R.C. Sproul

And, of course, most significantly, we see it in the marriage contract.

where the marriage contract is an agreement that involves oaths and vows, sanctions and promises between two people.

Now, all of these different covenants that I've just mentioned in our culture have elements of similarity to the biblical covenants, but they're not identical, though the biblical covenants have indeed elements of promise.

One thing makes them different from these other normal customary agreements that we're talking about, and that is that biblical covenants are established on the basis of a divine sanction.

That is, they are established on the foundation of a promise not made by equal parties.

but they're made on the foundation of the divine promise of God, and they are inherently religious.

Now, people might argue, well, marriage covenants are also religious, vows are taken before God, and that's true, but there's also some even people say that the covenant of industry, industrial contracts are also religious insofar as the vows are taken, so help us God, and all the rest, and there are

religious elements that you can find in these various or religious implications found in these various other covenants, but they don't have the same profound import of theological sanction that we find in the covenants of the Bible.

Now again, the key function in terms of redemption and redemption history of a covenant in the Bible is the relationship between promise

and fulfillment.

When I say that the basic structure of redemptive history that we see in the Scriptures is covenant, what I'm simply saying is that we exist as a church, we exist as people because God

has made promises to His people, and He has kept those promises.

He has fulfilled those promises.

And that we only can exist in the family of God and in the church because our God is a God who keeps covenant.

Our God is a God who is a covenant keeper where we are all covenant breakers.

God never breaks His promise, and His promises that He swears are without

mutation.

They are everlasting promises that God commits Himself to forever and ever and ever.

And for example, we see, as we will look at more closely later, when God makes a promise to Abraham, and then later on when the Christ child's birth is announced to Mary, and Mary under the influence of the Holy Spirit sings the Magnificat, she mentions in that song that God has remembered

the promise that He made to our father Abraham.