Welcome to another edition of Things Unseen. It's amazing really if you think about it

that our Christian scriptures contain the Old Testament or Covenant and the New Testament

or Covenant of our Lord Jesus Christ. And yet the idea that the Bible is a covenant book

about a covenant God who makes and keeps his covenant of grace is often a new idea to

many Christians. And that's why on Things Unseen we've been reflecting on how important

God's covenant is. His covenant of grace inaugurated in Genesis 315 and as we've seen

already, developed in the covenant with Noah and later on in the covenant with Abraham.

It is the next big covenant God makes that people sometimes struggle to understand. I mean

the covenant with Moses, the covenant made at Sinai. Why in the misunderstanding? I suspect

it's because this is the covenant that has the Ten Commandments and then all the laws

that govern the life of God's people, so many detailed regulations. And I think the biggest

misunderstanding amounts to this, and you're almost bound to have encountered it at some

time, is thinking that the Old Testament or Covenant, and especially the covenant that

we find with Moses, that that covenant teaches us that we are saved by what we do by obeying

the law. Whereas by contrast the New Testament or Covenant teaches that we are saved by grace,

not by what we do, but by what God has done for us in Christ. I hope I'm not the first

person you've heard saying that that's a disastrous misunderstanding. It turns the teaching

of the Bible upside down, and it couldn't really be further from the truth. Now how can

we be sure of that? Well let me explain. First, if you read the book of Exodus that contains

the law, I'm thinking of the law in chapter 20. If you read Exodus from the beginning,

you'll see that the giving of the law is set within the context of the covenant of grace

that God had made. And then that covenant is more fully expressed in the covenant that

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