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CPC Sunday School | Covenant Theology (1-7-2024: Dan Wann)
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The speaker is excited to study covenant theology and considers it the final piece in becoming Presbyterian. They recommend a lecture series by Ligon Duncan as a resource for diving deeper into the subject. The speaker discusses the similarities between Old and New Testament teachings and how covenant theology helped them understand these connections. They mention that infant baptism was a sticking point for them as a Baptist, but studying covenant theology provided clarity. The speaker also briefly touches on different types of theology, such as systematic and biblical theology, and the importance of understanding the Bible's teachings on various subjects. They explain how biblical theology reveals the progression of God's plan for salvation throughout the Bible. The speaker concludes by stating that the current lecture is an introduction to the series and that they will cover different covenants in future sessions. So we are starting off this winter term taking a look at covenant theology and I'm really excited about this just anecdotally for me. This is the last pebble that I had to clear for me to be decidedly Presbyterian. If I had I had the opportunity to get on RTS's website and there's a whole series of legacy lectures Ligon Duncan does a fantastic 24 to 27 part series on the topic that we're going to talk about today. And if you want I can show you where you can find that if you really want to dive deeper into the subject. But if I had a whole bunch of theological positions that I would have held in the past you know it's like there's a lot of similarities between this Passover meal and in the New Testament we find say the Lord's Supper. It just feels like those things seem very related or circumcision and baptism. There were so many things that really kind of I don't know bothered me that like I just feel like the Old and New Testament agree a whole lot more than they're given credit for. I've even talked about it with some pastor friends like oh yeah yeah there's parallels but once I listen to that series with Dr. Ligon Duncan and they put together in a long chain for me to appreciate oh yeah these things are related. These things do have concordance and they do align with one another. Like a snap I guess now I'm definitely Presbyterian because Presbyterian leaning at that point I would say well yeah I like everything that they're doing. I like all the stuff but there's a few things that hung up for example infant baptism didn't quite make sense to me when I was a Baptist but having this it was like all of a sudden I had vocabulary. There was already somebody who had done the work and thought about all of these things. It's like it just clicked. It's jelled in that moment. I finished that course and finally my wife no longer had to be leading on me to be Presbyterian. I accepted it. And so there's another thing to keep in mind when the coffee is ready to listen to your wife. So loosely we're going to cover all four of these things. They just the course overview. Today is an introduction lecture to the entire series. We're going to look at all of these various covenants and for terms of vocabulary we're going to define what do we mean when we say covenant having a little bit of a historical perspective. Is this a new thing. Is this something that the church has always taught that we've always appreciated and we're gonna make a little bit of a comparison to the water that we all swim in in broader evangelicalism. So this week we're merely making an introduction. So if you're thinking all right we're going to dig into all of the meat of the covenants this week you'll be less disappointed if you get a cup of coffee. Again but we're only going to get kind of a context of what we're doing. I want to have an appreciation for why we make such a big emphasis on this. Next week we'll look at the covenant with Adam and then they're on down the list. I don't want to give away too much and I'm trying my very best not to jump ahead and steal anybody else's slides that they're going to be no doubt making. And so I'm excited to be teaching along with several of these other brothers and the covenant with David. You know who you are here. We'll see if you're going to go for that but we've got to make sure that people's time commitments work so so types of theology in general. We keep saying this word covenant theology wasn't all theology just theology. What in the first place would we say is theology. This is the audience participation point. So jump in. What do we mean what do we mean what do we mean when we say theology Brian study of God. Yeah great answer. It's absolutely the study of the nature of God and a little bit more broadly around that religious beliefs but we're deriving this from biblical principles. We as Christians are at least. And so we want to understand what we mean when we're reading the Bible so that we can understand who God is how he's revealed himself. Now we made a particular distinction that this series we're going to be talking about covenant theology. So is that a subset. Is it only looking at God's covenant. Is it only looking at or maybe that's all of theology. There's at least four broad categories that are often spoken of when we're talking about theology systematic biblical historical and practical theology. So shouldn't all theology be biblical. What do I mean by that. Well practical is practical just mean the theology that you like to practice. Let's address some of those things. First of all systematic theology or systematics. This is generally thought of as this is the discipline of Christian theology that formulates an orderly rational and coherent account of the doctrines of the Christian faith. There's a whole division that we're in seminary of systematics and there's many classes within that but we get a little bit more particular. So for example you may have a whole series in systematics on Christology purely looking at what the Bible specifically says about the person nature and work of Christ or ecclesiology the work of the church. Eschatology. What does the Bible have to say about the subject of the end times pneumatology. What does scriptures tell us about the Holy Spirit presence of the Holy Spirit. Do we only see the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament or only in the New Testament. Is he present throughout all of it. What is the work of the spirit. We get a series on the Holy Spirit so that would be a subset on our last Sunday school series when we did the work of the spirit we're using a systematic approach to reading the Bible. So an example of that if we really say looking at Christology we might look at the Christ him in Philippians 2 or looking at the nature of Christ from Colossians 1 or John 1. We see what do we mean when we're saying this Jesus person his eternality his omnipotence his central deity those aspects and you can do this with any of these things. But if you were to look up a topic like Christology or ecclesiology for example there are places that you would go. And this is maybe a good example of this is if you look at the index in the back of your Bible and you're saying I'm looking for something on what is the church supposed to be governed. And you look at the index and it would give you a whole bunch of passages and these give you individual verses which are discussing the subject but only that one subject. So when you're doing systematic you're looking at what is the Bible say about a topic instead of what is this topic showing up throughout the whole of scripture. Whereas biblical theology. Biblical theology seeks to understand the relationships between the various eras of God's revealing activity recorded in the Bible. So this takes a little bit more of a chronological approach. This is showing us what is the whole Bible say about a particular subject. But there is an aspect of this that you're letting the word reveal that doctrine as opposed to finding that doctrine and finding every single place where it is. We're looking at the arc the biblical narrative and showing how that is being more and more progressively revealed to us. Another aspect of biblical theology that's concerned with the process of revelation as it unfolds through scripture. As it moves toward the goal which is God's final revelation of its purposes in Jesus Christ. So we have the idea of the person of Christ all the way in Genesis 3 the one who will crush the head of the serpent. But its fulfillment does not show up until later but the whole way the Bible is pointing us toward the person of Christ answering Eve's question that she must have had in her mind. Who is this man who will come and redeem us. Who is the one who will crush the head of the serpent. So there's an interconnectedness to all of this. We need to understand that our Christology will show us what we think of the work of the spirit. Jesus tells us that we're guaranteed this helper this paraclete will come. It's better that I go so that the one who is coming may come to you. And if we understand the work of the spirit we'll understand better what the work of the church is. And if we understand the work of the church and the work of the spirit will that will tell us how we ought to be doing missions. If we understand what Christ has commanded us we'll better understand the way that we are to understand the sacraments how we should practice it. What are the benefits of those things. The biblical theology continuously shows us a little more as the arc of the biblical narrative moves on. What those things mean to us because the church was a prototype church even in the Old Testament. But we're seeing the fullness of the church as it's being born throughout the arc of history. So from Genesis to Revelation we see more and more progressively revealed to us as God is showing us his plan for fulfillment in Christ. Biblical theology could take a subject like salvation which is somewhat of a systematic approach. We're only looking at this one idea but we're looking at it as it's changed over the course of the Bible. So again salvation is promised to Adam and Eve in Genesis 3 salvation is differently understood by Noah Abraham Moses and David. It's still showing us as salvation is delivered as a concept throughout the whole of the Bible. But ultimately we know that Christ is seen throughout the whole of the Bible. Biblical theology helps us to understand where we see the person and work of Christ throughout the whole of Scripture. So biblical theology why we isn't all theology biblical. Yes but what I mean by that term we say biblical theology is actually came to be as more of an academic process around the turn of the century in the 19th century. So 1900s early late 1800s early 1900s we have a movement in academia particularly influenced by the German scholastics that began to look at the story of theology the story of the Bible as more of an analogy an allegory which kind of stripped out its literal significance. So if you've ever heard of in a college course somebody taking a class called Bible as literature this is really where those came from. And so there is a movement to delegitimize the veracity of all the claims of the Gospels for example the Christ wasn't really virgin born. The Christ was not really performing miracles but really that the people who said the feeding of the five thousand for example Christ teaching was so good that they all felt sad on the inside. It's a metaphor that he didn't really rise from the dead but he was as a concept risen from the dead in the hearts of all of his leaders and followers and so we remember him today. This is heresy and there's a large amount of thought at the time at the turn of the century there was a liberalizing of the scholastic thought. And so there's a little cartoon here. This is the defense of the modernists that you move from. We lose biblical infallibility to the idea that man is maybe not made in God's image. A lot of this is thoughts of Darwinism at the time. We give up miracles the virgin birth and in fact the literal deity of Christ and eventually we walk our way all the way to atheism. I don't think there's many of us who would disagree with that if we are disagreeing with the fundamental stones that the Bible is laid upon if we give up the veracity the truth of scripture if we don't actually believe that we can have the word of God as an infallible and a bedrock that we can trust then you are working your way out of actual Christianity. So this is a period of time called the modernist fundamental or modernist controversy and the fundamentalists are where we have our lineage as far as the Presbyterian Church of America. So we would hold that the Bible is the sole theological resource that there's great unity in the Bible that it is the exclusive claim of revelation of God in history. We understand it particularly than having a Hebraic mentality. What I mean by that is we understand that the Old Testament scriptures in particular were revealed to a particular people. There's context there's culture that's to be appreciated in all of that. And we understand the uniqueness of biblical revelation in that it's not just an affirmation of good and positive helpful things this is not therapeutic moralistic theism but it's the very word of God and the salvation for us and biblical theology helps us understand that particularly as scripture is revealed to us through time. What are we even about. Well this feels maybe like I'm saying that there's historical component and there's an entire branch of theology. This is nothing more not nothing more but particularly historical theology. So historical theology is a means of studying scripture which helps us understand how the church has interpreted scripture throughout history from the time of the apostles all the way to today. This investigates the socio historical and cultural mechanisms that gave rise to theology their ideas statements and systems. So if we want to understand the teachings of Christ then it's helpful for us to understand the first world that first century. The first world that first century context when Jesus was teaching to these particular people when he says some of his parables thinking about the agricultural parables price those people would have understood them in a particular way. And so if we put ourselves in the mind of those people we can understand the words best. So it takes consideration of the content the culture the people were speaking to the connotation of the words that Christ was saying. So this is a methodology of understanding scripture called historical grammatical interpretation. We want to not just pick out verses that allow us to say oh I like what this one says but try to understand what was said to whom he was saying it and how would they have understood it. And so historical theology has an emphasis on that and this is useful for us not only in reading the Bible but understanding the history of the statistics the early church fathers and church across time and space. That last category is we've looked at systematic biblical historical since it's now practical theology. So this is another area that we would study if you were in seminary and practical theology it seeks to understand the who what why when and where and how of how we're doing church. So to seek to understand the connections between theology and practice and also to see how we could be integrating our theology into the practical ways that we're doing worship for example. This tends to be a little bit more or less of an academic emphasis but more of a practical aspect of thinking about how we impact the way that the church worships and the life of Christians. There's four questions that practical theology will often answer what is going on why is it going on what should be going on and how might we want to respond. So we're looking at the Bible still as the authoritative word of God but we're looking at what are the context of how Christians across time and space and in our unique context how are we responding to the word of God. And so practical theology questions might be surrounded church life ecclesiology. It's going to be a little bit more of a hands on kind of way of thinking about scripture. So as you're reading your Bible a way to read your Bible with practical theology in mind would say like well if this is what the Book of Acts is saying how should we then do church. All right so that's a lot to think about and we've got systematics biblical historical and practical theology. Well what if you just like one and you really don't think that you need to use those various methodologies as we're seeking to be a faithful church. My argument here is that they're all very important for us to consider the same way that you could go through life only considering the theoretical mathematics of the way the world works you. But you can't interact with the world purely as a mathematical equation or you could say well we're going to look at say the physics chemistry organic chemistry portion of life because really all of our interactions with other people boil down to the neurotransmitters that are firing and fizzing off in our brains and these are the interactions and you can have a purely kind of Newtonian view of we're all just matter in motion and the molecules that don't really give you a very satisfying way to study the world around you. So we can say maybe we need to think of people not as biochemical entities but real systems. And so if we want to have a healthy church a healthy life then we're going to look at this from more of a physiological and medicinal standpoint. Well maybe that will keep you healthy but it's not going to be the best way for you to thrive as a society because they're all individual entities and we're called to be a church who is a multi individual organism. So maybe within you look at surely the psychology and sociology of the way that we're interacting with one another. Or maybe just simply we ignore all of the theoretical and then we just work at the political science end of things we're saying well how do we interact with one another. So in the same way that if you take a look at all of these hard sciences and say well actually they all build upon one another and they're all important. If we take nothing but a practical approach to theology then we can quickly to our detriment lose the core doctrines and the real deep understandings of what God has revealed in Scripture. And if we only stick on the systematic side we become somewhat cold and academic. So all of these various disciplines of theology are important and they'll be a rounded component to our diet for a healthy church. Another way to think about this is if you look at these various methodologies of doing theology I'm going to say this is like a diamond. So you could go into a jewelry store and say well I'm looking for a diamond of a particular color cut clarity and carrot. That's all that matters to me. And there it is. You've got the numbers and the numbers all line up. So this is the one we want to get. Yeah there's that. Or maybe you really want to see how it moves in the light what it looks like. Maybe the actual numbers and hard evidence is not what dazzles you but like what is the actual picture. Is it pleasing to the eye. Can you see the way that it moves. Perhaps you're looking for a piece of heirloom jewelry. This diamond was once owned by the high chancellor of wherever. And because it's got a legacy because it has a history because it has a story behind it on who has owned it before. Maybe it's more important maybe a more practical example that is that this is my grandmother's ring. And so this is the reason that it's more valuable to me. So I think historical theology shows us how the church has viewed something over time. And so maybe understanding the tradition and the value of these ideas to the church over time is something that's really valuable and we should look at. Well you know there's also a practical purpose of this stone. If you've got a young lady that you would like to marry you at the end of the day it needs to be beautiful but it's got a purpose that you're seeking to use it with. And so we're using theology not simply to just have a collection of ideas in our head that we know are really really nice. We want to do something with them too. So these are all facets of theology as we seek to study it which are important. So we've talked about systematic biblical historical practical theology. Well we all have a deep love around here for reformed theology. So is there a separate category that's not even all of the things I've mentioned so far. Kinda. But we talk about reformed theology. We're generally speaking of Protestant theology that was derived from us or derived to us from Luther Zwingli and Calvin. We're clearly the three forerunners of the Reformation or the three main not forerunners but the three main guys who gave us a lot of the changes that we would have broken away from the indulgences of the Catholic Church. And this little word below that in Latin ad fontes this is really the heartbeat of what the Reformation was seeking to do. And so it means back to the source. So if you think about the heads of waters of a river this is the sound from which everything else flows. And so the Reformation sought not to come up with a brand new system. It was not a revolution. We're seeking to go back go back to where the source of all of this came from. Which was one the Bible of the authority to understanding the apostles understanding of theology what Christ would have taught what the earliest church would have appreciated about the practice and worship of God. And so reformed theology is certainly Protestant. It's also biblical and we say that because we believe that the Bible is both necessary and sufficient for our salvation. Everything that we need for a healthy church is contained within it and we know that we cannot approach God without it. And so not the traditions of man or any of the ideas or purely worship practices that are derived from the way that we have been doing church it's not purely looking at the idea that we need to do what people have done in the past not traditions but it's actually rooted in the idea that we have a biblical authority. Or maybe when you think about reformed theology your mind immediately goes to these five souls of the Reformation. So the script tour of scripture alone. So was Christmas in Christ alone. So the feed a faith alone. So the gratia by grace alone and solo Deo Gloria to God alone be the glory and amen. Those are all things which are true of reformed theology and this is definitely an emphasis that we have. Maybe when you thinking of reformed theology you think of our emphasis on the regular principle of worship where we're not doing things which go beyond what we find in scripture but doing everything that we do find in scripture. So we're not allowing ourselves to be influenced by the culture and the context that we find ourselves in but we're purely looking at we're going to do what God's word commands us to do. It could be our use of the sacraments that you think of as reformed theology and certainly that is in it and maybe just maybe you've heard this word covenant theology and that's what you think of as reformed theology. So reformed theology certainly is covenant theology but it's not necessarily exclusively covenant theology. And so if I'm looking at this we're seeing that there's systematics historical biblical practical reformed theology has all of those things within it. We're appreciating that all of those things are important but we're not using any one of them to the exclusion and so covenant theology really binds all of those things together. Covenant theology makes the gap between systematics and practice really palatable and understandable in a way that. That just kind of pulls a thread and puts a bow on everything. This just makes a whole lot more sense. OK so then what is covenant theology. So McLeod says that covenant theology the covenant concept is an architectonic principle for the systematizing of Christian truth. There you go. You can walk away today saying that's what it is. Well let's make that a little bit more approachable architectonic means that this is from like an architectural. This is the foundational. This is the scaffolding. This is the plate this cornerstone that we build all of our understanding of systematics. If we understand the covenant is the cornerstone concept for us to understand all of the rest of his scripture then we can see the way that everything else is built upon it. So it's a study of God's eternal unchanging purpose to bring a people to himself specifically using this concept of covenant. Is it because we're adding covenant to this. No it's because God himself has said this is the way that I'm going to interact. This is the means that I will redeem you people to myself. So if you somebody came up to you on the street and they said well what what is covenant theology. The one thing that you could say that would be most helpful to summarizing all of it. If you say like you got one sentence give me covenant theology it would be this which is called the Emmanuel principle. And we see that God tells us that I shall be your God and you shall be my people. And we see that specifically in Genesis 12 Exodus 6 Deuteronomy 29 Jeremiah 23 Ezekiel 37. It's even the second Corinthians 6 Hebrews 8 and Revelation throughout all of scripture we see this idea of covenant coming up again and again. So if we are going to be his people how is it that God is going to do this. He covenants with us and says this is a promise that I will make you my people. All right. So let's drill down a little more. What then is a covenant. Probably the cornerstone work that if you wanted to really really dig deep and read into this there's a book by O. Palmer Robertson called Christ and the Covenant. And so Robertson says that a covenant is a bond in blood sovereignly administered a bond in blood sovereignly administered bond means that Christ we see this idea of adoption has called the people for himself redeemed the people to himself bound this people to himself and the Lord has bound us. We certainly can never be undone from that in blood meaning that this is a costly bond. This is purchased at great price and we're going to see this idea of blood or the idea that the covenant again and again is a very serious thing through each of the covenants that we're going to talk about and sovereignly administered. There's a beautiful component to this and like I'm going to do Adam next week so I don't want to steal anybody else's thunder because this is really great. And some of the other weeks but did Adam choose to be in covenant with the Lord. No Adam didn't choose to be made. He was and there the Lord had said these are the terms of your existence. Adam didn't say no I choose not to exist. I think I won't tend that garden and so serious being a bond in blood. What are the consequences of your disobedience to this obligation that you've now been given very serious. So if this bond can be looked at and we're going to see it in various ways in the next couple of weeks there's parts that we can identify and they will be sometimes more present and sometimes less present and in each of the biblical accounts we're seeing for the various covenants but in general there's always a relationship and that is at least God saying you shall be my people. But sometimes there's more of a relationship built into that their duties and rewards associated with that. Lord says these are the things that you must do and these are the benefits that you'll receive from it. There's often an exchanging of oaths or bonds and these bonds are mutual but never equal because the Lord is always providing so much more he's always so much more gracious than the requirements to each of the covenants. So do we have any kids in here. Then it's going on here. Yes yes this is a wedding. How do we know that that's a wedding. We have been to weddings right. But we're seeing what were some of the things we notice about here we have these people they are dressed formally not informally they're not in Hawaiian shirts although if you choose to be married on the beach in a Hawaiian shirt that's fine makes it no less of a wedding. There are all kinds of things that tell us that this is a wedding. We have the two people of the central focus. We've got this guy in the special outfit got witnesses over the side here. We know that this is a wedding because we can identify that there is something special about what's going on here and parts of a wedding that you would commonly see. Well there's parties. We've got the groom side. We've got the bride side. We've got all of these witnesses around here and we could if we watch this in real time not just a still shot we'd understand that there are promises being made. There are terms that are being laid out. The pastor will hopefully get some kind of context for this is what the true meaning of this wedding is. There's blessings that are associated with being married itself. There are witnesses to this ceremony so that nobody can say like well I didn't really agree to that note. It absolutely is binding. Tokens are exchanged. There is authority both from the husband and wife to each other and then the authority of man of God who is sealing the two of them together. Ultimately his authority comes from Christ. So we see just by looking at a particular ceremony that there are things we identify like aha something important is happening here something very substantial is happening here. And so if we see this in a wedding we can see this also when we look at scripture and we see various motifs come back up. We're going to hopefully be able to pull some of those out as we're looking at these various covenants and see ah here's that covenant form again. Here is that repetition of the ideas that are maybe not identical between one another but shows us a little bit more each time. So again when we see this contract for blessings and obligations this covenant being cut or made that there will be parties promises terms blessings authority and submission. So the term covenant in Hebrew is brief and in the Old Testament it comes up two hundred and eighty six times. It's used a bunch of different ways. And for example there are covenants between two men Jacob and Laban agreeing to have this peace pact not to go to war with another David and Jonathan have a covenant. The word breed is used in those instances or even the nation of Israel and some of their enemies sometimes make peace treaties and they make a covenant not to go to war with one another. Mostly it's used between God and man. We see that in Genesis 6 with Noah Genesis 15 with Abraham. David makes reference to his covenant with the Lord in Psalm 89. It has lesser uses too. So sometimes there's some disagreement about the importance of the word covenant because for example it says the Lord made a covenant with Phineas in Numbers 25 which is not the same. We don't have a Phinean covenant. This is just a promise but it's not as significant. But there are other times where it's very very important. For example the Lord having a covenant with the whole people of Israel in exodus 19. But each time that we're looking at these make major confidence God is setting the terms and he freely enters into this obligation. He freely enters by his grace to set a call apart these people and make them his people. As we move into the New Testament the word covenant again happens quite a lot. But this time it's not in Hebrew it's in Greek and the word is die sake. This connotation that we should appreciate to this is more like it sounds like a last will and testament. So if you have purchased a home sometimes the neighborhood has covenants there's obligations that you must have. One of the benefits to you is that I mean neighborhood covenants is that we know that this is the standard that our neighborhood will be kept to. But we're using covenant more in this idea of last will and testament. So when somebody dies they dispose of all of their assets and give blessings to their people and there's no discussion about it. There's no argument to it. You don't get to say well you know actually I wanted that classic car not my brother. It's not an option. This is the person's final word on it and it's been spoken. So it's a testamentary disposition or a federal agreement. So one person is speaking to all of the people and that one person has authority over all of the blessings and responsibilities. So when we're looking at references or when the old when the New Testament is quoting the Old Testament and they're speaking of covenant the word buried that we saw on the previous slide to you so many times they say K is always used to translate this word buried. There is another New Testament word called thinking that is meaning a contract between equal parties. So I think so if you're these two words mean one there's something very federal very unilateral very powerful and this is one person speaking to another. There's a great unequal inequality between the power or students think it is just an agreement between two people more like a contract peer to peer. And so we're looking at all of the words in the New Testament that we're speaking of God's covenant with us. It is never this thing they pay idea. It's always diet they pay. And so liberal people liberal scholars liberal theologians will say like oh no this is this is more of we're agreeing to the terms that God is entering into a contract with us. And what we should keep in mind is the New Testament understanding of this idea of covenant is always God from on high condescends to us and makes a covenant with us. We're not equal entering into this relationship. One more use of the word covenant and this is Latin. So why would we spend any time talking about Latin. Well because Jerome translated the Vulgate and for a thousand years Latin was the principal language in which the church had access to God's word. And in Latin we have three words for covenant for this pactum and testamentum. So this is what we would have as our day sake or berate. This is just a more practical kind of equality as far as the covenant. Much more like a theme. And testamentum is more like a will just something given up. And so we'll come back to why that's important. All right. History. The word covenant shows up very very early in the Bible. Genesis 6 specifically although I'm going to show you next week that the covenant is even from the very first chapter. Hebrews chapter 8 speaks the most of the covenant than any other book in the Bible. Eight and nine really have a lot to say about that. Later on the New Testament authors are referencing the covenant continuously in the apostolic era from the ascension to the early church. There's a significant amount of writing and discussion of covenant theology. So some people will say covenant theology is just really an invention of the reformers and this didn't really exist in the in the early church. But this is an idea that we've imported on because we're doing now this Protestant thing and we don't we don't see that. But that's absolutely not true. So when we see the patristic and the apostolic era some of the early church fathers who were dealing with controversies particularly does anybody know what some of the earliest heresies and controversies that the church was dealing with in early church was. Nature of Christ. Exactly. The deity of Christ was one of the biggest controversies and the biggest things theologically that the church was seeking to hammer out. So Arrhenius particularly died I think in 20 to 20. So early church era wrote a lot about the idea of covenant to explain the deity of Christ to explain the essentiality of Christ being God himself. And so these early church fathers were Andy I lost my slides. We'll see if I can just hit a button and make it go again. So they spent a lot of time and put a lot of ink out on the idea that this is something but there's a large gap that we see in any kind of writing about covenant within the church. So we see in the early Bible all the Old Testament covenant is essential and prominent in the New Testament. The New Testament authors absolutely prominent in the writing and then from around 450 to the 16th century. There's not a lot of academic theological scholastic writing about the concept of covenant. And the reason that would be is because it is about this time that the Bible has been put into Latin. And so we saw before there's three different words for covenant in Latin and we do not see that same one to one correlation between guys take a and beret as we would in say the original languages. So if the entire church is reading the Bible and the words have changed so that they don't have that major emphasis on original languages in fact for probably about a thousand years the original languages were not studied and were mostly lost. And so the gaps that we find in writing and the emphasis on covenant is probably explained by the changing of the biblical text to being in Latin. So again with Reformation the idea is moving back at Fonta's back to the original source and the interest in original languages is much much greater. And so these 16th century reformers and on are going back and reading the original text in Hebrew and Latin and the read is jumping off the page. I think it's jumping off the page of them. And when you see a word in the Old Testament used almost 300 times there's a lot more interest and a lot more desire to explore that concept. So speaking of Reformation we have our Westminster confession and so Chapter 7 outlines very well what is the covenant. And so Chapter 7 says this distance between God and the creature is so great that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience to him as their creator yet they could have never had any fruition of him in their blessedness and reward but by some voluntary condescension on God's part he was pleased to express by way of covenant. So again God from on high condescends comes to man. This first covenant was made was called the Covenant of Works wherein life was promised to Adam and to his posterity and condition of personal and perfect obedience. Man by his fall having made himself incapable of that covenant the Lord was pleased to make a second covenant commonly called the Covenant of Grace wherein he freely ordained offer it to sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ requiring them faith in him that they may be saved and promised to give all of to all of those that are ordained into eternal life his Holy Spirit and make them willing and able to believe this covenant of grace is frequently set forth by scripture by the name of the Testament in reference to the death of Christ the test or. And the everlasting inheritance with all things there and to bequeath. So why is it called the New Testament because it is the covenant. So New Testament Old Testament New Covenant Old Covenant synonyms. All right. So we'll summarize all of those things that are in Chapter 7. Notice that the distance between man and God is so great that we cannot have this perfect reward prior to the initiation of the Covenant of Works even Adam and his unfallen state cannot have the fullness of God's blessing upon him unless he's passed perhaps some kind of probationary period and we'll get to that next week because that feels like wow that's that's a big statement. So there is this first covenant of works that we must obey perfectly. Yet there is a fall but God in his grace condescends to us even further and offer us this covenant of grace requiring faith in Christ and that the Holy Spirit will make us able and willing to believe. And we are then given all of the blessings in Christ through this inheritance. So what is the great big idea of covenant theology. This is the one thing I want you to be able to walk away from this morning that God says to us that I shall be your God and you shall be my people. Why is studying covenant theology useful. Well we have tremendous assurance because this is not a thing. OK. This is not us coming into an agreement with God. This is his diet. OK. This is God giving to us through his richness and his fullness and his total lack of need for us. This is just generous blessing. It brings great meaning to all of the Old Testament sacrifice. We see that this is a bond in blood sovereignly administered. We understand the reason for all the blood and sacrifice in the Old Testament. It makes sense of the Old Testament sacrifice systems. We should see the cohesiveness of the Bible as a whole. We're able to see all of the interconnectedness. It makes it one particular story. Jesus seems to think that the idea of covenant is particularly important. And you can see that because in the upper room when he's explaining his ministry to the apostles and what he's going to do he's saying he's going to fulfill and make this new covenant in his blood. And he wrote when he opens the scriptures to them he's explaining the covenant from the beginning. How should it shape our theology. We see God is more glorious. We see this cohesiveness. We see the structure. We see all of the ties from scripture at large. How does it show God's glory. Because even from the beginning we see grace throughout all of the Old Testament. There are some people who say we'll go to the Old Testament. That's a different God. We've got a new testament is God of love. We see the love and the grace and the condescension to us from the very beginning. Well don't we all believe all of this. As I said like I hadn't in this broader evangelical perhaps Baptist Bible church background that I had a lot of interaction and I didn't see all of these things as interconnected as they were. So around the late 1800s John Nelson Darby comes up with an idea that is really taken up by C.I. Schofield. Some of you may be in possession of C.I. Schofield study Bible right now. And there is this idea in theology that really is a novel interpretation of the end times and really interpretation of all of scripture called dispensational theology. So rather than C.T. we've got D.T. and they have as this structure and framework and their understanding of the whole of scripture a different idea. So whereas we would see continuity dispensation will see much more discontinuity. We would see the covenant with Adam being really revealed and refined and shown more and more focus. The dispensationalist will see the covenant with Adam is completely distinct from the covenant with Noah. And then that one kind of gets torn up and then we've got another covenant with Moses. These are all urban Abraham. These are all new things and God is kind of redoing a new contract each time we're adding addendums. They are tearing it up and making a entirely new contract. So dispensational distinctive won the rapture of the church but we're not doing eschatology this series so we'll skip that for now. They see a much more hard break between the old and the New Testament. And the emphasis is the imminent return of Christ particularly if we understand the study of the times World War One World War Two why this becomes so quickly adopted into the broader understanding of Christianity and then their dispensational ecclesiology. The central idea that you could wrap up dispensationalism is that they believe that the time is short and the workers are few. And so this has a tremendous amount of impact on the way that they choose to do church. So history of American evangelicalism really is the history of dispensational theology. If you understand the Billy Graham's the Billy Sundays and the evangelism movements missions in America para church organizations the way the church is done writ large in the United States today is hugely influenced by this couple of examples in the 1970s. This book the late great planet Earth by how Lindsay was the number one selling book in any genre for the entirety of the 1970s. And a great little side note taking this idea in the 1980s in Norco California. Some guys read a whole lot of dispensational stuff and they're like here we go. Very shortly the rapture is coming upon us and then we're going to save ourselves and our families from the rapture. We need to buy land in order to buy land. We're going to have to have some money. So naturally they robbed a bank for Jesus. This is the reason that all sheriff's departments have SWAT teams now. These guys put out a whole lot of bullets so that they could have a way to survive the rapture while they were in jail. Mount St. Helens erupted and they said see earthquakes. I mean see if you're reading your Bible with the newspaper as your guide you're going to have trouble. We've all somewhat familiar at least with the left behind series the books and movies more practically. This doesn't all have to sound absolutely crazy. I've got a box around this because this is the most flat flagrant of the dispensationalist things. But Christians in America today have a broad support for the ethno political entity of the nation of Israel. Why is that. Why is a voting bloc to American Christians particularly think we have a nation of Israel. It's an absolute must because it's central to dispensational theology that there must be a state of Israel so that Christ can return because they have to reinstitute temple worship. This gets off into the weeds. I could do a whole month on this subject that I greatly love. But it matters a lot that we are seeing the right things as core and central because we're going to get off into the weeds. We're going to change the way that we do church the secret sensitive movement. Again if the time is short we've got to get as many people into the kingdom as possible. Whereas in a reformed tradition we care a lot about growth. We care a lot about making disciples not just converts. So some of our brothers who are more dispensationalist will say to us like we'll know what you're talking about. And I got this literally when I was asking my pastor friend like I see so many parallels between say for example the Passover and the Lord's Supper isn't this just kind of new. And so they still have a need for the people of God to be literally Israel. Whereas I would say like no I think that the church has replaced the people of God but it's really the fulfillment of that promise that every nation is being grafted in. And and he said to me like well no what you're looking at like that's actually called replacement theology. Well it's not replacement theology. We see that God's promise is that the seed of Abraham will be a blessing to the whole world. Every nation. And so we see that in reality in the church that the church goes forth and the gospel is preached in every tribe tongue and nation. That's a beautiful thing. Whereas the dispensationalist will have more of a need to say like no the ethnic state of Israel still is very important to us. So I think this is most meaningful. Ignoring all of my jabs at the dispensationalist in the world they would have more of a break between each of the covenants more of a fracture view of the whole of scripture where I would say that actually we see the covenant with Adam. We see God's covenant with the entire world with Noah. We see his covenant particularly with mankind with Abraham. He's got a people that he's called to himself with Moses. He's made those people into a nation with David. We see finally a king. So there's this funneling down for the Genesis promises the one who will crush the head of the serpent. There's a broad view and that's the redemption the curse falls upon the whole world. But now we're seeing it getting more and more and more refined. It's as though your eyes being drawn to answer who will be this one that fulfills the full covenant. So now when we see Christ we see the true king not just a king. We see the one who will sit on David's phone forever as opposed to simply the nation of Israel. We see now the church is encompassing every nation. The promise has gotten better with not just a people. The church moves all the way to the ends of the earth not just a small state not a promised land that Abraham hoped for but the fullness of the promised land being the whole earth. We see even with mankind. If you look in the book of Acts you see the undoing of the scattering of the Tower of Babel with Adam. We're going to see not the whole world being simply saved but the whole world being God's garden in heaven. The fulfillment of all the scripture. So a last thought this visual along the bottom. These are scripture references and how often they're either quoted by the New Testament or Old Testament and how how they correlate. And so what you'll see is there's these lines to go over to where they find their New Testament home. So if there's something in Genesis that finds its way to revelation somebody traced all of these biblical cross cross references and there are thousands of them and made this great big connection. This to me is the value of covenant theology because we can see the Bible as one thought one story one narrative that God is telling us that God is the best and greatest storyteller. And so when the guy who made this put it all together he kind of randomly color coded it and doesn't that kind of remind you of a rainbow. This is not the sign that no it was given that God will not destroy the earth but he will redeem it. And so this is the arc of the biblical narrative. And this I think is the value of what we're seeing and hoping to study in covenant theology. That is the end of introduction and I finished five minutes early. Are there any questions. We're going to pray. And if you have any questions you can find me afterwards. Father in heaven we thank you so much for your word. Thank you for the redemption that you promised your your people. Thank you Lord that you have covenant with us to be our God. Lord thank you that you so graciously made us your people. We pray as we prepare our hearts and minds for worship this morning that we would be sober in result of that understanding that this bond and blood is one that is indeed in blood. And you poured out your own blood the person of your son Jesus Christ so that you may redeem us to yourself. We pray that we would be eternally grateful in light of that. Help us to see your glory your goodness and your character better today. We pray in Jesus name. Amen.
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