All right, well, good morning, everybody. Nice to see all of you, as always. Why don't we begin with prayer? Father, we thank you for your love and kindness, for your grace, and for your mercy in our lives. We thank you for this day that you've made and that you've granted to us another day of life to live here. And we thank you, Lord, for drawing us here to be with your people this morning and to hear from your Word and to set our minds on the things that are above and forget those things which are below, on this especially your day, that we may come before you and worship you and honor you and receive from you, Lord, as we are your people and you are our God. And we pray that this time may be edifying and glorifying to you. In Christ's name, Amen. All right, so this morning, we'll continue with our introduction to covenant theology. We looked at, last week, we looked at, you know, what kind of, just a brief overview of the importance of covenant theology, what it has to do with, in particular, how it links in a very unique way, both biblical theology and systematic theology. and biblical theology meaning not just theology that's biblical, but having to do in particular with the progressive revelation of God's plan of redemption over the course of history and how the various things that it touches on, how those themes, how those doctrines develop, and then systematic theology in particular being the individual doctrines that the Bible reveals to us, and how those things work together. We also saw that it's really, as Ligon Duncan said, that covenant theology is the Bible's way of explaining and deepening our understanding of at least four things, including the atonement, assurance, the sacraments, and the continuity of redemptive history. That last one's a really important one. All of these ideas that we're talking about in an introductory fashion, we're going to flesh out as we go on throughout the weeks and delve deeper into these things. I think where we left off at was we were about ready to look at the Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 7, which is on covenant theology or the covenants. Before we did that, I think we left off with just an explanation that covenant theology is not a response to dispensationalism. It existed long before the rudiments of classic dispensationalism, before those were brought together in the 19th century, and it's not a sectarian theology. It's really an ecumenical, reformed approach to understanding the Bible, and it was developed in particular, not as if it came brand new on the scene, but it was developed in a full manner, particularly at the time of what people will call the Magisterial Reformation, the time of Luther, of Calvin, and their immediate predecessors. But it goes back, you know, has roots stretching back to the earliest days of Christianity. And, you know, it historically has been appreciated by the various branches of what we would consider Protestantism, you know, Anglican, Baptist, Congregationalist, Independent, Presbyterian, and Reformed. Again, a lot of, if I don't specifically quote, a lot of the stuff that I'm getting comes from the class that I took that was taught by Ligon Duncan and from a book where he's contributed to and various professors have as well. But I thought it was important for us to look at, again, since it's been a couple years at least, probably closer to three years, if not four, since we looked at what the Confession has to say about covenant theology to help give us just that. One of the great things about the Westminster Confession is that it gives us really concise dense explanations of the important doctrines and teachings of Scripture, so that if we hear a term, or if we hear a phrase, and we wonder about it, a good place to go, obviously outside of the Bible, I'm not saying to usurp the place of the Bible, I've always got to make that clarification when talking about the importance of creeds and confessions to people, but if you want to know about what the Bible says about assurance, There's a chapter in the Westminster Confession that talks about it, and it gives you clear and concise explanation as to what it is, and it shows you in the Bible where they're getting what they got. And you can then examine it and see whether or not what they're talking about is actually in accord with Scripture. So I think it's important for us in looking at covenant theology, and particularly since our church's confession has a chapter on it, Just to briefly look at it again. Again, I think we've spent a couple, two, three classes, three or four years ago on it. So this isn't gonna be an in-depth look at it like we did back then. You guys can go back in the archives and find those lectures if you want to. But I just want us to look briefly at it again today. We should probably wrap up the bulk of introductory discussions, and then we'll start talking in earnest about how the concept of covenants begins to come to us in Scripture, and what they are, and where we see them. In particular, we'll talk about the covenant of works. We'll talk about the covenant of grace. We'll talk about the covenant of redemption, and things like that, and how those things relate to one another. So the Westminster Confession, chapter 7, section 1, says, The distance between God and the creature is so great, that even though rational creatures are responsible to obey Him as their Creator, yet they could never experience any enjoyment of Him as their blessing and reward, except by way of some voluntary condescension on His part. which he has been pleased to express by way of covenant. There's a variety of passages of Scripture that we can touch on to look at in regards to that. Section 2 says, The first covenant made with man was a covenant of works in which life was promised to Adam and in him to his posterity upon condition of perfect and personal obedience. Now that section, and particularly the words covenant of works, You may have heard before. You may find it interesting because there's not an explicit mention of covenant in the passages in the first couple of chapters of the Bible. So why would we insist that there's one there? That's going to be a discussion that we're going to have in full because it's an important one. But I do believe it can be clearly shown to be there. It's kind of in the sense of the word explicitly may not be there, but if a thing walks like a duck and it talks like a duck, it's a duck. I think is probably an ample way of putting it very briefly. Section three, since man by his fall made himself incapable of life by that covenant, the Lord was then pleased to make a second covenant, commonly called the covenant of grace. In it, God freely offers life and salvation by Jesus Christ to sinners, requiring of them faith in him, that they may be saved, and promising to give his Holy Spirit to all those who are ordained to eternal life, to make them willing and able to believe. Section four. This covenant of grace is sometimes presented in the scriptures by the name of a will or testament with reference to the death of Jesus Christ, the testator, and to the everlasting inheritance with all that belongs to it bequeathed in it. Section five, in the time of the law, this covenant was administered differently than in the time of the gospel. This is an important section right here. Under the law, it was administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the Passover lamb, and other types and ordinances given to the Jewish people, all of which foreshadowed Christ to come. These were, for that time, sufficient and efficacious through the work of the Spirit, to instruct and build up the elect in their faith in the promised Messiah, by whom they received complete forgiveness of sins and eternal salvation. This covenant administration is called the Old Testament, or the Old Covenant. Section six, under the gospel, Christ, the reality having been revealed, the ordinances by which this covenant is dispensed are the preaching of the word and the administration of the sacraments of baptism in the Lord's Supper. Although these are fewer in number and are administered with more simplicity, simplicity and less outward glory, yet in them the covenant is set forth in greater fullness, clarity, and spiritual efficacy to all nations, both Jews and Gentiles, and is called the New Testament or the New Covenant. Therefore, there are not two covenants of grace differing in substance, but only one under several various administrations. Those last two paragraphs being important because what they, along with the, not really the whole chapter, but what they show to us is a bi-covenantal structure. in Scripture, that primarily what we see are two covenants, the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. This is an important distinction for us to recognize, that what we see in the various covenants of Scripture, because you might be asking yourself, well, what? You say there's two covenants, but there's the Mosaic covenant, there's the New Covenant, there's the Davidic, there's all these different covenants listed. So how is it that we see these things as falling under these two headings? Does anybody have any ideas, any comments as to why? That's okay. What we're seeing essentially is that all of the various covenants after the one that we're gonna talk about with God and man in the garden, the various ones, they fall under various administrations of what is called the covenant of grace. As it talks about what we see in the old covenant, what we see in the Mosaic administration, that's basically outworking of the covenant, that what's contained in it is the substance of the same covenant, same covenant of grace. The gospel is in the Mosaic covenant. And it's presented, and the Messiah and Christ is in the Mosaic Covenant. And He is presented to the people of God at that time through types and shadows. And again, we're gonna go deeper and deeper into this. So that when we come to the New Covenant, and it is new, it's not completely new. It's not something that's completely unheard of. What we're seeing in essence, when we come to the gospel, when we come to the New Testament or the New Covenant, is the fulfilling of the previous covenants. And it's that one administration of the covenant of grace that's running through all of them, where the substance of it is Christ, where salvation is offered to people on the basis of faith alone by grace alone. And that's partly what people have a sticking point about, because The administrations are so different, as the Confession talks about. What we have here is far more simple than the temple sacrificial system and the priesthood. But yet, at the same time, we don't have all these ornate types and shadows. all the offerings and the smoke and everything of that nature in this beautiful temple building, all of those things were pointing to something greater, which we have in a fuller way, in a clearer way, so that what we have in the administration of the Word and in the administration of the sacrament brings together all those things that were hinted at in types and shadows through the Old Covenant. All right, but yet it's the same thread of grace and the same covenant of grace that God made with Abraham that flows through all of them. And again, this is just a quick overview. We're going to get into this and hopefully it'll be clear to you what we see that relationship being. So first, what we see is a bi-covenantal structure in scripture. And why that's important, I think, because it helps us to see that Rather than focusing upon the differences, which are certainly there, what we see is that there actually is, we talked about it last week, there is a unified story. There is one single story that's going throughout all of the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation. Remember when we talked about biblical theology? That's the focus of biblical theology. That one story that is weaving its way through Scripture in various ways and in various times, that is being connected by this idea of bicovenantal structure of Scripture, in particular, this covenant of grace. So God comes to Abraham. He calls Abraham out of his homeland. and he makes a covenant with him. And he makes certain promises to Abraham and subsequently to his people in that covenant. And then what we see is from that point on is God working out the fulfillment of those promises to Abraham. And he does that by making other covenants that point to the fulfillment of those original promises to Abraham. Any comments or questions or have I totally just put a fog over the room? It's important because it is just the unfolding of the creation, fall, redemption, consummation throughout all time. And we need to guard against what's been called replacement theology, where all of a sudden in the New Testament that this is new and it replaces all the old covenant. Because it's not at all. It's just an unfolding of God's grace. Yeah, and if you've ever heard that term, replacement theology, it's really used more of as a pejorative against covenant theology and Reform people in general, as if we don't care anything about Israel or Jewish people or what came before. God doesn't care about them. He's done with them. things of that nature. That's not what's being said here. What we're being said is that in the coming of Christ and in the establishment of the new covenant, where the people of God are no longer located in a single place with borders and walls, it's spreading throughout the whole earth. In the establishment of that covenant is God fulfilling Those same promises to Abraham that Moses relied upon, that David relied upon, that the prophets relied upon, that the people of God of old relied upon. What we're seeing is the fulfillment of those things. That's what we're seeing. And it was never intended to be just for one ethnic group of people located in a specific place and time. It was always, what's the promise to Abraham? I will bless every family of the earth through you. That's the gospel. Paul tells us that's the gospel. And Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. That's the gospel as it's presented at that point in time to God's people. All right? And Abraham was saved the same way we are, by grace alone through faith alone. And that's Paul's argument in the book of Romans. That look, what I'm saying in my presentation to you of the gospel, it's not new. It's just, it's clear, it's expanded, it's been established, it's been fulfilled. That's what he's talking about. And so we see, when we talk about there being a bi-covenantal structure in Scripture, the covenant of works and the covenant of grace, what we're seeing is the covenant of grace just flowing through the history of redemption, flowing through time, being administered to God's people in various ways and at different times. through the priesthood, through the sacrifices, through the temple worship, through all of those various things that we see in the Mosaic Covenant being established. What it is, is an administration of that same gospel. And then what we have is a different administration. Simpler, what the Confession says. Preaching of the Word, preaching of the sacraments. then that's where the promise has been. Christ has come, the lights are fully on in the room, we can see clearly, we have greater blessings, we have greater freedoms, we have greater hope and a greater idea of the hope that is set before us than the people of God of old in many places and many times. Yeah, exactly. Exactly, which I think we touched upon that point last week. It's exactly what Jesus was saying. It's exactly what he was saying to Nicodemus. It says, how do you not understand these things? You're the teacher of Israel. When I talk about the need for a new birth, how do you not know this? This has already been talked about. Or, you know, as he says to the scribes and Pharisees, if you believed Moses, you would believe me because Moses was writing about me. What does Jesus mean when he says that? Something contained in the writings of Moses, and particularly in the law of Moses, in the Mosaic covenant, he's saying to them, I'm the substance of those things. Those things are pointing ultimately to me. And again, that's the flowing, the outworking of God's promise to Abraham to bless all the peoples of the earth through his seed, who is the Christ. who he mentions way back earlier in the earlier passes of Genesis when he's cursing, he's cursing Adam, he's punishing Adam, he's cursing the devil. He says, he's the seed. What does he say to Abraham? I'm going to give you a seed. And through that seed is the whole families of the earth. Every family of the earth is going to be blessed. to see there's a connection there. And again, we'll flesh these things out more clearly. Yeah? So you said in the New Testament, it's administered through the Word and sacrament. Well, I know Pharisees, they had all of the Old Testament memorized. It's just they were blinded and they just didn't understand it. That's why they couldn't administer through the Word. But I guess there were some that could, like Ezra. They did, and the Word definitely plays a part in the administration under the Mosaic covenant, but the point that the Confession is making is that a lot of the trappings of the administration of the covenant of grace under the Old Covenant are removed because the substance of those things have been made clear through the coming of Christ. It's not as if the Word was not an important aspect of the administration of the covenant. back under that administration. It was extremely important, which is why God sent his prophets. His prophets are basically, they kind of act like God's prosecutors because he's coming to them like, look, we're in covenant with one another. I established my covenant with you and you're in violation of the covenant. And here's my messenger to bring you back to the realities of the covenant. And in that process, he also gives them more information about what's to come. And he talks to them about the new covenant. He talks to them about the coming of Christ. We start to find out more and more and more and more about the Messiah. So it's not as if there's a complete disconnect, whereas now it's primarily the ministration of the Word and sacrament, therefore it wasn't back then. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And as we'll see in various times throughout the history of the administration of the covenant under the Mosaic times, When God punishes His people and He brings them back or He's reviving them, what there often is, and we derive our form of worship from this in part, There's a reading of the words of the covenant to the people. There's a reading of the documents, the covenant documents to the people to remind them again, this is who I am, the Lord. You are my people. This is the agreement that I've established with you. These are the promises that I've given to you. So we see that, yes, even under that administration, it still is part of it. Any other comments or questions? All right. Let's see here. All right. Yeah, go ahead. What do you think is the driving force other than Satan to not accept covenantal theology? Because it seems like there is a There is. There is. You know, again, I think the reasons would be varied and it would have everything to do with, you know, not everything, but it would have a lot to do with people who are raised in a certain way of viewing the Bible. That's a difficult thing to come to grips with the fact that, you know, the way you were raised and the way that you were taught and the people who taught you were in serious error about what you were taught. That's a difficult thing, whether it's covenant theology or not. You see this in people wrestling with Reform theology or Calvinism and Arminianism. I remember when I came to understand the doctrines of grace and accept them and embrace them as being biblical, I was kind of upset that I had been taught so vehemently against them by people that I trusted. It was upsetting. I think psychologically it can be a very difficult thing for people to come to grips with. To recognize that though your church and your teachers and your pastors may have been seriously wrong, it doesn't mean they were wrong about everything. It doesn't mean they got the Gospel wrong. It doesn't mean they got the Trinity wrong or the Deity of Christ and those foundational, essential doctrines. But nevertheless, they were wrong. And because of that, you were wrong. That's a hard thing psychologically to come to grips with, especially if you're coming out of a tradition of decades or that you grew up in. That could be a very difficult thing. And I think that's one aspect of it. I think there's a psychological sort of block in people's minds where it's just difficult to come to grips with, man, I'm seriously wrong about the scriptures. Because it gives us an uneasy feeling, well if I could be wrong about that, we tend to make an illogical leap, well maybe everything is wrong. And I think that's just part and parcel of our day and age. People tend to be kind of an all or nothing sort of thing and I think that's a bad aspect of our culture. rather than really engaging and being discerning. Let's say if it's a political issue, let's say person X says something that you agree with politically, but then X, Y, or A, B, and C you really disagree with. You tend to not give them credit for the thing they say that you do agree with because there's other things that you don't agree with, if that makes any sense. We're just not very good at parsing out the good and the bad in our interactions with other people's ideas. I think that can be the way that it can be in the church. Covenant theology is actually talked about like a boogeyman. You mentioned the term replacement theology. That strikes at the heart of what a dispensationalist or Arminian would tend to think of as being essential to Christianity, like that pre-tribulational, Pre-millennial, pre-tribulational rapture view of scripture and the identity of the church and the identity of Israel is so foundational to so many people's understanding of what Christianity is. Just merely presenting that, there's been a lot said before that even ever came on the scene, and a lot of those ideas are actually foreign in the entire history of the church. That's a difficult thing for people to come to grips with, and particularly if people that they love and trust are telling them that it's dangerous, their shepherds are telling them that it's dangerous, it's why you get that kind of reaction and pushback from people, I think. and just plain old ignorance. It has been. Probably should have just said that. No, you're right. Brevity is the soul of wit. It has been marginalized. It's a great way of putting it. It has been. So it ruins everything. One side ruins everything. Can you throw a baby with that one? Yeah, exactly. That's another good way of putting it. Again, we touched upon this last week, and we'll touch upon it again. These are hermeneutical issues. When we're dealing with dispensationalism, or we're dealing with covenant theology, we're dealing with how we approach and interpret the Bible. Coming to grips with a very different way of interpreting the Bible, It's difficult for people. It's no surprise that it's met with such resistance. What I'm giving you is the minority report. I am absolutely convinced of its faithfulness to Scripture and of its soundness. But it is, in our day and age, the minority report. Yeah. And you were talking about the boogeyman. When you think about what we believe, like infant baptism, we believe God's providence. The atonement, election, free will, the sovereignty of God, His providence. That's hard for people who grasp Reformed theology. Those concepts are difficult for people who grasp Reformed theology. If you have something horrible happen to you and you fully accept Reformed theology, you know that that horrible thing that happened to you was decreed by God to happen to you. That's a difficult thing to grasp and deal with. Again, emotionally, we all have people in our lives who we love and who don't know the Lord, and we pray for, and we pray for, and we pray for. We know that their salvation is outside of our hands. We know that ultimately our own salvation is outside of our hands. That really is humbling and unsettling to our notions of who we are, how strong we are, and our pride. It strikes at the heart of all of those things that unfortunately in the modern church in our day and age, those things that it strikes at are held up as biblical orthodoxy, as biblical doctrine, and it ought not be so. It really shouldn't. I'm not saying these things aren't sincerely held. I'm not saying that at all. But there's just a lot of false teaching in the church. There just is. Yeah. run up against resistance, there's fear involved. And I'm just trying to process where, if covenant theology dates back to the first century, basically. Well, it has its roots back there, but we don't see its full development really until the time of the Reformation. But even, you know, we see it before that. So what was the fear? Was the fear giving up the sanctity of the Catholic Church, was the fear given up, any control they had over their own lives. There had to be a root cause of fear, I would think, that drove this. The reasons of our hearts are manifold, and I can really only guess and speculate, but to go beyond what I see today in the context of what we face today of covenant theology in our church and in the culture largely has to do with those reasons of the problem of false doctrine in the church and the marginalization of it, as Sean well said. just the identification of Christianity as being this thing and that if Christianity is this thing, a modern dispensational Arminianism, people think it must have always been that thing. And it's just, there's There's just a tremendous amount of historical and theological ignorance in the church. There just is. I would assume the judgment of charity is often just very sincerely held by believers who love and trust Jesus Christ. Any bringing in of anything that is complicated or different is viewed as a threat. It's challenging, yeah. probably innate to humankind. Look at how Jesus approached the Sadducees and Pharisees. You've heard it said, when he was saying, you've heard it said, he was talking about their tradition. I think it's so mainstream that it's hard to accept, like you said, the sovereignty of God and those kinds of things. When you look at covenantals, theology and you see the cohesiveness of it, it's a deeper and clearer understanding of theology and of scripture and it becomes more meaningful in your mind. It really does. As you come to understand it, I think that's just the Lord working that out. I think so too. Going back to the first part of what we read from the Confession, when you start to think about this in the terms of, you know what? I wouldn't have anything to do with or really know anything about God if He hadn't come down to me. I'm still His creature. I'm still obligated to obey Him. But if He hadn't come down to me and established a relationship with me, I wouldn't have anything. And it's very settling. You realize that He's got every right. He's got every right over me. He's got every right over His creation. And He didn't have to do this. He didn't have to do these things. He didn't have to become incarnate. He didn't have to live a moment. He didn't have to. We are completely and utterly dependent upon Him. And what does it tell us about him? He came down to us. And he initiated and established a relationship with us based on promises that cannot be broken. That is firm ground to stand on. What were you going to say, Mark? Yeah, I was just going to say that it's not a simple thing like we're having this class. going to be however many weeks. Yeah. How many churches have a class that goes on for that many weeks to explain? Yeah, I don't know. So it's not like you can have a one talk in Sunday school. Yeah. Yeah. One sermon and explain it. Yeah, yeah, that's right, because it is what was it? Was it Warfield that I quoted last week? It's the architectonic principle of Scripture. It's how the whole of Revelation fits together. That's a big, that's a tall order. But these simple concepts of God coming down to us and establishing relationship with us, and how is it that He establishes those relationships with us? He does it in covenants. That's a simple elevator pitch of what covenant theology is. If someone were to ask you, what is this? Well, covenant theology basically says that God comes to us, he's the initiator, he establishes relationships with us, and those relationships he establishes with us are covenantal. They're done by way of covenants. There's the elevator pitch. Now, how all those things relate to one another is a whole other story. I was just thinking too, to Guy's question, I think people don't know what they don't know. And a lot of people haven't been exposed to it. People who've been to seminary, because there's a lot of seminaries that don't teach it. And also, we don't have enthusiasm on our side. Hey! I'm enthusiastic. I just mean, you know, any of us who've ever visited another church that's like your regular EB3, you know, they've got, my sister's church had people and dinosaurs breeding. Yeah. Like they, they have the cotton candy and the bounce houses and the zip lining pastor and like, yeah. So you're suggesting that we zipline into the service that'll make covenant theology more palatable to people? There's a fair point. But you know, your initial point is well taken as well. There's this thing called the Dunning-Kruger effect. which is pretty well established, and I hope I'm relaying it accurately or at least correctly, that in the spectrum of intelligence, or being highly intelligent or of lesser intelligence, it's an interesting phenomena that appears to be universal, that people of lower intelligence, I'm not saying dummies or stupid people, but people who have a higher degree of ignorance or unintelligence, tend to be very confident and very vocal in the expression of their ideas. Whereas people on the other end of the spectrum, the higher end of the spectrum, are more reserved, more considerate, not necessarily in their manner, but more circumspect about how they approach things. And the reason being is that those on the higher end of intelligence have a sense of what they don't know. they have a greater sense of all that's out there that they don't know, which frankly is one of the benefits of seminary. Like if you come out of seminary and don't have a strong sense of all the things that you don't know, you might not have been paying attention very well. But this is just not just in seminary studies. This is in life. Just start to think about it. People who tend to not know as well what they're talking about, or don't have a deep understanding of what they're talking about, tend to be very confident and very sure of their ideas. And the reason being is that there's less of an awareness of what they don't know. And when you come into conflict with that, when you come into conflict with other people's sense or lack of sense of what they don't know, it's unsettling, it's threatening. Do you have to remember that a 100 IQ is the average? Yeah. Yeah. 50% is under 100. Yeah. Yeah. And again, I'm not making any kind of disparaging remarks about we all get the engines that God gives us. Some of us are two-strokes. Some of us have V8s and V10s and rocket engines and stuff like that. But I merely bring it up just as a way of recognizing that people engage with information in a broad variety of ways for different reasons. And one of those is there's the issue of not knowing what you don't know or not having a sense of it. That's one issue of it. So I've had a lot of conversations about this through the years with various people. And I find it boring. I hate to be that simplistic. You either believe in the sovereignty of God or you don't believe in the sovereignty of God. And those who believe in the sovereignty of God are much more inclined towards the things we've been talking about this morning, whereas if you don't believe in the sovereignty of God, then you let your own best thinking take over. Yeah, I mean, even if you do believe in the sovereignty of God, it's still a struggle to not let your own best thinking take over. Particularly in regards to Reformed theology and the emphasis upon Reformed, there is a tremendous emphasis on the sovereignty of God. I'm hearing what we've just been talking about today. Boy, I've got four more pages of notes to go through, but we're going to have to wrap it up. But just what we're talking about today, It all hinges upon the sovereignty of God. All these aspects of Scripture, from what happened in the garden, to Abraham being called out, to the people getting sent into Egypt, to them being brought out so miraculously, and then establishing the mosaic. All of those things, they're all grounded on that principle, that He's Lord and we are not. and He's the Creator, we are His creatures, and our relationship to Him is one that He has established, and they're on the grounds that He has established, and really, you don't want it any other way. because the lines have fallen to us in pleasant places, and the promises that He have given to us are immeasurably great and precious, and they are grounded in the fact that He is Lord, and that He is God. And that's a wonderful place for us to stand upon, and to rely upon, and to remember. We're about to go into worship. This is a covenantal ceremony. These are covenantal things that are happening. There's a covenantal renewing going on. We're meeting with our covenant Lord and Savior. He's giving to us the words of His covenant. He's giving to us those promises. He's giving to us His Spirit. He's giving to us the bread and the wine. He's giving to us the sacraments. And it's all within this context of the covenant that He established in His blood. And all those things. The word that's going to be spoken, the prayers that are going to be offered, all of those things, they're all grounded in that relationship that He established in His blood. When you start to look, stop, and think about things like that, it really informs everything. Our relationships as husbands and wives, they're covenantal. Our obligations to one another are covenantal. Yeah, any last comments or questions? We'll continue next week. All right, let's pray. Father, we thank you for your kindness and we thank you for this wide-ranging and interesting discussion which we've been able to have. We pray, Lord, as we go on by your will in the coming weeks and months, Lord, that you would help us to have a greater and fuller understanding of these things that we might be able to grow in them, and to live by them, and perhaps even help others to grasp them as well, Lord. And we thank You, Lord. We thank You that You have established Your covenant with us. We pray that You would help us in accordance with the promises that You've given to us, to have mercy and grace upon us, and to grow us in the grace and knowledge of Your Son. In His name we pray. Amen.