Overview of God's Covenants

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So this morning we're going to go over, we're going to start with covenants and there's no shortage of literature and sermons and books on covenants.

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So really this morning we're just going to do a quick overview of what a covenant is. As Reformed believers we hold to something called covenant theology.

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So we'll go over what covenant theology is, what a covenant is, and the covenants in the scriptures.

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And we're going to move kind of quickly, but we'll do our best to cover it as best we can.

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So covenant theology, what is it? Covenant theology is a framework for biblical interpretation informed by biblical and systematic theology that recognizes that the redemptive history revealed in scripture is explicitly articulated through a succession of covenants.

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We know the covenants of the Adamic covenant, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and eventually the new covenant.

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And thus it provides an organizing principle for the biblical narrative. So covenant theology and covenants are the backbone of scripture.

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Covenant is how God deals with mankind and what we're going to see in these covenants is an unfolding of God's plan, redemptive history.

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Redemptive history is just basically a short term phrase that describes

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God's plan of salvation from Adam until now and ongoing. So redemptive history is

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God's unfolding plan and when we see the covenants we see how God unfolds the plan and the revelation of what he's going to do within those covenants.

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That's why covenant theology is important. Covenant theology also posits theological covenants.

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So aside from the covenants with mankind, we have the covenant of redemption, covenant of works and grace and promise and appreciates how the scriptural teaching about covenants entails and relates to numerous and vitally important biblical themes and issues.

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The covenants touch everything as far as biblical theology goes.

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Every single thing that we do, how God saves humanity, what man's responsibility is, what man's responsibility not just to God but to each other, it all relates to covenants.

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Everything that God does with humanity he does through covenant. This includes the purpose of God in history, the narrative of the people of God.

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How do you know if you're the people of God? It deals with the federal headships of Adam and Christ, the person and work of Christ, the continuities and discontinuities in the progress of redemptive history, the relation of the old covenant to the new covenant,

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Old Testament to the New Testament, law and gospel, assurance of salvation, the nature and significance of the sacraments or the ordinances.

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These are all aspects of the covenants that God placed here. So again, covenants form the backbone of biblical theology.

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Continuing on what it is, covenant theology is an approach to biblical interpretation that appreciates the importance of the covenants for understanding the divine human relationship and the unfolding of redemptive history in scripture.

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So in other words, covenant is the way God deals with mankind. And we're going to go through what types of covenants he uses to do that.

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Covenant theology helps explain the economic trinity. Has anybody ever heard that phrase before?

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Economic trinity? Some of you have. In terms of covenant, we understand that God is triune, he's father, son, and spirit.

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So the economic trinity is how the covenant, the persons of the Godhead deal with one another, what each one is responsible for.

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We're going to get to that in the covenant of redemption. The communion God, the person and work of Christ, justification by faith alone, by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, the role of obedience in the

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Christian life, and the unity and progress of redemptive history. The Bible is a covenant book, and to be read well, it needs to be read covenantally.

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Have you ever noticed that covenant is written on the pages, the title pages of the two parts of your Bible? They read

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Old Testament and New Testament. The word testament is a Latin word for covenant.

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So the book that we hold in our hands and call the Bible is divided into two parts,

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Old Testament or Old Covenant and New Testament or New Covenant. Would be pretty important to know how the

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New Testament relates to the Old Testament, how the Old Testament, Old Covenant, provides the basis for the

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New Covenant to be brought in and work with us. How did that title get here?

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The earliest Christians saw a big chunk of the history of God's people as divided up between the Old Covenant, the one

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God made with Abram and Moses before Israel entered into the promised land, and the

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New Covenant, which was accomplished by Christ. The Apostle Paul and the book of Hebrews both talk about this in Galatians chapter three and four and Hebrews chapter eight and nine.

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And their own understanding goes back at least 600 years earlier to the time in the writings of the prophet Jeremiah who saw the coming of a new covenant, not like the

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Old Covenant, not like the covenant that they were in at that time. God promises, I'm going to make a new covenant with you, not like the one

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I made with your forefathers who broke it, who didn't keep it. That's important. God's revealing to us that the

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Old Covenant wasn't kept by the people who he redeemed and brought out of Egypt into the promised land.

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So what is a covenant? We need to define that first. The story of any kingdom, what is kingdom?

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We discussed this last week in Sunday school. Kingdom, king, dom, king, and a domain, right?

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The kingdom, when we use that word kingdom, we understand it's a king and his domain. So the story of any kingdom is in part the story of the relationship between a king and his subjects.

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In Scripture, this relationship is defined and structured according to covenants. The way the king deals with his subject is by covenant.

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Covenants are not merely contracts or promises, rather covenants are relationships under authority with obligations and rewards.

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So the king bestows the covenant, makes the covenant with mankind, they have certain obligations that they have to fulfill, and certain rewards related to those obligations.

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The terms and the benefits of the relationship are spelled out, and so are the consequences if the relationship is broken.

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Make sense? But what is perhaps most significant about biblical covenants is that when

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God enters into a covenant, he must condescend to initiate it. He sets the terms, he provides the benefits, and he executes the judgment when the covenant is broken.

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So when God condescends to make a covenant with us, we are not his equals, right?

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We have to maintain the distance between God and man, and recognize that if God is going to be in relationship with man, he has to condescend to enter into that relationship.

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There's way too many people with bad theology that think, oh, we're equals in this covenant.

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We are not equals in this covenant, in any covenant with God. A covenant is not merely a contract or a promise as we understand it, rather it's a bond that establishes an all -encompassing relationship.

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A covenant is not merely a financial obligation or a military treaty, it's a claim on someone's total loyalty and allegiance.

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It has an authority structure to it with ongoing obligations, blessings, and curses, and what's more, it's generational.

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When Israel entered into the covenant, they did, they did so for generations to come. In Hebrew, I just put up the word there, the word for covenant in Hebrew is barit, and in Greek, it's diathke, and it entails lordship.

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So when we say that a covenant establishes an all -encompassing relationship, what that means is he's the king, right?

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As far as the new covenant goes, Jesus is the king. Everything that we do has to be brought under his lordship.

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So when we look at our finances, when we look at our job situation, when we look at our marriage, our children, everything that we do, all of that has to come under his lordship.

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We don't just say, okay, I'm going to do this, this, and this according to God's covenant, and this, this, and this, that's outside.

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Everything you do is inside the covenant whether you realize it or not. The question is, are you doing it according to what he says?

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Any question on how the covenant is defined at this point? We're good? Okay. But not only was a covenant written out, a covenant was cut.

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You ever hear that term, oh, he cut a good deal? That comes from the scriptures. The Old Testament is a term for making a covenant.

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The Old Testament term for making a covenant is in fact to cut a covenant, cut a deal. That's because a covenant almost always involved the shedding of blood as both a sign and seal of the covenant, right?

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The shedding of blood is part and parcel to the way God does covenants. Now, not every covenant God does is sealed with blood, but some are.

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In Exodus 24, Moses sacrificed young bulls, took their blood, and sprinkled the blood on both the altar and the people as the blood of the covenant.

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In the ancient Near East, not only would animals be sacrificed, they would also be mutilated, torn in two, or have a leg shoved down their throat, all as a sign of what would happen to the vassal and his people should they break the covenant.

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So when you cut a covenant, what you were saying in essence is, may what happened to those animals happen to me if I break the covenant.

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Follow? So if I break covenant with somebody, whatever we sacrifice, that would happen to me.

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I'd be under the penalty of death. As Palmer Robinson aptly said, a covenant is not simply a bond, it's a bond in blood.

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He goes on to say, a commitment to loyalty and allegiance that was secured by the life of the covenant mediator, the vassal king.

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He didn't actually die to secure the covenant, but he was represented vicariously by the sacrifice mutilated animals.

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So if you've ever read Genesis chapter 15, this is where Abram, God comes down and brings

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Abram into covenant. And what happens is, he tells Abram to get the animals, cut them in half, he makes a nice line, but then he puts

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Abram to sleep. And the fiery pot and the pillar of cloud, the torch, walk through the pieces of those animals.

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And Abram is not really a part, he's not responsible to keep the covenant.

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The covenant is going to be kept by the fiery torch, the pot, and the cloud that walk through it.

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That represents father and son. So this is a perfect picture of God cutting covenant and walking through those pieces.

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Some people are going to say the covenant with Abraham is a covenant of grace, some are going to say it's a covenant of works, and we'll kind of get into that.

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Not too, too much. So there are certain kinds of covenants, three kinds in fact.

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There's kinship made between equals, not us and God. There's a suzerain vassal covenant, suzerain represents the king, the vassals represent the people whom he's conquered.

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So what would happen in an ancient Near East and in biblical times, a king would go in, conquer a nation, and then would go to them, to their king and say, listen, we conquered you, if you do this, this, and this, there'll be peace.

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If you don't do this, this, and this, we're going to further conquer you and take all your stuff. So it's king and vassal.

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Then there's a royal grant. Royal grant is the type of covenant where the king comes in and just bestows something upon you graciously, without any obligations.

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So here's a real easier definition. Kinship is an agreement between two equal parties with a few stipulations or requirements, marriage, covenant between equals, property boundaries, business agreements.

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Does anybody know the major difference between a covenant and a contract? What would be the difference?

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Why don't we just call it a contract? Contracts can be broken, so can covenants.

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There's no exit clause with a covenant. In other words, you can't say, well, if you don't meet this, then we're out of the covenant.

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It's either you break the covenant or you don't. You're in the covenant either way. Whereas a contract, if I contract with you to do something, there's stipulations.

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If you don't do it, well, then I don't owe you this money, and the contract is dissolved. Not so with a covenant, like a marriage covenant.

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There's no exit clause. You're married for life. Suzerain vassal covenant.

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A king would make a promise to his subjects, like I said before, or a treaty between kings would be dependent on obedience to specific terms.

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You could think of this covenant as a conditional promise, kind of like the Mosaic covenant. God was king over the

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Israelites. He told them, do these things, you'll be blessed. Don't do these things, you'll be cursed. He didn't say, don't do these things, and you're out of the covenant.

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You're still in the covenant. You're just going to sustain the curses that belong to the disobedience. And finally, a royal grant.

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Unlike the suzerain vassal agreements, a royal grant requires no action on the part of the beneficiary. It's an unconditional promise given from one party to another.

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The only downside to a royal grant covenant is missing out on its promises. It's usually by faith.

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So does that explain? Okay, you guys got it? Good, let's move forward. There's two kinds within those suzerain vassal kinship covenants.

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There's two kinds. There's a covenant of grace and a covenant of works, which we touched on, kind of. Covenant of works is exactly what it sounds like.

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Blessings are offered in return for works performed. Failure to perform the works leads to the covenant curses.

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This was the standard covenant of the ancient Near East, and we see this type of covenant clearly displayed with Adam.

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Do this, you'll live. Don't do this, you'll die. Or do that. Touch the fruit, eat the fruit, you'll die.

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So there's conditions. Covenant of works is based on the obedience of the person that the covenant is made with.

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If it's a suzerain vassal covenant, like it was with God and Adam, God says, this is what you do, you'll be blessed.

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Don't do these things or do something wrong. Don't eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, then you'll die.

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So it's conditional. However, in a covenant of grace, it's not the vassal, it's not the lower person that must perform the work in order to receive the great king's blessing.

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Instead, the great king himself undertakes to secure the blessing for the vassal and risks the penalties himself should the covenant be broken.

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This is a royal grant. He promises to do something, and he's the one who's going to secure that promise.

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This is also known as a covenant of grace. What is grace? Three things you can get, justice, mercy, and grace.

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Justice is getting what you deserve. Mercy is not getting what you deserve. What's grace? Getting what you don't deserve.

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So a royal grant, God is giving you something you don't deserve. So in a royal grant is a covenant of grace, and it's beautifully pictured in the new covenant established in Jesus and proclaimed in the gospel.

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That's what we are a part of. As Christians, we are part of the new covenant, a royal grant. Both covenants have a similar pattern, but the crucial difference lies in who takes the oath and so undertakes to suffer the curses.

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If it's a suzerain vassal, the vassal is the one who takes the oath. If he doesn't obey, he's going to suffer the curses.

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In a royal grant, it's the king himself who takes the oath and says if this doesn't happen, I'm going to suffer the curses should the covenant be broken.

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As we'll see, that difference is the difference between salvation and damnation, between heaven and hell. Every one of us deserve to suffer the consequences of a broken covenant with God.

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We've all broken covenant with God. We've all broken the commandments, right? But Jesus is the one who suffers those consequences for us.

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As we're going to see later, we're going to spell out each one of these covenants. Starting with the creation covenant or the

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Adamic covenant. This is the initial covenant made with Adam in Genesis chapter 2, verses 15 and 17.

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As Romans 5 makes clear, Adam entered into that covenant as the representative of the entire human race.

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Its blessings or curses would fall on us all. So Adam, the word

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Adam in Hebrew is man, it actually means man. So he's the first man. He represents mankind.

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So as Adam goes, so goes the rest of mankind and we know what happened, right? The blessing was implied, the promise of eternal life or the curse of death.

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The stipulation was to refrain from eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil as well as working, guarding the garden.

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Now did Adam accomplish that? No, he failed and the curse came upon him and his posterity, which is what

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Romans chapter 5 is all about. So in Genesis chapter 3, Adam and Eve's loyalty to God was tested.

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They failed the test and broke the stipulations. The curses followed immediately and have continued to work themselves out through all of history and each in our own lives.

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So after Adam, after Eve tempts Adam and he bites the fruit, okay, now

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God comes into the garden and pronounces a curse. First on the serpent, then on Eve, then on Adam.

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Now all Adam had to do in being faced with the serpent, tempting

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Eve and talking to Eve, if he didn't know what to do, let me ask you this, anybody who's had a father growing up with a dad, because not everybody has, right?

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If you didn't know how to do something, where would you go to find out to do it? You ask your dad.

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What did you say? YouTube. YouTube. Yeah, YouTube has replaced dad, right? So where would you go?

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You go to your father. Dad, how do I do this? Okay, here's how you do it, right? So Adam's faced with an enemy into the garden.

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In fact, it was a cherub, it was an angel, right? All he had to do is go, father, what should

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I do? Boom, this is what you do. Kick him out. Speak my word to him.

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Get him out. Protect your wife. He didn't do that. He listened to the voice of his wife, right?

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He listened to Eve. So at that point, it was a picture of autonomy. I'll decide now what to do.

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Not relying on God. I'll rely on what she told me. In fact, this is talked about, yes, actually,

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Paul made that a policy. A woman should not have authority over a man. And unfortunately, in the absence of true male leadership, women will fill that vacuum.

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And that's where the problem lies, right? We don't have enough men to stand up and take responsibility for the covenant responsibility that we have, right?

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This is talked about in our confession, chapter 7, paragraph 1. Though rational creatures are responsible to obey

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God as their creator, the distance between God and these creatures is so great that they could never have attained the reward of life except by God's voluntary condescension.

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He has been pleased to express this through a covenantal framework. So this covenant that Adam broke will never be able to unbreak that covenant, will never be able to keep it perfectly.

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And even if we didn't eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, like we learned a couple of weeks ago, that would only have given us perpetual life, not eternal life.

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There would always have been the threat of touching, eating that fruit, and dying, right?

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That's why when we get into the new covenant, which we'll see in a few slides later, the new covenant promises us eternal life, not based on our obedience, based on God's will.

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So what does this particular covenant promise? This promises eternal life or death.

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Do these things, you'll live. Don't do these things, you'll die. Anybody want to be in a covenant like that?

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Yeah, nobody should want to be in a covenant like that, right? So the next covenant is the covenant of redemption.

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Now this is different than the covenants with Adam, Noah, David, Abram. This is an inter -Trinitarian covenant, and the reason why

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I put it second, you'll see it in a minute. This is an inter -Trinitarian covenant in which the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit agree together to accomplish the redemption of a people.

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This covenant is implied in Genesis 3 .15 and referred to in other Old and New Testament passages,

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Isaiah 49, Psalm 2, Psalm 110, John 5 and 2, and Revelation 5.

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This is the covenant in which Father, Son, and Spirit enter into a covenant relationship before creation, where the

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Father promises to give Jesus a people, an elect people, known as a bride.

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This is like a marriage covenant. He gives these people to Jesus. Jesus promises to die on their behalf so that He takes on their covenant curses, and the

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Holy Spirit promises to bring them to life and walk them down the aisle in preparation for the wedding supper of the

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Lamb. It's Father, Son, and Holy Spirit working together in perfect harmony to bring about the salvation of His people.

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It's unbreakable. And this is why other theologies, Arminian theology, Provisionist theology, they have

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God choosing everyone in Christ before the foundation of the world, you have Jesus dying for everyone, hoping that they're going to choose

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Him, and you have the Holy Spirit trying to woo whoever He can to Jesus in hopes that somebody's going to get saved.

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No. The biblical covenant is Father, Son, and Spirit are going to guarantee salvation because it's their work and their work alone.

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All that the Father gives me will come to me. And whoever comes to me, I will no wise cast out, but raise him up on the last day.

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For it is my Father's will that I shall lose none of all those He has given me. None.

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None will be lost that were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. That's big.

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What's interesting about Genesis 3 .15 and what suggests that there is a covenant behind these words is that in the midst of the curse on the serpent,

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God Himself undertakes obligations and makes promises. This covenant becomes the basis for the covenant of grace or the covenant of promise.

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In other words, the new covenant and its outlines are worked out through the rest of Scripture. So what does

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God promise Adam in Genesis 3 .15? I'm going to send one who's going to crush the head of the serpent.

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He's going to get wounded, he's going to get nipped in the heels, but ultimately he is going to crush the head of the serpent, the proto -evangelical, the first mention of the gospel in all of Scripture.

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This is the promise that Adam and Eve received right after they sinned, after God pronounced the curse.

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They weren't seeking out salvation, in fact they were running away and hiding. God sought them out and promised something to them that they didn't deserve.

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This is the essence of the new covenant. We are being promised something that we don't deserve. All we need to do is trust

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God in the midst of it. Another chapter in our confession says, chapter 7, paragraph 3, this covenant, new covenant, is revealed in the gospel, this covenant of redemption is revealed in the gospel.

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It was revealed first of all to Adam in the promise of salvation through the seed of the woman. After that it was revealed step by step until the full revelation of it was completed in the

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New Testament. The covenant is based on the eternal covenant transaction between the Father and the

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Son concerning the redemption of the elect. Only through the grace of this covenant have those saved from among the descendants of fallen

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Adam obtained life and blessed immortality. Humanity is now utterly incapable of being accepted by God on the same terms on which

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Adam was accepted in his state of innocence. Do you understand what that's saying?

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In other words, after Adam fell, we are now all born in a state of sin is where we get the doctrine of original sin.

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Everything we do is tainted, touched by sin in some way, shape, or form. We cannot earn our way into heaven.

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But thankfully, by God the Father, through Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit, he raises us to new life, unites us with Jesus who's the sin bearer and the covenant keeper.

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So now we have eternal life because of Christ. This is also theological terms called the pactum salutis, the covenant of salvation, covenant of redemption.

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This promises, the covenant of redemption promises an elect people and a bride for Christ.

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These are the people who are going to be given to Jesus in time. Next covenant is the covenant with Noah.

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Following Adam and Eve's exile from Eden in Genesis 4 -6, Genesis 4 -6 describes a creation that becomes increasingly corrupt as the number of sinners multiplies on the earth.

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Good scripture to memorize is Genesis 6 -5. God saw that the intentions of man's heart was only evil continually.

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Only and continually. Only evil continually. That's without stopping. So when somebody says, oh, mankind is born in, you know, it's kind of good.

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Only evil continually. But for the grace of God restraining the evil in man's heart, he would be worse off than he is.

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We can say that even Hitler loved his mother. He wasn't as bad as he could be because of God's restraining grace.

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Wickedness of all sorts is prevalent, prompting God to destroy almost everything that he has made with a flood.

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Now if man was kind of good, would God have to destroy the entire world in a flood?

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No. Only Noah's family and representatives of the animal kingdom are spared. Out of his great mercy, the

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Lord saves a remnant of people, of creation. But only a remnant. Not all of it.

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This teaches us that we can be confident of God's grace, but we must never, ever, ever take advantage of it.

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We don't deserve it. So in this covenant, God postpones final judgment until a future date.

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In other words, God preserves the earth and a people which will bring forth what? The one who will crush the serpent's head.

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This is another unfolding. Each one of these covenants builds on the other and unfolds us to get to where we are today.

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Like the covenant made with Adam, the Noahic covenant in Genesis 8 and 9 is a covenant made with Noah and his family, but yet affects all of humanity.

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It's one of common grace. God says, I am not going to destroy the earth anymore.

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I will never flood it again. Do believers benefit from that blessing?

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Yes. Do unbelievers benefit from that blessing? Yes. So this is a royal grant.

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God is giving us the earth. He says he'll never flood it again and both believers and unbelievers benefit by that.

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So it's one of common grace and it marks a new beginning for the world after the flood.

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So God creates the world, it falls, God deconstructs the world and recreates it again.

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He deconstructs it with the flood and says, okay, I'm going to start with Noah and his family and the animals and we're going to recreate the earth.

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God promises never again to use a flood to destroy all life. The Lord promises that the seasonal cycle will continue while the earth remains and Noah is commanded to replenish the earth, to be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth.

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You'll notice that the same command given to Adam, be fruitful, multiply, expand is the same given to Noah.

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And shortly after Noah, we'll read about the Tower of Babel where instead of going out and conquering the world, let's get together, let's convene and build a tower.

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God's like, no, I'm going to destroy the tower and I'm going to scatter you myself. So what does this covenant promise?

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It promises delayed judgment, preservation of land and people to what?

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Unfold the redemptive history and the plan of God that will culminate in Messiah.

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Next is the Abrahamic covenant. This covenant in Genesis 15 picks up God's original purpose with Adam, the creation of a people who will display his glory as vice regent image bearers on earth.

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However, it's not made with all of humanity, but with Abram, Abraham and his seed.

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God does make the pet demands on Abraham's obedience, but it's fundamentally a covenant of grace.

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Now I put a little question mark there because there's, there's widespread division, even in reformed circles on if the

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Abrahamic covenant is a covenant of works or a covenant of grace. All I can tell you is this, and thank goodness for past Chris, these are all covenants of promise.

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The promise may or may not be dependent on our obedience. I see the covenant of, um, with Abraham as, as, as one of grace, but Abraham still had to do certain things to have it fulfilled.

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He had to sleep with his wife. If he didn't, there would be no eventual seed, right? So some guys look at it as a covenant of works.

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Other guys look at it as a covenant of grace. Thankfully we can call it a covenant of promise. It has a promise in it that we're going to benefit from.

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So God does make demands on, uh, on Abraham's obedience, but this fundamentally is a covenant of grace.

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According to Michael Lawrence, God promises Abraham a people and a place under God's benevolent rule and the blessings of this covenant will eventually flow to all the earth.

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It says, I will, uh, to your seed and through your seed, I will bless all the nations of the earth.

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Yes, Jerry. Yeah. So to repeat what Jerry said, uh, each one of these scenarios is like a garden situation, right?

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It's a recreation of the original Eden. Okay. We're going to, it's kind of like a do over, right?

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Okay. Adam screwed up. We got Noah. Noah screwed up. Now we got Abraham. We're going to start this process over again.

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Now the sign of this covenant of Abraham is circumcision. A lot of people think that the mosaic, the sign of the mosaic covenant is circumcision.

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We're going to see later on that it's actually the Sabbath Galatians three 16. This is where Paul talks about the covenant with Abraham, Abraham.

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Now the promise promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed singular. He does not say and two seeds plural as referring to many, but rather to one and to your seed.

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That is Christ Jesus. What I am saying is this, the law which came 430 years later does not invalidate a covenant previously ratified by God so as to nullify the promise.

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So even though the Israelites broke God's law, okay. The promise was to Abraham and his seed for if the inheritance is based on law, it is no longer based on a promise, but God has granted it to Abraham by means of a promise.

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So as long as Abraham fulfills the covenant obligation, the promise will eventually be to this.

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Well, the seed is the one promise through Abraham's Lloyd's and that seed is going to bring blessing to the entire earth.

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And that ends up being, again, on the unfolding plan of God. This brings forth

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Jesus who gives us the new covenant, okay. This promise, we get a seed, land, nation, and blessing.

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That's what Abraham is promised. Next covenant, the

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Mosaic covenant. This covenant is established in Exodus 20 through 25 and reestablished in Deuteronomy.

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For those of you who don't know, Deuteronomy is just second law. It's the second giving of the law after the

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Israelites broke the law in the wilderness before they go into the promised land.

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God tells Moses to give the law a second time to all the people so that they know when they get into the land, this is the law they need to live by.

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And it builds on the Abrahamic covenant by working out in detail what God's vice regent should look like.

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A holy kingdom who blessed the earth by their very distinctiveness in distinction from the seed of the serpent.

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However, this is a covenant of works. The Mosaic covenant, the Adamic covenant is a covenant of works.

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The Mosaic covenant is a covenant of works also. So Israel was given these promises and given the law, okay, to make themselves distinct from the other nations around them.

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Israel's job was to be a pastor to the other nations, to show them what a nation under God's rule and law looks like.

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If they kept that law, they would have been blessed over all the nations. Even though they did break the law, they were still blessed more than the other nations.

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But then they were eventually cursed because they rejected God completely and God brought in Syria and Babylon and destroyed most of them, right?

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So Israel's job was to be a light to the Gentiles, to show them what a nation under God's blessing looks like.

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But again, that's conditioned on human obedience. Therein lies the problem. The judges, successors to Moses, are the continuing covenant mediators.

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Through the sign of circumcision, though the sign of circumcision continues, God declares in Exodus 31 that the corporate sign of this covenant is the

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Sabbath. The blessing of this covenant was the continued possession of the promised land while the curse of the covenant was exile.

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It was conditioned on their obedience. Anybody see why this could have relevance in today's news cycle?

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Anybody know of a war going on? How does this apply? What do you think?

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There are a couple of people saying, that's Israel's land no matter what. It was promised to them, can't take it away.

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What was the Mosaic covenant based on? Their obedience to the covenant.

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Do you realize that Jerusalem is the LGBT capital of the world?

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They've turned their back on God. I'm not saying that God's going to take the land away, but if they don't obey the stipulations of the covenant, they're going to be cursed.

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Although that covenant came to an end in 70 AD anyway. So God's people believe in God's son.

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That's God's final revelation to all humanity and Israel. They rejected their

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Messiah. The Mosaic covenant is significant because in it, God promises to make

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Israel a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Israel was to be God's light to the dark world around them.

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They were to be separate and called that nation so that everyone around them would know that they worshiped

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Yahweh. This is what a nation who worships

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Yahweh looks like. Look at the blessing we have. Look at the protection we have. Look at the provision we have.

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Yes, Jerry. Yeah, yeah. They were to be a light to the Gentiles.

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In the world at that point, you had two types of people, Jews and Gentiles, Israelites and Gentiles.

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You have those who came from the 12 tribes of Israel and everyone else, they were known as Gentiles. So, again,

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Israel was supposed to be a light to the Gentiles, a witness to them. The same way the church is to be a witness to the people around us to show what a life committed to Jesus looks like, right?

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So where were we? It's significant because it's here that Israel sees the Mosaic law to be a schoolmaster pointing the way towards the coming

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Christ. The Mosaic law would reveal to people their sinfulness and their need for a savior and it is the

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Mosaic law that Christ himself said that he did not come to abolish but to fulfill.

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Now, the New Testament, 2 Corinthians chapter 3 says this is a covenant of death. The covenant with Moses could never bring life because it was written on tablets of stone.

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The new covenant, however, is going to be written not on tablets of stone but on the tablets of our heart.

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It's going to be from the inside out. That's the big difference. And what is the covenant, the

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Mosaic covenant promise? Blessing through obedience and forgiveness through sacrifice.

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The sacrificial system was to show the Israelites that there would be a sacrifice that they could make for their sin.

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Ultimately, we're going to see Jesus who becomes the sacrifice because he's what? He's the king who enters into the covenant with his father and unilaterally accomplishes it.

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Then we have the Davidic covenant. This covenant is established in 2 Samuel 7 and gives the nation responsibility to reflect

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God's glory particularly to the king. The king now represents the whole nation and so is called the son of God just as Israel had been at the

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Exodus and Adam was at the beginning. So David is now the son of God. The king in Israel.

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And as the king goes, so goes the nation. That's important to know.

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He's kind of, he's like the head of Israel. Not like the head. He is the head of Israel. The vice regency is once again focused on a single person.

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He's called to fulfill the Mosaic covenant and the covenant promises discipline if he does not.

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Still, the covenant remains a unilateral covenant of grace. And again, I put a question mark there because lots of guys disagree with that.

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They say, no, this was a covenant of works dependent on David's obedience. So they call it a unilateral covenant of grace since God personally guarantees the

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Davidic inheritance of the throne of Israel. The sign of the covenant is the birth of a son. So God promises

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David a son who will sit on the throne of Israel. Second Samuel 7, when your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers,

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I will raise up your offspring after you who shall come from your body and I will establish his kingdom.

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He shall build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father and he shall be to me a son.

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This is very much similar to what Psalm 2 says. I have installed my king on Zion's hill.

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This promises what? A messianic king. A king who's going to sit on David's throne forever.

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Finally, we get to the new covenant. This final covenant is one of grace and it's promised in Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36.

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If you haven't read those chapters, I urge you to read them. It's very important to understand what the

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Old Testament writings, the prophets, what it says about the new covenant. It is not fulfilled and established until Christ comes who picks up and fulfills all the various strands of the previous covenants.

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So Jeremiah and Ezekiel both promise Israel that there's coming a day where God's going to give us a new covenant, not like the old covenant.

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This is a separate covenant, different than the covenant with Moses. It's very important to understand that because there's people who say, no, it's still the same covenant, just two different administrations of that covenant.

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These are two entirely different covenants. The prophets explicitly contrast this covenant with the old

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Mosaic covenant. It's not like that covenant. Unlike that one, this new covenant would not and could not be broken.

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This is the covenant Jesus declares He's establishing in Matthew 26, 27 through 30, through the shedding of His blood on the cross.

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This is the new covenant in my blood, praise

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God. It's not our blood, it's His blood. In fact,

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Jesus mediates this covenant by standing before God as our representative substitute in Romans 5. He guarantees the covenant by taking on the curse of Genesis 3 and the

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Mosaic covenant through His death on the cross. Those who trust in Christ are therefore no longer under the old covenant's curse, but are free to enjoy the blessings of forgiveness and reconciliation with God.

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Accordingly, the sign of the new life of this covenant is baptism, Romans chapter 6. So the covenant of redemption basically is what

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God's going to do. The covenants on earth are what God does to get to what

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He promised to do in the covenant of redemption. And again, as the King goes, so does the nation.

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Only the King of the new covenant is Jesus. And as Jesus goes, He fulfills all of the covenant's obligations, so does the nation.

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Everybody united to Him in His family are going to get the blessings of Jesus' obedience.

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So covenants of promise, Ephesians chapter 2, verses 11 and 13.

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Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles, most of us in here are Gentiles, not all, you

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Gentiles in the flesh, called the uncircumcision by what's called the circumcision, so the Gentiles are called that by the

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Jews, which is made in the flesh by hands. Remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

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But now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

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So all those covenants previous to Christ for the Israelites were for the

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Israelites. Although the Abrahamic seed, He's going to bless all nations, up until that point

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Israel were the people of God. They were chosen out of all the other nations. They failed, same as Adam, and now the promise comes to the entire world through the new covenant.

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That's why we were strangers to those promises and now because of Christ we're not. So here it goes.

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The promise of eternal life with the Adamic covenant, the promise of an elect people, the promise of delayed judgment, the promise of a seed, the promise of blessing through obedience and forgiveness through sacrifice, the promise of a messianic king, in Jesus all these promises are fulfilled.

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He accomplishes each and every one on our behalf. So let's look at all these covenants once again.

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Covenant of redemption, the Adamic covenant, the Noahic covenant, the Abrahamic covenant, the

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Mosaic covenant, the Davidic covenant, the new covenant, in Jesus. Jesus as the perfect image bearer of God, He crushes the head of the serpent and protects

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His bride from harm. He succeeds perfectly where the first Adam fails. Jesus is the ark of God.

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Everyone in Christ will be saved the same way everyone who was in the ark that Noah built would be saved. Jesus spares

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His people from judgment and then floods the world in righteousness with the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the promised seed to Abraham who secures the land, makes the nation holy, circumcising each of His people and blesses people from every tribe, tongue, people, and language.

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Jesus perfectly keeps the law and becomes the great high priest who enters into the by His own blood, making atonement for all of His people, securing their salvation.

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Jesus is the perfect vice regent. He's the perfect son of God, the messianic king of kings who builds

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His church, sits down on the throne to rule and reign until His enemies are made a footstool for His feet.

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All the covenants of promise and of works and are graced are fulfilled because of Jesus.

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Jesus is the last Adam. He is the promise keeper. Where we are the promise breakers,

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He is the promise keeper. Yes, the covenant of redemption, the inter -Trinitarian covenant where the

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Father promises the Son a bride, Jesus dies on behalf of His bride, the

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Holy Spirit raises those people who were promised up, the elect, walks them down the aisle.

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That's your sanctification. Walks us down the aisle to prepare us for the wedding supper of the

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Lamb. Any good questions?

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The Abrahamic one and the Davidic one. Just understand this, there's widespread disagreement on all of them.

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There's no unilateral position in the Reformed community about whether there are covenants of grace or covenants of works or both.

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Some say it's works and grace. What we know for sure is that the

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Adamic covenant is a covenant of works and the New Covenant is a covenant of grace.

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That's where everybody has widespread agreement on. In between, they're in different spots.

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That's why thankfully for Pastor Chris he says these are all covenants of promise. Obviously it's right out of Ephesians.

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Now, well, you helped highlight it. Some people are going to say that the

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Abrahamic covenant is a covenant of grace. Why? Because Abraham was asleep while God walked through the pieces together.

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But Abraham still had to circumcise his children and he had to sleep with his wife or the promise doesn't happen.

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So which is it? That's where a little bit of the confusion comes in.

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Yes? Each one of these is a stepping stone that builds on one another that moves us ultimately to the

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New Covenant. I'll get you in a second, Jerry. Ultimately moves us to the New Covenant. But think about the

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New Covenant. It's a covenant. It's a unilateral covenant between Father, Son, and Spirit. But do we have obligations in that covenant?

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Can we just say, well, Jesus died for my sins. I can do whatever I want. It's not conditioned on me. What did we just go through in 1

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John? This is how they'll know you love me. That you keep my commandments. There's still an obligation if your heart really has been changed.

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The law doesn't become a burden to you. Becomes your desire. And you'll want to keep God's commands because your heart has been circumcised.

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So people look at it and say, well, you don't have to keep the law. You know, we're antinomians. You just jettison the law. It's not based on that.

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Your salvation is not based on the law. But your obligation is to the King, right?

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So we're a royal nation, correct? Royalty demands loyalty, right?

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You need to be loyal to the King. That's how you prove that you're in the new covenant, right? The fruit of your salvation is the works.

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They display the fact that you have a new heart, right? Whereas prior to your conversion, you might not have struggled with sin.

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I do what I do. What's the big deal? I'm a good guy. For the most part, I do good things. Now, wait a second.

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Now, if you sin, it's like you feel this conviction. In fact, you start to battle with it. You know,

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I got this internal thing going on in my head. And I'm like, I got to get that out of my head. Stop.

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But that wouldn't have happened had the Spirit not circumcised my heart and resides within me. I would just glide, go with it.

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I'm a good guy, you know? But no, the new covenant comes with the obligation to reflect

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God to the people around us, like Israel. They failed, right? We fail too.

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Ultimately, we're rescued by Jesus, but that doesn't do away with our obligation.

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Thankfully, it's not conditioned on that, but that's what should motivate us. The fact that He died in my place loves me to death.

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That's why I'm loyal to the King, not to any one of these earthly rulers, not any government, not any person, not any worldview other than the

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King. He's my King. I'm loyal to Him. Royalty demands loyalty.

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Yes, Jerry? Thank you. That's how you would miss out on the promises if you don't have faith in them.

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Right? So, earlier in the presentation, I said

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God deals with people covenantally, and that's going to show us why we're saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone.

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That's a covenantal aspect of what God's done for us. So, where Abraham's works were the condition upon which he would receive the blessing or curses,

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God now, as not the suzerain vassal, but the suzerain to zuzerain, comes in and says,

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I'm going to accept the curses of the covenant. I'm going to bear them upon myself and give them as a royal grant to my bride.

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Right? So, everything works covenantally. So, our works are important, but they're not what seal the covenant.

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I'll do a Pastor Jensen on you, right? Are we saved by works? No, no.

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Yes. Whose works? Jesus's works. Right? We're not saved by our own works.

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We are saved by works. They're just the works of Jesus on our behalf. Thank God for that. If you don't have a savior, you're going to stand before God and have to bear the curse, because you did not do everything you were supposed to do.

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Somewhere along the lines, you've lied. Somewhere along the lines, you've stolen. Somewhere along the lines, you've committed adultery in your mind.

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You've committed murder in your heart. You've broken the commandments. No one's loved God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength and loved their neighbor as themselves all the time.

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We've all fallen short. That's the beauty of the new covenant. Jesus says, okay,

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I'm going to bear those sins on me at the cross so that when I die, you die.

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When I'm buried, you're buried. But when I'm raised again, you're raised with me. Yes, Jerry? Sure.

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So what I think that displays, that displays the need for our knowledge to be dependent on God for everything.

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The moment we think that I'm not dependent on God for salvation, I'm good.

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That's what the rich young ruler said. Jesus says, there's no one good but God. Now, if you can get that revelation into your head,

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I mean, that's... Think about that statement for a minute. No one is good but God.

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No one is good but God. He's the only good one.

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We were created to be dependent on God for everything. God allows us, when

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I say us, Adam and Eve in the garden, to be tested and to show that their dependence needs to be on God.

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And the moment they don't depend on God, now they're going to incur the curse. Right?

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They failed the test. They didn't have to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but at some point in time, because they're mutable, they're not immutable like God who can't change, we're mutable creatures, human beings are mutable.

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They fell into sin, representing all of us who would have fell into sin as well. But here,

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God, the moment they sin, comes in, pronounces the curses, but also pronounces the solution.

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They weren't asking for it. They weren't seeking for it. They had no desire for it. God sought them out, and that's the essence of the new covenant.

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Right? God is the one who comes after sheep. Jesus came to seek and save the lost.

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Right? He's the seeker. We're not. We're not seeking. There's none who seek after God.

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You put those two verses together, Jesus comes to seek and save the lost, and there is none who seek after God.

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Jesus is the one who's pursuing us. We're doing our job and running away until he catches us, changes our hearts, and pulls us into.

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No one can come to the Father lest they be drawn. What does that word drawn mean? Well, in the book of Acts, they were dragging

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Paul and Silas into the courts. That word drag is the same word for draw. He's pulling us to him.

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I've said this so many times, I can't count. I would never choose Christianity as a religion. Die to myself, pick up my cross, follow him.

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Who would want to do that as an unregenerate human being? I want to live for myself. I want to eat, drink, and be merry.

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Tomorrow we die. It's only because of God's incredible mercy, grace, and love that he would track down a sinner who deserves his full wrath poured out on them and says,

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I'm going to love you in a way that you will never comprehend on this side of humanity.

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Yes, yeah. And because it's the unilateral work of God, the new covenant is a guarantee, right?

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And he gives us his spirit as a seal and a guarantee of our future inheritance. That's why when people say you can lose your salvation, well, if you have a new heart, you're born of imperishable seed.

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You were given to Christ. Really what you're saying is not that you could lose your salvation, you're saying that Jesus could lose you.

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That shows disunity in the Godhead. You have the father choosing a people, giving them to Jesus, Jesus not being able to keep them from falling and present them before the throne spotless, right?

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And what do people say? Well, Paul says in Romans, no one can pluck them,

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John says, no one can pluck them out of my hand. No one can pluck them out of my father's hand. And you know what the people who think you can lose your salvation say?

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You could walk away. Well, it just said nothing is going to pluck you out. Oh, yeah, it's not going to pluck you out, you just walk out.

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Really is that, you think that's what John is saying? That, oh, yeah, don't worry about anybody plucking you out, but, you know, got to be careful of your own heart going astray.

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But why would your own heart go astray if you have a new heart? That's why you have to read Exodus 36 and Jeremiah 31.

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I'm going to give you a new heart and compel you to follow my law.

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Sealed, done. I will, I will, I will, I will, I will. Then you will remember your sins and your evil ways and you will loathe yourselves.

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Right? That's what I'm constantly reminded of when I sin. It's like, gosh, am

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I worthy of the calling? No, I'm not, I'm not, but I have faith that he did it and it motivates me to strive, to strive, to share

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God's gospel, to walk worthy of what he's done. We're not worthy in and of ourselves.

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We can't be. We have the perfect righteousness of Christ. That's the gospel. You know, so it's mind -blowing when you think about it.

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Like, this is like the warden going into, you know, a prison full of like murderous guys, like gang guys, and saying, you, you, you, come with me.

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I'm going to put my son in prison to serve your sins, but you're free to go.

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Come with me. Like, are you out of your mind? You would, like, what's going on with the warden that you would do that?

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Out of his mind to do something like that. That's what God did for us. Only worse, on a much greater, grander scale.

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This was an overview. This was not in -depth. There's been books written on, there's been hundreds of books written on each of these covenants so we could spend forever going through this, just like any chapter in Scripture we could spend forever going through.

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So I hope that helped. It'll be put up on the site later if you want to watch, but let's, let's close in prayer.