I count it as a privilege to speak this evening on this topic and at this conference. And in my speaking on this topic, I am not in any way claiming to be the expert in evangelism and missions, though as my father-in-law pointed out, I was a son of a missionary. I find many faults in myself, many deficiencies in my ministry. regarding the work of missions, and I acknowledge that this evening, and I pray you do so with me. The topic I bring up this evening has some very pointed facets, and though I desire to make it mainly a positive topic, I want to be honest about the condition of missions and evangelism in our churches. And so, if you know the facts, which I don't have to point out, the facts regarding the condition of missions and evangelism in our churches, I think you will acknowledge that there are deficiencies. As a note, in your programs, there is an outline. It's not the right outline. This was a preliminary outline that I sent early on before I developed my speech. It does include some of the content that I have tonight, but not all, so don't try to follow my speech with that outline, but I ask that you simply pay attention to the outline that I develop here as I speak. Beloved brothers and sisters in the Protestant Reformed churches, This evening, I do take some time to develop in our minds the precious doctrine of the covenant, first of all, and then the covenant as it relates to evangelism and missions. In order to do so, I must remind you of the precious doctrine of the covenant, precious to us as churches and as individuals. I do so from this point of view with a somewhat negative and provocative statement or assertion. As much as we as Protestant and foreign people might think that we already know enough about the unconditional and gracious covenant of God, I believe that our lack of zeal and activity in missions is due at least in part to an underdeveloped understanding or misconception of the covenant. Now, we have indeed many things correct regarding the doctrines of the covenant, many truths that we must continue to hold to firmly. While I mean to be mostly positive in my speech tonight, I begin by making that assertion that in spite of the claims of being correct in our theology regarding the covenant, Deficiency in understanding missions and activity in missions does lead us back to consider whether there is deficiency in our understanding of the covenant. For as you know, it's often said in our circles, doctrine does lead to a certain kind of life. And perhaps some of you who hear that this evening might immediately want to shut off your ears to that because you might insist on what you think is enough of missions and evangelism in our churches. We're just fine in that regard. And then immediately also go on the defensive. How can he dare say that we have deficiencies in our understanding regarding the covenant? Because we Protestant Reformed churches take pride in that. And I say therein might lie the heart of the issue that sometimes in our pride, and I include myself in it, in our pride we as Protestant Reformed churches and individuals in them think that we already have it all understood and developed regarding the covenant and missions. So I ask you that you humble yourselves with me and do some self-examination tonight and see that we do have room to develop in both areas of understanding the covenant and in missions. What is the covenant to you? There are many misconceptions of the covenant. Some people, when they think of the word covenant, think immediately of the high school that we have, and though that's a good name for the school, that is not the covenant. Some immediately think of election. Perhaps there are those of you who are more developed in your understanding of theology, or you think you are, and you make election and covenant equivalent. And I think that misconception can lead to a problem in missions. While it is true that God's covenant is governed by election, and that only those who are elect God includes in His covenant, they're not to be made identical or confused. Perhaps the most common misconception about the covenant in our circles that we need to get rid of is that the covenant means children, or that the covenant is God saves children of believers. While it is true indeed that that is one of the wonderful, comforting promises of the covenant that I personally take to heart and love as I look at my children and see them as members of the covenant, that is not the covenant. that is a myopic or nearsighted view of the covenant. And it does lead to deficiencies then in our work of missions. Tonight, I want to show you that just as much as children of believers are in the covenant, so also are members outside the church yet who must be gathered through evangelism and missions and be brought in to fellowship with our God. Review with me the definition of the covenant. The definition of the covenant, one definition, is the relationship of friendship and fellowship which God graciously and unconditionally establishes and maintains with his elect people. It's not a cold contract or agreement, but it is a warm, personal relationship. God has, from all eternity, chosen the members of that covenant, and then in time, he has sent Jesus Christ to earn the rights for all of his elect to be in that covenant. And then in time, though each one of us was conceived and born in sin, in time he sends his Holy Spirit to join us to Jesus Christ and to make us one with him and to experience that relationship and fellowship which is covenant. He says to us in that covenant, you're mine, I'm yours, forever shall be. All things must work for your good. You're forgiven for the sake of my Son, and you have eternal life, and none shall pluck you out of my hands. That's covenant, that relationship of friendship and fellowship with God. Now, before I move on to begin to develop this idea of evangelistic character of the covenant, I ask you a personal question. Do you have this personal relationship, this friendship and fellowship with God? Do you know Him as your friend in Jesus Christ alone? And with that question, I'm not asking you whether you can give me or repeat the right definition of the covenant back to me, whether you have been catechized in the doctrine of the covenant, or whether you belong to churches who hold to the correct doctrine of the covenant, or even whether you can explain to me the recent decisions of Synod 2018 regarding the basis of the covenant and the means or instrument through which we experience the covenant and the way in which we enjoy that experience. But I'm asking you whether you have this relationship with God. Is He someone that you hear speak to you by His Spirit and with His Word? Is He someone to whom you come day by day to pray in response and thanks as you lean upon Him? Is there a living conversation that takes place between you and your God, which is an essential part of that fellowship, covenant with God? You see, I bring that up and that question up at this point because first things first, brothers and sisters, if covenant is merely an intellectual thing that you know about but do not experience, then there will be no witness that truly will come forth from you and from our churches. The very power of evangelism and missions is from a living relationship with God in Jesus Christ. Out of that, there will come forth witnessing and evangelism. So all of us, I think, must heed this call, which Peter brings up in Acts 2 before he speaks of the promise of the covenant, to repent. That is, to turn from our selfishness and our sins and our inward focus and our lack of zeal and missions and evangelism, and turn to Jesus Christ and cling to him alone and seek in him fellowship with our God and live as his friends. And then we can move to growing in this evangelistic zeal. This covenant of God that we must experience in our life more and more has an evangelistic character. Let me explain that word evangelistic and why I have chosen it as the description of the covenant. I've chosen the word evangelistic for three reasons. First, because it should bring to your mind the gospel or good news of the covenant. That first. Secondly, because evangelistic should bring to your mind both preaching and witnessing, preaching and personal witnessing. And third, because evangelistic should bring to your mind, especially this, an outward-looking direction. Let me explain those three things. First, the covenant has an evangelistic character because it is the gospel. The content of the gospel is the covenant. I prove that simply from the name of Jesus Christ that is given when He was born. He is called Emmanuel, which means God with us. He is the mediator of the covenant who has come in order that we might be one with God, brought into fellowship with God so that God might be with us and we with Him, now already and then one day in all its fullness in heaven. The good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people, is the truth of the covenant. The word Evangelistic has as its root the Greek word for gospel. The doctrine of the covenant is not supposed to be a difficult doctrine to understand and explain to others. It's supposed to be that which is dear to our hearts. and that which flows from our limbs. A relationship of friendship and fellowship with God I do have, and I don't have it because I deserve it, but because God has graciously given it to me in Jesus Christ, and by the power of His Holy Spirit, and now I want to go forth and tell others about this gospel. What a gospel, that in Christ alone we have free forgiveness, living communion now and forever. I bring up the word evangelistic because the covenant has the gospel or is the gospel. Secondly, I speak of the evangelistic character of the covenant because it should bring to mind both official preaching and personal witnessing. There's a different word in the Greek that refers more narrowly only to preaching by an official minister. And in the New Testament, that word is keruso. It refers to a herald, someone that the king officially sends to preach the gospel. That word is used to refer to an ordained pastor or an ordained missionary. Only they may keruso, herald the gospel officially. But there is another word in the New Testament in the Bible that refers not only to the ordained man preaching the gospel as a herald, but refers to both an ordained person doing it and God's people echoing it. And that's the word evangelize. We're supposed to gospelize. We're supposed to take the gospel that we hear preached officially, and God's people are to bring it forth in their daily witness. That's why I call it the evangelistic character of the gospel, so that it may come to your mind that The covenant is to be preached, not only by witness, but by every member of that covenant. Finally, and most importantly, I used the word evangelistic to describe the character of the covenant in order to bring to our mind an outward-looking direction of the covenant and the members of that covenant. The members of the covenant are supposed to be turned outward, to bring the gospel that they know and love. And through the preaching and evangelism, they are supposed to seek to bring that gospel to others, outward. And that is such an important point because when we think of covenant, we often think of covenant as an inward thing. We think children, as I already mentioned. We think that the promise of God is to gather His people from children of believers. We think about growth from within. We think about a development of doctrine in the churches. We think about the defense of God's people and the truth that we have. And there's truth in all that. But if we stop there, that inward-looking perspective, then we have a deficient view of the covenant. The covenant is an outward-looking truth, and not only inward. It is the gospel, the good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people, Luke 2, verse 10, not only for me and my children, but the gospel to be preached and witnessed outwardly to those yet to be brought in. That's the evangelistic character of the covenant, and I demonstrate that by going or bringing us all the way back to the first covenant. Remember that The covenant existed within the Trinity between the persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They had this close and personal relationship of friendship and fellowship with each other without any need of us. Prof. Engelsma has developed in his book, Trinity and Covenant, God as Holy Family, this truth of covenant being within the triune God from all eternity. In explaining that truth, here is a quote. He says, God is love. A God consisting of one solitary person could not be love. In this way also does God love himself. The love of God for himself is not simply the delight in his essence as the highest good, but it is the Father's delight in the Son, and the Son's delight in the Father. The divine being delights in himself and seeks himself as Father and Son in the Holy Spirit. God's love for himself, therefore, is not selfish and self-centered love, but it is the love of one for the other. God loves himself in that the Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father in the Holy Spirit. So within the family, God, within the Trinity, there is this bond of friendship and fellowship between the three persons. And that confirms the truth that in that eternal covenant between the three persons, there was an inward looking, father to son and son to father in the Holy Spirit. Theologians speak of that as God's activity ad intra, in the Latin, inward. But we may stop there. God also seeks to establish a covenant with those outside of himself. He's not only inward-looking, but he turns outward so that from all eternity, the covenant that he has had has been outward-looking as well as inward. Because from all eternity, he has chosen You and me, his people, in love to save in his Son, Jesus Christ. He's chosen us who are specks of dirt by nature, puny and putrid, without value, sinners. And he's chosen to take us in Jesus Christ, his Son, into his family. That has been in his counsel. It has been an outward evangelistic character of his covenant. And God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten son. Think about that word sent. That's the outward or evangelistic character of the covenant. He sent His Son, He gave up His Son, He said to His Son, go ye into the world. And His Son came, took on our flesh, that He might redeem Himself to Himself a people like us and bring us into covenant fellowship with God. The character of God's covenant has always been evangelistic. It has been to send His Son, to bring unto Himself us, His people, to say to them which were not my people, Hosea 2, 23, thou art my people, so that they shall say, thou art my God. And now I transition here. Listen. After Jesus has been sent, he has come as the mediator of the covenant to bring unto himself a people. He said to his disciples, and to them he says these things not only but to us, John 20, 21. Then said Jesus to them again, peace be unto you, as my father hath sent me, even so send I you. We as God's people brought into covenant are now to reflect the same evangelistic character of God's covenant. So that as God came and sent his son to gather into himself a people, so now we are to be used by him to reflect that. and to go to be sent as disciples for the gathering of those not yet brought in. The covenant has been of an evangelistic character. That was the case in the Old Testament also. Reverend Haack read a few passages that demonstrated that already, so I won't belabor this point, But it is true that in the Old Testament, God ensured that there was a more inward focus. That is true, there was a more inward focus of his covenant in the Old Testament. Genesis 17, seven, God said to Abraham, 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. So part of the character of the covenant in the Old Testament was an inward looking, that Abraham would be a father and he would have seed children and God would gather his people from the seed in the line of generations. But we do an injustice to the character of that covenant by only quoting that familiar text in Genesis 17, seven out of its context. I remind you of the context, which is similar to the passage from Genesis 12 that Reverend Haack read earlier. In Genesis 17, verse 4, right before 17, 7, we find this, as for me, behold, my covenant is with thee, God says, and thou shalt be a father of many nations. Neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham." And then here comes the explanation for why the name change. For a father of many nations have I made thee. That's what Abraham means. A father not only of the Jews, but of many nations. And I will make thee exceeding fruitful, and I will make nations of thee, and kings shall come out of thee. You see, when Abraham and the Jews were considered God's covenant people and they cherished the promises of God's covenant, that he would gather a people from among them, among the Jews, while that was a focus in the Old Testament, they did not lose the perspective and the character of the evangelistic nature of the covenant. They knew that as God gathered His people from the line of generations, He was also going to gather His people from the nations. It was prophetic when Christ, the seed of the woman, came in the line of Abraham. Then, especially then, God would cause all the nations to flow unto the house of Israel. That's Isaiah 2, verses 2 and 3. Many other prophecies show that, including the Psalms. Let the people praise Thee, the people saying, O God, let all the people praise Thee. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy. Thou shalt judge the people righteously and govern the nations upon earth. Although the evangelistic character of the covenant was not the focus in the Old Testament, yet the Old Testament saints were interested in anticipating the coming of the Messiah when all the nations, the Gentiles, would be brought in. and we're not in the Old Testament anymore. One insightful elder of mine once said, scratching his head and not too articulately, Reverend, I think sometimes our view of the covenant is Old Testament. And I think there's some truth to that. We've been brought to the New Testament. We live in the New Testament age, and that doesn't mean a totally different covenant. It's the same kind of covenant, a relationship of friendship and fellowship that God has with his people. But in the New Testament, the emphasis, that which becomes prominent is the outward-looking, For the gathering of others into the church. Not a forgetting of the N-word. Not a forgetting of the gathering of his people from our children in line of generations. Don't ever forget that. It's not to minimize that. But in the New Testament, the N-gathering of the Gentiles is emphasized. That's the very reason why you and I are in. Because we're not Jews by nature. But he has brought us in. And we're still in that New Testament. At Pentecost especially, when there was the sign of the speaking of tongues, tongue speaking was the sign of the gospel going forth to all nations. But not only the gospel going forth to all nations, think about tongue speaking. Tongue speaking was a sign of the people of the church