All right, while they're setting up the projector, I'm gonna ask you a question. Has anybody ever heard of this thing called New Covenant Theology? Have you heard of New Covenant Theology? Pastor Sarver has. Walt? You know the term? Okay. So if I ask anybody if they could try to explain it, could you try to explain it? Okay. Well, today's main topic is New Covenant Theology, and we'll see there's a cousin to that, a newer cousin called Progressive Covenantalism, that's the name. Hopefully when we get the projector set up, you'll have all the terms there up there that you can look at and help you remember. But you remember we're dealing with covenant theology over the next few weeks, the rest of the month of April, Lord willing. And so last time we talked about dispensationalism. So on the spectrum, we have dispensationalism on the far left, showing how there is discontinuity between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, or the Old Testament and New Testament. And we're going a little bit further to the right. So there's more that we have in common with this thing called New Covenant Theology. And I hope to show you that even if you don't know the word, or you don't know that term, or you don't know what that system of theology is, I'm guessing that you have heard a lot of people who teach this and who talk like this. So when we get into what New Covenant theology actually says, you'll probably recognize that a lot of pastors preach these ideas, and maybe people you've read, well-known people, actually hold to this idea. So, all right, we got it starting up. Here's your... Da-da-da. Good enough. All right, so here's your spectrum of covenant theologies, and we're more obviously on the Baptist covenant theology side. So there are some things that we have in common with New Covenant theology and what we call progressive covenantalism. All right, let me start with the history a little bit. So in the 1960s, 1970s, you may have heard of people like Albert Martin, Pastor Albert Martin, and even Pastor Dean Allen. So there are these men who became Calvinists in the 1960s and 70s. And then another man, Walter Chantry, started a church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. And so all these men are becoming Calvinists, and they're pastors. They're going to the Banner of Truth Conference. They're reading John Owen for the first time, discovering John Owen. And they say, wow, this Reformed theology stuff is great. Except we don't agree with all of this Pato Baptist covenant theology on the issue of baptizing infants. So we love Edwards and Owen, but we don't agree on baptizing infants. So we're Baptists. What does it look like to be a Baptist and to be reformed and have a reformed covenant theology? So that's what's going on. And then there are two brothers who are involved in this story. They are the Reisinger brothers. There's Ernest, or Ernie Reisinger, who is a Calvinistic Baptist, and then there's his brother John, and they have a disagreement on this issue of covenant theology. John goes with New Covenant theology, and then his brother Ernie goes with what is more of a Baptistic, what our confession says about covenant theology. The first group, John's group, starts all these Calvinistic Reformed churches. They like to use the word Reformed Baptist, but I guess the whole point of this series of lessons is to say that there is a particular view of the covenants that is Reformed Baptist. which is what we'll eventually get to. But they decided that they would use the First London Confession from 1644 or 46. And the reason they did that is because there isn't that chapter on the law, which is in the Second London Confession, chapter 19 on the law, which is very specific about what the 1689 believes about the law. So they would say, well, we can have the First London Confession because we disagree on the law. We hold to this New Covenant theology. And so then you basically had this division, this kind of split that was really with these two brothers who disagreed with each other. The split is not necessarily a bad thing. It's just they disagreed on their theology. And so you have Reformed Baptist churches holding to the Second London Confession like ours do. So just to be clear, I think they were wrong to say that we can have the first London confession and not the second. The people who wrote the first confession believe the same thing about the law as the people who wrote the second London confession. But it is true that the first confession doesn't have all that detail about the law. This idea of how we look at the law and how we look at the New Covenant theology is taught by people who would identify as reformed Calvinists. So then we come to this thing called progressive covenantalism, which starts in 2012. They, in some ways, are going to say, we're not quite like New Covenant theology, but at the core, and what I'm trying to get at in these lessons is, what are the foundations of what these theologies teach and how they are different from what we believe? And at the core, it is the same idea. So it's a cousin of New Covenant theology. So I'm kind of lumping them together after this. But progressive covenantalism is this idea that comes out in 2012 with this book, Kingdom Through Covenant, by a man named Stephen Wellam. He's the Grand Poobah of progressive covenantalism. So if you go online, you'll read a lot of what he says. And he teaches at Southern Seminary. And so now at Southern Seminary, by and large, what is taught at that seminary is a Calvinism, but not a 1689 covenant theology, but what is called progressive covenantalism, which is basically new covenant theology. And then from there, the influence goes to places like Bethlehem Seminary in Minneapolis, because a lot of those professors at that seminary came from Southern. And John Piper is one of the main proponents of what we would call New Covenant theology. And there are a lot of these guys, these names on the screen, D.A. Carson, Doug Moo, Thomas Schreiner. Thomas Schreiner also teaches at Southern. So they aren't going to say, yes, I am New Covenant theology. But if you read what they write about the law, if you read Schreiner's commentary on Romans or Doug Mu on Romans or Carson on the law, they are going to basically say these things. So those are good guys who say lots of good things about lots of things in the Bible. But when it comes to the law, we don't agree with how they view the law. But I'm bringing up this term because this is pretty much the cool thing now. This is the fad. This is the popular thing. If you are a Baptist and you're a Calvinist you're more likely to end up in this camp because of all these well-known people who are teaching this, rather than what we would call the 1689 camp. So this is what keeps some people from saying, you know, I can't go with everything that the 1689 says because of this issue of the law. And that includes the Sabbath, which is what we're gonna get to. All right, so here's the foundation of what they have in common. Here's what our main topic for today. The role of the covenant of Moses as Christians. How does the covenant God made at Sinai with Israel relate to us as Christians? What is the role of the law of Moses for the Christian life. So here's New Covenant Theology's idea, is that all of the law of Moses is done away with by Christ. So all of it is done away with. The Christian is no longer under the law, they would say. And so that includes the Ten Commandments. And that's really the main issue, are the Ten Commandments applicable, or I should say, are we bound to the law of God as it's expressed in the Ten Commandments and the moral law of God? Are we or not? So they would say, no, because even the Ten Commandments are all done away with by Christ, the law is all done away with by Christ, and we're going to respond that Christians are still under what we call the moral law. Now, I have this spectrum still up here again because there's a sense in which New Covenant theology is on that side, closer to dispensationalism, because they agree with dispensationalists that the law is given to Israel. The law of Moses is for Israel. Now dispensationalists would say, therefore it's not for Christians, And one day in the future, it's gonna apply to Israel again. But New Covenant theology would say, no, it's done away with forever. Christ has come, and he's done away with all the law. But I hope you see, what they have in common with dispensationalism is this idea that you have to take all of the law as a package as it applies only to Israel. And on the other side of the spectrum, with Paedo-Baptists, The Westminster Confession says there is one covenant of grace, okay? And so they would include the covenant with Moses as part of the covenant of grace. So if you ask them, does the covenant with Moses apply to Christians, they would say, well, yes, in the sense that it is part of the covenant of grace. Now we could even go further to the right. And if you want me to teach a lesson on this, maybe we could. But we could go further to the right and talk about theonomy, which believes that the law of Moses still applies to everybody. And we should apply the law of Moses in our nation. That's theonomy. So that's showing even more continuity with the law of Moses and how we live today. So how are we different? Well, we're gonna say that lots of the law of Moses, the law of Moses itself is done away with in Christ, but Christians are still under the moral law, and that moral law is expressed in the Ten Commandments. All right. There are some differences between New Covenant and progressive covenantalism, but we don't have time to get into that. But I just want you to know that they are there. If you go start reading online and you see that they disagree with each other, I want to be honest about that. All right, so why is this important? Why are we talking about the role of the law? Why does it matter how the covenant of Moses applies to Christians? Well, because we want to not add laws that aren't there for Christians, and we also don't want to take away laws that do apply to Christians. In Luke 11, 46, Jesus says, woe to you, lawyers, for you load people with burdens hard to bear. New Covenant theology would say that we load people down with burdens. We tell Christians that they need to keep laws that Christ has already fulfilled and Christ has done away with. And so the question is, well, are we making up laws or are we actually teaching people there are still laws from the Old Testament, specifically the Ten Commandments, that Christians do need to obey? And so if that is true, 1 John 5 3 would apply to us. If you love God, you keep his commandments and his commandments are not burdensome. Now we're really getting down to the fourth commandment of the 10 and that's the Sabbath command. Is the fourth commandment loading people down with burdens that are hard to bear or Is it a commandment that is not burdensome? Because if God truly does command us to keep the fourth commandment, then that's not a burden to obey that command. But if he's not telling us to do that, then, and we tell people they should keep the fourth commandment, then we are loading them down with burdens that are hard to bear. The reason I say that it's the fourth commandment that's really at the rub of the issue is because everyone agrees that the other nine are taught by Christ. And in the New Testament, the apostles, they tell us, right, not to steal and all those other commandments. The New Covenant theology would say, but the New Testament does not command us to keep that fourth commandment. So, we're arguing that we are under the Ten Commandments, the moral law of God. Okay, so that's why all of this matters, because we want to know how to obey the law of God and what that law is. All right, so here's what New Covenant Theology says. Their first argument is that there's no such thing, what we believe, as the threefold division of the law. Can somebody tell me what that is? What are the three divisions of the law? I'll let somebody else go before pastors. Mike. Ceremonial. The sacrificial, okay. Well, okay, the sacrificial would go under ceremonial. So there's one more, does anybody know? Civil, there you go. So the civil laws that are for Israel about what you do to people who pick up sticks on the Sabbath or what you do for adulterers, what you do when somebody's ox slays a person, those are civil laws. And then you have the ceremonial, which are the system of sacrifices and purity and all those things. And then you have the moral law. So we are arguing, our church believes, I believe that you can take the law of Moses, the law of God, and you can divide it up into these three parts, the law given to Moses. And they would say, that's not true. They would say, where do you see that in the Bible? Show me in the Bible where God says, Moses, speak to them the civil laws. Moses, speak to them the ceremonial laws. Now, Moses, here I'm giving you the moral law, which applies for all time. Now, you don't see that anywhere in the Bible. And so they're saying that that's artificial to make that distinction. And it's true, when you read the Old Testament, the law of Moses, it's all mixed in together. So there'll be one rule that's civil, and then another rule that's ceremonial, and then another that's moral. So in one sense, it's all mixed up together. So that is true. This term, the threefold division, was invented by Thomas Aquinas in the 1000s and then John Calvin made it more well known. But just because the term was used doesn't mean that the concept wasn't already there. It's just Aquinas came up with this way of explaining it. But they would say, you know, we're all just seeing this in the Bible because Calvin said it was in the Bible. It's not actually in the Bible. So again, they take the law as a package. And so if the Bible says you are not under the law, but you're under grace, that means you're not under the civil law, and that's why we don't stone adulterers. We're not under the ceremonial laws, that's why we eat certain seafoods. And they would say, we're also not under this moral law that's expressed in the Ten Commandments. It's all together. Instead, they would say, Christians are under a new law. We're under the law of Christ. So they're not saying, go do whatever you want. There's no sin anymore. You just, you decide what you want to do. They're saying, no, we are under law, but it's the law of Christ. So there's one definition up there. The law of Christ, as they define it, can be defined as those prescriptive principles drawn from the example and teaching of Jesus and his apostles, the central demand being love, which are meant to be worked out in specific situations by the guiding influence and empowerment of the Holy Spirit. So it has to be taught by Jesus, are exemplified by Jesus, are taught by the apostles, and the main thing that they teach is love. And so you work out these instructions and examples in the New Testament as it applies to loving people. So, no using the Old Testament to define what law might apply to a Christian, but use the example in the teaching of Jesus. Now, for that last part about being guided by the power of the Spirit, I mean, I think I can see where they would get that from. Like the Bible says, walk by the Spirit. But I have the same question that they accuse us of doing. My question is, isn't that artificial? Isn't that imposing something on interpreting the Bible? So where does the Bible say, follow the teachings of Jesus, worked out in specific situations by the guiding influence of the Holy Spirit? I mean that sounds good, sounds nice, but where does the Bible say that is the law that you have to obey? They're kind of adding and kind of interpreting a lot with that statement. That's what I would say. They would use Matthew 5, 17, this is an important verse for them, where Jesus says, I have not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. And their idea of fulfilling the law is that Jesus is replacing, Jesus is replacing the law of Moses with his own law. And that's why it's called the law of Christ. So let me give you all of these verses. I'll read them, and if you want, you can be looking them up in your Bible. But this is all under this second point, that we're under the law of Christ. So if Jesus brings his own law, replacing Moses' law, then this is how they would interpret Matthew 7, 12. Whatever you wish for others to do for you, do also to them, for this is the law and the prophets. Okay, this is the law. Just follow the golden rule and you're good. Whatever you wish others to do, do also to them. Jesus is saying that teaching is replacing the law of Moses. When he's asked about the greatest commandment in Matthew 22, Jesus responds that the law is to love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. In John 1, 17, John says, the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. A lot of people, in their interpreting that, they will add in the word but. They think it's a contrast. The law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. As if grace and truth are against the law of Moses. But my response would be that that word but is not in there. It's making two statements. Yes, the law came through Moses, amen. Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Anyway, I don't have time to explain all of that. Then there's Romans 10, 4. Romans 10, 4 says Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. And so their view would say Christ ends the law. He terminates the law. He says the law is done with. Our response, my response at least, would be Christ is the end of the law for righteousness. You cannot use the law to become righteous. So Christ is the termination, the end of the law, for righteousness to everyone who believes. Righteousness is through faith, not through the keeping of the law. But they would say, that verse says, Christ does away with the law. Romans 13, verse eight, the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. Galatians 5.14, the whole law is fulfilled. In one word, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Remember, for them, that word fulfilled means everything else is done, done away with. So love your neighbor as yourself, and you don't have to do the other stuff. Galatians 5.18, but if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Galatians 6-2, bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. Then James 2 verse 8, if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, you are doing well. So there James uses a word, the royal law, and they would say that's the same as this law of Christ or the law of love. Because James says, love your neighbor as yourself, that is the royal law. So it's the law of Christ. James 2.12, so speak and so act as those who are going to be judged under the law of liberty. So, a different word there, law of liberty, but it's the same thing. It's the law of Christ. So, what law is the Christian under? The law of Christ, which is the law of love. Love your neighbor, love God, and we are not obligated to keep this thing called the moral law as it's expressed in the Ten Commandments. But, again, because nine of those are directly commanded by Jesus or the apostles, they would say, we keep nine of those. So do not steal. We keep it, not because it's one of the Ten Commandments, but we keep it because Paul says, do not steal. And because do not steal is how you love your neighbor, okay? So, maybe that sounds like just technicalities and semantics, but it really gets to what law I am under, and it really gets to the Sabbath command. So, let's think about the way that Baptist covenant theology would respond. So we believe that the threefold division of the law is a biblical idea. We're not making it up. We're not doing it because Calvin said that it was there, but it's actually there in the Bible. Chapter 19 of our confession mentions this. So I'm not saying it's true because the confession says it, but I'm saying, We know this is what we have always believed because this is how the confession has said it. And so you can't say that you have this Baptist covenant theology if you don't agree with chapter 19 on the law. So we believe it is a biblical idea to divide the law into three groups. So, What about Matthew 5, 17? Jesus says he doesn't come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. And we want to focus on the first part of that phrase. He does not come to abolish the law. He's not coming to do away with it completely. And I'll get to what that means later. But, so then what do we do if Jesus says he doesn't come to abolish the law, but he does abolish some of the law? Okay, so I have up there Mark 7 verse 9, Jesus talking about what makes you unclean. Mark adds in there, thus he declared all foods clean. Jesus himself, according to Mark, declared all foods clean. So how can he abolish the food laws if he says, I haven't come to abolish the law? So hold that thought in your head. What does it mean then that Jesus doesn't abolish the law? So he abolishes certain laws. the laws of food, food, purity. He abolishes the ceremonial laws. Let's open in our Bibles to Hebrews chapter nine. I'll read while you're looking that up. Hebrews 7 verse 12 says, where there is a change of priesthood, there is necessarily a change of law as well. There's a change between the Aaronic, Aaron and Levi priesthood and the Melchizedek, which is Christ. So when there's a change of priesthood, there's a change of law. So Hebrews says there is a change of some law. Verse 18 of Hebrews 7, a former commandment is set aside because of its weakness and uselessness. But now Hebrews 9 verse 10 says, talking about gifts and sacrifices and these things, these deal only with food and drink and various washings, regulations for the body imposed until the time of reformation. So there is a time of reformation. There were these laws of the ceremonies that were imposed, but not anymore. They were imposed until the time of Reformation. So, there is this distinction of these certain laws that are done away with, and so New Covenant theology so far agrees with that. They would say, yeah, yeah, the ceremonies are done away with. This is the law of Moses. We can also see a distinction in the book of Exodus. Let's turn to, well actually we're in Hebrews 9. First read, let's read Hebrews 9 verses 18 and 19. It says, For when every commandment of the law had been declared by Moses to all the people, he took the blood of calves and goats with water and scarlet wool and hyssop and sprinkled both the book itself and all the people saying, this is the blood of the covenant that God commanded for you. So notice the blood of the covenant is sprinkled on a book at the end of verse 19 it says. So Moses sprinkles a book and this is the covenant, okay? This is the covenant that God makes with the nation of Israel. It's what's in this book. So what's in the book? Well, let's go to Exodus chapter 24. Exodus 24 verse 7. So, He sprinkles blood on the Book of the Covenant, and the Book of the Covenant is the covenant that Israel and God make together. Now, if you go back in Exodus, so go to Exodus chapter 20, you notice verses 1 to 17 are the Ten Commandments. 1 through 17 are set apart as being unique, different. We read later that the Ten Commandments were written by the finger of God. They are placed on two tablets of stone, so they are different. Tablets of stone are not a book, okay? So already we know that the Book of the Covenant is not the same, is not sprinkled, the Book of the Covenant is sprinkled with blood. The tablets of the Ten Commandments were not sprinkled with blood. So they are different. But then, in chapter 20, starting in verse 22, you have laws about the altar. So this is a ceremonial law. And then in chapter 21, you start to have civil laws, laws about slavery. And chapter 21 and 22, 23 are all civil laws. And then chapter 23, verse 10, you have ceremonial laws, laws about the festivals. So you have in Exodus the distinction, the 10 commandments as a separate thing. And then the book of the covenant is the civil and the ceremonial laws. Chapter 20, verse 22, all the way through chapter 23. Okay, so it's the book of the covenant that represents Israel's covenant with God. It is those civil and ceremonial laws. So when we get back to Hebrews and saying that those things are abolished, then we can say yes. That book of the covenant, that's the point Hebrews is making. That book of the covenant was sprinkled with blood, showing that that covenant is done away with by a new and better covenant. But what is it that's done away with? It's the civil and the ceremonial. So then the question is, If the civil and ceremonial laws are abolished, then what is the law that Jesus does not abolish? And we would answer that it is the moral law of God. Paul says the law is good if one uses it lawfully. He's talking there about the law, the moral law of God. One more verse we can look up is Romans chapter two. Romans 2 15. Really, you can read that whole passage that explains what this law is. This is talking about Gentiles who don't have Israel's law. It says they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts. while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them. So there's some law that's written on every person's heart, and it doesn't come with the covenant God makes with Israel. It doesn't come through Moses. It was already there before the days of Moses. And so this moral law is the law that reflects who God is. And what God has already said is right and wrong for Gentiles, for Jews, everywhere at all times. This law then is written on the heart. And God gives the Ten Commandments as a summary, as a way to express and condense what God is like and what his character is and what he wants us to do to live in a way that pleases him. So if you go back and you read Genesis and Exodus, you will see people knowing the law of God written on their hearts before Exodus 20, before the 10 commandments are given. Before God makes a covenant with Israel, people know right and wrong. We even have in Exodus 16, that they keep the Sabbath. Chapter 16 is before chapter 20. So they know that they are to keep the Sabbath, not because God said it in the 10 commandments, or because it's part of the law of Moses, but because it's part of the moral law. And it was built in from creation. Because God rested on the seventh day, we can assume that Adam knew that. Clearly he did, because he was created on the sixth day. Adam knew that. And then Adam knew he had that law written on his heart that he also needed to rest every seven days and to not work. And apparently all of this law of God written on their hearts is perpetuated, it's taught through the years before the Ten Commandments even show up. So when it comes to, I got like one minute left, when it comes to Things like the Sabbath, of course, everybody's gonna, I mean, there are a lot of questions about, you know, what about this passage that says, don't judge anybody about Sabbaths? And, you know, it would take a whole other series. We could have a whole series on the Sabbath. But what I'm trying to show is that there are these underlying things. It's not really about how you interpret Colossians 2 with the word Sabbath. And Paul says, don't judge anyone about the Sabbath. It's not about Colossians 2. It's about whether you think the Ten Commandments apply to the Christian or not. Because if they do, then the Fourth Commandment applies to the Christian. Now, just one quick response to these questions up here. What does it mean that love fulfills the law? Well, we don't disagree with that. Of course, love fulfills the law, but this doesn't mean that we do away with the moral law of God. We follow the moral law of God because that is the loving thing to do. It's the loving thing for people to rest every seven days. It's loving to not steal from other people. So we agree completely with all of these things. What about the passage in the New Testament that talk about the law as being bad? Well, there are lots of them, so you have to go through each one, but the basic answer is that when Paul especially talks about the law as bad, he's always talking about it as a savior. as a covenant that you try to obey to be righteous before God. It's bad if you're trying to use it to save yourself. And so New Covenant Theology, their problem is that they take all of those passages where Paul says the law is bad, and they apply it to all of the law of God, except the law of Christ. And we wanna say, yes, the law is bad if you're trying to earn righteousness, but it's not bad It's not done away with as a requirement for our obedience to please God. Okay, well, that's all we have time for today, so let's pray. Let's ask God for his help. Our God, we thank you for this opportunity to study your word, to think about things that maybe are difficult and hard to understand. We pray that you would give us clarity and insight and give us wisdom and we pray that we would seek your word and seek to be guided by your word. We pray again that you would lead us into your truth and that we would desire to obey you, desire to follow you and whatever it is that you call us to do. We pray, Lord, that you would continue to bless us through this day as we continue to worship you. We ask, Lord, for more and more of your glory to be revealed to us and that we would see you in Jesus Christ. May we have hearts that are eager to continue to learn and grow. We pray these things through Christ. Amen.