This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “By Way of Reminder” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, November 24, 1996.

Someday we will be able to sing that as well as we can sing Psalm 119. Tonight we are reading from the book of Leviticus, first of all, chapter 26. Leviticus chapter 26, beginning at verse 1. Give your attention to God’s Word. You shall not make for yourselves idols, nor shall you set up for yourselves an image or a sacred pillar. Nor shall you place a carved stone in your land to bow down to it, for I am the Lord your God. You shall keep my Sabbaths and reverence my sanctuary. I am the Lord.

If you walk in my statutes and keep my commandments so as to carry them out, then I will give you rain in its season, so that the land will yield its produce and the trees of the field will bear their fruit. Indeed, your threshing will last until grape-gathering, and grape-gathering will last until sowing time. You will thus eat your food to the full and live securely in your land. I shall also grant peace to the land, so that you may lie down with no one making you tremble. I shall also eliminate harmful beasts from the land, and no sword will pass through your land. But you will chase your enemy, and they will fall before you by the sword. Five of you will chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand, and your enemies will fall before you by the sword.

So I will turn toward you and make you fruitful and multiply you, and I will confirm my covenant with you. You will eat the old supply and clear out the old because of the new. Moreover, I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul will not reject you. I will also walk among you and be your God, and you shall be my people. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt so that you should not be their slaves, and I broke the bars of your yoke and made you walk.

He read. Then, turning to the book of Revelation, Revelation 21, beginning at verse 1. And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is among them, and he shall dwell among them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be among them and be their God.

And he shall wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there shall no longer be any death. There shall be no longer any mourning or crying or pain. The first things have passed away. And he who sits on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. And he said, These words are faithful and true. And he said to me, It is done.

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life without cost. He who overcomes shall inherit these things, and I will be his God, and he will be my son. But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. Our Father, our hearts are revived as those who are refreshed in the rebirth that has come to us.

As we hear news from the world, from your church, and from the outposts of your mission, Father, we are strengthened and refreshed as the word comes to us from Uganda. We thank you, O God, for this evidence of the work of your Spirit. So many have been baptized in a single day. Father, multiply your word in that place and in other places as well. Lord, even though we have not seen these people, may we greet them in the Spirit, rejoicing with them in the life that is now theirs in the Spirit. Help us, O God, in our praise of you, so that as we commit ourselves to prayer on behalf of others, we may prove ourselves servants of our God, serving those in need, and rejoicing, O God, as they are gladly supplied with the riches of salvation.

Hear us now, Father, as we approach your word, that your word may have the proper effect in us. For we pray this through Christ, who is at your right hand and who intercedes on our behalf. I am taking this occasion, in our series entitled, by way of reminder, to speak to you this evening about the Covenant.

It has been said that the doctrine of the Covenant belongs particularly to the Reformed faith. Not that others, such as Lutherans, Anglicans, or even Roman Catholics, have not spoken about the covenant in their presentations of faith. But it is the Reformed faith and the churches that trace their lineage most seriously from the Scriptures through Augustine to Calvin that have embraced the covenant as the central organizing principle of biblical understanding and as a continuing dynamic in Christian life. In other words, the Reformed faith and its churches have historically recognized the covenant as having a significance not generally acknowledged by others. So much is this the case that one branch of the Reformed faith has become known as the Covenanters. I mean only to say that it was natural for this development to occur within the context of the Reformed faith and its world, not necessarily that the Covenanters were entirely correct in claiming the term. But, of course, that has been one of our challenges within the Reformed faith—getting the covenant right. We, in the Reformed faith, have debated nearly every matter, including the covenant.

The Covenanters, for instance, have tended to emphasize the covenant in support of their position on public covenanting, on oath-bound commitments concerning their corporate witness for the authority of King Jesus in the public sphere. The Dutch Reformed have tended to emphasize the covenant in support of the strong family unit. That family unit and its awareness were central in their communities. As evidence of this, among the Christian Reformed people and related groups, there has been a focus not so much on individual church membership, but on family membership.

I still remember how surprised I was by the question from a Christian Reformed gentleman. He asked me, “How many families do you have in your church?” I did not know. And when I finally figured it out, I was embarrassed to tell him. At the time, that was the count.

But not only do various Reformed communities have differing views on the covenant and its application, there are also ongoing debates within Reformed churches about the meaning of the covenant. This is especially true in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. You may not know it, but the OPC has been involved in a long-standing dispute over the covenant for nearly forty years. This has been the OPC’s forty-year debate. The debate has not always been open, but it does tend to resurface from time to time. The most intense period occurred about twenty years ago, when a professor at Westminster Seminary, Norman Shepard, began to express views on the covenant that ultimately led to his removal from the seminary faculty and his departure from the OPC.

However, Professor Shepard and those who opposed him were merely representing positions that have long been in conflict within the Reformed tradition. In this century, these positions have come to rest in the theologies of two prominent Orthodox Presbyterians, John Murray and Meredith Klein. We cannot examine the full details of their positions in this setting. However, in brief, let me say this much.

Murray’s view tends to minimize the covenant of works in order to emphasize God’s sovereign administration of grace. Klein’s view tends to emphasize the covenant of works in order to highlight God’s sovereign administration of Lordship. The question for Murray is whether Adam would have earned his reward if he had remained faithful during the probation in the garden. The question for Kline is whether, after the fall, the covenant of works continues to function and is clearly expressed in the law of Moses as preparation for the work of Christ. Murray’s position has tended to suggest that the works principle is never meritorious in Scripture. Klein’s position has tended to suggest that the works principle is always meritorious in Scripture.

Practically speaking, therefore, Murray’s position has tended to promote a consistently positive view of the moral law in the life of the believer, while Klein’s position has tended to be more cautious and reserved. As a result, Murray has been labeled a legalist, and Klein has been labeled a dispensationalist. What I have just described is not a caricature, since each of these men, in his own way, has acknowledged some tension with the confession of faith, although each affirms himself to be a devoted adherent to the Reformed faith.

But where does this leave the rest of us—those who are ordinary people and do not think at this level? Many of us were raised on the teachings of John Murray. If we did not know him personally, we became familiar with him through his writings, not necessarily through personal acquaintance, not through direct face-to-face interaction. We have come to love him through memory. I remember my first encounter with John Murray. I was a student at Geneva College.

I read his book, rightly famous: Redemption Accomplished and Applied. I speak about his latter chapters in that book, for they remain especially convincing concerning the truths of the Reformed faith, and they have been genuinely a help to literally thousands. I do not know what the count is presently for the printings of that book, but I would judge that it is somewhere between thirty and fifty. This means that the book has been dispersed far and wide. It is still being sold by Eerdmans. It is still having great impact.

Klein, on the other hand, is truly, and I underscore this, truly one of the great exegetical geniuses of our time. His book, Images of the Spirit, is without doubt the most compelling book of biblical exegesis produced for the Reformed world since Gerhardus Voss published his Pauline Eschatology in 1930.

I stand before you tonight telling you, like most in the Orthodox Presbyterian Church and most in the Reformed world, I am indebted to both of these men, to John Murray and to Meredith Klein. But I would not presume to correct them, since I hardly consider myself capable of doing that.

However, I do have some time left, so I will raise a question. And that, in the light of the orientation of this pulpit over the years, and my present desire to remind you of what I have been preaching during the course of my ministry. My question is this.

Do we best approach the covenant, first of all, in terms of the category of the law? I ask the question again. Do we best approach the covenant, first of all, in terms of the category of the law? There have been those in the Reformed faith, and there continue to be those in the Reformed faith, who have equated the covenant with the law. Covenant equals law. That is the meaning of the covenant. Now, I would never charge Murray or Klein with such a position. Still, has the law, both positively and negatively, functioned at the very heart of their notions of the covenant?

Now, I ask these questions this evening with a tremendous sense of spiritual uneasiness and an appreciation of my own unworthiness. But my interest has been to direct us, during the course of my ministry, back to the seventh chapter in the Westminster Confession of Faith, and particularly the first paragraph of that seventh chapter. You may not have this memorized, so I will read it to you this evening. If you want to follow along, it is on page 676.

The distance between God and the creature is so great that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto Him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of Him as their blessedness and reward but by some voluntary condescension on God’s part, which He has been pleased to express by way of a covenant.

It seems to me that the clear intention of this paragraph is meant to bring into view as primary, not the law, even as the law is inferred in the phrase, although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto God as their Creator. Rather, it seems to me that the clear intention of this paragraph is meant to bring into view as primary the phrase, the voluntary condescension on God’s part. By which, now filling in the blanks, by which God enters into fellowship with His creatures so that they might have Him as their blessedness and as their reward.

The covenant, therefore, is not, first of all, the law. It is, first of all, a communal bond—between persons, between God and His people. There are many proofs of this throughout the Scriptures. In the law itself, which we read tonight, God testifies to the essential character of the covenant when He says, “I will be your God, and you shall be My people.”

That is Leviticus 26, verse 12. We are given images, are we not, pictures of the covenant throughout the Scriptures. In the Old Testament, we have the story of David and Jonathan, and that story provides us with such a picture. Do you remember 1 Samuel 18? There is hardly a passage like it in Scripture.

That passage tells us that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David, and Jonathan loved David as himself. There is covenant in that communal bond. There is fellowship in that expression of the love that is at the center of the covenant. This story of Jonathan and David, of course, has typological significance, and I am sure you are aware of that. But we are not here merely speaking about Jonathan and David. We are speaking about true Israel and the Lord’s anointed.

Do you see it? Does it strike you clearly? Jonathan, who is heir to the throne, the son of Saul, the one who will inherit all when Saul, his father, is gone, now has his soul knit to David. This one, Jonathan, becomes representative of true Israel, prepared and ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of the Lord’s true anointing. At the center of it is an eloquent sermon concerning the nature of the covenant. As Jonathan is bound to David, so too shall true Israel be bound to Christ. You can go on to the New Testament and find something similar here.

There is a complement to this text found in the thirteenth chapter of John’s Gospel, where we are told about the relationship between Jesus, the Lord’s anointed indeed, and another John, John the disciple, John the beloved one. The picture of John is given to us: the beloved disciple reclining on Jesus’ breast, the bond that intimate, presenting us once more with the truth concerning the covenant and the communal bond that exists at its heart.

Appropriately, then, throughout the Scriptures, the covenant is described in ways that bring this neutral, this covenantal bond, this communal bond, before us. For the covenant is compared to the marriage relationship. It is also compared to the family relationship. You need only think of the Prophet Hosea and how the covenant is featured in that prophecy and functions so powerfully, and that against the background of his own marriage and the threat that has come to that marriage. Then, at the conclusion of the Scriptures, the covenantal reality is presented as the consummation of the fellowship between God and his own, and that, of course, through the mediation of Jesus Christ himself.

John, that beloved disciple, now runs, and I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven, made ready as a bride for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men, and he shall dwell among them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them and be their God.” There is much more that I could add to this, moving through the entirety of Scripture. But let me add this one further feature.

There is a consistent theme running through Scripture, both Old and New Testaments, concerning inheritance. Yes, we know, as has already been stated, that God makes clear: “I will be your God, and you shall be my people.” But consider this and reflect on the implications, especially as you connect it to the concept of inheritance—the theme of inheritance that runs throughout Scripture. God has chosen His people to be a treasured possession to Himself. They are His inheritance, and God Himself has become an inheritance to them. They have Him, and He has them. This is the covenant.

What I have said to you this evening, if I must go back a little, is not meant in any way to diminish the importance of the law of God. To paraphrase the Apostle Paul: “We do not nullify the law, on the contrary, we establish the law.” In other words, the law—both positively and negatively—always serves the communal bond that the covenant is, the relationship that the covenant is. But the law can never be the substance of that bond or equated with it. To present this more clearly, let me conclude with an illustration I often use. After all, this is a message entitled, by way of reminder, and if I repeat myself, you will understand.

Men, what if your wife asks you, “Honey, do you love me?” You are in serious trouble if you respond by pulling out the legal code for the state of Pennsylvania and showing her its statutes concerning marriage. You are in serious trouble if you hand her your marriage license. The statutes serve the marriage. They are not the reality of the marriage. The law of God, the commandments, the statutes, and the ordinances serve His covenantal communal bond with His people. They are not the reality of that covenantal communal bond.

I hope this is instructive to you, especially as you anticipate the conclusion of the communal bond, which we enjoy provisionally now, but in the end we shall enjoy your law and your commandments, your ordinances and your statutes. May we be blessed by them. May we be encouraged by them. May they have their full work in us. Even as they help us to see more clearly that you are in covenant with us, and that by your sovereign activity, by your disposition and decision.

How we rejoice, O God, in this communal bond that is ours with you. In it, O God, we must acknowledge our unworthiness, for surely you have come and you have blessed us, and that even while we were yet in our sin, that we might be redeemed for you, a treasure of people, that we might become your inheritance, even as you are ours. Bless us now, O God, that we might delight in this covenantal bond that is ours in and through Jesus Christ, the very one who comes stating it clearly, putting it in front of us, welcoming us into it, and yet fulfilling all of its terms, that we might have, O God, the blessed fruition of you as our

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