1689 Class Session #1

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Josh Rice: 2LBC Chapters 7,8, 28-30.

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Right, so chapter one or chapter seven is about covenants. So I'm gonna I'm gonna do some teaching here.
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Here's here's essentially What it says now if you if you're a nerd and you have read the
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Westminster Confession There are significant differences between chapter 7 in that book in this one if you don't know the 1689 was somewhat modified and adapted from the
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Westminster because Baptists are not Presbyterians and there are key differences and one of the most key differences comes in how
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Baptists interpret covenants and this chapter is is simple and missing stuff
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Compared to the Westminster and what it's missing is extremely important Okay So I'm gonna
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I'm gonna talk a little bit about that to start with we have to say that as Reformed people We believe that God's interaction with man comes in the form of covenants
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Okay, so what is a covenant a covenant is a promise that has obligations Sanctions and rewards so you are obligated to follow the covenant
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It's an agreement if you want to think of it kind of like a contract, that's fine. It's it usually has more of a weighty
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Context than that. It's not a simple contract It is it is usually a promise made in front of witnesses that has duties
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With it and if you break the covenant their sanctions I mean as you get punished and if you follow the covenant
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There's rewards and the covenants of the Bible are Usually one -sided in the sense that God will never break his covenant
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So there will never be sanctions on God except in one very notable case, which is the core of Christianity right where where God willingly took on the sanctions for our breaking of a covenant and And therefore fulfilled the covenant
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So I think what we have to start with is that this is not accepted. This is not accepted as fact by the vast majority of evangelical
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Christianity because there's a competing system and if you've if you've been in Baptist churches if you've been in non -denominational churches if you've been in charismatic churches
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Pretty much all of these there is an atmosphere where there's a differing system. That's called dispensationalism
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All right, and what dispensationalism? Does is it kind of touchstones on covenants?
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It kind of makes its markers around covenants But what it does is it says that God works in different ways in different times or different dispensations?
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And if you want more on that later We can talk about dispensationalism and where we really like focally where the focal points where we differ with them
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Okay, but we are not dispensationalist. You can be a dispensationalist in the church But I wouldn't advise it.
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Okay, so And I'm gonna apologize about that So if we if we look at that, we have to prove it
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What proof is there that God works in covenants with man? well the obvious one is that the new the
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Old Testament is dominated by a series of covenants that are progressively revealed and these are covenants with Adam with Noah with Abraham with Moses with David and then the
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New Testament When we get to the end of the Old Testament There's two really key prophecies one of them in Jeremiah and one in Ezekiel And if you read through a lot of Isaiah, you're gonna see a lot of suffering servant prophecies and what that is pointing to is that there's going to be another covenant that's going to be better and different from the covenants that came before it and that this covenant is going to be the new covenant and so Jesus is the ultimate mediator of the new covenant and that's the one that has essentially established
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Christianity and what we would say is Baptist is that it fulfilled the covenant of grace and Brought in and fulfilled and glorified and showed everyone and made manifest the covenant of redemption
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So you've probably if you've not been around covenantal theology You've heard about grace and you've heard about redemption
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But you've probably not heard about the covenant of grace and the covenant of redemption and this is where the hard work begins
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Okay Because these covenants the covenant of redemption the covenant of grace and the covenant of works are not given in Scripture by name according to those names and so they are taken from an interpretation of Scripture and putting
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Scripture together and Looking at God's pattern and through his revelation Now we're in good company.
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Like we hold his cardinal doctrine the doctrine of Trinity The Trinity is never explicitly given in a proof text in Scripture, but we hold it as a test of orthodoxy because the
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Bible Clearly talks about God as Trinity and gives the gives his personhood and gives us information about that so here's what we know these covenants were given to these men and That God's interaction with man is a blessing and a curse and this happens every time
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Okay without exception when God interacts because man is fallen and because man is sinful
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Only one man was not which was Adam and he became that way very quickly Right the interaction be brings blessings because God gives a promise
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But it also brings curses because man breaks the covenant and you're gonna get it when you break the covenant There's no exceptions to that rule
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Somebody's gonna pay when you break a covenant and we see that as we mirror it with the covenant of marriage
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There's no way out of marriage, but death All right, that's the that's the legal definition and then in sinful man
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We fall and we break that covenant and adultery is really the death of the covenant, right? That's what that's what happens
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So in talking about these I'm not going to focus on the covenants of Adam Noah Abraham Moses David and the new covenant
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What I am going to focus in on is the covenant of redemption the covenant of grace and the covenant of works
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Okay, I am gonna give you a little bit on Abraham though Because I think that covenant is super important to us to cut to current events
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All right, and and shows one of the differences in covenant theology. All right, so the covenant of works here's essentially this the covenant of works is
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Summed up in what happens in Genesis 1 through 3 with Adam and the covenant of works is simply this do this and live
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Disobey and die and Adam is the only man who has ever really in a somewhat fair sense because we're
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Calvinist to right in a fair sense Adam was the only one that ever could have kept The covenant of works because he was before he fell he was good and he did not have indwelling sin
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He was not he did not have original sin. We get that from Romans 5 Okay, and so Adam could have obeyed the covenant of works, but Adam did not obey the covenant of works
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Okay, and so because Adam fell Then Romans Romans 5 tells us that because Adam fell then he became our federal head
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That's an important thing when we think of covenants covenants are given to a to a person who then represents many
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Okay, and that is not extra biblical that's Abraham that's Moses that's David so on and so forth
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So Adam is our federal head Romans 5 makes this clear though. We're all born in Adam We are sinners and we are going to die
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Right and we're gonna die and burn in hell in the judgment that God has given to sinners who have fallen
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Short of the covenant of works the covenant of works affects everyone because God's interaction with man is do this and live
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Disobey and die you will get your wages right and the wages of sin is death and all men will surely sin
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We see pointers to it in Psalm 51 where David David says that he was born in iniquity
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Right there before he was ever born that he was born out of sin Right and that is because Adam was his federal head.
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And so the covenant of works is our problem Okay, it is condemnation through failure.
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So every human being is accountable to the covenant of works And when we're born we're doomed
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All right. It's really that simple. The covenant of works is not bad news per se.
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It's bad news because we're sinners Right, it's bad news because we're fallen It's not bad news in a vacuum
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God did nothing wrong and did no evil or wickedness at all by instituting the covenant of works The covenant of works was totally just and it was a blessing because with it came blessings had
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Adam followed it He would have been fruitful multiplied taking Dominion live forever lived in the garden walking with God every day in the cool of the evening
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It was a great thing Adam was better off for being given the covenant of works But the covenant of works is the easiest of these three to understand
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Okay, because it was given to Adam because it does still work today and it's still in place
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All right. So then we have the covenant of redemption redemption What we want to think about is the covenant of redemption is a
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Trinitarian covenant Alright, it was a promise that was made in the Godhead and it is revealed throughout
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Scripture Progressively and progressively means that we have shadows like the proto evangelium in in Genesis 3
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Which is the promise that there would be that Eve seed would crush the head of the serpent, right?
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That is kind of the first gospel but it's very murky and it's very shadowy and it does not give us the clarity of Jesus on the cross or a
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Substitute or anything like that but the covenant of redemption makes its way from Genesis and it grows and we see it in a lot of clarity when we get to the end and we begin
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With a tree of life and we end with a tree of life in Revelation, right? And so the Bible is telling a story and so it's a
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Trinitarian covenant If you need a proof text, there are many most of them are in John Okay, but I'll give you one that really gives a highlight of the
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Trinitarian covenant Okay, so here we go. John 17 in the high priestly prayer Jesus prays in verse 1
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Jesus spoke these things and lifting up his eyes to heaven He said father the hour has come glorify your son that the
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Son may glorify you Even as you gave him authority over all flesh that to all whom you have given him
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He may give eternal life and this is eternal life that they may know you the only true God and Jesus whom you have sent
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I glorified you on the earth having finished the work which you have given me to do
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Now father glorify me together with yourself with the glory which I had with you before the world was now
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What I want you to understand from that text is that Jesus is talking about a job
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Work that had been given to him by the father for a purpose and that purpose was to save Jesus has authority over all flesh because of who he is and he was given a task
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And we have to ask ourselves and oftentimes we don't in Scripture we go. Well Why was he given this task and we have to understand that this is a window in and Jesus gives us that in John 17
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That it's a window into the inner Conversations of the Godhead. This is really it's it's one of the most incredible pieces of Scripture in the
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Bible in John 17 Because it does give us a window into God talking to God Right and we and we start to see the plan and the plan unfolds and what that really is is the covenant of redemption that there was a plan that Jesus would come to do work and the work that he would do would be to redeem a
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People and to give them eternal life, which was what was promised to Adam But he lost because he failed the covenant of works.
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And so Jesus is going to supersede the covenant of works and Fulfill the covenant of redemption
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But the way that he supersedes and fulfills the covenant of redemption is this other covenant?
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And this is where we have points of disagreements with our Presbyterian brothers Okay, and that is the covenant of grace very simply understood.
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The covenant of grace is this If you fail the covenant of works and God is just and you are doomed you are owed death under the law
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Then in order to get out of that There's going to be injustice and the only way for a judge to not convict you for your crime
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Is to give you grace that you don't deserve All right And the only way that he can justly give you grace that you don't deserve is to give your punishment
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To someone else who will take it and that justice is satisfied all right, so the covenant of grace is one that can only be accomplished by God because man is incapable of Being worthy of any grace, right?
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We're all sinners. We've all rebelled against God The simplest explanation I think is Ephesians 2 11 and 12
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Therefore remember that formerly you the Gentiles in the flesh who are called Uncircumcision by the so -called circumcision which is performed in the flesh by human hands.
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Remember that you are at that time without Christ Alienated from the citizenship of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise
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Having no hope and without God in the world, right? Isn't that the situation of every human being you're you're cut off.
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There's no hope there's gonna have to be grace You're cut off from the covenants of promise. And I think you have to ask. What are the covenants of promise?
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Well they're the covenants that were given to the people where God was revealing his plan and Then over time and then very specifically it's the covenant of redemption, right?
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There's a promise that God would redeem of people So the failure of Adam doomed us all Grace is the only way out
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And so the accomplishment of the covenant of grace is through the perfect sacrifice of Jesus and then the seal of the
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Holy Spirit Who brings life from death? All right now a side note
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I Can't go too far here. I have done some podcast stuff an area disagreement.
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All right, here's what we see as Baptist in the 6089 It's it's important for what's not there.
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And what's not there is that there is not language that talks about an administration of the covenants of grace
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Through the Old Testament shadows and this is it is it is a small area disagreement.
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It truly is but it does have ramifications so in Baptist theology What has happened is that all of the covenants were being and this is what the 6089 says is that the covenants were?
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Revealing God's plan over time right that the covenant with David Revealed more to us than we had before that covenant
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It showed us that there was going to be an eternal King on the throne, right? They didn't know that before Okay, Moses revealed the most right it revealed
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God's holy law. It revealed it to the letter. It revealed case law It revealed the Sabbath rest all of these things as a sign
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Abraham revealed circumcision It revealed God's grace in the land promises And so what we would disagree is the
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Presbyterian would say that all of those covenants If you want to think of it this way that there's a substance of salvation
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Right and what it would say is that the substance of salvation has always been the same which I would agree with But it would say that each one of those covenants
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Abraham Moses David that those were all different bottles that held the same substance and then the new covenant
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Is another one of those bottles true. It's made of diamonds. It's perfectly clear It's it's awesome.
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It's the best bottle of all it's a greater bottle It has it has more potency to it, but it's the same substance as all the others
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And so that's how what you can do and I'm being very simple here But what you can do is you can draw a direct line from the sign of those to the sign of this one
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Which is baptism right and which for a pedo communists is also communion, right?
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I'm not going there tonight But because of that line drawing that's why you baptize infants from a
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Presbyterian perspective. Okay For us as Baptists what we believe is that those are progressive revelations of covenants that yes
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The substance of salvation was always the same. I've got stuff coming out on that pretty soon, but It was not administrations of the covenant of grace
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They were progressive revelations of God's plan and what he was doing and then the covenant of grace becomes Manifest and jumps on to the scene and we see it at Calvary in the resurrection.
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Okay So to be a little bit reductionistic, but I don't want to it would be like We don't agree that the new covenant is another administration of the covenant of grace on the shelf with the other ones.
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Okay That's what a Presbyterian believes and that is an area of secondary disagreement not throwing them out of the kingdom
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I Got close guys real close. Okay, so So I'm not wanting to throw throw flames there
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But that's essentially how it goes and that is the argument and I would estimate that less than 1 % of people sitting in a
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Baptist Understand that disagreement Okay, and it's the truth. We don't take the time.
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What we do is Oh Bible says Yeah You know, they believe the
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Bible says to right so you got to get a little deeper than that All right. So back to covenants and ending with a little bit here.
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I know that hopefully that might as well Here's the deal covenant redemption big plan always the
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Trinity right the Trinity when when creation started this was the plan Covenant of works shows the beginning of that It's going to show the need for grace the covenant of works would have been would have worked if Adam would have obeyed
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He didn't so the covenant of grace has to come along to fulfill the covenant of redemption and fulfill the covenant of works
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Do you see how that happens? through Jesus we Obeyed the covenant of works.
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Okay, because we're given his righteousness, which means our sin of Adam is taken away.
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We are no longer sons of Adam. We are sons of Jesus, right? That's how that works one note about Abrahamic Covenant before I roll on and like I said,
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I'll have to be very quick But I knew this was gonna happen in this chapter. Okay? Here's the Abrahamic Covenant.
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You have to understand this because there's a lot of things most most recently on Tucker Carlson You know senator
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Ted Cruz went on said well I mean, we got to support Israel because the Bible says to he's like well, where does it say that?
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I don't know look While funny in a way to win an argument, you know at a table
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The truth of the matter is it doesn't really matter that Cruz didn't know where the address is He was saying that is basically part of the
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Abrahamic Covenant That I will bless those who bless you and I will curse those who curse you.
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All right, that's what the scripture says Here's the problem. It's fulfilled It's done there.
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There is no Active Abrahamic Covenant in the sense that there are waiting land promises for Israel today
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I Know that that makes me a literal Nazi. Okay? But it happens to be true
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So let me tell you right because if you've been growing up in the dispensational era what I just said is as a shocker
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Okay So let me prove it very quickly and we can go further if we need to to two pieces scripture one of them talking about What are these blessings and curses
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Galatians 3 13 and 14 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law having become a curse for us?
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Are you recognizing the language there? Okay for it is written Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the
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Gentiles So that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. So who gets blessed is
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It land Israel. No who gets blessed is the people who blessed Jesus and who gets cursed is the people who curse
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Jesus Because Jesus is the fulfillment of the covenant of Abraham, but if you don't believe me yet, let's go back to the
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Old Testament And talk in near proximity Joshua 21 43 So the Lord gave
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Israel all the land Which he had sworn to give to their fathers and they possessed it and lived in it
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Does that sound like the fulfillment of the covenant that was given to Abraham? Yeah, they had the land they took it
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It was theirs. All right, and Then they lost it, right?
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Why did they lose it because they broke the covenant? Okay, and and so today the way back into the covenant is the same way as for everyone else
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It's through blessing Jesus Christ. I know that that's a spicy thing It's probably the biggest most serious area of difference between a dispensational and a covenant theologian
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I think I think Gary Houston had asked me a while back like is Replacement theology part of this and I said it's an inextricable part of this
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All right you can't understand the covenants if you if you're still holding out land promises through the
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Abraham it because it makes a hash of the Way, this has happened over time. Okay, so that's covenants if you have your questions have them circled or I'm down I'm gonna move on Christ the mediator.
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This will be very cool. You're gonna see how quick we can go now All right. Here's the deal about Christ the mediator he is the only possible mediator between God and man because he was a hundred percent divine and Inseparably a hundred percent man in order to fulfill the covenant of works
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He had to be God because man couldn't possibly do it But he had to be man because God was not able to do it and take the place of man if that makes sense, he had to be man because man sinned he had to be
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God because Man is an original sinner and could never fulfill the covenant So Jesus has to be
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God in order to be immutably sinless Immutably is a fancy way of saying he doesn't change he is forever sinless
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Right and he will never and can never sin. He has to be man to die for the penalty for man's sin
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He is not part God part man He has never changed in his divine standing but was made manifest as man in the perfect timing with the advent
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So there's no eternal subordination of the Sun if you know what that means There's none of that Jesus is divine nature has never changed ever.
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He is eternal It is blasphemy and heresy to say that he has
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God is unchangeable Multiple scripture verses, okay And what we know is that no one can stand between God and man besides Jesus now
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The reason chapter 8 happens is because there is once again a difference with the Westminster Okay And what it tries to do is the
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Westminster is going to use the work of Jesus to say we'll see the new covenant It's the same substance
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It's just bigger and wider and more powerful But kind of the same stuff and what the
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London Baptist does is it's essentially saying It was God's purpose through his covenant to send
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Jesus as the divine You know as the God man Because that's the only way the covenants could be fulfilled and so he did fulfill them and he's the only one that ever could have
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And now we're not Papist because we don't pray we don't give our confessions to a priest because Jesus is the only mediator.
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He is the only bonafide authoritative Sacerdotal office on earth.
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All right, if you if you want to confess sins confess them to Jesus Alright, there's no one else who is between God and man.
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All right, that's chapter 8 28. It's kind of an overview of ordinances The two ordinances observed in the church.
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So this is another place where we're different from Catholics much more on that coming next week I know but it is there are two for the entirety of this age, which is the church age and Whatever your eschatology is.
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All right, if you fall under the eschatology that I follow or that David follows
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We we would say that the church is going to be instituted until final judgment happens so we're gonna be taking communion and administering baptism until that time and When Jesus consummates the eschaton, so these are the ones
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Communion and baptism must be administered by shepherds So administered if you just look at Webster's that means managed and dispensed.
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Okay Now there's room here. Can somebody's dad baptize their daughter? It's hazy right there's room for that.
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What it says is that the shepherds have to administer it They have to manage the table.
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They have to manage the baptistry. They have to dispense it and so what what happens is what's inarguable is that elders have to fence the table and Give the restrictions that are delivered in a church court
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So if you get excommunicated, which means you're barred from the table It is the elders responsibility to make sure that that penalty is carried out that you are barred from the table as a side note
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You cannot and should not be barred from the table Unless you've been in front of a church court and the court and the church court barred you from the table
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I don't get to make the decision that you're barred from the table Okay, that is outside of my power, but I am allowed to enforce the ruling of the congregation
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We are Baptist much more on that coming on a podcast tomorrow morning. Okay Chapter 29 baptism baptism is the is the sign of regeneration
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Both for the testimony of the professor and for the edification of the body. It's not a one -person show
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It's not just about your personal faith in Jesus Christ, right? It's about the church.
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It's also about your public profession It is a means of grace. All right, that's why we must be very careful with it
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What people like to do is they like to use religious ceremony to hold on to that and say that they have something that they don't have and so that's why we have to carefully dispense it and administer it because it does
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Bestow a status on somebody in the church. Okay. It is an important thing as Baptists we baptize upon profession of faith by immersing or dipping in water that does make us different from most other churches
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Okay Baptists have dominated America. So maybe not most churches in your
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Experience but most other churches right we as Baptists We do immerse upon a profession of faith and the last ones communion and have a little bit more about it
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So I'm gonna blitz communion was instituted the night of Christ's betrayal. There's a lot of Catholic stuff in here
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So I'm gonna I'm gonna tell you what he means and kind of go through so the heresy that was getting people
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Look, it was getting lots of people burned at the stake Right was the idea that the Catholic Church taught that when it was transubstantiation when you take the elements that they literally become the flesh
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Of Jesus and the blood of Jesus in your stomach, okay That's not true.
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And you cannot hold that position according to our confession and according to the Westminster. All right many many saints died right and were persecuted to Hold their conscience on communion.
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It's kind of unbelievable for us today How weak we are but people would die to deny that teaching that it that it did not become the literal body and blood so here we practice an open table and the reason why is because We think that the that the table is for those who are in the
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New Covenant Who have been saved into the New Covenant it does bring problems with it, right people can come get it
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But Jesus serves communion to Judas or serve the Lord Serpent or Judas and Judas was doubly damned by it
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All right, he should not have taken it. But there he was and he was saying he was something he was not
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So we deny as heresy transubstantiation, we don't play with that. It's a heresy and the elements are not the real body in blood
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Spiritual presence is not denied by this statement and that's interesting because if you are a theo nerd and you've huddled thought a lot about this
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There are two other schools of thought All right, and they're different. All right, there's the mere memorial position that was famous by Zwingli Okay, and then there's the presence
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Idea that was championed by John Calvin Like idea of con substantiation.
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Here's the idea either the table is just a memorial and that's all it is We remember what he did we take it.
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There you go That's allowed by the confession The other thing that's allowed by the confession is to say that there is a means of grace in it
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That there is a spiritual presence in the sense that the Holy Spirit is in this There is something more than just remembering what
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Jesus did There's a unification of the church There is a there is a renewal and a refreshing every time you take up the table for the record
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I hold that position myself. I am a I'm a presence kind of guy
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So I disagree with Zwingli and do agree with Calvin But Zwingli and Calvin could have both signed this part of the confession.
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They would have been okay with that. It does give room So the elements are prayed over and blessed by the officers and taken by the officers themselves
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We are not different from you. We take communion also as church officers so it's all of those things and The last thing and it gives a warning and I try to give that often
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I think Samuel laughs at me sometimes Bart used to laugh at me when I get up here and do it All right, taking communion.
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Sinfully is a great offense against God and it brings covenant curses You want to bring curses the new covenant down on yourself?
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Take communion in a sinful way. It's a dangerous thing to do. Don't do it. If you're in doubt, don't take it
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All right, it's really that simple if you think I don't know if I'm bitter don't take it All right, or repent of your sins have a clean conscience and come take it.