R.C. Sproul

That can be an intellectual conclusion that's not very difficult to come to, but it's quite another thing to believe God.

because what faith is, what living faith is, is trusting the promises of God.

That even when everything around us seems to testify to the futility of our lives and would cause us to abandon all hope,

We are people who are in a covenant relationship with God.

We are people who live by trust in His promises.

We break our promises to each other, we break our promises to God, but God never breaks His promises to us.

And that's why in one sense, nothing would be more foolish than not to trust in the promises of God, because God has demonstrated Himself throughout history to be

supremely trustworthy.

Well, let's start now and ask ourselves where the first covenant takes place, and this involves

some inferences drawn from the Scripture, particularly drawn from the New Testament with respect to our understanding of the mission and the purpose and work of Jesus.

Lately, in fact in this whole past year, I've been preaching out of the gospel according to St.

John to our congregation at St.

Andrews in Orlando, and so much of that gospel

gives us the record of the controversies that Jesus had with the Jewish authorities of His day, and so much of that debate between Jesus and the Pharisees and Jesus and the scribes and so on had to do with the origin of Jesus and the basis of His authority.

And again and again and again in the gospel of John, Jesus is saying that He was sent from the Father.

that he was the supreme missionary of God.

A missionary is someone who is sent and authorized by the one who sends them or the group that sends them.

And so Christ constantly refers back to his origin, not as a baby born in Bethlehem, but as the one who came down from heaven who was sent by the Father and authorized by the Father to speak the Father's word.

If you look at that, then you understand something of what went on before God even created the world, before God ever created Adam and Eve, before there was any kind of probation in the Garden of Eden.

And we talk in the first instance not about a covenant that God makes with us, but a covenant that takes place within the triune Godhead itself.