Weddings are big, exciting events. My best friend just got engaged a couple months ago, and she’s been searching for the perfect venue and deciding on important details, like what colors her bridesmaids will wear and what food they’ll serve at the reception. Last month, I even got the chance to go wedding dress shopping with her (and she picked out a truly beautiful gown).

While weddings are fun to attend or be a part of, they are more than just lavish parties where people dress up, and dance, and drink, and celebrate two people who have fallen in love. The real purpose of the wedding ceremony is to establish a marriage covenant between one man and one woman who promise to love each other for the rest of their lives and build a family that honors the Lord.

Nowadays, we don’t see a lot of people making covenants (outside of marriage), but they were quite common in ancient history. In Scripture, we find covenants being discussed often (the Hebrew and Greek words that translate as “covenant” appear about 300 times throughout the Bible). In fact, covenants play a key theme in the grand biblical narrative, and it’s important that we’re all familiar with the major biblical covenants and what they mean for us today.

What is a Covenant?

Before we go much further, we ought to address what exactly a covenant is. Like I’ve already mentioned, not many people make covenants these days. So, what does making a covenant entail?

A covenant is essentially a formal and binding agreement between two or more parties where they agree to do or not do certain actions or activities. In the biblical covenants we’ll look at in this post, God is the One establishing a covenant with an individual or a group of His people. God is the One promising to do or provide certain things, and with many of the covenants we’ll see below, God takes on the sole burdens of the covenants. He will do as He has promised to do, regardless of what His people (the other parties in those covenants) do in return.

The Adamic Covenant

While there is no mention of a covenant in the first few chapters of the Bible, we do see God making a promise, and I believe this is an important starting place for a study of the covenants.

If you’ve spent any length of time in church, I’m sure you’re familiar with the events that take place in Genesis 1-3. God created the heavens and the earth—the mountain ranges, the constellations, every creature that glides along the winds and ducks under the waves—and it was all very good. Our God created a good and perfect world where tree and man and beast lived in total harmony. But that harmony cracked when the first human beings decided to defy their Creator and rebel against Him. Their sheer disobedience initiated what is known as The Fall, the entrance of sin into a then sinless world. But despite the devastation of the moment, God made a promise—

“I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.” Genesis 3:15, ESV

Yes, the entire world was put under a curse as a result of the first humans’ first sin, but there was yet hope. From the woman would come a child, a Son who would crush the enemy and deliver the people from their sins.

The Noahic Covenant

Well, sin wasted no time corrupting both the earth we stand on and the hearts that beat inside our chests. Wickedness ran rampant in those early years of our world, and human beings committed the most depraved acts imaginable. God decided to destroy the earth, wipe the slate clean and start over. But there was one righteous man, a man named Noah, and He preserved him.

God commanded Noah to build an ark and board it along with his family and two of every kind of animal. And then He sent a flood to slay every other living thing dwelling on the planet. Once the floodwaters subsided, God made a promise—a covenant—with Noah—

“I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” Genesis 9:11

Noah was a righteous man, but that did not mean that he, or his sons, or his future descendants would be free from sin. Yet despite this, God promised to never flood the earth again in response to the sinfulness of man. But God still had a plan for how to deal with our depravity.

The Abrahamic Covenant

While many people and animals were swept from the face of the earth during the great flood, sin certainly wasn’t. It didn’t take long for humanity to continue in their sinful ways, to defy their Maker and make themselves into their own gods. But instead of destroying them again, God sought out a seventy-five-year-old man from a place called Ur and called this man to follow Him and became the father of His people—

“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Genesis 12:1-3

Years later, God made an official, everlasting covenant with Abram (then known as Abraham), in which He promised the man that he would not only father one nation but many nations and that kings would come from his line (Genesis 17:4-8). But who was this great nation? Who were these kings? And how would they bless the entire earth?

The Mosaic Covenant

At a hundred years old, Abraham finally was given a son—Isaac. Isaac had a son—Jacob—and Jacob had twelve sons who all ended up leaving their home in Canaan and moving to Egypt due to a famine. The descendants of Jacob, whom God dubbed Israel, grew in numbers and lived in Egypt for centuries, where they eventually became slaves to the Egyptians. After crying out for deliverance, God called Moses to lead His chosen people out of Egyptian slavery and into the land He had promised to their father Abraham. And while they were in the wilderness, God made a covenant with them—

“Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Exodus 19:5-6a

In the following chapters of Scripture, God lays out His Law, His expectations for His people to be different and set apart from the surrounding nations. And if they were faithful to obey this Law, God would preserve them and protect them and be their God.

The Davidic Covenant

While the people of Israel certainly became a kingdom and nation, they sadly did not remain obedient to God. As punishment for their defiance, Israel was forced to wander in the wilderness for decades before they made it to the Promised Land. Once they got there, they continually followed the ways of the pagan peoples around them rather than the ways of God, and God had to appoint judges to bring them back to Him. Eventually, Israel demanded to have a king like the other nations, and God acquiesced. But the king that rose to power was wicked and unfaithful to God.

After God brought that king’s reign to an end, He appointed David to be Israel’s next king. Scripture describes David as a man after God’s own heart (Acts 13:22), and while he made his fair share of mistakes throughout his life, he did remain faithful to God. David decided one day that he wanted to build a temple for the Lord, but God had other plans—

“When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.” 2 Samuel 7:12-13

We read later in Scripture that it is David’s son, Solomon, who ends up constructing a temple, but unlike what God declared in His covenant, Solomon did not live or reign forever. Because of this, we can infer that the Son in these verses would be more than just a future king of Israel. This Son and King would be divine.

The New Covenant

Israel had some good and righteous kings, like David, but they also had many wicked kings who led the people of God into idolatry and sin. And the people drifted so far from God that they eventually became exiled by the Assyrians and Babylonians. This was a very dark time for Israel, but there was still hope. God made one final covenant with His beloved people—

“Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah…For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people…For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” Jeremiah 31:31, 33, 34b

The people of the world were sinful. God’s own chosen people were sinful. And regardless of their greatest efforts, there was nothing they could do to become sinless and meet God’s standard of holiness. So, God promised to provide a way for their hearts to be cleansed and their sins to be forgiven. And that Way, the Only Way, is Jesus (Matthew 26:27-28).

Jesus is the Son of God, the Son of Man, the Messiah and Savior that the people of God had been waiting for since the Garden of Eden. He is the Offspring who crushed the head of the enemy and defeated sin and death. He is the One who blesses all the families of the earth, as it is through Him that both Jews and Gentiles can find salvation and enter the family of God. He is the divine Son who will rule and reign forever and who forgives us of all our sins, if we put our faith and trust in Him.

The covenants we read about throughout the Bible are a testament to God’s redemptive plan for humanity. Ever since the Garden, He has had a plan to save us from our sins, and that plan found its ultimate fulfillment in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the true and better fulfillment of all the biblical covenants, and it is only through Him that we can find true salvation and forgiveness.

If you have never sought out the freedom and forgiveness that comes from trusting in Christ, I pray you will do so today. And once you’ve found salvation from your sins, you can trust that God will carry you through this life and into the next one. He has always been faithful to keep His covenants, and He will be faithful to you, too.

“For great is his steadfast love toward us, and the faithfulness of the Lord endures forever. Praise the Lord!” Psalm 117:2