God deals with men, in a formal way, only through covenants. A covenant, properly speaking, is simply an agreement, a contract, a bargain between two parties. But when one party is infinitely superior to the other, as in a contract between God and man, then the covenant assumes the nature of a promise; sometimes conditional, and sometimes unconditional, as we will see further on. We wish to state just here, and would have it remembered, that our God is not only a covenant-making, but also a covenant-keeping