Isaiah 53; Philippians 2
Philippians chapter two and one
through 18. The apostle Paul says, so if
there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love,
any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete
my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in
full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from rivalry, conceit,
but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.
Let each of you look not only to his own interest, but also
to the interest of others. Have this mind among yourselves,
which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form
of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being
born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form,
he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death,
even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted
him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so
that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and
on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Therefore,
my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now not only as in
my presence, but much more in my absence. Work out your own
salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you,
both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Do all things
without grumbling or questioning so that you may be blameless
and innocent. Children of God without blemish
in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation among whom
you shine as lights in the world. Holding fast to the word of life
so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not
run in vain or labor in vain. Even if I am to be poured out
as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your
faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all. Likewise, you also
should be glad and rejoice with me. Let’s look to God in prayer.
Our Father, we thank you for your eternal word. We pray now
that by your spirit, we would hear it. We would see the truth
in it. We would understand it. and that
we lay it up in our hearts and put it into practice in our lives.
We pray that you would save sinners and sanctify your saints by your
gracious and mighty word. This we pray in Christ’s mighty
name, amen. The word covenant is probably
strange to some of you, but I think the concept is all around you. We just got through an election
cycle, praise the Lord. But it seems another one has
started, what fresh hell that is. But one of the things we
saw during the election season is how each political candidate
dealt with unions. Unions are people in covenant. It’s labor and owners, right? We the laborers want you, the
owner, to obligate yourself to give us things. We work, we get
paid. We work, we’re not getting paid
enough, so pay us better. And so there’s this covenant,
there’s this relationship between the owners and the laborers.
And there’s the United Auto Workers, there’s government unions, there’s
unions in all kinds of places and areas of business. And so we see the concept of
covenant in the idea of a union. Perhaps you live in a neighborhood
that has a covenant. And that covenant says you shall
not put, you know, your old decrepit car up on blocks in the front
yard, right? That would downgrade the neighborhood.
And so the neighborhood covenant says, you know, cars shall only
be parked in the driveway or mailboxes shall be to the left
of the sidewalk. Or if you build an outbuilding,
it must match the rest of the architecture of your house. Or
if you have a dog, it needs to be in a fence or on and on the
neighborhood covenants go. Most of us probably have a covenant
with Duke Energy. They provide power, we pay them
money. If we don’t pay them money, they turn it off and we freeze.
Same with the gas company, same with the cable company, the internet
company. We get an insurance policy. They assume our risk. We can’t afford to bear the risk,
so we buy insurance. And so if we hit someone, the
insurance company assumes the risk until they try not to. And
they pay for the accident, that sort of thing. So covenants are
all around us. And the simple way to think of
it is it’s a two party relationship. Two parties enter into a relationship. This is the thing. This is the
blessing. This is the curse. There are
obligations. And if the obligations are kept,
good. If they are not kept, bad. And
that’s a concept that we find all around the world. Unions,
electric companies, neighborhood covenants. You have a contract
with your employer. On and on we could go. Real estate
contracts, car sales, purchase agreements, notes and loans and
liens and all the rest. Well, in the scriptures, the
context of the ancient Near East, particularly, remember all the
ites? In the Old Testament, the Hittites.
We’re very well known for entering into covenants or treaties with
other nations. We won’t come raid your land
if you pay us a fee. Maybe you watch these police
shows on television and gangs do the same thing, don’t they?
They own a neighborhood. And so the store owners, the
business owners, they pay a fee, so to speak, to the gangs. We’ll protect your store. We
won’t steal from you. We won’t harass your customers,
those sorts of things. So that’s not always a positive
situation. Well, if you read through the
scriptures, you’ll see over and over again, the language of the
covenant. Moses writing under the inspiration
of the Holy Spirit, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and
Deuteronomy, the first five books of the Bible. We call them the
Pentateuch. We’ve been making our way through
them on Wednesday night in our evening study. You have Moses
giving to Israel their worldview. Where did they come from? Who
is God? What is he like? And how does
the great God of the universe relate to his people? And the language that Moses uses
over and over, beginning with the relationship with Adam and
Eve, on to the relationship with Noah, relationship with Abraham,
and then on to Mount Sinai, his relationship with the Israelites
at the foot of the mountain, you either have vague but their
use of covenant language and parameters or very clear, like
we’ve just read from Deuteronomy chapter four at the confession
of sin, the word covenant is used. Sometimes it’s used, sometimes
it’s not, but the theme, the structure, the idea is there. And so the covenant language,
God in relationship with man, God says, do this and you will
live, do this and you will die. We have the language of the covenant. There was a covenant made with
Adam. We’ll think of that next week. One made with Noah. We’ll
think of that in weeks to come. There’s one with Abraham, ultimately
one with Israel at the foot of Mount Sinai. God makes one with
David. You will be given a kingship, a throne, and someone, Jesus,
will sit on your throne forever. And then there’s the new covenant
spoken of by the prophets, particularly Jeremiah. And then what does
Jesus say when we come to the Lord’s supper, the Lord’s table?
This is the cup of the new covenant in my blood. So how do we read
the scriptures? Well, we read it from front to
back. How do we read the scriptures? Well, we read poetry as poetry,
history as history. We read wisdom literature just
as that and on through all the different genres. But the overarching
way to read the scriptures is through the lens of the covenant. It’s through the lens of seeing
that God is about making a relationship with his people. He imposes obligations
on us. We keep those obligations, we
live. We don’t keep those obligations, we get exile. We get the curses
of sin. We get ultimate curses. If we’re not saved in Christ,
we are cast out of God’s presence forever. Or we obey, we trust
and rest in Jesus. We get all these great covenant
blessings. Now, A lot of you probably understand
and kind of seen that the term and the concept covenant in the
scripture, but if it’s new to you, let me, let me be personal. Let me give another example and
then think through this a little bit more together. I can remember
reading through the Bible the first time myself, I was, really
required to do it for seminary, read through it three times.
So one summer sat down, read it, read it, read it, read it,
read it. And the more I read it, the more I began to see this.
Because, you know, usually we read a couple of verses, we put
our favorite one up on the shaving mirror or up on the fridge or
sticky noted on the steering wheel. And so we know verses,
but we know them out of context and we don’t see them in the
whole of scripture that God wants to have a relationship with his
people, and the whole of scripture is the unfolding of that relationship,
ultimately ending with his gathering his people into the heavenly
city in the book of Revelation. So I remember reading through
my Bible. I grew up in the 80s, so I grew up in the, you know,
memorize a few verses. You know, dispensationalism was
pretty heavy in America then, so I had all that in my head.
And I began to read the Bible and think, this is a whole different
book than I’ve read before. And it radically changed my view.
I began to see the whole Bible as God forming and establishing
and maintaining a relationship with his people so they could
be with him in heaven forever. In fact, if you get to the end
of Revelation chapter 22, what does the Bible say? Well, it
says what God said to Abraham, I will be your God and you will
be my people. And so you get to Revelation,
now the dwelling place of God. is with His people and He will
wipe away every tear and on and on it goes. And so the covenant
promises are graciously fulfilled. So let me encourage you, if you
haven’t read the Bible through and not in one sitting, but,
you know, maybe in a year or six months or a couple months
or two years, whatever, whatever your abilities are, let me encourage
you to do that. And I think you’ll find what
R.C. Sproul tells about his conversion. He became converted in college.
He was walking to the store in the night, I think, to buy a
pack of Lucky Strikes. He went in the chapel of his
college. He met with the Lord. He became a Christian. He read
his Bible. And his first response after
reading the whole Bible through was basically the covenant response.
God plays for keeps. This is a God who loves a people
and he seeks to save and rescue and purify them for himself to
bring them into his presence forever. And so the scriptures
can simply be put as a love story between God and man. We the unlovable,
God the lover, and he pursues us and purifies us and brings
us to himself. So how would you define covenant?
Well, the children’s catechism is kind of easy. It’s a relationship
that God establishes with us and guarantees by his word. God establishes a relationship
with us and we don’t guarantee it by our performance. No, he
guarantees it by his word. And so how wonderful that is.
Or we could say it’s God’s eternal, unchanging purpose to bring a
people to himself through a covenantal relationship. You read the whole
Bible, what’s it about? You don’t want to read the Bible,
so you get the CliffsNotes. CliffsNotes could easily say God plays for
keeps. The CliffsNotes could easily say, God is a people-seeking,
people-loving, people-redeeming God who’s bringing a people to
himself, purifying a people for himself. And it’s in the context
of covenant. Now, think about our relationship
with God. God is way up here. God is creator. He is infinite. He is holy. He
is eternal. He’s everything we are not. And
then we’re little bitty creatures. We were made by God. And I think to understand covenant,
we need to really understand the creator and creation distinction. God is the maker of all things.
We are the made thing. In fact, what does Paul say in
the book of Romans, when he’s thinking about God and all his
actions, he says, what right does the created have to say
to the creator, what are you doing? What are you thinking?
Why are you making me this way? Why are you forming this way?
Why are you the potter fixing the clay this way? And so it’s
good for us to remember God is creator. He’s way up there. We’re
creature, we’re way down here. And there’s a great distinction.
In fact, there’s such a gulf between us that God has to work
through a mediator to interact with us. And so this creator
creature distinction requires that God get down on our level.
So we’ve got a handful of kids in the room. And if you an adult
go up and talk to them, you are not going to talk to them about
the blessings of macroeconomics in the United States of America.
It’s just going to fall flat, right? They don’t care. They
don’t understand. But if you get down on your knees and you
look at them in the eyes and you speak their language, you
condescend, as it were. You speak their language. They
can understand you and you can have a two-way conversation.
You, an adult, have condescended to the child. and you have spoken. In fact, one of the great theologians
of church history says that God has to prattle to us. You know,
we go up to a baby and we, you know, we do our lips and the
little child’s eyes brighten up and they spit back at us,
that sort of thing. God has to prattle. to speak
to us. He has to condescend and speak
to us on our level and in language we can understand. And simply
put, what does God say? He says, I love you with an everlasting
love, and I’ll do whatever it takes to save you. When we come
to the Lord’s supper in just a few moments, we’re going to
see that God does indeed go to great lengths to save us. But simply put, our God desires
to have a people for himself. And he sends the son to seek
and save the lost. And as a reward for the son’s
obedience at the cross, he gives the church, he gives the people,
he gives him his bride, his inheritance, his people as his prize for keeping
the covenant that he made with God. We’ll skip ahead for a little
bit just to save a little time. So some of you may be scratching
your heads and saying, you know, this whole covenant business
is something that’s imposed on the scripture. It’s a system,
an outside system imposed on the scripture. And let me give
you an example of what that might look like if you think that way.
You go to a college or university today and you’re going to study
literature. Well, you can study literature just by reading it
and gaining out of it from its internal information true things
about it. Okay, so say you want to be a
Tolkien expert. So you learn all the Tolkien
characters. You learn all the themes of Tolkien. You learn
about who he was and how he wrote and who influenced him and those
sorts of things. And you read Tolkien and you say, this is
what Tolkien meant. That’s a good way to read Tolkien.
But you go to a university now and they’re going to have the
the liberation view, and they do this with the Bible too, you’re
going to have the feminist view, or you’re going to have the queer
theory view that’s predominant today, or whatever else. And
so an outside system is going to be imposed to interpret the
thing. We see that in DEI, we see that
in, I forget what it’s called now, I try to forget all these
cultural impositions on things. But you see what I’m saying is
you can take outside external information, impose it on a text
and say, this is what I find based on using these parameters,
these presuppositions. You can’t read the Bible that
way. And covenant theology, I want to tell you and encourage you
and show you is not an outside imposed system. It’s actually
the language God speaks. And if you read the Old Testament,
there’s a word for covenant, bereath, that’s used a couple
hundred times in the scriptures and in the Old Testament. God
says covenant, covenant, covenant. So it’s there. And then about
two or 300 BC, a group of translators said, let’s take the Old Testament
Hebrew Bible and let’s translate it into Greek. The Greek language
was becoming predominant. Well, guess how the Greek language
translated. the Old Testament word covenant,
where they translated it with one word, diathiki. And then
you come to the New Testament. You’ve got all the writers like
Luke, who wrote Luke and Acts. You’ve got Paul and his 13 epistles.
You’ve got the writer to the Hebrews. You’ve got Peter, you’ve
got Jude, you’ve got John, you’ve got all these writers. And so
you’ve got the Old Testament word that God inspired, gave
to Moses and others. You’ve got the uninspired Greek
translation that uses the Greek form of the word. And guess what
they use in the New Testament? They use that same word, the
Septuagint, or the Greek translation of the old use. So there’s consistency
in the Bible, consistency in the Bible of how God speaks of
his relationship with man through covenant. Now, why has that been
translated through history? Well, the early church fathers
believed it, the apostles taught it, but then you get into the
thousand years of the dark ages. And what was the Bible translated
into? It was translated into Latin. And there was a significant
downgrade in terms. And so you get this word used
or that word used or this word. And so instead of having one
consistent word, you get all these different Latin terms.
And what happens to language down the corridor of history?
It shifts its meaning. So if you end up today in a,
let’s just say, an argument with someone over politics or over
a social issue or a justice issue, you’ve got to define your terms.
What do you mean by that? And so the best way to approach
the Bible is, well, what did the Old Testament writers say? And we don’t go to the ESV. We
don’t go to the NIV or the NASB or the LSB or the Latin Vulgate. We don’t go to all those. We
go back to the source. We go to the Hebrew Bible and
we look at the words used, the way they were used in that context
and so on. We do that through the New Testament as well. And
so theologians have looked at the scriptures and said, God
has spoken consistently in the Old Testament Hebrew and the
New Testament Greek language. in this concept and idea of covenant. I will be a god to these people.
I will impose my obligations on them and I will save them
through my son who’s the covenant keeper because they are covenant
breakers. And so we have in the scriptures
several covenants. We have the covenant being made
with Adam. Don’t eat of the tree and live. We’ll look at that
next week. What does Adam do? He eats and Wait, he doesn’t
die. Ah, because there’s a covenant
of grace. God intends to save a people through his son, who
when he is not in a garden of paradise, but in a desert, 40
days, 40 nights, and hungry, he withstands the temptations
of that slithering serpent who fooled and duped Adam and Eve,
and the Lord Jesus passes, and he is the second Adam, is the
faithful son. But I want us to think for just
a moment about this covenant of redemption that we see glimpses
of in the scripture. And let me state what it is.
I’ll point out to a few scriptures and then we’ll say, so what?
And then we’ll have communion, which will tell you everything
you need to know, right? At the spoken word, but also the visible,
touched, and tasted word. The covenant of redemption is
simply this, God in eternity past, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
said in their, let’s just call it the inner Trinitarian boardroom,
what will bring us the most glory? We’ll make a world. It’ll be
a wonderful, beautiful world. We’ll permit sin to mar it and
to bruise it and to break it and to curse a people. And then
we’ll send Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, to redeem
not only the people, but to make a new heavens and a new earth. Why is that God’s plan? We don’t
know. Why is it God’s plan? Well, because
he loves us. Why is it God’s plan? There’s
things we don’t know. There’s things in the scripture
we can maybe catch a glimpse of, but it brings him the most
glory to make a world, to permit it to fall into sin, and then
to redeem it through his son, the Lord Jesus. And so we say,
and I think you see this in scriptures, we say the father elects a people
in Jesus Christ. That’s all over Ephesians, isn’t
it? In him. We were chosen before the foundation
of the world that we might be adopted as sons and daughters.
And then we say the son is the mediator or the savior or the
Passover lamb of God’s people. So the father loves, the father
sends the son, the son willingly obeys and keeps the covenant
obligations that Adam failed to keep. And then the son goes
to the cross as the Passover lamb. And then we say the Holy
Spirit applies to us. the redemption that is purchased
by the Lord Jesus Christ. In real space and time, the Spirit
moves in each of us to convince us of our sin and misery, to
show the light of the grace of the God in the gospel of Jesus.
And then he persuades and he enables us to embrace Jesus Christ
as he’s offered in the gospel. And then we spend the rest of
our Christian life being purified and being preserved until we
are brought home to God’s glorious presence. And so in the Trinity,
we see the great love of God. Within the Trinity, we see the
definite plan and foreknowledge as Peter will preach to the people
at Pentecost. Remember the Pentecost, the Spirit
comes, people are speaking in tongues and they say, oh, you’re
a bunch of drunks. And Peter says, no, no, no, they’re not
drunk. It’s just the promised spirit has fallen on them. And
then he preaches the gospel to them. And he says, it was the
definite plan. And in the foreknowledge of almighty
God, that you wicked people would put Jesus the Messiah on the
cross and you would put them to death. This wasn’t plan A,
B or C or D or an oopsie. This was the definite plan and
foreknowledge of almighty God. And so in real space and time,
Jesus comes. sheds His blood and saves a people
for Himself. And so we have the wonderful
mind and heart of the Trinity on display in the entirety of
Scripture. And you remember this well, I
think, as you think of the fullness of the life of Jesus. What does
Jesus say over and over? I’ve come to do the will of the
Father. I’ve come to keep the covenant obligations of obeying
my Father perfectly. What does he say to Satan when
he says, you could have the kingdoms of this world a little easier
than dying on the cross? You know, just jump and let the
angels come. Just bow down to me. Satan says,
you can have it all. What’s the way that God in eternity
past had determined that the son would be king of the nations. It would be through shedding
his own blood, giving up his own life. And so we see in the
fullness of life, Jesus doing the will of the father, keeping
the covenant obligations that Adam failed. The first Adam failed. The second Adam is a faithful
God. And you read the scriptures and
Jesus does and you read the Old Testament. What does Jesus say
after he reads the scroll of Isaiah in the tabernacle or the
synagogue? He says, this is speaking of
me, the suffering servant. is who I am, and I’ve come to
restore, to give sight to the blind, to let the lame walk. I’m here to set the prisoners
free. And so the fullness of the life
of Jesus is to do the will of the Father. You read places like
John 17, the high priestly prayer, Jesus says, all that you have
given to me, I want you to keep, I want you to preserve. They
live in this world, I’m about to leave the world, you keep
them. There’s this continued life of
the Trinity on display in the scripture of we’re going to save
a people and we’re going to draw them to us through the love of
God in Christ Jesus. So the fullness of Jesus’ life
is to do the will of the Father. We read the scriptures, it speaks
of me, Jesus says. Two places where this really
is clear and we’ve read them both already, Isaiah 53. It was
the will of the father to crush the son. But what is the son’s
reward for keeping the covenant of redemption? It’s a people.
What’s the reward of the son for keeping covenant? It’s that
because of his suffering, he is king. Because of his suffering,
he is exalted. Because of his suffering, he
has friends and loved ones. He has a church, a bride of Christ. God gave his will, the servant
obeyed, and his portion is now the spoils. And that’s you. You’re
the spoils of the cross, and Jesus inherits you. He inherits
the spoils of the cross for keeping covenant. Remember, of Christ,
it is said, for the joy set before him, he went to the cross. Why did Jesus go to the cross?
Is it because of cosmic child abuse? That’s what some will
tell you. They’ll tell you that God the
Father and God the Son were at odds, and God the Son said, fine,
if you’re gonna be that angry old testament, goon of a God,
then I’ll just pay for their sins. That’s not how it works. That’s not how it works at all.
No, Jesus willingly went to the cross. Jesus willingly took on
human flesh. In fact, Galatians says in the
fullness of time, God sent forth his son. You see very intentional
language. God determined to save a people
through his son. The son willingly came and his
victory spoils of the cross. he gains us as his inheritance. And so for the joy set before
him, he put aside the shame, he put aside the pain, he put
aside the sorrow, and he said, this is going to be worth it.
This is going to be worth it all. And so you come to Philippians
chapter two. And Paul is saying to the Philippians,
you know, y’all need to quit your fussing, you need to quit
your worldliness. This is where theology becomes very practical,
doesn’t it? You need to quit your belly aching and think like
Jesus. Well, what will make you quit
your belly aching? Well, thinking like Jesus. Consider others better
than yourself. Put aside your desires and serve
others. That’s very hard for us to do,
but that’s the mind of Jesus. And so catch this thought in
Paul’s theology. and in his practicality. He’s
simply saying this to us as Christians. If you want to live in harmony
with one another, you need to live like the covenant-keeping
Jesus. That’s a pretty weighty reason,
isn’t it? Don’t say, oh, get along because nobody likes strife.
Get along because it’s Thanksgiving and it’ll soon be over, right?
You’re supposed to chuckle at that. Get along at work because
you need a job and want to get paid. No, you get along because
it’s the mind of Jesus. And how did the mind of Jesus
come to full fruition on this earth? He left the riches of
glory. He took on human flesh, suffering,
pain, curses, all the hardship. He bore the wrath of God due
for our sins. Those sins were laid on him at
the cross. And his mind was to love in an everlasting way. And
so can’t we get along? That’s sort of the theological
rationale Paul gives for being at peace with one another. It’s
in the humiliation and in the exaltation of Jesus. And both
in the passage we read from Isaiah and in Philippians, there’s a
therefore. And there’s a, therefore Jesus
was willing to suffer. Jesus was willing to die. And
therefore he receives his inheritance. He receives his prize for being
the faithful to the covenant mediator and savior. And so it’s the will of God,
the will of the father, the son, and the Holy spirit to save a
people for himself. And we read the scriptures and
we see this covenant worked out in real space and time, real
history. We see it in the birth of Isaac.
We see it in the coming of Jesus. We see it in the victory of the
cross and we see it in each of our own lives. As God by his
spirit comes to us and he shows us our sin, God by his spirit
comes to us and shows us of our need of a savior. You’re a covenant
breaker. God will be angry with you forever.
And then he shows us our substitute Jesus who lived and obeyed and
suffered and died in our place. And he shows us that if we put
our faith in him, we put our faith in his work, not ours,
and we receive it and we rest in him alone. that God sees us
as covenant keepers. He looks on us as if we’ve never
sinned. He looks on us as if we’ve always
obeyed. That’s when we have faith in
Jesus, his beloved son. And so from time to time, we’ll
sing a little song, a modern song that’s in our new hymnal. And it has a refrain in it. Why
should I gain from his reward? Why should I gain from His reward?
And the answer is simply this, because He loves you so much
that He wants to save you and share that reward with you forever
in eternity. And if you don’t believe it,
ask God the Holy Spirit to show you that in His word and to write
it on your heart. But if you don’t believe it,
you’ll see it in the sacraments here in a moment. You’ll see
the emblems of Christ’s death. You’ll see the emblems of his
suffering. And that was done for you because he made a promise
to the father, I will seek and save the lost. And what it will
take is my condescension to this earth as a human in flesh, undergoing
the miseries of this life, taking on the sins of my people, dying
the death they could never die, but the death they deserved.
And then giving, gifting to them the righteousness, holy and just God requires. And he’s done that in his own
body when he bore your sins on the tree. So why does God love
us? Because he wants to. And that’s
a good enough reason, isn’t it? Let’s look to him now in prayer
and prepare for the Lord’s table. Lord, when we look in the depths
of our hearts and we look among the cobwebs of our minds, we
see things that we do not like and We see things that we know
displease you, but we thank you that in Christ, our sins are
forgiven. We thank you that in Christ,
we are being conformed more and more into the image of your dear
son, our savior, the Lord Jesus. And we thank you that the rest
of our lives until we are called home, you are purifying us, a
people for yourself, washing us and cleansing us and sanctifying
us. and you are preserving us to
the very end. Until that day, you call us home
and bring us into your glorious presence spotless. Lord, help
us in this moment to remember the great cost, the great lengths
to which you have gone to keep covenant, to keep steadfast love
and faithfulness. Show us now in the sacrament
that your word is eternal, your word is true, and that even our
great weakness, even our Strongest efforts are not enough. It’s
only through the work. It’s only through the righteousness
of Jesus that we have standing in your sight. Show us that and
help us to walk from this place today, relying fully on you for
you are our God and our Savior. This we ask in Christ’s mighty
name. Amen. We want to sing of God’s goodness
as we prepare for the Lord’s table. So stay seated and turn
to 427.