Well, this is our last week on this few weeks talking about the covenants and the different views of the covenant and how we put the Old and New Testament together. Today we're gonna talk about finally what Baptists, or at least we could say many Baptists have believed, and I should have put the word Reformed up there, because we're really talking about Reformed Baptist covenant theology. We spent a lot of time talking about the things that it's not. Remember how on the first lesson I said, teaching my son shapes, I say, you know, put the circle in the hole there on the puzzle and he grabs the square and he said, no, that's not a circle. And then the triangle and you say, no, that's not a circle. And so that's what we've been doing for the last few weeks is telling you everything that the covenants are not, and hopefully today we're trying to get more at what is the circle? How do you define the circle? How do you define the biblical covenant theology from a Baptist view? We're gonna think today about especially the relationship of the covenant with Abraham with the new covenant. So remember that this is the main difference that we have with those who baptize infants and that covenantal baptism. We are very close to them on our view of the covenants, but the main difference that we have is a different view of the covenant with Abraham. And so that's what we're gonna focus on. The Westminster Confession, the covenant view, says that there is one substance in the covenant of grace with two administrations. There's the old and the new, and so they would include that covenant with Abraham, Moses, and David as part of the covenant of grace. One substance, two administrations. What we're gonna talk about today has a label, and you might not have heard this label, but it's called 1689 Federalism. Now, this is not the only way that Reformed Baptists have explained the covenants, but it is one way that has been around for the 1600s, I guess, at least starting there. I am not a huge fan of the label because it does make it sound like If you believe in the 1689, you have to follow every jot and tittle of what this view is saying. So I don't want to make that point, but. I think it is true that most of the people who wrote that confession that came out in 1677 seemed to have held this view of the covenants. And so they were trying, remember, to show that they are reformed, but also how that they are different as Baptists. But it's a new understanding to a lot of us, and it's a new label because For about 350-ish years, we didn't really have access to the writings of the guys, all those, some of those faces. So there are men like Nehemiah Cox, and you probably never have heard of him. And he was a prominent Baptist in the 1600s, but we don't have access to them. And so Sam Renahan did his dissertation at Oxford, and when he went to Oxford, he uncovered, he basically went to all the primary sources of what these churches were doing in the 1600s, reading all their minutes and all these things, and he has the whole history. And so he and some others are coming out with all this history, and now we can read what these Baptists were arguing for in the 1600s. So if you want to learn more, there's a website. 1689federalism.com. It'll take you deep down a rabbit hole that will take you a long time to come out of. There's a lot of stuff on there. This book came out in 2013, The Distinctiveness of Baptist Covenant Theology. Another group of people came out with another book, and then Sam Renahan wrote The Mystery of Christ, which is about the covenant, so you can read all about that if you want. So even though this label is about 10 years old, the theology is over 300 years old. So this is what we're gonna talk about today. I'll just try to explain what their view is. So if we contrast with the Pato Baptist view, one covenant of grace and two administrations, old and new, we would agree, the Federalist view would agree, there is one covenant of grace, but it's the new covenant. The one covenant of grace is the new covenant. And so we have the old covenant and Abraham and Moses and David would all fall under the old covenant. And you can just think of like the sacrificial system, even though God's promise to David was a promise of grace, David still lived under the sacrifices and the temple. So he lived under the old covenant. And what we're really gonna get at is whether Abraham is part of that old covenant. That's what we're gonna try to look in the Bible to see. But if there's one covenant of grace and that covenant is the new covenant, then everything before that is a promise of the covenant of grace. It's not the covenant itself. So we wouldn't say the covenant of grace comes with Abraham, but it comes with Christ. But through Abraham, it's promised. The promise starts in Genesis 3.15, and then it gets worked out in very specific ways through the covenants of the Old Testament. In one sense, this is kind of easy to understand, although it gets complicated, but it's easy to understand because you look in your Bible and you see the table of contents. Now, obviously that's something we've added, but it says Old Testament, and the word testament is the word for covenant. And then it says New Testament. And so on a very simple level, you could just say, well, everything that I'm reading about. in the Old Testament is under the Old Covenant. It's not the covenant of grace. The covenant of grace comes with the New Testament, with the new covenant. Well, that's a very simple way to look at it, but let's see if there's anything about this in the Bible. Now, before we move on, I do have a few disclaimers that we're not saying there's no grace in the Old Testament. There is a lot of grace in the promise to Abraham, the covenant at Mount Sinai, there are aspects of grace to the covenant there. There's aspects of grace obviously with David. And so we're not saying everything that happens in the Old Testament is just law, it's old covenant so it's bad. There are promises of grace, there are aspects of grace to all of these covenants. Second, Everybody agrees that believers in the Old Testament are saved by faith in the promise of the Savior Jesus Christ who is coming. So even some many dispensationalists on the far side of the spectrum believe that believers in the Old Testament are saved by faith in the Jesus who is coming. So when we say the covenant of grace doesn't come until Christ in the new covenant, we're not saying all of those people aren't saved. No, they are saved by faith in the promise of what's coming. So don't confuse those two ideas. All right, let's look in the Bible. First of all, we wanna make the point, we wanna see if there's biblical basis that the covenant of grace is the new covenant. So let's go to Hebrews chapter eight. Let's read Hebrews 8, beginning in verse 6, and then you'll notice he quotes Jeremiah 31 in verse 8, so we'll read verses 6 to 13. But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old, as the covenant he mediates is better. since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. For he finds fault with them when he says, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, for they did not continue in my covenant. And so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my laws into their minds and write them on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people. And they shall not teach each one his neighbor and each one his brother saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least of them to the greatest. for I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more. In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete, and what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. All right, so let's look at this passage. There are a few things we can notice that would lead us to think that the covenant of grace comes with the new covenant. Notice first in verse six, it says, the covenant he mediates is better. The covenant Christ mediates is better. So what covenant does Christ mediate? The new covenant. So when God was making that covenant with Abraham, This verse would imply Christ was not the mediator of that covenant. Christ mediates the new covenant, and that's why this covenant is better. That's why this is the covenant of grace, because it's the one that he mediates. So how can we say that the covenant with Abraham is of the same substance as the new covenant, the same thing? if Christ was not the mediator of that covenant. Another thing we can notice is the word enacted, also in verse six. It, the new covenant, is enacted on better promises. Now that word enacted is a legal word. It's referring to a a law that comes into effect. So, we could say something like it was lawified, it was put into law on better promises. So, it's enacted, the new covenant is enacted when Christ comes and dies. So, we don't enact laws, and then apply them retrospectively, right? So, painters go and paint houses with lead paint, and then 50 years later, a law gets passed that says you can't paint with lead paint. I don't think that people then go back and punish those people 50 years ago who painted with lead paint because at that time they were not breaking the law of that time. And so this is the same idea that's being communicated here. The covenant of grace was not enacted in the days of Abraham or the days of Moses. And it's enacted through Jesus Christ. He also says it is enacted on better promises. And so there are different substances, there are different things of these covenants. One covenant has different promises than the new covenant. This promise that we read about in verses eight to 12, Jeremiah 31, those promises are only enacted when Jesus dies. So it doesn't make sense to call the covenant with Abraham a covenant of grace. Another one, another point to look at is you notice that he calls them two different covenants. Now these last two, maybe it's just the wording, but it does, I think, help us in our thinking. Notice that the writer of Hebrews doesn't call these two administrations. He doesn't say, there's one covenant of grace, but it was just administered differently in the old covenant. No, he says, it's a new covenant. It's a different covenant. Here's another one, this was pointed out by John Owen. John Owen wrote his commentary on Hebrews, it's the only book he wrote commentaries on. And he points out, notice in verse seven, it's called the first covenant and the second covenant. Now again, this is not like some slam dunk argument here, but there's the first and the second. The second comes with Christ. So everything before Christ was the first. So Moses, David, Abraham, even though there are aspects of grace to those covenants, they all go under this one label, the first covenant, which is the old covenant. So this is, I mean, not this particular point, but this idea is what has really helped me think about these, the differences between the covenants. Because when you look at Hebrews 8, the contrast is the new covenant, on the surface, I should say, the contrast is the new covenant with the covenant of Moses at Mount Sinai. And so I always thought, okay, well, Moses' law Gospel is grace. And so, yeah, it makes sense that Abraham could also be grace. But if you understand, when you see the words Moses, or the old covenant, the old covenant is more than just Moses. It's all of the Old Testament, including the covenant with Abraham. which is what we'll get to in a minute. But then one more verse, Hebrews 9, turn over maybe a page to Hebrews 9 verse 15. It says, Therefore he is the mediator of a new covenant so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant. For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive. There are many issues we could discuss in those few verses, but my translation uses the word will. And when you think of a will, you think of someone who's died and they leave a will to, you know, pass on their inheritance to whoever. The word will here is the word for covenant. And so you could just insert that word there in verse 16, where a covenant is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established. I think basically what it's saying, and he explains it in verse 17, is that the covenant is established upon the death of the one who made it. the death of whoever, not the person making the covenant, but the covenant is established upon death. That's the point that he's trying to make. So that's what he says in verse 17. A will, or use the word covenant, a covenant takes effect only at death. And so he's referring to those ceremonies with Abraham cutting the animals in half, with Moses sprinkling the blood of the covenant on the people, there has to be death for the covenant to be enacted. So again, we have this question, so then how could we have the covenant of grace enacted until the death of Jesus Christ? It's only established upon the death of Christ. So, to repeat again. So we have the covenant of grace promised. The seed of the woman will bring this new covenant of grace. Ephesians 2 verse 12 calls them the covenants of promise or the promise. We have that promise again through Abraham. The seed of the woman is now gonna be the seed of Abraham. The seed of Abraham will be in the land of Canaan. there will be a great nation. So we have this development, more of the promise of who's coming. Then we find out that God's gonna make a nation at Mount Sinai and that the seed of the woman is the seed of Abraham. He's gonna obey God's law perfectly. And he's gonna come from the nation of Israel. And then we find out in a covenant with David, more of the promise, he's gonna come through the line of David and he's gonna be a king. So all these covenants are the covenant promised, revealed, and then finally enacted upon the death of Jesus. All right, let's move to the second topic. So number one, covenant of grace equals new covenant. The second question is, is the covenant with Abraham the old covenant, which would be done away with, or is it part of the covenant of grace? So 1689 federalism says it is part of the old covenant. So here's how we think about it. In the Bible, we're gonna look at some verses in the Bible, the covenant with Abraham is called the covenant of circumcision. And the Bible links that with the covenant of Moses, or Sinai. And so it links the two, a circumcision, the covenant with Abraham as part of the old covenant. Let's go back to Genesis again, Genesis 15. in verse 4. We remember the promise, the Word of the Lord came to him This man shall not be your heir, your very own son shall be your heir. And he brought him, Abraham, outside and said, look toward heaven and number the stars if you are able to number them. Then he said to him, so shall your offspring be. Abraham believed the Lord. Then in verse seven, he says, I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess. Now in Genesis 15, we have unconditional promises. So these are not dependent on the conditions of Abraham obeying. God says to Abraham, I will give you your descendants, your offspring, as numerous as the stars. And he says, I will give you this land to possess, the land of Canaan. So there are unconditional aspects to the covenant with Abraham. There are grace aspects to that. Now did God fulfill those promises? We would say yes. God gave Abraham his offspring. He gave him many descendants and Paul tells us that this offspring ultimately is Christ. He is the one offspring. So God fulfilled that promise of offspring. I would also say God fulfilled the promise of land. So remember dispensationalists, they would say, everlasting promise of land, they're gonna move back, it's gotta happen eventually. I would say God fulfilled it, it's done. They went into the land of Canaan, Joshua led them in, they entered into that land. but look at also at Genesis 17. Genesis 17, we have a lot of the repetition. Verse six, I'll make you exceedingly fruitful, I will make you into nations, kings shall come from you. So that's the offspring. And then verse seven, and I will establish my covenant between you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and to your offspring after you, and I will give to you and your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God. Here, It's called an everlasting possession, the land of Canaan. Some people say, well, everlasting doesn't really mean everlasting. It means until it expires. So like you buy an appliance, and your appliance is guaranteed until the warranty expires, and then it's going to stop working. And so there are some people who say, well, the word everlasting here just means as long as it's in force, and then when it expires, the promise is no longer, the promise is void. That's not the way that I would interpret it. Again, I would say that God is faithful to those everlasting promises. The offspring that comes through Christ and ethnic Jews who come to faith in Christ. But then also, there's the land. In Romans 4, 13, Paul says this. Looks like it's not verse 13. Oh yeah, it is. Verse 13, Romans 4, 13. For the promise to Abraham and his offspring that he would be heir of the world did not come through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. So there's a promise that Paul says that he would be heir of the world. he would inherit the world. So the way that I interpret the promises of the land of Canaan is that Canaan is part of the world. So yes, God will allow, or he will keep his promise that Christ and Christ's people, which will include Jews who believe in Christ and Gentiles, they will inherit the land. They'll inherit the whole world. the new heavens and new earth. And then you can also look at Hebrews and it says in Hebrews 11 that Abraham is looking forward to the new heavens and new earth, the city of God. Hebrews 4 talks about the rest and Joshua entering the rest and the rest is the land of Canaan that is pointing forward to the eternal rest of the new heavens and new earth. So there's gonna be a new earth. And so this is how God is gonna fulfill his promise to the everlasting possession of the land that he promised Abraham. So, there's the unconditional, but in chapter 17, we also have conditional. Look at verse nine, Genesis 17. As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you, throughout their generations. This is my covenant which you shall keep between me and you and your offspring after you. Every male among you shall be circumcised. And then in verse 14, any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people. He has broken my covenant. So you have promises. But here in chapter 17, he says, you have to individually, personally, you have to keep my covenant. You have to do something. And in particular, it's that the male needs to be circumcised. And again, verse 14, if you do not do this, you have broken my covenant. So this is a breakable covenant. So here's how I think about it. Here's how I think it makes sense. The overarching promise of God to Abraham is unconditional. He will have an offspring and he will have land. But you as a Jew, as an Israelite, as a child of Abraham, if you want to inherit that promise as an individual, you have to obey. You have to circumcise the male children. So there's something that you have to do in this covenant to be part of the covenant, to keep His covenant. So it's a breakable covenant. Now, let's go to Acts chapter seven, verse eight. This is Stephen preaching. Acts 7, verse 8, Stephen is telling the history of Israel, and here's what he says. Speaking of Abraham, God called Abraham out, and he says, and he gave him the covenant of circumcision. And so Abraham became the father of Isaac. So really the point to bring out is he calls it the covenant of circumcision. The covenant is defined here as a covenant based on a work, literally based on flesh, based on something you have to do by the flesh to be part of this covenant. So that's just one verse. He's defining the covenant with Abraham as one of circumcision, which is a work. Now, John, let's go to John chapter seven. Verse 22. Jesus is speaking, John 7, 22. He says, Moses gave you circumcision, not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers. And you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the Sabbath I made a man's whole body well? So obviously the context here is the Sabbath, right? And they're mad at Jesus for what he's doing. But Jesus says, Pharisees, why do you circumcise a man even when it's the Sabbath? Because, he says, Moses gave you circumcision. Then he's got these parentheses. But I know it's not from Moses. I know it's from the fathers. I know it's from Abraham. See, it is from Abraham. He knows that. But he calls it part of the law of Moses. Moses gave you circumcision. And then in verse 23, why do you do this? It's so that the law of Moses may not be broken. He doesn't say, well, it's so that you can become part of the inheritance of the promises to Abraham. He says, no, it's because this covenant is something you have to do, and it gets linked by Jesus with the law of Moses. One more passage that links these is Galatians 5. Galatians 5 verses 2 and 3. Paul says, Galatians 5, look, I, Paul, say to you, that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law, you have fallen away from grace. So there again, especially in verse three, Paul is linking the covenant with Abraham, something that you do, that then obligates you to keep the whole law. And so again, linking Abraham and Sinai, linking Abraham, not with the covenant of grace, but with a covenant, which is a law covenant. All right, so maybe Maybe I'm just repeating myself here, or maybe the summary will be helpful, but here's basically the point. The covenant with Abraham is the covenant of circumcision. An individual can break the covenant. You can break it, right? Or make your children break it. The covenant that God made with Israel at Mount Sinai is also breakable. Basically, both of them have the same substance, do this and live. Now, again, there's lots of aspects of grace to both of them, but at the core of it, they are both covenants that say, do this and live. If you wanna inherit the land of Canaan, if you wanna individually not get kicked out of Canaan, you have to do this, obey my law, so that you might live. Now, the Paedo-Baptists, in some senses, would say, exactly right. We would agree. The covenant is breakable. The covenant of grace is breakable. That's why we just let the children in, and we pray that they won't break it, but we understand that there will be children that will break the covenant. So that's how they would respond. So there's a lot of similarities here to this way of thinking. We give children the sign and we understand they can break the covenant. So here's our response then. If you're following all of this so far and you agree, you agree with point number two, if the covenant with Abraham is the old covenant, then that's why it's so different from the new covenant. In Jeremiah 31, 31, the new covenant is not like the covenant that they broke. It is an unbreakable covenant. It is impossible to break. God will keep his promise to save every person that is part of that covenant. So I hope you see the difference. So if we're saying the covenant with Abraham is not a covenant of grace, but it's a breakable covenant because it's in the old covenant, then everything in Hebrews kind of clicks into place. The old covenant is all obsolete. And this one is radically different. This one is unbreakable. Everyone in this covenant will be unable to break it, because you don't get in by the flesh. You don't get in by works. You get in by the work of the mediator, Jesus Christ. So the substance of the new covenant is grace. the substance of the old covenant is works or law. It's a law covenant. So we get to the new covenant and we look at this covenant and we say, who is part of it? Well, the Bible tells us it is those who know the Lord, who personally have the law written on their hearts. And that's why the new covenant is so radically different. Let's pray. Our God, we seek your help in understanding your word and in very practical ways seeking to obey you and do what your word says that we might be your new covenant people, your new covenant church. We pray Lord that you would continue to guide us into your truth. Help us to understand more and more of what Your Word says. We thank You for the Lord Jesus Christ and His mediation and His death, which brings about this new covenant. We pray that each one of us can truly know the Lord, have Your law written on our hearts. We thank You for the joy of the knowledge of an unbreakable promise, because it depends upon you. And so we pray that each one of us would truly know this promise is for us, that we would not be deceived, but that we would think soberly about ourselves. We pray that you would help us as we come to worship you. Your people gather again. We want to hear your word and we want to see Christ. We pray that Christ would be magnified among us throughout this day. In Jesus' name, amen.