THE KINGDOM AND THE COVENANTS

Introduction:
Eschatology is a complex subject with a capacity for dividing and confusing unmatched by most other doctrines. Where do we start in our efforts to build a consensus in this key area of doctrine? It will hardly do start debating the Book of Revelation, much less to pin all on an exposition of Revelation 20. Neither will it do to start in the New Testament where many concepts, statements, and explicit word forms were frequently related to the author’s understanding of Old Testament truths. We must first understand the Old Testament eschatology, before we can see how it is developed, refined, and expounded in the New. We must therefore start with the divine covenants, whose oath bound promises are the very foundation of all our eschatological hopes. And that is where we will start in this paper.

The Trinitarian Covenant:
The Apostles James stated at the council of Jerusalem, the first synod of the early church, "Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world" (Acts 15:18). To God nothing is contingent; there are no ifs. The very hairs of our head are all numbered, the sparrow cannot fall except it be by his will, and the very heart of the king is in his hands. Everything in history is working out towards the fulfillment of his eternal plan. And it is with the formulation of this plan that we are now concerned. That there is such a plan is constantly set before us in the scriptures. And this plan encompasses more than what we normally term the plan of salvation. It encompasses the establishment of the eternal theocratic kingdom of God.

It is wrong to think of God having created the world and ever since he has been implementing a contingency plan to counteract the consequences of the fall. One of the glories of this future glorious kingdom is that the redeemed saints will be forever praising him who has conquered sin and death and hell on their behalf. And it would be wrong to think of this covenant as merely providing for the salvation of fallen man. That is only a part of his plan, only a necessary step in his plan. The redeemed will form the citizens of this future glorious kingdom and their salvation, sanctification, and glorification are necessary to that end. But it is the kingdom that is the eternal purpose of God as formulated in this covenant. To think that the salvation of man and the meeting of his spiritual and eternal needs is the nexus of the covenant is to think in humanist terms. It is to put man at the center and think in terms of him. Rather we are to think theocentrically and put God first. It is God’s honor, God’s glory, and God’s kingdom that are to be put first. As the scriptures say, "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you" (Matthew 6:33).

Christ refers to this plainly to this covenant when he declares, "Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world" (Matthew 25:34). The Apostle Paul refers to this covenant when he declares, "According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love" (Ephesians 1:4). The Apostle Peter refers to this covenant when he taught the saints, "Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you" (1 Peter 1:18-20).

Christ again refers to the nature of this covenant in his teaching, as recorded by Matthew. "All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them: That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world" (Matthew 13:34-35). Now this statement is placed at the end of a series of parables by Christ commonly called the kingdom parables. These parables are designed to teach us the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. And it is these mysteries concerning the kingdom that have been kept secret since the foundation of the world, since they were formulated as part of the Trinitarian Covenant. This covenant is about the kingdom. And if we would understand the kingdom this is where we need to start,. If we would understand the kingdom we have to study this covenant and the covenants that were made in time in fulfillment of the purposes of this covenant. To ignore this covenant or to misapprehend it as dealing merely with salvation is to start off on the wrong foot, to minimize the importance of the kingdom of God, and to understand all of scripture in terms of our personal salvation and not our eternal inheritance in that blessed kingdom.

The Noahic Covenant:
This is the covenant that the Lord made with Noah after the flood.

"And God spake unto Noah, and to his sons with him, saying, And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you; And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beast of the earth with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beast of the earth. And I will establish my covenant with you; neither shall all flesh be cut off any more by the waters of a flood; neither shall there any more be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth. And it shall come to pass, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow shall be seen in the cloud: And I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh. And the bow shall be in the cloud; and I will look upon it, that I may remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is upon the earth. And God said unto Noah, This is the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh that is upon the earth" (Genesis 9:8-17).

The promise of the covenant is that God will preserve the earth until the end of the age. Never again will God allow the "end of all flesh" to threaten the continuity of the human race. God covenants that history will run its course and that the grace and mercy expressed in the purposes of the Trinitarian Covenant will come to pass. As God receives Noah’s first blood sacrifice after the flood, offering up to the Lord of the few precious clean animals that have survived the flood, the Lord responds, "And the LORD smelled a sweet savour; and the LORD said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease" (Genesis 8:21-22).

There is more promised here than bare continuity of existence. God promises to limit his just curse on man’s sin for the remainder of man’s existence in this age. And God covenants that the heavenly bodies will continue in stable orbits until the end of the world. The sun will continue to rise every morning to warm the earth and make it fruitful. The earth will continue in her course and the seasons will roll by year by year without interruption. Springtime will come every year and harvest time will follow like clockwork and never again will a cataclysmic judgment of the Lord interfere with that cycle until the very end of the age.

This covenant does not give us additional information about the kingdom, nor does it proceed with steps in it’s implementation. Rather this covenant is designed to make the kingdom possible at all. The kingdom supposes a people…and another universal judgment, such as the waters of Noah, could wipe out the race and make an end to everything. This covenant supplies the grace to ensure that will not happen.

Another chief purpose of this covenant is to provide man with a standard of God’s covenant faithfulness. God will continue to make covenants with man. Many of them will take ages to come to fruition. Generation after generation will pass without seeing the fulfillment of the promises. Men will become discouraged and wonder if God has forgotten his covenant. But the Noahic covenant is a covenant that God is fulfilling every day. Year by year, as the celestial bodies continue in their courses and the seasons roll by endlessly, it is a continuous testimony to God’s covenant faithfulness. And generation after generation as God restrains his wrath in spite of man’s great wickedness and the creation continues, men can take comfort that God is remembering his covenant. Whatever befalls the children of men the faithful can always take hope in God’s promises knowing that they will all be kept as faithfully as God has kept his covenant with Noah.

Psalm 89 is a good example. In the writer’s day the Davidic dynasty has fallen on hard times. It seems as if God has forgotten his covenant with David. But God’s word comes to the author with a message of comfort saying,

"My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips. Once have I sworn by my holiness that I will not lie unto David. His seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as the sun before me. It shall be established for ever as the moon, and as a faithful witness in heaven" (Psalm 89:34-37).

God has not forgotten his covenant with David. God will maintain all his covenant promises in spite of the present distress. Things may appear to be dark and the prospects may look very bleak but in due season God will remember his covenant. And even as God remembered his covenant with Abraham and delivered the children of Israel from Egypt so will he deliver from the present afflictions. And the assurance of all this is a comparison with the promises of the Noahic Covenant. Even as God has maintained the sun and moon in their courses as a witness to his covenant faithfulness so will he maintain the seed of David on David’s throne forever. Someday the Messiah will come and will rule forever. Someday the Messiah, born of the seed of David, will sit on David’s throne and rule forevermore, even as the angel promised Mary, "And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end" (Luke 1:31-33).

In Jeremiah’s day the Northern Kingdom, Israel has long disappeared into Assyrian captivity and now her Southern sister Judah has gone into the Babylonian captivity. It seems that God is casting off his people and has forgotten his covenant with them. But through his prophet God comforts them saying,

"Thus saith the LORD, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The LORD of hosts is his name: If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the LORD, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever. Thus saith the LORD; If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the LORD" (Jeremiah 31:35-37).

God reminds them that as he has kept his covenant with Noah and maintained the sun, moon, and stars in their courses so will he maintain Israel as the covenant nation forever. God uses his faithfulness in keeping the Noahic Covenant as a standard by which men can judge his faithfulness in keeping all his other covenant obligations. Surely God is gracious to give us such a constant witness in the heavens to his covenant faithfulness.

Now let us examine how the Noahic Covenant has been fulfilled. Has it been fulfilled in an allegorical way? Must its explicit promises be spiritualized to see any meaningful fulfillment of them? No! Not at all! Not in the least! Rather they have all been fulfilled in a strict literal way. We have literally been spared any further real physical judgments on the race that has again threatened the end of all flesh. Yes, there have been famines, plagues, and wars, but nothing that has threatened the continuity of the race and the ultimate fulfillment of God’s covenant purposes. And seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night have literally continued the four and one half millennia since Noah’s day. These have not been typical harvests or spiritual winters, but real seasons that have continued in God’s faithfulness despite the sinfulness of his creation that cries out for righteous judgments. And in the most explicit terms the Scriptures make the fulfillment of this covenant the standard by which all the other covenants will be fulfilled. We can therefore expect all of God’s subsequent covenants to be fulfilled in the same strict literal way as his covenant with Noah. Anything less is to make a mockery of God’s most earnest pledges and the testimony of his word with respect to his covenant with Noah.

The Abrahamic Covenant:
A kingdom presupposes three things; a people, a land, and a king. All three are provided for in this covenant as God’s proceeds in time to begin the unfolding of his purpose and the implementation in time of his covenant purposes concerning the Kingdom.

"And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee" (Genesis 17:7)

This promise identifies the people of God, the people who will inhabit the Kingdom. After all if God will be their God then they are his people. It is the seed of Abraham who will be the covenant people who will inherit the Kingdom.

This is accented by further promises of this key covenant.

"And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: so that if a man can number the dust of the earth, then shall thy seed also be numbered" (Genesis 13:16).

"And he brought him forth abroad, and said, Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to number them: and he said unto him, So shall thy seed be" (Genesis 15:5).

"That in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies" (Genesis 22:17).

Abraham’s seed, the covenant people of God, the people who will have the true God as their God, will be a most numerous seed, a people as innumerable as the stars of the heaven and the sand of the seashore. The people of the Kingdom have been identified and once they have been redeemed, justified, sanctified, and glorified, they will be not only a vast host, but a most worthy and glorious company, fit for that glorious Kingdom that will have no end.

The next promise deals with the next requirement of the Kingdom, and is the promise of possession of the land of Canaan by Abraham and his seed in perpetuity. This promise is also frequently repeated and renewed throughout scripture.

"And the LORD said unto Abram, after that Lot was separated from him, Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed for ever…Arise, walk through the land in the length of it and in the breadth of it; for I will give it unto thee" (Genesis 13:14-15,17).

"In the same day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying, Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates" (Genesis 15:18).

"And I will give unto thee, and to thy seed after thee, the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession; and I will be their God" (Genesis 17:8).

Two details are very noteworthy here. First of all the land is explicitly promised to both Abraham personally, as well as to his seed. Secondly, the promise of the land is that it will be an everlasting possession. Such detailed, repetitive, and explicit promises cannot be fulfilled by any spiritualized millennium or any spiritual reign in the heart, etc. It was on the basis of these covenant promises that the Pharisees disputed with the Sadducees concerning the Kingdom of God and the resurrection. The Sadducees were what today would be termed apostate Postmillennialists, social gospelers, who believed in a kingdom that was here and now and was to be maintained by power politics, by political accommodation with the Romans, etc. They held the power and the high priesthood, and crucified Christ because he threatened their status with the Romans and feared that they might lose their "place and nation." The Pharisees were Premillennialists looking for the coming of the promised Messiah and the establishment of the millennial kingdom. Like Premillennialists of all times they believed in a resurrection of the just immediately preceding the millennium, so that all the saints would inherit the Kingdom. They based this on the Abrahamic Covenant and the promises of the land. Abraham had been promised the land of Canaan; he had never received it; God’s covenant promises cannot fail; therefore Abraham must be resurrected, and the promises be literally fulfilled in the millennium.

Both Stephen and the Apostle Paul confirm this state of affairs. Stephen declaring before the Sanhedrin…

"And he gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on: yet he promised that he would give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him, when as yet he had no child." Acts 7:5

Stephen reiterates the personal promise of the possession of the land and that it had as yet remained unfilled.

And Paul in his letter to the Hebrews states…

"By faith Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither he went. By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Through faith also Sarah herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him faithful who had promised. Therefore sprang there even of one, and him as good as dead, so many as the stars of the sky in multitude, and as the sand which is by the sea shore innumerable. These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth." Hebrews 11:8-13

Paul confirms the same, stating that Abraham and the patriarchs died with their faith in the covenant promises of God but without having received their fulfillment in this life, in which they wandered as pilgrims and strangers in the land of promise. Their audiences in both cases would have understood exactly what they meant and the inference that these things would be fulfilled in the resurrection, in the Kingdom of God. To both Stephen and Paul the promise of the land was personal to the patriarchs, was unfulfilled, and would see a future fulfillment by God who cannot lie. They believed in a literal millennium!

It is interesting that Paul when before a Roman court was questioned about his beliefs he declared, "Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee: of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question." (Acts 23:6) Are we to take this as a cynical ploy to win his freedom by dividing the opposition. That is hard to believe especially in light of the fact that later Paul refused to pay a bribe to Felix for his liberty. The truth of the matter is that Paul shared the hope of Pharisees in the resurrection of the just and the messianic kingdom it would introduce. The difference between them was not on those points, but the fact that they were hypocrites, and that they rejected Paul’s belief that Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Messiah.

And the third promise in this trilogy of promises is the promise that some day out of Abraham’s seed will come the Messianic King. This is the promise that one of his descendants will be the promised Messiah. The definition of the promised seed keeps narrowing through the history of redemption. First we have the promise of the Edenic Covenant concerning the seed of the woman that will crush the serpent’s head. Then Abraham is told that the genealogy of this promised Messiah will run through him, the Messiah will be of the seed of Abraham. And the line keeps narrowing. Abraham is told that it will run through Isaac and not through Ishmael. In the next generation again Isaac and Rebecca are told that it will run through the younger (Jacob-Israel) and not through the elder (Esau). Jacob at the end of his life prophesies that it will run through Judah and finally God promises David that it will run through his line. A greater son of David will be the Messianic King that will sit on David’s throne forevermore.

"And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee" (Genesis 17:6).

"And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice" (Genesis 22:18).

This may not seem as clear to us in these Old Testament promises as those concerning the land, etc. but they were abundantly clear in the minds of many inspired writers. The fulfillment of this promise is noted by several New Testament authors. Matthew notes it starting his gospel by stating,

"The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham" (Matthew 1:1).

Matthew starts his gospel by identifying Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ (i.e. the Anointed One, the Messiah). He then immediately identifies him as the promised seed of Abraham and the promised seed of David. Any believing Old Testament Jew would have immediately understood what Matthew was saying. He would have understood that Jesus was being set forth as the fulfillment of these promises of the Abrahamic and the Davidic covenants.

In the Magnificat, as Mary rejoices over the impending birth of Jesus the Messiah, she relates it to the Abrahamic Covenant saying,

"He hath holpen his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy; As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever" (Luke 1:54-55).

Similarly, it was so connected by Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist.

"And his father Zacharias was filled with the Holy Ghost, and prophesied, saying, Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people, And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David; As he spake by the mouth of his holy prophets, which have been since the world began: That we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hand of all that hate us; To perform the mercy promised to our fathers, and to remember his holy covenant; The oath which he sware to our father Abraham" (Luke 1:67-73)

It is significant to note that Zacharias does not limit the benefits of the Messiah’s coming to personal salvation from sin, but includes the national salvation of Israel, as promised in the covenants.

Peter, preaching in the temple after the healing of the lame man, also connects the coming of Christ with the fulfillment of this promise in the Abrahamic Covenant.

"Yea, and all the prophets from Samuel and those that follow after, as many as have spoken, have likewise foretold of these days. Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed. Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities" (Acts 3:24-26).

And finally the Apostle Paul mentions this in the book of Hebrews saying of Christ,

"For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham" (Hebrews 2:16).

To all these inspired men it was clear that the coming of Christ was the fulfillment of God’s covenant promise to Abraham, that out of his seed would come the Messiah. And this trilogy of promises is one related whole. Together they provide the land, the people, and the king for the promised kingdom.

To spiritualize all this away into some ephemeral spiritual reign in the heart, or to allegorize all this into some kind of Church-Kingdom theory is in my estimation to do extreme violence to Scripture and to make a mockery of these oath bound covenant promises of God.

God has sworn strict fulfillment of his covenant promises. God has sworn he will keep his covenant with the seed of Abraham…