THE CONFERENCE - Covenant Theology - Brian Sauvé
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Summary
In this episode, we discuss the centrality of covenant theology in the mission of our faith, and the story that we believe we are in, and why the story we believe matters and matters deeply. Joel asks me to speak on the importance of Covenant theology in our faith and mission, and in seeing the kind of Christianity established in Christ that Christ says will leaven the world.
Transcript
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Joel asked me to speak on the centrality of covenant theology in the mission of God and in
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seeing the kind of Christianity established that Christ says will leaven the world. And so that is
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exactly what we're going to do. We're going to talk about the God who makes and the God who keeps
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his covenant. We're going to talk about why that matters for us and for our children, for all who
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are far off, and why the story that we believe we are in matters and matters deeply. So let's begin.
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let's ask for the Lord's help and we'll get to work. Our Father in heaven, we give you thanks
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that you are an almighty God who makes covenant with your people and keeps your covenant. We give
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you thanks that you are abounding in steadfast love, that you're slow to anger, that you have
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great mercy towards us, and that it's not an ethereal mercy, but one that you have demonstrated
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in history towards us through Christ and by your spirit. So help us now, we pray in Jesus' name.
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Amen. Well, a few years ago, a member of my church out in Ogden, Utah, Refuge Church, is the church
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that I help pastor out there in northern Utah, found one of those decorative plates that you've
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probably seen on the wall of your grandmother's, your great-grandmother's, maybe your mom's house,
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those ones with the artsy prints on them that are not to be used under any circumstances as an
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actual plate. And this one, which turned up in an antique store just right on the main historic
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Main Street, down the street from our church, featured an illustration of three church buildings,
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historic church buildings on the front. And the reason that it caught their eyes so quickly is
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that one of the churches, they instantly recognized, hey, that's my church. That's the church building
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that we meet in, which is a historic brick church building that we purchased about eight years ago
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and enjoy meeting in to this day. So they bought the plate, which I'm thankful they did before
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anybody else got a hold of it. And now it sits in my office. I hung it on the wall as a reminder of
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important lessons. And here's what I mean by that. Some of the first Protestant missionaries
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to bring the gospel to our area of northern Utah were the Methodists. Utah is the only state in
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the union that I'm aware of, at least, that has never experienced majority Christian populace.
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It's the only one. I mean, I would be surprised if it ever even got above 10% or 15% in its entire history.
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But the Methodists arrived with Reverend G.M. Pierce by railroad on June 28, 1870,
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and Reverend Pierce conducted the first Methodist worship service right there in the terminal,
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which makes me think that he's probably my kind of guy.
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For a few generations after that, the Methodists labored in the rocky soil of Mormon country.
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ultimately they established several thriving congregations and they ended up building three
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beautiful churches that are now on the historic registry the ones that still stand both in the
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state and in the nation one in corinne utah in 1870 one in salt lake city in 1906 and finally the one
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that we reside in today in ogden in 1929 and it really is a beautiful building people that don't
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So, we were thankful to the Lord because we were looking for something cheaper than the
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mattress warehouse when we found this church.
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It's one of the benefits of being in Mormon country is that there are not enough Christians
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at its zenith in the 1950s the congregation that met in our building had something like 400 plus
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families in attendance now they had a boiler heating no air conditioning at this point it
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gets over 100 in august i don't know how they did it and that's a very significant number for a
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railroad town like ours again in a state that's never enjoyed a majority christian populace at
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any point in its history the church grew so large in fact that they ended up purchasing several
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of the parcels around the building, the adjoining lots, and they ended up building an entire
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educational wing and fellowship hall onto the building, along with a lot of other major
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renovations. Unfortunately, some of them were done in the 1960s, and so they're hideously ugly
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when they had more engineers than architects in the 1960s. The plate, though, that my congregant
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found was commissioned in 1970, and it was a commemorative plate for the centennial of their
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arrival, the 100-year mark of that first minister arriving on the train there in Utah to the Beehive
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State. And so you might be asking now, okay, that sounds like they're doing great. How did we end up
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with this building? Did they outgrow it? You know, did they just, they had to build something bigger
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and give up their beautiful little church building? Well, no, because right at the zenith of their
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growth, as the nation at large entered into the first stages of what we now look on as the sexual
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revolution, their denomination began to slide towards liberalism along with the culture. Maybe
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a few years behind the culture, but they were on the same track. And so it wasn't long before they
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began to ordain women, and then they began to, you know, tolerate all sorts of things in their
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organization. Like maybe, sure, you can't technically affirm a gay marriage there, but, you know, Jesus
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befriended tax collectors and sinners, right? So we're really just being like the Lord and welcoming
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our LGBTQ plus brothers and sisters, right? Without judgment? Doesn't that not follow?
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Well, the story of the Methodists in Ogden is as predictable as it is ancient. It's a story that we
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could tell a million times through history. We could go all the way back, in fact, to Revelation
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chapter 2 with the church at Thyatira. When Jesus, the one who walks among the seven golden lampstands,
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strode into that church, what did he have to say to them? Well, this is what he said. He says,
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I know your works, Revelation 2 verse 19, your love and faith and service and patient endurance,
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and that your latter works exceed the first. But I have this against you, that you tolerate that
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woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice
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sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, but she refuses
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to repent of her sexual immorality behold I will throw her onto a sickbed and those who commit
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adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation unless they repent of her works
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and I will strike her children dead and all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind
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and heart and I will give to each of you according to your works but to the rest of you in Thyatira
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who do not hold this teaching who have not learned what some will call the deep things of Satan
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to you I say I do not lay on you any other burden only hold fast what you have until I come
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the one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end to him I will give authority over the
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nations and he will rule them with a rod of iron as when earth and pots are broken in pieces even
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as I myself have received authority from my father and I will give him the morning star he who has an
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ear let him hear what the spirit says to the churches much like the church at Thyatira there
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was certainly faithful and zealous brothers and sisters in the midst of the congregation that had
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labored to raise that beautiful building on 26th and Jefferson. There were debates in the
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denomination. There were those who disagreed with the denominational leadership and fought
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the current of liberalism that seemed to be sweeping their church away. But ultimately,
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and as the years wore on, those who would fight lost, and rather than seeing the lost converted
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and discipled, their attempts to pander to the culture only made the church grow emptier by the
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year. And so finally, not long ago, less than 20 years ago, with the building falling into disrepair
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around them, the lady pastors at the helm decided to sell that they were going to liquidate the
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inheritance and try to scrape out enough money that they could build one of those metal buildings
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that you can build for about $18. At least in 2006, you could build it for about $18. Now it's
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about $18 million, in Marriott Slaterville, which is about 20 minutes north of us.
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It features invitations to such liturgical wonders as Paws in the Pew Sunday, Bring Your
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Pets to Church Day, which is an offering to attract revival, I'm assuming, in the dying
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I've looked at the live stream out of a morbid curiosity, and when they panned it, saw about
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but you won't hear something in particular in that church
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Something that would almost overwhelm our attempts
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to live stream our service should we attempt such a thing.
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while I'm attempting to preach through the Gospel of John.
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and see that plate there to my left on my office wall,
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I think about the God that keeps both aspects of his covenant, both the blessing and the
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And I think about that ugly metal building in rural Marriott Slaterville with the elderly
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women pretending to pastor it, frantically searching for ways to keep the light on in
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a church whose lampstand is all but extinguished.
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But I think as well about the faithful saints, the Methodists, we're different.
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Look, I'm not a Methodist, I've never tempted, I'm not a son of a Methodist, never been tempted
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to be a Methodist, but I do think with thankfulness about the labor of those saints in the 19th
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century, in the early 20th century, as they labored brick by brick and dollar by dollar
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to build the church that now rings with the singing of Psalms and saints every Sunday
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in Ogden, Utah, and the shuffling and fidgeting of children, like 150 of them strong on a
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Sunday, we might have 165 adults and 100, you know, bazillion children. And I hope that those
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saints who built that building, at least some of them praise God from the great cloud of witnesses
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as they see the things that they built in faithfulness, were not wholly lost, that God
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didn't write the story that way, that God's blessing may have taken a left turn from the
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track as their successors left faithfulness and turned around and said, we'll go with the culture,
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that we do for some kind of personal entertainment.
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And so what I'd like to do now is to help us understand why that is,
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to understand what covenant theology is, why it matters,
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and why it ought to put cast-iron strength into the spines of Christian men and women
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in the work that God has set before us, namely the work of baptizing the nations.
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And though this is a work that is far too great for a single generation or two or 23,
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it is a work that might be undertaken by a God who keeps his covenant to a thousand generations and beyond.
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You, me, every one of us have come into this story
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a few thousand good works that he set before us
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and the story that God is telling will continue
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in continuing to see that thousand-generation mission unfold.
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So let's begin now with that first and most obvious question.
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If we're going to talk about covenant theology,
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the first thing that Joel needed was a Presbyterian.
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I'm going to speak some Presbyterian in this service,
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but you're all welcome to translate it into Particular Baptist.
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I don't know what that language would be called.
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If people from France speak French, maybe Particular Baptists speak potluck.
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This is one of my favorite, yeah, I grew up Baptist, potlucks are amazing, we have one
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But I'm going to try to tell this story in a way that's not obnoxiously Presbyterian,
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because this is a shared inheritance that we have with some disagreements about some
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particulars, but this is our story, this isn't the Presbyterian story or the Anglican story
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or the Lutheran story or the Reformed Baptist story, this is our story.
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Well, we should probably start by understanding what a covenant is.
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A covenant is a binding compact between at least two parties to keep certain conditions.
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And with those conditions being kept comes blessing, and with the failure to keep those conditions comes curse.
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A covenant is a legal agreement, and all of us are involved in many of them in our day-to-day lives and experiences.
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For example, if you purchased a home using a mortgage, then you are involved in a mortgage covenant.
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Maybe they didn't call it that, but you're involved in one.
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There are rules for each side of the deal, the conditions of the covenant for you and the bank.
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If you agree to submit to certain rules about the value of the home you're buying against the total amount,
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then you'll pay the principal and interest, which is a separate debate that maybe we could have a rousing debate someday about usury,
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and then you get access to a large amount of money
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they can force you into bankruptcy. So this covenant between you and the bank is a binding
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compact that initiates a relationship between you and the bank with certain laws or conditions,
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with blessings for keeping those conditions, and curses for failing to. Biblically speaking,
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covenants between God and man tend to have these five characteristics. Number one, they entail
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relationship with God. Number two, they bring blessing to the ones who keep the duties or
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obligations of the covenant. Number three, they bring curses to those who break those obligations
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or fail in those duties. Number four, they ultimately point to Christ and his work.
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And then number five, they include the one in the covenant and their children,
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meaning the obligations and its attendant blessings and curses are typically passed on
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in some sense to the children of the one in the covenant. At its most basic level, that's what
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a covenant is. The reason that this is so important to understand, and hence why thousands and
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thousands of pages and volumes of books have been written with covenant theology somewhere in the
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title. I have some on my shelf. It would stretch for thousands of pages, just that section on
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covenant theology. The reason this is important is that God orders history from eternity past to
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eternity future and relates to his creatures through covenants. We can't understand God's
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interaction with us or with his creation without understanding covenants. Though God makes and
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keeps many covenants with man throughout scripture, including covenants with Adam, Noah, Moses, and
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Israel, Abraham, David, Ezra, and beyond, it's helpful to see his covenantal working unfolding
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through three major covenants which order all of history and God's relationship to humanity. These
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are three covenants that reformed theologians of just about every stripe will point to. They're
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often referred to as the covenant of redemption, number one, the covenant of works or life or
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creation depending on who you ask, number two, and the covenant of grace, number three. The covenant
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of redemption wasn't made between God and man. It was made in eternity past within the divine
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persons of our triune God. And this is the covenant where God determines before creation
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even begins to save a people from their sins and for himself. And so Father, Son, and Spirit
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covenant together to save a people through Christ and by the Spirit to the glory of the Father,
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even from eternity past, with names and details and method and means all foretold beforehand.
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or life or creation is the covenant that explains
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why the world is in the condition that it is today.
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Why is the world today in bondage to sin and death?
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The answer to that question is a covenantal answer.
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Well, this is the covenant of works between God and Adam,
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where Adam and his progeny are promised eternal life and blessing
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But some of you kids understand what I'm talking about.
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It's condition upon perfect obedience to God's commands,
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like especially don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
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and I'm giving you dominion over the fish of the sea
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And importantly, the covenant had implications again,
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not just for himself, but for his children after him.
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In the covenant of works, Adam represented mankind itself,
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That's the point that Paul's making in Romans 5, 12 to 19.
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It says, sin came into the world through one man
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And so death spread to all men because all sinned.
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The judgment following one trespass brought condemnation.
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One trespass led to condemnation for all men.
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and this can be somewhat alien to us this is one of the reasons why covenant theology seems quite
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simple but it can be sometimes hard for us to really grab a hold of in our day this idea of
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covenant headship that a covenant head has implications in his obedience and disobedience
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not just on himself but to his children and not just if his children see him obeying or disobeying
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Adam's children weren't there, and they still bore the brunt.
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This is a deep theological principle that God has worked into the foundations of all things.
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Adam's covenant breaking would affect the entire human race.
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But we need to be careful here before we quickly say that doesn't sound right.
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Because without that paradigm, believe it or not, you and I would have no hope.
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then how could Christ represent us in his righteousness?
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How could he make a new humanity after his own likeness?
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if we say, well, Adam's sin can't be counted to me.
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from his conception to his death, burial, and resurrection?
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Christ makes a new humanity from the sinful sons of Adam.
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So covenant representation is what explains this question that maybe has baffled you before
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about what one man's sin at a tree 6,000 years ago has to do with me.
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Well, you better be thankful it has something to do with you
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because one man's obedience and sacrifice at another tree 2,000 years ago
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is your only hope. Romans 5 again, same passage, but without the removals that I made.
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If because of one man's trespass, Romans 5, 17, death reigned through that one man, much more
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will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life
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through the one man, Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men,
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or all men so one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men for as by one
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man's disobedience the many were made sinners so by the one man's obedience the many will be made
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righteous though all humanity is imputed with the guilt of adam a new humanity is imputed the
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righteousness of christ by grace and through faith and this brings us to the third covenant
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which is the covenant of grace. The covenant of grace is the outworking in history of that
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covenant of redemption that God said, I'm going to do this. The covenant of grace is him doing it
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in history. It's the father actually, and in history, saving a people for himself
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through the son and by the spirit. The essence of this covenant is the same across time. If you are
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saved it is by this covenant is what i'm saying there's not another way if you're saved whether
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you're abraham believing god in genesis 17 or paul believing god in the book of acts or you know
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bill and joe and cindy and susan and sarah believing god today you're saved through the work
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of christ by the covenant of grace the covenant of grace and this is where i'm going to speak
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presbyterian for a minute feel free to translate has two basic administrations we could say
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the old and the new. It begins to unfold immediately after the fall of Adam in the
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garden with the promise that the seed of the woman would ultimately crush the head of the serpent
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and though this promise is repeated and filled out and renewed in the preceding covenants in
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scripture with Noah and Abraham and Moses and David and Ezra and Israel all of them look to
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Christ and contain the seed of the same promise which would reach its final fulfillment in a
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beautiful form in the new covenant, which we could call the final form of the covenant of grace.
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I know some of you disagreed with some parts of that because you're a Reformed Baptist again.
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Don't lose track. Don't start arguing with me in your head and miss the next 35 minutes.
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You can do that later, but for now, just stay with me. I understand. That's the heart of covenant
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theology, though, for all of us, that history is this one great unfolding story of redemption
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and glory that is written by the hand of the great playwright, who is God himself.
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It's a story in which God made man to be his kings and priests on earth, his royal vicegerents,
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fearfully and wonderfully made, bearers of his own divine image.
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This story, though, is not just a story of rainbows and kittens.
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It's a story that doesn't shy away from the pain and darkness of the world.
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It would be a useless story if it had nothing to say about suffering.
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No, this is a story that makes direct eye contact with suffering.
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Because man, who was created to be a crown of good and glory atop God's world, fell.
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And so sons became rebels and brigands and slaves.
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Man, who was made for glory, is capable still of horrors beyond comprehension
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and swiftly carries out those horrors in history.
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God's kings and priests ally themselves with the wicked dragon.
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And so the story also recounts the long, slow decline of man
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as man rejected the fountain of living water that is God himself
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and instead hewed out for himself broken cisterns which hold no water.
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becomes enslaved to dark and demonic powers and his own passions
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And so the story recounts the long, slow tragedy of man trying to be his own God, to save himself, to make himself clean and good and happy, all without God.
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But this story doesn't just paint with a single color on that side either.
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It's not just a crayon box with a lone black crayon rattling around the bottom.
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The story has suffering, but the story also has bright white.
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a white writer faithful and true white wins in this story have you read revelation 21 for example
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if you have read revelation 21 then you follow john the revelator as you know death is drug out
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into the shed like old yeller and a single shot rings out and death dies you've seen that part
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if you've read the prophet ezekiel then you've watched where a valley of dusty bones puts on
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new flesh and walks in joyful life again. This covenantal story tells us that the writer who is
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faithful and true cuts down the corrupter, the ancient liar, with the sword of his mouth. So in
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this story, we do see God's good creation corrupted by sin, yes. In the pages of scripture, there are
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blacker blacks than in any horror movie that you'll find. Don't forget that. Again, Joel made
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this clear. We're post-millennialists. That doesn't mean that we're rainbows and kittens
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and Thomas Kinkade paintings pasted to our glasses and everything we look at. We're like,
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I'm post-millennial. That'll be fine. Well, no. Lamentation gets a whole book in the Bible.
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Righteous Job sits there for the better part of 36 chapters, scraping his festering boils
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with potsherds while his wife tells him to curse God and die, and he laments the death of his
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children at the hands of the devil himself. Lamentation happens, but in this story,
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lamentation doesn't win. In this story, life swallows up death. Everything in the end rises
00:26:57.140
from the grave, everything that is except death and those who love it. And the question you should
00:27:02.280
be asking is why how and the answer is is because the playwright entered his own play because the
00:27:09.340
god man comes because the god man fights the dragon because the god man crushes the dragon's
00:27:14.680
head and then the god man dies but the god man knew the deeper magic if we should steal from
00:27:19.700
lewis he was there when it was spoken and so death couldn't keep him and the god man cracked the old
00:27:26.560
world through and through, and the God-man rose up, and so heaven took root in the soil of the
00:27:32.460
cursed earth, and now a new world overtakes the old with a world-swallowing tree whose fruits
00:27:39.800
heal the nations. So there's creation, there's fall, there's covenant, there's redemption,
00:27:45.620
there's glory. It's a story in which the dragon is destroyed, not by shock and awe, by the way.
00:27:51.780
It's a story where God decides that he is going to do battle with the ancient dragon,
00:28:24.860
with his hands tied behind his back, and he did.
00:28:28.240
He did it not by destroying all who wrought the suffering,
00:28:37.300
What does this have to do with Christendom 2.0?
00:28:54.860
I'll give you two out of 10,000, because Joel only gave me an hour.
00:29:01.560
Two reasons why it matters that you and I become a people who are deeply aware of the
00:29:06.660
fact that we are threads woven by God in a covenantal tapestry.
00:29:14.120
It's going to be about nations and empires and peoples and realms, the very cosmos.
00:29:18.260
And the other reason is going to be much smaller, but no less significant.
00:29:21.720
It's going to concern the epic story of the people who share your last name and sleep in your house at night and what will come of them.
00:29:31.440
Number one, because covenant theology teaches us how to read history.
00:29:36.280
And you can't live rightly in your chapter of the book without being able to understand those who have gone before.
00:29:44.360
The story that you tell yourself deeply matters.
00:29:48.620
Everybody lives their life by some story or other where they tell themselves who they
00:29:55.240
are, where they come from, what they're for, and really what everything is for, where everything
00:30:03.320
And the thing is, if you live by a false story, you can't live by no story, so you have to
00:30:09.880
And if you choose the wrong one, then you will live a false life to some degree or other.
00:30:15.360
For example, what would happen if you believed the following story?
00:30:18.620
Once upon a time, there was nothing, or maybe it was foam, but not just any foam.
00:30:27.240
This nothing foam, though, it was unstable, and so it tunneled.
00:30:33.900
And when I say it exploded, I mean a singularity of virtually infinite density exploded outward
00:30:38.380
and flung superheated matter out like a Jackson Pollock painting before it began to cool and
00:30:44.980
coalesce into atoms which made elements, which made stars, which made galaxies, and then everything
00:30:49.360
else up to and including professors of theoretical physics. About nine or ten billion years into this
00:30:56.080
explosion, some of those things floating through space decided to coalesce further into a ball
00:31:01.420
that was so dense that it eventually caught on fire and became a thing that some advanced primates
00:31:06.500
would later name the sun. The rest of this dust cloud in this region of space spun around some
00:31:12.680
more and became some other objects important enough for a name eventually jupiter and mercury
00:31:17.180
and saturn and all the rest and ultimately a really important special cluster of stuff
00:31:21.860
which some primates again later named earth okay so we're pretty far into the story now but we need
00:31:27.680
another two billion years or so before some of those atoms on that earth cluster got bored
00:31:33.500
and decided that they were going to become something else now i think that's kind of
00:31:37.620
impressive that they made it two billion years they must have a decent attention span i don't
00:31:42.120
think I would have made it 15 minutes as a hydrogen atom. And so they decided that they
00:31:46.980
were going to become something that could ooze and squish and divide and then taste and smell
00:31:53.620
and then maybe even someday write the next great American novel. So some of these particular clumps
00:32:00.020
of living stuff came up with the story that I just told you, right? In fact, this story changes a few
00:32:06.800
times a year, typically sometimes minor details, sometimes major. I remember in high school when
00:32:11.040
the story needed to be altered because we found out that the universe was 50% bigger than we
00:32:15.820
thought it was. Which if you're taking a test and you're off by 50%, usually that's an F.
00:32:22.000
Usually that's what it means. But the clumps of matter that tell this story are very confident
00:32:28.320
in their story. And so this story, this tale has rung in the ears and wormed its way into the
00:32:33.760
hearts of at least a few billion people in the last century or two. As this story goes, what even
00:32:39.960
are you? Well, you are a tiny speck of highly evolved stardust clinging to the skin of a fairly
0.55
00:32:48.280
pedestrian planet orbiting a medium-sized star in an average galaxy somewhere in a vast universe
00:32:53.180
that has no meaning in it whatsoever. You're an animal who's descended from animals, specifically
00:33:00.060
an advanced primate that we call Homo sapiens, which is just Latin for wise man, but the truth
00:33:23.500
You find yourself in this story on a particular story
00:33:35.760
that requires the most astonishing suspension of disbelief
00:33:41.380
and then jumped onto a highway overpass in Die Hard 4,
00:33:51.380
decided that they would organize themselves into planets and stars
00:33:55.280
and giraffes and frogs and theoretical physicists
00:33:57.740
and evolutionary biologists and poets and podcasters
00:34:17.500
What if you heard that story and you didn't just,
00:34:19.860
ah, okay, yeah, I'm gonna pass the test, learn and flush.
00:34:34.300
What if that's the story that you told yourself every day, or backing up a bit, what kind of
00:34:39.360
world do you think would result if you were to tell this story to, say, 50 million students
00:34:43.680
in public schools in the United States alone every year? What do you think happens when you teach men
0.97
00:34:50.920
that they are animals, come from animals, come from a singularity, come from quantum foam?
00:34:56.540
What kind of world would you expect people who deeply believe this story to make? What kind of
00:35:01.480
men would it make? What kind of women? Would it make men and women who have no idea what they are
0.98
00:35:06.620
for, who they are, and if they are actually for anything at all? Would it make a society that
00:35:13.280
ends up having no idea what a man and woman even is? What does that even mean? Would it make a
00:35:19.020
people who think that a man might even become a woman with the right surgical alchemy and
0.96
00:35:23.320
pharmaceutical elixirs? Don't some frogs change sex under the right environmental conditions? I saw
1.00
00:35:28.880
Jurassic Park. Why not Homo sapiens? But we're Christians, right? We're Christians. We don't
00:35:36.320
believe that story. And good news, it happens not to be true. It happens not to be a true story,
00:35:43.280
so it's a good start. But we're not off the hook yet in terms of story. There are other stories
00:35:48.240
that we might believe, stories that you'd find in the Christian section of Barnes & Noble,
0.97
00:35:52.640
stories you'll find stuffing the shelves of the average life way, right? Stories that are
00:35:57.220
in our circles probably far more popular than the one I just told it's the one I grew up with that
00:36:02.900
the world is getting worse every day worse and worse because it more or less belongs to Satan
00:36:08.320
it's more or less his so Christians might try to do some evangelizing and stuff but for the most
0.71
00:36:15.060
part pretty much nobody is going to believe you know narrow path and all that so I know that
00:36:19.720
sounds like bad news but good news you'll probably only have to put up with it for a few more months
00:36:47.240
God's going to rapture them off the planet
0.99
00:36:50.140
like the troops airlifted off that rooftop in Vietnam
0.99
00:36:52.560
huh. And then he'll be able to get, and this is where the story is important, then he'll be able
00:36:56.900
to get back to his main thing, which is all about a special zip code in the Middle East called Israel
00:37:02.100
and a special people who live here. They're God's special people. And even though they rejected and
00:37:06.560
crucified him and forced him to turn away for a time to work with the Gentiles, that was kind of
0.99
00:37:10.520
his plan B in this story, he'll be able to get the Gentiles safely out of the way, rapture up to
1.00
00:37:15.440
heaven so that he can get back to fixing up that really important piece of real estate in the
0.99
00:37:19.060
promised land again. Well, what if you believe that story? What if you, like me, I ravenously
00:37:26.680
read the Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. I finished one of them shortly before a mission
00:37:31.880
trip to Honduras, and it messed with me, man. I was like, Lord, please wait until I get married
00:37:38.120
at least. You know, like the greatest fear of the youth group evangelical in my world was getting
00:37:45.100
raptured his wedding day. I'll leave it at that. I'll leave it at that. You do the math.
00:37:54.960
And you all thought it if you grew up like I did. You all thought it.
00:37:59.620
So what if you believe that story? And again, I don't mean as a theological idea.
00:38:06.600
What if you really believe that? When Pastor Wilson says that theology comes out of your
00:38:12.940
fingertips. He's not talking about an option that, you know, Christians, hey, care about application
0.91
00:38:17.960
so that your theology comes out your fingertips. He's saying actually correctly that your theology,
00:38:23.160
whatever it is, is what actually comes out your fingertips. If I told you right now that an
00:38:28.680
intercontinental ballistic with, you know, MIRVs and nuclear warheads were on the way to this
00:38:34.260
building and it was going to arrive in 30 miles and blow a two-mile radius around this building,
00:38:56.540
Would you try to build institutions for the centuries?
00:39:14.780
Would you build Christian schools and universities?
0.85
00:39:26.760
You know, I just go, what do you really believe there?
00:39:30.180
Would you worry too much about leaving an inheritance
00:39:33.740
Or would you instead make your fourth pilgrimage to Israel
00:39:53.340
When you understand and tell this story rightly,
00:40:01.960
repeat in different chapters and sections of the book
00:40:05.560
as you watch the history unfold of nations and empires and peoples and realms, you'll notice
00:40:11.360
that they fall along covenantal lines. You'll start to notice that when peoples worship the Lord,
00:40:17.660
as the leaven of the gospel spreads through the land and transforms men and women and families
00:40:22.300
and cities and realms, that in those places, righteousness and peace and prosperity tend to
00:40:27.960
explode, that God still blesses his people along covenantal lines. Righteousness still really does
00:40:36.020
exalt a nation. I know that's in the book of Proverbs. Believe it or not, the Old Testament
00:40:42.200
still counts. It still counts. It still counts. You don't need to cut it out. Your back would
00:40:50.140
feel better carrying around a smaller Bible, but you still need the whole thing. Righteousness
00:40:54.740
really still does exalt a nation. But when they disobey and when they apostatize and trade their
00:41:00.960
god for new gods, the gods of the age, you see death and destruction and curse fall again and
00:41:05.880
again on covenantal lines. This is history. This is the great British empire rising to its Christian
00:41:11.420
zenith and then giving it all back and fading now into apostate oblivion where you could be arrested
0.86
00:41:16.440
for reading Romans 1 on a subway. Subways that a mere 30 years ago or less, I was riding as a kid,
00:41:23.280
we lived in England for a few years, and no such law existed. That's how quick it happens.
00:41:28.940
This is the Methodist church in Utah raising up generations only to give it all away for a seat
0.82
00:41:33.480
at the cheap, plastic, cool kids' table of feminist, sexual revolution culture.
00:41:40.520
So first, covenant theology matters because it teaches us how to read the book that God is
00:41:46.640
writing with history, which is another book he's writing. He didn't just write the scriptures,
00:41:50.360
he's also writing the story of all things and so locate our place in that story and live faithfully
00:41:56.900
in that story with the promise of blessing seen in history and with the warning of curse seen
00:42:04.480
as well but it also teaches us some things much closer to our grasp why does this matter well
00:42:10.200
secondly covenant theology matters because it teaches us that likely the most important thing
00:42:15.700
any of us will ever do is to believe what God says about our children and act like it.
00:42:22.460
That likely one of the most important things any of us will ever do is to believe what God says
00:42:27.680
about our children and act like it. See, there are two primary mechanisms by which the kingdom
00:42:32.180
of God grows and expands out like leaven through the lump of the world. Generally speaking,
00:42:36.200
conversion and covenant succession. Conversion is what happens when someone who's not been born
0.97
00:42:41.500
into a Christian home, is converted to Christ by the Spirit of God as they hear the gospel preached.
00:42:46.560
This is why we send missionaries to foreign lost peoples like Utah who have yet to be converted.
00:42:52.380
It's why Christians evangelize. It's conversion. Covenant succession is the biblical doctrine that
00:42:58.400
God ordinarily, here the word ordinarily, works his covenant faithfulness on down through generations
00:43:05.160
of Christians within families, and that that is what God has told us. Now, I'm not saying that
00:43:10.560
in covenant succession, you don't need conversion. Don't hear me say that. You need conversion,
00:43:14.860
you need regeneration and faith and new heart and all of those things. Our children need those
00:43:18.840
as well. But the covenantal pattern of God's working from Adam to Abraham to the new covenant
00:43:24.500
is not just believe and be saved, but believe and be saved, you and your household. It's not just,
00:43:30.800
and I'm quoting, by the way, I'm not interpreting. It's not just this promises to you, but it's this
00:43:35.260
promises to you and to your children and to all who are far off. Again, God tells us this. We're
00:43:41.860
not presuming here upon his grace. He has told us this. In Exodus 34, for example, we're told that
00:43:50.040
the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,
00:43:56.180
keeping steadfast love and forgiving iniquity and sin to the thousandth generation. Exodus 20 as
00:44:02.080
well. This covenantal pattern is demonstrated in the covenant with Abraham, which includes his
00:44:06.860
children in Genesis 3.15 and Romans 5. It's demonstrated in the covenant with Noah, which
00:44:11.420
includes his children in Genesis 6.18, 7.1 and 9.9. It's demonstrated in the covenant with Abraham,
00:44:16.880
which includes his children in Genesis 17.7. It's demonstrated in the covenant with Moses and Israel,
00:44:22.100
which includes their children in Exodus 20 and 34, Deuteronomy 4 and 6 and more. It's demonstrated
00:44:27.420
in the covenant with David, which includes his children in 2 Samuel 7, 12. It's reaffirmed,
00:44:31.980
as I just said, in New Covenant in Acts 2, 38 to 39. This pattern is affirmed in proverbial form
00:44:37.780
in Proverbs 22, 6, when Solomon says, train up a child in the way he should go. Even when he's old,
00:44:43.760
he will not depart from it. Let's not asterisk that until it means train up a child in the way
00:44:48.840
he should go and flip a coin that's a proverb but it means something and it doesn't mean the
00:44:58.140
opposite of what it says that's not how proverbs work it's affirmed in the requirements for elders
00:45:03.900
which demand that the children of elders be faithful it's evident as well in malachi chapter
00:45:09.400
two what does the prophet say god is seeking in marriage a holy seed godly children does god ask
00:45:15.860
us for that which he will not also freely give? No. God accomplishes in us, as John Piper loves
00:45:24.000
to say, he accomplishes in us what he requires of us. As Robert Rayburn puts it, covenant succession
00:45:30.440
is the purpose of God that his saving grace run in the lines of generations. I'm not here again
00:45:37.020
saying that our children don't need inward faith and regeneration. Of course they do.
00:45:41.360
But I'm saying that God delights to and has purpose to save the children of believers
00:45:46.540
ordinarily, and he has called us, their parents in particular, to be the particular means
00:45:56.000
So what I'm telling you is that covenant theology ought to lead you to the conclusion that one
00:46:01.460
of the most important things that you will ever do, likely the most important thing most
00:46:05.780
of us will ever do is to believe what God says about our children and then act like it. Did you
00:46:12.520
know that depending on what polls you believe, something like 80 to 90 percent of Christians
00:46:17.840
today were born in Christian families in the U.S.? If you were to go to the average church and say,
00:46:23.220
are you a Christian? Okay, were you born in a Christian home? 80 or 90 percent would say yes.
00:46:27.320
what i'm saying is this do you want christendom 2.0 do you know how it's going to happen
00:46:35.880
yes by evangelism yes to the conversion of the nations the conversion of family lines that have
00:46:42.760
never tasted the grace of god yet that's a glory that's a great glory but it's evangelism that
00:46:50.800
begins a new covenantal pattern in families this is how we disciple the nations it's that
00:46:56.220
covenant. This is why the psalmist says every family of the earth will turn.
00:47:01.980
Every individual unit of humanity will turn. Every family will turn. So do you want Christendom?
00:47:10.340
Then have babies, believe God, and obey God in raising them. I'm not talking about magic.
00:47:18.340
I'm talking about applied theology. I'm talking about applied theology. I'm talking about things
00:47:25.220
like give them what they are owed by from you do you know what they're owed from you your children
00:47:31.240
they're owed a godly father and a godly mother who worship the lord in spirit and truth in secret
00:47:37.080
and in public they're owed a father who would present them to the lord and pray for them
00:47:44.100
and earnestly seek their faith in god their fruitfulness before god
00:47:50.360
they're owed parents who would look at their children and say god has said of me to you that
00:47:56.540
i owe you a being raised up in the fear and discipline of the lord the paideia and new
00:48:03.860
thesia of the lord which sums up to this give them a christian education from the cradle on up
00:48:09.760
teach them how to think like a christian about everything from cicero to science to calculus
00:48:15.500
or their career. You owe that to your children. You don't owe them the thing that evangelicals
00:48:21.760
have been doing very unsuccessfully for generation after generation in recent memory, which is to
00:48:27.760
treat the Christian faith like the seasoning packet in a top ramen, where the bulk of the
00:48:32.960
thing has nothing to do with Christ. And so, you know, go to public school, learn about everything
00:48:38.180
and how everything works. And that whole story I just told, you're basically an animal come from
00:48:43.300
animals, but then when they get home, we're still not going to do anything. But then on Sunday,
00:48:49.160
but then on Sunday or Wednesday night, and then Sunday, we're going to go to the church
00:48:55.320
and we're going to leave you in a room with some underqualified teachers who don't know their
00:49:02.720
catechism. And you're going to get 45 solid minutes of seasoning packet, the Christian
0.95
00:49:08.580
seasoning packet. And it's going to change everything. It's going to change everything.
0.98
00:49:14.500
Well, Top Ramen's not that actually good, you know, good at all. Neither is the seasoning
00:49:17.400
packet that it comes with. But the point is that that's not how this works. The point is that they
00:49:21.980
are body and soul to belong to the Lord. And so give them a Christian education. It doesn't matter
00:49:27.780
what it takes. Give them a Christian education. Some of you are Charlotte Mason homeschoolers.
00:49:32.320
Some of you are Dorothy Sayers Trivium classical Christian school people. We have a classical
00:49:37.200
school at our church we have homeschoolers at our church but there's one thing that ordinarily
00:49:41.700
speaking meaning when that it's it's permitted by laws some cases where there's divorce and mass and
00:49:46.460
there's other problems that come up but ordinarily speaking it means that the pastors hear from
00:49:50.800
their pat the the congregants hear from their pastors know you may not send your children to
00:49:56.820
the public school you can't you're not allowed because of ephesians 6 and deuteronomy 6 you're
00:50:05.200
not allowed because of Proverbs 22.6. The principle is plain, Christian education. You can land it in
00:50:11.220
method in a thousand different ways, really faithfully. We don't argue a lot about that.
00:50:16.220
We have a friendly dinner debate. We don't argue about that. But they are owed a Christian
00:50:21.280
education. They're owed that from the earliest days. I want my children like Timothy. It says
00:50:27.560
that he learned the faith from his infancy. This is what it says. In the Proverbs, when it says,
00:50:33.260
I learned to trust the Lord at my mother's breast. That's how it is. That as my children grow up from
00:50:40.940
their mother's breast in a way appropriate to the age of that child, they are going to be taught
00:50:46.560
you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ who died and rose for you. Believe in him, be saved from your
00:50:52.700
sin, and then go and obey all that he commanded. And in ways appropriate to them as six months old
00:50:58.820
and 60 year olds and 16 year olds and 60 year olds, I hope that they continue and
00:51:03.080
trust that they do, because our God is a God who does not demand bricks without straw.
00:51:09.080
Build an inheritance for them, and don't squander it on RVs and vacation homes. You can have an RV
00:51:14.620
and a vacation home. That's fine. I'm not saying, but if you have to choose, and most of us probably
00:51:20.140
do, let's be honest, my main problem isn't that I have too much money. Now, every eye close,
00:51:28.040
every head bow, raise your hand if that is your problem, and we're going to direct you.
00:51:36.600
Again, God tells you, these are not suggestions.
00:51:41.400
They give an inheritance to their children's children.
00:51:49.440
Help them get a financial foothold in the place where you are.
00:52:09.660
Then pour yourself out when grandkids start to come
00:52:15.020
and know their God and his covenant faithfulness.
00:52:17.700
What I'm saying is basically when we have children
00:52:28.760
I know that somebody is going to write a blog post about this talk,
00:52:31.760
and they're going to say, where was the gospel centrality?
00:52:36.360
And I'm going to reply, first of all, it was at Joel Webin's conference.
00:52:44.140
But the second thing I'll say, do you mean the gospel of the kingdom of God
00:52:47.200
that sets captives free and starts new legacies to the thousandth generation
00:52:50.960
and families that were enslaved to demons and sexual sin and alcoholism
00:53:03.300
that actually shows up in marriages and parenting
00:53:11.240
It's okay if you put the majority of your energy
1.00
00:53:24.840
Or maybe you never plant a church, or maybe you never become an office holder in Christ's church,
00:53:42.960
and you're not a deacon, or you're not an elder, you don't pastor.
00:53:45.880
Maybe you don't go as a missionary to the New Hebrides, and we need those people.
00:53:49.300
if all you do is to faithfully build a christian household in christian faith having and loving
00:53:57.300
your children working a job to the glory of god to faithfully provide setting good food before
00:54:02.580
your children mothers three meals a day cooking to kids who aren't always that thankful cleaning
00:54:08.380
muddy clothing loving them and catechizing them and homeschooling them or taking them to school
00:54:12.980
and doing all of this day after day after day and you lay your head down on the last day of your
00:54:18.160
life on your pillow and you see some grandkids around you hopefully singing some psalms you're
00:54:23.760
not less in the kingdom than a missionary to papua new guinea you're not it's probably in fact going
00:54:30.280
to be the main thing all of us do and guess what that was god's idea that was god's idea remember
00:54:36.960
what he decided to do in his covenant story remember how he decided to take over the world
00:54:40.680
a baby and death by crucifixion that's what he did a baby and death by crucifixion not shock and awe
00:54:47.920
not humanly impressive things, not by eloquence or the wisdom of the world or human power. He
00:54:53.140
didn't trust in horses and chariots. He's going to continue working that way most of the time.
00:54:58.140
It's going to be ordinary Christian faithfulness leading to the conversion of the lost,
00:55:03.140
the conversion of our children in covenant succession. So may God give you the hearts
00:55:06.740
of your children. May you behold your great grandchildren before you lay your head down
00:55:11.520
in the grave, singing psalms over you. And let's pray. Our God and Father, we thank you that you
00:55:19.280
do not ask us what you don't richly provide for us in Christ and by your Spirit. Lord, we thank
00:55:25.860
you that you have not left us to wander in the wilderness of life with no instruction on how it
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is that we're to live. Lord, we thank you that you do not only save a people, but that you sanctify
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a people, that you don't just justify us, but you take us all the way to glory. Lord, we pray that
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you would train our hands for war, that you would train our hands for the good fight of the faith,
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that we would run with endurance day by day, that we would walk in good works like one footstep
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after another footstep through our day, choosing to lay our lives down for our people, for the lost,
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for our neighbor, that we would be a kind of people who would choose to die so that we might
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live, to die to our own preferences in 10,000 blue-collar ways that nobody ever sees or writes
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a book about. Lord, help us to love our children well. Pray that you would richly bless these
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families here with many children and that you would bless them with the grit and the steel in
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their spine to put their back into it as they love and raise these children in the faith. Lord, we
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thank you for your great and mighty promises. We put our trust in them and in your faithful character,
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not in our hands, not in the flesh, not in horses or chariots.