The Covenant People of God
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Acts 2:37-39
Acts 2:37-39
37 Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” 38 And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. 39 For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.”
Been talking about the sacraments - Baptism and the Lord’s supper
To make full sense of them we need to zoom out a little bit - like on Google maps, and get the bigger picture.
God is a covenant keeping God, and His people are a people of covenant.
What we’re seeing in Acts 2 is the consummation of the new covenant. Peter tells them to repent and be baptised in Jesus’s name for the forgiveness of their sins and that they will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. What He says next might sound strange to our ears:
“For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Himself.”
What does this mean and why did He say it?
This was the language of covenant - an echo of what we see in Genesis 17:7
7 And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.
Where God made a covenant with Abraham and his offspring.
God deals in covenants.
What is a covenant? Essentially it’s an agreement between two or more parties. There will be conditions on either side of the agreement which are to be kept.
The marriage ceremony is a covenant - the husband and wife make promises to one another before witnesses which are to be kept. If you have a mortgage you have a covenant with that mortgage provider - that they will loan you x amount for your house and you are required to pay it back over an agreed upon period of time.
Most of us will be familiar with the idea of the new covenant, and maybe we have heard of the Mosaic covenant but if we zoom out and take a look at the big picture we see that God has been making covenants with mankind ever since we were created
ADAMIC COVENANT - 1/2
NOAHIC COVENANT
ABRAHAMIC COVENANT
MOSAIC COVENANT
DAVIDIC COVENANT
Jenga picture - many imagine the covenants like that. As though they are failed attempts at relationship that needed to be entirely scrapped and God needed to start fresh.
But there is an essential connectedness and progression between these covenants. One built upon another and they get progressively greater both in scope and in power.
Each covenant acted as a pedagog ‘a nanny/teacher’ to point towards the coming of a greater covenant.
24 Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.
13 These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.
THE NEW COVENANT
God did not fail in His dealings with man - he’s not a have a go henry, each covenant gives more and more light to His people until the final consummation of the new covenant when the Holy Spirit actually enters into His people and shines the light from within.
13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.
The new covenant fulfilled ALL the old covenants
covenenat of works fulfilled by Christ
All the promises of those covenants now belong to us
God chose to enter into each of these covenants - He is the initiator. You don’t get to approach God and demand He make a covenant with you. He approaches you on His terms.
You see that God made a covenant with Adam and his offspring, with Noah and his offspring, with Abraham and his offspring, with Moses and the nation of israel and so on and so forth.
God’s covenants are not just with individuals, He makes covenant with them and their offspring - a multigenerational family unit. This is the church throughout the ages - it’s the covenant family of God.
So when you got saved it wasn’t just something purely individualistic and absolutely personal - you were brought into the covenant people of God, and that promise is also to you and your children.
It was no accident that Peter reiterated that phrase ‘to you and your children’. He wanted the jews to know that this new covenant was the final fulfilment of all other covenants, that this was the same God instituting it.
You can see the connection here between circumcision and baptism again - OT new comers must be circumcised - NT new comers must be baptised, showing the work of the Holy Spirit in cleansing us from sin.
12 remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
The people of the Covenant are the heirs of all the promises of God. We are a people of promise. Signed by baptism and the Lords Supper, sealed by the Holy Spirit.