In Genesis 3:15 we learn that there are two communities. No more… no less. One can belong to the community of the seed of the serpent or they can belong to the community of the seed of the woman – The Messiah’s community. They can be in God’s covenant community or they can belong to the Serpent’s covenant community.
As the history of history of redemption unfolds as between the covers of Genesis to Revelation we see these two communities in contest. Cain kills His brother Abel. Noah and His family are a community in distinction from the community that didn’t have a ticket to ride. There at the Tower of Babel you find the serpent community who are intent to build a name for themselves but God has other designs in the next chapter as He intends to build the Messianic community through Abraham and so promises to make a name for Abraham. This community will be so great that through this community and the final seed it is hurtling towards all the Nations of the earth will be blessed.
The Scripture continues to unfold with the contest between these two covenant communities locked in mortal battle. I’m just choosing some of the highlights and in choosing these highlights I am suggesting that this a lens we should be reading all of Scripture through.
Don’t worry … I’m getting to Baptism
Of course there is that contest between these two covenant communities in Exodus where Pharaoh and Egypt strikes at God’s covenant community to destroy it. So stark is this contest that Pharaoh is quite literally wearing a serpent on his crown as a sign of Egypt. Egypt strikes at God’s covenant community and God’s crushes Egypt. The two covenant community clash and God’s covenant community wins out.
In Judges the we meet the woman of Thebez. Abimelech, belongs to the seed of the serpent community and we find him channeling God’s people into a citadel with the purpose of burning it down around them. Up steps the Woman of Thebez. She launches a millstone from the citadel and BOOM it lands on Abimelech’s head and kills him. Abimelech struck the covenant community’s heel and the seed of the woman crushed his head.
Lets recall Jael and Sisera in Judges 4. There the Canaanites had arisen to strike at Israel. Their leader was Sisera. In God’s economy and to Israel’s embarrassment through the Generalship of Deborah, Sisera is put to flight. He finds refuge in the tent of Jael who promises him rest, safety from Barak’s pursuit and some goat’s milk. Right when he was feeling safe, dear sweet Jael comes in and drives a tent stake through his temple thus crushing his head.
We could cite dozens of example…. One more.
There stands the giant Goliath and swallowed in his shadow stands the puny David. Goliath is clothed armor that very likely was covered in snake skin. You know the story. Before long David is cutting his head off thus crushing his head.
Anyway .. there stands these two covenant communities. No more … no less. And they are constantly throughout Scripture at each other’s throat. The serpent community striking the heel. The Messiah’s community crushing the serpent’s head. It climaxes with the death of the Messiah. The serpent finally believes that his community has won out but with the resurrection the Serpent’s head is definitively crushed.
So… here are these two covenant communities. Now the question becomes how does one become a member to the covenant community? In the OT we know that God calls, Abraham responds in faith and Abraham is known as God’s friend. However, God also requires that Abraham take as a sign circumcision in order to identify all those who would be members of the covenant. It is not only Abraham who must be circumcised but also all of the males in Abraham’s household who are to receive the sign of the covenant. If you have this sign of the covenant one is in the covenant community and so are part of the contest between the Serpent’s covenant community and the Messiah’s covenant community.
Before we move on, we must note here that this covenant is trans-generational. Once one is in the covenant one belongs to the covenant community not only of the present but also of the past and the membership anticipates a belonging into the future once one is gone. Joseph, asked for his bones to be taken into the promised land. At the end of his life he understood he would still belong to the covenant community after his death and so asked that they would take his bones with them into the promised land. Joseph thus testified that in being a member of God’s covenant community we are members with those covenant members who will come after us even after we are gone. That we are part of the covenant with those who were before us is seen in the language of Scripture. Throughout the Scriptures we God is often identified by later generations as “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” The book of Hebrews speaks of those, “being dead, yet they still speak.” They have gone before us but they remain part of the trans-generational covenant community.
So, we have this covenant community of the Messiah. It stands in antithesis to the covenant community of the Serpent. We enter into this covenant by faith in God’s Messiah and are required to give a sign of the covenant to the babies in the covenant community… in the OT that sign was circumcision.
Now we come to the NT and the covenant rolls into the NT, except it is a New and Better covenant. What makes it New and better is that it is no longer promissory but is now fulfilled. All that was only anticipated is now realized in Jesus Christ.
And because all is realized in Jesus Christ those signs and seals that were of a promissory nature in the Old Testament are changed. The Passover which spoke of a deliverance is changed to the Eucharist which speaks of the deliverance now accomplished in Christ, And circumcision as the sign of membership in the covenant – a sign that required blood letting — is now changed out for the water of Baptism since with Christ’s bloody Cross work there is no longer any need for blood rites. Christ commands water as the sign of the covenant membership.
And who is given the water sign of the covenant? Well, we are nowhere told in the New Testament that the children are no longer to be part of the covenant community was they were in the Old Testament. We are not given a positive command in the New Testament to forbid the children from being given the sign of the covenant. Nowhere do we read, “Verily Verily, I say unto you, marvel not when I say unto you that your seed is no longer counted as God’s seed.”
No, we understand that just as in the Old Covenant so now in the New and better covenant the household of God is still characterized by the sound of babies babble and children’s play. We understand that we could hardly refer to the New and better covenant as a new and better covenant if it were the case that the new and better covenant required us to leave our children outside the covenant.
We realize the riot we find in Scripture at the notion that the Gentiles are now in the covenant and we are left a little stunned that anyone would suggest that no riot would have likewise followed at the news that not only are the Gentiles in the covenant but that also children who had always been in the covenant are now no longer to be considered members of the covenant.
And so because we find no positive command from God in the Scriptures to cease giving the children the sign of the covenant we give them the privileges of the covenant membership. They are part of God’s covenant community and we extend to them the judgment of charity that they are blood bought and sealed by Christ. They are now part of the covenant contending against the covenant of the serpent. And as members of God’s covenant community – a covenant community, in part defined by our opposition to the covenant of the serpent – we train our children to fight against our and their mortal enemy as they grow. We train them that our thinking is different than the thinking of those who are members in the covenant of the serpent. We train them to realize that the Law we live by is different than the law-word of those who belong to the covenant of the serpent. We train them that our belief system, our confession, our worldview stands in opposition to the seed of the serpent covenant community. We train them for Kingdom work as activists for God’s covenant Kingdom wherever God plants them as His agents. We and they are the King’s people and we think and act like the King’s people. And in this age that is characterized by fighting for the expansion of the crown rights of Jesus Christ.
This morning we baptized children thus ratifying God’s covenant.
These Children were born into the web of pre-existing relationships – both vertically and horizontally. They are silken cords that are connected to the past through their Kin and are silken cords that will connect kin past to kin yet to come so that the generations together form a trans-generational web of covenant unity. This is the idea of covenant. We are not born atomistically, belonging to ourselves. We are born belonging to God and so to God’s family — a family which begins with — but isn’t limited to our blood family. Part of the idea of covenant is that we are organically related and connected through Christ and to each other so that with the birth of each new child the covenant web continues to connect the honored past with the gloriously anticipated future.
