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.