Good to be with you again today. We have actually a long way to go this morning, a lot to do. We began on Friday evening by talking a little bit about Baptist history. And I received a question about Baptist history that I hope to be able to address at the end of our time. I'm leaving the questions for the end. Not that they're unimportant, but there are other things that need to be done first. We dealt with Baptist history and then yesterday we spent the whole morning talking about different ways that Christians put the Bible together. And we ended by watching a video that a friend of mine put together that began the process of talking about Baptist covenant theology. I want to talk about that in a little bit more detail and perhaps in a little bit more of logical progression because it is important and it helps us to understand how our fathers put the Bible together, how they understood the connections that exist in the Bible. Now the way that I want to do this is by considering the seventh chapter of of the Second London Confession of Faith. This is the title page from one of the first editions of the Confession. You can see down at the bottom it was published in 1677. We frequently refer to it as the 1689 Confession, but it was never actually printed in 1689. It was first published in 77, then another version was published in 1688, and then a third edition of it was published in 1699. The reason that it's called the 1689 confession is that there was a general assembly of Baptist churches that met in London in September of 1689, and they publicly adopted this as their confession of faith. And so it was not actually written or published in 1689, but it has that name because of the General Assembly. A confession of faith put forth by the elders and brethren of many congregations of Christians baptized upon profession of their faith in London and the country, printed in the year 1677. We don't know exactly what the origins of the confession are, but a very good educated guess, circumstantial evidence points to the fact that it came out of a very large church in London known as the Petit France Church. Two men were ordained to the eldership of that church on the same day. In 1675, their names were William Collins and Nehemiah Cox. And the first literary reference to the confession is found in the church book that was kept, the records of the church. It's in the Guildhall Library in London. I've actually had the privilege of holding it in my hands and I've taken digital photographs of the entire book. And in September of 1677, you find the first literary reference anywhere to the Confession of Faith. It says something to the effect of that the confession was read by the people and they believed that it ought to be published. So it seems that it came out of this church in London. Nehemiah Cox at that point would have been 28 years old, but probably was the primary editor of this Confession of Faith. Now what I want to do is to move on to chapter 7 and very quickly work our way through it, sort of in the same way that we worked through chapter 7 of the Westminster Confession yesterday. Those of you who are here will remember that when we looked at the Westminster Confession it had six paragraphs and we sort of commented on each of the paragraphs along the way. That's what I want to do here, but the Baptist Confession only has three paragraphs. It's a shorter, briefer statement of covenant theology. And this is the page from the 1677 edition that cites for us chapter seven. I thought you'd be interested in seeing what it looked like originally. And you can probably follow along with me as I read. I actually have a hard time looking over there and seeing it, so I'll read from this version. But I'm going to read paragraph one first here. The distance between God and the creature is so great that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience to him as their creator, yet they could never have attained the reward of life but by some voluntary condescension on God's part, which he hath been pleased to express by way of covenant." And then you can see in the old style, this A refers to the scripture verses over here. And they want us to go and look at these scripture verses and understand that in these scripture verses, there's some sense of a demonstration of the doctrine that they put into the Confession of Faith. Well, if you can just take a look at this, Now let me try to describe to you what they're saying. It's very similar to what we saw yesterday in the Westminster Confession, and it begins with a very important distinction. That's the distinction between the Creator and the creature. God, as we said yesterday, is in his own category. He is unique, He's self-sufficient, he has no beginning, he has no ending, he is God, and everything else that exists exists because God has brought it into being. And Christian theology has always recognized this fundamental importance of the distinction between the creator and the creature. Because God, who is who he is, And because of this tremendous distinction that there is, this fact that God exists in his own category, we have to wrestle with the means that God uses to communicate to us. And in this expression, you'll remember this word from yesterday, distance is the word that is used. Now, they don't mean here distance such as from Hampton Roads, Virginia to San Diego. which, God willing, tomorrow I will fly. It's not that kind of distance, but rather it's a separation, a distinction between the two. The word distance does express the concept well, but they're trying to say God and man are fundamentally different. One is the all-supreme maker of all things, and as I said a moment ago, everything that exists exists because God has brought it into being. The other, so he is the all supreme maker of all things, we are the product of his act. And for this reason, we as his creatures owe obligations to him. And those obligations are stated for us here. On the one hand, creatures must obey their creator. because he has made us, we have this obligation of obedience to him." Notice the word reasonable, although reasonable creatures do owe obedience unto him. Reasonable here distinguishes man from the beasts, and the idea is that man is created in the image of God. Now, if we were studying this in my class when I lecture through the confession, at this point, I would remind you of the previous chapters, and especially chapter four, which speaks about creation, about God's direct act of bringing mankind into being. We were made in the image of God. We were made to bear that image and to show forth his glory in our actions. That's our obligation to him. because he is our creator and we are his creatures. But the reality is, because we are his creatures, our natural obedience, that is, this obedience that we owe to God as creatures, is not in itself meritorious. It doesn't bring us merit. It doesn't gain us any points with God. God owes us nothing. God has given us life. He has breathed into the nostrils of Adam the breath of life. and through Adam we have our life, but we simply owe him the obligation of obedience. And when we give that obedience to him, it doesn't add to his glory, it simply is the debt, the obligation that we have to him. Obedience is required for his rational creatures, but it does not in and of itself, even in an unfallen state, before the fall, before Adam sinned, it doesn't merit a reward. It's simply the obligation of the created being. Its purpose is to serve the creator, to do his will, whatever that might be. Now, there is an analogy here between anything that we might make. Anything that we might make with our hands from whatever materials or ingredients we happen to use will never be greater than us. And all that that thing can do is fulfill the responsibility or fulfill the purpose for which we make it. There's an analogy to that and the way that God has made us. He made us to fulfill a purpose. We are to fulfill his purpose, we owe him that obligation, but it won't add anything to God. He has all that he needs. And yet, God's purpose for man in creating humanity was not that they would be like all of the rest of the beasts of the field. Because they were made in the image of God, God had a different intention for them. His purpose was far greater. And his purpose was that man as a being would enjoy life as his deputy, his ruler, upon the newly made earth. God would rule in heaven, and he made Adam and Eve to be the rulers over the earth. That was the charge that he gave to them. Subdue the earth. Multiply and fill the earth. And show the glory of God as you do this. If they were to do this, the blessing of life would remain upon man and their descendants forever as a reward for focused obedience to a specific commandment. Now, this cannot be understood in terms of the obligation of a created being. This is something that God adds to creation. And so he condescends, notice the language, some voluntary condescension on God's part. Remember the distance, the distinction. God is in his own category. Man is one of his creatures. In order for God to give a blessing to humanity, he must in some sense condescend or accommodate himself to his people in their created state. The word is a technical word, and it refers to the mode of revelation that God uses to address man his created state. God makes this creature, he creates him in the image of God, and then he gives him the opportunity to demonstrate by his obedience that he loves God first, and then God will give to him a reward for that specific obedience in response and as a result of his obedience. Now we we have to find a way to describe this, that God freely and condescends or accommodates to man, in this case for the purpose of granting to man the reward of life, not just continued existence, but rather confirmation in the high estate into which God created man and the greatest blessing being unbroken continued communion with God his creator forever and ever. That's the high point, that's the best thing, to know God, to live in the presence of God forever and ever. What do you call this condescension on the part of God? Well, we call the condescension covenant. The chosen vehicle by which God reveals himself to his creature is covenant. Now, at this point in the formation of the doctrine, Covenant can refer to either the covenant of works, that is, the arrangement that God makes with Adam or imposes on Adam, is a better way to say this, in which he tells Adam that he is to obey, that he may eat of the fruit of all of the trees in the garden, but of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he must not eat. And by keeping himself from the fruit of that tree, Adam is demonstrating to God that his obedience, his love, that he sets the will of his creator above his own personal interests or of the deception of the serpent as the serpent comes to him. It can refer to the covenant of works or It can also refer to the covenant of grace, that which God does after the fall in order that men might receive forgiveness for the violation of the covenant of works that was committed by Adam. And since this chapter is really laying down the groundwork for the doctrine of salvation, it doesn't so much focus on that first covenant, the covenant of works, but rather it focuses our attention on how God saves sinners. God condescends to us by way of covenant, and in his covenant, he grants us the grace of salvation through Jesus Christ. Now this is complicated. In the first paragraph here, this number one, it really is speaking about man as he's created, okay? Before the fall, the condition of man as he comes from the hand of God. And the key thing to have in mind is the distinction or the distance, the difference between the God of heaven and earth and his creation man. Paragraph two, presents to us a complicating problem. Take a look at what it says. Moreover, that's an important word. It's easier for me if I read it here. Forgive me. Moreover, man having brought himself under the curse of the law by his fall, it pleased the Lord to make a covenant of grace. wherein he freely offers unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in him that they may be saved, and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life his Holy Spirit to make them willing and able to believe." Now once again this is very similar to what we saw yesterday in the Westminster Confession of Faith. Adam, did not remain in his state of innocency. We know that this is taught to us in the first three chapters of the book of Genesis. It becomes very important in Paul's doctrine in Romans chapter 5 and 1 Corinthians chapter 15. The book of Hebrews, pardon me, picks up on the role of the first Adam and the second Adam and the comparison between what happened with the first Adam what Jesus Christ the second Adam does. Adam did not remain in this state of innocency, this relationship to God where he was able to obey God freely and of his own ability and thus earn the reward of life by God's condescension. Rather, Adam took heed to his wife and after she had been deceived and he reached out and he took of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and ate from it and in doing so sinned against God. He brought upon himself and upon all of his descendants ruination and death and all of the troubles that exist in our world exist because Adam disobeyed God at that point. Now God could have simply written off Adam, ended the creation act at that moment sent him to death and destruction and that would have been the end. But he didn't do that. The result of the fall, or the realities of the fall, color the development of revelation and redemption at this point. I pointed out the word moreover. This, not only does man face the difficulty of the creator-creature distinction, and the necessity of God condescending to enter into relationship with him, but now there is an added factor that necessitates the idea of covenant, and that is that Adam fell. Adam brought this upon himself and all of his descendants, And in doing this, he further complicated his situation because he brought himself under the curse of the law. At first, Adam was at a distance from God simply because of the distinction between the creature and the creator. But now he has complicated this infinitely more. by disobeying God and bringing upon himself and his descendants the curse of the law. Because you see, now not only was Adam a creature, but he was a fallen creature as well. And being a fallen creature, a sinful creature, he was subject to the curse of the law, the curse of the broken covenant of works. If man by nature could not merit eternal life and could only receive eternal life by obedience to this covenant that God makes with him, if his natural obedience is not meritorious, how much more difficult is man in sin to recover from the fall and to, in some sense, merit from God the reward of eternal life? In fact, he couldn't. by his sin against God, now everything was against him. He was a creature who could not, because of his creaturehood, merit eternal life. Now he was a fallen creature who had violated the law of God, and he had the judgment of God against him. So there were two very serious strikes against Adam. And what happens? Well, God responds to this. He does not leave his creature to the curse and to death that ensues, but instead he shows grace even to this rebellious son who was given all of the blessings of a beautiful garden. I think we can't really understand or even imagine what it must have been like for Adam and Eve to be set down in the Garden of Eden. Now we were talking last night about national parks, and what an enjoyable thing it is to go to the Grand Canyon, or Yellowstone National Park, or Yosemite, or these places that are just absolutely, incredibly beautiful. When I go there, though, I have to remind myself that they have nothing in beauty compared to what the Garden would have been. The Garden of Eden was paradise on earth. Adam lived in that paradise on earth, and he still sinned. And yet God shows his grace to this fallen man and to his descendants and comes to him in his sin. Notice here the language of, it pleased the Lord to make a covenant of grace. The Lord's pleasure. That's an important theme in the Bible. The covenant or covenant theology is inextricably bound to God's sovereignty. God is the sovereign creator, is pleased, it is his pleasure to demonstrate his grace, and he does this by way of covenant. And so he makes a covenant of grace. No longer is man able by works to achieve the fruit of eternal life. Now it must be simply grace. And the covenant of grace is defined for us as a one-sided covenant. Now sometimes covenants have two sides, sometimes covenants have one side. The covenant of works is a two-sided covenant in which God comes to Adam and tells him he must do something, and then Adam must obey that in order to receive the reward. The covenant of grace is not like that. It is a one-sided covenant. It's completely different from the broken covenant of works. It is a covenant in which the Lord comes by grace and based upon his own actions provides salvation to humanity. Now, this is a very brief statement of what the Lord does. It simply tells us that he freely offers life and salvation. That is, the grace of this covenant is given by God apart from the merit or the demerit of the object. And in reality, the object has no merit at all. All that the object has is sin. In the covenant of works, God calls upon us to give him righteousness. and instead what we give him is sin. That's all that we do is we pile up sin. He expects from us righteousness, we give back to him sin. But in grace, he doesn't expect us to give back anything. He comes to us and he grants to us graciously this gift. He offers to man the blessing that was lost in Adam, the blessing of restored, renewed, and unending life. And that is salvation from the terrible consequences of the fall, salvation from death. Death in this life and death in the life to come. You remember in the book of Hebrews, for example, in Hebrews chapter 2, the writer tells us that Christ came to save us from the fear of death. We will all die unless Christ returns. We will go to the grave. But we are saved from the fear, or what Paul calls the sting of death. Because we know that when we die our souls go to be with the presence of Christ if we trust in him. And that one day our bodies will be raised to newness of life and will live forever with resurrection bodies like that of our Lord Jesus Christ. See, what was lost in Adam is gloriously regained, but it's only regained by God's actions. not regained by what we do. It's regained by what God does for us. And how does he do this? He does this by Christ. It pleased the Lord to make a covenant of grace wherein he freely offerth unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ. By Jesus Christ. It is only Christ who on our behalf fulfills the conditions both before God and before men. He's the perfect mediator. He satisfies God's requirement, he keeps on our behalf the broken covenant of works, and he grants to us by faith his righteousness so that we may stand before God. welcomed as his beloved children, clothed not in our own filthy rags, not in the wickedness of our sinful actions, but clothed in the righteousness of Jesus Christ. He looks at us through his Son and he welcomes us into his presence because of that. Now the language here is brief. And the language points to the next chapter, chapter 8, which is Of Christ the Mediator. It has 10 paragraphs. It beautifully describes to us the work of Jesus Christ, the one who is truly God and truly man, who comes in order to fulfill the demands of the covenant and provide to us life and salvation. everything that follows in chapter 8 is really necessarily implied by this very brief statement that this salvation comes to us by Christ. Now notice, the object of God's covenant is sinners. It's really astounding to consider that we are the objects of this wonderful grace. It's not the righteous. It's not those who qualify because they keep commandments to a certain level. It's not the self-righteous who think that they have satisfied the demands of God's law. In fact, it's sinners. It's those who have nothing to give to him. Nothing to bring that will merit his favor. Nothing that will satisfy the demands of his justice. Nothing. It's not the righteous, but his sinners. And all that God requires of them is faith. They trust Him. They trust that Jesus Christ, by His life and by His death, satisfies all of the demands of righteousness. They trust that if they place their faith in Him, if they rely upon Him and forsake all of their own efforts, that God will receive them, that God will forgive them, that God will grant to them eternal life. And the result of that is salvation. All that God expects from us is faith, and faith itself is not a work. Faith is simply receiving the gift that God gives to us. But that comes by God's grace. You see, it all goes back to God's sovereign grace. He grants this to us. And he does this by way of, now all the way down at the bottom of the page, you see the word promising. When we read the word promise in the Bible and in books on covenant theology, we have to think about the term covenant, because the word covenant and the word promise are intimately bound together. They imply each other. God's promise is God's covenant. And God being faithful and true, who cannot lie, who will not fail to accomplish his promise, makes these promises to us in Jesus Christ. He gives these promises to those who are ordained unto eternal life. God's purpose in the covenant is to save his people, to save those he has chosen, to save those he has ordained and to set them on a guaranteed course. Though they are sinners, though they are condemned in Adam, he promises from eternity in the covenant to grant to them the Holy Spirit Remember, they're dead in trespasses and sins. There's nothing that they can do to merit God's favor. They cannot act on their own. They can't take a step towards him for the sake of eternal life. They're dead and they need someone to come upon them and give them life. That is the Holy Spirit. All who are saved, all who come to faith, do so because of the work of God's Holy Spirit. You see, we're talking about God's Trinity. the Father, the Son, and the Spirit working together in covenant to save his people. That's what this is all about. The Spirit comes, the Spirit gives them life, he changes their wills, and they believe the result is eternal life. Notice, promising to give them his, to those that are ordained unto eternal life, his Holy Spirit to make them willing and able to believe. So that all of us here, if we are believers, when we came to faith, it was because from eternity God purposed to save us, because God sent his son Jesus Christ to die for us. And because at the right moment in your life and in my life, he sent his Holy Spirit to us to give us life. That's how we come together. That's how we enjoy salvation. Now there's some highfalutin Latin terms that I like to use, the Pactum Salutis, which is the eternal covenant of salvation, the Historia Salutis, which is the story of the Bible, the history of redemption, how God brings salvation, and then the Ordo Salutis, or the order of salvation, which happens in my life and in your life. All of us could stand up and we could, pardon me for a moment, We could give testimony to the circumstances that God used to give us salvation, right? For me, I was just about 15 years old in 1970. And through hearing the word preached and through some friends witnessing to me, I came to faith in Christ in 1970. And all of you who are believers could stand up and give some indication of that. Now, I'm not saying that you have a date and a time, I don't mean that. But you could say, I was not a believer, and God used these things, and I came to realize that I was a believer in Jesus Christ. That's the point. God, by his Holy Spirit, comes and gives this to us. And all of it is a result of God's eternal covenant purpose. Now the third paragraph is where the Baptists make some significant changes to the Westminster Confession of Faith. It's much simpler, it's much shorter, and it's a little bit more comprehensive than what you find in the Westminster Confession. Let me read it for you, the third paragraph. This covenant is revealed in the gospel. First of all, to Adam in the promise of salvation by the seed of the woman, and afterwards by farther steps. Remember yesterday in the video, we talked about farther steps. This is where that comes from. afterwards by farther steps until the full discovery thereof was completed in the New Testament. And it is founded in that eternal covenant transaction that was between the father and the son about the redemption of the elect. And it is alone by the grace of this covenant that all the posterity of fallen Adam that ever were saved did obtain eternal life and blessed immortality, man being now utterly incapable of acceptance with God upon those terms on which Adam stood in his state of innocency. This is really a wonderful, wonderful paragraph. This is how the covenant is revealed. How is divine accommodation or condescension evident? Well, only by special revelation, not by general revelation. Men cannot be saved by the world around us and the things that they see in the world. Rather, mankind is only saved by the revelation that God gives to us. Sometimes I feel like I'm a tour guide in a museum. And there are certain rooms that you walk by and you say, I'd like to go in that room right now and explore it, but we just can't. But let me tell you the name of that room. It's Gospel Missions. This is why missionary endeavor is so very important, because no one will ever be saved by natural revelation, by living up to the light that they have. This is why it's important for us to send people, for you to go next door, and for us to send people to the other side of the earth. because without the gospel, as it's revealed in the Bible, no one ever will be saved. But that's all I can say about that room as we go on our tour, all right? There's a lot more in the Confession that talks about that, but covenant is directly related to the cause of missions. Let's talk about this a little more. The covenant is first off revealed in the gospel. People are saved by the gospel and nothing else. This is a positive statement. But it's interesting, in the 16th and 17th centuries, there were a couple of movements that argued that so long as people lived up to the light that they would receive, God would accept that on their behalf. One of those groups was called the Socinians. the Polish Brethren, and they really developed in Poland and then spread their views to many other places. And they believed very strongly that all that was necessary, all that God required of people, is that they be good and they live up to whatever light that they have. Now surprisingly, the Arminians agreed with the Sosinians on this point. And they did not believe that it was necessary for people to hear the gospel and believe the gospel. All that was necessary was for the Buddhist to live up to the tenets of Buddhism and the Muslim to live up to the tenets of Islam and God would save them. Here's another room that I'd like to go into, or maybe it's part of the first room. It doesn't surprise me that the modern missionary movement came out of Calvinism and not out of Arminianism. Because the Arminians had no impetus for missions, because they believed all you have to do is live up to the light that you have. In fact, if a missionary goes to someone and tells them to believe in Jesus, maybe he's gonna condemn them. Because now they have the opportunity to hear about Jesus, and if they don't believe, they will certainly be damned. If they'd been left alone and simply lived up to the light that they had, they would have been saved. It was the Calvinist, and it was the Calvinistic Baptist in 1792, who led the way in the modern missionary movement. But again, that's all I can say about that room. Now, how is this gospel revealed? Well, it's revealed in historical stages, and this is putting the Bible together. The Baptists look back at the history that's recorded for us in the Old Testament and recognize its true history. But it's a history that tells us the story of redemption. It tells us how God saves sinners. And they begin all the way back at Adam. this covenant is revealed in the gospel first of all to Adam in the promise of salvation by the seed of the woman. Now that's Genesis 3.15c. They're arguing that God's grace, covenant grace, is revealed to humanity right from the beginning, right there in the garden, immediately after the fall, when God places a curse upon the serpent and promises that one will come and crush the skull of the serpent, though his heel will be wounded. They argue that's the first place that the covenant of grace is revealed. And that all of the rest of the events of the Old Testament are simply the means that God uses to demonstrate to us what salvation is and how he will save sinners. And that's the farther steps. Each historical covenant and all of the events that take place in the Old Testament cumulatively add to our knowledge. They help us to see that God saves sinners graciously, by his grace. And they are all leading up to, anticipating, and fulfilled in the full discovery, that's the language here, the full discovery that is made in the New Testament or in the New Covenant. where the complete and final revelation is granted to us in Jesus Christ the Son. And that's, they would look at a place like 2 Corinthians 1 verse 20 where Paul says that all of the promises of God are yea and amen in Christ, or they would look at Hebrews 1.1 where the writer to the Hebrews tells us that in the past God revealed himself to the fathers in different ways, but now he has revealed himself to us in a final form in Jesus Christ. So everything that goes before is an anticipation, and it's an increasing revelation of what God would finally do in Jesus Christ, our Lord. Now, that's a great historical statement and a great way to look back at all of the events leading up to the birth of Christ, his life, his death, his resurrection, his ascension into heaven. Everything before that anticipated What would happen when Jesus Christ would come? And this is called the history of redemption. In the 19th and the 20th century, there's been a lot of work done on this. You may have heard names like Gerhardus Voss and Herman Ritter Voss, a couple of Dutch theologians. They've done a brilliant job of opening up how the Old Testament points to Jesus Christ. We think about that night of his resurrection when he was on the road to Emmaus with the two disciples. Remember? And he opened up to them, Luke says, he opened up to them the things that were written in the law and the prophets about himself, and their hearts burned within them. Man, that was the best lesson in Old Testament theology that was ever given. When the Lord Jesus walked with those two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and he said, you know what the Old Testament is about? It's about Christ. He didn't say yet, it's about me, because it wasn't until he was with them and broke the bread that suddenly their eyes were opened and they realized it was Jesus. But he says, it's all about me. That's what the Old Testament is about. It's about our Lord Jesus Christ. Now it is rooted in, it's founded in, the covenant of redemption. You heard that language yesterday on the video. The covenant of redemption is a very important doctrine that we don't even have time to consider. Luke 22-29 is a great text that points us to the covenant of redemption. There the Lord Jesus says, The verb that he uses is the verb form of the Greek word for covenant. In the ESV I think it says that the Lord has appointed me and he will appoint you. It really says the Lord covenanted with me and the Lord will covenant with you as well. The Lord Jesus was sent by command of his Father from eternity in an eternal covenant to achieve and to accomplish our redemption. And the covenant of redemption, this theological covenant, serves as the basis for who Christ is and how our salvation is accomplished. He brings into the history of the world that which was planned in eternity by God for the salvation of sinners. Then towards the end of the paragraph, only this grace can bring salvation. so that salvation is all of grace for everyone who has ever lived. From Adam until today, and from today until when Christ returns, the only means of salvation for everyone is through Jesus Christ. Now, in the Old Covenant, they didn't have as much information as we do, but they still looked forward to the coming of Christ. We have much more information today. Peter talks about that in 1 Peter 1.10. But what this denies is any possibility of self-salvation at any time and in any place. Once again, we could talk about missions and the importance of the spread of the gospel. The language here, life and salvation, is very similar to the language in paragraph two, you can just look across, that speaks about life and blessed immortality. Immortality is eternal life, life that doesn't end. And then finally, the paragraph ends with these words, man cannot stand as did Adam in innocency. And here's a clear reference back to Adam's circumstance in the covenant of works. Adam's circumstance was different to ours. He could obey God and he failed. Well, our circumstance is no longer the same. We cannot obey God. We suffer all of the consequences of the fall. We cannot merit the reward of eternal life in the covenant of works. We must be dependent on the covenant of grace. All right? So salvation is all of grace. Now, this deserves a lot more treatment, and the amount of time that we have today, we're really limited. But that's a survey through how the Baptists put together their covenant theology. I have about five minutes left, and I want to talk about these questions that I received. Let me give you some answers. I apologize if I'm being very quick on this, but I'm conscious of the fact that we have a 10-minute break before we begin morning worship. Are the Anabaptist spiritual kinship and the English separatist origin theories mutually exclusive? If so, how? It seems like portions of the first could be combined with the second and be compatible. Well, the answer that I would give is that they are not mutually exclusive. And sometimes they fit together. In fact, you heard me say that I have a certain amount of sympathy with the Anabaptist spiritual kinship view. However, one thing needs to be said. Even in the 17th century, and we spent a lot of time thinking about the 17th century on Friday night, the English Baptists sought to distance themselves from the Anabaptists of the continent. They did not want to be identified with them, and there are several reasons. One is theology. If you get into Anabaptist theology, you'll find that they didn't understand the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and they had a mixed doctrine. It was really a form of Roman Catholicism that they had. failed to distinguish between justification and sanctification, and they believed that our works did play a subordinate role to the imputed righteousness of Christ that is given to us. So they were not Reformed or Lutheran in that sense. In fact, they didn't like Luther. Some of them had said some pretty nasty things about Luther and about his doctrine of justification. So the English Baptists understood that and wanted to keep themselves at a distance. Likewise, the continental Anabaptists, many of them were pacifists. They refused to have any part in the political process around them. And the English Baptists recognized that that was not God's purpose. I know that you have a lot of military folks in your two congregations. If you were an Anabaptist, you could never have served in the military. Ask me afterwards why Mennonites don't wear mustaches. It has to do with the military. And then there was a disaster in the early 1530s in a city in northern Germany called Munster. It came about because of some wild-eyed Anabaptists. Some of them were very sober-minded. Michael Sattler, Balthasar Hubemeyer were very fine men. But in Munster there were some fanatical Anabaptists who took over the city, who introduced polygamy, who ended up being besieged by a Roman Catholic and Lutheran army, and never did the Roman Catholics and the Lutherans get together, except when they had to deal with the Anabaptists in Munster. There was a siege that was held. Some of them actually plunged into, well, there was no food, and they ate whatever they could, and mice and rats and leather, and it was horrible. And they were defeated, but it became, If the enemies of the Baptists could identify them with Munster, they did everything that they could. So the English Baptists wanted to separate themselves from the continental Anabaptists. So that relationship doesn't work. But you do find that some of them did look back to the ancient medieval groups and say, well, we have some sympathies with them. So in a hybrid kind of sense, you could put together the Anabaptist spiritual kingship and the English separatist view. Why is it important for Reformed Baptists today to go back to and understand our historical roots practically and theologically? That's a good question. Here's my short answer. Well, we must beware of chronological snobbery. By that I mean thinking that our day and our generation is the best. And we have the answers and why do we need anyone else? We believe in the communion of the saints. And that doesn't just mean the fellowship that we have with people on earth who are alive today. Isn't it great when you go somewhere and you find that somebody is a Christian believer that you've never met before, they're from the other side of the country or another part of the world, but you have something in common and you share that with them. That's a great thing. Well, not only is the communion of the saints true on that horizontal level, it's true on the vertical level. That we have communion with those who have gone before us. And I think it's important for us to recognize that we live at the end of 2,000 years of Christ's work by the Holy Spirit in his church. We need to be careful not to think that our age is the most important age. It isn't. And we need to study our own history and find out how God's people have wrestled with and resolved problems that are before us. One of the things the Puritans did, When they were faced with a theological problem, some kind of heresy that would crop up in their midst, if someone a thousand years before had written about that, they didn't write a new treatise, they republished what Augustine had written a thousand years before them. Because they said, he did the work. He said it right. Let's show that we have something in common with our brother from 1,000 years ago. Let's reprint his work. And so I think that that is tremendously helpful for us to be able to think through the past. Well, my time is up. I must stop. There was one more question that I was going to answer, but it was asked three times privately yesterday. So at least I've been able to answer it to those who were asking it. And I guess I'll have to stop at that. All right, thank you very much, and I guess we'll prepare for worship now.