The covenants
The binding agreements God makes with people, which give the Bible its structure from Noah to the new covenant.
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What is a covenant in the Bible?
A binding, solemn agreement that establishes a relationship, with promises and obligations, usually sealed by an oath and a sign.
Covenants were common in the ancient world between kings and their subject nations. The Bible uses the same form for God's relationship with his people. It is more than a contract: it is closer to a marriage or an adoption, a relationship with commitments built into it. The Bible's story can be traced as a series of covenants.
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What did God promise in his covenant with Noah?
Never again to destroy all life on earth with a flood, with the rainbow as the sign.
It is made not only with Noah but with every living creature. It asks nothing in return. It guarantees that the world will go on long enough for God's plan of rescue to unfold, and it keeps seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, day and night, steady while it does.
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What did God promise in his covenant with Abraham?
Land, a great nation of descendants, and that through Abraham's family all the nations of the earth would be blessed. The sign was circumcision.
This covenant is the backbone of the Bible. God seals it in Genesis 15 in an ancient ceremony where the parties walked between cut animals, but only God passes through, taking the whole obligation on himself. The New Testament argues that the promise of blessing to the nations is fulfilled in Jesus, Abraham's descendant.
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What was the covenant God made with Israel at Mount Sinai?
The agreement, given through Moses after the exodus, that Israel would be God's treasured people and a holy nation, living by his law, with blessings for faithfulness and curses for breaking it.
It is also called the Mosaic covenant or the old covenant. It begins with rescue, not rules: "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt", and only then the Ten Commandments. The rest of the Old Testament, especially the prophets and the exile, is largely the story of Israel breaking this covenant and living with the consequences it named.
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What did God promise King David in his covenant with him?
That one of David's descendants would always sit on his throne, and that God would be a father to that son.
When the line of kings was cut off in the exile, the promise seemed to have failed. That gap is what created the hope for a Messiah, a coming "son of David" who would restore the throne forever. The New Testament opens by calling Jesus "the son of David".
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What is the new covenant?
The covenant promised through Jeremiah and Ezekiel, in which God would write his law on people's hearts, give them his Spirit, and forgive their sins completely. Jesus said it was established by his death.
The old covenant failed because the people could not keep it; the new one promises to change the people themselves. At the Last Supper Jesus took the cup and called it the new covenant in his blood. Hebrews spends several chapters explaining how the new covenant fulfils and replaces the old.