1689 London Baptist Confession (part 14)

We're going to be speaking about Covenant of Grace.

Anybody know what the Covenant of Grace is?

It's what the London Baptist Confession of Faith says.

It says, the distance between God and the creature is so great, which we would acknowledge, that

although reasonable creatures do owe obedience to him as their creature, or I'm sorry, as their creator,

yet they could never have attained the reward of life, but by some voluntary

condensation on God's part, which he hath been pleased to express by

way of covenant.

Now what does this start to sound like?

Listen to this and see if you can kind of frame it in a different language.

The distance between God and the creature is so great.

Let me see if I can help you out here.

God is holy and man is sinful.

Does that sound like a great distance?

That although reasonable creatures do owe obedience to him as their creator, although they knew

God, they did not worship him as God, they did not acknowledge him as God, right?

This is Romans 1 stuff here.

Yet they could never have attained the reward of life, but by some voluntary condensation.

Did I say that?

Condescension.

Voluntary reign on God's part.

We're having condescension on God's part, which he

hath been pleased to express by way of covenant.

So what are we talking about here?

What's the voluntary?

Let me slow down here.

Condescension on God's part.

If I said, you know, I'll just throw out a scripture.

If I said John 3 .16, would that ring any bells for you?

Come on, people.

Get some coffee.

Yeah, the incarnation.

God, the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, came down to earth condescended to come down to us.

Why?

Well, this is the whole covenant, right?

And this is where we're going.

So, then Waldron says, questions like this confront us.

Is there a covenant of grace?

Does the Bible speak of a covenant of grace?

Can anybody think of a scripture that describes or includes the words covenant of grace?

And the answer is no, because there's no one scripture that says covenant of grace.

You know, is there one scripture that says Trinity?

I mean, you know, one scripture doesn't necessarily mean all that much.

Waldron says, if it does, where?

If it does not, is this terminology valid?

Such questions are particularly important because in recent days, not a few have rejected this terminology

as unbiblical.

The covenant of grace in this chapter is viewed as the ground of every sinner's salvation.

I mean, if we said covenant of grace, well, it wouldn't be wrong to call it something else.

It wouldn't be wrong to view it as the gospel.

This is implied by the statement of paragraph two that it was made after the fall of Adam.

It explicitly stated in paragraph three that it is alone by the grace of this covenant that

all the posterity of fallen Adam that were ever saved did obtain life and blessed

immortality.

Now, I found Waldron somewhat impenetrable, so I've pulled

some other resources together here to help us out.

This is from Ligonier .org.

Author is Daniel Hyde.

He says the essence of the covenant of grace is the same throughout Old and New Testaments.

God saves sinners by what means?

Grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.

But its historical administration has been varied by time and place.

For example, the covenant of grace widened from the Old Testament to the New Testament.

He says also it was administered in the Old Testament through what the New Testament authors describe as

types and shadows such as sacrifices, the priesthood, and the temple, all of which

pointed to their reality, Jesus Christ.

You know, there has been teaching really for the last hundred

plus years that God saved people in different ways.

What's the problem with that?

Is there a problem with that?

It starts to sound like different religions, right?

Yeah, Cory.

It sort of contradicts the idea that God is immutable.

Other thoughts?

Makes the cross a waste of time.

Well, yeah, if every other religion gets you there.

But the idea is, you know, if you follow some lines of thinking that Old Testament,

they were saved by what?

Following the law.

I mean, there's that idea.

And there's a big problem with that, which is nobody follows the law, right?

Right.

I mean, Jesus makes that explicit.

When he says, you know, you have heard it said, but I say to you, he says, you know, you've heard it said thou shalt

not commit adultery, but I say to you, if you look at a woman with lust in your heart, you've already

committed adultery.

So in other words, it wasn't enough to have the external obedience, which is kind of contradictory to the whole idea

that there were two systems, that somehow the Old Testament, and not only that, but if we look at

Hebrews 11, what do we see?

What words repeat over and over and over again in Hebrews 11?

By faith.

So, you know, it wasn't, I mean, it would be one thing if we open up the Hebrews

11 and instead of the Hall of Faith, we read the Hall of Obedience, you know, by

faith, well, scratch that.

I mean, it would be interesting to try to read it that way.

By obedience, so -and -so, you know, Abraham.

But then we'd go, well, wait a second, this is the same Abraham who did, wait a minute, this is the same Samson who did,

and we just go through one by one by one, and we'd go, these guys were not obedient.

How is it possible that, you know, they are in heaven?

We'd go, this doesn't make any sense.

It's like there's two standards, right?

There's the imperfect standard of the Old Testament, and now that Jesus has come, well, now you can be perfect in

him, but before you didn't have to be perfect.

So there's a consistency to Scripture.

You always had to believe.

The difference is the Old Testament, they didn't know who Jesus was.

They knew there would be a Messiah, a Savior, or at the very least we could say that

God would save.

In fact, let's just go to the Genesis 3, the

so -called, I'm going to call it the prototype, because, oh yeah, proto, because I can never say

the word right, so I'll just call it the prototype.

Proto -ewangelion.

Yeah, well, you know, it's the first gospel.

That's the English version.

When God is pronouncing the curses on

Eve and Adam and Satan, and he says to

Satan in Genesis 3 .15, I will put enmity between

you, Satan, and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring.

He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

This is a foreshadowing of, or basically the early version of

the gospel.

When he says between your offspring, well, who is her offspring?

Who's the offspring of Eve that it's being referred to here?

Anyone who says Seth or Cain or Abel gets

demerits.

You know, just looking even at the MacArthur study notes, it says the first gospel is prophetic of the struggle

and its outcome between your offspring, Satan and unbelievers, who are called the devil's children in John

8 .44, and her offspring, Christ, a descendant of Eve and those in

him.

Because Jesus is not a descendant of Adam, does not have

an earthly father, therefore does not have original sin, which we were talking about.

So that's the prototype of the gospel.

And then the rest of the Bible really sort of is a development of that.

Getting back to the notes here, any questions about what I've said so far?

If so, please ask Charlie.

Okay, back to Waldron.

He says the Bible, however, never used the word covenant to refer to an overarching covenant of grace, which

spans the whole of human history.

While it may be admitted that the use of a biblical term to describe something other than what it describes in the Bible is somewhat

confusing, as is that phrasing, it remains true that the phrase, the covenant of grace, does refer to

a biblical truth.

It refers to the biblical truth intimately related to the divine covenants.

Back to the Baptism, Lent, and Confession of Faith.

The covenant is revealed in the gospel, first of all, to Adam in the promise of salvation by the seed of the

woman, which we just read.

And afterwards, by farther steps, until the discovery thereof was completed in the New Testament, and it is

founded in that eternal covenant transaction between the father and the son

about the redemption of the elect, and it is alone by the grace of this covenant that all the

posterity of fallen Adam that were ever saved did obtain life and blessed immortality,

man being now utterly incapable of acceptance with God.

Anyway, okay, so let's talk for a minute.

What does the covenant of grace supplant?

What does it replace?

We talked about it, the covenant that Adam and God had in the Garden

of Eden, which was called the covenant of works.

Well, you've all been taking notes, copious notes, so let me just kind of review this.

I have some notes here from Van Dixhorn about the covenant of works, and I like

what Van Dixhorn says because he speaks plain English.

He says, we could have called this the Adamic covenant, mentioning the person representing us in this divine

arrangement, and I like this.

It could have been called a covenant of death.

Here's the covenant of death.

For Adam was to be punished with nothing less than death should he not abide by the simple

terms of this covenant, and the terms of the covenant were

tend the garden and don't do something.

Don't eat anything.

No.

See, that's what Eve did in the garden.

Same thing.

We're having a good time.

Others of us are still in repentance mode.

Okay.

Well, we could just skip to, you know, I don't want to

skip that.

So it's back in Genesis 2.

Took a minute.

Okay.

Okay, here we go.

So he said, don't do that.

Pretty basic.

That's all you, you know, you're restricted from that.

No one calls it the covenant of death.

Ben Dixhorn goes on to say, he says,

And here's the key.

The idea that the law of God, here's the idea behind the covenant of death or the covenant of

works.

The idea is that the law of God requires perfect and personal obedience.

If you remember, we talked about Adam being on a time of probation.

We don't know how long it was that he was in the Garden of Eden.

But if he had obeyed for a amount of time determined by God, although God knew he

wasn't going to, then that would have been imputed to us all.

And we would have had, well, the righteousness of Adam instead of the sin

of Adam.

But doing was the important verb.

Do, do, do, do.

Obey.

As it was, Adam did not keep the one simple law that was explicitly put before him.

In spite of God's command to avoid the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam ate its fruit.

Disobeying God, he came under the law's curse and the penalty of death.

This was an immense tragedy for the life was not only within sight, it was even within reach.

Covenant keeping really would have led to a more abundant life.

Okay.

So, covenant of works.

Now the covenant of grace.

This is from R .C. Sproul

talking about the covenant of grace, the covenant of... the

covenant of grace or the gospel.

He says, God gives us his son.

He also promises to give his Holy Spirit to all those who are his people.

And then he asked this question.

He says, does your faith ever waver?

Remember the Holy Spirit for he too is promised in this covenant.

That is all of grace.

The spirit is willing or is will make us willing to believe in a crucified Savior and

able to believe in an empty tomb for it is he who begins our salvation.

He begins our salvation.

He takes it to completion.

And remember too that this gift is for those who are ordained unto eternal life and nothing less.

For in this second covenant, the father, the son and the Holy Spirit have offered a relationship to us

that will never end.

In fact, I was just about to get to that in John 14 when I was rudely interrupted, but I digress.

The covenant of grace is not so -called because God no longer requires obedience

and now negotiates his holiness and righteousness.

He does not change the standards in the covenant of grace.

It pleased the Lord to provide a substitute, a champion to obey his law.

Now listen to this wording.

This is key.

Van Dixhorn used it and now Sproul uses it.

To send his only begotten son to obey his law perfectly and personally.

Perfectly and personally.

He had to personally obey and for us.

God had him do for us what Adam failed to do.

So Adam under the covenant of works, here Adam, here's what you need to do is tend the garden and by the way, don't

eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and he fails to do that.

Fails his probation.

Jesus comes to earth, obeys perfectly and when we talk about the covenant of grace, we're

really talking about a covenant.

Well, a covenant of grace is basically the gospel.

I could talk about the covenant of redemption as well.

The covenant of redemption though is between the Trinity, members of the Trinity.

So let's just stay on covenant of grace.

Jesus had to spend his earthly life in perfect obedience because God required that for his death to

be an acceptable price, an acceptable sacrifice.

He had to be the mediator of a new covenant and he had to do what we cannot do.

This is why as Christians, we flee to him and cling to him.

We know that if God looks at our iniquity, we cannot stand.

Right?

If you, oh Lord, were to count iniquities, who could stand?

Mark iniquities, who could stand?

The answer is no one.

Christ alone covers our sin.

He alone is perfect.

This is the good news of the gospel.

God has not only made the covenant of works but also the covenant of grace.

Christ fulfilled the covenant of works for you and me.

In other words, what Adam was supposed to do and failed to do, Jesus has done and that is

credited to us.

Questions?

Covenant of works, covenant of grace.

Okay.

Still mulling it over.

What Waldron is now going to do is just show that the Old Testament covenants just kind of build on each

other.

He says that the covenant with Noah, Noahic covenant, the rainbow,

provides the stable context in which the redemptive purposes of God embodied in the later covenants may be pursued.

What does he mean?

He means that since God will no longer destroy the earth by flood,

then we have a stable context, a stable world in which the redemptive

purpose of God may be pursued.

The Mosaic covenants is organically dependent upon the covenant of Abraham, specific

blessings of the covenant with Abraham began to be fulfilled under the Mosaic covenant.

The mercy of God to Israel was due to the covenant with Abraham.

Conversely, the blessings of the Abrahamic covenant were dependent on obedience to the Mosaic covenants,

etc., etc., etc.

These things are just sort of built on one another.

How impossible is it to call the covenant of Abraham a covenant of grace and the Mosaic covenant

a covenant of works?

They are inseparable.

Why would somebody call the covenant with Moses a

covenant of works?

Yes, Erickson.

What's that?

Okay.

Because of all the works, because the obedience demanded.

Erickson.

Okay.

Let's look at...

Where are those pesky Ten Commandments?

Oh, yeah, in Exodus 20.

Let's turn to Exodus 20 for a moment.

Beginning in verse 1,.

And God spoke all these words, saying, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt,

out of the house of slavery.

And then we start in the Ten Commandments.

You shall have no other gods before me.

I mean, if you just stop there and you think about how many times

Israel violated that.

Taylor sent me a message here a few days ago about

supposedly, this is a liberal author saying this, that

the wife of God has been edited out of the Old Testament.

And you're like, really?

Really?

The wife of God, according to this scholar, her name was Asherah.

What is Asherah?

Yeah, one of those things.

Yeah, Chaldean things or Babylonian things, which we also call idols.

Yeah.

And so the fact that they were, you know, in the temple means absolutely nothing other than what?

The people of Israel had violated the First Commandment.

You shall have no other gods before me.

And so they bring in the false gods, even in the temple.

And, you know, what caused the children of Israel to be taken out of the land?

Idolatry.

They did this over and over and over again.

They would get judged for their idolatry.

You shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not make for yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven

above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the water under the earth.

I mean, this is what they did.

You shall not bow down to them or serve them.

For I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third

and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and

keep my commandments.

So idolatry is likened unto doing what to God?

Hating him, right?

You can't say, I love God, and then bow down to, you know, I'm sorry with all due

respect for any of you who have Buddhas in your house.

I don't really understand that, you know, if you have any Buddhas in your house.

Contradiction.

Okay.

Verse 7.

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not

hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.

Study what MacArthur says, but I think it's a lot more than I was watching Ray Comfort

yesterday in a video, and he was, you know, doing his usual thing, and he said, you know, if you ever take the Lord's name in vain,

I think it's just a lot more than using it as a swear word.

But anyway, I digress.

Verse 8.

Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God.

On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or

your female servant or your livestock.

Your livestock should not do any work.

Or the sojourner who is within your gates, somebody who's just going through your land.

For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all that is in them and rested on the seventh day.

Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

Honor your mother and your father that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

You shall not murder.

You shall not commit adultery.

You shall not steal.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

You shall not covet your neighbor's house.

You shall not cover your neighbor's wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey

or anything that is your neighbor's.

This sounds like a lot of what?

Do, do, do, do, do, do, do.

But what do we find out?

How can you say that that's possibly a covenant of grace?

Yes, but I don't think that's where it is.

My mind's going through that.

But let's turn to 1 Timothy for a moment.

So I'm just kind of pondering that question myself.

A tutor.

See, I want to say that's like, where is that?

I want to say Galatians.

Does anybody have the verse?

But let's look at 1 Timothy 1 because that is an address I recall where

Paul says about the law.

324?

Okay, well, let's read.

I'll let you nail that down in a second, but let's read 1 Timothy 1, verse 8.

He says, now we know that the law, and he would be talking about Mosaic law,

is good if one uses it lawfully, understanding this, that the law is not laid down for the just, but for the lawless and

disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who strike their

fathers and mothers, for murderers, the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers,

liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine.

In accordance, listen, in accordance with the gospel of the glory of the blessed

God with which I have been entrusted.

We need to see what's a lawful use of the law.

We hold up the law, we hold up the Ten Commandments, and we look at it and say we fall short, just like Jesus

did when he said, you've heard it said, but I say to you.

He was pointing out the contrast between the legalistic external obedience

and the internal sin that we commit,

even if we don't like to admit it.

Charlie, did you have a...

Okay, the law is a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ,

Paul writes in Galatians 3 .24.

So it is gracious in the fact that it shows us how,

all you have to do is just keep the Ten Commandments.

I can't keep the Ten Commandments.

I can't do that.

Maybe I can commit, commit.

I can keep certain things, like in my entire life, I don't think I've ever carved an idol for myself

and then fallen down and worshiped it.

But one out of ten is not good, or two out of ten is not good.

The Lord demands ten out of ten.

So how do we do on that scale?

And the answer is not very good.

And it always, it should drive us to, when you think about the Old Testament saints, ultimately to

despair knowing that they needed what?

You know, a rock, a savior, someone greater than themselves to keep the

law.

Sorry.

Okay.

Comments or thoughts?

Okay, he says, Waldner says, the covenant with David is organically related to those with Abraham and Moses.

Et cetera, et cetera.

Okay.

Let's look at, okay, I'll read this and then we'll look at this.

You can start turning to Ephesians 2.

The thematic unity of the covenants means that they have a single ultimate theme or purpose.

The text that epitomizes and summarizes this point is Ephesians 2 .12, which literally

translated speaks of the covenants of the promise.

Let's look at Ephesians 2 .12.

In fact, we'll read verse 11 as well.

Therefore, remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh called the

uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands.

Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of

Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and

without God in the world.

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

of Christ.

For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the

dividing wall of hostility by

abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances that he might create in himself one new

man in place of the two, so making peace.

Jesus Christ obeyed all the commandments, thus setting aside

the hostility that existed between...

One of the reasons why Israel had so many laws, rules and

regulations was to keep them separate

from all the peoples that were around them.

And what Christ has done is he's knocked down that wall by obeying all the law for us so that

we're no longer under that law.

But when he says the covenants of promise, we were outside the

covenants.

We were not covenant people as Gentiles.

We were not covenant people until Christ obeyed, thus

basically fulfilling all the mandates of all the covenants

so that we might be brought into the covenant of grace.

Skip that.

The crucial point in all this, Waldron says, is that the promise of a redeemer is

intimately related to the way of salvation.

Salvation is by the promise, that is to say, it is by grace through faith in a coming

redeemer.

This way of salvation has operated and has been progressively revealed in every age of human history.

Let's read.

Let's back up a little bit in Galatians.

Let's read Galatians 3, 18 to 22.

And would somebody read that please?

Galatians 3, 18.

Go ahead, Will.

Okay.

So, it's interesting there in verse 21.

If a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law.

So what does that mean?

If we could, if there were a set of rules that could give us, he's not speaking of

physical life, that could give us eternal life, then righteousness would indeed be by the

law, by that particular law.

But the scripture imprisoned everything under sin so that by the promise or by the promise by

faith, so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe.

In other words, there has never been salvation by

keeping the law.

And part of that, again, we get back to Adam's fall.

And Adam's fall can only be undone, can only be reversed by Jesus Christ.

Even speaking, I saw in the MacArthur study notes here, he says, now an

intermediary implies more than one, but God is one.

There's never been an intermediary, a mediator,

in the sense that someone that worked between God and men to

mediate these covenants, there isn't one until the Lord Jesus Christ.

I mean, even thinking about the Abrahamic covenants, God alone passes through

the separated animals.

Abraham does nothing.

Or Abram, at that point, does nothing.

It's always been of God.

It's always been by grace.

And I think the Abrahamic covenant, well, I guess we should look at it real quickly.

Let's look at Genesis 15.

The point of the Abrahamic covenant, besides the fact that it is the

basis of many of the other promises of God, is that there's no way you can look at it

and say that Abraham was a,

I don't want to say a willing participant, but that the covenant was ultimately

made with him.

It was between God and God.

Look at verse 12.

He makes these promises to Abram back in verse 12.

And then, well, let's back up a little bit to verse 7.

And he said to him, I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.

But he, Abraham, said, O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?

In other words, how can I know that these promises are going to come to pass?

He said to him, God said to Abraham, bring me a heifer, three years old, a female goat, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera,

cut them in half.

And then the birds of prey come out because you've got dead animals there.

And it says at the end of verse 11, Abram drove them away.

Now, as the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram.

And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him.

Then the Lord said to Abram, know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners

in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there and they will be afflicted for 400

years.

Talking about the bondage in Egypt.

But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve.

And afterward, they shall come out with great possessions.

As for yourself, you shall go to your fathers in peace.

You should be buried in a good old age.

And they shall come back here in the fourth generation for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.

Verse 17, when the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch

passed through these pieces.

On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying to your offspring, I will give this

land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the

land of Canaanites, the Canaanites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the parasites.

Sounds like parasites.

The Rephaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites and the Jebusites.

Here's the point.

The point is this is a covenant, a gracious covenant.

Why?

Because God makes all these promises to Abraham.

And normally, Abraham would walk through the pieces of the animals signifying that if he failed to keep his

part of the covenant, then what?

He'd wind up like the animals.

But he doesn't even go through it.

Why?

Because God is saying this is my covenant with you and I'm going to keep it.

And I'm going to show you that I'm going to keep it by saying that on on pain of my life, on pain of

my existence, I'm going to keep my word to you.

So it's not a covenant of works where Abram is going to be

is going to fail to keep some part of it and he's going to lose out.

This is a covenant of grace.

OK.

The work of Christ, the only source of salvation in all the ages, is itself

rooted in covenant relationship between Christ and God the Father.

There is a covenant made by God the Father with Christ, the Redeemer.

A covenant, as shown above, is a sworn promise, an oath bound promise.

The scripture teaches in Psalm one, ten, four, that God the Father has given the sworn promise

to Christ that he should be the priest and king of his people unto their salvation.

Can you think of places in the New Testament where we would see

an allusion to what I'll call the covenant of redemption?

In other words, that Jesus and the father, the son of the father, agreed

to save people even before the foundation of the world.

Janet.

Ephesians one would be one, yes.

Ephesians one, three to fourteen, would definitely be one.

We would see that.

Any other ideas?

Excellent.

Excellent.

Let's look at John 17, the high priestly prayer, and we'll have to close here.

John 17, when Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come.

Glorify your son, that the son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh

to give eternal life to all whom you have given him.

And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.

And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

You can't read this and think that Jesus is not eternal.

You can't possibly read it and think that.

I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world.

Yours they were, and you gave them to me.

He's talking about election.

And they have kept your word.

Now they know that everything that you have given me is from you.

For I have given them the words that you gave me.

In other words, God the Father chose people before the foundation of the world.

He told Jesus who these people were, and that's why Jesus came to die for these people.

But not only that, he told them what to say when he came in here.

What did Jesus say over and over again?

I come only to do the things that the Father told me.

What he wants me to say.

I do not speak my own words, but I speak the words of the Father.

The things that I'm doing, the Father does.

All these languages, why?

Because, or all these words, because of the eternal covenant between the Father and the Son

and the Holy Spirit.

Which I don't really have time to develop, but this is the point.

There are covenants, there are unbreakable bonds.

And what's the advantage of a covenant?

And we'll just close on this idea.

If we think about the covenant being this

promise, right?

Where if one party or the other does not keep it, then what happened to these

animals will happen to the person who breaks the covenant.

And we know that these covenant promises reside with God.

And he is eternal and he cannot change and he cannot die.

Then what do we know about these covenant promises?

They absolutely will come to pass.

When Jesus says, you know, that whoever comes to me I will not cast

out and I will raise him up on the last day.

How can we rely on that?

Because it's a covenant.

It's a covenant between the Father and the Son.

One person of the Trinity cannot break his bond with the other person of the Trinity.

This is not going to happen.

The triune God works cohesively, coherently.

I mean, there is nothing but comfort as we think

about the eternal workings of God, the eternal plan of God.

And as it's exhibited in the covenant of grace and the covenant of redemption, which I just briefly

touched on.

But we need to stop and we'll close in prayer and we'll pick it up next week.

Father, we thank you for the sure promises that you have

granted us.

Lord, as we just think about what Jesus has done, what he has accomplished,

what he has told us, really the kind of the way that he has

explained you to us that we might know you better, that we might see the work of your spirit better.

Father, we praise you for these things.

We thank you that your promises are sure and they will all come to pass.

Because you cannot change, you cannot lie and you cannot break your covenant.

Father, we praise you for these things in Jesus name.

Amen.