himself, needed Christ, needed what God promised He would do for Abraham, in Christ.  And that is what the sign of the covenant symbolises.  I am talking about circumcision and the meaning of circumcision.  I shall have to be very brief here and continue this subject next week.  But let me just tell you that circumcision was the covenant sign.  It was the sign that you belonged to the covenant people of God and that you had a part in its blessings.  It was, we are told in Romans 3, also the sign and seal of the fact that Abraham was a righteous man.  He was justified by faith, in God’s promise.  And circumcision was a sign and seal of that; of the righteousness by faith.  Circumcision was the sign that a person was clean in God’s sight.  Now that can only mean that circumcision was a symbol of having a share in the saving work of Christ.  Because otherwise it would not be possible for God to say to a people: ‘You will be My people and I will be your God’.  Circumcision was a symbol of having a share in the saving work of Christ.  It was a symbol of a spiritual reality which was not temporal but which is eternal.  In other words, the Old Testament people of God were as much dependant on Jesus as we are.

We will look at this in more detail on another occasion.

AMEN