The NXR Podcast - THE CONFERENCE - Covenant Theology - Brian Sauvé

00:00:00.000 Joel asked me to speak on the centrality of covenant theology in the mission of God and in

00:00:06.020 seeing the kind of Christianity established that Christ says will leaven the world. And so that is

00:00:12.500 exactly what we're going to do. We're going to talk about the God who makes and the God who keeps

00:00:16.240 his covenant. We're going to talk about why that matters for us and for our children, for all who

00:00:21.340 are far off, and why the story that we believe we are in matters and matters deeply. So let's begin.

00:00:28.220 let's ask for the Lord's help and we'll get to work. Our Father in heaven, we give you thanks

00:00:32.940 that you are an almighty God who makes covenant with your people and keeps your covenant. We give

00:00:39.240 you thanks that you are abounding in steadfast love, that you're slow to anger, that you have

00:00:44.260 great mercy towards us, and that it's not an ethereal mercy, but one that you have demonstrated

00:00:49.580 in history towards us through Christ and by your spirit. So help us now, we pray in Jesus' name.

00:00:55.420 Amen. Well, a few years ago, a member of my church out in Ogden, Utah, Refuge Church, is the church

00:01:02.100 that I help pastor out there in northern Utah, found one of those decorative plates that you've

00:01:07.560 probably seen on the wall of your grandmother's, your great-grandmother's, maybe your mom's house,

00:01:12.560 those ones with the artsy prints on them that are not to be used under any circumstances as an

00:01:17.820 actual plate. And this one, which turned up in an antique store just right on the main historic

00:01:23.460 Main Street, down the street from our church, featured an illustration of three church buildings,

00:01:29.240 historic church buildings on the front. And the reason that it caught their eyes so quickly is

00:01:34.620 that one of the churches, they instantly recognized, hey, that's my church. That's the church building

00:01:40.040 that we meet in, which is a historic brick church building that we purchased about eight years ago

00:01:46.700 and enjoy meeting in to this day. So they bought the plate, which I'm thankful they did before

00:01:52.760 anybody else got a hold of it. And now it sits in my office. I hung it on the wall as a reminder of

00:02:00.700 important lessons. And here's what I mean by that. Some of the first Protestant missionaries

00:02:05.320 to bring the gospel to our area of northern Utah were the Methodists. Utah is the only state in

00:02:12.780 the union that I'm aware of, at least, that has never experienced majority Christian populace. 0.98

00:02:18.140 It's the only one. I mean, I would be surprised if it ever even got above 10% or 15% in its entire history. 0.95

00:02:25.100 But the Methodists arrived with Reverend G.M. Pierce by railroad on June 28, 1870,

00:02:31.600 and Reverend Pierce conducted the first Methodist worship service right there in the terminal,

00:02:38.020 which makes me think that he's probably my kind of guy.

00:02:41.340 For a few generations after that, the Methodists labored in the rocky soil of Mormon country.

00:02:46.800 ultimately they established several thriving congregations and they ended up building three

00:02:52.380 beautiful churches that are now on the historic registry the ones that still stand both in the

00:02:57.580 state and in the nation one in corinne utah in 1870 one in salt lake city in 1906 and finally the one

00:03:04.960 that we reside in today in ogden in 1929 and it really is a beautiful building people that don't

00:03:16.800 So, we were thankful to the Lord because we were looking for something cheaper than the

00:03:34.760 mattress warehouse when we found this church. 1.00

00:03:38.700 It's one of the benefits of being in Mormon country is that there are not enough Christians 0.99

00:03:41.760 to fight over the Christian real estate.

00:03:43.300 at its zenith in the 1950s the congregation that met in our building had something like 400 plus

00:03:51.740 families in attendance now they had a boiler heating no air conditioning at this point it

00:03:56.880 gets over 100 in august i don't know how they did it and that's a very significant number for a

00:04:01.420 railroad town like ours again in a state that's never enjoyed a majority christian populace at

00:04:06.520 any point in its history the church grew so large in fact that they ended up purchasing several

00:04:11.820 of the parcels around the building, the adjoining lots, and they ended up building an entire

00:04:16.800 educational wing and fellowship hall onto the building, along with a lot of other major

00:04:20.980 renovations. Unfortunately, some of them were done in the 1960s, and so they're hideously ugly

00:04:25.200 when they had more engineers than architects in the 1960s. The plate, though, that my congregant

00:04:32.500 found was commissioned in 1970, and it was a commemorative plate for the centennial of their

00:04:39.200 arrival, the 100-year mark of that first minister arriving on the train there in Utah to the Beehive

00:04:45.000 State. And so you might be asking now, okay, that sounds like they're doing great. How did we end up

00:04:49.100 with this building? Did they outgrow it? You know, did they just, they had to build something bigger

00:04:53.740 and give up their beautiful little church building? Well, no, because right at the zenith of their

00:04:59.320 growth, as the nation at large entered into the first stages of what we now look on as the sexual

00:05:06.440 revolution, their denomination began to slide towards liberalism along with the culture. Maybe

00:05:12.160 a few years behind the culture, but they were on the same track. And so it wasn't long before they

00:05:17.880 began to ordain women, and then they began to, you know, tolerate all sorts of things in their

00:05:22.780 organization. Like maybe, sure, you can't technically affirm a gay marriage there, but, you know, Jesus

00:05:28.540 befriended tax collectors and sinners, right? So we're really just being like the Lord and welcoming

00:05:33.320 our LGBTQ plus brothers and sisters, right? Without judgment? Doesn't that not follow?

00:05:40.400 Well, the story of the Methodists in Ogden is as predictable as it is ancient. It's a story that we

00:05:46.160 could tell a million times through history. We could go all the way back, in fact, to Revelation

00:05:50.260 chapter 2 with the church at Thyatira. When Jesus, the one who walks among the seven golden lampstands,

00:05:58.500 strode into that church, what did he have to say to them? Well, this is what he said. He says,

00:06:02.280 I know your works, Revelation 2 verse 19, your love and faith and service and patient endurance,

00:06:09.780 and that your latter works exceed the first. But I have this against you, that you tolerate that

00:06:14.840 woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess and is teaching and seducing my servants to practice 1.00

00:06:20.600 sexual immorality and to eat food sacrificed to idols. I gave her time to repent, but she refuses 0.99

00:06:27.120 to repent of her sexual immorality behold I will throw her onto a sickbed and those who commit 0.95

00:06:33.300 adultery with her I will throw into great tribulation unless they repent of her works 1.00

00:06:37.500 and I will strike her children dead and all the churches will know that I am he who searches mind 0.99

00:06:43.020 and heart and I will give to each of you according to your works but to the rest of you in Thyatira 1.00

00:06:48.240 who do not hold this teaching who have not learned what some will call the deep things of Satan

00:06:52.580 to you I say I do not lay on you any other burden only hold fast what you have until I come

00:06:59.700 the one who conquers and who keeps my works until the end to him I will give authority over the

00:07:04.940 nations and he will rule them with a rod of iron as when earth and pots are broken in pieces even

00:07:10.920 as I myself have received authority from my father and I will give him the morning star he who has an

00:07:15.900 ear let him hear what the spirit says to the churches much like the church at Thyatira there

00:07:21.340 was certainly faithful and zealous brothers and sisters in the midst of the congregation that had

00:07:25.840 labored to raise that beautiful building on 26th and Jefferson. There were debates in the

00:07:31.740 denomination. There were those who disagreed with the denominational leadership and fought

00:07:36.160 the current of liberalism that seemed to be sweeping their church away. But ultimately,

00:07:41.460 and as the years wore on, those who would fight lost, and rather than seeing the lost converted

00:07:47.600 and discipled, their attempts to pander to the culture only made the church grow emptier by the

00:07:53.620 year. And so finally, not long ago, less than 20 years ago, with the building falling into disrepair

00:07:59.260 around them, the lady pastors at the helm decided to sell that they were going to liquidate the

00:08:05.540 inheritance and try to scrape out enough money that they could build one of those metal buildings 1.00

00:08:09.540 that you can build for about $18. At least in 2006, you could build it for about $18. Now it's

00:08:13.980 about $18 million, in Marriott Slaterville, which is about 20 minutes north of us.

00:08:19.600 And they're still out there today.

00:08:20.680 Their website, you could go on it.

00:08:22.060 It features invitations to such liturgical wonders as Paws in the Pew Sunday, Bring Your

00:08:27.940 Pets to Church Day, which is an offering to attract revival, I'm assuming, in the dying

00:08:33.960 congregation.

00:08:35.360 I've looked at the live stream out of a morbid curiosity, and when they panned it, saw about

00:08:40.680 15 or 20 gray heads still there on a Sunday.

00:08:43.000 but you won't hear something in particular in that church

00:08:46.060 through the microphone.

00:08:47.640 Something that would almost overwhelm our attempts

00:08:49.640 to live stream our service should we attempt such a thing.

00:08:52.780 It's the children.

00:08:54.260 There's no children.

00:08:55.500 There's no fussing.

00:08:56.300 There's no squeaking.

00:08:57.000 There's no crayons hitting the floor

00:08:58.200 and rolling all the way down to the front

00:08:59.600 while I'm attempting to preach through the Gospel of John.

00:09:02.400 It's never happened.

00:09:04.780 Every time I look over in my office

00:09:06.460 and see that plate there to my left on my office wall,

00:09:08.880 I think about God's covenant.

00:09:10.660 I think about blessing and curse.

00:09:14.140 I think about the God that keeps both aspects of his covenant, both the blessing and the

00:09:19.940 curse. 1.00

00:09:20.700 And I think about that ugly metal building in rural Marriott Slaterville with the elderly 0.98

00:09:26.080 women pretending to pastor it, frantically searching for ways to keep the light on in 0.97

00:09:31.560 a church whose lampstand is all but extinguished.

00:09:34.380 But I think as well about the faithful saints, the Methodists, we're different.

00:09:38.960 Look, I'm not a Methodist, I've never tempted, I'm not a son of a Methodist, never been tempted

00:09:42.820 to be a Methodist, but I do think with thankfulness about the labor of those saints in the 19th

00:09:49.700 century, in the early 20th century, as they labored brick by brick and dollar by dollar

00:09:54.540 to build the church that now rings with the singing of Psalms and saints every Sunday

00:09:59.680 in Ogden, Utah, and the shuffling and fidgeting of children, like 150 of them strong on a

00:10:05.080 Sunday, we might have 165 adults and 100, you know, bazillion children. And I hope that those

00:10:12.920 saints who built that building, at least some of them praise God from the great cloud of witnesses

00:10:17.960 as they see the things that they built in faithfulness, were not wholly lost, that God

00:10:21.920 didn't write the story that way, that God's blessing may have taken a left turn from the

00:10:27.160 track as their successors left faithfulness and turned around and said, we'll go with the culture,

00:10:32.400 that God said, well, you're not gonna take

00:10:34.680 the inheritance with you.

00:10:36.260 And he took it from them and he gave it to us.

00:10:39.100 And we're thankful for that.

00:10:40.520 There's a warning in that

00:10:41.520 and there's blessing in that as well.

00:10:45.160 Now that story, and you probably see why,

00:10:48.000 story I just told you is a picture

00:10:49.700 of why covenant theology matters

00:10:51.760 and why it matters deeply.

00:10:54.020 It's not just a confessional,

00:10:55.920 reformed theological exercise

00:10:58.060 that we do for some kind of personal entertainment.

00:11:02.400 And so what I'd like to do now is to help us understand why that is,

00:11:05.280 to understand what covenant theology is, why it matters,

00:11:09.460 and why it ought to put cast-iron strength into the spines of Christian men and women

00:11:14.760 in the work that God has set before us, namely the work of baptizing the nations.

00:11:20.600 And though this is a work that is far too great for a single generation or two or 23,

00:11:26.220 it is a work that might be undertaken by a God who keeps his covenant to a thousand generations and beyond.

00:11:33.100 All of us have come into this story.

00:11:34.860 You, me, every one of us have come into this story

00:11:37.320 that God is telling for a very brief time.

00:11:40.760 All of us will do some work,

00:11:43.340 a few thousand good works that he set before us

00:11:45.760 to walk in Ephesians 2.10,

00:11:47.600 and then we'll leave the stage

00:11:48.960 and the story that God is telling will continue

00:11:51.520 and God will continue telling it.

00:11:53.720 But because our covenant keeping God

00:11:55.980 is our covenant keeping God,

00:11:57.880 we have a strong hope not only for ourselves

00:12:00.180 but our children's children

00:12:01.300 in continuing to see that thousand-generation mission unfold.

00:12:06.240 So let's begin now with that first and most obvious question.

00:12:09.340 If we're going to talk about covenant theology,

00:12:11.020 the first thing that Joel needed was a Presbyterian.

00:12:14.200 And so here I am.

00:12:16.200 That was a joke. 0.94

00:12:17.780 I'm going to speak some Presbyterian in this service,

00:12:20.880 but you're all welcome to translate it into Particular Baptist.

00:12:23.880 I don't know what that language would be called.

00:12:26.440 If people from France speak French, maybe Particular Baptists speak potluck. 0.99

00:12:30.500 Let's call it that.

00:12:31.300 This is one of my favorite, yeah, I grew up Baptist, potlucks are amazing, we have one

00:12:36.980 every Tuesday before Psalms thing.

00:12:38.580 But I'm going to try to tell this story in a way that's not obnoxiously Presbyterian,

00:12:43.680 because this is a shared inheritance that we have with some disagreements about some

00:12:48.280 particulars, but this is our story, this isn't the Presbyterian story or the Anglican story

00:12:52.840 or the Lutheran story or the Reformed Baptist story, this is our story.

00:12:56.800 So what is covenant theology?

00:12:58.660 Well, we should probably start by understanding what a covenant is.

00:13:03.780 A covenant is a binding compact between at least two parties to keep certain conditions.

00:13:10.420 And with those conditions being kept comes blessing, and with the failure to keep those conditions comes curse.

00:13:17.860 A covenant is a legal agreement, and all of us are involved in many of them in our day-to-day lives and experiences.

00:13:24.920 For example, if you purchased a home using a mortgage, then you are involved in a mortgage covenant.

00:13:29.720 Maybe they didn't call it that, but you're involved in one.

00:13:32.640 There are rules for each side of the deal, the conditions of the covenant for you and the bank.

00:13:37.740 If you agree to submit to certain rules about the value of the home you're buying against the total amount,

00:13:42.600 then you'll pay the principal and interest, which is a separate debate that maybe we could have a rousing debate someday about usury,

00:13:48.640 but we'll just talk about reality right now.

00:13:51.320 You pay the P&I every month on a certain date,

00:13:54.140 and then you get access to a large amount of money

00:13:56.700 to purchase a home you otherwise couldn't.

00:13:58.380 It's a blessing.

00:13:59.460 And if you keep making that payment,

00:14:00.960 you get to keep living there.

00:14:02.560 It's a blessing.

00:14:04.740 They can't raise the rate arbitrarily

00:14:06.580 outside of the conditions of the covenant.

00:14:08.200 That's a blessing in most cases.

00:14:11.700 But if you stop paying,

00:14:12.920 if you break the terms of the covenant,

00:14:14.840 then there are curses.

00:14:16.020 They can foreclose on you.

00:14:17.140 They can take your home.

00:14:18.120 They can ruin your credit.

00:14:19.060 they can force you into bankruptcy. So this covenant between you and the bank is a binding

00:14:24.400 compact that initiates a relationship between you and the bank with certain laws or conditions,

00:14:30.600 with blessings for keeping those conditions, and curses for failing to. Biblically speaking,

00:14:37.140 covenants between God and man tend to have these five characteristics. Number one, they entail

00:14:41.880 relationship with God. Number two, they bring blessing to the ones who keep the duties or

00:14:47.440 obligations of the covenant. Number three, they bring curses to those who break those obligations

00:14:53.560 or fail in those duties. Number four, they ultimately point to Christ and his work.

00:14:59.600 And then number five, they include the one in the covenant and their children,

00:15:03.680 meaning the obligations and its attendant blessings and curses are typically passed on

00:15:08.920 in some sense to the children of the one in the covenant. At its most basic level, that's what

00:15:14.240 a covenant is. The reason that this is so important to understand, and hence why thousands and

00:15:21.240 thousands of pages and volumes of books have been written with covenant theology somewhere in the

00:15:25.740 title. I have some on my shelf. It would stretch for thousands of pages, just that section on

00:15:30.820 covenant theology. The reason this is important is that God orders history from eternity past to

00:15:37.580 eternity future and relates to his creatures through covenants. We can't understand God's

00:15:44.160 interaction with us or with his creation without understanding covenants. Though God makes and

00:15:51.320 keeps many covenants with man throughout scripture, including covenants with Adam, Noah, Moses, and

00:15:56.060 Israel, Abraham, David, Ezra, and beyond, it's helpful to see his covenantal working unfolding

00:16:02.520 through three major covenants which order all of history and God's relationship to humanity. These

00:16:09.500 are three covenants that reformed theologians of just about every stripe will point to. They're

00:16:14.200 often referred to as the covenant of redemption, number one, the covenant of works or life or

00:16:19.640 creation depending on who you ask, number two, and the covenant of grace, number three. The covenant

00:16:25.800 of redemption wasn't made between God and man. It was made in eternity past within the divine

00:16:31.720 persons of our triune God. And this is the covenant where God determines before creation

00:16:37.480 even begins to save a people from their sins and for himself. And so Father, Son, and Spirit

00:16:43.620 covenant together to save a people through Christ and by the Spirit to the glory of the Father,

00:16:50.220 even from eternity past, with names and details and method and means all foretold beforehand.

00:16:57.680 God determined he would do this

00:16:59.200 before he created a single quark or Adam.

00:17:02.460 The second covenant is that covenant of works

00:17:05.360 or life or creation is the covenant that explains

00:17:08.960 why the world is in the condition that it is today.

00:17:12.700 Why is the world today in bondage to sin and death?

00:17:16.380 Why are human beings born captive to sin?

00:17:19.500 The answer to that question is a covenantal answer.

00:17:23.240 Well, this is the covenant of works between God and Adam,

00:17:25.940 where Adam and his progeny are promised eternal life and blessing

00:17:29.520 upon condition of perfect obedience.

00:17:32.620 And I can't say that without, in my head,

00:17:34.400 starting to sing the catechism song.

00:17:36.280 Upon condition of perfect obedience.

00:17:38.660 But some of you kids understand what I'm talking about.

00:17:42.560 It's condition upon perfect obedience to God's commands,

00:17:45.160 like especially don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

00:17:49.400 And commands like take dominion and multiply,

00:17:51.840 and I'm giving you dominion over the fish of the sea

00:17:54.360 and the birds of the air and over all things.

00:17:56.020 So go and take dominion.

00:17:58.680 Adam failed the test, as Joel spoke of.

00:18:02.240 He sinned and he fell.

00:18:03.420 And importantly, the covenant had implications again,

00:18:06.120 not just for himself, but for his children after him.

00:18:10.600 In the covenant of works, Adam represented mankind itself,

00:18:14.100 and so mankind fell with him.

00:18:16.180 That's the point that Paul's making in Romans 5, 12 to 19.

00:18:20.180 We select a few portions of that passage here

00:18:23.280 and just read those portions.

00:18:24.960 It says, sin came into the world through one man

00:18:27.880 and death through sin.

00:18:30.200 And so death spread to all men because all sinned.

00:18:33.100 Many died through one man's trespass.

00:18:35.180 The judgment following one trespass brought condemnation.

00:18:38.600 Because of one man's trespass,

00:18:40.780 death reigned through that one man.

00:18:42.940 One trespass led to condemnation for all men. 0.94

00:18:47.580 Everybody that came from Adam.

00:18:49.060 It wasn't just Adam and God.

00:18:50.180 It was Adam and God and his children.

00:18:51.940 and this can be somewhat alien to us this is one of the reasons why covenant theology seems quite

00:18:57.840 simple but it can be sometimes hard for us to really grab a hold of in our day this idea of

00:19:04.760 covenant headship that a covenant head has implications in his obedience and disobedience

00:19:12.160 not just on himself but to his children and not just if his children see him obeying or disobeying

00:19:18.820 Adam's children weren't there, and they still bore the brunt.

00:19:22.540 It's not mere imitation.

00:19:23.760 This is not mere sociology.

00:19:25.820 This is a deep theological principle that God has worked into the foundations of all things.

00:19:32.760 Adam's covenant breaking would affect the entire human race.

00:19:37.620 But we need to be careful here before we quickly say that doesn't sound right.

00:19:41.560 Because without that paradigm, believe it or not, you and I would have no hope.

00:19:45.860 because without the possibility

00:19:48.080 of this kind of covenant representation,

00:19:50.360 then how could Christ represent us in his righteousness?

00:19:55.200 How could he make a new humanity after his own likeness?

00:19:59.660 How could his righteousness be counted to us

00:20:02.340 if we say, well, Adam's sin can't be counted to me.

00:20:05.420 I wasn't there.

00:20:06.820 Well, were you there when Jesus obeyed God

00:20:08.760 from his conception to his death, burial, and resurrection?

00:20:12.280 Were you there?

00:20:13.180 Were you coaching him?

00:20:14.560 Don't do it, Jesus.

00:20:15.860 Don't give in to temptation.

00:20:18.180 Obviously not.

00:20:20.080 Covenant representation. 0.98

00:20:21.900 Christ makes a new humanity from the sinful sons of Adam.

00:20:25.360 So covenant representation is what explains this question that maybe has baffled you before

00:20:30.960 about what one man's sin at a tree 6,000 years ago has to do with me.

00:20:35.560 What does that have anything to do with me?

00:20:38.260 Well, you better be thankful it has something to do with you

00:20:41.420 because one man's obedience and sacrifice at another tree 2,000 years ago

00:20:45.320 is your only hope. Romans 5 again, same passage, but without the removals that I made.

00:20:53.220 If because of one man's trespass, Romans 5, 17, death reigned through that one man, much more

00:20:59.940 will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life

00:21:05.240 through the one man, Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men,

00:21:10.660 or all men so one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men for as by one

00:21:16.920 man's disobedience the many were made sinners so by the one man's obedience the many will be made

00:21:23.220 righteous though all humanity is imputed with the guilt of adam a new humanity is imputed the

00:21:30.640 righteousness of christ by grace and through faith and this brings us to the third covenant

00:21:36.000 which is the covenant of grace. The covenant of grace is the outworking in history of that

00:21:42.420 covenant of redemption that God said, I'm going to do this. The covenant of grace is him doing it

00:21:47.440 in history. It's the father actually, and in history, saving a people for himself

00:21:53.200 through the son and by the spirit. The essence of this covenant is the same across time. If you are

00:22:00.240 saved it is by this covenant is what i'm saying there's not another way if you're saved whether

00:22:07.120 you're abraham believing god in genesis 17 or paul believing god in the book of acts or you know

00:22:13.800 bill and joe and cindy and susan and sarah believing god today you're saved through the work

00:22:18.720 of christ by the covenant of grace the covenant of grace and this is where i'm going to speak

00:22:23.320 presbyterian for a minute feel free to translate has two basic administrations we could say

00:22:28.440 the old and the new. It begins to unfold immediately after the fall of Adam in the

00:22:35.140 garden with the promise that the seed of the woman would ultimately crush the head of the serpent

00:22:40.500 and though this promise is repeated and filled out and renewed in the preceding covenants in

00:22:46.040 scripture with Noah and Abraham and Moses and David and Ezra and Israel all of them look to

00:22:51.300 Christ and contain the seed of the same promise which would reach its final fulfillment in a

00:22:56.740 beautiful form in the new covenant, which we could call the final form of the covenant of grace.

00:23:02.280 I know some of you disagreed with some parts of that because you're a Reformed Baptist again.

00:23:06.520 Don't lose track. Don't start arguing with me in your head and miss the next 35 minutes. 1.00

00:23:11.140 You can do that later, but for now, just stay with me. I understand. That's the heart of covenant

00:23:15.940 theology, though, for all of us, that history is this one great unfolding story of redemption

00:23:22.420 and glory that is written by the hand of the great playwright, who is God himself.

00:23:29.600 It's a story in which God made man to be his kings and priests on earth, his royal vicegerents,

00:23:37.260 fearfully and wonderfully made, bearers of his own divine image.

00:23:41.360 This story, though, is not just a story of rainbows and kittens.

00:23:45.960 It's a story that doesn't shy away from the pain and darkness of the world.

00:23:50.760 It would be a useless story if it did.

00:23:53.940 It would be a useless story if it had nothing to say about suffering.

00:23:56.600 No, this is a story that makes direct eye contact with suffering.

00:24:01.620 Because man, who was created to be a crown of good and glory atop God's world, fell.

00:24:06.740 And so sons became rebels and brigands and slaves.

00:24:11.300 Man, who was made for glory, is capable still of horrors beyond comprehension

00:24:16.660 and swiftly carries out those horrors in history.

00:24:19.940 God's kings and priests ally themselves with the wicked dragon.

00:24:25.500 And so the story also recounts the long, slow decline of man

00:24:29.780 and the world that he's made us to govern

00:24:32.680 as man rejected the fountain of living water that is God himself

00:24:36.720 and instead hewed out for himself broken cisterns which hold no water.

00:24:41.320 Man, who was made to serve his God,

00:24:43.500 becomes enslaved to dark and demonic powers and his own passions

00:24:46.640 and fell creatures in the dark.

00:24:48.380 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.

00:25:02.520 Thank you very much.

00:25:04.600 But this story doesn't just paint with a single color on that side either.

00:25:07.420 It's not just a crayon box with a lone black crayon rattling around the bottom.

00:25:13.320 The story has suffering, but the story also has bright white.

00:25:16.200 a white writer faithful and true white wins in this story have you read revelation 21 for example

00:25:24.840 if you have read revelation 21 then you follow john the revelator as you know death is drug out

00:25:31.380 into the shed like old yeller and a single shot rings out and death dies you've seen that part

00:25:37.760 if you've read the prophet ezekiel then you've watched where a valley of dusty bones puts on

00:25:45.100 new flesh and walks in joyful life again. This covenantal story tells us that the writer who is

00:25:52.880 faithful and true cuts down the corrupter, the ancient liar, with the sword of his mouth. So in

00:25:58.420 this story, we do see God's good creation corrupted by sin, yes. In the pages of scripture, there are

00:26:04.600 blacker blacks than in any horror movie that you'll find. Don't forget that. Again, Joel made 1.00

00:26:11.740 this clear. We're post-millennialists. That doesn't mean that we're rainbows and kittens

00:26:16.260 and Thomas Kinkade paintings pasted to our glasses and everything we look at. We're like,

00:26:20.880 I'm post-millennial. That'll be fine. Well, no. Lamentation gets a whole book in the Bible.

00:26:29.920 Righteous Job sits there for the better part of 36 chapters, scraping his festering boils

00:26:36.360 with potsherds while his wife tells him to curse God and die, and he laments the death of his

00:26:43.620 children at the hands of the devil himself. Lamentation happens, but in this story,

00:26:52.600 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,

00:27:56.040 who devours the world in death

00:27:57.880 with a baby and crucifixion.

00:28:01.380 That's what he says.

00:28:03.200 I need to take back the whole world.

00:28:05.820 It's all corrupted.

00:28:06.780 Every molecule, every human being

00:28:09.000 has made himself an enemy of mine.

00:28:10.860 How am I gonna take this world back?

00:28:12.760 God thinks.

00:28:14.340 I know what I'll do. 1.00

00:28:16.080 I'll send a baby and he'll be killed 1.00

00:28:19.860 and that'll do it. 1.00

00:28:23.740 God could have done it all

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,

00:28:32.520 but by entering into the suffering himself.

00:28:35.680 So why does this matter?

00:28:37.300 What does this have to do with Christendom 2.0?

00:28:40.060 The title of this conference, right?

00:28:41.660 That's what we're here for, Christendom 2.0,

00:28:43.940 some blueprints for that.

00:28:46.380 There are probably 10,000 reasons

00:28:48.420 why this story matters for that,

00:28:50.360 and I'm going to give you two.

00:28:52.540 So it's kind of underwhelming.

00:28:54.860 I'll give you two out of 10,000, because Joel only gave me an hour.

00:29:00.340 Two reasons.

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.

00:29:12.020 One reason is going to be about everything.

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.

00:29:30.200 So why does all this matter?

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.

00:29:47.080 And stories are inescapable things.

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

00:30:00.540 came from, where everything is going.

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

00:30:08.760 choose one.

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.

00:30:24.900 It was quantum foam.

00:30:27.240 This nothing foam, though, it was unstable, and so it tunneled.

00:30:31.160 And when I say tunneled, I mean it exploded.

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

00:33:06.120 of which has yet to be seen, right?

00:33:08.700 Apparently, we got to name things.

00:33:10.320 So, you know, if you get to name everything,

00:33:11.660 then you can call yourself,

00:33:12.780 what should we call the things that are like,

00:33:14.640 let's call them geniuses.

00:33:16.460 Let's call the name of that class of being,

00:33:18.660 those are geniuses.

00:33:20.560 In this story, the world is just stuff, right?

00:33:23.500 You find yourself in this story on a particular story

00:33:27.620 where the only actors on the stage

00:33:29.040 are various atoms bumping into each other

00:33:31.120 in a random and unguided and meaningless way.

00:33:33.720 And in my opinion, in a plot twist

00:33:35.760 that requires the most astonishing suspension of disbelief

00:33:38.940 since John McClane surfed on an F-22

00:33:41.380 and then jumped onto a highway overpass in Die Hard 4,

00:33:45.760 all of those atoms, for no real reason at all,

00:33:48.820 because there is no reason in this story,

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

00:34:00.760 and ice cream parlor workers,

00:34:02.060 and then all of you sitting here right now.

00:34:04.300 Now, so in this story, what are you?

00:34:06.740 You are an animal, nothing more.

00:34:10.580 So be a good one, whatever that means.

00:34:14.000 So I repeat the question.

00:34:15.400 What if you believed that story?

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.

00:34:22.260 What if you believed that story?

00:34:25.220 What if you heard that and you said,

00:34:26.780 that's it, that is the truth.

00:34:29.240 That is the way, that is the life.

00:34:31.300 I will live by that story.

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

00:36:24.580 maybe a few years at the outside

00:36:26.700 what with all the stuff that's going on

00:36:28.820 at Gog and Magog, I mean Russia 0.88

00:36:30.560 and what with the chips that

00:36:32.620 Elon is trying to put

00:36:34.680 in our foreheads, Mark of the Beast

00:36:36.180 so there's just no way it's going to last

00:36:38.520 so bad news, it's getting worse

00:36:40.580 by the day, okay

00:36:41.760 but good news, good news 1.00

00:36:44.720 when there's only about 37 Christians 0.99

00:36:46.700 left 1.00

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,

00:38:38.240 and then I just kept giving the talk?

00:38:40.500 None of you would think I believed that

00:38:42.400 because what would be coming out of my life

00:38:45.420 wasn't I think we need to all leave,

00:38:47.600 but let's talk more about covenant theology.

00:38:51.240 What comes out your fingertips

00:38:52.660 is what you actually believe.

00:38:53.920 What if you believe that story in that way?

00:38:56.540 Would you try to build institutions for the centuries?

00:39:01.400 Would you try to build institutions

00:39:03.740 that might need buildings that by themselves

00:39:06.300 take 300 years to build?

00:39:08.240 carved in rock that says, to the glory of God?

00:39:14.780 Would you build Christian schools and universities? 0.85

00:39:17.360 And I'm not saying that my dispensationalist

00:39:19.560 brothers and sisters don't do these things.

00:39:21.300 They do.

00:39:21.640 Johnny Mac has built, what, 15 schools?

00:39:23.760 Like, the man has an empire.

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

00:39:32.260 to your children's children? 0.51

00:39:33.740 Or would you instead make your fourth pilgrimage to Israel

00:39:36.560 to tour the Temple Mount?

00:39:38.240 with the money that you could have left.

00:39:41.320 The stories that we tell deeply matter,

00:39:43.880 and that's why we need to tell the right one.

00:39:45.880 We need to tell the true story

00:39:47.720 of God's unfolding covenant of salvation

00:39:50.660 from eternity to eternity.

00:39:53.340 When you understand and tell this story rightly,

00:39:55.920 you're learning how to read history.

00:39:58.720 And you begin to see that story shape,

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

00:45:52.880 by which this happens, humanly speaking.

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.

00:51:30.920 I'm just kidding.

00:51:34.200 I'm just kidding.

00:51:35.420 Build an inheritance.

00:51:36.600 Again, God tells you, these are not suggestions.

00:51:39.360 Do you want to be a godly man?

00:51:40.500 Well, here's what godly men do.

00:51:41.400 They give an inheritance to their children's children.

00:51:43.460 Of faith, yes.

00:51:44.700 Of wisdom, yes.

00:51:45.960 Of training, yes.

00:51:47.020 And of financial help.

00:51:49.440 Help them get a financial foothold in the place where you are.

00:51:54.460 Help them get a house.

00:51:56.260 Help them get started. 0.98

00:51:57.260 Help them marry well. 0.63

00:51:59.060 Help them live with you until they are.

00:52:02.560 Help them.

00:52:03.980 Help grandparents.

00:52:04.820 Help pay for the kids' school. 0.98

00:52:06.520 Catechize them.

00:52:09.660 Then pour yourself out when grandkids start to come

00:52:12.240 and hope to see your grandkids worship

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

00:52:19.740 is to put your back into it.

00:52:23.460 Put your back into it.

00:52:25.400 Put your back into it.

00:52:26.360 I know that's unpopular in today's age.

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.

00:52:41.240 What did you expect?

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

00:52:54.840 and a million other evil, wicked,

00:52:58.040 soul-crushing humanity-destroying vices, 0.99

00:53:01.400 the gospel that starts new legacies

00:53:03.300 that actually shows up in marriages and parenting

00:53:06.620 and finances and legacy.

00:53:09.840 Put your back into it.

00:53:11.240 It's okay if you put the majority of your energy 1.00

00:53:13.340 into building a Christian house

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

00:55:31.260 is that we're to live. Lord, we thank you that you do not only save a people, but that you sanctify

00:55:35.940 a people, that you don't just justify us, but you take us all the way to glory. Lord, we pray that

00:55:41.720 you would train our hands for war, that you would train our hands for the good fight of the faith,

00:55:46.680 that we would run with endurance day by day, that we would walk in good works like one footstep

00:55:52.000 after another footstep through our day, choosing to lay our lives down for our people, for the lost,

00:55:57.400 for our neighbor, that we would be a kind of people who would choose to die so that we might

00:56:03.180 live, to die to our own preferences in 10,000 blue-collar ways that nobody ever sees or writes

00:56:10.240 a book about. Lord, help us to love our children well. Pray that you would richly bless these

00:56:14.940 families here with many children and that you would bless them with the grit and the steel in

00:56:21.000 their spine to put their back into it as they love and raise these children in the faith. Lord, we

00:56:25.880 thank you for your great and mighty promises. We put our trust in them and in your faithful character,

00:56:31.020 not in our hands, not in the flesh, not in horses or chariots.

00:56:34.660 And we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

The NXR Podcast - March 26, 2024

THE CONFERENCE - Covenant Theology - Brian Sauvé

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