All right, our last session, and then we'll do some Q&A afterwards. So the title on your handout. When I created the handout, I should have looked at the original. So it says, Critique of the Covenantal Argument, but I think on the announcement, it says, A Defense of Believers' Baptism. So it'll do both, right? But it's also doing that through a valuation of what we looked at this morning in terms of the overall argument and looking at it, evaluating it, and then providing something in its place, right? So on the handout, it's just the outline here. I have an overall response, and the overall response is, and worked out in terms of details. And the overall response first is, since they argue that their view is the covenantal view, I'd love to respond back and say I don't think you're covenantal enough. So I want to say I want to be more covenantal than you in the sense of following then the Bible's own presentation of the covenants and how Scripture is put together. We said that the debates over baptism are a test case of how the whole Bible fits together, how covenants are related to the covenant people of God, Israel Church, covenant signs. And my contention is, at least this is my argument, is that the covenantal view does not correctly, I mean obviously it understands many things, but it doesn't correctly grasp the way that the Bible itself understands the unfolding of the covenants and puts the covenants together. It doesn't correctly understand the relationships between the biblical covenants and thus the changes in terms of God's plan as it leads us to Christ, that you can't just say everything is more continuity, substantially, essentially. I mean, obviously the substance of God's plan is grounded in Christ, but there's some changes that you cannot ignore, right? So they rightly emphasize the unity of God's plan, right? There is one plan of salvation. We have to underscore that. Sometimes I've been charged with having two plans of salvation. No, no, no, no. There's one plan of salvation, yet we have to account for God's unfolding plan in history. So it's an eternal plan that then gets worked out in space and time, especially in regard to the relationship of the covenants. the relation of Israel to church, and the relation of the covenant sciences. So just picking up on the three areas that they focus on. So the bottom line would be, with their emphasis on continuity of the one covenant of grace, I think we'll come back to that just in a moment, on this use of the covenant of grace, I think they don't pick up enough the discontinuity that occurs as you go from Old Testament covenants to the New Covenant, to Old Testament covenants to fulfillment in Christ. So in some sense, they read New Covenant realities back into the Old Testament when they shouldn't totally be there. They're more type and shadow and anticipatory. So they almost treat some of the Old Testament realities, Israel and so on, as if they're all New Covenants when they're not. And then they do not account for the unfolding nature of the covenants as they move. to Christ, and so on. That's the overall response, and then as we work through covenants and see how they unfold, see how they are brought to fulfillment in Christ, then we see the covenant signs aren't exactly the same thing. They don't mean the same thing, right, because they're under different covenants. Israel church isn't constituted the same way. There's differences between the mixed view of Israel and then ultimately the new covenant people of God, that's a regenerate believing community and so on. At the heart of all of the differences, in some sense everyone's going to agree on this, but it's working it out consistently, I'd want to say that they don't get Christology. That's of course quite a charge, but what I want to mean is they don't understand how all things have been brought to fulfillment in Christ. They don't see how Old Testament type and shadow leads us to Him. and then leads us to his people. And that relationship between Christ and his people is not exactly the same way as you have under the old covenant structures and so on. So that's the overall kind of argument. So second on your handout is the use of, and then I have italicized here, the theological category of the covenant of grace, right? So scripture doesn't have any, We have to be careful again, we're dealing with theological categories. There's nothing wrong with theological categories. After all, I teach almost every day on theology and there's all kinds of theological categories. Just think of the doctrine of the Trinity. There is no chapter and verse that gives you the word Trinity, does it? When the Jehovah's Witnesses come to your door and they knock on your door and they say, did you know that the word Trinity is not found in the Bible? They think you should be shocked by that. You say, yes, I did know that. The word Trinity's not there. Yet, God is a triune God everywhere in scripture, right? So theological categories are not improper. We just want to make sure our theological categories match and are true to the Bible's own teachings or theology comes from the canon. And then we then draw theological conclusions in light of the way the scripture itself presents itself on its own terms. So when I say that, I say scripture does not speak precisely in terms of the covenant of grace that begins in Genesis 3.15 that encompasses all the biblical covenants. If you mean by that theological category, there's no chapter and verse for the covenant of grace. It's a theological category. If you mean by that, the eternal plan now worked out in history. The one plan of redemption, that's no problem, we all agree on that. Yet, the problem is, is that they do not see how scripture speaks in terms of more of a one plan, in terms of a plurality of covenants, that progressively, meaning unfolds step by step, leading to its culmination in the coming of Christ. So that each biblical covenant is part of the one plan of God. Each biblical covenant is revelatory of that one plan and you have to do justice to, you have to explain and understand each covenant in its own context. So you have to see it in its own biblical context and then see how each covenant builds and leads to the next covenant and then reaches ultimately its fulfillment in the new covenant. That is what is necessary. So each covenant contributes to the unified plan. It's crucial to see then how all of this is worked across redemptive history from creation to fall through redemption, ultimately to new creation. The covenant of grace category as the plan of God, I say I agree with. But in terms of a category that says this is one mono covenant that then subsumes all the other covenants without doing justice to each in their redemptive historical, each in their Old Testament context and how it leads to fulfillment in Christ. But the tendency of this is to, as we've seen, lead to essential unity without seeing differences. So the Israel church are the same with a few allowances of fulfillment. Circumcision baptism is the same. They signify the same thing, but if you place circumcision in its Abrahamic context, Israel context, and then see even in the Old Testament what it points forward to and then how it comes over into the New Testament. In light of fulfillment, we cannot move from circumcision to baptism as if they mean the same thing. We have to treat them in their own covenantal context and then see how they're brought to fulfillment. So this is why I say the covenantal argument tends to, I use the term flatten out the covenants. What I mean by flatten is that they don't do justice to them in their own context. Seeing how they're brought to fulfillment, it just tends to reduce them to all their sort of spiritual elements. But the Abrahamic covenant, Mosaic covenant, have a lot of features in there in terms of the Old Testament. Abrahamic has spiritual aspects, it has national aspects, it has typological aspects. Each of the Old Testament covenants point beyond themselves to reach their fulfillment in Christ. That is what is not accounted for fully. Now, they obviously account for many of these things in many areas. But on the particular issue of the church and baptism, I don't think they account for it fully. So that's the problem with this use of the category, the covenant of grace. So in the baptism book, I used a phrase in there that I've been shot for. Over and over again, I said we need to put a moratorium on termed the covenant of grace. Well, that didn't go over well by Westminster folks and 1689 London Baptist folks and so on. And all I simply meant was you can't just appeal to the covenant of grace without argumentation in terms of how the covenants relate to one another and how fulfillment has come, right? So a covenant of grace as a larger category, no problem, right? The same way when we have categories such as law and gospel. No problem, it's theological categories. It's how you derive those categories from the scripture and how you ultimately warrant them and so on, which is where the debate lies. And you have to then lay your cards out and argue, this is why I'm arguing this position. Now, that now leads us to then discussion particularly of the Abrahamic covenant in relationship to the other covenants. Now, why am I focusing there? Because much of the covenantal argument in terms of baptism goes back to Genesis 17, right? It goes back to the Abrahamic covenant. And I argue this morning that they, the Abrahamic covenant under the larger category of the covenant of grace, they equal or they make, they equate the Abrahamic covenant with the new covenant, right? So these are brought together. So within covenant theology, there's differences on how you understand the Mosaic covenant. But they're all united in that the Abrahamic covenant is basically one for one with the new. This is why you can move from Abraham's family, the circumcision as a sign, automatically over to baptism, and they signify the same thing, right? Because there's this equation that is given. And of course, this is where the genealogical principle comes in. You and your seed, Genesis 17, 7, right? So Abraham is to circumcise his male children, and in his entire household, you and your seed, which is a sign of the covenant. That is the grounding to then you do the same thing with baptism of the infant in the new covenant, right? So we have to then look at how we understand the relationship of the Abrahamic to eventually the new covenant, but then its relationship to all of the covenants as they unfold. So my response to their argument of equating Abrahamic with new is that the Abrahamic Covenant has to be first placed in its own context. You have to look at what the Abrahamic Covenant is in the Old Testament, then see how it is unfolded in terms of then Israel, David, and ultimately Christ, and then you start drawing your conclusions from there before you simply go from Genesis 17 to infant baptism, right? So if you read R.C. Sproul's book in terms of the Bible, Geneva Bible, and he has the R.C. Sproul footnotes in it, just read the footnotes in Genesis 17, you make a beeline from Genesis 17 to baptism. The problem is there's a lot of intervening things that are going on that are missing in terms of the unfolding of The Genesis 17 circumcision, Abrahamic covenant, how it gets worked out through the Pentateuch, how it gets worked out through the covenants, how it's brought to fulfillment in terms of Christ. So two issues here. So I say the Abrahamic covenant must be placed in its own context first, then brought over to the other covenants. Two issues here is the first say that in Scripture, the Abrahamic covenant is the primary means by which God unfolds his redemptive plan. So obviously the Abrahamic covenant is very, very, very important. Its location in the Bible story obviously starts with Genesis 12, alluding to it in Genesis 11. So you've got Genesis 1 to 11 built off of Adam, the fall, the promise of redemption in Genesis 3.15, the seed, and by the time you get to Abraham and there's a whole created between the Tower of Babel and Genesis 12, where the nations are seeking, the people are seeking to make a name for themselves and God will make a name for Abraham. So in Genesis 12, God chooses by sovereign grace, Abraham's just a pagan. He chooses him by grace to be the means by which Genesis 3.15 will come about. It's through him, Isaac. It's through his offspring. It's ultimately through the nation of Israel. that you will have the promised Messiah, and that's how it functions. Yet the Abrahamic Covenant has a lot of features to it that ultimately lead us to Christ. And the point of the first area here is the Abrahamic Covenant is very important. Galatians 3 and 4, the Apostle Paul reflects on that, right, and speaks of the promise tied to Abraham as before the giving of the Mosaic Covenant, the Mosaic Covenant being temporary. That promise, which I could Paul doesn't do it, but you could take it right back to Genesis 3.15, is that which runs through the entire covenantal structures, right? Is that God promises the coming of a Redeemer through Abraham, through Israel, through David, and ultimately to Christ. Now the important point here to notice, and we won't develop all those covenants and dealt with in other areas, is that there is, as you work from the covenants, from Abraham ultimately to Christ, there's progression. And there's change. Of course, that change is what's crucial. There's fulfillment that comes. There's shadow and types that get anticipated, which come to their culmination. And with that, there's some changes occur. Changes occur in the covenant people. Changes that occur in the covenant signs. I mean, this is the debate, and this is how I would argue this scripture is unfolding this. So a second issue is not only is the Abrahamic covenant, crucial in the entire plan of God, right? And as it moves from creation through Abraham, through Adam, through Abraham to Christ. But we cannot, in its own context, reduce the Abrahamic covenant merely to its sort of spiritual components. That, I think, often occurs when you read new covenant realities back into it, or read from Abraham new covenant situations. So circumcision, baptism are read almost equally together. I think the covenantal view reads new covenant realities back into the Abrahamic too fast. If the Abrahamic covenant has a lot of diverse elements to it, it not only encompasses spiritual elements, but it also has national elements. It also has typological elements. There are certain family biological elements, and we have to then see how this is developed and unfolded. Probably the best illustration of this that pertains to this debate over baptism is the different senses or the different ways scripture speaks of the genealogical principle to you and your children, right, to Abraham's seed. You have to then look at Abraham's seed in diverse ways, both in the Abrahamic covenant and ultimately as it's brought to fulfillment in terms of the news. The covenantal view understands to you and your seed, not totally, but a lot in terms of your biological seed, your natural seed. This is why families continue in exactly the same way. So believers and their children. This principle continues from Abraham to Christ, to the new covenant, without really change. It continues in the same fashion, right? The household argument. If children are put in the covenant, In Abraham, they're put in the covenant in the new. The genealogical principle is unchanged, unchanged in that sense. And it continues until the end of the age in that sense. But this, I think, fails to account for the Abrahamic covenant on its own terms and its fulfillment in Christ. So I'm saying, no, we have to look at the Abrahamic covenant in terms of its own terms, and then we also have to see how it gets unfolded to Christ. And when you do that, this genealogical principle does, this is the idea that there is change of it over time, right? And it's already anticipated that there's gonna be change in the Old Testament. It's not just the New Testament being read back and saying, oh, now it's all changed. Even the Old Testament is anticipating changes that are occurring that reach their fulfillment in Christ. Now, we can ask the question, and this was a question that I, as a young person, was driven home by one of my pastors, my pastors who actually performed my wedding with my dear wife, Karen, and her parents. He also performed their wedding, right? So that's quite a, and his name is John Riesinger, right? And John Riesinger had a very well-known book, Abraham's Four Seeds, right? And this was very, very helpful in my thinking early on in terms of understanding the Abrahamic covenant. Who actually is the seed of Abraham? How does that then work itself out across the canon? And what does that have to do with the baptismal debate? Well, in there, right, if we look at who is the seed of Abraham, who's the true heir of God's promise, we have to distinguish four different sort of senses to Abraham's seed. And we then must not confuse them. So first of all, there is the natural or we would say the biological seed. Obviously, Abraham has a number of children, right? Little kids love to sing, I'm Abraham's child and dance around that way. But here you have natural biological seeds. So it's not just Isaac, obviously his first biological seed is Ishmael. And Ishmael circumcised. after Genesis 17, right? You have Isaac. And then after Sarah departs, old Abraham is still pretty active. He's got sons of Keturah. So he's got all kinds of children that are biological natural. All of them come under the old Abrahamic covenant, right? And they're natural biological seed. You also though have within Abraham's biological seed, You have a unique one, right? Ishmael is not the promised one, Isaac is. So you have Isaac as now the one by which the seed of the woman will come through him. Isaac's not the savior, he's not the redeemer, but through him. And then of course, they get picked up with Isaac and Jacob and the nation of Israel and eventually Judah. I mean, you have that seed line in terms of that biology, but you have a natural biological yet typological special seed in terms of Isaac, and that continues all the way through the Davidic kings, sons, as it anticipates ultimately Christ. You also have Galatians 3.16. Tom mentioned Paul's argument. In some sense, Isaac is the promised seed, and you have all the drama that brings that about in the Abrahamic covenant. But the true seed, the singular seed, right? So you have Isaac, and then you have seeds, yet it all culminates in a singular seed is Christ. If you want to ask who's the true seed of Abraham, it's Jesus. So you have Jesus as the true seed of Abraham. He's both biological, which is very, very important. The Redeemer comes from Israel. He's the biological, through a genealogical line. In fact, Luke 2 records, we'll come back on this, it records Jesus' circumcision. It records in Matthew, as well as in Luke, his genealogical line. It's very, very important that he gets tied back to Isaac and to Abraham, and ultimately all the way back to Adam. But you also have him as the one to which all the seeds point. So this is the typological. So Isaac becomes a pattern of the one to come, But Christ is the one who fulfills that. He is the, what we call, anti-type of the type, right? He is the one who is the true seed. And then, of course, the church, Galatians 3, 26 through 29, the spiritual seed. The spiritual seed, as you work through scripture, are those who have the faith of Abraham, right? He's saved by grace through faith, the promises of God centered in Christ. And so in light of Christ, The true spiritual seed, those who belong to the true family, are no longer just biological. You may be that way in terms of if you're a Jewish person and you have saving faith, you're part of the church, and there's a biology too. But true spiritual seed of Jews and Gentiles are those who are people of faith, born of the spirit, who ultimately are then related to the true seed, Christ, right? And so that Christ-Church connection will be very, very tight. So the way into Abraham's family, as you work through scripture, is not dependent upon circumcision. It's not dependent upon coming out of the line of Abraham, in that sense, biology. You've got people brought in who are not even biologically related, but they are spiritually his seed by regeneration and faith. And only those who've experienced conversion are those who Abraham's seed in this sense. It's not tied to a specific ethnic line, But faith, union in Christ, and so on, and so you have these different kinds of seeds, and Apostle Paul picks that up. We who are Gentiles are now Abraham's seed. We are his family, and so on, the church. Now, as you put those seeds together, in the first two cases, you have his biological Ishmael, Isaac, sons of Keturah, then you have Isaac uniquely as the seed. Abraham's seed was marked by the covenant, or the covenant sign of circumcision. it did not necessarily signify the reality to which it pointed. Now circumcision ultimately points to a need for something more. Circumcision in the Old Testament was a priestly act, right? So you were set out to devotion of God. Well, sometimes those who received that sign were not devoted to God, right? So the external sign didn't always match what they should have been, right? And that was true of those first two kinds of seeds. In fact, in the first two cases, Circumcision usually signified nothing more than one was biologically related to Abraham. One was part of a group that didn't necessarily mean that you had saving faith. That's why the Apostle Paul will eventually say in Romans 9.6, not all Israel is Israel. It's only those who truly have the faith of Abraham are true Israel, even within Israel. You have that in terms of the Old Testament. As you have Israel come out of Abraham, Israel is both a covenant nation and God's people. They're a covenant people, but they're a nation. They were redeemed. You have to be very careful with that term, redeemed. They were taken out of Egypt. They were redeemed, the great act of the Exodus. But that redemption doesn't necessarily equate to how the church is redeemed. So we're dealing with some typological relations here. The Exodus becomes a pattern of a greater redemption to come. It ultimately gets tied to Christ's cross, which is then applied to his people. So covenant theologians love to speak about Israel as the redeemed people of God. Well, they are in a physical sense, in a political sense. Some of them were spiritually, right, rightly related to God, but not all of them, right? And the pattern of redemption ultimately culminates than in Christ and ultimately the church, the spiritual seed. So as the covenants unfold, the typological nature of Abraham's seed reaches its fulfillment in Christ, which brings with it, what I would want to contend, some changes. So usually, the argument is there's no change in that genealogical principle. If God put him in Abraham, they're going to stay now? No, this is not how the text unfolds. This is not how the scripture unfolds. As you work through the covenants, who's related to Abraham and ultimately who are the people of Christ, it changes from the relations that you have there of first biological, being part of a nation, to much more of now union with Christ, spiritual relations and so on. So as you move to the new covenant, Christ's people are viewed as Abraham's spiritual seed. But this is not dependent on circumcision. This is not dependent on national rights or ethnic lineage. It's dependent upon conversion. It's dependent upon faith union with Christ. And so the point of that is you cannot just simply equate everything aspect of the Abrahamic covenant with the new. You have to sort of say, what is in this context? How does this unfold? Seeds of Abraham are a great example. Now, what does this have to do with infant baptism? Well, the covenantal argument, I think, incorrectly identifies and equates the Abrahamic covenant too quickly. with the new covenant without noting these differences, what the Abrahamic covenant is in its context, and then how it's brought to fulfillment in Christ. To identify the natural seed in terms of Israel with the spiritual seed, the church, and to identify covenant signs of circumcision and baptism too quickly is a mistake. You fail to do justice to how the Abrahamic covenant has diverse aspects and then how the covenant is fulfilled in Christ. So Israel, as a nation, is the means by which the Savior comes. And you could even say it's some sense typological of the church, right? The New Testament applies Old Testament passages of Israel. Jeremiah 31 is the best example of this, right? This is made to the house of Israel, the house of Judah, and it gets applied to the church. So the Israel is a kind of, Church, right? It's eschatological church in that sense. But it's not merely, the church isn't just merely a replacement of Israel, but it's ultimately because of Christ that the church then is now the true Israel. So Galatians 6.16, that important connection between Israel, Abraham's family to Israel, to Christ, to church is very, very important. If we were to talk about dispensational theology, I think that's also where they get things wrong, right? So that you have to go from Old Testament Israel or to Abraham to Israel to the fulfillment in Christ and now his people and the relationship of Christ to his people is not exactly the same way that Abraham related his seed, natural seed. It's not exactly the same way that Israel within itself was this biological sense and so on. And also we'd say it's a mistake to think that the genealogical principle of the Abrahamic covenant is not changed as we move across the covenants. This is the major assumption of the covenantal view. There's no change in this. Hermeneutically, they will say, unless the genealogical principle is specifically abrogated in the New, it continues. It's just by default. Even though you have no infobaptism in the New Testament, it's just default. It continues unless it's specifically abrogated. It's not specifically abrogated. That's the argument. I would say it is abrogated. And it's abrogated as you actually walk through the covenants. You see the change in the genealogical principle. I don't buy their argument at all. So as you move from Abraham to Christ, what we find that under the Old Testament covenants, the relationship between the covenant heads, the covenant mediators, and their seeds are primarily Abraham, And you also have it with Israel, David, and so on, are primarily natural biological. That's true of Adam, Noah, Abraham, David. But now in Christ, under his mediation, the relationship between Christ and his seed is no longer natural or biological. It's spiritual. That is, it's brought about by the Spirit's work of new birth. Hence the reason why the covenant sign is applied only baptism to the spiritual seed of Abraham. It's applied to those who have faith. In Christ coming as last Adam, true Israel, head of the new creation, he mediates a new covenant. Now a new covenant isn't just simply part of a larger sort of covenant of grace structure. All the covenants in the one plan of God are leading you to this covenant. And Christ's people are those who are identified with him. Already seated in the heavenly realms, which speaks of spiritual life, reality, union with Christ, conversion, who are born of the Spirit, forgiven of their sin, the way that one is identified with Christ is not through biological lineage, but spiritual rebirth and adoption. Christ's seed are all those who believe. And that's Galatians 3, 28 and 29. And that's why, as you work through the covenants, is there a change in this principle of You and your seed, ultimately Christ and his seed, Christ and his people, there is, right? And even the Old Testament prophets speak of that reality and speak of that change. So what I'm contending here is one of the major arguments for continuity of the household principle, genealogical principle, isn't true to the covenantal unfolding. And ultimately, it's not true to then how it comes to pass in Christ. So that's something there in just in terms of the language of the covenants and how the covenants are related. What we have in common is the one plan of God centered in Christ. Salvation is by grace through faith in Christ alone. All of that's in common, yet we have to let God's plan unfold the way he unfolds it. And we have to let it be brought to its culmination in Christ. And with that, discontinuity or change occurs. And we cannot just simply say all these areas of Israel church covenant signs are the same. Now, the next area here, number four, is then as you work through those covenants, the new covenant is that to which all these covenants are leading us to. They're not just sort of a new administration of the one covenant of grace. It's where all the promises are leading. And I would say even the Genesis 3.15 promise is already looking to the New Covenant, and yet under the Old Testament it has to unfold through the covenants to lead us ultimately to Christ, right? So the New Covenant does bring newness and change. The church is different because it's under the, the church ultimately is the church of the New Covenant, right? It doesn't mean that there's not one people of God, but it uniquely is tied to the coming of Christ and so on. Covenant theology argues for the sameness of the covenant, the sameness of Israel church, the sameness of the covenant signs, right? Now we all agree, we should all agree that there's only one people of God in scripture, that's not a dispute. But in the promise of the new covenant's fulfillment in Christ, the nature of that covenant people is not the same, right? They're not exactly the same as Israel, which entails a difference in the meaning and application of the covenant sign. So there's gonna be changes here. So obviously circumcision and baptism are related, but under their covenant structure, they don't mean the same things. And so that's the important point. So covenant theology consistently interprets the new covenant in terms of renewal, rather than ultimately fulfillment, which brings change and replacement and so on. And then of course they have the ways of covenant keeper, covenant breaker and so on. If you turn to Jeremiah 31, right, there are many, many passages that we could look at in the prophets, right? Jeremiah 31 is an important text in this regard because it's the only text where you actually have the prophets saying there's coming a new covenant. Sometimes the covenant is called, the new covenant is called the everlasting covenant, the covenant of peace, and so on. But here already in the Old Testament, I would argue, we are seeing an anticipation of change in the covenant people. There's a lot that can be said here. So Jeremiah 31, actually in verse 29, and all the way through 34 is important. This is picked up in Hebrews 8 and applied there to Christ and the church and so on. Christ picks this up in the The night he's portrayed in the celebration of the Passover, this is the blood of the new covenant and so on, right? So we read in verse 29, in those days, people will no longer say, the fathers have eaten sour grapes, the children's teeth are set on edge. Instead, looking to the future, everyone will die for his own sin. Whoever eats sour grapes, his own teeth set on edge. That's quoted in Ezekiel 18 as well. It's hard, lots of debate on this. I do think this is signaling, and we'd have to argue this at greater depth, But I think it's signaling that this is what I call there's coming a change in the structure of the covenant. What I mean by structure is that the Old Testament, Israel for the most part, was governed by leaders, right? Prophet, priests, kings, right? Hierarchical structure, right? If you wanted to know the word of the Lord, you went to the prophets. You wanted your sins dealt with, you went to the priests. You wanted to be ruled under the king and so on. That's the fathers. When the fathers, the leaders, do well, the nation does well. Read the book of Judges. It's like an up and down cycle. When the judges do well, the nation does well, and vice versa. Here, though, it's signaling some kind of change. In the new covenant, ultimately Christ who comes, he's the great prophet, priest, and king. He will bring now a people that will all be, in some sense, prophets, priests, and kings in relation to him. There's a whole change of structure. Under the old, many of the leaders had the spirit. They were anointed by the spirit. Kings were anointed. Prophets were anointed. Numbers 11, you have the 70 elders of Israel that are chosen to help Moses' leaders. What are they given? They're given the spirit, and then they prophesy. And Moses says, I wish that all God's people would have this. Well, they don't. Joel 2 anticipates a day when they will. And that gets picked up in Acts 2. So all of this is signaling, we'd have to put other texts together, but all of this is signaling there's coming a change in the entire New Covenant. There's coming a change with even how it's structured and then particularly what I speak of here in terms of a change in its nature, right? The heart of the people, the kind of people. So you have in verse 31, the time is coming, declares the Lord, I'll make a new covenant with the house of Israel, with the house of Judah. That's very important, because it gets applied to the church in the New Testament, right? So Israel is that which points to church. It's gonna be through Christ, which just happens. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers, a clear reference to the Mosaic. When I took them out of Egypt and so on, they broke it, right? So this covenant here, in some sense, right, is gonna be presented as unbreakable, right? They're not going to break it. Why is it not going to break it? Because there's going to be a change in the people. There's going to be the giving of the Spirit and so on. There's going to be new hearts. This is the covenant I will make with them at that time. I'll put my law on their minds and that has to be connected with other passages that Tom mentioned on the Spirit and Ezekiel 36 and other places. How is the law on the minds done? It's done through circumcision of heart. It's through transformation. It's the work of the Spirit. All of that is taught in the prophets. I'll put my law in their minds, I'll write it in their hearts, I'll be their God, they'll be my people." Covenant language. No longer will a man teach his neighbor a man and his brother saying, know the Lord, right? You go to the prophet to know the Lord. In this sense, all of us know God. Well, that knowledge of God isn't just I mean, that's a saving knowledge. There's a knowledge of the people that they know God directly. That was not true of Israel of old, right? Israel of old, they were always exhorted to know the Lord, right? They were exhorted, circumcise your hearts. God's gonna have to circumcise your heart. But now the law is put in the hearts. We will know God. They will all know from least to greatest. And of course, that picks up the entire community will be the case. And at the heart of it, there's the permanent forgiveness of sins, for I will forgive their wickedness, remember their sins no more, which is in direct contracts with the types and shadows of the old system, as it pointed forward to the coming of a Redeemer who would bring the full forgiveness of sins. Now, in the prophets, this is what is anticipated in terms of the coming of a new covenant. A coming of a greater mediator is obviously tied to Christ. who then has a people that are born of the Spirit, laws written in the hearts, knowledge of God, forgiveness of sins. That's justification, right? They will be justified before God, and so on, and so on, and so on. And of course, what brings this about ultimately is, as you work through the covenants, the coming of Christ. That's why I say Christology is everything. The whole Bible is leading us to Jesus, who now brings all the types of shadows to fulfillment, to pass in himself, and he establishes a new covenant with a people that is not going to be like Israel of old. They're going to have relation to Israel, right? They're the true Israel, right? But they're the true Israel because they are the true seed and spiritual seed of Abraham, people who have faith. So as you work this out then, Christ now becomes, right, he comes as last Adam. The second man, the head of the new creation, and what does he make us in his people? All those who are related to Christ become new men, right? New man, new creations, Ephesians 2, and other places, right? He brings the future age to pass, the age to come. All the prophets look forward to the coming of the age to come. We, the church, as his people, are part of that age. We are seated with him in the heavenlies. That can only be true of believers. It can't be true of unbelievers, right? When Christ comes, we are transferred from Adam to Christ, right? All people are born in this world post-fall in Adam. Now this new covenant people are now in Christ, the theme of union with Christ, and so on. And because of Christ's work, He has brought this to pass, and the church that results from this are those who are in Christ. Now, it's not to say that Old Testament saints, as they look forward, in some sense, you could say they're in Christ. Of course, it's slightly different, right? They're proleptically, they're looking forward to Him, right? Their faith is that which, you know, is looking to Christ's coming. But in the New Testament sense, of the full sense of in Christ means that one is in the New Covenant. One is a member of this gathered people who's already seated in the heavenlies with Christ, Hebrews 12. One is a regenerate believer. And this is why the New Testament knows nothing of those who are in Christ, who are in the New Covenant, who are not regenerate, who are not effectually called by the Father. who are not born of the Spirit, who are not justified, who are not set apart as holy, who are not awaiting glorification. I mean, to be part of his church, to be part of his people are those who are now identified with him. And that's why the covenant sign gets applied to those who are his, right? Those who are Christ, those who are identified with him. And as Tom laid out, in fact, in the New Testament, there's such a close association with baptism and new covenant blessings. Such a close association because baptism gets bound up with conversion. It doesn't bring about conversion. It's not regenerative. But to be in the new covenant is to be baptized. You show that in baptism. Baptism speaks about having new covenant blessings. It functions as shorthand for a conversion experience as a whole. So in Galatians 3, We are clothed with Christ and we have that in our baptism. Or Romans 6, when we died with Christ in baptism, right? Well, it's speaking not just of a spiritual baptism, but it was displayed in a water baptism as well. All the texts that closely link these things together. Now, what happens here is the covenantal view will turn back and say, well, wait a second here. Wait a second, you have this regenerate church, this believing community and so on, but you look at the visible church, many visible churches, there's believers and unbelievers there, and so on, what's the difference? And then look at the warning passages. Particularly, they'll argue that the warning passages assume that you have people in the covenant that then can apostatize from the covenant, and so on, and that is their argument that, see, the church is really no different than Israel of old, right? Well, I would say to that that when they make those kind of appeals, right, you eventually have to assume either their entire viewpoint that has to be demonstrated, they are not accounting for what the church is as this new covenant people, and there are ways of looking at warning passages that speak of, right, warnings, not speaking of covenant members, covenant breakers, and so on, but it's speaking of warnings as means to stir God's people on to faithfulness and so on. Tom can address that because he's written many books on that issue, right? So there's other ways to handle that. So you still have to look at, all right, how do the covenants work? What is the church? Just simply appealing to the visible church. Yes, it's true, many people show up at our churches, that affirm some kind of faith and not, but our job in churches is to receive those and baptize those and welcome those into membership who have affirmed faith in Christ and not, simply not professing faith at all. There's a difference there between the covenantal view and more of a Baptist view. Now let me just mention, just as we wrap this up in terms of then circumcision baptism. What I've tried to argue is that you have to think through the covenants. As you move through the covenants, there is change. There is fulfillment. In Christ, the new covenant isn't just exactly the same as the previous covenants. Those covenants are leading us to, they are anticipating, they are being brought to their culmination in the new covenant and Christ. That brings a change to the church, what the church is conceived in terms of Israel of old. So this essential continuity has to be nuanced. It has to be, yes, there's one plan of God, but there's also some changes. Now that's true of circumcision and baptism, the covenant signs. No doubt, circumcision and baptism are related in terms of signs, but they're under different covenants. The question is, do they signify the same spiritual realities? My argument would be no, they don't. No doubt they're parallel in several ways, but they are functioning in terms of different covenants. Circumcision is an Old Testament sign established in a particular covenantal context, Abrahamic, Mosaic, and baptism in terms of the new covenant. It's a mistake to equate these one for one. So what I give you is sort of a biblical sort of canon look at circumcision to baptism, right? And we could then develop that. I've got the sort of six areas there, but where does circumcision first begin? Genesis 17. You have to then look at how it functions there, right? It's functioning there, as Paul argues, to not bring about any kind of regeneration. Paul's argument in Romans 4 is that Abraham is justified before circumcision. Very, very important. Circumcision does not bring about justification or regeneration. Abraham is already justified before. Yet it functions to identify Abraham's family, speak of certain promises, no doubt, but we then have to look at how it functions in that Old Testament context. So number two, circumcision under the Abrahamic covenant and Mosaic covenant, the primary purpose of it is to mark out a people. That's the primary purpose. A natural biological seed, right? It marks them out as a priestly nation. It's a priestly sign. Exodus 19.6, Israel is called a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, and circumcision signifies that. They're covenant people set apart. It doesn't signify that all of them are believers and so on, right? It signifies the promise of the Abrahamic covenant that ultimately point beyond themselves. I also think that it's signifying, obviously, circumcision is given to males, not females, right? And there is, I think, a sense in which, right, signifying the male line is ultimately anticipating an ultimate seed of the woman, right? I mean, there's a sense in which every male child in some sense anticipates, is this the one? Is this the one? So I think there's a sense of that as well. A male line of descent from Abraham to David, ultimately to Christ. It's not accidental that in Luke 2, there's not many details given of Christ's life, early life, but circumcision is, right? So there's some sense in which Luke wants to say here is, in terms of scripture, the last, in some sense, covenantally significant circumcision there is. Ultimately, the true seed has now come, right? That to which it points. Number three, under the Mosaic Covenant, circumcision continues to delineate them as a priestly nation, yet they're constituted as a mixed entity. And also, as you work through the Torah, the Pentateuch, as you work through the Mosaic Covenant, it becomes very clear that Moses will tell you that circumcision, external circumcision, also points to the need for internal circumcision. And that becomes very dominant. Tom mentioned that. So you have circumcise your hearts, Deuteronomy 10, Deuteronomy 30. Ultimately, Moses says God's going to have to circumcise your heart. And the prophets say the same thing, Jeremiah 4, 4. The promise of the new covenant is that God will circumcise the hearts. It doesn't mean that no Old Testament saint didn't have circumcised hearts. What's being anticipated is the entire people will have circumcised hearts. That's going to be the change. The scope is going to be massive. It's not going to be just some within the nation who have faith of Abraham. Ultimately, the entire New Covenant people will have that new heart, will be circumcised of heart, and so on. And so circumcision is a physical sign. It demarcates the people, and it also points beyond itself for a need of an internal heart. Now, in the New Testament, number four, it's beyond question that circumcision is done. You can't read 1 Corinthians 7. Paul says, what matters is you keep the law of God, but circumcision is nothing. You think, how is that possible? I thought circumcision was the law of God. It was a command of God. Moses, you know, had to learn this lesson, didn't he? He wasn't circumcised. He tries to come back and lead. He's almost his life taken, right? It's a command of God, the Old Testament woman. Paul says it's not a command of God. Obviously, it's covenantal significance and point Now that Christ has come, has come to an end, right? So that circumcision functions in a certain way in the Old Testament, but now that the new covenant is here, it is no longer valid. That's why Tom mentioned Doug Wilson. It's unthinkable to have Doug Wilson's view with the Apostle Paul, right? The Apostle Paul would not say, right, if you have a child as a Jewish person, you can circumcise and it means the exact same thing as baptism. And it's only because Gentiles come in that we then have to sort of come to baptism and drop circumcision. No. Circumcision as a covenant sign, function of the Abrahamic, function of the Mosaic, now that Christ comes, it's done. What it points forward to, namely circumcision of heart, has now come. That's the point that we picked up in the New Testament. So then in the New Testament, baptism as a covenantal sign. similarity with the circumcision as covenantal signs, but baptism is given to establish the identity of the gospel, the true spiritual seed of Abraham through faith in Messiah. Unlike circumcision, baptism is not a sign of physical descent, nor is it a sign that anticipates gospel realities. Baptism doesn't function that way. It doesn't mark off a biological seed. It doesn't point to the need for circumcision of heart, that's what circumcision did, but rather it speaks of the fact that we have united union with Christ, that all the benefits entailed by that union are ours. And so that it is that which is now applied to those who have circumcision of heart, who are joined to Christ and so on. So as we put the entire canon together, circumcision signifies at least two truths. One, it marked out a priestly people. Two, it served as a type to speak of New Testament realities. First, ultimately to lead us to Christ, right? And even on Colossians 2, we can say not only Christ's physical circumcision is sort of the end of all hopes of a seed of the woman. He's that final seed. But ultimately on Colossians 2, the cross is viewed as his circumcision. So that circumcision now finds place in him, not only in terms of his humanity, but ultimately his death for us that brings now the new covenant to pass so that we now have internal circumcision in relation now to him. And circumcision then secondly is a type in Scripture that points for the need for circumcision of heart, a reality which all New Covenant people have experienced, whether it's Romans 2, 25, Philippians 3, 3, and so on, right? So that's how circumcision is functioning. But when you come to baptism, number six, baptism doesn't signify what circumcision signified in its Old Testament context. Baptism signifies union with Christ. One has entered into the realities of the new covenants. One has experienced regeneration, the gift and down payment of the spirit, the forgiveness of sins. It graphically signifies that a believer now is part of the family of God, that we are identified with him. It's a defining marker of demarcation from the world. We're no longer in Adam, we're in Christ. It's an entry into the order of the new creation. that which our Lord has ushered in through baptism, we are united to Christ by faith, sealed with the Spirit until the day of redemption. And what's crucial to note, right, is that circumcision in the Old Testament context, baptism in the New, even though they're both covenantal signs, carry different meaning. And the reason they do so is that circumcision pointed forward, as all the Old Testament covenants did. They all anticipated the one to come. Now that Christ has come, The reality is out here, and even the sign of that coming, and all that he has done for us is change, right? It signifies something different. And so that is where baptism and circumcision are not essentially the same meanings, right? And that's why in the New Testament, right, baptism gets associated with conversion. Every believer who repents, believes, is baptized, and so on, that cannot be said of infants and so on, right? So, as we pull this together, right, we agree on many, many points with our brothers and sisters in the Reformed community, right, there's much to learn in terms of Reformation heritage, the great solos of the Reformation and so on, but baptism still is a point of disagreement, right? Because the Lord himself commands, this is part of the Great Commission, we have to get his command correct, right? We can't just sort of say, well, you just pick your view and I'll pick my view. The views don't mean the same thing. They don't lead to the same results. They are reflecting larger issues of All kinds of matters that we have talked to and ultimately they're tied to the proclamation of the gospel and the reality of what Christ has achieved for us in the New Covenant. To not get baptism correct misunderstands Christ's command. It misunderstands in some sense, if we're not careful, the mission of the church. And it may downplay, we've got lots of problems in our Baptist community, so I'm not saying that no one else has a problem. We don't have problems. But it may, and this is my experience of it, I grew up in a Christian school from grade two to eight, and it was primarily Dutch Reformed. The danger is, is the gospel doesn't get preached to children. is that you treat them as covenant children. You presume they're regenerate until they show otherwise. That's my experience with much of the reformed community. If you're not careful, then we always have exceptions of that. We say, no, no, no, no, the gospels that we preach to kids. But in a proper understanding, right, as you work through the covenants, families still remain very important, family structures still remain important, tied to the Noahic covenant and so on. Yet, right, you cannot, right, under the new covenant say, my child is automatically in the covenant by receiving the sign of baptism. Baptism is to be applied to those who are believers. So we have, our children have many, many benefits of being in Christian homes, being part of churches, Christian churches. And the benefit is, is that they come under the preaching of God's word. They have parents who pray for them. raise them in the fear and abolition of the Lord, call them to understand who has made them and who the Redeemer is, and calling them to faith and repentance. That is what is most crucial, so we raise our families no differently than those who say, well, you have to put them in the covenant in order to raise them properly. No, we raise them as under the admonition of the Lord and teach them all that the scripture teaches, but we call them to saving faith and then we welcome the day by God's grace that as the Lord brings them to saving faith, they then are not just are biological children, but more than that, they are part of the family of Abraham, right? They're the spiritual seed that we are, that unites us with the church of all ages, of those who have repented of their sins, believe the gospel, and are adopted into the family of God. That's the adoption we're looking for. And even in the New Testament, when you have the dawning of the church and the dawning of the new covenant age, families become very, very important, but in the end, Right? We have to be able to say, to loyalty to Christ, sometimes we have to say no to father and mother. We have to say no to child. We have to say, the church, right, Christ and his people are where my first identity is found, right? Even though I have my own children and I want to see them being raised and grandchildren and so on, what's most crucial is they know Christ, right? They know Christ. They're part of the church. They're part of the new covenant. That's what goes into eternity. not your biology, and not your just nuclear family. That is what is most significant. So that's how we would wrap up in terms of some of the areas of critiquing the view and on the basis of scripture and how the Bible fits together and the realities of the New Covenant. I would say a defensive believer's baptism is that it's biblical. That this is what scripture is saying, this is what baptism signifies, and this is what we should practice as God's people. Okay.