from God's Word, the book of Ephesians in the beginning, and then I'll go to the book of Zechariah. for just a couple of verses, and then back to the book of Romans for a brief moment as we take a step to the side, as it were, as we open up a bit more of what undergirds this glorious doctrine and decree of election, and that is the covenant that God has made with men through his son, Jesus Christ. I'll begin reading in Ephesians chapter 1, beginning in verse 4, really 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him, that is, the Father chose us in the Son, before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ through himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, by which he made us accepted in the beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, The forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace, which He made abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, having made known to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure, which He purposed in Himself. That in the dispensation of the fullness of the times, He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven. and which are on earth in him." And then you can move with me. You can get there quickly if you'd like. I'll read from the book of Zechariah chapter 6, beginning in verse 12. Then speak to him, saying, Thus says the Lord of hosts, saying, Behold, the man whose name is the branch, from his place he shall branch out And he shall build the temple of the Lord. Yes, he shall build the temple of the Lord. He shall bear the glory and shall sit and rule on his throne. And he shall be a priest on his throne. And the council of peace shall be between them both. And then we'll go all the way back to the book of Romans chapter five. Romans chapter five beginning in verse 17. For if by the one man's offense death reign through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ. Therefore, as through one man's offense judgment came to all men, that's Adam, resulting in condemnation, even so through one man's righteousness, I'm sorry, righteous act, the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. Of course, we know this to be Christ. For as by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners, so also by one man's obedience, many will be made righteous. Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound. But where sin abounded, grace abounded more. So that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. As for the reading of God's holy word, you may be seated. Let me pray even now for the blessing of the preaching of his holy word. Lord, we love your law. And we delight to do your will. And we confess that your word is a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. That it is sweeter than honey, than drippings of the honeycomb. And moreover, by your word is your servant warned. O Lord, grant to us then warning and instruction and the nurturing of delight in you today. that our faith might be grounded upon the rock who is Christ Jesus, and not upon the shifting sand that are the dangerous doctrines of this world. Oh Lord, would you draw our hearts away from our idols? Would you cause us to cease playing in the mud puddles? But Lord, to heed the invitation to this Sabbath's rest, to behold you in your holy temple, to see your glory and honor and strength, and to treasure you above all. And so make us a people jealous for love and good deeds that you might be praised, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. I take just a pause. not from the themes that we find in the book of Romans, but as Paul continues in the book of Romans 9 to move from the decree of election that comes to us as a sort of category of doctrine, that we ought not be divorced from the things that Paul has already written, the Roman church and to the church in every age, we get to what is in many respects some of the challenging sections of Romans as it relates to what is the place of Israel and the Jews by birth and blood to our father Abraham. What has happened in their rejection of the gospel? Paul has already said why. Why has Israel rejected the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ? And Paul makes it very clear. That the rejection of Israel is due to the fact that they were not all Israel. That God is the one who calls. God is the one even prior to that calling who ever before, you and I, any man, woman or child that has ever lived the day of their lives in all of history sets his love and affection upon them in Christ Jesus or judges them through Christ Jesus. And one of the things that you and I need to do, especially in this age of post-Nietzsche post-Marx, post-Rousseau, and the sort of European enlightenment of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, that which grew out of the enlightenment of textual criticism and secular humanism. All of these things do not proclaim what is man that you are mindful of him, but man is the measure of all things. And in that pride and arrogance, even within the church, We have become conditioned by this sort of modern philosophical culture and we place man and especially self at this act of divine mercy. We must eliminate all of that kind of thinking from our minds and especially from our hearts. And so when Paul, in Romans 9, gets to the conclusion, in light of the objections that God's Word is not powerful to accomplish what it was given to do, and yet Paul says, no, the Word of God is so powerful that it gives miraculous children to those who could not have children. Well, what about the righteousness of God? God is righteous because no man demands mercy, and yet God has chosen mercy to some. Well, what about His justice? And Paul concludes his argumentation, at least where I concluded last week, look guys, you are the clay, he is the potter. Don't get all uppity. Know your place. Know that you cannot bring a charge against God of injustice because He Himself is the standard of righteousness and justice. And you accusing God of injustice is just like an inanimate object. Have you ever seen a thing of clay? Just a square of clay? Something that is nothing until it is made by the great artisan of heaven and earth. The clay doesn't look at the potter and say, I'd like to be a coffee mug. No, the artisan is the one who chooses and crafts and molds. But where is all of this grounded? Upon what decrees, upon what decision between the persons of the Godhead is this glorious decree of election grounded? It is grounded upon the agreement between the Father and the Son and the Spirit, an inter-Trinitarian council, not the council that I've written in the title of this sermon, but c-o-u-n-c-i-l, a council, a meeting between the persons of the Godhead to do something among creatures, even sinful creatures, that would display the council as it's listed in the title of our sermon, that in Christ, the righteous and sinners can be reconciled to one another. All of this is built upon Christ's finished work. And so if I want, if you want, if you are to leave here with anything, it is an understanding that this salvation that has been revealed unto us is not a salvific work of which we occupy the center. It is a salvific work upon which Christ occupies the center. He is the one who is to receive all glory and honor and praise. Two points that I wish to make this morning as it relates to this everlasting peace made between God and men. The first, the eternal counsel of peace. Second, the division and cooperation of Trinitarian labor. Let's look first at the eternal counsel of peace. Now I know I read from Ephesians chapter 1 first, but what we need to see is that in Christ Jesus, men are reconciled unto the Father. That in Christ Jesus, those who were not His children have been made His children. And this according to the eternal plan of God. We were chosen in Him. what we mean and all mean by this is there was an agreement between the father and son ever before we live today where the father gave to the son a bride and if it comes in your life to a point in which you receive a regenerating work of the Holy Spirit in your life it is because the father gave you to the son in eternity past you are his treasured possession you are his And so as we look at a survey of scripture related to the doctrine or the decree of election, we find it throughout. It is impossible to get away from. In fact, the only way to get away from it is to close our Bibles and not to open them and read them, frankly. In fact, this is what many Christians do. It's monkey see, right? The whole thing. I'm not going to read it. I'm not going to listen to it. I'm not going to handle it. I'm just going to ignore those sections of scripture that speak plainly of God's sovereignty over my life. In fact, let's argue the contrary for a moment. What if the system that is often touted by many within the Christian church, that man himself is the one who is in the driver's seat regarding his own salvation, was left to his or her own devices. Do you know yourself? Do you know anything about yourself at all? Do you think, for one moment, if it were not for some instigating work of grace in your heart that you had arrived to the conclusion that I'm a sinner in need of salvation, that these things that I'm doing in my life are worthy of divine judgment? The answer to that question is, yes, you would. In fact, in Romans chapter one, this is the argument that Paul makes about all sinners. Every man, woman, or child that has ever lived that is of normal mind is under the awareness of or under the condition of guilt before God. And yet what they do with that knowledge of God is not worship God, but what? To suppress and exchange the knowledge of God for a lie. You are not, morally speaking, a neutral agent. Though all men are aware of the existence of God, that He is to be feared and worshipped and adored. Men suppress the reality of a God who is judge for a religion in which they, in their own sort of ideological crafting, can create a system where they can appease that God by things that they can do. Now they may be challenging things. You may have to fly planes into buildings or martyr yourself in the face of infidels in order to earn meritorious favor with God. And every cult and false religion has a sort of hierarchy of laws related to how it is we can earn or buy merit before God. Or false gods, small g gods, demon gods, idolatrous gods. And so the argument that scripture makes is not that men are not aware of God. It's that we hate the true God of the Bible. In fact, we hate anyone that would cause us to rightly order our affections upon God first. Because we do what with our affections? We distort our lives through disorderly affections. And so this eternal, as we see in Zechariah chapter 6, counsel of peace comes to us, as we read in verses 12 through 13, from the branch. Did you notice the kind of language that is used of the branch? Perhaps you've heard the language, the shoot from the stump of Jesse. Or you've heard of the main branch out of which the vines are grafted in. That branch in Scripture, especially in the New Testament, is whom? It is the Lord Jesus Christ. The one who roots and grounds us into eternal, divine, inter-trinitarian fellowship. And what does he do as the branch? He builds the temple and he sits on the throne. The counsel between them both is the advice, it is the declaration of the priestly king of heaven and earth who says, as prophet, priest, and king, it is through me and through me alone that you have access to be rooted and grafted in to the fellowship of the Godhead. And this entire plan, let me tell you, you had nothing to do with. You didn't get to, like a beautiful painting. Or perhaps if you've seen, maybe when you bought your house, this happened when we bought our house, down in the basement, there was this rolled up set of blueprints. And it's the blueprints of the house. And in the bottom, I can't remember, right or left corner, was the name of the architect of it. Here is the problem with a man-centered approach to understanding and applying the doctrine of salvation. We want our name to be on that square where it says architect, but it cannot be. In fact, every false religion, let's say it says Mohammed, what kind of building did he build? Not the true temple, but a false house. A house not built to honor God, but to honor the devil. Or every other false religion that says Joseph Smith, or Joby Fowler, or fill in the blank. Every one of those houses that we endeavor to build with our own hands is insufficient. It cannot bring a council of peace, a call to restoration. And so we must, as we look at salvation, moving a little bit even further back from Romans chapter 9, what undergirds it is a inter-Trinitarian work of deliverance. First, we are made by God. Let us make man in our own image. Genesis chapter 2. And then to understand not only the work of creation but even prior to creation was the decree of creation and the decree of providence and salvation. God would over time, having decreed the fall but not the author of sin, bring a sinful people unto himself, his family, the elect, the children of God, unto himself, and the Father and the Son and the Spirit would each have distinct yet complementary roles in all of this. And so even in my Bible survey class, as we move through the unfolding of the plan of redemption over three years of middle school classes, from Genesis to Revelation, and I ask them, who did this? And they say, God. I say, yes, but which person? Who walked with Adam and his wife in the cool of the garden? Who was the one who was with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace? Who is the one who sent the sun into the world? Who is the one who met Joshua on the eve of the battle of Jericho? Who is the one of whom Christ said, I will send you a helper? Who are these persons? We must know their names, and we must rightly attribute to each of the persons the work that they arranged ever before we live today. Children, do you ever wonder what life was like before you came into the world and your parents would get up and have breakfast, just the two of them? Parents, do you remember? Can you recount? Can you recall? Look, bacon's not cheap. but we only have to cook four pieces. I mean, we're cooking like 16 pieces of bacon at one point every morning in our house. We're going back to fewer pieces of bacon. I remember looking at old photographs of my parents. I remember when my grandparents passed away and we found love letters from my grandmother to my grandfather or a letter from my grandfather to my grandmother's father asking for her hand in marriage. And I remember thinking, I just remember my granddad was this kind of tall portly guy that wore eyes odd cardigan sweaters that you couldn't rub up against him because they were so itchy. Like this guy, He had a life. He had a great romance. He had a life before he was a grandfather. And yet in our perspective as it relates to our own salvation, we in our idolatrous nature like petulant children think we are the center of this family. And yet what we ought to do is to understand that the great drama of the unfolding of the history of redemption that we find in scripture is the plan carried out, a plan that was made ever before we lived a day, ever before Adam and his wife lived a day from eternity past. We ought then have a Trinitarian perspective, not only with regards to history, but with regards to love between the persons. Parents, on that day in which your children are married and there is joy in your heart because you anticipate the future joy of that romance in that couple. It is not unlike the father's joy in giving to his son, Jesus Christ, a bride. And yet the mission of the Messiah was a difficult one as it related to the pursuit of that bride because she was a wayward bride, like Gomer. What a name! And Hosea was called by God to marry her as a picture of His covenant affection for His people and the long-standing rebellion of Israel. And God's covenant affection is the foundation for all that happens in our salvation. And so the foundation for the covenant of grace The principal part of what we call the covenant of grace is not God's covenant with you, it is the covenant or the covenanting between the Father and the Son directly and through the Son, you. This is why, if you're ever to come to the Elders of Reformation OPC, and maybe you as a couple need to come and talk about the health of your marriage, or the state of your family, this is what you're gonna hear every time. That the health of the husband and the wife is the most important thing to get right in the home. That bad parenting begins by being a bad husband and a bad wife. And so what do you need to do in order to get the parenting thing right first? Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church. Wives, submit to your husbands in the Lord. And when that relationship of covenant affection upon which children are the fruit, there is blessing in the home. Parents, your children should see you with your spouse loving one another. Christ himself in his earthly ministry exhibited the love he had and the submission in his human nature to the Godhead in the call to die for his people. I came not to do my will, but the will of the Heavenly Father. He exhibited his longing to get away from them for a time and go be with his Father. The foundation for all of the decrees as it relates for the good of the creature is built upon a council, a meeting, an agreement between the persons of the Godhead. Now, when did that council take place? Well, that's a very difficult way to ask the question about those who are eternal in nature. In the same way that God is eternal in His being, God is also in eternity past timeless with regards to what He does. So when you do something, the act of you doing something takes place over time. Even a thought. It may be a small amount of time, but it takes place over time. The eternal decree of God unto salvation is co-eternal with God Himself. It is as much of His being as the things that we attribute to him, his righteousness, his holiness, his goodness. So chew on that for a little while. Wrap your arms around that, it'll start making smoke come out of your ears. The reason why I think that is important, though it's very difficult to grasp, is that we who are oftentimes full of ourselves and full of either doubt or pride, which is just a way of putting ourselves more than we ought in the center of this drama of redemption. The way that we remedy that is by putting God where He belongs upon the throne of our salvific work. And so the foundation for the covenant of grace and the benefits of our redemption principally flow from God's eternal everlasting covenant with the Son, that is the Father with the Son. Now what does this make? Just narrowly speaking, as it relates to those doctrines that are sort of challenged in Romans 9, it makes dispensationalism impossible. And it not only makes dispensationalism impossible, it makes it heretical. Because what does dispensationalism have at its root? A God who made a mistake in the first plan. And so he has to come up with another plan. How many of you have done woodworking? You know what they say about woodworking? Measure twice, cut once. Measure twice, cut once. Why? Because you are prone to mistakes. Dispensationalism is God not measuring properly and then having to cut again and again and again and again. And then one day he'll go back to Israel because he sort of messed it up and he's sort of recovering while he deals with the Gentiles. That leads to an eschatology that is broken. And not only is dispensationalism ruled out, but so is Arminianism. Which is itself a way of putting man at the center of the drama of divine redemption of sinful men and women. Because it places, again, not God as the decreer, as the one who is behind the wheel, steering this thing. Parents, how many of you are going through the process of being in the passenger seat while your children are driving. And you press that invisible brake. Come on, come on. Stop! And there's nothing you can do. Do you think it honors God to have a doctrine of salvation that is distinctly that model? God going, hey, hey, Joby, I wouldn't drive down that road. No, I got this. Such is every religion that puts man behind the steering wheel, not just of the decree of salvation, but of all the decrees of human history and providence. And so what must we see? That Christ, in his divinity as king and priest, has done something that you and I could not do. And this is the division and cooperation of Trinitarian labor. Again, I would call you to go back to the eternal council, C-O-U-N-C-I-L, between the Father and the Son and the Spirit. This is a council of love. This is a council of everlasting peace, upon which Christ's declaration of peace is built. And so when you and I hear that declaration of peace, you need to see that it comes not as a mistake, Not as an alternative plan, but as an everlasting plan. And we need to see Christ's role in it. Christ is, first, the surety. Now, what is a surety? A surety is something that is expressed as a clear guarantee that something has happened. Christ's blood shed is the surety that our sins are forgiven. And the effect of his shed blood is connected to our confidence that we are in fact forgiven. And let's say that the surety of Christ's redeeming work is not the surety that we put our hope in. Let's say it's something else, like a mood, or a feeling or an experience, how often does your mood change? All the time. This is where I can get in a lot of trouble, right? How often does your mood change? How often do you think one way and then another? How often do you grasp the glory and the beauty and you sense the awe of the God who was and is and is to come? Yesterday on the ride home from Presbytery from Wilmington, I was in the car and I began listening to C.S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces, which is a story that is not unlike the story of Job. where the character that is a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, this woman despises the gods because she wants to live the life that she wants to live and her affections are disorderly. And through her idolatry, she destroys herself and she destroys others until she glimpses the true God. And in beholding God, Truly and really, she understands her purpose in life. She understands herself until she has a face. And she beholds what she is for. Where does that beholding come from? Where does that new sight come from? Well, from the One. As He walked in Jerusalem, He saw a man blind and begging. And he bent down in the dirt, he spit in the dirt, he made mud with his hands and he rubbed the mud on the eyes of the blind man. And he says, go wash yourself. And he went and washed his face and he could see. That blindness would be temporary. And so too the curing of that blindness of that man. For one day his eyes would be closed in death. But Christ not only gave him sight to his eyes, but he gave him sight to see that he himself, Christ, was the Messiah. Christ performed that sign to show what? That he has the power to forgive sins. And the surety of Christ's redeeming work given in the sign and the seal of the shedding of his blood and the breaking of his body on the cross Christ is our surety and not only is the surety is he the surety he is the head He is the head of the church. He is our head. He is our king. He is our priest. He is our prophet Christ has done all this Christ has fulfilled the covenant of works. That which Adam violated in his disobedience in the garden, Christ fulfilled. And so the covenant that God made with man is gracious because God made that covenant with Christ and Christ fulfilled it for you and for me. And if you endeavor apart from Christ to live by works, What will happen? What happened with Israel that Paul speaks of in Romans 9? You will inherit only death. Christ fulfilled the law for us. Christ is therefore the Lord and head. He is the surety. He is the Redeemer for all whom the Father gave Him. And in John chapter 6, what does Christ say of those whom God has given Him, the Father? I won't lose one of them. Parents, you ever lost your children in the national park like we did one time? Or the grocery store? You ever had a pet turtle? You think, this turtle, so slow, it'll never get out of my sight. It's like that. And you turn around and you get busy and all of a sudden your kid is gone. Christ does not lose any whom the Father has given. Because he has laid hold of us through his precious blood. such that all that the Father has promised to the Son, the Son will be given. Dear saints, and so as we move through Romans 9, we need to see that this is not about merely which doctrinal school or tradition has it over another. This is ultimately about what the chief purpose of Scripture is given for. Why did God give us the word? So that we might know what to believe concerning God and know what God requires of us. Romans 9 is a what must we believe concerning God. And then what is required of us? To believe and to find in Christ everlasting life. To gain a greater understanding for why Jesus himself spoke as he did and did what he did. And then this is what I'll leave you with. The strength of the armor of your assurance of salvation is forged not due to the resilience of your own human fleshly will, but it is forged and made strong when we see that it is God the Father who clothed us in the righteousness of Christ. That he had been laid down for us ever before the foundations of the world were laid. And so our security, our hope, our comfort is not grounded in our own will, but in the eternal will of the persons of the Godhead. And God cannot lie. There is no shadow of turning and change within Him. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. And what He has decreed, He will do. Build your life on that. Let's pray. Lord.