Notice there is a family line God is dealing with. Matthew and Luke record that line of mother and father. This is God's determination to this.
Jeremiah, I'm well aware of this truth, not so sure you are. Luke's genealogies goes back to Adam, where it should go with whom the first covenant
was made with and us in him! But after the fall, God found fault not with his good, spiritual, and holy law, that he had given Adam, but with man, unable to secure eternal life by his own works ~
even when put into a
perfect opportunity, without a sin nature, since Adam was created after the image of God, in righteousness, knowledge, understanding ~in other words, very good as God judged and we know that His judgment of very good and not very good is perfect. (
Genesis 1:31 )
Rather or not you want to accept this truth ~ God found fault not with his law which was given first to Adam than written to Israel on two tables of stones is consider the first covenant~a covenant of works which can be summed up in this:
"This do and live, sin and die"!
God made no covenant with any Gentiles in the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets.
Jeremiah are you very sure of what you have written? How sure? Well sir, you are so wrong, which only proves that you don't have the truth on what you are attempting to teach others. Not only are you wrong, but you are corrupting God's word in teaching what you are doing. That's very serious, and you need to stop and reconsider this subject, asking God for light and mercy, Consider:
God made no covenant with any Gentiles in the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets. There is none.
First question for you ~Was Noah a Jew? Did Noah find grace in the eyes of the LORD? What prompt that grace?
No one thing ~ since grace is FREE. Just in case you do not believe that grace is free, just read Genesis six concerning the very generation from which Noah came from:
Noah found grace ( where ) in the eyes of the LORD. The new covenant is termed the
everlasting covenant since it was from the foundation of the world; and in that covenant all of the names of God's elect were written
then and given to Jesus Christ to secured their eternal salvation. This covenant is gradually unfolded in the OT beginning in Genesis 3:15, through men like Noah, Abraham, David and into the NT with David's son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
As we said~The first germinal publication of the everlasting covenant is found in Genesis 3:15..
“I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head,and thou shalt bruise his heel.”
Thus, immediately after the Fall, God announced to the serpent his ultimate doom through the work of the Mediator, and revealed unto sinners the channel through whom alone salvation would and could flow to them.
The continual additions which God subsequently made to the revelation He gave in Genesis 3:15 were, for a considerable time,
largely through covenants He made with the fathers, covenants which
were both the fruit of His eternal plan of mercy and the gradual revealing of the same unto the faithful.
Only as those two facts are and held fast by us are we in any position to appreciate and perceive the force of those subordinate covenants.
God made covenants with Noah, Abraham, David; but were they, as fallen creatures, able to enter into covenant with their august and holy Maker? Were they able to stand for themselves, or be sureties for others? The very question answers itself. What, for instance, could Noah possibly do which would insure that the earth should never again be destroyed by a flood? Those subordinate covenants were less than the Lord’s making manifest, in an especial and public manner, the grand covenant: making known something of its glorious contents, confirming their own personal interest in it, and assuring them that Christ, the great covenant head, should be of themselves and spring from their seed.
This is what accounts for that singular expression which occurs so frequently in Scripture: “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your seed after you” (
Genesis 9:9 ). Yet there follows no mention of any conditions, or work to be done by them: only a promise of unconditional blessings. And why? because the“conditions” were to be fulfilled and the “work” was to be done by Christ, and nothing remained but to bestow the blessings on His people. So when David says, “He hath made with me an everlasting covenant” (
2nd Samuel 23:5 ) he simply means, God had admitted him into an interest in the everlasting covenant and made him partaker of its privileges. Hence it is that when the apostle Paul refers to the various covenants which God had made with men in Old Testament times, he styles them not “covenants of stipulations” but covenants of promise” (
Ephesians 2:12 ).Above we have pointed out that the continual additions which God made to His original revelation of mercy in
Genesis 3:15 were, for a while, given mainly through the covenants He made with the fathers. It was a process of gradual development, issuing finally in the fullness of gospel grace; the substance of those covenants indicated the outstanding stages in this process.
They are the great landmarks of God’s dealings with men, points from which the disclosures of the divine mind expanded into increased and established truths. As revelations they exhibited in ever augmented degrees of fullness and clearness the plan of salvation through mediation and sacrifice of the Son of God; for each of those covenants consisted of gracious promises ratified by sacrifice (
Genesis 8:20; 9:9; 15:9-11, 18 ). Thus, those covenants were so many intimations of that method of mercy which took its rise in the eternal counsels of the divine mind. Those divine revelations and manifestations of the grace decreed in the everlasting covenant were given out at important epochs in the early history of the world. Just as Genesis 3:15 was given immediately after the Fall, so we find that immediately following the flood God solemnly
renewed the covenant of grace with Noah. In like manner, at the beginning of the third period of human history, following the call of Abraham, God renewed it again, only then making
a much fuller revelation of the same. It was
now made known that the coming deliverer of God’s people was to be of the Abrahamic stock and that all the families of the earth should be blessed in Him ~ a plain intimation of the calling of the Gentiles and the bringing of the elect from
all nations into the family of God. In Genesis 15:5,6, the great evidence of one being part of the covenant of grace, namely...
faith.....was then more fully made known.
I'm indebted to some of the above to A.W. Pink's book of Divine Covenants I read many years ago.
