February 9, 2024 Show with David Reece on “The Necessity of Covenant Theology”

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But I'm thrilled to have back on the program a recurring guest. In fact, he's become a regularly featured guest now on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, and I am thrilled about that.

And by now his name will be immediately recognizable to the vast majority of you listening. David Reese is my guest today, pastor of Puritan Reformed Church of Phoenix, Arizona, and CEO of armoredrepublic .com.

Today we're going to be addressing the necessity of covenant theology. It's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Pastor David Reese.

Brother, it's an honor to be here. Thanks for having me on. I'm really excited to help to talk about covenant theology.

I think it'll be really helpful for those who are even already familiar or if they're not familiar with understanding the outline of the

Bible and how the pieces of the Bible work together. Amen. And first of all, as we always do, because there are people who may be tuning in to this program for the first time in their lives, or they may be hearing you as a guest for the first time, and they're not familiar with Puritan Reformed Church of Phoenix, Arizona.

So let listeners know about that. Puritan Reformed Church is a church that's reformed in doctrine.

We're concerned to see the doctrine, worship, and government of the church aligned with the teachings of scripture alone.

And we have found, we believe, you know, the scriptures teach that we are to sing psalms.

And so God has given us a book of hymns in the middle of the Bible. And many times people are deeply edified by having the joy and the experience of singing those songs back to God.

And so we are a psalm singing church. And I think a lot of people would be edified by getting to do that.

Many churches don't even include psalms at all. And in their sung worship, we exclusively sing psalms.

And so I'd really encourage anybody who's in the Phoenix area, whether visiting or living there, to come check out what it is like to sing the psalms back to God and the joy of being able to hear that, because there's not a loud sound around that prevents people from being able to hear.

Instead, you can be edified by the words of your brethren singing the psalms back to God. And you sing them exclusively a cappella.

We do, yes. So we believe that musical instrumentation is a part of the ceremonial law of the

Old Covenant, that it was instituted as a part of the worship of the temple system.

And so when you look at, if you look through the scriptures at all the uses of musical instrumentation and the worship of God, you'll find that for the public worship of God, it was instituted as a part of the temple system.

So it's similar to the offering of incense or the sacrifice of animals or the wearing of some sort of a clerical garb or having a physical temple, right?

And so those are all sort of a part of that ceremonial law. And so hopefully the context of that will make more sense as we talk about covenant theology as well.

But yeah, that's our practice, and that's the theological reason for it. And it may make some of you totally scratch your head because you've never heard of that before.

What? They don't have musical instruments? Well, believe it or not, I learned this from John Price's book,

Old Light on New Worship. The vast majority of Protestants did not begin including musical instrumentation in their worship services until the 19th century.

It was only the Lutherans and the Anglicans that had musical instrumentation.

The rest of Protestantism did not. Charles Spurgeon did not have musical instruments in his

Metropolitan Tabernacle. And many of your great heroes that you uphold as your heroes of the faith, you might not even realize that they did not use musical instruments either.

So I just thought I'd throw that out there. And if you want to find out more about John Price's book, I did a three -part interview with him on Iron Trip and Zion Radio.

Just type in John Price in the search engine of IronTripandZionRadio .com.

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Well, I remember years ago, perhaps it was even early on after I began broadcasting

Iron Trip and Zion Radio, I was getting complaints from people who were saying, you know, you're using these terms and words and phrases that we don't even know what you're talking about.

And I was taking for granted that most people listening would understand the words and phrases and terms that reform people regularly use, but those outside of our camp, as it were, they may be totally unfamiliar with it.

And so, therefore, I actually took heed to what they were saying, these listeners, and began trying to conduct programs with the mindset you never know who's listening.

There may be a lot of new Christians who are not even a part of a reform church. And so we have to be careful not to just assume that they understand what we're talking about.

So I think it would be very important for you to start with a definition of covenant theology, and not even all people who believe in covenant theology are exactly identical.

Obviously, you and I are different in that you are a Presbyterian and I'm a Reformed Baptist, and yet we both believe in covenant theology.

But if you could give us a working definition to start with. Absolutely. So first, if we break down the term itself, covenant is a word that means, covenant is a bond in blood sovereignly administered.

That definition comes from O. Palmer Robertson, and he has a fantastic book called Christ of the

Covenants. And so in that, this idea of a covenant is a bond, which means it's established by swearing, established by an oath.

An oath, when it's a promissory oath, is something where there's a promise to do something, and there's also calling upon God as witness to bless the fulfilling or to curse the breaking of that oath.

And so the idea that God himself covenants with man, he swears. And when he swears, he swears by his own name.

He swears by himself. When he makes promises, there's nothing higher for him to call upon.

And so he calls upon his own name. And so his word is unbreakable, and his swearing by his own name is unbreakable.

And so covenant theology is seeing that God's promises give us an organizing structure for seeing how the

Bible fits together. Now, in addition to that, I think about the word theology, and theology is the study of God, right?

So we're looking at, we're studying God, theos and logos. Those two

Greek words are jammed together to get the word theology. Theos is God, and logos is study or doctrine or reason.

So we have the doctrine of God. And so this idea that we're studying God, and we're understanding what he has, what promises he has given.

And so when we think about the structure of the Bible, on a very basic level, we talk about the idea that there's the

Old Testament and the New Testament. And those words, that word testament is actually a translation of the word in Hebrew, berit, or in Greek, diatheke.

And those two words are normally translated covenant. So we talk about the idea of the Old Covenant and the

New Covenant. And so when we're thinking about the Bible itself, the way we even refer to it is governed by this basic breakdown of the

Old Covenant and the New Covenant. So I want to help people to have that in mind, that the very basic structure of the

Bible itself is built around our understanding that covenants are key to understanding what

God is doing and what his promises are. Now, when we think about covenant theology, the

Reformed have historically talked about three main covenants in terms of understanding the structure of the

Bible. And I won't have time to go through some of the detail on what we're going to call the covenant of grace.

What I want to give right now, before we go into the next segment, is to talk about these three main pieces of that structure.

And then hopefully in the next part, we can talk about the outline of how that breaks down in history. But the three covenants are, the first one is the covenant between the

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Now, in a lot of Puritan writings and Reformed writings, what you'll find is that this covenant is sometimes called the covenant of redemption.

Sometimes you'll hear the covenant of creation. But the technical name that you'll often also run into is called the intra -Trinitarian covenant.

And the idea is that it's a covenant between the members of the Trinity, right? It's not inter -Trinitarian.

It's not like different trinities that you're going between. It's intra -Trinitarian, right? So this is the covenant inside of the

Trinity. And so this is a covenant between the members of the Trinity. And God the

Father makes promises to God the Son. And God the Son makes promises back to Him.

And then God the Father makes promises to the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit promises things to the Father. And then the

Son promises to the Spirit. And the Spirit promises to the Son. So these promises between the members of the Trinity, the promises ultimately come into this idea that they are agreeing to fulfill particular roles and to glorify each other in creation and in redemption in history.

And so they each agree to fulfill roles. And those roles of distinctive place is why they one submits to the other, for example.

So the Father and the Son and the Spirit are equal in their substance. They're equally

God. The Father is God. The Son is God. The Holy Spirit is God. Their agreement with each other is the basis for their difference of roles.

And so those difference of roles and how they fulfill different roles is most obvious, for example, in the fact that God the

Son is the one who became incarnate and who died for our sins.

The Father did not become incarnate. The Father did not die for our sins. He did not suffer on the cross. The Son is the one that does that.

The Holy Spirit also didn't. And so even though the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are all involved in our salvation in different ways, they have different roles there.

And so the incarnation is an easy way of seeing how there's that distinctiveness. And so the different roles of the members of the

Trinity, again, is established in this agreement, in this covenant between each other. Now, in history, you end up with these two major covenants that are going to govern how we see the history in the

Bible itself. And so when we chase these down a little bit more, we're going to be chasing down really the detail of, again, what's called the covenant of grace.

So the first covenant that occurs is called the covenant of works. And the covenant of works occurs in Genesis chapters 1 and 2, and then

God gives curse for the breaking of it in Genesis chapter 3. In Genesis chapter 3, we also find

God giving a promise, which is the first giving of the covenant of grace there in chapter 3.

So we'll talk about that. But the covenant of works is a covenant between God and Adam.

And in this covenant, God tells Adam to subdue the earth, to fill the earth, to multiply.

So we get what's called the dominion mandate there. We also have in the establishment of this covenant, we have the giving of the institution of marriage and having children, for example, as well.

But the thing that happens in the giving of this covenant, the most distinctive element is the fact that God says, if you break this covenant, if you eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in the day you eat thereof, dying you shall die.

And so what we have is the grant of this curse, a threat of a curse for breaking the covenant.

And we also have the tree of life there, which is given as an emblem or symbol of the promise of life for obedience in the covenant.

So the covenant of works is a covenant where Adam is required to obey

God. And if he fulfills the requirements of this covenant, will be rewarded with life.

Adam doesn't just act on his own. Adam represents people. And one of the interesting things about covenants is we find that there's a system of representation that is developed in covenants.

And that's one of the reasons why it's important to recognize that marriage, for example, was instituted back in the covenant of works even because Adam represented his wife.

But he also represented all those who would descend from him by ordinary generation.

In other words, the children that they'd have by ordinary marital relations are people that Adam represented in his actions.

And so we find that, for example, in Romans chapter five, this idea that Adam represents humanity and his actions are on our behalf.

So he represents all his posterity, all of his descendants by ordinary generation. And Adam owes

God perfect obedience. And he and his posterity would be rewarded with life. But in breaking this covenant, in disobeying, there is death on the basis of his disobedience.

And so that death is a death that is both a legal dying in the covenant. And also there's a spiritual death in terms of the idea of unbelief.

But there's a physical death that comes. And what we find is that God has designed man in this structure in terms of the covenant of works to make it so that there's a way where physical death can be used for salvation.

Now, this covenant of works is something also you find a similar structure in terms of how

God deals with the angels. And the way God dealt with the angels was he judged each of them individually rather than having one angel represent the whole.

He has each of them individually. And those angels that sin at fall would be cursed for their disobedience.

And those angels that obeyed would be rewarded for their obedience and be blessed. And so you have the righteous angels, the elect angels.

And you have the wicked angels, those that are reprobate angels. And Satan is an example, the most famous example of one of those demons, one of those fallen angels.

So each of them individually is under a covenant of works. And they are rewarded for their good works or punished for their evil works.

And so man is under Adam in that same condition.

But all of man is fallen because Adam represents the whole race. And so everybody's guilty by the sin of Adam.

In addition to that, everybody who descends from Adam by ordinary generation also receives a corrupted nature whereby at the very moment of conception, rather than having spiritual life, we have spiritual death.

We don't glorify God as we ought. We do not believe the truth. And as a result, we commit particular sins.

We commit particular transgressions of the law. And so in Genesis 3, what's given is what's called the covenant of grace.

The covenant of grace is a promise relating to a second Adam, the seed of the woman that would come.

And he would defeat Satan. You know, Satan came, deceived Eve, and then Adam follows

Eve into sin. Now there's this promise about a child who would come through Eve, through the woman.

And as a result, this child would crush the head of the serpent. But there's also, we're told, and this is

Genesis 3 .15, we're told that Adam, sorry, that the seed of the woman, that Christ, his heel would be crushed.

His heel would be bruised. So he's going to crush or bruise the head of the serpent, and his heel will be crushed. This points to the idea that he will die in the process of defeating

Satan. So this is the giving of the covenant of grace. And the covenant of grace is a covenant between God the

Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And here, Christ is the second

Adam, and he represents all the elect. And Christ will glorify the Father by taking to himself a human nature and submitting perfectly to the

Father under the law in order to redeem the elect. And this is, he fulfills the law, he does the positive duties that Adam failed to do, and he also dies to make payment.

Now, Christ, when he dies, he has a legal right to his life because he was perfectly obedient.

He is owed life. And so he's able to offer his life as payment. Furthermore, in his, he did not have spiritual death.

He glorified God, believed all the truth, and did all the particular duties. And so he had spiritual life.

And so his physical death is something where his spirit is separated from his body, and he undergoes the curse of God on the cross.

And in suffering the curse and undergoing physical death, he never enters a point where he is disbelieving or not glorifying

God. And so he is able to offer himself for full satisfaction to make payment for guilt.

And he's able, as a representative, having fulfilled the whole law, to give his righteousness imputed to those he represents.

So the guilt of Adam is imputed to those he represents, but the righteousness of Christ and the satisfaction of the debt that Christ fulfills, those things are imputed to the elect.

And so what we find is the covenant of grace gives us a structure to understand the legal workings of the gospel.

And it shows us how there is a way that we are saved so that God is both just and at the same time is the justifier of those who believe in Jesus.

And so God's forgiveness is not just an arbitrary forgiveness without regard to law, but it's a just mercy.

And so these covenant structures help us to understand that. And so what I'm looking forward to discuss soon here is to then be able to go into the covenant of grace in terms of how the old covenant and new covenant work in relationship to that covenant of grace.

And we'll jump right into that when we return from our first commercial break. If you have a question for David Reese, we're going to hold off reading those questions until our final segment.

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Now we're back with David Reese, who is pastor of Puritan Reformed Church in Phoenix, Arizona.

We are talking about the necessity of covenant theology. And you wanted to give us now an outline, if you would.

Absolutely. Thanks, Chris. So when we talk about covenant theology, we've already talked about the definition of a covenant.

We've talked about the covenant of works, covenant of grace. And we talked about the eternal covenant between the

Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit called the inter -eternitarian covenant, which is the plan of God to glorify himself by glorifying the various members of the

Trinity, glorifying each other. So in the covenant of works, Adam represents the race of man. And we are all found guilty in him because he sinned.

In the covenant of grace, Christ represents God's elect. And we are found innocent because of his death, providing a full satisfaction for our sins.

And we're found to be righteous because of the perfect obedience of Christ, his fulfilling of the law in every detail, in our place, in our stead as a representative.

And that's in the covenant structure of the covenant of grace. So what we find is this is given to us in the scriptures in a way where we find that this covenant of grace is introduced to us in Genesis 3, but it's built upon as we go through the scriptures.

So the covenant of works is given to us in Genesis 1 and 2 and the fall and the judgment of God in Genesis 3.

But we also find, and remember in those chapters, the individual is given the dominion mandate to subdue the earth.

And the household is also established with marriage and the idea of children and potentially servants who are hired, being under the authority of an employer.

So you have this idea of the institution of the household there. And then in Genesis 3, you have the promise for forgiveness and the work of Christ, the promised seed of the woman that she would cross the head of the serpent.

And so Adam receiving the covenant of works, he then receives the covenant of grace. And what we find in Genesis 3, all the way through Genesis chapter 6, verse 8, is this focus on the church as a distinctive body from the world.

Genesis 4, for example, gives to us the murder of Abel by Cain and how that results in Cain being the first person who's excommunicated.

But there's no state around to punish him. So God hasn't authorized man to punish with criminal penalties yet.

And so there's no avenger. And therefore, Cain is able to go out. And though he's separate, there's now a distinction between the church and the world.

And as a result, the city of man, the world, continues to grow and grow. And its wickedness fills the earth in such a way that it begins to destroy the church.

So God raises up Noah and has him build an ark. And what we find is that what

God does is from Genesis chapter 6, verse 9, all the way through chapter 9, is he brings a judgment to destroy the city of man and to preserve the church, to preserve his people that have a distinctive existence, the city of God.

And what we find after the flood and after the destruction of the world is that man is still sinful, but God has promised not to destroy the world again in the same way, even though man continues to be sinful from his youth, even though his thoughts are only evil continually.

He's going to still at the same time make it so that fallen men who are not regenerated, even though they are only thinking evil continually, that what's going to happen is

God instead puts into place the institution of the state. So rather than having this grand judgment occur again, the state will be a tool to help to limit the wickedness of men by being able to have the authority of the sword to deal with the worst offenders.

And so, you know, there's an interesting reality that you talk about, you know, the Pareto principle gets talked about a lot now that 80 % of effects come from 20 % of causes.

And so God instituting the state limits the great destructive power of men's evil by making it so that the worst offenders are likely, the people who would commit the most crimes would be the worst, are going to be restrained by the state.

But we also find that the state is no perfect defender of the church. And throughout history, we see over and over again, a declining of societies into being wicked and being pagan.

And so what we see with Noah is even though there's a gift of the state, that God has to come. And even though he re -covenants with Noah, he adds things there.

He has to come back and continue to give more. He didn't forget this. He didn't realize this wasn't going to happen.

This is always God's plan. But history is a process of revealing more and more to show more and more about God and to display his glory in more and more clear and full ways.

So Adam receives animal sacrifice and he's given clothing to cover his shame.

And we continue to see this animal sacrifice, for example, with Cain and Abel and Abel offering the sacrifice of blood pointing forward.

The idea of an animal being killed and the blood being a part of that. The animal's life is given as a representation, a symbol pointing forward to Christ.

And that's a type. That's a ceremonial law. That's a foreshadowing that points forward to Christ.

And so what we have is there are two types of ceremonies that begin to be given in the covenant of grace, even going back to Adam.

These ceremonies are things that are types and shadows pointing to Christ like animal sacrifice.

And then we have symbols that also have sort of moral duties represented in them.

And so we find the ceremonial law is given to us as these symbols are are are given to us to help us to think about our separateness, our moral duties and also

Christ as a representative. And so with Noah, what's given is not only the state to restrain evil, but in the covenant of grace being added on to Noah is also given the ability now to eat animals.

And so now the animal sacrifice has become a lot more fun because previously before you had to kill the animal and there was no ability to eat the meat.

And now here, all of a sudden, the sacrifice has become a feast. And so you think about the types of sacrifices are going to get instituted later on in the

Mosaic covenant. And you have the benefits of Christ are given to us and symbolized in these things.

So the obvious thing with the death of an animal is pointed forward to is Christ dying to pay for our sins.

But now also with the eating of the meat, we think about what's called the peace offering or when you take, for example, the

Lord's Supper. Now you are thinking about the reality that you take Christ in and you're nourished by him.

And so that symbolism gets added on. Now, we jump forward and what we find is, you know, after Noah, there's the great human empire with the

Tower of Babel and all that. And God further separates humans with the division of language and all that.

But then you get to Genesis 12 and you have Abraham being called out. In Genesis 15, there's the giving of a third administration of the covenant of grace.

And this idea, these changes, these administrations, sometimes people call them dispensations. And the difference between covenant theology and dispensational theology is this.

Covenant theology looks at the dispensations or these changes in the covenant of grace as additive.

So that's being built upon. And then furthermore, what you have is sort of changes of the outward ceremonies, the rituals.

And the dispensationalist would look at this as a change of the method of God interacting with man in a way where it sort of like ends the old one and adds a new one in its place.

And so if you look at it that way, it's sort of like the Bible keeps having new covenants that annul the previous covenants.

Well, the Book of Galatians plainly teaches us that, for example, the Mosaic covenant coming later does not annul the

Abrahamic covenant that was earlier. And so it's important for us to realize that as these things are given, they're additive.

They build on. They do not replace and simply end. They build upon what has come before.

But the changes of outward ceremonies are the things that we find. There's sort of an ending of old ceremonies and a giving of new is what occurs in the new covenant.

And so we're going to we're going to see this. This changing of ceremonies is something that occurs throughout and gets capstone for us in what we call the new covenant.

So in Abraham, what we find in Genesis 15 is there's this giving of the covenant and there's additional promises given.

But in Genesis 17, Abraham is given a symbol of the covenant. So Adam received animal sacrifice.

Noah is unable to eat. And Adam also received, of course, the coverings of skin. So he's given clothing.

But then Abraham is given this idea of the sign of circumcision to point forward to the seed, to the child that's promised to Christ.

And so it's a symbol. It's a ritual symbol for entry into the covenant. And it points forward to Christ, along with all these other promises there.

And so it's the symbol of the covenant. And so we have two sacraments now that are in this covenant of grace.

Since the fall, we have the sacrifice of animals and then we have circumcision as an entry ritual.

So, Chris, I don't know how we are on time here before the next break. Needs to jump in. You've got you've got nearly 10 minutes.

OK, great. So Moses, we get to Moses and what we have in Genesis, you obviously have this process of going from Abraham all the way into Jacob and his 12 tribes.

You know, the 12 sons and the tribes that they represent. You go through all of that and it's tracking for us the line of Christ getting there.

And we get to Abraham was told that his descendants would be enslaved in Egypt.

And so we get to that at the end of Genesis. And in the beginning of Exodus, the first word in Exodus is and.

And the reason it's and is because it's showing how it's connected to the book of Genesis. It's just it's the

Mosaic authorship continuing on. And so these two books are connected. And it's the book of Exodus starts with and.

And so when we get there, we're introduced to the people of God. They're they're enslaved.

And we find we're introduced to Moses, who's raised up as a deliverer. And, you know, all this stuff happens.

But we get ultimately to Moses being brought back to the people of Egypt. And in being brought back to the people of Egypt to try to pull them out, they go through the 10 plagues.

And by the time we get to Exodus 12 or the 10th plague, which is, you know, the angel of death. And the killing of the firstborn.

And in that 12th chapter of Exodus on the 10th plague, we are introduced to the

Passover. And the Passover is a special ritual of sacrifice. And we all know that the

Passover is ultimately what the Lord Jesus Christ transforms into the

Lord's Supper. And so we have we have now this sort of we're getting a more and more complex system of the animal sacrifices.

And we have the idea of feast days. And I didn't mention feast days to begin with.

But if you think back, Sabbath was given even back in the covenant of works. God worked six days to create and then he gave the seventh day for rest.

What we find in the old covenant is that God had that, you know, that day, that Sabbath that was one in seven.

And that one in seven Sabbath was given. And then in the

Mosaic time, he starts to add on more days. We get the Passover. We get the feast of weeks and we get the feast of tabernacles.

We end up with Yom Kippur with the fast. We end up with the new moons. We have all these days that are added on as a more complex set of days.

And that's a part of the set of ceremonies. And in Exodus 12, you have that Passover feast and the sacrifice.

You move forward into Exodus 16 and God is reminding people to keep the Sabbath. Exodus 20, you get to the

Ten Commandments. And what you've got is sort of this laying out of the moral law.

And we find the fourth commandment there right in the middle. And the fourth commandment is teaching us that there is holy time and there's regular time.

We're called to work six days and rest one. And the Sabbath is sort of that emblem of the ordering of time.

And it has a ceremonial value. Now, in the new covenant, we have the Lord's Day. And it's the one in seven

Sabbath, but it's on the first day of the week because we start from a position of rest. And Christ has already come.

So you see the building of these types and shadows, all these things. The Passover points to Christ. The Pentecost points to Christ.

The Feast of Weeks. The Trumpets points to Christ. All this stuff is all pointing to Christ and his work.

And so the mosaic system, you end up with these four types of sacrifices. And these four types of sacrifices are given to us to point to different elements of what

Christ is going to do. There's the sin offering for the payment of sin. There's the burnt offering to focus on the idea that we're holy unto

God. There's the peace offering to focus on our fellowship and the enjoyment of peace and blessedness.

And fellowship. And then there's also the grain offering, which points forward to Thanksgiving.

And so these types of offerings there, the Mosaic Covenant explodes out the detail.

It's kind of like you have like a diagram and it shows you some piece of machinery. And then there's like a 3D rendering where you can take all the pieces and it blows out.

And you see all the pieces and they're all labeled. And then you can kind of like there's like an animation to pull it back together. That's the kind of thing that the

Mosaic Covenant does. It provides this 3D chart blowout to help us to see all the stuff that Christ is doing.

And so that's all pointing forward to him. And we get to the Davidic Covenant and there's this idea of establishment and kingship.

And so that's way forward after the period of the judges and they go through this period of time. And so Moses is around, you know, 1480 and 1440 for the going in and dying.

And you end up with David around 1000. And so we're looking at a period of over 400 years to get to David and then his son

Solomon, the building of the temple. So that right there is in 2 Samuel chapter 7. We're introduced to the Davidic Covenant.

And so all of these things are pointing forward to the New Covenant, which is a change. All these things, Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David.

This is all the old covenant with all these types and shadows. And the New Covenant is promised for the reality.

And that's about Christ. And Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 37 give to us this pointing to the

New Covenant. And the New Covenant doesn't totally replace the old. It's the same covenant of grace, but it's a greater degree and it's a fulfillment.

And so when we get to the covenant of grace that's the New Covenant, we have Christ. And he gives us all these symbols that point backward and tell us here's what's been done.

And so we have the baptism and the Lord's Supper replace circumcision and replace

Passover and all the sacrificial system, none of which paid for sin, but always pointed forward to the payment of sin.

These things point back to what Christ has accomplished. And so the covenant of grace in the New Covenant gives to us these symbols that we have going from a national church to an international church from just Israel to all the nations.

And so the visible church goes forward with these symbols that are portable. And these are the new ceremonies of the covenant of grace, the old ceremonies having been ended because they were fulfilled.

Amen. Well, we have time before we go to the break for one listener question.

And let's see. I was just looking at it. Excuse me. We have

Jeremiah from Battle Creek, Nebraska. And Jeremiah says,

I have met and heard Christians who make the claim that the covenant of works implies that people were saved in the

Old Covenant initially by obedience to God. Is this not heresy? That is heresy.

The saints in the Old Covenant were not saved in the covenant of works. What they were saved in was the covenant of grace.

They believed in the Messiah to come. Just like Abraham, they were saved by grace alone through faith alone, believing in the

Messiah to come. And so what we have is a covenant of grace that's looking forward to the

Messiah. And the covenant of grace now in the New Covenant era is looking back on what the

Messiah has already done. And we still have things he's fulfilling, right? There's still things that are promised that are being fulfilled.

And so that reality of the gospel going forth to the nations is still happening. The elect are being gathered.

That's a part of what's foreshadowed in the idea of the Feast of the Trumpets, this idea of the ingathering that's occurring.

And so this process of pulling in the elect is a part of still a fulfillment of the work of Christ as he's redeeming saints out of the whole world and bringing the nations to himself.

Thank you, Jeremiah. And we have time for another one. Ronald in eastern

Suffolk County, Long Island, asks, Can we rightly say that the

Old Covenant was based on the physical nation of Israel? And that is why people could be removed from the covenant, whereas the

New Covenant is a spiritual covenant, which involves the circumcision of the heart.

And if you are truly a part of Christ's covenant, you will never be removed from it.

So there were externals in the Old Covenant and there are externals in the New Covenant. And there were internals in the

Old Covenant and there are internals in the New Covenant. The issue is not that one was totally external and the other one's internal or that one was only national to one nation.

And this one, the New Covenant's only international. We find, for example, there were people in Nineveh who repented and were saved under the ministry of Jonah.

We find that there's Rahab who's brought in. The Old Covenant includes Adam, who represented, you know, the whole of humanity.

It includes Noah and we include Abraham. And so Moses, we see that with the national

Israel, but Abraham, you know, he has many nations that came from him. And so what we find is that, yes, there is a focus on the nation of Israel and there was an emphasis there in the

Old Covenant. But there was still justification was by grace alone, through faith alone, through the mediatorial work of Christ alone.

In the Old Covenant, through Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses and David. And there is an emphasis on the nation of Israel and there is an emphasis on externals.

But the New Covenant has externals and the nations are all to covenant with Christ in the New Covenant.

Well, thank you, Ronald. And we are going to go to our midway break now. Please use this time wisely.

Write down as much of the contact information as you possibly can for as many of our advertisers as you possibly can.

So that you can more frequently respond to our advertisers. And I truly thank

God to hear the wonderful news from Pastor David Reese before the show went on the air. That a listener or listeners in the

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As a result of listening to this program and hearing Pastor Reese interview.

So, likewise, please write down the information that our advertisers provide.

So that you can more frequently purchase their products, use the services and visit their churches. But remember, when you can't do any of those, please at least contact our advertisers and say thank you for sponsoring

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And that our listeners are being blessed by them keeping us on the air through their financial support.

And this reminds me to thank, once again, from the bottom of my heart, the fine folks at Puritan Reformed Church in Phoenix, Arizona.

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That continues our existence. And so, write down that contact information.

And also, send in your questions to David Reese to chrisarnsen at gmail .com. Chris Arnsen at gmail .com.

We'll be right back. Puritan Reformed is a Bible -believing, kingdom -building, devil -fighting church.

We are devoted to upholding the apostolic doctrine and practice preserved in Scripture alone.

Puritan Reformed teaches men to rule and lead as image -bearing prophets, priests, and kings.

We teach families to worship together as families. Puritan is committed to teaching the whole counsel of God so that the earth will be filled with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea.

We sing the Psalms, teach the law, proclaim the gospel, make disciples, maintain discipline, and exalt

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Join us in the glorious cause of advancing Christ's crown and covenant over the kings of the earth.

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It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpens Iron radio listeners from all over the world.

Here's Joe Riley, a listener in Ireland who wants you to know about a guest on the show he really loves hearing interviewed,

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Before I return to my discussion with Pastor David Reese of Puritan Reformed Church in Phoenix, Arizona, on the theme,

The Necessity of Covenant Theology, we have some important announcements to make.

Folks, if you really love this show and you don't want it to disappear, I'm urging you please go to ironsharpensironradio .com,

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In fact, just today, I informed a listener who wanted a church in Western Australia about a wonderful Reformed Baptist church plant that my congregation here in Pennsylvania was involved in,

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But wherever you live, if you don't have a church home that's biblically faithful, send me an email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com

and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also where you can send in your questions to Pastor David Reese of Puritan Reform Church of Phoenix, Arizona, on the necessity of covenant theology, chrisarnsen at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence. Well, now let's go into the segment, which is actually specifically on the theme that we gave this program today, the necessity of covenant theology.

Absolutely. Thank you, Chris. So basically, if we think about the structures that we just talked through, what we talked through was the covenant between the members of the

Trinity, the covenant of redemption, as it's commonly called, the covenant of works, which is the covenant between God and Adam.

And that makes it so that there's an establishment of guilt for the whole human race except for Christ.

And we look at the covenant of grace and how Christ is the second Adam who represents all of the elect and pays for the sins of the elect and provides them with a perfect righteousness.

If we think about that structure, the denial of that structure in terms of minimally the idea that Christ is the second

Adam is a denial of the gospel. So when we think about the idea of the structure of covenant theology, the very basics that are taught in Romans five teaches us that we are all guilty in Adam.

He is a covenant representative who represents the whole human race except for Christ. And that Christ is the second

Adam who fulfills the law on our behalf and he pays for our sins on our behalf.

And so that basic structure right there, how those those fit where we're guilty in Adam and we're innocent and righteous in Christ.

We need to understand that basic legal structure in order for us to understand at all what it is that Christ is doing for us in the gospel, his payment for us.

So that idea is really basic to our salvation.

And the second thing we talk about, the necessity of covenant theology. When we look at the structure of the scriptures, we have no idea how to deal with the fact that, you know,

OK, in the Old Testament, we're commanded to sacrifice animals.

There's all these ceremonies and all that stuff. You've no idea how to deal with these ceremonies without a way of looking at the significant points of transition in the

Bible. And so the new covenant, which is so emphasized in Jeremiah and in the book of Ezekiel.

This new covenant that that is the the way in which Christ comes, fulfills all the types and shadows and changes this external ceremonies to point to the fact that it's been completed.

This structure helps us to understand how we can now live a life that is pleasing to God, to know what ceremonies were old, what ceremonies are ended and what's new, and to view how we're supposed to deal with the law as a whole.

And so reformed people historically have dealt with the law of God in terms of three major categories, the moral law, those things that are duties of everybody, everywhere, and that were written on the heart of Adam.

And that are summarized in the two great commandments to love God and love neighbor and then further explained in the

Ten Commandments. When we look at that as the moral law, we understand that the second commandment teaches us how to love

God in terms of worship. The second commandment teaches us we're not supposed to use images of God and try to have idols engraved in images or or drawings or whatever of God.

We're supposed to use the ceremonies that he's appointed. And so you think about if we took bread and wine and God had not commanded us to use it as a symbol for Christ and of his work, it would be an idol.

But the fact that he commands us to use that ceremony is what makes it lawful. And so the external ceremonies, the rituals that we have are things that we need to know what ceremonies are no longer to be used and which ones are we to use now so we can have right worship.

So this covenant theology is basic to the structure of our doctrine. It's also basic in terms of right worship and to know how governance works.

When we look at how is it the church is organized? How was it organized before and which things continue?

We think about that in terms of the other institutions and the state. And so as we think about God is the one who institutes the state, he's the one who institutes the church, he institutes the family and he makes the individual.

And so the governance for an individual household, a church or a state is all dependent upon what

God has commanded. And so we have to understand when we look at those rules of governance, we have to understand which ones apply to which institutions.

And we have to understand are there changes across time. And so when we look at, again, the reformed structure of the law, the ways when we talked about the moral law, you know, the ceremonial law in terms of the ceremonies that are given in the old covenant.

And we have new covenant ceremonies. Again, you know, Lord's Supper is a ceremony and baptism is a ceremony.

And so those are things that we know we use now, but we're not to we're not we're not supposed to invent ceremonies.

We use the ones that God has given. And so in addition to that, there's the civil law, which was the rules that were given for how the state of Israel was to be organized.

And but it provides for us principles of justice. So, for example, one of the things that you have is an interesting part of the ceremonial, an interesting part of the civil law is that there were cities of refuge where if a man committed a crime and he needed to appeal to a higher court, they could go and wait in the city of refuge for a trial.

And at the same time, if the high priest died while he was waiting there, he was supposed to be able to go free and not receive a penalty, which provided a sort of basis for the statute of limitations.

And so we find that statute of limitations. We don't have to have somebody dying for the statute of limitations to end for us.

We can have a time period after after a crime. But it gives us a principle that there's is an orderly way to deal with things like statutes of limitations.

On the other side, we don't know what a crime is or what a just penalty would be apart from God telling us in his word.

And so we have principles for administration and for the efficient running of government and avoiding tyranny in over centralization.

We also have principles to know what a crime is and what a just penalty is. So civil law has elements that are particular to Israel in terms of the geography of Israel and things that are peculiar to it and also technological things.

But it does give to us principles of justice. And so covenant theology provides us an understanding of the fact that that was a particular nation.

But it also is given to us as an example for our teaching with other nations. And so the structure of the law in terms of the moral law, the ceremonial law and the civil law gives us a way of looking at the structure of Scripture in terms of when things change and how they affect us.

So one of the great things in terms of the ceremonial laws, one of the interesting elements there is that you find in Leviticus 17 and 18.

There are these rules that apply not only to the Israelites, but even to strangers in the land. And Acts 15 provides us with a list of four categories of law that were from the ceremonial law that don't only apply to Jews, but they even applied to Gentiles.

And those that are found in Leviticus 17 and 18, and they have to do with, for example, not eating blood, which was a commandment given to Noah.

They have to do with the idea of not eating animals that are designed in such a way as to not have the blood spilled out.

So if you butchered an animal and kept all its blood in it so you could eat it, sort of vampirism, because the blood is a symbol for life.

Thirdly, you find we're not supposed to have things that are polluted by idols. So you don't want to take things that are a part of idolatry or polluted by it or associated with it and to consume it.

And then fourthly, there was this rule to not participate in sexual immorality. And sexual morality is being referred to there as the special rules that were instituted again in Leviticus 18.

We find what are called the rules of consanguinity and affinity. Consanguinity means with blood and affinity has to do with a connection in terms of marriage.

So with blood would be like, you know, what level of relative are you forbidden from marrying? And how close of a relative could you marry?

Can you marry your fourth cousin? And so the idea of how close or how far of a relative away is something that's defined for us in that set of laws.

And it's a part of the ceremonial laws. And we find, for example, that the descendants of Adam and Eve initially were marrying siblings.

And it was lawful until the institution of God giving in the Levitical law there, a place where we know what level of person by blood we cannot marry.

And then there's also, again, the application of that in marriage so that the in -law, you cannot marry as close as you could not marry somebody related by blood.

And so we find those rules, those are examples of ceremonial laws that carry over. So this interpretive structure to know which laws are applicable to us is extremely important.

And we find these as the theological structures that we see, even from the Apostle Paul, who takes, for example, the idea that in First Corinthians, you find a man was disciplined for breaking this by, for example, taking to himself a woman who had previously been a stepmother, a person who had been married to his father.

And so the rules of affinity are being applied there. So we find these kinds of things being dealt with.

So the structure of law is found in and rooted in how we understand these covenants.

So covenant theology is necessary for us to get the gospel where Christ is our representative, and it's necessary for us to understand the law structure for how we should live now as Christians.

And so it resolves for us many confusions. I find so often that people don't understand how to deal with the law, and they don't understand the way of salvation in a coherent way that makes the

Bible make sense. And so many people, like the listener who called in earlier or asked earlier, think, oh, the

Old Testament taught that people were saved by works, and now people are saved by grace. And that is simply not the case.

There is a structure that goes back all the way to Adam, that people were saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in the mediatorial work of Christ alone, for the glory of God alone.

Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, and Christ bringing in the new covenant, as was promised in Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 37.

And let's remember that the listener who sent in the question about that was in agreement with you.

He wanted you to confirm that that was heresy to believe that men were saved by obedience in the covenant of works.

Absolutely. Thank you for correcting me. Sorry about that. That's all right. Well, let's take a couple of questions before we go to the final break.

And we have Janice in Evergreen, Idaho. And Janice said,

I believe earlier on you said something about the covenant of marriage. And a lot of things have been said about that lately, in light of the scandal that erupted from Alistair Begg, giving absolutely ridiculous advice to a

Christian grandmother to attend a transgendered wedding, so -called.

Some of the defenders of Alistair are rebuking Christians for being inconsistent, because they will attend a marriage between two unbelievers.

But is not even a marriage of two unbelievers a binding covenant of God, regardless of whether or not they believe in him?

Yes, that's absolutely true. It is the historic doctrine of Rome that marriage is a sacrament and it is only valid when administered by the church, specifically the papal dominion.

And they will try to teach that civil marriages are illegitimate and marriages between unbelievers or between a believer with an unbeliever, if the unbeliever isn't given some sort of a dispensation by Rome to marry the believer, unless they agree to go through the

Romanist sacramental version, that it's invalid. So anyways, yes, that's an error.

So Protestantism and the Bible plainly teach that marriage between unbelievers is valid.

Marriage between a believer and an unbeliever is valid. Marriage between believers is valid. Now, believers ought only to marry a fellow believer.

But the idea of what our duties are, in terms of what we should do, is not the same thing as what a valid covenant is.

And so we are obligated to do everything perfectly all the time, but there are some things, even when we sin in the process, that are still valid.

And so it's not sin to watch unbelievers enter into a covenant and to hold them responsible for that covenant.

And it is also the case that covenants can be valid and binding and obligatory, even if the persons who are in them are unbelievers.

So it's an illegitimate argument. God establishes the validity of marriage, and the validity of marriage includes the validity of marriages between unbelievers or a believer and an unbeliever.

Okay. Thank you very much for that excellent question. And we have—let's see here—we have

Rubel, just like the Russian money. Rubel in Crystal, North Dakota.

And Rubel says, I don't want to cause any tension between you and the guest of the show.

But it seems to me that the Reformed Baptist understanding of covenant theology is that only the elect of God are truly in the covenant, and that many, perhaps not all,

Pado -Baptists believe that even the non -elect are truly in the covenant, which is why they can be removed from it.

I was wondering if you think that's an adequate or accurate description, and where exactly do you stand on those issues?

I'd be interested in your thoughts on that, brother, but just a really quick version of my answer would be, I think that anybody who is in the visible church is visibly in the covenant in the sense that they will suffer greater curse if they reject it, if they reprobate, and they'll receive greater blessing if they're elect.

So a person who's baptized will either receive greater blessing or greater curse depending on whether they are chosen or not, whether they're an object of grace or wrath.

And so the covenant, not everybody who's externally in the covenant internally has the covenant written on their heart.

Furthermore, not everybody who has the covenant internally written on their heart is someone who externally receives the signs of the covenant.

So there's salvation outside of those who are baptized. There's salvation in baptism.

Most people who are saved are baptized. And there are many who are baptized who are not saved.

And so I think that language of being in the covenant externally and being in the covenant internally is a useful thing.

And I think you would agree there's greater blessing and cursing based upon whether a person is baptized or not.

And so a false professor, for example, who's baptized, I think you would agree that there's greater curse on them for the rejection of Christ.

I'd be really interested in your thoughts. Yeah, I agree with that, although from my years as a

Reformed Baptist, I was thankfully saved in a Reformed Baptist church. I didn't have to get de -brainwashed, if that's a word, from other, like, false theologies and so on which exist within modern evangelicalism.

But I have always heard that, just like the listener

Rubel said, that only the elect are truly in the covenant, but there are false members of churches.

And if they are revealed to be charlatans, they are to be removed.

They are to be excommunicated until they demonstrate genuine repentance. But from what

I know—and there may be Reformed Baptists who even disagree with the way I'm explaining this— but from what I have been always taught and said, that there is only the elect in the covenant of Christ, and therefore anybody else is just a false or charlatan member of a local congregation.

Everybody else that's not truly of the elect, I mean. Would you agree that there's a false covenanting that occurs when a person is baptized hypocritically?

Oh yeah, but I wouldn't say that they were truly in the covenant. Go ahead,

I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. No, I was just going to say that I have met and had conversations with Presbyterians who believe that a baby of believers is truly a member of the covenant after their baptism, but that child obviously is not necessarily of the elect because we don't breed the elect.

God chooses for the foundation of the world who is the elect, and therefore

Christians cannot assume that their babies are definitely of the elect, and therefore, you know, members of the covenant.

Sure, and I imagine you would agree that in some way, the children of the old covenant that received circumcision as a symbol of the covenant, that there was some way in which they were in the covenant in terms of a visible way, they brought greater responsibility to them, but that not all of them were elect.

I mean, obviously not all of them were elect. Yeah, and that's why I believe that this is a new and better covenant. That was a covenant with Israel, and therefore you had people who were truly in the covenant that were not circumcised of the heart that were in the covenant, but in the new covenant,

I believe only those that are circumcised of the heart are in the new covenant. Okay, and so I would say that there's an external presence in the covenant, and there's an internal presence, and so those who are externally, they just have a greater responsibility, and they have a greater blessing if they are converted, and they have a greater cursing if they're not, and I think you would agree with that, but not necessarily if they're in the covenant in some ways.

I'm not really sure how you would talk about the covenanting act of baptism, but I think hopefully that lays there kind of how

I would view those in terms of the internal and external. Yes, and that is why, even though we have different views, they're not monumental enough to not have fellowship, and confessional

Reformed Baptists and confessional Presbyterians have frequent fellowship and even pulpit exchange, and they're on the same panels very often at conferences and co -author books together, and so I don't find the difference so monumental that we have to disfellowship one another over the differences.

Yeah, so institutionally, we couldn't obviously have the same church because we can't acknowledge the same membership, but we can say we have the same gospel.

We can say that we have overwhelming agreement about applications of what the law of God would teach, and then

I think it's good for us to have, as you and I have just had a brotherly argument with each other right here, and seeking to understand each other's positions,

I think it's very important that Reformed Baptists and Reformed Presbyterians really argue about this and seek to understand each other because that's how we're going to come to see who's wrong, right?

Either I'm idolatrously baptizing babies when

God has not commanded it, or a Baptist church is disobedient, not fulfilling some requirement that the

Lord has given, and so it's really important that we come to figure out who needs to repent there, and that occurs through that debate, and so it's such a wonderful thing to be able to engage in the discussions of those things as we seek to share the same gospel and to seek to engage in seeing the truth that we share advanced, and I think the gospel and scripture authority are such a central marker for that, and so I'm so grateful that you and I share in the same gospel.

Amen, and the show's over now, folks. No, I'm only kidding. And don't go away, folks, because we are coming back after our final break, and if you haven't already sent in your question, send it in now because we'll be out of time before you know it.

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Almost gave the Dr. Beeky seminary name there. If you have the power to grant title to it,

I'll take it. And we're discussing the necessity of covenant theology.

And before I take any of my listener questions that are left, I just wanted to ask you, because of our little chat before about our differences on covenant theology, if you could exegete

Hebrews 7, verse 25, therefore he is also able to save forever those who come to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.

And would you believe that as a promise for everyone in the covenant, as a Baptist would, or just for the elect?

That's Hebrews 7 what again? 25, you said? Yes. So I would say that obviously his capability in terms of the idea of being able to save the other most is something that he has in terms of anybody, but he obviously effectively only does it for the elect.

And so his intercession is only for the elect.

He is only seeking to bring about the good of the elect.

And so I would say that when we talk about the book of Hebrews, you're going to find like the famous apostasy passage in chapter 6, or you're going to have the promises that get laid out, and you're going to have those in the promises of the new covenant in chapter 8.

And I'm going to have differences there. But I think when we come to this one, verse 25, chapter 7, verse 25, you know,

Christ saves to the uttermost those who come to him, come to God through him.

That's obviously only talking about the elect. His intercession is only for the elect. So sorry, I muddled through that.

But how have you heard that interpreted previously by Presbyterians?

I have heard some Presbyterians say that Christ mediates, even with the non -elect in the covenant, he mediates wrath.

And I just don't understand how somebody can come to that conclusion. Obviously, I'm a

Baptist, so I wouldn't come to that conclusion. But I don't know if you've heard that as well. So I have no problem saying that Christ mediates wrath to the reprobate, and I don't have a problem with that.

For example, I think he as a king, Christ has two kingships. He has a kingship in terms of his eternal divinity, but he also is the mediatorial king receiving the throne of David at the right hand of the

Father. And so as the mediatorial king, for example, I think Psalm 2 would teach that the mediatorial kingship of Christ, he mediates wrath.

And so I think that there is a way in which Christ, in his kingship as on the throne of David, very specifically both administers and mediates wrath there.

And I would say as a high priest, he even brings imprecations on the reprobate, like he would pray curse on them.

And then I would say as a prophet, he brings oracles of woe on them. So I would say in the mediatorial office of Christ and in the three offices of prophet, priest, king, there are ways in which he brings wrath by that mediatorial office.

Any thoughts on that? Yeah, I would agree that he mediates wrath, but not for anybody in the covenant.

That's the only way I would say. Got it. I'm sorry. It took me a second to figure out.

I get what you're saying. And you understand what I would say there is obviously the idea that there is a way in which there's a bringing of greater curse and therefore wrath on those who receive the externals of the covenant but are not actually elect.

And again, I think you would agree with that. You just wouldn't agree they're in the covenant. You would say somebody who's wrongly baptized or falsely baptized or wrongly takes the

Lord's Supper, they're receiving greater wrath, greater curse in that. You're just not willing to say that they're in the covenant.

So you agree it's a covenanting act. And so I'm curious if there's a covenanting act there, even if they do it wrong, is there some way in which you would think that they covenant with God?

Well, I guess if you want to use that way of phrasing it, covenant with God, like, for instance, two lost people getting married who maybe even though not all lost people consciously are making a covenant with God, there are some that proclaim that.

In fact, I would imagine in some way most lost people who get married in any church or house of worship, even if it's a false religion, they are making a public statement that they're making a covenant with God.

And in that case, as we said earlier, it is a binding marriage between one man and one woman.

In other words, when people get saved, they don't have to get remarried, obviously, because that's just not a requirement in the scriptures.

But I just think that the rebirth is a different story. And I believe that all who are truly in the covenant are the elect.

And those that appear to be to the outside world are merely charlatans, or they're not necessarily conscious charlatans.

They may be just lost people who are unaware of their state. Self -deceived.

Yes. As unaware as somebody possibly could be in light of Romans 1, because obviously we believe that there's no true atheist, for instance.

But that's about all I can think of saying right now on that issue. But as far as before we go to any final listener question, did you want to conclude with anything else as far as what you intended to say about your theme today, the necessity of covenant theology?

So, yeah, thank you for that opportunity. I think in regards to the general points that I want to make sure that people walk away with,

I want to make sure that people remember that there are three major covenants that govern the structure of how we think about history and how the

Bible is organized, and that's the covenant that exists between the members of the Trinity and the intra -Trinitarian covenant between the

Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, where their roles in terms of how they carry out creation and redemption occurs.

Then also the covenant of works between God and Adam is the basis of our guilt. The covenant between God and Lord Jesus Christ, God the

Father and Lord Jesus Christ, called the covenant of grace, is that whereby we have salvation, where we have the death of the second

Adam to pay for our sins. I want to make sure that people think about the fact that there's a transition across time, even with giving of Adam the covenant of grace, then there's also a building on that with Noah, a building on that with Abraham, a building on that with Moses, a building on that with David, and that the new covenant, which is that same covenant of grace with the change of the outward forms, is given in what was promised in Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 37.

Then the Lord Jesus Christ comes and gives us the signs of the new covenant, and the Lord's Supper being, for example, called, we have the cup being called the blood of the new covenant or the symbol for the blood of the new covenant.

I want to emphasize those things. Just to get a parting shot at you, friend, I want to say that there's a way in which circumcision as a sign of the covenant is something where people were in the covenant, but they were not savingly in the covenant, but it simply brought greater curse on those.

They disagree, and they probably don't have time to respond, so ha, sorry. Let's go to another listener question.

Let's see here. We have Kimmy in Aquabog, Long Island, New York, and Kimmy says, since you have titled the theme of the show

The Necessity of Covenant Theology, are you claiming that dispensationalists and others are not saved?

So if a person ultimately denies that Adam represents them and they have a basis of guilt there, and they deny that Christ is the second

Adam and covenantally represents them to pay for their sins and to provide them with righteousness that is not their own, then

I would say that they're not saved. If, however, you have those elements in your theology and you think that there's somehow in which you call yourself a dispensationalist and that the covenant is, you know, there's one way of salvation throughout history here, then okay, that's not a problem.

I think many people who call themselves dispensationalists are willing to agree with that basics, those basics of the

Romans 5, you know, the first Adam and the second Adam. But I think that there are some dispensationalists, people who call themselves dispensationalists, that want to say that there's a bunch of different ways of salvation, some of the footnotes, you know, and stuff like that.

And so I think that that's heretical. Yeah, and that would be a tiny fragment from my experience anyway.

There are even amongst that tiny minority of dispensationalists who claim that salvation is through obedience and martyrdom during the tribulation and things like that.

They have different gospels, it would seem, but that is not what I have heard. Like, as I've repeated many times in the show, one of my modern -day heroes is

John MacArthur, and I disagree with John on eschatology and on dispensational theology, but I agree with him on far more than those things over which

I disagree with him. And I have no problem having fellowship with dispensationalists as long as they don't harp on or hobby -horse their differences, especially with eschatology.

I couldn't tolerate, for instance, joining a church where every week they were beating the drum on their unique understanding of pre -tribulational and pre -millennial rapture and so on.

But I think that most of them would be, in the majority, in agreement with things that you said today.

Yeah, and I think that's true, and I think that a lot of people who call themselves dispensationalists are very modified from what you might read in some of the older forms, and a lot of them have even kind of come to a place where you might call— people talk about new covenant theology, where they'll talk about three structures.

They'll talk about the covenant of works, their covenant of grace, or the old covenant, and they'll have the new covenant, which is sort of a—they'll say it's a different structure or whatever, but they'll still teach that those two covenants, the old and new, even though they're not one unified covenant, they'll teach that they still have justification by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone.

I think they're wrong in trying to separate them and make them not the same covenant, but they're trying to make them so they both end up pointing to Christ or whatever.

So you have all these modifications and kind of variations on it, but I think that the confessional standards that lay out these,

I think that the Westminster Confession does an excellent job on it, and I think that you find there's a lot of overlap in terms of how the

London Baptist Confession, for example, talks about it. And I think that the idea of the relationship of the visible church with being in the covenant is going to be the major point of disagreement, right?

A Baptist is going to say being in the visible church doesn't constitute being in the covenant. A Presbyterian is going to say being in the visible church does constitute being in the covenant, but that doesn't mean that you're savingly in it.

And so those choices of language, the differences between London Baptist Confession and Westminster Confession are much smaller than a lot of those other variations.

My hope is that we will find a growth in unity through much discussion as people seek to debate these things.

Amen. Well, I don't want our listeners to forget that the website for Puritan Reformed Church of Phoenix, Arizona is

PuritanPHX, the abbreviation for Phoenix, dot com. PuritanPHX .com.

And don't forget about the website for the wonderful business that my guest,

David Reese, where my guest serves as the CEO. That's ArmoredRepublic .com.

ArmoredRepublic .com. Pastor David Reese, I am so thrilled that you are a regularly featured guest in this program.

I can't wait till you return, and I know it's coming up in the very near future. I always enjoy every minute of our discussions.

I want to thank everybody who listened today. I hope that you all have a very safe and healthy and God -glorifying and Christ -honoring weekend and Lord's Day.

And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.