Pt. 11 LBCF Chapter 7: Of God's Covenant

Okay, so we're beginning chapter 7 of the London Baptist Confession of Faith, and if you remember our introduction, alright, we gave in part 4 of our introduction, we gave you an outline, and basically the confession is broken down into four parts.

We've finished part 1, that was chapters 1 to 6, which was the basics, or the foundation.

And so now we start with chapter 7, and this goes into part 2, and this goes on all the way to chapter 20, alright?

And this is, this whole section is explaining and expounding upon the covenant.

So the first chapter, obviously, is of the covenant, and this lays out some of the basic principles of the covenant.

So let's look at a couple of things. Firstly, in this chapter, there are three paragraphs, okay?

It's one of the shorter ones, but remember, this is just the foundation for the first part of the covenant.

What this does, what this chapter does, is it highlights the

Reformed Baptist view of God's covenant. Now that's important, alright?

And it's very important for us for several reasons, which we'll elucidate throughout the whole thing, but this view of the covenant is distinctively

Reformed Baptist, alright? That's why I say it's so, so important.

If you look at the first six chapters, any Calvinistic -leaning church would pretty much take the first six chapters, and maybe not every section of it, but they would agree with the first six chapters in general.

But when we get to the covenant, we're going to find this is where we really start to make a departure.

And in fact, let me say this, I probably have it in the notes later, but let me say it now while I remember it.

There are a lot of people that call themselves Reformed, who are not really Reformed.

Being Calvinistic doesn't make you Reformed. Now you can't be Reformed without being Calvinistic, but you can be

Calvinistic without being Reformed. So our view of the covenant, firstly it distinguishes between Reformed Baptists and Paedo -Baptists.

That's easy, and again, I'll go through this at the end of the lesson today.

I'm going to show some of the comparisons, just in general, the difference between the

Paedo -Baptist view of the covenant and the Reformed Baptist view of the covenant. And this is really where the difference in who gets baptized comes in.

It really has its roots in the covenant, alright? But notice what else I put up here.

And also from Dispensational Baptists, alright? Let me just talk, let me use an example that everybody would know,

John MacArthur. John MacArthur is a great brother in Christ, I mean, what he's accomplished for the kingdom is astounding, and you know, we take our hats off to him.

He is a Calvinistic Baptist, alright? So on our soteriology, we would agree with John MacArthur in every sense.

But he is a Dispensationalist, and that's something that he holds forth, his

Dispensationalism. We are not. And it's the view of the covenant that really separates us from the

Calvinistic Baptists who are Dispensational and also from the Paedo -Baptists.

So you can see why I'm belaboring this. Plus, you can see the importance of this in the fact that the way we've broken down the confession, remember there's 32 chapters in the confession.

First six are the foundation, which most evangelical churches, or at least

Calvinistic churches, would agree with. But seven through 20, is our view, expounds on the covenant, alright?

And then 21 and following, there's, talks about Christian liberty, and only the last two talk about eschatology, alright?

So you can see how important this is just from that. So the outline goes something like this.

Firstly, in paragraph one, we see the general necessity of the covenant, alright?

And again, remember this is all still building on the foundation of the first six, alright?

So here's what the first paragraph says. The distance between God and the creature is so great that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience to him as their creator, yet they could never have attained the reward of life but by some voluntary condescension on God's part, which he has been pleased to express by way of covenant.

That's the opening paragraph, and remember again, I know I'm going to sound like a broken record or a dirty

CD for those of you who don't know what records are. The first paragraph usually is a summary, or at least lays the found work for the rest of the paragraphs in the chapter.

So what we see here, a couple of things. Notice it talks about the distance between God and the creature, okay?

Of course, we're not talking about distance in space or time.

We're talking about ontological difference. God in his essence as deity is very distant from man in his creatureliness.

That's one of the principles that we see in scripture very frequently, and we've seen it already in the foundation.

We've seen who God is, God in the Holy Trinity. We have a whole chapter devoted to that, and then we have a whole chapter devoted to the fall of man and telling us who man is, and so we know this.

The scripture is very clear that there is a gap between God and man, even before the fall, okay?

We need to understand that, that there was always a covenant. That's how God relates to man, alright?

Even though man owes obedience to God, God relates to him in the form of a covenant, okay?

And the other thing that we see in this, which is so important, is that the reward of life is unattainable by man apart from a covenant.

Even if you look at the covenant of works, you know, there was a promise given of life if Adam fulfilled certain obligations, okay?

That was the covenant of works, okay? But apart from God in his condescension establishing a covenant relationship with man, the reward of life is unattainable, alright?

So God provides a way. What is the way? How is it that anyone ever receives life?

It is through the covenant, okay? Does that make sense? So that was, let me just back up a second, that was the general necessity of the covenant, alright?

Also, keep in mind the last chapter that we just looked at on the fall of the nature of sin, etc.,

remember? We see this distance between God and man exacerbated by the fall, okay?

And things change, alright? That's what we saw in the last chapter, alright?

Paragraph two talks about the essential character of the covenant, okay?

And the first half of the paragraph two talks about the universal dimension.

So look at the universal aspects of the covenant. Well, where man having brought himself under the curse of the law by his fall, it pleased the

Lord to make a covenant of grace wherein he freely offers unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ.

Notice, a couple of things. Firstly, man is under the curse.

All men are under the curse. You see, again, the logic of why we had chapter six talk about of sin, of the fall of man, and of punishment before chapter seven.

Because now we understand all men are under the curse, okay? Which means that we are unable or inable to have that same relationship with God and also we are unable to attain life, alright?

What would, again, remember, think back to the last chapter. What is the fate of man after the fall of Adam?

Death, to Adam and Eve, and what about all of their progeny? Death, okay?

So man is under the curse, which makes it impossible for him to have one, a relationship with God, and two, to inherit life.

But also in here you see a universal dimension of it. You see the free offer of the gospel, alright?

A lot of people who don't understand Calvinistic soteriology or Reformed theology think that, well, you don't believe in free will, or you don't believe in the free offer of the gospel.

They don't like it when we use the word free, alright? But clearly the gospel is offered to all men, is a free offer of the gospel.

When we preach, we just preach, right? We preach and we not only plead with men to come to Christ, but you've even heard me say that, you know, as your pastor, as a minister of the gospel,

I command you to repent. Because that's what the gospel says, every man everywhere ought to repent, alright?

So the gospel is offered freely, and that's what we see in this first half of the paragraph 2, okay?

The second half of paragraph 2 shows a particular dimension of it. And here you're going to see, even in the wording of it, you're going to see how our

Reformed theology comes through in our soteriology, Calvinistic soteriology. Requiring of them faith in him that they may be saved, and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life his

Holy Spirit to make them willing and able to believe. Alright, now a couple of important things in here.

First, what is the requirement? Here we're getting into the particular, because not everybody's going to be part of this covenant, are they?

We know that. We're not universalists. Not everybody's going to be included. What's the requirement of those included in the covenant?

Faith. Okay? It clearly says it. Requiring of them faith in him.

Without faith, it is impossible to please God, okay? So the requirement to be part of the covenant is faith.

Who are those who exercise faith? Because don't forget, we do believe in the free offer.

Whosoever will, a lot of Calvinists don't like that verse, but it's in perfect keeping with our theology.

Whosoever will. But who are those who exercise faith? Alright, well it tells us up here.

All those that are ordained unto eternal life. See? Why and how do they believe?

By the work of the Holy Spirit. By the Holy Spirit to make them willing and able to believe.

Without the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart, not only is the person unable to come to Christ, and therefore be unable to be a partaker of the covenant, they're unwilling.

And again, this is one of those caricatures of Reformed theology that you'll hear out there.

Oh, you believe that there are people out there who want to believe, but you're pushing them away.

God pushes them away. Nothing could be further from the truth. No one is willing, unless the

Holy Spirit does the work in their heart, to make them willing and able to believe, okay?

You see how this all flows? Again, our confession was extremely well put together.

Now we get to paragraph three. And in paragraph three, what we see is it's progressive revelation.

So here's paragraph three. This covenant is revealed in the gospel, first of all to Adam in the promise of salvation by the seed of the woman, and afterwards by father's steps until full discovery thereof was completed in the

New Testament. Very important what we're saying here. Progressive revelation does not mean that the covenant of grace has changed or the covenant has changed at all.

Later revelation expands on earlier revelation. We went over this in chapter one of the

Holy Scriptures, that the later revelation in Scripture is fuller, it's broader, but it hasn't changed the essence of the revelation, just giving you more information.

And that's what we see in the covenant. The covenant is revealed in Genesis 3 .15.

There's the promise of the Redeemer to come. But how much do we know about him?

What are the circumstances? What is his work going to look like? What is he going to look like?

All we have is what's called the proto -evangelical. The seed of the woman will crush the serpent's head.

That's pretty much what we're given. And he will bruise him on the heel. Okay? But as we go successively through the

Old Testament, remember, what does the whole Old Testament point to? Jesus Christ.

So everything is pointing, and we get further and further revelation until the time of Christ when what does he say to those who don't believe?

You should have known. Because the revelation was so complete. And then we have the full revelation after he's crucified and raised from the dead.

And what's the last part of the Bible? Mostly the epistles. All right?

And what do they do? They expand and tell us the meaning of the works of Christ. So you can see that's what we're talking about, expanding on it, but not changing.

All right? So the full discovery there was completed in the

New Testament. Without the New Testament, you don't have the full story. You need both

Testaments, all right, fully revealed in the New Testament.

Okay. Still in paragraph three, now this is significant features of the covenant, all right?

It's eternal foundation. It is founded in that eternal covenant transaction that was between the father and the son about the redemption of the elect.

But this might even get you into a fistfight in certain churches.

What we understand from the Scripture is that God the Father, God the Son, and God the

Holy Spirit, all right, the triune God entered into a covenant from all eternity.

And that is the covenant of redemption, all right, which was brought to man in the covenant of grace, all right?

The covenant of grace is founded in that eternal covenant transaction that was between the father and son about the redemption of the elect.

And we know that each person, we know that salvation is a work of the triune God, God the

Father elects, God the Son accomplished redemption by dying on the cross, and God the

Holy Spirit applies that to the individuals who were elected by God the

Father and brings them and then seals them until the end of time, okay?

So now again, now this is the relationship between God and man is determined in the eternal covenant.

Salvation of the elect is determined by the eternal covenant. Here is your basis for Calvinistic soteriology.

Notice, next I think we have the exclusive provision, all right?

I was getting ahead of myself. And notice what it says, it is alone by the covenant of grace that all the posterity of fallen

Adam that ever were saved and did obtain life and blessed immortality, man being now mortally incapable of acceptance with God upon those terms on which

Adam stood in the state of innocency. We don't stand in the same place as Adam. Adam lost that for us.

In his innocency, if he had kept the terms of the covenant of works, he would have inherited eternal life, all right?

But now, that's not available. The only way that anyone is saved is through the covenant of grace, all right?

Now I'll say it here and I'll pick up on it in a few minutes. The covenant of grace was not effected until Christ came and shed his blood.

The Old Testament saints were saved because they believed the promise of the covenant of grace.

This is the difference between the Paedo -Baptist view and the Reformed Baptist view. And I'll cut into that detail a little bit later, but I just want you to see that.

It is alone by the grace of this covenant that all the posterity of fallen Adam. Nobody is ever saved by any other means other than the covenant of grace.

Dispensationalism, forms of dispensationalism will come in conflict with that, all right? Man now being utterly incapable of acceptance with God.

What do we know about that? What is utterly incapable? That's total depravity. I know the

T is true, okay? So it's total depravity, all right? And with those terms in which

Adam stood in the state of Venice, remember that has been removed. We don't have that anymore. That's no longer available to us.

Only one way to be saved for all men of all eras since the fall of man, fall of Adam, man is incapable of keeping the terms given to Adam in innocency, and salvation is only through the covenant of grace, okay?

Now I want to spend the rest of... This is a relatively short chapter, so it's going to be a little bit shorter study tonight, but I don't want to do more than one chapter at a time, even though this might be a little bit shorter today.

So I want to spend some of the time just giving you some of the overview of the

Paedo -Baptist view and the Reformed Baptist view of the covenant, because this is crucial.

This is what separates us. Why don't we have a baptismal font and baptize our babies, okay?

It's a matter of how we view the covenant. So first, the Paedo -Baptist view of the covenant. They have a slightly different view.

They say that the covenant of grace began in the Garden of Eden right after the fall, okay?

So what they say is, you know, once God made that promise in Genesis 3 .15,

that began the covenant of grace, okay? But the difference, according to them, is there is one covenant from that time forward with two administrations, the old administration and the new administration.

So the new covenant in the Paedo -Baptist view is not new in that sense.

It's a new administration of the covenant. Now, you can see why we have some issues with that, because Jesus didn't say, this is the new administration in my blood.

He said, it's a new covenant in my blood. And that's when he began the new covenant, all right?

In the second administration, baptism in the Lord's Supper replaced circumcision and the

Passover. Now, again, this is in the view of the Paedo -Baptists. So you can see now, if they hold that circumcision and Passover were signs and seals of the old covenant, of the old administration, all right, then baptism in the

Lord's Supper is in the second administration, therefore, since children were circumcised in the first administration, they should be baptized in the second.

That's part of their reasoning, all right? And they argue that vehemently, by the way, okay?

And again, remember now, I'm talking about dear, dear brothers in Christ, people who we are probably the closest to theologically, all right?

So I'm not saying this, you know, pointing my finger at them or looking down my nose at them.

These are people that we respect that hold to this position, but we just believe sincerely that they are wrong, okay?

And the result of what they believe here is that baptized children are then considered to be in the covenant.

That's why you will see or hear them speak a lot of our covenant children, because that's a very important tenet of the paedo -baptist view of children being baptized, okay?

So now that's just an overview. It's a lot more complicated than that, but these are some of the basic tenets.

Now let's look at the Reformed Baptist view of the covenant. The covenant of grace was instituted by Jesus Christ in his first advent, okay?

The covenant is a new covenant, not just a new administration, okay?

And there are two sacraments or ordinances. Some people don't, some Reformed Baptists don't like the term sacraments.

I have no problem with it. But there are two ordinances or sacraments, baptism and the Lord's Supper, okay?

Only those people who repent are in the covenant and therefore should receive the sacraments.

Therefore infants would not qualify to be in the covenant until they get to the point where they repent and are baptized and then therefore take the

Lord's Supper, all right? Now again, that's a vast oversimplification, all right?

But you can see the difference now, all right, as to why we have some differences. Now there are differences as well.

There's differences in paedo -baptism in church government, all right, which we'll get to later on in chapter 26 of the confession.

And we'll see the difference, how we come upon that as well. Is that, okay.

That's all I have planned as far as showing the different views of the covenant.

You can see how important this basic chapter is.

And every succeeding chapter, all the way up to chapter 20, is going to explain further our view of the covenant and our relationship with God.

If you understand what we said in the first slide, the only way that God has a relationship with man is through covenant, all right?

Our dispensational Baptist brothers don't hold to covenant theology.

They use the term covenant and whatnot, but they are not covenant theologians.

By the way, this is another, I said I'd mention this later, so I'm going to mention it now. You will hear quite a few

Calvinistic Baptist pastors and people who have come to that view say that they are reformed.

It's a little bit of a pet peeve of mine, not a big one, but a little bit one, because reformed is the theology.

Covenant theology is reformed theology. If you don't believe in covenant theology, you can't be considered to be reformed, all right?

You're using a wrong title, all right? That's why, you know, if you talk like someone like John MacArthur, who would, he would refer to himself as a

Calvinistic Baptist. He knows not to call himself reformed because he's not reformed.

He's a dispensationalist. And so just because somebody tells you that they are reformed doesn't mean that they are.

They can honestly think they are because they hold to TULIP, the five points of Calvinism.

But that's not necessarily the case. So again, remember, covenant theology is another name for reformed theology, vice versa.

And so that's why it's important. That's why we take the pains to go through this confession with anybody who is looking to become a member of Hope Reformed Baptist Church, because if you're going to claim to be reformed, you have to know what reformed theology is, and therefore going through this whole confession.

And notice again, we're talking about chapters 7 to 20, all expounding upon what it means to be a covenant theologian.

That's a major part of the confession of faith. Therefore, these next series of lessons on the covenant are just so, so important and so crucial.