TiL- Reformed Covenant Theology pt 8

Hold to the crucified and rest there now and forever, then, with the power of God resting upon you, go forth and preach the cross.

Welcome y 'all to the Labors, Labors Rewind. It's Monday. Welcome to the -

It's not the Labors podcast. It's not. Welcome to the Truth and Love podcast. On the

Truth and Love Network, Labors podcast is coming up this Thursday. Join us on the

Truth and Love Network this Thursday for Labors podcast. This is Truth and Love Network. We are in chapter eight of Reform Covenant Theology by Harrison Perkins.

Stick with us. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

The comment line is open. We would love to hear from you, whether you're watching live or you're watching or listening later.

Thank you for joining us. Dan, Troy, how are you doing, brother? Good. I'm good.

Tired. Tired. I'm right there with you. Right there with you. Happy to be alive, though.

I'm happy. I've been in the sun all day, and that's a good perspective to be able to feel the sun.

I was not in the sun. I was lifting boxes of Bloody Mary Mix all day. Oh, okay.

Well, I will leave any jokes with that one aside. We were not drinking the

Bloody Mary Mix. We were simply moving it from one place to another. Oh.

Hey, that's what we do, we take things up and we put them down. I work in a warehouse.

I was going to ask if you were just picking up tomatoes. I thought that might have been the thing. I don't know.

I just thought it was tomato sauce. Pretty much. Like VeggieTales.

That reminds me. This was hilarious. I've got to tell you guys this story.

So a group of men from my church, two last weekend or the weekend before,

I can't remember. So it was a neighboring church down the road. They had a men's conference.

And so a group of men from our church went to this conference. And so I take my dad, he and I, we go in and they're serving supper.

And when we first go in, of course, we get our name tags, whatever, we go find us a table. We go to the closest table that there is.

And there's already two older gentlemen sitting there. So my dad and I, we sit down and we begin to have conversation with these two older gentlemen.

And the first guy who was sitting right beside me, he said, hi, my name is

Bob. My friend, his name is Larry. I said, no way. There's got to be no way.

He said, what? I'm like, you know, Bob the tomato and Larry the cucumber.

What? He had no clue what I was talking about. Almost fell over in my seat.

Yeah. He said, I'm Bob. This is my friend, Larry. Was Bob shorter and more rotund than Larry Tyler?

That would have been great. They didn't fit the caricature, but.

They should have. That would have been great. Yeah. Should have just put them, look, if you're curious,

Google YouTube silly songs with Larry. That'll let you know. All you need to know. Just left it at that.

It was amazing. It was amazing. Thank you, Troy, for filling in tonight.

We appreciate you being with us. Thank you guys for having me. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, go ahead.

Jumping in. Yeah. Last minute, huh? Yes, sir. It's the way we like to do it.

I think. So we're on actually, actually part, part three.

The substance of this conversation. The substance of the covenant of grace. Chapter eight begins that. That new section.

The unity of the covenant of grace in Christ. The passage comes from Psalm 48, 14.

This is God. Our God forever and ever. He will guide us forever.

Dan, I wanted to start out with these two slash two statements last questions.

And then you can take it over from there. So the first one is. The substance of the covenant of grace. As I was reading through this chapter, it really reminded me of what

I've typically heard in church my whole life, that all of scripture is about Christ.

And basically what he's teaching here is that all the covenants, the substance is, is

Christ. And so I found some continuity there between what I, what I had been taught for years and what he was teaching in this passage.

And then, and you can comment on that. And the other thing that I saw was,

I've got to turn my volume down. The other thing that I saw was, huh?

So Tyler got you too. Was that Tyler? I had a blip. Was that Tyler? Yep. Yep.

So the covenant of redemption, like I was saying, what

Harrison Perkins is teaching us here in this chapter is that Christ is the substance of all the covenants.

So what makes the covenant of grace unique and different than the covenant of redemption?

If Christ is the substance of all the covenants, that's kind of the question that was rolling around in my mind.

So that, so my first question statement was, is, is what he's saying here in this chapter similar to what

I had been hearing, you know, all my life in church, that Jesus is, is we should read

Jesus. We should see Jesus in all of scripture. And then here, what he's saying is that Jesus is the substance of all the covenants.

And then secondly, what makes the covenant of grace unique and different if Christ is the substance of the covenant of redemption, covenant of works and all those.

So tell me what you think. All right. So I told you I was tired. So you gave me stuff to remember.

Is that, is that how you did it? All right. Well, anyway, number one, you should absolutely have heard that kind of stuff in church.

The book of Luke, I think, yeah, towards the end of the book of Luke on the road to Emmaus, they meet up with Jesus.

The two guys, they don't remember, they don't recognize him. Some divine thing where they didn't recognize him.

They're talking along the way, you know, ask them some questions, you know, what's been going on down there. They're like, you haven't heard what started with, with Moses and the prophets explained to them how the scriptures were about Christ right there.

The Bible tells us that they're about Christ. Now, one thing that you said, I don't think you meant it this way, but I liked how the wording came out because it gave me a chance to address it.

We don't need to read Christ into the old Testament because that can be dangerous.

Anytime you read into a passage, something that is not necessarily there, you can come away with wonky stuff.

But what I think, what you should be able to do is as you read through the old

Testament, each section that you come to will show some part of the plan or working of God in salvation, which comes to us through Jesus Christ.

So you see the promise of salvation in Genesis three. You see it again in Genesis 12, 15, 17.

You see it again in, what was it, chapter 28, 50 of Genesis.

And you just see it all over throughout where God is faithful to his people. God's taking care of his people.

And you even see types and shadows. So you don't, Christ isn't necessarily in the sacrifices of exes, but they point to him, right?

So when you see the sacrifices for sins in the old Testament, they point ahead to Christ and his ultimate sacrifice.

So we should always be seeing Christ in the scriptures because all of them serve to point to him and his actions and why he should be glorified in the world by his creatures.

All of it points to his glory. So that was question one.

So good on whoever was preaching to you when you were growing up. Praise the Lord. And now question two was what, because I almost heard three questions and I don't know what you said.

So what I understand from this chapter, what I was getting from this chapter is of course just what we had just talked about in the first question,

Jesus is the substance of all the covenants. But yet there's three covenants, covenant of works, covenant of redemption, and covenant of grace.

So what makes covenant of grace unique, distinct, unique from the other covenants if Jesus is just the substance of the whole kit and caboodle, everything?

Right. The covenant of redemption is an inner Trinitarian covenant. So it's between the members of the

Trinity, father, son, and spirit, that they would accomplish salvation in the world and apply it to mankind.

So we saw that through the father decreeing salvation, the son accomplishing salvation and the spirit applying salvation to mankind.

The covenant of grace is different in that it's a covenant made between God and mankind.

So how do we, whereas before mankind was going to relate to God on the basis of law and obedience, we broke that.

We have severed our relationship with God on the basis of our own obedience. So now we have to have a relationship with God on the basis of grace.

God is gracious to us and allowing us to have relationship with him on the basis of his son's righteousness, which he secured for us through his active obedience, his passive obedience through going to the cross, dying for our sins, raising again, sitting at the right hand of the father.

The spirit applying that work to our lives, to where we will believe and trust in Christ.

That is the grace that we have in God.

So that covenant was made between God and man while the covenant of redemption was the plan before all eternity.

Covenant of grace is it's outworking in time and history.

Did you freeze? No, there you go. He was thinking. Sorry. I was telling

Tyler to back off. That wasn't Tyler. That was one of my other elders from church, and he was asking me a question.

So I was... Talk to your elders. That's important. I was peeking at his question.

Yeah, the elders are there to watch over you and care for your soul. So that's right. Amen. Anything you want to add,

Troy? I think Dan hit it right on the spot.

The covenant of redemption is in between the Trinity and eternity past.

It's God's outworking plan throughout all of history, all of eternity.

The covenant of grace is where we truly see it working from our perspective, right?

The fact that we can read our Bible in the New Testament and see the new covenant, right?

And that's what I would say is the covenant of grace. It's the new covenant. It is

Christ keeping the covenant of works on my behalf. It's Christ, as Dan said,

His active and passive obedience. It's the coming, and it's by faith, right, that we have this faith.

It's not according to the law. And the first question that you asked, you know, in everything we should see, we should see

Christ in the Bible, in the Old Testament, in the New Testament. And we kind of got into the shadows and types.

You know, Hebrews 10 tells us that, you know, these things, all the priestly sacrifices, all of the earthly tabernacle, the sacrifices that were there were just shadows of what

Christ would do in the new covenant, bringing about, finishing the covenant of grace, sealing it on our behalf.

So yeah, I think that's our hope. That's our hope,

Christ fulfilled the covenant of works, and it is applied to us by faith.

We have that alien righteousness. And, you know, when we emphasize that Christ is the substance of the covenants,

Christ is the substance of the Old Testament, the New Testament, and everything. You know,

I know there's the temptation on our side to neglect, like the

Holy Spirit, and then there's the other ditch to overemphasize the Holy Spirit.

But to grasp this concept of who the substance is of these covenants, of all things, and to realize and understand that it is

Christ, there is a direction in which the

Bible points us to, and it's God's Son. And so without falling into one ditch or the other, it is true that that's the direction that we should be walking in, is pointing to Christ.

Dan, are you ready to walk us through this chapter? Yeah, man, let's do it.

So the name of the chapter, for anybody who has the book, is the unity of the covenant of grace in Christ.

So he's showing the unity of that covenant throughout human history, really, is what he's getting at.

He shows it as a unity because the point being that there has only been one way of salvation for mankind throughout all of history.

He leads back to the covenant of works briefly, and this is how we were to relate with God on the basis of obedience.

Since we broke that, we don't have that as an option anymore because we've been disobedient.

So works has been broken. So if anyone was going to have a chance of being in relationship with God in a positive sense, because we all have a relationship with God, I don't know if y 'all know that, we all have a relationship with God, whether it's one that is king or one is judge.

But as far as a positive relationship, our salvation being cleansed of the sins that caused us to break the covenant of works in the first place, it was only by the grace of God.

And that has been from the beginning. So he started off, there is a little quote from the first page, so the covenant of grace is

God's one plan of salvation whereby he effectively redeemed all his elect by the work of Christ.

So how did God work out salvation? He worked out salvation for his people through the work of Christ.

And that in a nutshell is the whole chapter. Now granted, we're going to have a lot more to talk about, but the whole chapter in a nutshell is there's been one plan of salvation and it's through Christ and his work, received by faith.

We'll get into that here in a little bit. And yeah, that's a good place to start.

What do y 'all think about that? I did want to ask you a question that's somewhat related because Christ is the substance, and I think

Christ is the substance for both sides of this question that I have in my mind.

But Harrison Perkins talks about the elect, Christ rescuing, dying for the elect.

And that's a reformed, it's a biblical term, but you hear it emphasized in reformed circles and Calvinistic circles.

So my question is, is there room in covenant theology, because you mostly relate covenant theology, reformed covenant theology with a

Calvinistic perspective on election and predestination. But is there any room for a non -Calvinistic view of soteriology in the covenant theology?

Yes. There, there is room for somebody who - 100%. Okay. Hold on a second.

I got a volume of books. So somebody can believe in covenant theology and believe that free will and God died for everybody.

These right here. Okay. The works of James Arminius. Okay. Sorry, I'm scowling.

I took my glasses off because of the glare, and I was trying to see. I didn't mean to be scowling. But yeah, these are the three volumes of his works.

Arminius is technically a reformed guy, right? He, of course, got in big trouble at the

Synod of Dort. Well, he was gone by then, but you know what I'm saying. His doctrine got in a lot of trouble at the

Synod of Dort, where they said, no, this is not good. This is extra. We're going to put this to the side, and that's how we got the tulip thing.

Yeah, that word. But he started from a place of covenant theology.

In fact, in this first volume, go through the first bunch of,

I got a stack of books over here. It's about to fall down. We don't want to lose you.

Oh, you might feel it on the Richter scale. I mean, this thing's like, it's like that tall, and it's going to fall down.

But yeah, his first several chapters in this book are a recap of covenant theology.

This is what happened in the covenant of works. Here's what happened with God in the covenant of grace. And it runs through, and it's fairly solid, really, looking at what he's written down.

But he goes and turns the corner when it comes to, how does that actually work out?

Since we deal with God on the basis of grace, how does that work?

How do we get faith? How do, how does that? So the classical Arminians started from a place where they agreed with total depravity, and then agreed that there was, there was a level of grace that kind of moved that depravity to the side so that we would be able to receive with, by faith, the grace of God.

So they kind of, you know, cart before the horse type of, type of thing. So yeah, they, they, they came to it from a place of covenant theology.

So you don't necessarily have to be a Calvinist in order to hold to covenant theology. In fact, you don't even have to be a

Pentecostal to come. I mean, obviously they look a little different. There's some stuff that gets a little, you have some divergent opinions at places, but yeah, there's, there can be a variety of folks who hold to it.

Does anybody know the, whether or not a Roman Catholic hermeneutic,

I know it gets different because of the elevation of tradition, but would they hold to a type of covenant theology?

Has anyone looked into that? Have you looked into that, Dan? Not as far as Catholics go. OK, I thought this, although defining

Catholicism is. Weird, yeah, it is, but by what point in history are you going to call it the

Catholic church? Because, or at least the Roman, at least the Roman Catholic church that we think of today, you go back a certain point and there's, there's changes.

So, yeah, I mean, even in this chapter, he shows folks who were medieval period and a little bit before that, who were saying things that sounded like covenant theology, who would be considered,

I guess, part of the Catholic church. They did not hold to the dogmas of Rome in the 1800s.

Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was a different, it was a different, yeah, things were not the way that they are now then, right?

Yeah, I said that right. Yep. I think this question might be in your wheelhouse, Troy. I was carrying on with that thought, the question that I asked

Dan. In modern history, it seems like most

Armenians lean more towards dispensationalism. So why do you think that is?

And then a follow up question would be, if Armenians can hold to covenant theology, why is there such a tension, it seems, between Calvinists and Armenians?

Well, so the reason I think that dispensationalism is so huge now, actually putting it in a point in history, you know, the first study

Bible in the English language was technically the Geneva in 1560.

And then you have, of course, the King James after it, and slowly the King James kind of becomes the standard.

No more study Bibles, no study notes in the, in the original editions of the King James until you get the, the

Schofield study Bible, right? And, you know, all of us have seen one of those more than likely.

And yep, right back there. Well, Schofield, whenever he's putting together his, his cross references and his study notes, he goes to a guy by the name of Darby.

Darby writes the commentary for him and it is dispensational. And what it does is since everybody can get their own study

Bible with commentary inside of it, you know, you no longer need these big shelves in behind me and the big shelves in behind Dan and big shelves that you have somewhere.

Now you can have a Bible with study notes in it. And they were, they promoted a dispensationalist perspective.

And then you get into Clarence Larkin and where he kind of charts it all out.

It's something specific, something to where most people felt, you know, this sounds really good.

I understand this. And it has. It's just kind of become the norm that everyone kind of starts out as anymore in America now, it's kind of like a.

A universal acceptance that if you talk to someone, they may not know what a dispensationalist is, they may not know, you know, you throw out the term dispensational, pre -tribulational, pre -millennial, you know, they don't know that, but they know

Jesus is coming back. I'm going with him. And then the great tribulation is going to happen.

And so it is just kind of become a default position for for most churches other than your, you know,

Presbyterian branches and. Such, yeah, a lot of that took place during a time when there was a lot of liberalism does infiltrate in the church as well.

So the dispensationalists largely were the ones or one of the large proponents of the the fundamentalist movement.

Now, people will think of the fundamentalist movement and think of the extra fundamentalists, you know, angry, pulpit slapping folks.

But really, all fundamentalism start off with was holding the fundamentals of the faith, you know, the virgin birth, the deity of Christ, the inerrancy of scripture.

And so they were holding on to those things as people wanted to find a a solid church that held to the faith and wasn't jumping off rails into liberalism.

What they found was these dispensational churches were holding the line. And so it grew in popularity that way as well.

Yeah, well, and to my other question, I was thinking. It's not necessary,

I don't think it's necessarily coming at theology. And dispensationalism is where the hang up comes from.

I think it comes from the election predestination. Yes, that's where the hang up is.

Yeah, that's that's where it's it's solely on Calvinism, not necessarily on covenant theology, because if you start if you start talking to someone that's that is dispensational and, you know, yes, you're going to have differences, you're going to have quite a few differences.

But whenever it comes to the covenant of grace, you know, and we are looking at this as, you know,

Christ is the savior, as as Dan read not long ago, right? The substance, there's only one way people have come to faith and that is or come to be saved.

And that's through faith in Christ, whether our Old Testament brothers or our New Testament brothers, 90 percent of, you know, believing professing

Christians would go, yes, amen. We're all together on that point. It's fleshing out the details.

Yeah. All right. I don't want to distract anybody from listening to you, Dan, so I want to do this for Troy.

Now, it's this thing is sensitive. I don't know if I can. Oh, that is one fancy camera.

Oh, my goodness. Well, there's a ceiling fan there. OK, it's good.

There we go. Come on back. Come on back. There was I saw the bookshelf. I saw your smoke detector up there, too.

There we go. If I touch my phone stand, it might fall and break. It's just better to leave it there.

There we go. All right. So how we're like 30 minutes in, let's get started.

So he. He kind of he goes with the way he goes about laying out this chapter, he since it's called reformed covenant theology, he lays out the reformed position using the reformed documents.

Then he goes back and tries to prove it with scripture. And then he goes from scripture and shows that this is something that's been taught throughout history.

Right. So. To start where he started, the Westminster larger catechism, number 32, the answer says this, the grace of God is manifested in the second covenant.

And that he freely provides and offers to send us covenant grace to sinners, a mediator and life and salvation by him and requiring faith as a condition to interest them in him promises and gives his

Holy Spirit to all his elect to work in them that faith with all other saving graces and to enable them unto all holy obedience as the evidence of the truth of their faith and thankfulness to God and as the way which he hath appointed them to salvation.

So. What that says in a nutshell is that the covenant of grace is there to show

Christ as the mediator for our sins, to bring us into salvation, to give us the grace we need to be able to obey him and to live lives that are pleasing and honoring and glorifying to him.

So how does that happen? It happens through Christ. And so that's what the covenant of grace is all about, that we who are sinners and separated from God would through the righteousness of Christ be brought into fellowship with God and changed from our sinful ways into redeemed individuals.

And ultimately his his church gathered together, which

I think is. Beautiful, amen, great, yeah, it's good stuff.

So he goes from there, actually, there's so much here, but he brings up a distinction of law and gospel or works and promise and works and in grace,

I would say. And that is the that's the line that he kind of defines with the covenant of works being law and.

Or the covenant works being works and the covenant of grace being gospel or promise or grace, as we said, so along those lines, he.

He breaks it down in the page 190, he brings up something.

Listen, as it says, the covenant of grace offers salvation as the only alternative to the covenant of works, meaning that this saving plan spans all human history and is the method of rescuing each of God's elect.

So how is somebody going to be saved? The covenant of grace now, he brings up a good, good point that word covenant in Greek and Hebrew can be translated as covenant or testament.

Now, testament is also a it's like a here's a written down testimony of what

God is doing. So while covenant has the idea of a contract between folks, you could also take the idea of testament where this is something that has been spoken to us as this is this is what

God has promised to mankind, that that through God's grace alone, you will be brought into into a saving relationship with him by faith.

And that's why we can have confidence in scripture. You know, we we talk about the new Old Testament and New Testament.

And in essence, the word testament you're talking about means covenant. So this is God's word,

God's covenant to us. And so therefore, God can't break a covenant.

God can't break a promise. So therefore, his word, his testaments to us are by default going to be faithful.

They're going to be right. They can't fail. They they're trustworthy. We we can depend on his word because they're his covenant to us, his testament to us.

And that's that's such a powerful, a powerful place to lean into.

As as many as many trials, as many troubles as we have in this life, even as a believer because because of the world that we still live in, to know that we have a testament, a word from God that cannot fail because it's his covenant, his promise to us, there there is a place that we can go to in this world where we can have sure footing.

That makes sense. You know, absolutely. So I hope

I did justice on what the basics of the doctrine was from a reformed perspective, because I really wanted to get to this part and spend most of our time here because the

Bible is fantastic. So I wanted to look at Romans four with you guys for for a good a good portion of time because it really talks about every

I mean, I saw him sprinkle it throughout the whole chapter so we can touch on just about everything that we need to from from here.

We'll just start reading through it. We'll talk about the verses, how they relate to to grace, faith, works, how they work with Old Testament folks,

New Testament folks and all that jazz. So Romans four one, what then shall we say?

That Abraham, our forefather, according to the flesh is found, what did Abraham find?

For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about.

So what he's saying is if Abraham had been in the sight of God, made right and justified, you are

OK with me based on what Abraham had done that he could brag.

But it says, but not before God. Verse three, for what does scripture say that Abraham believed

God and it was counted to him as righteousness? So what's it bringing up in the first three verses is that Abraham, even in the

Old Testament, even when he was said he was told, hey, get up and leave this place, go over here, circumcise yourself and your sons, do this, do that.

It wasn't him doing those things necessarily that saved him, although that was not working of what did save him.

It was faith. It was trusting in the promises of God. When God said, hey, you come out of here,

I'm going to be your God and you're going to be my people. He said, OK. He believed in him. He trusted in him by faith.

And it was that trust in God by faith that caused him to be righteous in the sight of God.

It was obviously that led to obedience because you don't really trust somebody if you won't do what they say.

My wife tells me to, you know, eat this bacon. I swear it won't kill you.

OK, I'll trust you. I have faith in my wife not to dietarily ruin me.

And, you know, she makes me bacon all the time. So I think it's a pretty good deal. It works out for us.

You're on the carnivore diet. Hey, it's it's working. I had a big old steak before I came on.

Nice. Yeah, I'm feeling fantastic, a little sleepy, but I like that you said trusting in the promises of God, because obviously,

Abraham and we must believe in God. But the verse says Abraham believed

God. And there's there's more to that than just believing in God is trusting in the promises of God.

Right. So I believe God to believe God means you have to believe something that he's done or said, which

I guess would also mean that you have to believe in him. Yes, if you don't believe in him, you can't believe what he said.

Right. Yeah. And it was he was believing the promise of the seed, the one that would that would rule the nations.

You know, that's what Abraham trusted in. And it's it was Christ. It was the promise of Christ that would come.

Yeah. It says now to the one verse for the one who who works, his wage is not counted according to grace, but according to what is due.

So if if Abraham had done things in order to be justified in the sight of God, then it would have been due to him that he would be glorified.

But that's that's not what happened. But verse five, to the one who does not work, but believes upon him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness.

So what does that mean? It means that if you try to be, it says in other places in the

Bible, the person who seeks to be justified by the law and fails at one point, fails the whole law.

If you're trying to work your way into heaven, you know, like like half the country songs out there saying working hard to get to heaven, you're not going to, because if you fail at one point, you fail at the whole thing because it demands perfection.

And we we don't have perfection. We wouldn't start with perfection, but his faith is counted as righteousness.

It's that faith and faith is is incredible.

And here's why, because it's not something that we do ourselves. It's a gift of God.

Ephesians two says that that that we're saved by the grace of God through faith.

It's not of ourselves. So we can't boast. We're like right here. You can't boast on works. You can't boast on faith either, because it's something given to you by God.

And then he tells us what place works has right there in the next verse for we are his workmanship, creating in Christ Jesus for good works that he prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

So what is works? Works aren't our way to get to God. Works are a means of glorifying

God by, by. It's it's like I don't know, electricity, so y 'all who do no help, you've got your voltage and your amperage right with no amperage, your volts don't do anything but make little shiny sparks.

But if you have amperage, it gives it power to it. Your works. You know, they might be flashy, but unless there is a faith in God behind it, there's no actual real righteousness there because you come from a place of righteousness before Christ, and that's how you get you engage in works and serve your neighbor.

You love your neighbor, and that's how you're able to actually do something good in the world is through Christ.

Yeah, I think the theme of this chapter would be a great place for somebody to start to help them for those who have a hard time seeing or understanding that faith is a gift.

My my first question that has popped up in my mind as as we're having this conversation is so for someone who is having trouble seeing understanding that faith is a gift from God.

Who was the substance of all these things, it's Christ. So if if our faith depends on us, our righteousness depends on our faith, that it's something that we we do, we we we must have faith in Christ that is generated from within ourselves, then the substance is no longer

Christ. Does that make sense? So I think this is a great place to start for somebody who's who's struggling with understanding and seeing in Scripture that faith is a gift.

Well, it's good. So it's not just a gift, it's the gift. Amen. Look at look at here.

I'm going to read a couple of verses just just moving on, but not moving on. We're talking about what you what you were saying just as David also speaks of the blessings on the man to whom

God counts righteousness apart from works. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven and those whose sins have been covered.

Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account. Therefore, is this blessing on the circumcised or the uncircumcised also for we say faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness, faith was counted to Abraham as righteous, not because of something that he did, but it's because it was something that God did for him.

And so that's where that's where where he was able to get a righteousness of works wasn't because of Abraham's works.

It was because of the works of Christ that were given to him. And that's important because it's talking about this to Abraham, who was

Genesis 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 and a little bit after.

That's way back at the beginning. That's that's the unity he's talking about through the whole thing.

It was the same faith that saved Abraham is the same faith that will bring you home to Christ. So that's the grace of God working throughout all of history that though we should die and perish in our sins because of our rebellion,

God has been gracious to us and brought a people to himself by granting them faith in the one who was to take away their sins and provide them a righteousness that they couldn't provide for themselves.

Yep. And would you say that Paul is revealing to us that continuity he's he's bringing to us, he's taking us from Genesis, he's in the middle, we're here and sorry,

I'm out I'm out of screen. Genesis is here. Romans is in the middle and we're way over here and he's showing us the continuity between the beginning and the end that the substance, the substance is

Christ all along. Right, well, it's not just beginning and end, it's beginning and Jew, Gentile, male, female, slave, free in Christ, they're all flattened out.

He has done for all. Yeah. Amen.

Somebody needs to change their smoke detector battery. Can you hear that? That's mine.

That is mine. I can't believe y 'all called me out on that on live.

Yeah, it's OK. We've only got one for all three viewers now. I'm sorry. I called you all three.

Oh, buddy. Oh, we're big time in it now. Yeah, I joke with my wife.

It came on the other day and she goes, which one is that? Because I've changed all kinds of them throughout this house.

We've been in this house maybe a year and a half. And I'm like, I don't know. We'll we'll find it in three weeks, whatever, whenever we finally figure out which one's going, you know, going crazy.

That's good stuff. If you unplug it, it'll set off an alarm. They'll all start screaming.

It's terrible. So it's one of those is hardwired and battery. Mm hmm.

I got you. Yep. But it for some reason that it goes crazy whenever the like the battery thing, like as soon as you go to change it, you got to click this button like eight times.

It's it's I didn't I don't know. I need to throw the main and change this battery.

Put it back on. Yeah, right. Here you are.

We have derailed. We we got a world we're talking about.

Because, yeah, coming up over. Yeah, let's hit verse 10. How then was it counted while he was circumcised or uncircumcised?

Not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised. So it wasn't it wasn't even him, you know, receiving the sign.

It was through faith, even though the sign was there and it was good. It was through faith.

Verse 11, he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of righteousness, of the faith, which he had while uncircumcised so that he might be the father of all who believe without being circumcised, that righteousness may be counted to them.

So how is it that all of us are going to be saved? It's going we're all going to be saved through faith.

And then verse 13, for the promise to Abraham. Or to his seed, that he would be heir of the world was not through the law, but through the righteousness of faith, for those who are of the law are heirs, faith has been made empty and the promise has been abolished.

For the law brings about wrath, but where there is no law, there also is no trespass.

So when it says that the promise to Abraham or to his seed, that they would be heir of the world was not through the law, it means that there was a, a promise given to Abraham and to his offspring.

Now it tells us who his offspring is back a couple of verses when it says that he would be the father of all who believe without being circumcised, those who believe, who have faith are the real true and proper offspring of Abraham.

It's not the Jewish people per se. It's those who have faith in Jesus Christ.

They're the true heirs of Abraham. And so that means that the one covenant that Abraham was saved by that covenant of grace is the same covenant that we're saved by because it's the same promises that God has promised to save us through faith in Christ, by the work of Christ.

And what he has done for us. And so that's why he, he entitled this chapter, uh, the unity of the covenant of grace in Christ, because there is only one covenant, one testament from God to man about how we're going to be reconciled with God and that is by grace through Christ.

Right. And I was, I was just thinking as you was making that point about how, um, it's not, it's not the

Jews per se, that's the children of Abraham, which they are in a sense, but the true children of Abraham are those who believe in Christ.

And I was thinking about the authors of the new Testament. These are Jewish men.

Sure. Jesus was a Jewish man revealing to us, God, the father and the authors of the new

Testament are Jewish men revealing to us these truths. It's not, it's not as if some, some

Gentiles or some pagan religion was come, come in and, and, you know, created this religion, you know, the, these are

Jewish men who were brought up under the law, who revealed to us these truths of Jesus.

And that's why, um, that's why when you look at Romans 11, it describes what's happening at the time of, of Christ and his, his, his coming and dying, right, right, raising again.

That the, the old administration of the covenant, that old olive tree, the unbelieving branches are broken off.

The unbelieving Jews are broken off from the, from, from the olive tree and put to the side.

And the believing branches, those Gentiles who know wild, crazy Gentiles that we are, we're grafted in.

Why? Because of faith, not because of, of anything else.

It's because we are, uh, brought into the body.

The fact is that this, this is the most secret of all.

Testify. My apologies. I think a, um, another few just really good scriptures of anybody listening wants to, wants to dive into, uh, dealing with, with covenant and Abraham, uh,

Galatians three and four. Um, you even have further definition in the portrayal of the, of the two covenants, the, the, the, or the law gospel distinction, so I liked it where you have the law portrayed by, uh, his, his wife and son

Ishmael, and then you have the promise through Isaac and, uh, just that's a good section,

Galatians three and four, uh, Hebrews 12. Can't be Hebrews 12 as far as the old covenant, new covenant distinction that's that's there.

Uh, but yeah, as seeing, and then Hebrews 11 as well, seeing that Abraham was saved by faith in the promise is something that, that we can say, and he lists everybody and at one point goes through like eight names and goes, we don't have the time to just show you that all of these brothers were saved by faith, like, uh,

Lynch's, uh, Samson lot, all of it's called the, uh,

Hebrews hall of faith is kind of its nickname. Yeah.

Yeah. So the, uh, he brought up ice cream and we should talk about ice cream because I haven't had any in like three months.

We should talk about it. Don't tempt yourself. I'm not going to tempt myself. I'm doing too good to fall back now, but he tries to bring out the difference between the substance of the covenant, which we've been saying all along is

Christ's grace towards us received by faith, right? That's a substance of the covenant of grace.

And then he brings up the administration of the covenant of grace. So what did it look like through different points in history?

And he likens that to ice cream. So let me bring that up.

If Rob goes in to get ice cream, Rob looks like a cone guy. Am I right?

Rob waffle bowl. I'm down with a waffle ball. All right.

Rob is a waffle bowl guy. He's going to get his mint chocolate chip.

Bingo. Mint chocolate chip. I thought I remember seeing that in the waffle bowl. Now, if Troy over here were to get over here, where to get a mint chocolate chip, but say he's a cup kind of guy or a sugar wafer cone kind of guy, they're both going to have the same ice cream.

The substance of their dessert is going to be the same, even though it's been administered to them differently.

One through waffle bowl and plastic spoon. That's going to cut the sides of his mouth and one through a cone, which you will get in his beard and have a stickiness until he goes home and takes a shower, but either way it is the same dessert administered in a different way.

That is an analogy for what you see throughout the old, the old covenant and the new covenant as the covenant of grace has worked out throughout all of history.

So you have the covenant of, of Noah and Abraham, Moses, David, and the new covenant, all of them showing a different aspect or, or, or, um, way by which we're to trust in God for our salvation.

Um, we're to trust him through Adam. We trust in God that he will keep his promise to crush the head of the serpent.

Uh, through Noah, we see that the, the promise given to Adam is not going to go away, um, that God will not just destroy us all, uh, especially through water, but even

Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Abraham was called out from a people and was told to trust in God and God would bring about his salvation and make him the father of many nations and all the families of the earth would be blessed through him.

In Moses, we see the incredible, great, um, sacrificial system.

Uh, well, it all points to Christ. And then you see in, in David, the kingship of Christ as it's brought out that Jesus will sit upon the throne of David forever and ever, no king of Kings and Lord of Lords and the new covenant, where you just see all the types and pulled away.

And the very fullness of Christ has brought forward in that you see that he came to the earth and died on the cross and the place of men, all the promises he made all throughout the old covenant were there, no longer in type and shadow, but in reality, here is

Christ dying for the sins of men. Here he is laying in the grave. Here he is raising from the grave and ascending into heaven.

This is the redemption that he has promised from the very beginning accomplished for us and then given to us.

Um, even as, as we see, uh, moving on in the book of Acts, where the

Holy spirit does a work among the people, we see that redemption, redemption accomplished and applied to us through the work of the spirit, um, and all done through faith.

So it's that same covenant of grace all the way through, you know, whether they had it in a waffle bowl or a cup or a little sugar cone.

Didn't matter what they got it in. They got the good stuff.

I about made a chocolate minty chip goodness joke, but it's, it's Jesus. So he's so much better than mint chocolate, but I didn't want to bring it down to that level.

Well, I appreciate that. Dan, that was, that was powerful. And of course, explaining, exalting the truth of God's word, talking about Christ as the substance of all things, especially the gospel.

It's a beautiful thing. And Roy, would you take us out by, um, bring all that together in the gospel and tell us how we can respond to the gospel and, and Dan, I'll close us in prayer and we'll, we'll be finished.

All right. So as we've, uh, looked at tonight, uh, through, through this book, right.

Looking at the covenant of grace and it's, and looking at the, the substance of all of what the

Bible talks about, whether it's the, all the types and shadows from the sacrificial system of the old

Testament, or whether it's all the promises, the substance in and of itself is

Jesus Christ. It is his, his life, his death, his resurrection.

It is the gospel. And so the whole Bible points to Jesus, the old

Testament or old covenant points forward to Christ. And the, the new

Testament or the new covenant is pointing back to what Christ did and further explaining it.

And the way that we see through the entire Bible is that it is all by faith in Christ.

It's all been hinged on the Messiah, on his active and passive obedience.

That means that he kept the law in our stead. That means he fulfilled the law.

Right. And then he gives his righteousness to us. And all we have to do is to trust him, to believe that, right.

It's, uh, the, the, the word faith in, in Greek is pistis and the word believe is pistou.

And that is just same word. It means believe Christ. You're trusting in him to pay the price for your sins.

And, and that they're settled on the cross. He said it is finished and he, he paid the debt.

You just believe it, trust it by faith. Just like Abraham, just like David, just like Paul, just like Peter.

All right. Let me, okay. Praise the

Lord. Praise the Lord. Yeah. If you do not know him, we encourage you every time to turn to him, turn from your sins and turn to him in faith.

Let's pray. Father, we want to give you all praise and glory and honor because you deserve it.

And you do not have to prove anything to us, but you shown us your faithfulness.

You've shown us your kindness. You've shown us your goodness. And we're thankful that you give us that place to come for security, for strength.

And you've given us your son. And we are, we come to you with our, our grateful hearts for saving us.

And we want to give you all the praise and all the glory and all the honor. And we want

Jesus to receive all the fame and all the credit for all that he has done.

For you said he has pleased you. And we pray all these things in Jesus name.

Amen. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, Troy. I really appreciate it. Thank you everybody for watching.

We appreciate you as well. I remember as always, Jesus is King. Go live in the victory of Christ.

Go speak with the authority of Christ and go share the gospel of Christ. Hope to see you.