The New Covenant Part 2 - Baptist Covenant Theology Series

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Baptist Covenant Theology Week 13 - The New Covenant (Part 3)

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Okay, so we have some more work to do tonight on the

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New Covenant, and there was a handout early on sometime, it might have been the first week or second week, when

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I talked about the differences between Baptist covenant theology and Presbyterianism and Dispensationalism, and on that handout it talked about how the

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New Covenant is eternal, spiritual, internal, so eternal, spiritual, internal, unconditional, and secure.

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Now we come to that word at the end, unconditioned, what do we mean by that?

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What do we mean that the New Covenant is unconditional, the covenant of grace is unconditioned?

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Well, we mean that there is no condition for us to fulfill. It has all been done for us, so John Bunyan says this, the condition was made with one, and also accomplished by him alone, and not by several, yet in the nature and for the everlasting deliverance of man, even by one man,

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Jesus Christ, as is clear from Romans 5, 1 through 17, etc.

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in Zechariah 9, 11, the Lord saith to Christ, as for thee also, by the blood of thy covenant was that thou shouldest spill thy blood, which having been done in the account of God, saying he,

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I according to my condition have let go the prisoners, or sent them out of the pit wherein is no water.

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In other words, the condition was fulfilled and met by Christ.

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In other words, we can say this one, the covenant of grace is conditional for Christ, insofar as he has to fulfill all righteousness and give his life as a ransom for many, and this he did, okay?

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But is it unconditional? I mean, isn't there a requirement on our part? Like what's the requirement on our part?

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Yeah, yeah. So in one sense, right, there's a very real sense that we do say and command all people, the

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Lord does, repent and believe the gospel. This is God's requirement, and maybe in one sort of sense you could say it was a condition, but even faith and repentance are not mustered up within ourselves to meet that condition, but even faith and repentance are gifts of grace.

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Does that make sense? So this truly is a covenant of grace.

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We'll talk maybe more about that later, maybe next week, but tonight, I promised you last week, we really need to jump into a couple of Old Testament passages.

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So first, it's on your sheet there, but let's turn to both of these. First, let's turn to Ezekiel 36.

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Ezekiel 36, and then we'll flip backwards to Jeremiah.

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So Ezekiel 36 verse 24. I will take you from the nations and gather you from all the countries and bring you into your own land.

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I will sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness and from all your idols

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I will cleanse you and I will give you a new heart and a new spirit. A new spirit

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I will put within you and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

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A lot of I wills there, isn't it? A lot of things there that God is promising to do.

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Who's he promising to do that to? Well, verse 22 says, therefore say to the house of Israel.

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Right? Keep that thought in the back of your mind. Now, I don't know if we'll come back here, but we will keep your

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Bibles open to Jeremiah 31. That's quoted in Hebrews 8, which we looked at last week and we read at the beginning of class just a minute ago.

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But Jeremiah 31, this is the key passage, if you will, of the promise of the new covenant in the

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Old Testament. So Jeremiah 31, 31 through 34.

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Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when

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I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the

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Lord, but this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the

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Lord. I will put my law within them and I will write it on their hearts and I will be their

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God and they shall be my people and no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying, know the

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Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.

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So this is the promise of the new covenant. Now who is this with? According to the text, who is this with?

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I'm not asking a trick question. What does the text say in verse 31? Yeah, the house of Israel and the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

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So I want to talk to you about tonight a little bit of the hermeneutical means.

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Hermeneutics is like how we study the scriptures, how we read the

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Bible. So I really have some thoughts here and I hope they're helpful, but I want to talk for a moment about Israel.

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A .W. Pink was helpful with this, but the overall point I want to make is this. In the

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Bible, sometimes Israel is used of physical Israel and sometimes it's used of what we'll call spiritual

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Israel or true Israel. Now Pink points out in Genesis 32 28, which says this, then he said your name shall no longer be called

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Jacob, but Israel. For you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed. So the

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Hebrew name there, Israel, means he strives with God, but this is a name,

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Israel, is just a name that God chose to give to a man, Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, but A .W.

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Pink points out, I think he's right, it's simply a name of grace in the sense that God gave

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Jacob this name out of his own pleasure as a special identification of Jacob.

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And now the physical children of Jacob, which are the 12 sons, you understand the 12 tribes of Israel, they're identified as Israel, right?

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It makes sense, so there's a physical connection there. But what we see in the scriptures, and I'll show this to you tonight, is it is applied more than just a physical

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Israel in the Bible, all right? So let's look at some places. So here's an example.

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Psalm, we can look at a lot of places, but here's just a few pertinent passages.

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Psalm 73 one says this, truly God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart.

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Now think about that for just a moment. Was all physical Israel pure in heart?

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Of course not, right? So what is the Psalmist equating Israel with here?

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He's equating Israel with the pure in heart, right? So those who are, who is

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Israel? Those who are pure in heart. Now the issue is, in the

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Old Testament, basically 99 .9 percent, I haven't done the calculations, but you understand, of spiritual

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Israel was also physical Israel. Now you're gonna get blessed tonight. I've almost forgot about it.

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You've got marker board here, all right? I didn't send you guys this picture, so you're just gonna have to listen very carefully to the explanation.

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Okay, so here's my drawing. I'm sorry that it's so bad, but here's what's going on.

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In the far picture over there, there's two circles, you see them? The big circle is physical

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Israel. That's the physical lineage of Abraham, right?

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Well, the physical lineage of Jacob, okay? So the physical lineage of Jacob is noted in that big circle, but is all the physical lineage of Jacob in the

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Old Testament believers? Are they all pure in heart? No. I mean, read the

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Old Testament, right? They're not. So what I have in there is another circle which says, spiritually, they're pure in heart.

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Those who look to Christ, the coming of the Messiah in faith, true believers, the remnant, if you will, within physical

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Israel. What you may not be able to see from way back there, and because my drawing is so poor, is that circle also extends outside physical

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Israel. How come? Yeah, because in the

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Old Testament, you may not be able to read those names, in the Old Testament, there are foreigners who believe, such as, yeah, there was

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Egyptians that came, there was people we know by name, like Ruth.

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I put Nebuchadnezzar, question mark, we'll talk about that, you know, we'll go back and forth, but remember

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Naaman, okay? Remember Rahab? So within spiritual

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Israel, there is, in the Old Testament, majority were who?

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Majority were within physical Israel. It was the exception, right, that you had people outside of Israel believing.

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But if they came and they believed, they were looking forward to the Messiah. Does that make sense? Okay, we're gonna read some passages in a minute.

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In the New Testament, okay, you still have, does physical Israel still exist today?

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Yes, right? I mean, I'm not talking about, I mean, yes, the physical people who are physically

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Jews exist today, of course they do. But now I've drawn the circle, and it now comes out this way a little bit.

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Why? Because it includes a lot more, what? A lot more Gentiles, a lot more non -Jews.

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What about the Jews? Well, they're included too, who what? Who believe, right?

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Well, that's the point of Romans 11, in my opinion, you're not, we don't forsake the

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Jews, we bring them Christ, right? In fact, we honor and love the Jews most when we give them

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Christ, okay? So we preach the gospel to them, and Jesus in Ephesians 2 has united, this is the mystery fulfilled in the

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New Testament, is that this has become one new body, not by, like in the Old Testament, it was like, okay, you guys got to become

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Jews. So in the New Testament, you're like, oh, you guys got to become Jews. No, the Gentiles don't become

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Jews, and the Jews don't become Gentiles. The Jews and the Gentiles are called together into one body in Christ, does that make sense?

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Okay, so if someone can draw that better, I'd like to see. So the church doesn't replace

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Israel, but is the fulfillment of Israel, does that make sense? So let's look at some passages, some more for us, 1st

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Corinthians chapter, I usually don't do this because we're recording, but 1st Corinthians chapter 10, verse 18,

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I'm sorry, here, okay, does it look really good?

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I'll send you a picture later. Alex, a redraw a coin. Oh, oh yeah, that's right, oh yeah, yeah, that's right,

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I'll send it in a message. Okay, Alex, 1st Corinthians 10, verse 18.

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Now, it's interesting, you're like, what in the world is going on in that verse?

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That is not translated well, in my opinion, for our purposes, and it's not translated well in many translations.

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Actually, the best translation of those first few words is to King James, because the

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Greek literally reads blepite ton Israel kata sarka, so blepite is like see or behold, and then ton

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Israel, Israel, kata sarka, kata is like according, according to, we translate it, and sarka is flesh, so what it's literally saying is, behold

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Israel according to the flesh. Now, the only point I'm bringing up here is, why would

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Paul give that identifying marker?

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Why would he say Israel, now listen, I'm talking about Israel, the one according to the flesh, why would he say that?

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Well, no, yeah, they're not the ones that believe in Jesus.

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There's Israel according to the flesh, and then, I've got this on your sheet, Galatians 6 16 says, and as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them and upon the

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Israel of God. There is an Israel that's according to the flesh, we're talking about this

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Israel, physical Israel, and there's the Israel of God, which is who? This Israel, right?

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Not just believing Jews, right? Believing Jews, believing Gentiles, they are identified as, this is the new covenant people, we say the church, and that's right, but when you read the

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Old Testament, so some people, you know, they're like, well, you don't see the church in the

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Old Testament. I'm like, yeah, you do, it's the people of God, right? I'll talk about more of that later.

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You have in Romans 9, 6 through 8, this is on your sheet, but it is not as though the

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Word of God has failed, for not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.

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Now what does that mean? Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.

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Huh? Yeah, there's two Israels. There's children of the flesh, this could be very important for Baptists too, by the way, if we push this a little further, there's children according to the flesh, and there's children according to the promise.

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Verse 7, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but through Isaac shall your offspring be made.

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This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, it's not the children of the flesh who are the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring.

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So who is that? That's true Israel, right? That's children of the promise. And then

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I'll mention Romans 2, 28 and 29. For no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical, but a

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Jew is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the

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Spirit, not by the letter. His praise is not from man, but from God.

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That's interesting. So what's the point in all this? The big picture point is, so I got two points.

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One, big picture. Two, back to our text in Jeremiah, you probably forgot we were there. But the big picture point is this, the church is typified, that means pointed to, alluded to, prophesied, much more in the

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Old Testament than you probably realize. The default kind of state in our area is dispensationalism, okay?

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And it has taught us to put such a hard line between church and Israel that I think it really messes up how we read the

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Scriptures, okay? So when you're reading from the Old Testament, look for places that Israel, even

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Jerusalem and Zion, they're pointing to their fulfillment in the church. Now don't misread me.

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Some of you may hear this, you may think, are we trying to come back under the Mosaic Covenant?

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No! Don't you understand? True Israel has always been, even though there was different administrations of the covenant of works, true

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Israel has always been included in what? The covenant of grace. We don't go back to the law, we don't go back to the feasts and those things, because all those pointed forward to what?

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To Christ, the substance. We don't go back to the shadow, we got the light, right?

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And so, but that's just the reality. Now this takes me back to the point.

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When we read Jeremiah 31 and it says, verse 31,

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Behold the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Judah, the idea here, and the promise here of the new covenant, is not to be understood as simply something for physical

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Israel, though part of physical Israel is included, obviously. But this covenant is for who?

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It's for God's people, for all who call upon the name of the

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Lord, all who turn to Christ in faith. The same is true with what I said from Ezekiel.

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I will give you a new heart. Who's that for? Well, it says the house of Israel, yes, but it's all new covenant members.

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Not just the, not physical Israel, but God's people, true Israel, spiritual

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Israel, people of the promise, or we could say the church, right? So, questions or comments about that, and we'll move forward.

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Alex just stepped on something. Yeah. So is this a good place to mention,

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I mean, what you just described a few minutes ago is what people often try to argue that this is replacement theology.

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Yeah. The idea of that. Replacement theology, or if you want to get real technical, supersessionism, and the idea is that you understand there's a difference between saying the church replaces

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Israel and the church is the fulfillment of Israel, okay?

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So the church replaces Israel is the idea of like, well, you know, God's done with physical

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Israel. Well, I would say God's not done with physical Israel on two fronts.

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First front, he's still saving, okay? He's still saving them by the gospel.

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The second front is, I'm okay. Like, I feel comfortable with the idea of a revival or a great repentance of the physical people of Israel in the last days, you know, coming to Christ and seeing that.

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Like, I'm okay with that, what all that looks like. We can work through and we can talk about, but God's not done.

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But as far as the Mosaic covenant goes, we covered this already. It's abrogated.

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It's been fulfilled and abrogated. Abrogated, fancy word for saying what? It is no more, right?

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We're not going back to that. So it's not a replacement. It's a fulfillment.

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Does that make sense? So it's good. Anything else on that? Okay, so now we need to go back to something we covered last week, but we need to go here again.

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We're going to tie some things together. So how does one enter into the new covenant or the covenant of grace?

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I want to tell you that it is not and never has been, listen carefully, it is not and never has been by physical birth.

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That is the argument. I'm just going to tell you, I'm being very,

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I'm trying to be charitable here, but this is my opinion. I think Luther was very close to becoming a

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Credo Baptist. It is a baptism based on a profession, but the

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Peasants' Revolt, you know, kind of messed that up. And then you have Calvin and Zwingli and all that.

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And you have these guys that, this is my opinion, that national identity is tied to your infant baptism, right?

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So they do very great work. The first wave of reformers do very great work of getting the gospel right, but they don't let go of infant baptism.

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It's just too deeply entrenched tradition, and they just can't let it go.

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So what they do is they start with the presupposition, infant baptism is a must, and then they go where?

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They go to the Bible and they make an argument for it. By the way, don't do theology. I have,

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I start with a position, I'm going to go to the Bible and prove it. Now I have a very well argued position, and biblical insofar as like, they're not trying to pull it out of thin air.

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They are attempting to use the Bible and we commend them for that. But their argument follows as such.

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Children were included in the covenant, in the old covenant with circumcision.

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Therefore, why are you going to be harsher in the new covenant and not include children?

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Now you start arguing with that, and you haven't thought through it, and you're like, you're right. Jesus says, let the little children come to me, and then, okay, well, a few problems.

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First problem is, not all children were circumcised, right, right? Only 50 % or whatever the birth rate of males is,

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I don't know, but you know, only males. Secondly, these males and females were not included in the new covenant.

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They were circumcised, the men, the boys were circumcised under the covenant of what?

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Works, right? Under the Mosaic covenant. Even Abraham, who we talked about in Genesis 17, works, right?

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Appointing to Abraham's offspring, appointing to someone that needed to fulfill the law.

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And so they've never, it's never been by physical birth. So I'll say it again, the covenant of grace has only and always had believers in it.

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No unregenerate person has ever been a member of the covenant of grace. Listen to what

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Jesus says. This is in your notes. Jesus says this to some Jews, John 8 39. They answer him,

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Abraham is our father. Jesus said of him, if you were Abraham's children, you would be doing the works

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Abraham did. Now, Jesus, are you being anti -Semitic?

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Well, of course not. That's not what he's doing because Jesus is a physical lineage of Abraham, right?

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But Jesus is saying you are not true sons of Abraham because you don't what?

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You don't believe, right? You understand? So he calls the physical children of Abraham, not the children of Abraham because it's not the physical children that are in the covenant, but those who are born again.

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Right. So turn to John 3. John 3. And this is a really familiar passage and it could take us, you know, we could go through it for weeks.

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We're not going to, but I'm just going to point out something that I think you should see that you need to know.

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So John chapter 3 verse 1. Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the

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Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.

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Jesus answered him, truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.

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Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he is old?

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Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born? Jesus answered, truly, truly,

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I say to you, unless one is born of water and the spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.

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That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, you must be born again.

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The wind blows where it wishes and you hear it sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

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So it is with everyone who is born of the spirit. Nicodemus said to him, how can these things be?

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Now listen to what Jesus says. Jesus said to him, are you the teacher of Israel?

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And yet you do not understand these things? What's implied there?

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You should understand these things, Nicodemus. Being born of the water and the spirit.

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Listen, y 'all. To our Church of Christ friends, I'm sorry, I'm not sorry.

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He ain't talking about baptism. He's not. How do I know that? Because Nicodemus would not have been held responsible for knowing about Christian baptism.

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Why? It doesn't exist yet, right? In the truest sense, right?

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I mean, I understand Jesus says his baptism and John's baptizing, but it's not something that Nicodemus would have honored.

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That's not the... Okay, then what about this water and spirit language? We've heard that tonight.

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Where did we hear that tonight? I will sprinkle clean water on you? Where was that? That was sprinkling clean water.

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That was in Ezekiel 36. Okay, and I'll put my spirit within you and I'll give you a new heart.

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That's all within Ezekiel 36. In other words, Nicodemus should not only have understood these things, he should have been teaching, right?

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He should have known about it. The only way you get into the kingdom of God is not by outward circumcision.

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It is by being born again. John 6 .63, Jesus says, it is the spirit who gives life.

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The flesh is no help. Let's put that into a percentage.

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The spirit is 100 % responsible for life. The flesh is...

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Well, how many percents left over? Zero percent, right? So, the spirit 100%, flesh zero percent.

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This is what has to happen for a person to enter into the covenant of grace, into the new covenant.

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It's always been true. It's not physical, it's spiritual. Now, here's an interesting point of commonality between, we'll call them

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Presbyterian, Dutch Reformed, that kind of camp over here, and over here, dispensation.

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Now, when you bring this up, it's funny, I've done this, had some dialogue. They don't like that because they see themselves as so far apart, but actually there's a very interesting common ground between them, and that is that they both have the common error of seeing

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God's people as encompassing both the physical and the spiritual.

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So, the Presbyterian or Dutch Reformed will say believers and their unregenerate children are part of the new covenant.

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They're part of God's people. The dispensationalist will say God's people are physical

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Israel and the church. God has two peoples, right? Now, we have dear brothers in both camps, brothers and sisters in both camps.

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I'm saying they are wrong, okay, but they're dear brothers, they're dear sisters.

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We love them, but they confuse or conflate the physical and the spiritual, and I'm telling you tonight, so Scripture, it's only the children of the promise who are counted as offspring.

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Why don't you baptize your children? I mean, a really good argument is, number one, the

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Bible never gives us an example. It never commands us to. If it did, that would be over.

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That's one argument. The other argument is, children have never been included in the new covenant. They've never been included in the covenant address.

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Well, I should say this, sorry, unregenerate children, right? Are some children born again?

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Yes, they've been, right? So, praise God. So, why don't you baptize your children? Well, we do baptize our children if they repent and believe the

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Gospels. We baptize our regenerate children. That's the only people who should be baptized.

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So, furthermore, since I'm on this topic, and this will be the last thing I tell,

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I've got another point, but we'll, I'll finish this out, and then we'll wrap everything up next week, but since I'm on this topic and want to roll here,

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I want to mention that I actually think it's a similar error as the post -millennialists and the pre -millennialists.

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How do you say that? Post -millennialists and pre -millennialists. Now, again, these guys will be like, we're so far apart, but I would actually say, no, it's a natural outflow of Presbyterianism, you know, to go to post -millennialism and a natural outflow of dispensationalism to go to pre -millennialism, but the common error that binds these two positions, in my opinion, is forcing the kingdom of God to be equated with the physical prior to the new heavens and new earth.

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That's the common error and just flows out of, it flows out of their covenant theology, which technically dispensationalists, you wouldn't call it covenant theology, but it flows out of how they put the scriptures together.

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Okay, so what I'm saying tonight is God's people is true Israel, that's the church, and to be part of the new covenant, so you understand this, so you ever think like, why is our church, why do we are so serious about who joins, why are we so serious about who we baptize?

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Because baptism is a sign of the what? New covenant, and we are only to apply that sign to who?

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To people who are in the new covenant. That's why we take membership seriously, that's why we should take, if all this flows out into together, it affects all of our theology and practice, it's why we take church discipline seriously, and church membership seriously, it's why we take the preaching of the gospel seriously, right, because how does

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God bring people from death to life? It's the heralding of the gospel, it's why we take discipleship seriously, like it all fits together, and so it's not just some sort of random, you know, theology nerd discussion that the losers in seminary talk about, no, this comes down to the local church level, it's something that we should love and know, so we'll wrap this up next week, and then

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I hope that you've been blessed by our class. I'm going to stop the recording, and then we will have a couple minutes of questions.