In the Beginning: A Covenant of Works

Just glad that you are spending your Sabbath day with us, with God's people. Welcome this morning and want to welcome you, especially if you're new to our church. We're glad you're with us this morning. We're in the book of Genesis chapter two today and last week, I made you read a really long portion of scripture. So making up for it today. Only a few verses. If you would join me and find that in your bulletin or up on the screen behind me, we're gonna read Genesis two fifteen through 17 together out loud. You ready? Three, two, one.

The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, "You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat. For in that day that you eat it, you shall surely die." — Genesis 2:15-17

Let's pray together. Lord, I pray that the words of my mouth, the meditation of all of our hearts would be pleasing and acceptable in your sight. You are our rock and our fortress and our redeemer. Amen.

I'm a fan of Malcolm Gladwell's podcast, Revisionist History, and Gladwell is this quirky guy who sort of looks back at different moments in our culture and history from a different angle and asks good questions. A member of our congregation tipped me to this one a couple of weeks ago about his episode on the Disney classic, The Little Mermaid and this is maybe one of his best I've ever heard him talk about.

So if you remember, The Little Mermaid was one of a series of Disney movies about princesses that came out in the nineteen nineties. The Little Mermaid kind of marked the beginning of a bunch of Disney classics. After that came Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Mulan—all hits right after the other. And of course, the movie is made for kids. It's an animated Disney classic, especially for little girls. This is one of the princess genre that started through there.

It's a story of a mermaid, Ariel, who falls in love with this guy, Eric, a human, after she rescues him from a shipwreck. After that, she's in love with him and wants to be human. So she makes a deal with the sea urchin, Ursula. Anybody remember this? She would have legs, and she could have legs in exchange for Ursula taking her voice temporarily. If this worked out, the plan was that Ariel would kiss Eric, and she would forever be able to live happily ever after with him—with legs as a princess. That's sort of the plan. And if not, Ursula gets to keep her voice.

Now the focus of the podcast that Gladwell does is on how fairy tales work, and I thought this was fascinating. He said, fairy tales work in a society by teaching kids a moral universe. They teach them that there's a good and there's a bad and that there's poetic justice. Good people get good things, bad people get bad things. And this is woven throughout a lot of the Disney fairy tale stories. Think of Cinderella—the wicked stepmother and sisters, right? At the end, they get the bad, but Cinderella, who's good, she gets the good ending. And so that's how these sort of work. They're intended to communicate to our children that there's good and bad and to do good things—a moralistic universe.

And as Gladwell says, this one, The Little Mermaid, is like poetic justice on steroids. The good people get really good things. The bad people get really bad things. Yet there are problems that he points out with this movie that maybe we haven't always thought about. And I appreciated this. As he points out, this is a movie that's about law. It's about a contract. And it's even complete with lawyers in the movie. So Ariel signs a golden contract with Ursula, lawyers present for this. And it's a binding contract. Not even her dad is able to undo the words that are on that contract.

Yet he points out, maybe we haven't thought about this one enough because this movie is really about a young girl selling her body parts with a contract. Right? Maybe not the best Disney message that we thought about before. You can catch the rest of his podcast. It's very fascinating. I won't spoil the ending of that. He does do a retelling of The Little Mermaid with a better ending, which is worth listening to. It's acted out with a famous actress.

But listening to that reminded me so much of the passage we are looking at this morning because it's all about a contract. It's all about law. It's all about poetic justice. It's about blessings for obedience, curses for disobedience. We're looking again at Genesis chapter two, these few verses, at what theologians call the covenant of works.

Now that may sound strange to you. The word covenant actually doesn't appear in this passage. So where are we getting this from? Well, here's a little thing about reading the Bible.

You can't be too literalistic in reading the Bible in equating a word with a concept. For example, Genesis chapter three, we're doing next week, go one more chapter over, and it's all about the fall and the curse. And yet the word sin never appears in Genesis chapter three, not one time. So, class, is there a sin in Genesis chapter three? Yes, there is. Even though the word doesn't appear there, the concept is. So the same thing applies to covenant here. The word covenant itself doesn't appear in this section, but it's all through here.

This morning, I want us to think about God's covenant with his first image bearers and I'm gonna ask a bunch of questions. So, if you take notes, this is kinda my outline: Why, what, what if, and so what?

Why a Covenant?

Now, I know we don't use the word covenant very often, but the most analogous term in our culture is contract. And you know all about contracts, don't you? If you are an adult in this country, you have to learn lots about contracts. You may feel like you even have some contracts with Ursula, the urchin. We have contracts with our phone companies. We have contracts if you get a car and you're gonna make payments on that. You have a contract called a mortgage or a lease. You have a contract if you go to college for paying back that loan.

A contract is always defining a relationship between two entities. There's a good and service provided. There are expectations for how that is gonna be paid for, and those are spelled out. And also, what are the stipulations in case that's not paid for?

So if you think about contract, it may seem really strange to us to think God has a contract with His first people He makes. Why would God do that? Why would God need that? Why would God define that? I mean, are there goods and services being passed here? Sort of. Not really. It's not like Verizon. So why would God do this?

Creation, brand spanking new, and God wants a DTR. Now, I may date myself with this one, but does anybody know what a DTR is? When I was in college, this is what we did. You're hanging out with someone, you're sort of interested in each other, and you have a define the relationship talk. That's what a DTR stands for. Define the relationship. I messed this one up so badly. It was amazing that my wife continued to date me or started to date me after this because it's sort of like, hey, we're hanging out. What is this? What are we about?

And God does this now with his people in Genesis two. God has a DTR with them, and it makes all kinds of sense if you think about the two parties involved here. This is so different from any contract that we enter into today. When you enter into a contract, you enter into a contract with another individual, like a landlord, or with a company, but it's people on equal footing. And in here, these first image bearers, Adam and then later on Eve, they enter into this covenant with God, and it's not the same. This is a covenant with the all-knowing, all-powerful, eternal being in the universe. This is God stooping down to figure out how to have a DTR with them. This is God condescending to be able to even enter into this.

You know, it's funny because people today have all kinds of problems with how we relate to God. You'll hear people say things like this: "Well, you know, I couldn't relate to a God who..." or "I like to think of God this way..." What's funny about that is I think that when people say that, they think they're relating to a being that's on the same level, and so they get to define the relationship. But we would never do this in some areas of life. Would we let our toddlers define the relationship with the parents? Would we let the kindergarten class come up with international policy for our country? No.

See, God has the right. The all-knowing, ever-present, all-powerful, holy being in the universe who wants to enter into relationship with people—He has the right to give that DTR. He has the right to define the contract and what's involved there. And notice that God even does this before there's sin in the world. Before the fall, God says, this is how we're going to relate. This is what this is going to look like. And so this is all setting it up for what we find here in verses 15 through 17: a covenant.

What Is a Covenant?

A covenant is a bond in blood. It's a binding agreement between two parties, and a covenant is not something unique to the Bible. You don't just find this with Yahweh or the people of Israel. This is actually common in the ancient Near East, just like contracts are common language that we all use. This would have been very common to the people who first received this. They would have understood exactly.

The Covenant Structure

It's based on there's an example of this in ancient Near Eastern literature: a suzerain vassal treaty. You don't even know about that. But what that means is suzerain is another word for a warlord, and a vassal is someone conquered. And this was common practice in the ancient Near East. A warlord would take over an area and define the relationship between the people that he had conquered. This is how this is gonna work. This is how I'm gonna take care of you, and this is what it means for what you can expect from me, but also the services I expect from you.

There are five components always in a covenant. There's always two parties in a covenant. There's always a historical list of past benefactions—here's how I've taken care of you in the past. Then there are stipulations: here's what you do, and here's what I do. And then there are promises: here's what happens if things go well, here's what happens if things don't go well. And finally, there's a sign—a sign of the covenant.

The closest thing that we get to in our society is a marriage ceremony. I'm doing premarital counseling for two couples right now, and both of them are here this morning. That's a little hint. So I'll stand up next month with a couple, two parties, and I'll have them face each other and they will make promises to one another. They say, I promise to love, to be here. And they'll make all these statements: sickness and health, things going well, things going poorly, I will be here. And then they give each other a sign of the covenant. What's the sign of the covenant? It's a ring.

The Meaning of "Cutting" a Covenant

Now what's funny about this is in the Old Testament, the word to make a covenant is actually the word cut—to cut a covenant. Isn't that strange language? Why in the world would you cut a covenant? Well, this is how it went. It was common practice for the two parties entering into a covenant to take an animal and kill it and cut it in half. And then to walk between the two parts—either half of this dead animal—as a promise, as a way of solemnly swearing and signifying the covenant. And what they were saying walking between those halves is, may it be to me like this animal, may I be destroyed if I don't keep my end of the bargain.

Can you imagine doing this in a wedding ceremony now? Like, you visit the butcher, you get a piece of meat, you cut it in half, put it on either side. Nobody's gonna forget your wedding if you do that. That's an option for you, Randy. We're gonna look at this later in Genesis 15. That's exactly what happens.

The Covenant of Works in Genesis 2

Let's look back at Genesis 2. This is called a covenant of works and all these five things are part of this.

First, there are two parties: God and His image bearer Adam, and then by extension, Adam and Eve.

Second, it's gracious. Notice, there's nothing that requires God to do this, and the whole purpose of this—he says in verse 16—it's not to punish them, it's for blessing.

You may surely eat of all these trees except for one. — Genesis 2:16

Please do. I am providing graciously for you.

There are stipulations and rules to this covenant. What is Adam's obligation? Poetic justice, right? Good people get good things, bad people get bad things. Follow through on what God has asked you to do: be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, tend the garden. And what would happen over time is that would begin to expand. The Garden of Eden would begin to expand and fill the whole earth. That was the plan.

Then there are prohibitions. We know this. Don't eat of that one tree, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

There are promises and stipulations. If you obey, good things will happen. If you disobey, bad things will happen.

And finally, there's a sign. This is maybe a little hard for us to see, but this is in Genesis 2 and 3. There's a sign, and it's the second tree. Remember, there are two trees that are specifically named in the garden: the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. Now we always focus on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil because of what happened at the end of the story, but there's another tree, and that tree was the covenant sign.

What's more, it appears that there's a probationary period for this. There's a time frame for this. Like lots of suzerain vassal treaties in the ancient Near East, over this time, if you fulfill your obligations and I fulfill mine, good things will happen. There will be a reward. There will be something that happens.

God will dish out blessings for obedience to the directives, remember that from last week? To the directives in keeping the covenant. So what if? And this is where I need you to actually use your brains this morning with me because I think that a lot of times when we read the Bible, there is a lullaby effect. You know lullabies—we play them for little babies to put them to sleep. And this is what happens a lot of times with people who have grown up around this book. I mean, you teach in that wing of the building with our kids' classes, we cover the Garden of Eden every year. I bet some of you have heard this over and over and over again, and I'm afraid there's a lullaby effect where we don't ask questions.

Here's the question I want you to ask this morning: What if? What if it didn't go this way? When I was a kid, one of my favorite series of books was Choose Your Own Adventure. Loved those. It left the plot in the hands of the reader. So you'd be reading down the page, and at the bottom you'd get a question. You could choose one of two options. Do you want the hero of the story to cross the icy bridge over the ravine? Turn to page 122. Do you want the hero of the story to turn back and face the dragon head on by himself? Turn to page 56.

There's actually a whole new version of this. Some of you may have seen this on Netflix. Bear Grylls, you know, the famous outdoors guy, has a show called You versus Wild, and he plays a scene, and after a while you get to choose, using your remote, what Bear Grylls is gonna do next. My kids choose for him to be tortured over and over again, usually.

So this whole thing begs the question: What if? And it's a question we don't think about. What if they hadn't sinned? What if they hadn't failed the test? What if they had kept the covenant? What if? I mean, this was no setup. God is not doing a number on them like, "Woo hoo, caught you." Adam and Eve are not like us. The North African bishop Augustine famously said: "Adam and Eve, able to sin or not sin. Us, after the fall, not able to not sin." They actually had the ability to follow through on this. They had something that you have. They had an ability to follow through in obedience in a way that you and I don't experience. They could have gone on.

So what if? Well, if Adam and Eve had obeyed, something else would have happened. And this is where the other tree is so important—the tree of life. We don't read a whole lot about what the tree of life does, but in Genesis 3 we get some implications of this. Because after they sin and fall, this is what God does:

God drove them out of the garden, and at the east of the Garden of Eden, He placed the cherubim, messenger of light, an angel, and a flaming sword that turned every way, to guard the way to the tree of life.

To guard the way, to prevent them from, in their sinful state, going from one tree to the tree of life—the tree of the knowledge of good and evil—eating that apple, and living forever in a status of alienation from God beyond restoration. Eternal life apart from God. The implication is if they had obeyed, God Himself would have taken them by the arm, escorted them: "Let's go over to the other tree, the tree of life." He would have picked the apple himself, and they would have gone on to some heightened status of glory, clothed in light—something we cannot imagine. But they would have gone on to some kind of glory in that moment that's not just status quo, hanging out in the garden naked. This is something much better, like fulfilled in ways that Adam and Eve didn't know up until this point.

When we think about the garden, sometimes we have this nostalgia view, like this was great, this is the best there ever was. I'll come back to that in a second.

Why This Matters

So here's where I have to ask the next question: So what? I mean, obviously, we know what did happen. Adam and Eve didn't obey and they fell. And some of you are like, "Thanks, bald preacher, for a tour through covenants that never came to be in the Old Testament. Why do I need to know that?"

Well, here's why: because if you don't understand all that was intended in the covenant of works, you don't understand Jesus. You won't understand the covenant of grace. You'll have a half-baked savior. You have a half-baked salvation. This is so important.

You know, how many of you grew up having a nickname? A couple of you. I noticed that in families there's nickname families and some people in the family seem to collect lots of nicknames. Jesus collects lots of nicknames. It's a fascinating thing reading through the Bible.

How many names are given to Jesus? A lot of times, in our families, nicknames are given based on funny things people did, things that happened to them. Jesus is called by a funny nickname in 1 Corinthians 15. He's called the last Adam. Now that's weird. I mean, there's Adam and Eve who we've been talking about, but 1 Corinthians 15 says, no, there's another one. Let's nickname Jesus the last Adam. And he's saying something really important here. There's something that Jesus did related to Adam that you gotta know. You gotta understand.

There's this common phrase that I hear among Christians a lot of times to try to describe what did Jesus do for us on the cross. And this is trying to be helpful. So the technical word for that is justification. And some people have given this a little memory aid around it: just as if I never sinned. And that sounds really good, right? Just as if I never sinned. But I wanna ask the question, is that right? Is that really all of what God has given us in Jesus?

Think with me about this. Here's Adam and Eve. They disobeyed. Jesus comes on the cross after the fall and returns them to what? Returns us to what? Is it just as if I never sinned? See, sometimes we think about the garden in terms of perfection, but I actually would like to use a different word. I wanna think of it in terms of potential, not perfection. There's something about Eden that has a kind of "what if" quality around it. Eden was unspoiled, but it was also unfinished. Eden was unsullied by sin, but it was also incomplete. And just as Eden was incomplete, so were the original people, Adam and Eve. They were incomplete.

Think about it. They are sinless, but they're vulnerable to temptation. They are alive, but they're vulnerable to death. They're made in God's image and His likeness, but they weren't yet as glorious or complete as God had intended them to be.

So here's my point: a return like this—just as if I never sinned—actually is not very helpful. And this is Roman Catholic theology. It's a return to a place of vulnerability just like Adam and Eve.

Picture it this way. Let's say you owe an incredible amount of money to the IRS—back taxes, all kinds of stuff—and they set up a payment plan for you, but it is a crushing payment plan. It ensures that you will be in poverty for the rest of your life. Sure, you can work at this, but you're never going to pay it all off. And then you get news from somebody in your family: "Hey, you didn't even know you had a great aunt so-and-so who died this past weekend and left you the exact amount of money you owed to the IRS."

Now, how would you feel about that? Incredibly grateful, but broke. Your great aunt paid your debt, but you're still back at nothing.

Now, let's just say—crazy world that it is—coincidentally, you also find out you have a great uncle so-and-so you never heard of before who is also incredibly rich and who died the same weekend. And you get word from him that you not only have your debt paid, but you also get an inheritance of more money than you could ever spend in your lifetime. In fact, you can live off the interest. Never need to work again.

Now, how do you feel about that? Grateful but broke? Heck no. You're jumping up and down. Your debt has been paid, and there's an inheritance that you could never have imagined, that sets up your life in a way that you have never tasted.

The Last Adam and Our Inheritance

See, this is when Jesus uses this nickname—last Adam—and if we don't get this, we miss so much good news of the gospel. We don't have just a Jesus who returns us back to broke, who pays the debt for our sin on the cross. We also have a Jesus who did what Adam failed to do. He perfectly obeyed his Father. His life was defined by "not my will, but yours be done," and what is credited to you is both the inheritance of the great aunt who died and the great uncle—paying your debt and also giving you an unbelievable amount of money to live off of.

This is what's given to us. This is why I say we have a "how much more" gospel over and over again. I keep trying to say this to the congregation: we have a "how much more" gospel.

The gift is not like the trespass. The gift is so much greater than the trespass ever was. — Romans 5

What's given to you in Jesus is more than you can imagine.

You know, in the nineteen nineties, there was a movement called Promise Keepers, and it was centered around getting men together from all kinds of different denominations to come together in big city stadiums and worship Jesus together. It was a great movement. I drove a school bus from the Philadelphia suburbs down to Veterans Stadium with a bunch of sweaty guys, and we worshipped Jesus together in the stadium, and it was great. But the irony was the name.

Because the name Promise Keepers was actually a gathering full of nobody in that stadium who could keep any promises. It was a gathering of promise breakers and there was one and only one promise keeper. The Lord Jesus Christ who fulfilled the covenant of works for you, who did what Adam could never do so that you have a double portion.

So look, just as if I never sinned—no thanks. I don't want to go back to Eden. This is what we have in Jesus. Just as if I was Jesus. That's where I stand and you stand in the gospel.

The Little Mermaid and Poetic Justice

So back to The Little Mermaid. Let me wrap it up with The Little Mermaid again. Remember, Malcolm Gladwell called that a movie that's poetic justice on steroids. In that episode, Gladwell interviews a researcher named Angus Fletcher, who does work on studying the impact of media on children. He won't reveal how he does this on the episode, but he says he's studied and developed technology to be able to watch kids as young as four and how they respond to these Disney movies and what's being communicated.

And this is what he found out. Kids love Disney movies and yet they don't love the poetic justice fairy tale ending. Kids don't say that, but they enjoy watching everything kind of turn out okay in the end. But here's what he said: these fairy tale movies with poetic justice endings end up creating a type of catastrophizing in the lives of our children. Because as they're watching this movie, they know—your kids are really smart. They know what they're watching means good people get good things, bad people get bad things. And every child knows, I'm not a good person all the time. And it creates this internal tension, subtle but real, like, I know. I end up looking over my shoulder.

What kids really want, according to Gladwell, is fairy tales with a twist. Fairy tales with a twist where somehow the bad person ends up getting really good things. See, what children want and what we want is the gospel, that God treats the bad people—us—with good things. And thank the Lord, it's no fairy tale.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Let's pray together. Father, this runs counter to how we live all the time, and we are not people who live as if the gospel's true. But if poetic justice is really how we relate to you, that we're just back where we were back at Eden, broke—Lord, we thank you we have a bigger gospel than that. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.