Well, we're sort of starting to close out the series we're doing on the five solas, and this morning we'll look at Solus Christus. So if you don't mind, we'll turn to our beginning passage this morning, which is Luke 24. This may seem like a strange place to go to talk about Solus Christus. I promise I'm not picking it to be weird or novel. Luke 24, so what's happening in Luke 24 here is that Jesus has been resurrected and there have been the beginning of witnesses there to see his resurrection and then we come upon a scene in 24 beginning of verse 13 that you're probably familiar with, you've probably heard this story before, but I think is a pretty pivotal moment in church history. So Luke 24, looking at verse 13. So this is our story of the resurrected Lord. This is what it says, that very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and they were talking with each other about all these things that happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, what is this conversation you are holding with each other as you walk? And they stood still looking sad. And then one of them said, then one of them named Cleopas answered saying, are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened these days? And he said to them, What things? And they said to him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying they'd even seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see. And he said to them, O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all the prophets have spoken. Was it not necessary that Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. So, again, I think you're probably familiar with the story. The central gist of it is you have some people who were followers of Jesus who are perplexed by the events. They've heard resurrection stories, but they're not sure what's going on there. They're expecting a Messiah, and Jesus is not what they were expecting. And they don't recognize their resurrected Lord with them in that moment, although later in the passage they do become aware of him. And his response wasn't to say, okay, yeah, I get it, it's all pretty confusing stuff. His response instead was to call him foolish and slow of heart, and then to go back to the scriptures. And it says that he searched all the scriptures beginning at Moses and the prophets, which is basically a way of saying he unlocked the Old Testament for them. And when we talk about Solus Christus, when we talk about Christ alone, I think one of the most important things we have to know is that all of scripture is Christocentric. And that's really why I want to start with this passage. This passage tells us that when Jesus wanted to explain what the whole Bible was about, he said, it's about me. And so I think when we come, a lot of times when we come to the scriptures, we can easily be distracted by the particular events that happen in one place or another, or the trivia, the details, and forget that there's supposed to be, there's meant to be a larger picture at play here. And really that's what today's lesson in Sunday School is about. It's what's the big picture. And because you know this is Solus Christus, and you know that means Christ alone, The answer, and I think Jesus points to this himself, is all of scripture is really about Christ, and particularly it's talking mostly about one work that Christ does. Now there are many parts under that, more parts than we could possibly talk about in a Sunday school or a sermon. What I'm going to do is kind of give you a big overview. I'm going to give you a grid work that you could view a lot of scripture through to make sense of it. And then in the sermon later, I'm going to drill down on one particular aspect of it, and really kind of mine that very deeply. So you have a broad overview, and I'll give you one vein that you can kind of look through. But really what I want you to see is that there are principles in Scripture that are so big that they help us to unlock everything else that's in Scripture. They help us to make sense of it. So the things that we didn't know were related before, we can find from Scripture itself actually bind Scripture together. And we're going to talk about one of those this morning. And what we're going to talk about, because it's so closely related to the work of Christ, both in this passage and all of scripture, is called the Covenant of Redemption. Have you guys heard of Covenant of Redemption before? You guys know what I'm talking about? You may have heard it referred to as the Pactum Salutis. No? Okay, good. That means I have my work cut out for me. Okay, we have, yeah. Just for the audio record, Travis has heard of it. Good. Okay, Chuck's going to keep Travis company. That's good. That's all set down in the record. Yeah, John, yeah, definitely does. He's helping out with the kids. I think they're going out with Solus Christus this morning as well. So, when we talk about the covenant of redemption, it would be right for you to ask, what is that? Like, what is the covenant of redemption and what is it doing in Scripture? Basically, the covenant of redemption is an agreement that we find from scriptural passages that's between the Father and the Son. that happened before time, and we say it's time immemorial or eternity, so before the creation of the earth of the world, this agreement between the father and the son, in which the father promises to redeem people, and the son promises that he'll go as their redeemer, he'll become incarnate, that he'll fulfill that role, and the father will redeem the people because of the work of the son. The son volunteers to become incarnate. And because of that, he acts as what's called a surety or a guarantor, and as a mediator. I'll unpack a lot of those details, but for now that's the gist of it. Father and the Son, time immemorial, eternal covenant between the two of them. Now two weeks ago in my sermon on grace alone, I mentioned two ways that this covenant of redemption plays out in the world that we see. So there's two more covenants. Sorry. Hang with me for a minute. One of them is called the covenant of works. You guys remember me talking about that when we talked about by grace alone. So we get this idea of covenant of works from the scriptures, of course. Specifically, we get it from the story of Adam and Eve in the garden. So you remember Adam comes and God has this arrangement with him where he promises him, well, what the Westminster Catechism says, a covenant of life with him upon condition of perfect obedience. Meaning if you do what you're supposed to do, then you live forever. And if you don't do what you're supposed to do, you will surely die, right? This condition of perfect obedience forbade him to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So there's two trees in the garden, right? Two principal trees. There's lots of trees, but there's two main trees. One is the tree of life, and the other is the tree of knowledge. With me so far? And so the covenant looks like this. God says, essentially, Adam, you have unfettered access to the tree of life forever. so long as you don't eat of the tree of knowledge. Okay? Adam and Eve, but principally Adam, as emphasized in Romans and other places, Adam eats of the tree of knowledge and he breaks the covenant. So the core of the covenant of works is do this and live. If you obey, you live. If you disobey, you die. Adam was perfectly capable of keeping the covenant. He was capable of keeping the covenant. But he failed it. He broke it. He broke the covenant of works. So to sum it up on my kids level, that's real bad news. That's discipline time. You have this covenant and the way covenant works, is that if you fill the covenant you get the blessing if you don't fulfill covenant then you get the cursing and by extension and that means Adam gets the curse and because he's not just Adam he's not just some random dude but the scriptures talk about him being a covenant head of us meaning he wasn't just representing himself he's representing all of us we also fall in Adam and of course we cooperate with that it's not as though We do it differently. We agree and we do the same things. But the key here is that we are naturally in this old Adam, the Adam who chose the wrong thing. And of course, you can see this working out in our lives all the time, right? We have a law of God, and God tells us what to do, and we all the time, rather than sort of metaphorically choosing the tree of life, we instead choose death, right? And it doesn't matter how many times we chose the right tree, We occasionally choose the wrong tree, so to speak, and that's enough. That's enough to bring down the covenant curse. So that's your covenant of works. Adam fails, and therefore we fall on Adam. Okay, so you have the bad news. What's the good news? Well, the good news is there's also what's called a covenant of grace. And again, you see this all the way in the beginning from the story of Adam. But basically what's promised is that there's going to be a second, sometimes referred to as a second, sometimes referred to as a last or a second, a better Adam. There's another Adam. So Adam was a type of head. We're promised there's another head that would come and that we can be in him. And this other head does what Adam didn't do. So he comes in the flesh and he upholds the law in his life. Right? Every aspect of God's law he upholds, he doesn't break any of it. And not only that, that would be pretty amazing, but he also, not only lives, but he also dies for us. He literally expunges the guilt and takes the punishment for the wrong thing that we did. And this covenant of grace is essentially this idea that instead of being under the covenant works, we could instead be under the covenant of grace. That is, we could have, instead of the old Adam, we could have the better Adam, the second, the last Adam. We could be in Christ. And so you have essentially this choice laid in front of us. Covenant of works, covenant of grace. Do this and live, we've already failed that, or rely wholly upon the work of Christ, rest in him, and you can be saved. Those are the two covenants that are laid out. Okay, what does that have to do with the covenant of redemption? Well, the covenant of redemption really is an agreement that made those two things happen. It's the thing that happened before those two things happened, where the Father and the Son, to redeem people, worked together with specific roles that both of them would play, so that this redemption would unfold in human history. And that's what's called the covenant of redemption. That is, before we had fallen, there was already an agreement from time immemorial that God would make a way of salvation for us, even in our fall. So at no point in human history were we left truly in despair. We always had a God who was a saving God who was working for his people. This covenant of redemption really is It's sort of, well, let's say it this way. The Covenant of Works is kind of a mirror image of the Covenant of Redemption. The Covenant of Redemption says only God will save us, right? The Covenant of Works says you can save yourself if you fulfill these obligations. Some people ask, well, is the Covenant of Redemption, is it more Covenant of Grace? God does it for you, or is it more Covenant of Works? You do it for yourself. And the answer to that, well, I don't think I can do better than Scott Clark, who says the Covenant of Redemption is a covenant of works for Christ and a covenant of grace for you. That is, the obligations are actually of the covenant of works, do this and live. Those obligations are placed on Christ instead. He has to do this and live for us, and he does. And by fulfilling that, we are instead under the covenant of grace. That is, Christ did these things for us, they're applied to us, and therefore we live instead. All right, I'm gonna pause here. We started on the deep end of the pool. And pause for questions. So where are we at? How are we doing? So far so good? OK. So this is usually where I tell my students, I've either done a perfect job of explaining this in every respect. What's that? Or we have no idea what's going on. Yeah, that's the other possibility, that's right. Okay, well how about we do this? How about we get into some details from Scripture that will flesh some of this out, right? Because as is often the case with Scripture, if you're looking for a particular proof text that says, hey guys, there's this thing called the covenant of redemption, this is how it works, that doesn't often happen, right? The Bible is never meant to be a systematic theology. It does have theology and it is in places systematic, but it never lays it out systematically in that way. It's a progressive revelation. So let's do this. Let's start with Ephesians chapter 1. You guys want to go there? So you may say, well, I mean, Jeremiah, if you're telling me this thing has been from time immemorial and this plan has been there from the beginning, Why are we starting in the New Testament? Why would we not start in the Old Testament? We will get to the Old Testament, and I think as we see these things play out in Scripture, you'll see that the old saying that the New Testament is concealed in the Old Testament, and the Old Testament is revealed in the New Testament, I think you'll see that play out. We're in Ephesians 1, and on this one we're going to look at a few verses, so bear with me here. Ephesians 1, we'll start at verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ, with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has blessed us in, the beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of His will according to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth. In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory. So yeah, this is obviously a very popular passage. It's dense with theological truth, and I'm going to obviously pick a few points here rather than going through piece by piece through the whole passage. But one thing you would want to point out, too, is that this gives us the beginning of the timeline, right? So one of the questions is, we've seen how God redeemed us in history. When did that plan began, right? And it seems to me to be clear that Ephesians 1 talks to us about him choosing us in him before the foundation of the world. that we should be a holy and blameless before him. That is, as he's unveiling this story of what the Christ is, he begins the story, maybe you could say before the beginning, right? Where the story begins before we have a story, in essence. So he locates our predestination to be adopted sons and to gain an inheritance in Christ before there's even a time or there's a fixed people who've attained. All of the language here is redemptive type language. When you talk about the adoption, the fact that here he's referred to as Christ, John Fesco, he's an author who talks a lot about the covenant of redemption and the work of God in history, is fond of saying that Christ is not his last name, which I'm sure you guys know that, but like me, I tend to read and just kind of gloss, it says Christ, I think Jesus. But it uses Christ most often, particularly for a reason. It's talking specifically of his redemptive work, that he's the one who's there to redeem us. There's an Old Testament word for it and a New Testament word that match, specifically speaking of his messianic office, the fact that he's the one who comes and saves us. So all of this is talking about how God redeems his people. When it talks about an inheritance, you might think of it as being like riches that you get, But that's actually not what it's talking about. It's not talking about you having a chunk of gold somewhere or having a claim on one of the jewels in the wall or something like that. It's actually using language that specifically refers back to what the Old Testament people were also looking forward to. They were looking forward to an inheritance, and when they saw inheritance, they meant a promised land, a land promised to them. Inheritance that's only found in the offering of God by covenant. That's the only place that it's found. And we're told that the land that they had wasn't really the promised land. It's a type, it's a shadow of something that's to come. And the promise that we have, the inheritance we have is in Christ. that Christ gives us our salvation and all of the things that accompany that, all the blessings that accompany it, and that's our inheritance. And of course that, we're told, is also predestined. That is, it's something that's claimed for us before the foundation of the world. All right, so if you were going to put a pin in the timeline of when the story of how we get redeemed starts, you have to begin it before our beginning, right? I mean, I think Ephesians 1 is pretty clear on that. So far, so good. Yep. Okay. Let's move over to Luke 22. Luke 22. Luke 22 and we're looking at verses 28 and 29 and 30. This passage is a discussion about who's going to be the greatest in the kingdom. You know, they hear Christ talking about his kingdom all the time. That's not insignificant for us. We see that we are inheritors of the kingdom, his kingdom, which was, again, also ordained from the foundations of the earth. We have this conversation about who's the greatest. Starting in verse 28, this is what it says, you are those who have stayed with me in my trials and I signed to you as my father signed to me a kingdom. that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel." Now the location of this promise obviously he's applying that specifically to his disciples. I think that the key that we're looking at here really is that verse where he talks about where this idea of kingdom comes, verse 29, I assign to you as my father assigned to me a kingdom. So that verb there, assign, that's a really nice English verb. It means a lot of things, but unfortunately it does avail to us a little bit about what's going on in the Greek there. I have no intention of getting technical with you, so don't be afraid. Except to say that when it talks about assigning, That is a synonym for covenant. In fact, in other places in the New Testament, you'll see it interpreted as covenant. And the reason is because when someone assigns something, it would be like saying, you're going to inherit this as a last will and testament. It's a type of assignment. Yes? Yes, I would go probably a little stronger than agree and say decreed, because it entails that, like the kingship language, right? So what we're getting at here is there's covenants, there's ways that covenants work, and the Bible assumes that you know how those covenants work, but basically the idea there's two types. There's a unilateral covenant, that's where somebody better or bigger than you makes a covenant with you and tells you what the conditions are and you have to fulfill them. And there's a bilateral covenant. That's when two relatively equal parties both agree to do something. Our agreement here is more of a unilateral. This is the way that it's going to work. So when God covenants with us, it's more unilateral. He says this is what you must do. Right. That's right. This covenant with Christ is the other type. It's the bilateral covenant. Exactly right. Where, again, as we mentioned earlier, the father says he's going to accomplish redemption. The son agrees to go in incarnation and be a surety for us. We'll get to that word surety in just a minute as well. But the point is, where does Christ's kingdom comes from? Well, the kingdom is made up of people. we refer to as his kingdom, and it's what Jesus was continuously preaching on. You guys know the Sermon on the Mount, right? You've heard this. There's a lot of good stuff in there. Some of the most quoted passages from Christendom come from that. Have you ever wondered what's the Sermon on the Mount about, if you had to say what's being preached? How would you summarize it? Well, the author of Matthew tells us. He tells us at the end of the previous chapter, he goes about preaching the kingdom. Meaning he's telling you what the kingdom of God is like. The kingdom of heaven, kingdom of God being synonymous terms there. He's going around preaching the kingdom. He's talking about it all the time. And now he tells you where does the kingdom come from. this covenant between he and his father, right? They have this agreement between the two of them. And if we have a kingdom, it's only because they've agreed upon a kingdom. That's another good and necessary inference from that. So far so good? Covenant? Okay, good. Let's look at some Old Testament. Look at Psalm 2. So you have the plan of redemption happening from time immemorial. You have it being covenantal. You have it between the father and the son. Let's look at Psalm 2 to try to flesh this out a little bit, see how this works. By the way, in the previous passage, I would never rely upon my own ability to exegete Greek better than translators. That would be very presumptive of me. Many of them are not just schooled in Greek, but are Greek scholars. I would only look to other Greek scholars to do that. And you can do the same. For instance, Theodore Beza does a great job of pointing out exegetically how that appointed or decreed is a covenantal language. It's a type of covenant. And you can find that, by the way, in any Greek lexicon for yourself if you wanted to find it that way. But I would never try to give you guys a secret meaning of a hidden Greek word. I'm not that good with the languages, so. 2-7 this is what it says, I will tell of the decree the Lord said to me you are my son today I have begotten you ask of me and I will make the nation's your heritage and the ends of the earth your possession. So you're seeing here in Psalm 2 language which echoes what we saw in Luke 22. You have a son speaking of his Lord, and being decreed to him that you are the Son, and specifically being given an inheritance of the nations and the people thereof." So again, sort of echoing what we had before, you have Ephesians 1, where does this plan come from? Time immemorial. What does it cover? The work of the Son. Who's found in that? All those that the Father has given Him. That's exactly what we find in places like John 17. And again, here you have this word decree. Decree here speaking, again, of covenantal language. Similar to what we talked about at Leek 22, this idea that there's a covenant between the two of them, that this will be how it operates in the world. Good? Yes? Okay. You guys ready for a weird passage? You want a weird one? I like the weird ones, a little bit. Let's go to Zechariah 6. I know you probably did your devotions from Zechariah this morning, as you do every morning, I'm sure. No? Okay, well. Try to work old Zechariah in at least some mornings, if you can. I'm going through, my family does a couple chapters most days. We listen to a couple chapters and we just go straight through. we're in Revelation. And if you've never had the joy of trying to go through apocalyptic literature with small children, it's delightful. We have some that understand metaphor and some who are in the stage where everything is very literal and wouldn't, you know, they don't really get metaphor yet. And so it's been really interesting. But anyway, speaking of prophecy, Zechariah 6, look at verse 13. It is he who shall build the temple of the Lord and shall bear royal honor and shall sit and rule on his throne and there shall be a priest on his throne and the council of peace shall be between them both. So this idea of, first of all, you have, of course, the work of Christ. Christ, you may know from other places, is referred to in the scripture as being the temple. We're told that the temple points to Christ. It is a type of Christ, right? It all points back to him. And we have the work of the Lord here. But specifically, you have this counsel of peace between them both. Now it has been true that lately some exegetes are trying to go with literal translation only, kind of like what my younger son might do. They really wouldn't. So they're trying to locate two people in history in which this these two offices might have come together as being the center of this. But instead, I think it makes sense to look at this, as we do with all prophetic literature, as having both often a literal component, but also a component that is a type of foreshadowing. We didn't make up that idea ourselves. The author of Hebrews demonstrates throughout his book that that's a proper way to address the scripture. So we're really only doing what he, and we see Jesus do this as well. What we're told is there's a council of peace between them. And the author here, Zachariah, being a student of scripture, knows his Psalms. And one of the things you'll find, for instance, in Psalm 110 is this idea of a council of peace. So let's flip over there, if you don't mind. Psalm 110. I know, I... Yeah, 110, that's right. We're doing a little Bible drill here this morning. One of the things Nathan and I went to worship, Reformed worship conference, one of the things they hit on, I think we're going to actually talk about it in Sunday School in a few weeks, some of the historical important components of Reformed worship. One of the things they talked about a lot was the centrality of the scriptures. They were among biblically illiterate people, actually just illiterate people, but also biblically illiterate people. And so one of the things they thought was very important was to make sure that we have lots of scripture. Take this as your, I guess, your biblical vitamin for the morning. 110, look at verse four. The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. You're a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. So this Psalm, Psalm 110, where the Lord says to my Lord is a conversation between Yahweh and Adonai. This is a classic Christological passage, a classic passage where we see that the Christ is God, right? And here you have this conversation, which is really what it is, the rest of it is a dialogue between Christ and the Father. And it plays out where there's a lot of repetition except in verse four where it says, Yahweh has sworn and will not change his mind, you are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. Well, where is this passage picked up again, this idea that Christ is a priest after the order of Melchizedek? It's picked up in Hebrews, as I mentioned before. In Hebrews, it speaks not just of Christ being a priest, but tells us what kind of priest he is. We're told he's a priest after the order of Melchizedek, barring language directly here from Psalm 110. And it tells us what his role as a priest was, which was to lay out himself as a offering. So what we have in Psalm 110 here is we have the dialogue that happened between the Father and the Son, essentially, where they lay out the plan of salvation, the covenant of redemption. This is what I'll do, and this is what you do. And the work of Christ is to be a priest, but not a priest who sacrifices an animal, right? Not the blood of bulls and goats, not an ox, not a dove, but instead the Lamb of God sacrifices himself. He's both the priest and the offering and the temple are all pictures of Christ. He does all of the work and all of it points back to him. So putting all these things together, I think it's fair to say that we have a timeline. We know when this conversation happened. It happened in time immemorial. The fact that it was a covenant, we see this in places like Luke 22 and Psalm 2. We have what it was about, it was a type of council of peace, and we have the dialogue that's included in that council, which is this agreement between the two of them about how the plan of redemption, the covenant of redemption, would play out. And just to look really specifically at one aspect of it, look at Hebrews 7 with me briefly. I'm going to allude to this in the sermon, but Hebrews 7. Last one, I promise. I've got sore fingers from leafing through. That's the last one. Look at Hebrews chapter 7 and verse 22. I'm sorry, actually let's back up to 20. So Hebrews 7 verse 20, So you have Hebrews 7, borrowing language from Psalm 110 about the work of God and specifically tells us we're bound by an oath and that Jesus is the guarantor of a better covenant. When it talks about a guarantor, you might think that means like a cosigner. Like if you need somebody to make sure your loan's gonna go through, you pick somebody with good credit, who's a little bit of a sucker. No, I'm just kidding. Someone you can, well, maybe. Someone who will put themselves up for you, right? The language here is not a cosigner. Here, when it's talking about a guarantor, it's the person who's gonna execute the covenant for you. So the guarantor, sometimes referred to in the older language as a surety, isn't something that you hold out against whether or not you can fulfill the covenant. That would put us in a bad situation, but instead is the one who fulfills the covenant for you. They're the one the obligation falls on. So we have this idea that he's a priest, and his role as a priest is bound by an oath. An oath is exactly what you would find at the beginning of a covenant, and it's for a better covenant for us, this covenant of redemption that doesn't condemn us, but instead calls us the righteousness of God in him. That's the covenant of redemption. Now, any questions? Still totally lost, or we're kind of starting to wrap our mind around it? When I grew up, New Testament was all about Jesus. All of a sudden, when you start studying, and there's more to Old Testament, a lot of Jesus, then there's more of mere mention. And it's so great. And I'm thinking, it took a lot of years for me to catch up. Maybe I had to do wise. I'm just thinking, there's a different reason there. But as you study, it bleeds over and says, hey, Old Testament, look at these passages. They're rich. I don't know the solution to it, but when I grew up, I wish I would have had a better understanding young about, hey, you know, that the Old Testament has richness or had dimensions. Just like my parents did. For years, people would say, you can't say that. They'd mention the Old Testament and mention the New Testament. It's confusing. It's really not confusing. Right, okay, so Chuck's talking about the fact that some of the beauty of Christ is hidden in the Old Testament. And it's important, I think, when we look at places like Luke 24, where Jesus says, I'm going to tell you all the scriptures about me, and I'm going to go back to Moses. He's not saying all things are equally obvious. That's certainly not true. I agree with you. There are definitely things that are obscure. I do think it is why we're enjoined in multiple points in both the Old and the New Testament to make sure that we're people of the book. that we read it and we know it, that we can say like David did that he delighted in the law of God and he meditated it on day and night. I think that's one of the pieces. Another piece really is to make sure that you're under sound biblical teaching. I'm not trying to impugn any teaching you were in before. But it does help, I think, if you have someone who believes in the whole counsel of God, who there is a tendency sometimes in modern evangelicalism to do what you said, kind of make the error of an old heresy called the Marcionites, who really kind of thought the Old Testament God either worked completely differently or maybe even was a different God from the New Testament God. And that's a very dangerous way of approaching it. Now, there are challenges in that as well, because if you own both Testaments, you have to really own both Testaments. And there are going to be some things that are difficult you have to work with, but I agree with you. If you look at the Old Testament, you'll actually find Christ everywhere. So, for instance, as soon as there's a fall, there's a promise. Right? The promises there'll be two seeds, seed of the woman, seed of the serpent. And the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent are going to be locked in a cosmic battle. And we're told that the seed of the serpent will have enmity. Now enmity is the word that when Moses is writing the law and he's describing murderous intent, murder one. He wants to kill you, and he's thought about it beforehand, and he has a plan. He plans on executing, as opposed to something like manslaughter, where you just make me angry and I hit you in the head with an axe, or where I accidentally am negligent and hurt you. This is not those types. This is, I hate you specifically. So the scriptures tell us the seat of the serpent has enmity. He has murderous intent towards the seat of the woman. That's the bad news. The good news is we're told that even though the seed of the woman will receive an injury, a bruised heel, he'll crush the head of the serpent. Even as he's injured, he'll crush the head of the serpent. That is, he's going to win. I mean, from the beginning, as soon as we find out we lost, we find out we're going to win. But not us. Christ in us. And you can follow those themes throughout, and in fact, as we talk about the mediatorial work of Christ later, as we drill down on one specific element of this covenant, we're going to find out some details about that. How did God work this out in history? How was Christ the perfect mediator as opposed to everyone else? And you'll see this theme carried out throughout. Abel sacrifices an offering, and it's a good sacrifice, and his brother sacrifices one. That's bad. But even Abel's good offering is only good if he offers it in faith. That's the only way. Abraham, we're told, believes and God counted to him as righteousness. So the story is, what is he believing in? He's believing in the redemptive work of God. that God will do the things he said he would do. Does he have the full plan of redemption ahead of us? No. He only knows parts. I mean, he knows a sufficient amount, but he doesn't know all of it yet. And so we, in a sense, we stand in a good position as far as knowledge is concerned. We can look at the full scope backwards and sort of unpack some of this. But I do think that's a good observation. It takes some work. Yes? Could you clarify this term, assurity? Because I think I know what you mean. Oh, no, no, it's two words, yeah. So surety would be the noun. I was just throwing in the indefinite article there. Yeah, so surety. So guarantor and surety are synonyms. And surety and guarantor really are just talking about the fact that someone has to fulfill the terms of the covenant. So not a cosigner, someone who fulfills the covenant, right? And that's, we're told, that's Christ. If we were left up to, I'm sorry, if it was left up to us to fulfill the terms of the covenant, it would be no different than a covenant of works and we would fail. So, I mentioned a quote a few weeks ago about will, and perhaps it's stated too strongly, but Luther said that he doesn't want any of it up to his will because he would just mess that up. And I sympathize with that quite a bit. Yeah. Right. and if you say no to that, then clearly it was in the mind of God for a very long time for the use of the cross, and that just is the covenant of redemption. And so that's a good way to approach this, I think. Just ask that question, and then you can go back from there. But my question is how, we're talking about Christ alone, so how do you specifically Sure, yeah, okay, so, yeah, so Travis, I think, great point, talking about the fact that the very nature of God necessitates that the plan of redemption existed. We could perhaps, you know, theologically quibble about what's included or excluded, but given what we know about the nature of God, what, in fact, I would here plug your lectures about the nature of God. Someone should go back and listen to that. If you know that, for instance, God is unchangeable, right, that he's self-sufficient, he doesn't need anything of anyone else, right, his aseity, It only stands to reason that he had a plan from the beginning and that this is not an accidental thing, right? I think that's a great observation that some at home might not have heard you say yet. So yeah, if you're going to locate this in Christ specifically, I think John 17 is a fantastic place to go to that, where he addresses that the people that he has are people that his father gave him. And these people are not given to anyone else. We're not told of anyone else. In fact, we haven't gotten to the objections, but one of the objections sometimes that's raised about the Covenant of Redemption is people say, well, you leave out the Holy Spirit. Well, that's not true. The Holy Spirit actually isn't left out. It's not a center point here. But what actually happened was the Reformers were interested in exegeting the scriptures, and most of the time when we're told about the Covenant of Redemption, it specifically links two parties. the Father and the Son. Now we know, because of what we believe in the Trinity, that doesn't mean the Holy Spirit is left out. And by virtue of saying one party did something doesn't mean that we're not Trinitarian. For instance, we would all say that Christ was on the cross, not the Father or the Son. It's proper to say that God died on the cross, Christ died on the cross, but it's inappropriate to say the Spirit died on the cross. If you want more unpacking of that, that's more than a lesson can do, and Travis has proven that, and I would, again, point you back to his recorded lectures you'll find on Sermon Audio about the Trinity, but the point is, I would say this, John 17, John 5 and 6 are great passages for that as well, but the point is, every time you find it in Scripture, the covenant of redemption mentioned or alluded to in one way or another, it's always the Father and the Son. You're gonna see those two bound together. Now, I will, in the sermon, Do some work to exclude some other parties. And it'll be a little lengthier. But I want to start here with the positive. Bill, this is what it is. These are the parties. And I think we'll see from the... It's not. It's not Hebrews 1. Yeah. Right. And it excludes everyone. Right. Yes. No, I allude to that quite a bit, but I went for the more terse 1 Timothy 2, 5 and 6. One God, one mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ. Good. Other questions, comments? Yeah, so when I talk to my son about metaphor, I give him examples of metaphor that we use all the time. So we say things like, I'm worn out. And what do you mean by that? I mean, are there gears inside of you that no longer work? Because that's what that's alluding to. Certainly feels like sometimes, right? But yeah, I point him out to other figurative language he's actually quite comfortable with. If you want to look at biblical passages, the Reformers, when they talked about the use of biblical metaphor, might look at something like Jesus saying, I'm the door. No one read that and thought, oh, you're a wooden or stone edifice that's on a hinge that has a handle that must be moved in order for someone to go into a building. No one thought that way. They all thought, okay, he's talking about how he's a thing like a door in theology, right? Or I'm the vine. No one looked down to see if he was sprouting up from the ground at that particular moment. And then, of course, he goes on to say, and you were the branches. And, of course, they wouldn't look at their fingers to see if the leaves are coming out or if they're sprouting grapes, right? This is all figurative language. And I think when we talk about inerrancy, this is a little bit off topic, when we talk about inerrancy, the Chicago Statement on Inerrancy, which is, I think, what most people would say they either have signed on to or agree with, basically says, inerrancy means you take the Bible as it actually presents itself. So where it's literal, it's meant to be taken literally. where it's figurative, it's meant to be taken figuratively. And we have to match those up. And, of course, there's a lot of work to be done on that piece, but if we can at least agree on that, that's, I think, very helpful. So, yeah. Yes, ma'am. Well, definitely historically there have been people who take it to be a metaphor, exaggeration. I think one of the more famous current ones is probably Joseph Campbell, and he talks about his hero theory. He actually names one section of it, the belly of the whale. And he tells us it's always metaphor, and it's talking about how the hero has to undergo something that looks like he's going to die for sure, or he actually does die and is brought back, or whatever. He thinks there's a totally mythological or metaphorical element there. I don't take it that way. The reason I don't is because Jesus doesn't seem to take it that way. He actually, when he's asked for a sign, tells him he's going to give him the sign of Jonah. And he specifically talks about him being down for three days and coming back. So he says, my sign will be like Jonah's sign. So if we don't think the resurrection is a metaphor, I think by extension we can take it the way that Jesus did, which is that it's literal. Now, if you think it's just metaphor, that doesn't undo the gospel, okay? There's maybe perhaps an argument to be had there. But it does make some other things more difficult. That's how I would position that. So, good question though. Other questions? Yeah. Right, right, right. That's right, yeah, yeah. So the question is whether it has to be physically a whale. And my understanding from the Hebrew is that it does not have to be a whale the way we think of it. So we do a taxonomy, meaning we name things. And the way that we name them may not match up with the way that the Hebrews named them. It doesn't make it untrue. It makes our expectation a different expectation of what they had. My understanding of the Hebrew is that it is possible, and again this is pretty far afield from what I prepared for this morning, but my understanding is that within what's called the semantic range could include something large mammalian like a whale or could include something like a very big fish. Let me just kind of jump to the chase here. If you believe that God made everything out of nothing, and he rules it by the word of his power, and he did other things like make an axe head float, or came in the flesh in the incarnation, or met a dead man walk again, a guy being swallowed by a big fish isn't really that big of a stretch. It's not one I would choke on, so to speak. That was terrible. Dad joke. Sorry. Sorry. That was bad. All right. I think Travis's jokes are better, among other things. All right. Any other questions? Yeah. That's right, yes, you're talking about the Lord's Supper. Yeah. That's right, and I think that's a good point, and maybe we'll close on this because we're out of time, but some have theologically thought of the Lord's Supper as being an altar, and what happens there is a sacrifice. It's a recapitulation of the sacrifice over and over and over again, and that that makes it literally the body and blood of Christ that's being offered. That means the priest is the one who's consecrating it. And he has the same role as the priest in the Old Testament. Reformers rejected this. They called it a Lord's table on purpose. It was a meal that was to be taken. It's not that Christ is not present. He is. He's mystically present, but they would never claim he's physically present. And if you want to get into some of the arguments there. But it does make it exactly what you're saying. That it's not a table of death, it's a table of life. uh... and that's not a small that's not a small thing for us that we don't go to it for another bloody ritual sacrifice of uh... elements but instead we look at it as uh... a way to enter in life god is gracious to us through it that it strengthens our faith by participating and that's that's why we refer to it as a means of grace No. Yeah. Yeah, maybe on another day when we talk about worship, we could talk about the role of collection. There's a biblical warrant there, so we could talk about that. Alright, let's close in a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, what can we say other than that we trust upon your word that you're the God who from eternity past didn't just work in history, but planned history, and that you have a role, that you have played an active role, that you're not passive or reactionary, or hoping for the best, or just a really skilled chess player, but instead that you have intentionally acted in human history for us, for your people, and that we were not left in our trespasses and sin, that you tell us that even though we were dead, that you were able to bring us to life, that as surely as you could call out Lazarus from the grave, that you can call us out from our sin and misery and into newness of life. We ask that you would continue to do this work by your word and spirit. It's in the Son's name that we pray. Amen.