All right, we're moving on to chapter eight. Christ, no. Seven. Like, no we're not. You know, it's funny because a while ago I scrolled up and I was looking at these Bible verses and I was like, how did I miss all those Bible verses? That's because I'm in the wrong chapter. Okay, let me get backwards. Chapter seven, this is the chapter I'm coming on. Sorry about that. All right. Covenants. God's covenant, specifically. Though rational creatures are responsible to obey God as their creator, the distance between God and these creatures is so great that they can never have attained the reward of life except by God's voluntary condescension. He has been pleased to express this through a covenant framework. Now, is everybody counting that? I think we discussed before the word covenant. I mean the most simple, I think there's a, I think one of our catechism questions deals with it on Sunday mornings whenever we get to it. What is a covenant? It's an agreement between two or more people, right? It's a really simple way to remember it and of course The thing about the covenants of God is that God has to initiate them all. It's not like man can decide, hey God, come down here and we're going to talk about something. I'm ready to make a covenant. So God is the one making the covenant, but it is an agreement. And of course, that's what makes the covenant of grace so wonderful is that we can't mess it up. We can't undo it. If we can keep going here, let's talk about this first section. I'm gonna try to spend a lot of time on Covenant and really go through the Baptist distinctives of Covenant and what Baptists have historically believed about Covenant. And know this, when we're talking about God's Covenant, It's different than talking about the covenants in the Bible, right? Because you start talking about the covenant of Abraham, the covenant of Noah with Noah, the Davidic covenant. Those fit into this, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about covenant theology, which y'all are familiar with because we've talked about a lot before, but it's really a way of reading the Bible. You read the Bible with this understanding in mind that God has dealt with man through covenant. And specifically, three covenants that we talk about. The covenant of works, which he made with Adam. Right? And the covenant of grace, which he also promised in the garden right after the fall. And the covenant of grace is based on what we call the covenant of redemption, right? Which is eternal. In which God, the covenant of redemption is within the Godhead, right? We talked about the sun when we talked about the crease. God has made a covenant of redemption which was made before creation as we know it, right? And because he had a covenant of redemption that he was going to save his people, Then he created, made a covenant of works, and then of course Adam failed the covenant of works, and then he made the covenant of grace, which the second Adam fulfilled perfectly, and I left out earlier the new covenant, which I should have said. So that's, when we talk about covenant theology, and in this chapter we're talking about God's covenant, That's what we're talking about, really. Seeing the Bible through the covenant of redemption, which we see God made in Christ before the world began, and then the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. Now, it's interesting that in this first section, it tells us that even though specifically Adam and Eve were rational creatures and responsible to obey God, There's a distance between God and these creatures so great that they never would have attained the reward of life except by God's voluntary condescension, excuse me, which is, of course, God just coming down, right? Coming down to man, making a covenant. This is one of the reasons we believe there was a covenant of works. There's other reasons because you can't open the Bible and say, okay, then where does it say and you know, God made a covenant of works with Adam, except for, of course, in Hosea chapter six, verse seven, where we're told that just like Adam, Israel broke the covenant that God had made with him. So, but we do believe that God made a covenant because he told them, you can do this, you can have, we just, we just talked about this, right? Everything in the garden is yours. There's just one tree you can't eat from. And so if Adam would have obeyed God continually, because he had always obeyed Him, then God would have made it possible for him to achieve eternal life, not only for himself and Eve, but for all of humanity, right? But it's important to see that the necessity of covenant is rooted in human creatureliness and not the fall. Because I've even made this mistake that, well, because of the fall, God had to make covenant. No, God had to make, God deals with humans through covenant because of the distance between God and humanness, creatureliness. So some way, an avenue had to be created for Almighty God to be able to commune with man, and the way he did that is through covenant, right? Through these agreements. So even Adam needed God to condescend in order for any type of relationship to be possible. So again, that's why we believe there was a covenant with Adam. Because Adam's relationship with God was through covenant. Because the assertion that's made here, let's keep reading, let's see where this is. Let's just read section two. Since humanity brought itself under the curse of the law by its fall, it pleased the Lord to make a covenant of grace. In this covenant, he freely offers to sinners life and salvation through Jesus Christ. On their part, he requires faith in Christ that they may be saved and promises to give his Holy Spirit to all who are ordained to eternal life to make them willing and able to believe. This covenant is revealed in the gospel It was revealed first of all to adam and the promise of salvation through the seed of a woman That is the covenant of grace after that. It was revealed step by step until the full revelation of it was completed in the new testament So that's why I was saying Depending on how you view this But for baptists for the most part, this is the way baptists saw the covenants in the bible fitting into the covenant of grace Was that we have the covenant of grace revealed in the garden? foreshadowed, prophesied if you want to, and then step-by-step through Abraham, through Noah, through Moses, I forgot that covenant earlier too, through King David, all the way to the covenant of grace, step-by-step, till it's fully, completely revealed to us in the new covenant, through the gospel, right? That's what it's saying. In here, this covenant is based on the eternal covenant transaction between the father and son concerning the redemption of the elect. That's the covenant of redemption, right? Only through the grace of his covenant have those saved from among the descendants of fallen Adam obtained life and blessed immortality. Humanity is now utterly incapable of being accepted by God on the same terms in which Adam was accepted in his state of innocence, which is something else we can talk about. But in that second section, since humanity brought itself under the curse of the law, that assertion, you have to ask your question, what law, right? It wasn't the law of Moses. So it had to be a law of nature. And again, this is why we believe there was a covenant of works and there was a law written on Adam's heart. In fact, chapter four of our confession, you might not remember back then when we went through it, but it says that mankind, that creation, in other words, Adam and Eve, they had the law of God written in their hearts and the power to fulfill it, right? So there was law, and it was a covenant that they were to keep. That's why Paul in Romans 2 said the Gentiles, when they do what the law requires, they are a law unto themselves, even when they didn't have the written law, right? they still had it written in their hearts. And also, it's why men who don't have Bibles anywhere in the world are without excuse, right? We can't say, well, you know, they haven't heard the gospel, so I'm sure that God will be gracious and grant them another chance or a different way, or he'll just give them eternal life out of fairness. No, because They're without excuse. Romans 1 is very clear that nature is such that men ought to know there's a God and the law of nature has been revealed to them that they should obey it, just like with Adam and Eve. Right? So, we're going to try to go through all this. and see how it works itself out through the whole Bible in these covenants and how those fit into the covenant and covenant theology. Is that clear as mud? Does that make sense? It's not the first time we've talked about it. But sometimes when you hear, oh, you believe in the covenants? Well, I do too. I believe in the Davidic covenant and the Noach covenant and the covenant of Moses and the covenant of Abraham. But covenant theology and God's covenant has to do with Covenant of Redemption, Covenant of Works, and the Covenant of Grace. And of course, the Covenant of Grace carries us all the way to eternity, future, and will keep us forever saved because of the Covenant of Redemption. Theocast has a really good series on the covenant theology, I think. They do a good job of bringing it down to the non-academic level. Right. And that's where that was first explained to me was three down. Yeah. They do good. And oh, my goodness. My brain is shutting down early. If it was ever even up and running, why can I not think of What's the word for covenant of redemption? Eternal covenant? No, there's a fancy... Pactum. Pactum Salutes. The Pactum is another podcast that that guy, in fact the book I'm looking for it I can't find, he wrote the book that I was looking for called Covenant Theology and they do as well. He does a great job of just explaining what I just said. Covenant works. Covenant grace. P-A-C-T-U-M. That's a good, that's a great podcast just for everything they do. They do a question and answer. I mean, he's a little goofy, but he does a great job. And Theocast too. Sometimes this guy, his name is Pat Avendroth. He's on with the, he comes on Theocast. They do interchanges a lot, especially about this, about law and grace, law and gospel kind of stuff. I was, yeah. Is he the one, the Pantone guy that has the word golossal? You know what he's saying? When we combine law and gospel, you have a golossal and it's kind of messed up. But I don't want to keep going because I don't have something else I can talk about real fast. But y'all have any questions about that or want to discuss it at all? I mean, you can see how, when I say it's a, it does kind of create a hermeneutic, which is the way to read the Bible and study it, because if you see and understand, just like the Trinity, you can't open the Bible and find covenant of redemption, covenant of works, you can't find new covenant. I'm not sure if the phrase covenant of grace is in the Bible either, but you see that God dealt with people through covenant, by these means. And when you can see that happening, then you start reading the Bible and you start seeing, well, does this fit in the covenant of redemption, the covenant of works, covenant of grace, right? And it kind of gives you categories. And I know we talked about this before, especially when we were talking about the attributes of God a lot. Categories are very helpful in everything and especially theology. I mean, it's silly for us not This is why he can't be just a straight biblicist and say okay I'm only gonna I'm gonna read the Bible and if it's right there in the Bible I can't find this I can't find Covenant Redemption words in the Bible ain't there? Well, you can't find Trinity in there. So it must not be a Trinity, you know There's all kind of stuff you could say come up with but church history has come up with these categories for a reason because they're important right just like we have a confession because it delineates and gives us categories so we can study these things and it creates a way for us i just think the more you grow the more you learn to read the bible and you start seeing these things right and it starts making sense you're like okay i see what god's calling me to do so that must be that must be uh law and part of like the covenant of works things that I'd have to do if I and we know that the bible says if you're gonna if you're gonna live by the law you have to be perfect and I can't be perfect But if it speaks of something being done, this is what God has done in Christ, then that's covenant of grace because it's finished, right? You start seeing those things, it starts making more sense to you. And you're not so busy saying, well, Jesus said, you know sell everything I got and follow him because that's what he told Rich Young Ruler and it you have these categories okay well I can't do I mean really that's not reality is that what Jesus is saying and of course you you study and start looking into it and say okay that's not what he's saying he's trying to point out the fact that you know yeah if you want to become a follower of Christ through human abilities, then these are the things you have to do. You've got to keep the whole law. So you might as well sell everything you own." And even then, he proved that He didn't really love the Lord as God with all his heart, soul, and mind, which we also can't do, right? So there again is law. I can't do that, no, but Jesus loved the Father perfectly because He kept the law and never broke it, so we follow Jesus and trust Him because of grace. And so it just creates categories, and I think they're very helpful, and so that's why we're gonna look at it. And there's a lot of reasons that Baptists believe. It's important that we understand why Baptists believe in the covenant. Because this is where we're going to get to. When we say that us and Presbyterians, for example, and other Reformed churches have a lot in common, we do, except it's the covenant that gets us to infant baptism or believer baptism. And I think it's important for us to see why we believe in believer's baptism and not infant baptism. And I know we talked about it a little bit. Several years back when we were in the old building, when Jonathan was teaching, we talked about that a lot. I just think it's important for us to look at these things, talk about it. Because it's important for us to know these things. Why are we this? You know? So, anyways. Anything else?