The study of God’s covenants with man has the potential of turning into a dozen different rabbit trails, so I’m going to deliberately avoid following any of those rabbit trails and instead just focus on the important features of God’s covenants, and how they compare with each other over three separate, broad epochs of time.
The very first covenant with man is found in Genesis 2:16-17, where God commands Adam, that he might freely eat of any tree in the Garden of Eden, save for the tree of knowledge, of good, and of evil. God warns Adam that in the day he eats of that forbidden tree, “in dying, you will die.”
In order to get proper context, let’s look at the next covenant after this one. It’s found in Genesis 6:17-18. God promises to bring a flood to cover the earth, destroying both man and beast. But Noah, a descendant of Adam, God covenants to preserve by having him build an ark.
You may be picking up on the pattern here already, but let’s look at the next couple of covenants after this one. The third is found in Genesis 9:8-17, regarding God’s promise to never again bring a flood of water to destroy all life. The fourth is found is Genesis 12:1-3, regarding God’s promise to Abraham, a descendant of Adam, to make his descendants into a great nation whereby all of the families of the earth might be blessed.
For each of these four covenants, God makes promises to people from one specific family line. Why? Why not just anyone?
You can think of it this way. The genealogies in Genesis 5 and 10 represent those who were faithful to God. They may have sinned (as Adam did), but they didn’t reject God outright. We’re not told of anyone else who was worshipping God at this point in time
Once we get to Abraham, we now begin finding repeated covenant blessing after blessing indicating that God is about to widen the scope of the people He has been working with. No longer will He just focus on one singular family line, but that family will become a nation, and through that nation, the entire world will be blessed.
The first epoch is, of course, of the span of time that God deals with one, singular family line. The second epoch is the span of time that God deals with one, singular nation. The third epoch is the span of time that God deals with the entire world.
This might seem overly simplistic, but it nevertheless fits the Scriptural record that has been handed down to us. More importantly, we can compare and contrast the different covenants that God made to the family of Adam, vs. to the family of Abraham and eventually to Israel itself, vs. to the Gentiles and the rest of the world. Some of those covenants involve physical promises – such as inheriting a specific land, or having many descendants – whereas others involve spiritual promises.
Unfortunately, most Christians tend to only focus on the covenants that God made involving spiritual promises, and completely ignore the other covenants. Since those covenants don’t pertain to them, they must not be important.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Either God will keep all of His promises, or none of them. They stand or fall together. And as far as those promises applying to others but not us…you may want to consider WHY God made promises to the Gentiles. In part, it was so that they could turn around and help to redeem all twelve tribes of Israel.
God does things in a certain order so that He can offer salvation to as many people as possible, but He doesn’t intend to leave anyone out. Not even those who formerly rejected Him.
As we begin delving into some of these ancient covenants, we’ll explore just how they do pertain to us, and why they’re still important – even today.