When Nathan asked me to take this service, he said, you should preach on baptism. And I immediately thought to myself, what a mistake that would be. Because sermons on baptism tend to be controversial sermons. Because they're looking at a very small part of the picture of the great tapestry of the truth of God. And if you don't stand back and look at the big picture of what God is doing in Jesus Christ, then you will major in minors. You will talk about ceremonies, rituals, and externals, and you will lose yourself in all those things, and you will miss the great picture, as I say, of what God is doing in Christ. So I will be preaching, baptism will come into the picture. It'll get there in its time and place. So those of you who want to hear a sermon on baptism, just hang on, I'll get there. But today we're going to be talking about something far more monumental. We're going to be talking about God's covenant of grace. and how it stands to a thousand generations for all who belong to the Lord Jesus Christ. Our scripture reading comes in two parts this morning. The first from Genesis chapter 17, where we will read, we're going to read just the first 14 verses, and then we'll turn to Romans chapter four and read the first 12 verses. So hear the word of God as we find it written, first of all, in Genesis chapter 17, beginning to read at the first verse. Hear the word of God. And when Abram was 90 years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram and said unto him, I am the almighty God. walk before me, and be thou perfect. And I will make my covenant between thee and me, and will multiply thee exceedingly.' And Abram fell on his face, and God talked to him, saying, As for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. Neither shall thy name anymore be called Abram, father of a nation. Thou shalt be called the father of many nations. Thy name shall be Abraham, for a father of many nations have I made thee. And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. And I will establish my covenant between me and thee, and thy seed after thee, in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee. And I will give unto thee and to thy seed after thee the land wherein thou art a stranger, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession. And I will be their God. And God said unto Abraham, thou shalt keep my covenant therefore thou and thy seed after thee in their generations. This is my covenant which ye shall keep between me and you and thy seed after thee. Every man child among you shall be circumcised and ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you. and he that is eight days old shall be circumcised among you, every man child in your generations. He that is born in the house or bought with money of any stranger which is not of thy seed. He that is born in thy house and he that is bought with thy money must needs be circumcised and my covenant shall be in your flesh for an everlasting covenant. And the circumcised man child whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people. He hath broken my covenant. Thus far from Genesis 17 we continue to read turning to Paul's epistle to the Romans and to chapter 4. Now let me just say in writing this particular chapter Paul uses the categories that he was familiar with from childhood categories familiar to every Jew who saw the world strictly in terms of those who were circumcised and those who were not. And those who were circumcised were indeed heirs of the promise and those who were not had no part in God. It was an absolute category, an absolute separation between those who were circumcised and those who were not. But what Paul does here is, he says, I have come to a new understanding. I've come to a better reading of the book of Genesis. It dawned on me, he says, that Abraham was justified by faith before he was ever circumcised. Circumcision came later. But the chief thing, the great thing was he was justified by his faith. Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. And then he draws an astonishing conclusion, one which many Christians today have completely forgotten. He says, this was all in the will of God so that Abraham could be the father of all who believe. Not the father of the Jews only, but the father of all who believe. and that is the place that he occupies in our faith. You could call him the original Christian, the first one of whom it was said he believed God and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness. Well let's go through this discussion. I hope those remarks will help you to keep understand clearly what the Apostle Paul is laying out by way of an argument. Romans chapter 4 beginning at verse 1. What shall we say then that Abraham our father as pertaining to the flesh hath found? For if Abraham were justified by works he hath whereof to glory. but not before God. For what saith the scripture, Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Now to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of death. But to him that worketh not but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted, his faith is reckoned for righteousness. Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, saying, blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered, blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin. Cometh this blessedness then upon the circumcision only or upon the uncircumcision also. For we say, that faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness. How was it then reckoned? When he was in circumcision or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision. and he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had being yet uncircumcised, that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised, that righteousness might also be imputed unto them also. and the father of circumcision, to them who are not of the circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham, which he had being yet uncircumcised. For the promise that he should be the heir of the world was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. Here endeth the reading of God's word. To his name be the praise and the glory forever. Amen. I want to call your attention today, and it gives me great joy to do so, to one of the pivotal verses in all of the Bible, a verse on which the whole text of Scripture turns, the whole action of Scripture depends. Everything prior to this moment has been preparation and anticipation. Everything that follows from this point onward to the very end of the Bible itself will be fulfillment and the outworking of what God says to Abraham on this particular occasion. So the verse is verse seven. of Genesis chapter 12, I will establish, and I just, look at the pronouns. This is not Abraham working out a deal with God or even God working out a deal with Abraham. This is a declaration by a sovereign power. I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee. We're calling this message the old time religion, the old time religion. And I do so because I believe that Christianity is as old as the book of Genesis. I do believe that Abraham was the first recorded Christian, the first to believe unto righteousness, the first to be justified by faith alone without any works of the law. He is the exemplar, he is the pattern, For all Christians, he is indeed, as Paul says, the father of all them that believe, whether they are uncircumcised, but believing, or whether they are both circumcised and believing, walking in the steps of their father's, Abraham's faith. Well, that's the old time religion. And it stands opposed to what many have called New Testament Christianity. The quest for a Christianity that is mined completely and exclusively out of the New Testament alone. that they had rediscovered New Testament Christianity as if it were a thing in and of itself and by itself and not connected to anything else that there might be in the whole canon of Scripture. We call these people the Anabaptists, the Amish, the Mennonites. We call these people the Baptists and the Independent Fundamentalists. We call these people also the Dispensationalists, some of whom won't even accept all of the New Testament. They pare the thing down further. They only want the epistles of Paul. to be their guide, their Christianity. If there's anything else in the New Testament they want nothing to do with it. They only want what they can find in the epistles of Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles. Now you see, this is a false idea of the Bible, a false idea of Christianity. If by New Testament Christianity you mean the faith and the life and the order and the worship taught by the Lord Jesus Christ and given to his church, well, that is one thing. And it only takes a short exploration of the New Testament itself to discover that these New Testament Christians who didn't have the New Testament in fact, found everything they needed for faith and life and order and worship in the scriptures as they then stood in the 39 books of the Hebrew canon. It was the contention of the Lord Jesus. It was the contention of the Apostle Paul that these great documents had been misconstrued, misunderstood, misapplied, terribly abused and rested to the destruction of many. And they simply wanted, in the New Testament, to set forth a right understanding of the whole word of God. Now this false idea of New Testament Christianity divides the scriptures into two books and for all intents and purposes it discards the largest part of the scripture in its focus on what it regards as the New Testament and the New Testament alone. And not surprisingly, all these groups have fallen into various kinds of doctrinal errors and practical errors, and even at times, immorality and rebellion. as a result of separating the New Testament from the Old and attempting to produce their version of what New Testament Christianity should be. I think we should just discard this term. It does great harm to the faith and order of the church. and it hands back to God 39 books of the Bible and says, thank you, but we don't need them. Thank you for giving them to those Jews, but we're not Jews, so you can have them back and we'll stick with our pocket version of the New Testament from now on. Give up your New Testament Christianity. in favor of whole Bible Christianity, the old time religion of the law and the prophets of Christ and the apostles. Now in this text, we discover that God sets up four great institutions for his people to observe throughout their generations. And the first and the greatest of these is the covenant promise. The covenant promise, I will be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee. Now having said that, God has said everything that we need to know. He will be a God unto us, not a friend, not a helper, not even a savior. He'll be all those things and all, many, many things more beside because he will be our God, the God who made us, the God who knows us, the God who cares for us, the God who orders the course of all events according to his own will, God who makes all things work together for the good of his people. What a great God this is. In giving himself to us, he has given us everything conceivable. And in giving himself to us, he could not have given us anything more. I will be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee. Now that is a great promise indeed. So great in fact that the word promise itself can be used as Peter does on the day of Pentecost as a synonym for covenant. Because the great and dominant characteristic of the covenant is promise. God's promise to us. The promise of life. The promise of salvation. The promise of blessing. The promise of grace to supply all our needs. Now that is the great thing about the covenant. It is promise. All the promises of God in particular, and there are so many of them to be found throughout the scriptures, all of them are simply footnotes to this great promise. I will be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee. By contrast, the Apostle Paul describes the condition of the unsaved Gentiles, the uncircumcised, the unwashed, the unsaved. He says they are without God and without hope in the world. Without God, without hope in the world. You couldn't be more destitute than to be without God, to be without hope in the world. But that is the plight of many across the ages and the plight of many people today. I suspect even some who occasionally attend religious services or make some token profession of Christian faith. They really are so far from God in their thoughts and in their lives that they can be said truly to be without God and without hope in the world. We are never in such a strait. Those of us who believe God, those of us whose faith is counted to us for righteousness, those of us who have a father in Abraham, we are never without God. He himself has said, I will be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee. So that is the first and great institution, the covenant promise, the covenant bond. And again, I want to underscore, this is God stepping forward in the presence of Abraham and announcing this great truth. God's presence is so overwhelming. The word of God to Abraham is so overwhelming. What does Abraham do? He falls on his face. And he's lying there on the ground headlong for the rest of the whole account. He never has a word to say in response. He has no part in this whatever. He simply receives this sovereign divine interposition, as John Murray described it, a sovereign divine interposition on the part of God. I will be a God unto thee. Now the second thing, and again this is a part that many Christians de-emphasize in these modern times. The covenant obligation. The covenant obligation, it is expressed in these words. I will be your God and you will be my people. The covenant obligation is simply this, to live in the world, confessing the name of God and doing all things to his glory as his faithful witnesses and as his obedient children by word and deed. To live in the world as the people of God. Not to go out of the world, to a secluded place, not to set up a state for Christians only to live in, and they can all be by themselves in one little corner of the world. No, no. Dispersed abroad in the world, this is the will of God. Living in the life of every community, being a part of what goes on all around us all the time, but doing so as God's people in the world. That's the covenant obligation. Now you can reduce it to a matter of obedience, but I don't want to be charged with legalism because I do believe that the Spirit of God makes God's children ready and willing from henceforth to live unto Him and unto His Son, Jesus Christ. And if you are not obedient, if you don't want to be obedient, it's simply because you do not have the Spirit of Christ dwelling in you. If obedience is a chore, if it's an uphill battle, if it's a wearisome, burdensome thing, that is a very distressing indication. you should be very concerned that you have no real faith at all, that you do not have the spirit of Christ dwelling in you, and that your conversion so far as you think you've been converted has really been spurious and misleading. The covenant obligation, I will be your God Ye shall be my people. God asserts a claim over your life, body and soul, in life and in death. You belong to him through the mediation of his son, Jesus Christ, the seed of Abraham. But obliged you are, engaged you are to the Lord. obliged to walk in His ways, obliged to show forth His praises, obliged to eat and drink and do all things to His glory. So that is the second thing that God sets up here as a permanent, everlasting institution. The covenant promise, the covenant obligation. And those who want to regard this as a menu and you can click on the one or the other, I'm sorry, we're not sitting at a computer screen. We are listening to the word of God. And the one is as binding on us, the one is as meaningful to us as the other. If God has made exceeding great and precious promises to us, who are we? to say no to any kind of obligation to live unto Him in righteousness. Now the third great thing that is established here, and here that subject of baptism is creeping into view. The third great institution in these words is the covenant community. Abraham is not to be alone. That was never the plan that it would be just Abraham and God going on forever. Abram's name meant father of a people and God had embraced that name and said, that's exactly right, Abram. That's what I have in mind for you, to be the father of a family. I will give unto you an heir. I will give unto you offspring. I will give unto you a family. But on this occasion, and remember, this is before Isaac was even born. On this occasion, God says, you know what, Abram? For all these years I've said you're going to be the father of a people, but no more. You're going to be Abraham. You are going to be the father of many nations. as if something God does and something will have more to say out on another occasion. There's always this tendency with God to keep on enlarging and enhancing and extending the promises, promising more and more, never less and less. But you see, on this occasion, he summons up the fact that this is the promise. There will be offspring. There will be a seed. There will be nations. Kings will come out of Abraham. All of this, you see, is promised to Abraham. And all of a sudden, the promises are being made, not to one man only, but to a body, to a community, to a fellowship, to a communion of faith. And so the church comes into view. Oh, you say, no, no, no. Pentecost is the birthday of the church. Well, no, it's not. Pentecost is not the birthday of the church any more than Christmas is the birthday of Jesus. Although some have argued cogently for the December 25 date, that's a minority opinion. Christmas isn't Jesus' birthday. Pentecost is not the birthday of the church. It's the coming of age day for the church. The church is not celebrating her beginning. She is coming into full possession of all that has been promised to her across the ages in this great gift this great outpouring, this mighty baptism with the Holy Ghost and with fire. Church's real beginning is here in Genesis chapter 17. where God says, there'll be you, Abraham, and there'll be your wife, Sarah, and there will be children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren to 1,000 generations, Abraham. Speaking in terms of Abraham's own ability to take things in, 1,000 years would have been just fine. We know that it's thousands of thousands of years. It's an everlasting covenant. It's an eternal covenant of grace. But it always is given not to individuals, but to the church as a body, the church as a whole. The me and Jesus mentality of American evangelicalism falls far short of what scripture teaches about the church and her place in the purposes of God and in the life of every Christian. You cannot be a solo Christian and be faithful to the word of God. If nothing else, the letter of Scripture compels you to unite with your fellow believers. But again, it's that all-essential work of the Spirit of God that draws us to each other and together as a body. If this is not a Spirit-filled assembly of people, then it is just a man-made institution, a man-made organization. There's no life, there's no power. But when the Spirit of God is working in your heart and in my heart, we're drawn together, we're empowered to stand together and serve the Lord as we should. The covenant community is an essential part of God's plan for your life. It's one of the spiritual laws of the kingdom that we must join ourselves to the church of Christ and abide in her fellowship throughout our days of life on earth. And this means then that this description of the covenant community identifies who should be counted as part of the church. Those who believe and their children with them. A pattern is established here. It's already been anticipated. In the book of Genesis, in God's dealings with Adam and Eve, his dealings with Noah and Mrs. Noah, and now with Abraham and Sarah. The same pattern you see. It is so strongly entrenched in scripture. Sometimes someone will say to me, well where does it say you're to baptize an infant in the New Testament? And I have to say to you, show me where God changed his mind. and decided to shut the children out and say, I only want, this is an adult church only. We've been driving down through Georgia and there's a great big chain of something called adult bookstores. I suppose, are they great big books? I don't know. But is the church to be the adult church? This is for adults. This is only for believers. If you're a non-believer, get out of here, stay out of here, and keep those kids out. Well, dear friends, if that's your view of how to improve the church, make it an adult-only operation, exclude the children, oh my goodness, you may as well take the church by the neck and wring all the life out of them. We know. Sitting here with our children in church, they bring such life and vitality to our congregation. That's the way we want it to be. We wouldn't have it any other way. because the covenant community extends to the children of believers. I didn't say that. The Westminster divines didn't say that. It wasn't even the Apostle Paul with all his narrow-minded thinking who said it. It was God speaking to Abraham. I will be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant. So don't argue with the Presbyterians. Don't argue with the Westminster divines. Don't even argue with John Calvin. Take your case directly to the throne of God and argue with him. Oh no, God, how is that even possible? They don't know, and they haven't been taught, and I haven't had a chance to share the wordless book with them, and I can't do all the things I want to do to kind of coerce them into being Christians, but here you go and take the ground out from under me and tell me that they're already included in the church. Oh yes. That's exactly what God says to Abraham. My covenant community extends to the children that I give thee. And it's remarkable, even to reinforce this, even to reinforce this, he goes on to say, he that is bought with thy money. Slavery was still tolerated among the people of God. People were still buying and selling men and women as slaves. Well, Abraham, if you're going to do that, then you have to put the slaves in the church also, not in the gallery and not down the road in their own little Baptist church. You put your servants with you in the pew. That's the way it ought to have been. If the slavery of the South were a Christian institution, it would have been that way, but it never was anywhere. Now, dear friends, that means that if all you have to do is be bought with money, that's like today, I guess the closest thing to that is the practice of adoption. They too must be baptized. It is right and proper. If you adopt a child to present that child for baptism at your earliest opportunity, because God includes them all. To us, it is too much. We want to interrupt God and say, no, wait a minute, God, you're going too far with this thing. But you see, Abraham had better sense than we do. He did not interrupt God. and tell him he had to put some fine print in there, make some fine distinctions, somehow make this thing a little safer and easier to live with. No, no, the covenant community embraces all with seed of believing parents. And they too are to be distinguished from the children of the world by baptism. Now this brings us to the fourth institution, the least important of all, the sign of the covenant. The thing signified is always of far greater importance than the sign. Well, when we saw that, you know, we crossed over the border from Georgia, it said, welcome to Florida. We didn't stop the car. and say, okay, we've come to Florida. Now we can go home again. Well, one of us was of that mind, but the other felt we should press on because there's so much more to Florida than just a sign at the state border. There's so much more to the covenant of grace than just the thing which is used as a sign to mark those who belong to it. In fact, this sign is so unimportant in the divine economy that it could be changed at will. And it was the will of the Lord Jesus Christ that baptism come in the place of circumcision. That's a discussion for another time. I simply point to the fact that this is what happened. and baptism comes to occupy the same place as a sign and seal of the righteousness which is by faith, the sign and seal of our engrafting into Christ, the sign and seal of our belonging to Christ that circumcision did in its time and place. So unimportant, you see, you can change the outward form but the significance, the meaning remains exactly the same. The sign of the covenant draws a line and says, on this side of the line are those who belong to God, who are the heirs and the possessors of his covenant promise. Those who have received such promises are obliged to live in the world as his people. It's all there in baptism just as it was there for Abraham in the rite of circumcision. So four great institutions ranked in order of importance. Number one, the covenant promise. Not far below it on the scale of things in the thinking of God, the covenant obligation. You will be my people. Next, the covenant community, believers and their seed to a thousand generations. And finally, last of all, and least important of all, the covenant sign, the covenant sign. You can belong to God's covenant even if you haven't received the sign. We do not teach the necessity of water baptism as some do. Some of those New Testament Christians, as they like to call themselves, teach the necessity of water baptism. You have to be baptized in our church. And you have to be baptized the way we say it should be done, which is forward, not backward, three times under, not just one. It goes on and on, this superficial obsession with the sign and this utter neglect and ignorance of the thing signified, the covenant of grace. Well, just a few words of applications. First of all, I say to you today, if Abraham is not your father, you are not God's child. If Abraham is not your father, you are not God's child. You are not a Christian. The covenant of grace has nothing for you. You have no part or interest in it if Abraham is not your father. We read that from Romans chapter four. We don't need to read it again. This is the sentence of the word of God. And that is why I say, everything before Genesis 17, seven is preparation. Everything after is just fulfillment. You could divide the whole Bible, not between Old and New Testaments, but between what goes before Genesis 17 and all that comes after. Secondly, if you are not an acknowledged member of the covenant community, you are walking disorderly. That's Paul's phrase for it. You are not walking as you should walk as a follower of Jesus Christ. Someone says, why do I have to join the church? I've been asked that question more than once in 45 years. Why do I have to join the church? You have to join the church so the rest of us know about it. And know who you are. And know what we can do for you. And what you can do for us. We stand together as a community. And the community must have borders. And the community must have an order. And the community must have a way of knowing itself and knowing its members. So your membership in Christ, yes, you can theoretically be a Christian without joining a church. But should you? Do you really want to be? Do you want to stand apart from the covenant community? If so, I say it to your face, you are walking disorderly. Thirdly, if your church is ordered according to God's will, the children of believers belong to it and should receive the sign of belonging. If your church is ordered according to the will of God as stated in Genesis chapter 17, then your children, the children of believers, belong to it and should receive the sign of it. It just is the simple logic, it is the grammar, it is the truth of the passage, undeniably. And if things were going to change in the New Testament, as I say, God should have told us. He should have made an announcement. He should, I'm giving revised instruction for the lives of my people, and so on. But it was not to be. It was not to be. I don't need to prove to you that the New Testament church baptized infants. I don't need to prove to you that there were infants in those households and families that received baptism from the apostles. It is irrelevant, it is unimportant once we understand Genesis 17, verse seven. And finally, if your desire is to follow Jesus Christ with integrity, with your whole soul, heart, mind, and strength, then be ruled by the whole word of God and not just one part of it. Not just one part of it. I mentioned those dispensationalists that reduce everything to the epistles of Paul. They do that because it's so much more manageable and doable. Because everyone who sets out to keep all the commandments of God discovers in the end the absolute requirement of the law. You must keep all of it. You must defend against not one line of it. To transgress against one part is to be guilty of the whole. That's overwhelming. How much easier to just pare it down? Well, we'll just look at what's here in the epistles. That's an easy way out, an easy way out. It is lacking utterly in integrity. We want to be subject to the whole word of God, not just to one part of it or another. That and that only. is deserving of the name of the old time religion. Amen. Lord Jesus we have been instructed from thy word and we ask first of all for understanding make things clear in our hearts and minds so that we may know the truth and then move our hearts to embrace it and receive it as the truth and finally lead us in the doing of it that we may fulfill our obligation that we may live in the world as the people of God that we may follow Jesus Christ according to his whole word and not just some part of it. For this we ask the help of the Holy Spirit. We ask for further instruction from the Word of God. We ask to be confirmed in our knowledge of the truth. We ask to have all our errors rebuked and corrected. We ask, O Lord, that the Spirit of Christ would guide us into all truth for Jesus' sake. Amen.