All right, so today we're actually going to be talking about covenants and covenantalism. So when I started a few weeks back, I had mentioned that I was mentored at the Air Force Academy by a teaching elder in the PCA named Reverend Dr. Jimmy Covey, and he had a very affable way of asking people when he met them. He'd find out if they were a Christian, and when they said that they were, he would say, what flavor are you? And if you asked Jimmy that question, he would answer that the flavor of Christian that he was was that he was confessional, covenantal, Presbyterian, and Reformed. And so that's kind of what we're going through in this Sunday School. So we've talked about being confessional. Did that a few weeks back. And then last week, we talked about being Presbyterian. So this week, we're talking about what it means to be covenantal. And I should also make one correction from last week. I had asked my brother from the audience if Bancroft was an admiral or a secretary of the Navy. He corrected himself afterward. He was a secretary of the Navy. He founded the Naval Academy. He was not an admiral. But he was confused and had given me the wrong answer. because he was counting how many times I said um. So he showed me his score sheet after the fact. I had said um like 20 some odd times, and I will try not to say it as many times today. OK, so what is a covenant? Sorry, now everybody's going to know when I say it. What is a covenant? Anyone want to throw a hazard or guess? A statement of what a relationship is. And John Knox, you look like you wanted to say that because you were shaking your head like this. So no? No? OK. All right. Yeah, a relationship. A covenant is a relationship or a promise. Oh, and there are notes, too, on the back table if you wanted to grab some notes. Modern examples of a covenant. To kind of demystify the term, it's an ancient term, right? A marriage would be a modern example of a covenant. Mortgages. are a modern example. All kinds of debt instruments, wills, and testaments. For all of those, interestingly, I put in the notes, marriage till death do us part. Mortgage is a death pledge, a testament. Death of the testator is when it takes effect. Death typically has some kind of role to play in a covenant. But I want to point out from these that The context of our lives is a context of covenant. There are voluntary covenants, but there are also involuntary covenants that we are just a part of because we are human. So let's look at Westminster Confession, Chapter 7, Section 1. For starters, it says, The distance between God and the Creator is so great that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto Him as their Creator, yet they could never have any fruition of Him as their blessedness and reward but by some voluntary condensation on God's part, which He hath been pleased to express by way of covenant. Okay, so the key words there would be voluntary condensation, right? Some covenants are unilateral in their establishment and the covenants, many of the covenants that we are born into are that way. All people are in relationship with God and with other men. If you will, if someone would turn to Deuteronomy 30 verses 15 through 19 and once you get there, if you want to read that aloud. 15 through 19. So, all people are in relationship with God, whether they are elect or reprobate, it's a question of the character of that relationship, whether it is will or woe, blessing or curse, as Moses says, I put before you life and death, therefore choose life. So we're just a part of this covenant. We didn't vote to be a member of it. We're also a member of a variety of covenants as people and our relationship to people. A good example of that would just be you're a citizen of this country and you're born into a subordination to the government of this country, the Constitution of this country, right? You didn't write it, you didn't vote for it, but you are beholden to it, right? So there again is an example of how Congress, not Congress, Covenant, is the context of our lives. A couple other examples would be respect for your parents. You have a relationship with your parents that you're born into. Keeping your brother. God says to Cain, where is your brother? And he said, am I my brother's keeper? The answer is yes. You are your brother's keeper. Love your neighbor. The Good Samaritan, right? Who was a neighbor to the man who had been left for dead. And then render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's. again, our relationship to the government. So, why we are covenantal, or what makes us covenantal, is that we believe that Scripture is organized into and driven by covenants. At a macro level, it's as simple as the organization of the Old and New Testament, right? Or the Old and New Covenant. And at a micro level, as you read through Scripture, you'll encounter any number of covenants. If you'll turn to Genesis 8.22, someone would turn there, and someone else turned to Jeremiah 33.19. I'll just, to make the point, give you an example of an interesting covenant. In terms of the micro, you'll come across a covenant with Noah, with Abraham, with David, and several others, but then there's this one we'll pick up in Genesis 8.22 that God calls my covenant with the day and night. But let's read Genesis 8.22, if someone has that. Very good. Now Jeremiah 33, 19. We're going to hear God label that information. If anybody's got Jeremiah 33, 19. Go ahead. So there is a sense in which we see almost everything that God does or says in Scripture, at some point, He comes back to and says, it's a covenant. That's just how He operates, and that's what the Confession is saying when it says that He is pleased to express, by way of covenant, His relationship with us and with His creation. Okay, so, the first major covenant, we're only going to look at three covenants today, not all of the many covenants that you can find in Scripture, but the three main covenants. The first is the covenant of works. So if you will turn, please, to Genesis 2, 15 through 17, and someone could read that. Yeah, that's perfect. That's perfect. Yeah. What were the terms in that covenant? What was the rule set? Don't eat of that tree. That's right. It's a command. Do not eat of the tree. The Westminster Confession in the next section says, the first covenant made with man was a covenant of works wherein life was promised to Adam and in him to his posterity upon condition of perfect and personal obedience. So when we call it the covenant of works, it's a naming convention. We're just naming what we see happening here, right? The relationship that God establishes and he says that the blessing or curse will be based on whether or not Adam eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. So now, if someone will turn to Genesis 3, 6. Very good. So, you don't have to read for very long, starting in Genesis 1, to get to the first covenant and then to find that it's already broken. So the problem is introduced very early on in human history and in scripture that Eve ate of the tree and gave to her husband who was with her and he also ate and immediately the relationship changes with God from will to woe, life to death, blessing to cursing. They go from innocent to naked guilt and from walking in the presence of the Lord to hiding from him when he walks through the garden. So, turn, if you will, to Ephesians 2, 1 through 3. If you remember the curse, God said, in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die. And man died spiritually that day, as we see in Ephesians 2, 1 through 3, which provides additional information about the state of man, if anyone can read that one. Go ahead. like the rest of mankind, right? So, you are dead in your trespasses and sin. You are children of wrath by nature, like the rest of mankind. So, not only the people that Paul is immediately addressing, but all the way back to Adam and everyone else is spiritually dead in this moment. But what does verse 4 say? Right. So, then verse 4 says, but God. And so if you'll turn to Genesis 3 through 7, I'll read this portion, because I'm going to read the rest of the chapter. Adam and Eve do not die physically, though they begin to in that day, because God immediately starts to work on their behalf. Don't count how many times I'm saying um. All right, so in verse seven, then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord, from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, where are you? And he said, I heard the sound of you in the garden and I was afraid because I was naked. and I hid myself. He said, Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat? The man said, The woman who you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate. Then the Lord God said to the woman, What is this that you have done? The woman said, The serpent deceived me, and I ate. The Lord God said to the serpent, Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field. On your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. To the woman he said, I will surely multiply your pain and childbearing. And pain you shall bring forth, children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you. And to Adam he said, because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, you shall not eat of it. Cursed is the ground because of you, and pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread till you return to the ground. For out of it you were taken, for you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Okay, so there we have the announcement of the next covenant. But God immediately, before I get there, God immediately begins to use this next covenant that he's about to announce to them, or that he just announced to them. And as we read in the rest of the chapter, he immediately makes a new promise. And what was that promise that we just read? What? Right. Right. And then, in verse 20, it says, let me check my notes here for a second. Yes, okay. It says, uh, the man called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living, and the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. So, Immediately, God makes a new promise. He kills an animal, and He clothes Adam and Eve with the skins. The new promise is of a new and living way, because the old way isn't going to work for Adam and Eve anymore. The animal, which is implied in the use of the skins over against the use of the fig trees, or fig leaves, reminds us that without the shedding of blood there is no remission of skins and then throughout scripture we see again and again a pattern of being clothed in righteousness. The rags being removed and righteous clothing being provided and Romans 13, 14 even says put on Christ and I don't think it's the only place but that we are to wear Christ as a covering. There's also that motif on the Mount of Transfiguration that picks up from Isaiah when God says, let us reason together, though your sins were as scarlet, I will make them as white as snow. Then when Jesus is transfigured on the mount, it says that his face shone like the sun and that his clothes were whiter than any fuller could make them, which is a launderer, right? So that's what God immediately does. As soon as they've broken the covenant, the covenant of grace begins. He makes them a new promise, there's shed blood, and there's a covering provided. So if we'll look at, oh, and I'm supposed to then read paragraph three of the Westminster Profession. Man, by his fall, having made himself incapable of life by that covenant, the Lord was pleased to make a second, commonly called the covenant of grace, wherein he freely offereth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ. requiring of them faith in him that they may be saved and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life his Holy Spirit to make them willing and able to believe." Okay, so then I'd asked and Nate answered what are the terms of this new covenant and you'll notice that God says in Genesis chapter 3, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and her offspring He shall bruise his head and you shall bruise his heel. No longer is the term, you shall not eat of the tree. The terms of the covenant are, I will do this and he shall do that. Right? So there is a shifting now of who's going to accomplish and work out this covenant. So the rest of scripture is taken up in unfolding the details of the covenant of grace Which are we just read in Genesis 3 both covenants are unilateral in their establishment, but God takes on Even more in the second covenant in terms of what he is going to accomplish in fulfilling it. So we see that beginning in Genesis chapter 12 when God comes to Abraham and he says Abraham I'm going to make of you a great nation. I will be God to you and to your children, and you will be my people, and you will walk before me and be blameless." God then has Abraham set up a ceremonial rite that historians tell us would have been familiar to Abraham for the sealing of a covenant between two parties. He takes a number of animals, and he cuts them in half, and he lays either half, he lays a half on either side. Now what you would expect, kind of like when Abraham is warring in the valley, you've got, there's five kings and four kings, they go to battle against each other, and the four kings lose, and they come to Abraham, and he helps them defeat the five kings and bring back the spoils to include his in-law, or his brother-in-law, or nephew, Lot. Imagine those kings. Two of them get together and they decide to make a pact to defend one another and to come to each other's aid when other kings are attacking. They would take these animals and they would split them and put them side by side. They'd make their agreement and then each king would walk through the halves of the animals to say, let this happen to me if I break the terms of this covenant, right? They're calling down a curse on themselves that they be torn asunder if they should break the commitment that they've just made to the other king. So, God has Abraham set this whole scene up, but then, he puts Abraham to sleep, and he comes down in a theophany, a smoking and burning furnace, and God passes through the haves on Abraham's behalf, and on his own. God is calling down a curse on himself, saying, if I break this covenant, may I be torn asunder. And he then says, and Abraham, if you or your people break this covenant, may I be torn asunder. Right? So, again, God is clarifying and consolidating this covenant under himself. He's made it, he's going to keep it, and he is going to bring it to fulfillment on our behalf. Here is a question. This is a typical Sunday school question. Are you saved by works or are you saved by grace? What? Go ahead. Trick question. Trick question. OK. Perfect. Referring to us, grace, but there are works. Exactly. Did everyone catch that? You are saved by works, just not your own works. You are saved by the works of Jesus Christ, right? Everyone got up this morning, and they got dressed before they came here. William said, Dad, why do we get dressed? I didn't get to finish that conversation. I was in the middle of something. We got dressed this morning. We also all know, if we think a little bit, about people who have died, and the fact that we are going to die someday, too. Why do we get dressed, and why do we die? The covenant of works never went away. It's still there. The wages of sin are death. And Paul, I believe, tells us that sin entered the world and death through sin, right? We die because the covenant of works is still in force. Now I'm going to check my notes, see where I was going with that. Right, so it never went away. The covenant of grace, then, is only possible if Jesus fulfills the covenant of works for us. So, Jesus came down and became a man. He obeyed his father's law perfectly, right? And he fulfills the covenant of works that Adam fails to do, right? Adam was put in a probationary period in a beautiful garden with a beautiful wife, and he was told not to do one thing, right? And he failed. Then Jesus is taken, and he's put in a desert without food, without water, and without human contact, and he is tried, and he comes through successfully. And that's just a picture of his entire life, and he was perfect his entire life. He fulfilled the covenant of works, and he even says that, right? When he says, I didn't come to abolish the law, I didn't come to abolish the covenant of works. I came to fulfill the law. I came to fulfill the covenant of works. The second half of that is not scripture, right? That is me using the nomenclature here. He came to fulfill the covenant of works, and when he had done that, he was then qualified to take our punishment on himself. which he did when he died on the cross, right? When he died on the cross, he took that curse that he had called down on himself, right? When he walked between the pieces, or went between the pieces in the theophany, he called down the curse if Abraham broke the covenant. And that's what Jesus then receives on the cross. So then, he's able because he was perfect, because he is God, and because he was given all authority, he is able to raise himself up after three days. And having taken our own punishment for our sins, he then gives us his righteousness and clothes us in it, right? That is the covenant of grace. That is how it is accomplished. And when the people hear it proclaimed by Peter, they say, well, what do we do? And he says, repent. and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Repent and be baptized and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. For the covenant is to you and to your children. So we are saved by grace, through faith, in the works of Jesus Christ. Now, the, let me check the time. Okay, so real quickly then, this perspective helps us to understand the importance of a variety of Christian doctrines. We take the Bible very seriously and what it tells us very seriously, and we don't see it being able to be picked apart and saying, I don't really want to take that part, but I'll take this part. So some of the key doctrines that are absolutely necessary as a consequence of what the Bible tells us about these covenants would be the immediate and special creation of Adam and Eve as the no kidding singular parents of all of us here in this room. It is because we are related physically and spiritually to Adam and Eve that He could be our representative and our federal head, and we died in Him when He sinned. That's a real downer, but it's only in that context that Jesus could then take His place as a new representative, and He could then save us, right? So, the creation of Adam and Eve as humans is a non-negotiable teaching of Scripture. The virgin birth of Jesus. So, if we all descended from Adam and Eve, and we're all sinners because of that, Jesus must have been conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, so that he would be untouched by sin. So, again, that's a non-negotiable, right? Because he had to be perfect and righteous. The deity of Jesus. God called the curse down on himself. He said, I will uphold this. If you fail, I will be torn asunder. Jesus had to be God in order to fulfill that promise that God had made. And so when he dies, the Godhead is torn asunder, right? When he says, my father, why have you forsaken me, right? And even the curtain, in an amazing touch, is torn in the temple. from top to bottom, it is torn in half. The humanity of Jesus. He had to be our blood relation in order to take Adam's place as our representative and to bring his righteousness to us. And he had to be perfect. He couldn't just be a Buddha. He couldn't be wise. He couldn't be a nice guy. He had to be perfect because that's the only way that he could fulfill the terms of the covenant of works. And in fulfilling the terms of the covenant of works, he became qualified then to complete the terms of the covenant of grace and bring us to God covered in his own righteousness. Okay, so we've only talked about two of the three. We're running short on time. But the third covenant answers the question that you would probably think of this afternoon if you haven't already, which is, well, wait a second. If the Covenant of Works, if God made the Covenant of Works and then man screwed it up, and God had to go, oh no, what am I going to do, come up with Plan B, that doesn't sound like an all-powerful, all-knowing God, right? So the third covenant that we'll talk about is the Covenant of Redemption. And it is the covenant that precedes and supersedes the Covenant of Works and the Covenant of Grace. And when we talk about the Covenant of Redemption, what we're talking about is, we've already mentioned a number of covenants that are between God and man, and covenants that are between man and man, like marriage or mortgages. But the covenant of redemption is a covenant between God, the Father, and God, the Son, and God, the Spirit. G.K. Chesterton talks about the lonely God of Islam. He is singular. He is lonely. He is distant and impersonal. He is fierce and just a terrible idea, even. That isn't the Christian God. The Christian God is a relational God, because He's relational in its very essence, because He relates as Father to Son, and as Son to Father, and both to Spirit. So, turn, if you will, to John. We'll ring out a couple of verses. Someone could go to John 4.34, John 6.38, 12, 27-33, 17-1-5, and 18-37. So again, the beginning one was 4-34. Does anyone have that? And to accomplish His work, right. 6-38. 12-27. Thank you. 17, 1 through 5. And John 18, 37 says, Then Pilate said to him, So you are a king? Jesus answered, You say that I am a king? For this purpose I was born, and for this purpose I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice. Okay, so in that series of scriptures, we heard Jesus saying that he came down from heaven, saying that he came into this world, that he didn't come on his own, he was sent here to do something. He was sent to do particular work. We hear him saying, Father, I have accomplished the work that you have given me to do. You see him saying things like, this wasn't spoken for my sake, it's for your sake. It wasn't spoken for his sake, because he already knew, right? He tells them then how he's going to die, because he knows how he's going to die. Jesus came knowing what what the father had sent him to do, how can that be? And when did they talk about this, about this mission? When did they agree on the terms of this mission, is the question. C.S. Lewis in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, just when you think everything is lost, lets you into the little secret about what he calls the deep magic, right? And that's what the covenant of redemption is. It's the deep magic that goes back to the agreement between God the Father and God the Son and God the Spirit to eternity past when they agreed that they would create the world and man and that this drama would play out for the glory of God. If you turn to Ephesians 1 verse 4, you get at least one clear picture of when this agreement took place. It says, "...just as He chose you in Christ..." It uses a pronoun there, but the anticipated is Christ. "...just as He chose you in Christ before the foundation of the world." So that's when. It's before time is created. Back before Genesis 1-1, before man and before history, the Godhead agreed in relationship that they would work out the history of redemption. And so that is where we get this idea of the covenant of redemption. And with that, we'll open the floor for questions. Okay, let's close in prayer. Father God, we thank you for your Word and what you have revealed to us in Scripture. We pray that we would be led by your Spirit to rightly understand what you have revealed to us in your Word. And that is all we seek to do, is to understand that and to pass it on. Just as Paul has told us, what I received I also deliver to you, Lord. We thank you that you have revealed this, that it isn't far from us, but it is right here in your Bible, and it is in our hearts and in our minds. And we pray, Lord, that you would make these realities real to us and comforting to us as we face the trials and the hardships and the suffering of our lives. We know that we have an eternal security in you if we have placed our faith in your Son, And we thank you for this, and we praise you. In the name of Jesus, amen.