The puzzle finally takes shape this week as the pieces fall into place.  The beautiful thread of redemption and salvation that runs from the Garden of Eden all the way to The Revelation can now be clearly seen as our study of covenant in scripture comes to a close with this Sunday’s lesson. 

The Bible you hold in your hand is divided into the Old Testament and the New Testament.  The words “testament” and “covenant” are interchangeable.  The Old Covenant was the red arrow pointing to Jesus.  The New Covenant declares that He came.  The Old prepared us for the New.  The Old was the “schoolmaster” that led us to understand what the New would reveal and make plain.  The Old was the frame.  The New filled in the picture. 

Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and David were huge sections of the story.  Through covenant relationships with these five men of the Old Testament gospel story, God promised fruitfulness, preservation, blessing, a priestly nation and a line of kings. The four hundred years of judges were followed by the four hundred years of kings.  Along with those kings, God also sent prophets to deliver His Word to the kings and the people they ruled over. 

Long before Day One, God had a plan to send Jesus to break down the wall of sin between Himself and His creation.  God’s plan would be to show the people that He was to be their fruitfulness, their preservation, their blessing, their priest, their prophet and their King. 

Through the prophet Jeremiah, God would reveal a major clue as to how His covenant relationship would be perfected.  Six hundred years before the birth of Jesus, Jeremiah would speak of a new covenant, not a new and improved covenant, but a complete covenant.  Rather than being written on tablets of stone filled with rules they could never manage to observe and obey, this covenant would be written on their hearts. 

God desired a relationship with people that began on the inside based on changed, committed, receptive, believing hearts.  Paul would later write that the law was given to show us we could never be “good enough” but the law was a school master to lead us to Jesus.  The Old Testament “lovingkindness” would translate one day into New Testament “mercy and grace.”

God values and elevates the importance of marriage.  That special relationship was to be a picture of His relationship to His people.  Later marriage would display Christ as a groom and the Church as His bride.  Marriage is a covenant relationship.  When vows are broken by unfaithfulness, the marriage is broken.  God called that adultery.  When His people disobeyed, God wanted them to see that sinfulness was equated with spiritual adultery.  This was eternally serious business in the eyes of God. 

Covenants usually involved the sacrificial shedding of blood of an innocent animal.  The cleansing rituals in the book of Leviticus involved the shedding of blood as well. The priests in both the tabernacle in the wilderness and the temple in Jerusalem would offer blood sacrifices. 

God was lighting the way to a bloody cross on a hill called Golgotha and a place called Calvary and His one and only begotten Son, Jesus.  In Hebrews 10:10, the writer would connect the dots with these words: “…but He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God.”  Jesus was the mediator of the new covenant.  No longer external, but internal.  No longer a command from outside, but a desire from within based on love and trust and belief.  Direct divine forgiveness leads to personal divine fellowship between God and man.  Jesus accomplished this on the cross and sealed it with His resurrection and defeat of death forever.

Jeremiah spoke in chapter 31 of the days that shall come.  In Luke 22:14 when Jesus dined with His disciples at Passover in Jerusalem, we see that “the hour had come!” God is a promise maker and a promise keeper.  As He speaks and His word goes forth, it is in the process of being fulfilled as a fact.  French people speak French.  Spanish people speak Spanish. God speaks JESUS!  He is the fulfillment of the covenant.  He is the promise and the promise fulfilled.  As they ate the bread and drank the wine that night in Jerusalem, Jesus declared that meal to be fulfilled shortly in the giving of His own body and blood.

On our side of the cross, we have the privilege of a vantage point which looks all the way back through David, Moses, Abraham and Noah…all the way back to Adam!  We can see the big picture.  This line has been called the scarlet, red thread of salvation.  Only the mind of a holy and loving God could have charted such a course for us to follow.  His plans are always best.  Always for our benefit.  Always providing a way for us to be drawn back to Him and away from sin and death. 

All of scripture points to Jesus.  All of the feasts and festivals celebrated by the Jews point to Jesus.  All of the prophets declare that God is at work bringing events together to call His people back to Himself.  All of the sacrifices offered day after day after day after day are finally made unnecessary because of Jesus.  The priests could never sit down.  Jesus completed the covenant promise and sat down at the right hand of His Father.