[Sunday School] The Covenant of Grace (WSC 20)

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:32

I am a fa a single father of three this weekend. So I'm here. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for your grace to us in Christ. Thank you that it's a grace that reaches all the way back into eternity and forward into eternity. Thank you, Father, that it is conditioned upon nothing but your own sovereignty and freedom, your own kindness, your own goodness, your own mercy, your own grace. So help us this morning as we continue to think about the working out of your grace, the choice you made in eternity, and the covenant of grace by which that choice flows through time. Lord bless us this morning. Help us to think well about the deep things of God for the Holy Spirit who helps us to do so. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Alright, so last week we talked about, uh we made, we mainly talked about unconditional election. And we only got about halfway through my outline. So we're going to go through the other half today. And we're rooted really in question 20 of the shorter catechism. Question 20 asks, did God leave all mankind to perish in the estate of sin and misery? And the answer is, God having out of his mere good pleasure from all eternity elected some to everlasting life, did enter into a covenant of grace to deliver them out of the estate of sin and misery and to bring them to an estate of salvation by a redeemer. So again, last week we talked about the unconditional election part, and today we talk about the covenant of grace. Uh, you know, quick level set and discussion starter. What is the covenant of grace? You've heard of it around here at various times and in various places. What is it? What's the covenant of grace?

SPEAKER_01 2:27

If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you shall be saved.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Okay. Belief equals salvation. Yeah, I can say that's the condition of the covenant. Yeah. Which is not wrong. It's not the covenant. It would have been okay if I were wrong, though.

SPEAKER_07 2:44

I'm okay with that.

SPEAKER_00 2:45

You're okay. Okay, I'm glad we hear that.

SPEAKER_07 2:47

I'm glad you heard that. Because what else? So there's two covenants. The first covenant was the covenant works, which came to an end in the garden, and then uh God instituted the covenant of grace.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Yep, that's right. So we talked about it when we talked in question 12. That special act of stuff all over my table here. It's not my table, it's the Lord's table, I suppose. We talked in question 12 about that special act of providence when God entered into a covenant of life or a covenant of works with Adam. And that was uh, you know, that was the relationship, that was the arrangement between God and man, and basically the arrangement was do this and live. Personal, perfect, perpetual obedience. That was the condition of the covenant of works. And if Adam had fulfilled that condition, then he would have enjoyed eternal life. He would have been able to eat from the tree, his wife with him too, their offspring, and everyone who came from there. They would have been able to eat from the tree of life and to enjoy eternal life with God in paradise. But, you know, we know how the story went, and we spent a couple weeks talking about sin. But we're talking about is how you have this unconditional choice in eternity, where God chooses his people in Christ before the foundation of the world. And now we're talking about the covenant of grace as the historical outworking of that choice. An arrangement that God makes not with the first Adam, but with the last Adam and with all of his people included in him by grace through faith. So that works principle, do this and live, is fulfilled, it is accomplished in Christ. And the way we're made partakers of the blessings of that as opposed to victims of the curse is by grace through faith, being included in Christ. So we're counted as covenant keepers by way of the covenant of grace. So I have a quote from Herman Bobbing, who is a Dutch theologian from the turn of the 20th century that really helpfully encapsulates what the covenant of grace is and how it relates to unconditional election, which we talked about last week. He says the covenant of grace differs from election, in which humans are strictly passive. The covenant of grace describes the road by which elect people attain their destiny. It is the channel by which the stream of election flows toward eternity. Christ sends his Spirit to instruct and enable his own so that they consciously and voluntarily consent to this covenant. The covenant of grace comes with the demand of faith and repentance, which may in some sense be said to be its conditions. Yet this must not be misunderstood. God himself supplies what he demands. The covenant of grace is thus truly unilateral. It comes from God who designed, defines, maintains, and implements it. It is, however, designed to become bilateral, to be consciously and voluntarily accepted by believers in the power of God. In the covenant of grace, God's honor is not at the expense of, but for the benefit of human persons by renewing the whole person and restoring personal freedom and dignity. God supplies what he demands. God supplies what he all.

SPEAKER_04 6:16

That is beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

It is. And God supplies what he demands in such a way that it's like, you know, the perfect parents with the perfect child, right? You're trying to give them what they need in order to do what they need to do. But the goal is not that they would be an automaton just following your instructions, but that they would actually be transformed in such a way that they are doing the right things because that's who they are now, to they want to. You know, don't misunderstand that. The good shepherd isn't in the business of training his sheep to not need him anymore. But the covenant of grace is God's actually actualizing that eternal decision of election and channeling it through the flow of history so that we become a certain kind of people. Calling us to himself, making us willing and obedient and loving and all of the things that we're supposed to be in the covenant of works. So the covenant has a historical shape to it that unfolds throughout Scripture. We see it first in the garden. Genesis 3.15. God says, I will put, and he's speaking to the serpent here, he says, 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. So God is saying that he is going to instigate a kind of holy war between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. What's gracious about that?

SPEAKER_06 7:56

We are incapable of being able to fight the battle ourselves. Yeah. So God's taking the area.

SPEAKER_00 8:04

And take it a tick back. It's not just that we are incapable of fighting the battle, it's that we're actually on the wrong side. Because think about what just happened in the fall. You had the serpent enter as a as a kind of covenant anti-lord. Here's God, the triune God, your covenant Lord. He said these things, he's promised you these things, and he's pulling your leg a little bit. Why don't you listen to me? I'll show you where life is. I'll make you just like him. So what had Adam and Eve done? They had joined themselves to the side of Satan. And what God is saying in the curse on Satan and the serpent, he's saying, I'm going to break that allegiance. I'm going to cause a war. I'm going to cause a battle. I'm actually going to cause there to be tensioned so that you don't want to follow after Satan like that. Other, if that didn't happen, if God didn't put that dividing line, then Adam and Eve would have just kept on keeping on following the serpent.

SPEAKER_05 9:03

Because that's the easiest way to go.

SPEAKER_00 9:05

Right, right. So right there, you get the earliest intimation of a covenant of grace. You get it a little bit in the sacrifice of the animals, which is assumed when God gives the skins to Adam and Eve instead of sending them out into the wilderness naked. That one kind of takes the fullness of revelation to unfold. Because you come to learn what sacrifice means. You come to learn how the shedding of blood covers for the sins of God's people. You ultimately see the culmination of the covenant of grace and Jesus, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. But as you go back and reread Scripture through the light of Christ, you come to see, whoa, these people sinned. God kicked them out of his place of blessing, yet he didn't kick them out in nakedness and shame. He clothed them with animal skins. Huh. That points forward to what he does for us in Christ. Alright, next step in the covenantal journey comes with Noah. After its intimation, the intimation of covenant grace in Genesis 3.15, God's covenant with Noah establishes the stability of the creational stage in which Christ will play out. Could somebody read Genesis 9, 1 through 7? I didn't ask you to open there, presupposed by my request. You're hearing me too much, so we'll give you a break. Genesis 9, 1 through 7.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you or the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground, and all the fish of the sea, into your hands are delivered. Every morning, excuse me, every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning. From every beast I will require it, and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man by man shall his blood be shed. For God made man in his own image. And you be fruitful and multiply, increase great on the earth, and multiply it.

SPEAKER_00 11:27

So there's so much we can say about this. And if you want to hear more, you can go look up our Genesis series and listen to the sermons on Noah and the Flood and Genesis 8 and 9 and 10 and all of that. You know, it makes God makes it very clear that He's making a covenant kind of with everything, with all of creation. And that's led some to argue about whether we're right to include this in the covenant of grace or not. I think we are. Because what God is doing is he's just sent this incredible judgment on all the world. And he's renewing his covenant with creation. You have the language here right at the end of what James read. You be fruitful and multiply, increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it. Noah is being set up as a kind of second Adam, a renewal of the covenant. And God is setting the stage in such a way where he's saying, hey, there is never going to be another worldwide cataclysmic judgment in water, like the one that I just sent. Everything, stability, and if we read more of it, we'd see the seasons, the day, the night, the seed time, the harvest, the ordinary patterns of weather. God is making a covenant to say all of that is going to remain. All of that is going to be consistent, all of that is going to be safe. And what that's doing is setting the stage for the outworking of the covenant of grace. He's creating the conditions in which we see the rest of the Bible play out. Where he calls the people to himself and eventually he raises up a redeemer from within that people. And then he brings all things to consummation after that redeemer has finished his work and the word of the gospel has gone out and he's called all people to himself. So this is another step in the covenant of grace. And the next step that comes after it? Abraham. Abraham, we see Genesis 12, Genesis 15, Genesis 17. He was among a people where faith had all been lost. He was from the line of Shem, which was the faithful line of Noah, but even that faithful line of Noah lost its way. So basically the world had gone back to Pa. It had basically gone back to the condition in which God sent the flood. But instead of sending another flood, he calls another covenant mediator, another Adam-Noah kind of figure, Abraham. And in him, he constitutes a new people. In him, it becomes like the familial ark on which the people need to come in order to be saved from the wrath that is to come. So he promises him a nation, he promises them a land, a people, and a blessing. And a blessing that's not just for himself, but a blessing that is for all of the peoples of the earth. I will make your name great, God says, so that you might be a blessing, so that whoever blesses you will be blessed. So there's this, God is creating a people in Abraham, his covenant people, and yet there's this universalist kind of thrust to it. It's always supposed to be moving outward. That's why in Isaiah, Isaiah can talk about Israel being a light to the nations. And when Paul and Barnabas and Acts 13 and 14 think about their mission spreading the gospel, they think about it in terms of that Isaiah light to the nations. They think about it in terms of the Abrahamic covenant, right? It's not a brand new thing. It's not a completely different thing in the Great Commission when the gospel goes out to the end of the world. It's a kind of summation of everything that's gone before.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

And that's where dispensationalism fails. Yes. Separates it out.

SPEAKER_00 15:20

Right. Yeah. According to dispensationalism, these are all different epics or eras. Or you know, you have more covenantally friendly forms of dispensationalism today, like uh progressive covenantalism, where you'll see more of the continuity, but there's still a kind of break that happens in the age of Adam and then Noah than Abraham. I'm not a dispensationalist, I don't always know all the details. It gets pretty complicated, and there's charts and things on the walls. But um, from where we're coming from, in our tradition, our perspective, is very much continuity-based. That God doesn't make a succession of plans and scrap them when things go wrong. There's one plan from the beginning to the end, yet it works out in different historical ways. And it's the working out of that historical plan that we're talking about: the covenant of grace under Adam, under Noah, under Abraham, and then through Moses. The uh now this is where things get tricky, especially when we're kind of influenced by dispensationalism. Because often evangelicals will come to this and think that, okay, Abraham, the time of Abraham, you were saved by grace, like with Jesus. But when Moses comes along, it's a kind of pause, and God gives a law, and that becomes the means by which you're saved. Which is not at all what the Mosaic Law was. Think about the Ten Commandments. Anybody know the preface of the Ten Commandments?

unknown 16:52

Remember the word of God you have.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Well, that's number one. What comes before number one?

unknown 16:58

I am.

SPEAKER_00 16:59

I am the Lord your God who rescued you, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. So the first, the very beginning, the foundation of the Ten Commandments is God saying, I am the God who saved you. And then he gives the rules. Which is exactly how it works in the time of the gospel. We're saved by grace through faith, not by works. But then comes Ephesians 2.10, we're saved for works. For you are right as workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, that you might do the good works he prepared for you beforehand in Christ.

SPEAKER_02 17:34

Between Noah and Abraham, there's that whole interesting, I find it interesting because I have a word like languages with the Tower of Babel. Yeah. Which is remote again at Pentecost. And the Tower of Babel as a you know willful man's pride, we're gonna reach up to heaven, we're gonna do this, is kind of recapitulating that arrogant, I'm gonna be God, we're gonna be God. And God's merciful and very creative judgment on that was to scatter us and give us some languages, which are so cool. And then in Pentecost, those are that's not done away with. That is kind of redeemed and sanctified, which I think is simple. Everybody hearing the gospel in their own language. Yeah. And then in Revelation, we have every tribe and tongue.

SPEAKER_04 18:34

Yeah.

unknown 18:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:36

I have no idea what it's gonna be like. But the language is the the judgment was an act of mercy as well, to put a limit and tourniquet on people. Yeah. You're not going to go there. Yeah. And here's what I'm gonna do to stop you. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:51

From creation, the thrust is this. Right? He creates man and male and female in his own image. And the idea is that you know they will take care of their priests of the garden temple. And what do you do with the temple? You expand it to precincts into the world. They were to multiply, to subdue, to have dominion, to fill the earth with images of God. And what did they want? They didn't want to go out, they wanted to go up. And so God graciously disrupts them. And then what do we get after Cain kills Seth? Well, he starts building cities. And what do they name their cities after? Theirself and their kids. So, we do this, and then we'll do this. Alright, then, and that continues, and you have the flood, and then you have Noah and his family. Go do this. Okay, cool. We're gonna do this. We're gonna come back together and we're gonna build a tower to heaven. And God, once again. And I'm gonna make it harder for you this time with languages. Alright, so that's that's you know, as human beings, that's one of our besetting sins. When we are supposed to be outwardly focused in every sense of the word and glorify God as we go out in service and love and preaching and all the things, we want to hunker down. We want to not glorify God, we want to glorify ourselves. And so grace continues to disrupt us. The so, and that's, you know, coming back to Moses, that's one of the effects of turning God's gracious law into a means of self-righteousness. It ceases to be about, I have been loved by God, now here is how I can walk in that love, and it becomes about here's how I can make myself a love-worthy person. In God's sight and in the sight of the people around me. And again, that's that is a misunderstanding of what the Mosaic law is supposed to do. Let's open to Galatians 3. And if I could get somebody to read verses 19 through 29, that'd be great. Because Paul really helps us to understand how the law of Moses fits in with the covenant of grace with Abraham. Galatians 3, 19 through 29.

SPEAKER_06 21:16

Why then the law? There was a custom transgressions until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made and it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. Now, an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one. Is the law then contrary to the promise of God? Certainly not. For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the scripture imprisoned everything under sin, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Now, before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then the law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under our guardian. For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there's neither slave nor free, there is no male as female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

So what Paul is doing there, I wish we could dig all the way into it, but he's basically situating the law with respect to the promise. Abraham's covenant of promise, Moses sure seems to be a covenant of law. How does that work? Does this covenant of law abrogate the promise? Does it annul it? Does it do away with it? No, not at all. It fits within it. The law had a role to play as a tutor, as a guardian, as a pedagogue, pointing to Christ, conditioning a people to look for Christ because they're supposed to know that they can never keep that law for themselves and they needed another to come and atone for their sins and come to keep the law on their behalf. So that's important to when we think about the covenant of grace and we think of its different historical administrations. Some people want to treat the covenant, the Mosaic administration as a kind of covenant of works. It's not a covenant of works. It's part of the covenant of grace. It's part of God's gracious dealing with his people from start to finish.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

The law condemns. The law is what condemns. So you uh Because of our sin. Right. Right, because we buy the law. Right. Paul said. Right. Right. You know, Paul would Paul said, you know, had I not known the law, I wouldn't have sinned, right? Had there been no law, I could there be no sin. I may have, you know, kind of alluded to that.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

Well, yeah, not quite, but his part of his point in Romans 5 is that even when there was no law, there was still sin. No Mosaic law, showing you that even before there was a law of Moses, there was a law in the world. And that gets you at the covenant that works. So if you're right with God, the law is like the instruction manual, and you're like, thank you, God, this is great. If you're wrong with God, the law is like the hammer, right? It's the rules, yeah, exactly. The law is the hammer. We're the nails. It's like, oh my goodness, this is everything I'm supposed to be doing. Uh-oh.

SPEAKER_02 24:40

But we can't we can't ever look at God as an employer.

unknown 24:44

That is such a practicing of who God is.

SPEAKER_02 24:48

And Jesus was so careful in the parable of the um prodigal son. Yeah. So careful to show us that the father wants to be a child of the father relationship with us. He doesn't want an employer relationship. He wants his children to come running to him. He doesn't want all these I've done, and you never gave me a kid. Right, you know. That older son was treating his dad like he was an employer, and like had some kind of contractual thing like if I do this, then you need to give me this. Yeah. That's so awful. Yeah, that's right. It's a slap of God's face.

SPEAKER_00 25:26

Yeah. And that's the wrong way to use the law.

SPEAKER_06 25:32

Don't the Jewish people look at the law as being uh the means of salvation for them, uh, especially maybe the Pharisees, that they used you know that's the way they believe.

SPEAKER_00 25:45

There's an argument about that. Um they weren't supposed to. Because even contained within the law is provision for what you do when you break the law. So to keep the law of Moses is to you know follow the rules, and if you break a rule, to follow the other rules for dealing with the broken rule. What had gone wrong with the Pharisees is the same thing that goes wrong with every human being. It's that they stopped seeing the law as the gracious provision of God and they started to see it as the source of their righteousness. That's part of what Paul's going after here. If righteousness could have come by the law, or if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. If that was a viable option, then why do we need Jesus? It's not a viable. Under the covenant of works, it is a viable option, the only option. But because we're dead in our sins and trespasses, we can't pull it off. So we need Jesus to come and pull it off for us. That's where we get our righteousness, that's where we get our life. And if we try to get it apart from him, like from the law, we misunderstand ourselves and we misunderstand what the law is and what the law is able to do.

SPEAKER_01 26:57

Romans 8:3, for God has done what the law weakened by the flesh should not do. By sending his own son, the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, he condemns sin in the flesh, in order that the righteousness requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. There you go.

SPEAKER_00 27:20

Alright, next one is David. It's the next era in the administration of the covenant of grace. 2 Samuel 7, if you want to open there. The covenant with David. You'll find it here in 2 Samuel 7, also 1 Chronicles 17, also Psalm 89. And this is what establishes the monarchy, the Davidic line. And it more clearly brings into view the Redeemer's kingly office, even though that's been kind of under the surface for all the Old Testament, but you really start to see it in the covenant with David. Could somebody read 2 Samuel 7, verses 12 through 16?

SPEAKER_01 28:03

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. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the shreds of the sons of men. But my steadfast love will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul and I put away from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.

SPEAKER_07 28:50

So to me it's clearly talking about Jesus. Then I come to that when he commits iniquity. I'm sure that question's been asked a thousand times, and I'm looking for a good answer on it.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

Well, what we don't want to do is treat the covenant promise or really any prophecy kind of like a mortar shell, where you drop the mortar in and you go when it lands on Jesus' head. This is a covenant being made with David and his line. So David and all his sons. So it's it's it's presupposing this historical line, right? It's talking about how God is going to deal with the line of David. But it also bakes in our kind of an inherent limitation of this administration in itself. Right? Because there's kind of a principle here, and it's a principle that goes through all of creation, but especially the medieval, or not the medieval, the ancient Near Eastern world. As goes the king, goes the people. The king's doing well, the people do well. The king's doing poorly, the people do poorly. And you see that in the historical books in the Old Testament. You know, if the king worships idols and builds altars and high places and sacrifices children and all that kind of thing, well, Israel gets judged and the king gets judged. And then you get this interlude. You know, God doesn't let it go for more than three or four generations, and you get this interlude of a decent king. And so long as he keeps the law and does what he's supposed to do, it goes pretty well for Israel. But when he turns aside, this way or that, Israel suffers. So you have this kind of, you know, this relationship. And what it creates is an expectation and a longing. When are we finally going to get the son of David who is the one? When are we going to finally get the one who doesn't have to be disciplined for his sin? When are we going to get the one who doesn't have to be dealt with for breaking the law? When are we going to get the son of David who actually does what he's supposed to do and leads us as God's people to where we're supposed to go? One who actually sits on a throne that's an eternal throne and actually establishes the kingdom as an eternal kingdom that spreads from sea to sea. When will we get that one? Alright, so the promise, you know, God is promising to deal with the line of David, but it's leading up to this culmination. And the promise ultimately finds its fulfillment in Jesus as that perfect son of David. Now, one more we need to talk about that centers on Jesus is the new covenant. The um you know, the present and I don't want to say ultimate administration of the covenant of grace. You can find this one in Jeremiah 31, so let's turn there. There are other passages that touch the reality of it, but this one is the clearest uh announcement of it. Jeremiah 31, verses 31 through 33. Can someone read those for us? Jeremiah 31, 31 through 33.

SPEAKER_05 32:16

Behold the days of coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. Not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. My covenant that they broke, for I was their husband, declares the Lord. 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 upon their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

SPEAKER_00 32:55

So as you have this time, right? The covenant administrations, right? You have this period in the history of Israel where you have that Davidic promise and you're waiting for that Davidic king, but you keep getting judgment, you keep getting failure, nothing's really going in that direction. And so Jeremiah speaks this promise about a new covenant as opposed to the old covenant. A new covenant when all of it comes to fruition, all of it comes, all of it is consummated. When we finally get that Davidic king we've been looking for, when God writes the law on our hearts so that we'll stop breaking it, when he'll give us his Holy Spirit so that we'll actually want to keep it. In Ezekiel 36, it talks about the same reality as God taking the heart of stone and replacing with the heart of flesh and putting his spirit within us. All of that, those are new covenant promises looking forward to the day when one would come to establish and to inaugurate that new covenant. And that's exactly what we get in Jesus. I mean, how significant is it when at the Lord's Supper he's sitting with his disciples? This cup is the new covenant in my blood. So he's saying that this covenant is about to be fulfilled, it's about to be established, it is going to be ratified with his own blood. Because that's a part of covenant ratification in the Old Testament. Abraham, you know, hack up the animals and lay them down, the blood. Moses sprinkle the blood on the book and on the people. You see covenant renewal involving sacrifice and the sprinkling of blood. So Jesus comes as that sacrifice, as that covenant, as that ratification. And the covenant's ratified in his blood. And we have the kind of culmination of God's covenant promises, such that we are in the era of the new covenant, if you want to put it that way. And the only thing we look forward to, we're not looking forward to another administration of the covenant of grace. We're looking forward to the end of history. And Jesus comes to bring all things to completion, all things to consummation, and then we're done. We're with God forever in glory. Well, yeah, right. As far as this goes, yeah, we're done. Yeah, it's it's the end of the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 35:14

It just blows me away when Jesus reads Isaiah. And he says, today the scriptures refer to your head to that. I mean, come on. Yes.

unknown 35:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:28

Whenever we participate in communion, I always, my mind goes back to all these multiple scriptural grounds. Yeah. First one is the smoking torch going between the pieces. Representing the presence of God. Like Abraham couldn't make a covenant, but God could. He made it any kept it. Jesus has kept the covenant of us. The covenant that we could not keep.

SPEAKER_00 36:00

The uh and this covenantal language, it's this is the language of the Bible. This is the thought world of the Bible. We tend to systematize things. We think maybe a little too doctrinally, a little too uh technically about things. And that, you know, the that's not wrong, but we kind of think of, you know, the doctrine of election. God chose us in eternity. Done. And yes, it is done. But the covenant of grace shows us that, well, that's eternity. And this is history. And history is real. History is a creation of God, and history is the stage on which his eternal decree plays out. And so what does it look like for God to actualize his decree? It looks like a story. It looks like a world story in which he deals with different people in different ways at different times and places, but not arbitrarily, but as actually building to something. All the things we love about stories, drama, tension, uh, good characters, bad characters, all the things. God's doing that, right? That's that's you know, the and and he's taking us somewhere through the course of history. Again, on the world stage and also on our individual stage. God is dealing with us as individuals. He doesn't just, you know, drop a waterfall of grace into your lap in a moment. Well, in a sense, he kind of does, but then there's more, and there's more, and there's more, and it changes you, and it grows you, and it moves you here, and it moves you there. But again, never in an arbitrary way, but in a way that's actually leading somewhere. That's what we get in the covenant of grace. And because it is a covenant of grace, it is a promise. It's like a contract, but more. It's less the kind of contract you sign when you buy a house, and more the kind of contract that you sign when you say I do at the altar. So it's a personal, relational contract with a promise. And because God is who God is, you know, he can't violate that. He can't violate his covenant. It's part of who he is. He's the covenant-keeping God. For God to violate his covenant and break his promise, God would actually have to stop being God. And he can't do that. He won't do that. And so we have this covenant. Now we talked with some of the people.

SPEAKER_06 38:26

I was just thinking of the way that the prophets uh filled in these gaps all in the historical period of the Old Testament, you know, with the promises escalating as we went along. Then you had a 400-year period of silence, and then suddenly, here's Christ. And he proclaims that message, I'm here. This is it. Now here we sit 2,000 years later, with basically a period of silence. Because we don't have anybody complaining about that now, except in our individual churches message. And we had great awakenings, we had two of those, and we had other ground, which were big, you know, proclamations being made of this gospel of grace. But is that where we stay? Do we stay pretty much in the individual churches today?

SPEAKER_00 39:25

Well, I think Jesus was the prophet to end all prophets, just like he's the king to end all kings and the priest to end all priests. So, you know, how does the word of God go forth? It goes forth in scripture. We have this, we have the canon of scripture. In a real sense, we don't need another Isaiah. We don't need another Jeremiah. Of course, we sense the ways in which we kind of subjectively need that. We need preachers, we and God has been gracious to give that to us, but not in the mode of new revelation. No, no. So it's, you know, we're we're in a different era. What more can he say than to you he has said, to you who to Jesus? Or how does it go? Who for refuge to Jesus have led? Yeah. Yeah, right? So so, and that's that's kind of it, right? God's not raising up those new ethical kind of messengers because uh Jesus was the final one, he was the culmination. And uh remember with the the rich man in Lazarus, it's like my family. Oh basically, Jesus like, oh, you didn't listen to me, you're not gonna listen to anybody else. Now someone comes back from the dead. Right?

unknown 40:40

And we don't know how God is working today.

SPEAKER_02 40:44

We can't always see it, but he is definitely at work. And uh, I mean, I'm thinking historically, Industrial Revolution happened, printing press happened, now our big tech thing, the word of God can write on the back of technology in places that a physical Bible maybe. We don't know what God is doing around the world to draw this number that can be numbered, but there's that massive group of people around the throne. There's not one drop of Jesus' blood that will be wasted. Every drop will be effectual in drawing his people to themselves. I'm so excited.

SPEAKER_05 41:28

Looking forward to when you show it your next series on Sunday talking about technology and the gospel.

SPEAKER_00 41:36

We'll do that in a couple months. Alright, one more thing I want to talk about this morning. And it's the eternal covenant, or sorry, the internal, the eternal component of the covenant of grace. And it's getting back to how we think about unconditional election. Because, you know, like I said a little while ago, sometimes we can kind of sterilize things, and we think of God as the great desire in eternity, just he's got his clipboard, and you know, check, check, no check, check, check, that kind of thing. But actually, Scripture encourages us to look back and to think about that eternal moment, if we want to call that, to think about that even in covenantal and relational terms. And that gets us into something that in our tradition we call the covenant of redemption. We talked about this in the class on Christology, so I won't go too deep into it. But uh, Scott Swain, who's the president of RTS Orlando, he talks about it like this The covenant of redemption is the eternal self-determination of the Blessed Trinity, who wills to communicate the bliss of his triune life to elect sinners through the mediation of Jesus Christ to the glory of Jesus Christ. The doctrine is a faithful conceptual gloss of biblical teaching regarding the eternal appointment of the Son of God by way of covenant to become the incarnate redeemer and head of his adopted siblings. So in the in the New Testament, Jesus work, Jesus' redemptive mission. It's often portrayed to us as a mission and as ascending, right? God has sent him. John 4, 34, Jesus said to them, My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish this work. Or Galatians 4.4, when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of woman, born under the law. So it's ascending, right? The Father is sending the Son. Where is he sending him from? When is he sending him from? And we start thinking about those questions and we see it's not just that God is kind of monitoring the situation on the ground, and then he says, Alright, Jesus, go. It's an eternal decision, an eternal decree, a kind of eternal will to send. Where this isn't, if this is the plan from the beginning, right? The plan is to send Jesus. Now, there's some aspects of this where we see Christ appointed to an office, uh, appointed to an office of mediation, like we talked about the prophet, the priest, and the canon. And we'll Talk about that some more as the weeks come because that's where the shorter catechism leads us. And the idea is that Jesus from eternity undertakes upon himself to take the office of a redeemer, to take the office of a covenant mediator, to be our prophet, to be our priest, to be our king. So the covenant of redemption kind of gives shape to that eternal decision and the eternal sweep of history, showing that this was the plan. The plan is based in history. I'm sorry, the plan is based in eternity, right? We look at Luke 22. Jesus saying, I assign to you as my Father assigned to me a kingdom. The Father assigned to Jesus a kingdom. Acts 2.33, being therefore exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. A promise. Jesus has given a promise. When is he given a promise? He's given a promise, and I'm so enlightening so many texts of scripture right now. I'm sorry, I'm floating over this stuff. But from eternity, God makes a promise to Jesus and through Jesus. I will give you the Holy Spirit to equip you for your ministry as a redeemer. And consequently upon your finished work, your faithful completion of the mission I've given you, I will pour out the Holy Spirit and all of the people you've come to save. This is Jesus' mission. This is the covenant of redemption. This is the promise that God made with Jesus in eternity to say, go and get your people. Go and get your people. I'll give you everything you need, and I'll give them everything they need through you and through my spirit. So it adds, you know, I won't do the full demonstration of the doctrine or defend it in any big way. But this just adds more of that covenantal structure to the way we think about how God deals with us. And the way God deals with himself, in a sense.

SPEAKER_01 46:56

One of the things that strikes me is the uh the abiding. The Holy Trinity resides in us. Right. You know, and then I think that's lost on everyone because of distractions of the world. Um but that intimacy, you know. I think of Jesus saying to Martha, do you believe this? Do you believe this? Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_00 47:20

So that's part of the beauty of the covenant redemption. It's not just, you know, Jesus says that he and the Father will come to make their dwelling in us by the Spirit. But Ephesians 2.18 also says that by Christ through the Spirit, we have access to the Father. So they come to live in us and we go to live with them. Right? And it's kind of, it gives you both sides of that just to show you how intimate the relationship is. Kind of our spatial metaphors fail us in order to fully understand what this is like and what the reality of it is. And the covenant of redemption tells us that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit from all eternity had this perfect life, perfect relationship, perfect bliss. And they chose, God, the triangle God chose to open that up in a sense, to invite people into it. So that 1 Peter says we are now partakers of the divine nature. It's not that we become divine. It's not that we become gods in a little g sense, but it's that we are actually invited into the divine life to live forever with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And the covenant of redemption is that plan for eternity past, where they basically said amongst themselves, this is one God with one will.

SPEAKER_01 48:38

So whatever that conversation looked like, their change was like, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

SPEAKER_00 48:44

Well, God basically says, I'm going to create them for life, light, and love. I'm going to create them for fellowship. I'm going to create them to enjoy me. And they're going to cast it all aside. And you know what we're going to do? Son, you're going to put on flesh. Spirit, you're going to give him what he needs. Son, you're going to die for these people in their place. Spirit, you're going to apply the redemption to the ones who believe in the Son. And we're all in this together. And the Son says yep. And the Spirit says, yep. It's a great conspiracy theory. And the Father says yep. Great conspiracy theory. Great conspiracy theory. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 49:30

The conspiracy of God. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 49:35

So that everything that happens is serving that one ultimate goal.

SPEAKER_02 49:40

People in our day and age, I'm just using that as we generalization, have the wrong idea what faith is. They think faith is believing something is true. And of course, that's a part of it. But the faith in Romans, Abraham believed God. He believed God could do what he promised, and then he would do what he promised. And that's biblical faith that God can and will do what he promised to us.

SPEAKER_00 50:12

It's not just that Abraham believed in God, it's that Abraham believed God.

SPEAKER_02 50:17

He believed God.

SPEAKER_00 50:20

And that's the key.

SPEAKER_02 50:21

It is the key.

SPEAKER_00 50:22

The Hebrews tells us that we do have to believe in God. But you know, all kinds of people believe in God, a God, whatever that God is. They actually have to believe that that God has spoken and introduced himself and done so in all of these ways.

SPEAKER_01 50:36

But that faith was given to us, was it not? We would not have that faith. Were it not given to us? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:44

Grace and faith are a gift, right? Faith is the instrument by which we receive God's promises. Alright, so in our sin, it ought to be the natural response of the human being to God and his revelation. We've just taken at his word. But because of our sin, we have a reception problem. So, yeah, God deals with the reception problem. He regenerates our hearts. He gives us eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts to believe. And in that sense, he gives us faith. It's a thing we do, but it's not a work. It's an instrument. And our tradition has always been emphatic, and it's important to recognize with Scripture that faith is not the one work that a Christian does in order to be saved. Faith is the instrument by which we receive the finished work of Christ. So it's still not about what we do. We need to respond in faith. But if you're thinking about that as your work, then you're all. If you think about it as your work, then you're always going to wonder, did I do it right? Am I doing it right?

SPEAKER_02 51:52

Am I doing it enough?

SPEAKER_00 51:53

Am I doing it enough? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 51:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:56

Just catholicism.

SPEAKER_02 51:59

It's his work from beginning to the end. And my main job is not to get in his way. Yeah. Because left to myself, that's what I'll do. I'll get in his way.

SPEAKER_00 52:14

Alright, good. Any closing thoughts or questions before we pray? Thank you, Kenny. Thank you. Thank you. Alright, let's pray. Father, thank you for your great grace to us in Christ. Lord, thank you that though we were dead in our sins and trespasses, though we were blind, though we were opposed to you in the flesh, rebels, enemies, fools, strangers, aliens, all the words that you use to describe our separation from you. Father, thank you for sending Jesus to die in our place and for our sin. While we were dead, you made us alive together with Christ. Even though we were enemies, he laid down his life for sinners. And you by your grace have made us alive with him, so we thank you. We thank you, Father, for this covenant of grace that you have made promises to us in Christ that you will never unmake, promises that you will never break, a contract that you will never violate. Thank you, Father, for your great commitment to us. Help us to find hope and comfort and security in that. And Lord, may it fire us this morning as we worship you in spirit and truth. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.