Covenant and Dispensational Theology Part 1

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Chris and I have been talking about this now for, I don’t know, how long have you been acting away at this, Chris? About three years. Yeah, and it’s really good. I think, and I am definitely prejudiced, but I’ll say it anyway, I think this is the best attempt at defining both camps in a fair way with their own material that I’ve ever seen. And it is very difficult for those of you that have gone out and tried to do this before. It can get reduced down to very simplistic terms, which is unfair to both sides. And it can become so complex you lose sight of what you’re describing sometimes. And I think that Chris has done a good job in boiling it down to what the both sides are saying about this.

And he’s got great graphics and all kinds of wheel-breaking, zoom-in and all this kind of stuff. The interesting thing to this is, if you think the stuff that we’re doing in the, like, theology notes is like one step out there, We are now arriving at a whole other step away from the basics. So, you know, who is God, who is Jesus, that kind of thing. So this is, for those of you who’ve never been to Sunday School that had this kind of stuff, it’s, I think it’s incredible that you need to understand that these discussions are being had, and still remember that this is an in-house discussion. In other words, we’re all believers having the discussion about this.

These are people that believe in Jesus Christ, believe in his return, believe in his, you know, crucified, resurrected, and all the things. They are Christians, all right? Don’t lose sight of this. Because that’s what happens sometimes when you get your theology cranked, and then you learn about these little subsets or eschatology, and you start deciding that people aren’t safe if they believe in a mid-trib rapture, or they don’t even believe in a rapture at all. I think John MacArthur said it best when he talked about an eschatological discussion a couple of years ago. We went through that whole sermon in this class.

But the idea is this isn’t some kind of, you know, crazy debate out here that we’re going to call somebody heretic if they believe this or that. This is trying to understand a very difficult subject. And if any of you think prophecy and all that is simple, do have it read your Bible enough, Jeff. That’s just, it’s not easy. There we have it. Abadah and Chris. All right, well, it is definitely a privilege to be with you guys and try to slog through what is, in everybody’s estimation, a very difficult topic. Hopefully, as we go through this, we will see that it doesn’t have to just be some kind of intimidating intellectual discussion, but that there is worship to be found in the midst of this topic that it will help us to glorify God better.

And that’s my ultimate goal. Just kind of get a feel where we’re at this morning. How many in here would say, I’m familiar with covenant and dispensational theology enough that I know which camp I’m in and I could define both sides of the discussion to some degree? Okay, so a number of you have been exposed to this already. And for the rest of you, well, rewind and jump on board with me a few months ago. I know we’ll try to re-walk the journey I went through. I was privileged to be asked by Dave to take on this topic, to try to summarize it for you guys. And it has been very eye-opening for me, very challenging to my thinking, but it’s been very productive and I really enjoy it.

So I’m excited to share with you kind of what I’ve learned. And as we dive in here, you can see I’m just calling this an introductory comparison and evaluation. We are just scratching the surface of this discussion. a lot of guys have given their lives to this discussion. But for our purposes, we’re going to try to walk through it kind of like this. We’re going to try to define the discussion today. What are our terms? We’re going to try to describe what’s covenantalism, what is dispensationalism, what are these two big words that we’re talking about. Then I want to walk us back through history and show how these develop, the development of these two positions because it’s very revealing. It’s actually very interesting to see how the church historically began to wrestle with this discussion, where the ideas came from and how those progressed. And then lastly we’re going to have just a bit of a demonstration.

We’re going to look at two key doctrinal questions. What does the Bible mean, especially in the Old Testament, when it talks about the land? And what does the Bible mean when it talks about the Israel of God? What do those terms mean? And we’re going to see how these different people from different camps take their knowledge of the Bible and try to understand what the Bible means by these phrases. And it’s a great illustration of how these two different fields of theology work themselves out in practical everyday Bible study. So that’s kind of going to be our roadmap today. I’m hoping to get through the first two.

I’m already planning to probably fail at that given the time we’re starting. So I think we’ll definitely get to the definition, but we’ll see how far through the description we get. So with that, I just opened up a quote by John MacFulmin. Then the dispensational teaching of the Scofield Reference Bible represents perhaps the most dangerous heresy currently to be found within Christian circles. Now for many of you who walked into this room this morning, if you’ve been in this church a long time and you kind of generally buy into what Pastor Zimmer has been teaching upstairs, you’ve just been labeled a heretic. And you may feel like, whoa, that’s a strong term.

Well, there’s strong feelings in this discussion. This quote kind of gets at that. And to be fair, there are heretics within the dispensational camp. And we’re going to talk about how those in the dispensational camp tend to like to see more differences between the Old and the New Testament camp than covenantal guys do. And some people take it to such an extreme that they’ll say, for example, there are two different paths for salvation. What do we call that? Heresy. Heresy. Right. And I think a reaction against some of that extremism that gives people like Bowman the fuel for fiery quotes like this. And so they’ll say, whatever it is that’s producing that kind of doctrine is heresy, and it’s dangerous, and we need to get it out of our church.

On the flip side, you got guys like Norman Shepherd, who’s an extreme, and I use that word very intentionally, he’s an extreme covenant theologian, who says that Jesus himself was justified only by faith and obedience in his covenant with the Father, and that we are likewise justified by personal faith and obedience apart from the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. What do you call that? Heresy. Heresy. Right. And that’s one of the reasons why those in the dispensational camp get all uppity and go and say, we’ve got to cut all the covenant fields out of the church where we’ve got heretics over there. And whatever theology they’re practicing that leads them to those conclusions, we’ve got to get rid of that.

That’s dangerous. So this can be a very heated discussion. Jonathan Edwards, I believe, very correctly observed, there is perhaps no part of divinity. There’s no theological discussion. There’s nothing we’re talking about in the church. Attended with so much intricacy, and wherein Orthodox divines, that’s just an old term for theologians, Orthodox divines do so much differ as stating the precise agreement and difference between the two dispensations of Moses and Christ. And the two dispensations of Moses and Christ essentially are at the heart of the dispensational and the covenant systems. So Jonathan Edwards, no dim bulb by anybody’s standards, said that this topic we’re trying to discuss right now is the most intricate and difficult discussion in all of Christianity.

So just know that where we are treading is tough ground. This is a hard hike, and we’ve been walking this trail for a long time, and I don’t think anybody’s reached the summit yet. So we’re really plunging in. So I just wanna begin with a very clear disclaimer. This is not a gospel issue. This is not a gospel issue. It can become a gospel issue at the extremes where you have heretics on both sides. But in mainline dispensationalism and in mainline covenant theology, we have nothing but brothers and sisters and dear brothers and sisters that love God, love His word and pour their lives into studying it. And there are great godly men on both sides of discussion.

Some prominent covenant theologians, you might recognize some of these names. might stand out. Guys like Jonathan Edwards, Charles Hodge, B.D. Warfield, J. Gresham, Major, J. I. Packer, R. C. Sproul, good guys. On the dispensational side there are other names you might recognize that would stand out. So you guys, Charles Ryrie, John McArthur, CJ, and P. Feinberg, all the Feinbergs ended up being dispensational. Wahlberg, Pentecost, lots of different guys that we recognize on both sides of this discussion. And I also want to point out the bell curve we’re talking about here is broad. This, if you want to say this represents dispensational theology or covenant theology, or if you have a color bias you can switch those around and take a look at the side.

I’m going to try to shoot for the middle of these two bell curves. What does predominant covenantal theology hold to today? What is predominant dispensational theology hold to today? That’s easier with the covenant side in one degree. They’ve stayed fairly consistent over time, but they tend to be very complicated in how they describe themselves. So it’s hard to define, but they haven’t moved. So that’s them. The dispensational side likes to define themselves very specifically, but they’re constantly moving. So the dispensationalism today doesn’t look anything like dispensationalism in the 80s. So the dispensational side is a moving target.

The covenantal side is moving, but a lot more slowly. So we’re going to try to tack this down, which basically means this discussion has an expiration date. By the time I finish speaking, all of my study will be out of date and it won’t be valid anymore, so you have to go study for yourself. But that’s kind of my goal. That’s where I’m trying to head with this. Big question. Who cares? You know, why take all the time learning these big words? Why take all this time trying to understand this weird, super intricate, complex theological discussion? Well, a couple of reasons. you can’t avoid it from that. This is a discussion that has really occupied a lot of the brain time of the church in the last 100 to 200 years in particular and as we’re going to see for several centuries before that as well. It’s a very very common topic and so you’re going to keep seeing terms bounced out that you will actually talk about and discuss in our lecture through here.

But even more than that as we talk about these two different sides you’re going to see how a lot of the different things that creatures that you you know and respect, teach, come from their understanding of this theological topic. So it’s just helpful to say, okay, I see why he’s saying that. I see where he’s getting that from. I see why both these guys that I trust and that I look up to and that both are godly men, why they disagree on this. It’s very helpful in that regard. Secondly, the issue does affect our life before God and how we understand God’s purposes, his people and his promises.

not salvation. But his purposes, his people and his promises are all dramatically affected by your understanding of the covenant. For those of you that are in this class every week, how many times does Dave Light give a nod to Dave Mills saying, and we know that you’ll have a little different perspective on this, but you know that you’ll have a different perspective on this. It’s because these two different camps will see a lot of things a little bit differently, but not salvation. So it is an issue that will affect your study of God’s scripture. Now this is the question that I want to kind to hold up in front of us as we go through however many weeks it takes us to get through all this.

How can we best understand the amazing things our great God has done, is doing, and will do? That is the question that drives covenant and dispensational theologians. God is doing amazing things. He’s done them in His word. He’s doing them today. He’s told us He will do them in the future. How can we understand that? What is it that God’s up to? And in our efforts to answer this question, we’ve seen two big schools of thought form the covenant and the dispensational line. And I want that question that drives them to drive us as well. We’re not trying to set up ammunition for an inter-church battle. Okay? That would be the last thing I’d want to see come out of our study.

What we’re trying to do is we’re trying to set up an opportunity for us to worship God a little more precisely, It’s a little more conviction and a little bit more appreciation of how unknowably amazing our God is. And we’re pecking at something that we’re never going to get our minds fully around. And you see underneath there, doctrine drives doxology. If this study, this doctrine we’re studying, does not drive and inform our worship, then I failed and we failed. And this has become nothing but foolish argumentation. This has become a vain debate. So make sure that this is all for your worship. Yes for your information, but your information must lead to your worship.

Or please just sit out of this meeting. Because this will just arm you for fights and that’s not what we want. So that’s kind of just a brief introduction to our topic. So now let’s really dive off the deep end and try to define what it is that we’re going to be talking about for these next few weeks. What are we talking about? Well, let’s start by looking at covenant theology. Here’s the definition of covenant theology that we’ll be operating under. It’s a system of theology which holds that God conducts himself towards man at all times according to the terms of two primary covenants, grace and works. Now, we’re going to talk about how some covenant theologians will say that grace also works with a covenant of redemption.

a third covenant that sometimes is introduced, but virtually every covenant theologian would agree that grace and works are the two dominant covenants by which God conducts himself towards man. These covenants form an interpretive framework for understanding any point of Scripture or theology. And so they’re going to study Scripture and they’re in their study of Scripture they’re going to see two primary covenants, two agreements that God has made, and And they’re going to say that we see God in every period of history as He interacts with man. He is conducting Himself towards man according to the terms of these two primary covenants.

And because those are the covenants that God uses to conduct Himself towards us, they become interpretive guidelines. They become a way for us to interpret Scripture. So when I look at a passage, I need to ask myself, How does my understanding of these covenants that God conducts himself by affect how I am to understand properly this passage in its context? And we’ll see some quotes in a second where they teach us that. What we’re going to see is that covenant theology, because of this, emphasizes continuity. Now continuity just means connectedness. It’s going to emphasize that there’s a lot of things in the Old Testament that are connected to the New Testament.

the things that God is doing in the Old Testament, he’s doing in the New Testament. There’s gonna be this concept of a flower growing and blossoming of a tree going from a seed to a full grown tree, of shadow becoming substance. So there’s the idea and then the reality, but it’s all connected. It’s all one work that God is doing beginning to end. It’s all the progression of one plan. And we’re gonna see how dispensational theology, we had to chop it up into smaller pieces. So that’s the basic concept behind covenantal theology. They’re also going to see an emphasis on God’s work of salvation. I’m going to pause here because there’s something that we dispensationalists say that is unfair and grinds on our covenantal brothers and sisters.

And that’s that our theology is God-centered, because we believe in the glory of God. And your theology is man-centered, because you’re just all about salvation. That is not true. Our covenant brothers and sisters are deeply concerned about the glory of God. However, because of their understanding of the covenant of grace and of works being the primary interpretive principles of scripture, their emphasis, not the only thing on the camp, but their emphasis is going to be on God’s saving work through scripture and seeing a continual flow of salvation as being the primary emphasis of scripture. So that’s going to be characteristic of the view.

So if you run out of here and you confront your local covenantal guy and say, you’ve got a man-centered theology and you did not listen this morning, but it’s not true. all about the glory of God. Just go and sit down with R.C. Sproul and tell me as a man-centered theology, see if you can survive that conversation. Okay, don’t go there. Here’s a couple quotes.

You’ll notice this one I sourced Wikipedia because ironically, after reading many, many covenant theologians, I felt that the Wikipedia tree actually summarized it the best. We’re going to look at some of their definitions, but this one I felt actually really did a good job. Covenant theology, also known as covenantalism, or federal theology, or federalism, it’s all the same basic idea, is a conceptual overview and interpretive framework for understanding the overall flow of the Bible. It uses the theological concept of covenant as an organizing principle for Christian theology. So covenant theology isn’t the theological view that says that the church and Israel are the same. They They often come to that conclusion because of their interpretive framework, which comes from these covenants.

Does that make sense? The specific doctrinal positions they hold to are the result of being covenantal. It’s not what it means to be covenantal. Similarly, the distinctions that we hold, that the Israel and church are not the same, and things like that, are not what defines us, they’re the result of being dispensational. What makes a person covenantal or dispensational happens almost entirely at the hermeneutical level at how you go about studying God’s Word, at what you feel is the proper way to get at the meaning of Scripture. That’s really what launches you onto the path that ends up as a covenantal doctrine or a dispensational doctrine.

I thought Mickey P.D. got it well defined. You’ll notice that in their link to dispensational at the bottom, whoops, a little too far, They called it an opposing hermeneutical framework. I think they got it right. Covenantalism and dispensationalism are two different hermeneutical frameworks, two different sets of rules for how we interpret scripture. Now we’re going to talk about there’s a lot of overlap. There’s a lot of overlap and that’s one of the reasons why we’re both brothers and sisters. But there are some key disagreements between us that lead to some fairly significant different views on different positions in the Bible.

So far tracking okay, feel free to throw a flag and raise a hand anytime if I’m just woo, and you’re not keeping up because my goal is not to see how many big words I can hit you with in half an hour, but hopefully to actually be helpful. Douglas Wilson said this, believers should not think of separate packs or contracts throughout history, and we’re looking at the covenants of scripture. The believer must think of a growing child, a fruitful tree, a bud unfolding into a flower. We must understand the continuity of the covenants over generations. It’s all in process. It’s all one planet, one stream. Now let’s briefly try to define dispensational theology.

Here’s my definition. I think we’ll work for this view. Dispensationalism is the system of theology, again these are both systems of theology, by its attempt to maintain a consistent, literal, grammatical, historical hermeneutic, recognizes significant distinctions between God’s administration of different historical periods. Another footnote. Does this definition mean that our dear covenant brothers and sisters don’t know how to do literal, grammatical, historical interpretation? No. A lot of those guys teach a lot of us how to study our vitals. They know how to do the languages, they know how to study, they know how to do their work.

In many cases they’re the best out there at it. We’ll come to find most of the really, really smart Christians you know are probably covenantal. There’s a lot of very smart, very hardworking, exegetically fantastic people in the covenantal camp. But we’re going to talk about how the understanding of covenant colors and affects their interpretation of scripture, and we disagree that that is appropriate. And we’ll talk about why. And so by our attempt to say no, we don’t want to use an overarching interpretive framework. We want to just rely on each text on its own by itself, step by step by step through scripture.

By doing that, we come to say, you know what, we’re seeing a lot more distinctions in scripture than our covenant brothers and sisters do.

see God acting differently here than he did here, doing something here that he’s not doing there. And so we’re going to see those differences, and we call those differences discontinuity. So whereas covenant theology is going to emphasize continuity, we’re going to emphasize discontinuity. And related to that then is going to be this emphasis on the glorification of God. Remember my footnote from covenant theology. That does not mean that they don’t care about the glory of God. What this does mean is that we don’t see this covenant of grace, the so-teriological purpose as being the primary interpretive principle for Scripture. We’re seeing the primary point of Scripture is telling us about the many different ways that God is glorifying himself, and whether that’s by flinging the universe into existence or by saving mankind, that he’s using different things in different ways at different times to bring glory to himself in a variety of different ways. Many of which our covenant brothers and sisters

we’ll acknowledge. But we’re going to emphasize those distinctions. We’re going to emphasize that discontinuity. And so we’re going to say God glorifying Himself in many different ways both through salvation and otherwise is the primary point of Scripture. Not just the main covenant of grace. Does that make sense so far? Okay, I know I’m splitting some hairs, but part of the reason why I’m splitting some hairs is because we’re talking about brothers and sisters who have a disagreement. We’re not talking about the heretic and the believer. Because that’s easier. Then you’re just splitting sheep and goats. That’s a lot easier, you just put the stinky ones over there.

So we’re talking about believers, and so this is just a disagreement. Alright, Michael Vlock, who has a very helpful small pamphlet on dispensationalism, defines it as a system of theology, primarily concerned with the doctrines of ecclesiology, what is the church, how is the church supposed to function, and eschatology, how does God’s plan end, what’s the end times, primarily concerned with those two things that emphasizes the historical grammatical meaning of Old Testament prophetic passages and covenants. We’re going to try to take the Old Testament prophecy and understand it apart from any kind of overarching covenant of grace or interpretive framework. We’re going to try to take them one by one and try to take them as literally as we can. Now there’s a lot of different flavors of So I’m going to try to just kind of lay these out because this is where it really gets confusing.

I told you that dispensationalism likes to define itself, but they’re constantly moving. Here’s the flavors you got. Ace, exhibit A, most of the heretics end up in here. Ultra or hyper-dispensationalism. According to this view, the church age did not begin until the ministry of Paul to the Gentiles was in full effect. Pentecost was an old covenant event. Pentecost, not the beginning of the church. That was Old Testament stuff. Instruction for the Church is not found until the middle of Acts. Some hold that it isn’t until Acts 28 that the Church Age actually begins. And at the early Epistles, all those letters that these guys wrote before that time are not for the Church today.

And so they’ll ignore all that stuff. This view emphasizes extreme discontinuity to the point of seeing, in many cases, two paths of salvation. How many of you in here have ever learned the Beatitudes? How have you ever tried to live by them? Okay, hopefully she’ll see a similar number of hands. They would say, that’s dumb, that’s Old Testament stuff. That’s not for you. You ignore all that stuff Jesus was teaching? That was him teaching the Jews under Old Testament rules. Forget all that. We have to just look at the last few epistles that were written in the New Testament. That’s the only thing that applies to us today.

And so their emphasis on discontinuity becomes so extreme that they often end up teaching, like I said, two different paths of salvation. Here’s how old textiles people got saved. Here’s an entirely different way that we get saved today. And that is called heresy. Right. Now we’re going to talk about…yes, question. It’s not directly says, doesn’t apply to us today because it’s a kingdom thing. We don’t live by that today because it’s not a kingdom thing. Gotcha. Right. That’s a long rabbit trail. And I’m willing to go there, but probably, yeah. The discussion around the stream on the mount does involve a ton of theology.

It affects your eschatology, your understanding of the Old Testament, New Testament, law, grace, all of that comes into how you understand the Sermon on the Mount. That being said, to take everything Jesus ever said and say we don’t need to pay attention to it is problematic. I think we can all agree on that. And we can talk about the intricacies there at length. I’d love to, but I’m not going to finish as it is. So I can just appeal to you to let me slide on that one for now. Let’s talk about classical dispensationalism next.

view emphasized two different purposes in salvation. There is the salvation of the heavenly humanity who comprise those from all dispensations that have died and will be resurrected. There is also the earthly humanity which consists of those who are preserved from death by God. So it’s going to make more of a distinction between things that God is doing spiritually like saving people from every age and generation and it’s going to say, but you know what, we can’t say that that’s the same thing as God’s promises to Israel about fulfilling to them a kingdom and having a millennium and having people that will survive the tribulation and all those kind of things.

They’re going to say, no, there’s another thing that God’s doing here on earth in the earthly humanity that’s separate from what he’s doing in his spiritual heavenly humanity. And they could get a little extreme on that for sure.

classic statement of this position is the Scofield Reference Bible. So you want to see what these guys believe, flip through that thing. And that is largely not what people believe today that are in the dispensational camp. They largely moved from that. And that process began with what we call revised or modified dispensationalism. So we had ultra-hyperdispensationalism, which is still around today, unfortunately, in some corners, dark little mealy corners of Christianity. But classical theology, classical dispensational theology was really where the movement began. And now they have, then they move to revise or modify dispensationalism, which softens the distinctions between Israel and the church, does not remove them. That’s a hallmark of dispensational theology. But it softens the distinction somewhat. Usually does not hold to an eternal distinction between the heavenly and earthly humanity, affirms one way of salvation, but also affirms the distinction between Israel and the Church.

Only one covenant is seen in Scripture, which is enjoyed by believers, but fully fulfilled in Israel in the future. And by covenant there I should specify it. There’s only one covenant of salvation. There’s only one way that we’re saved, and believers are grafted into that, and we enjoy the blessings of salvation. But that covenant doesn’t just talk about salvation. It includes other things like future blessings for Israel that God will fulfill. So while we do share in one path of salvation, we’re not ultra, we don’t say there’s two different ways of salvation, we do share in the same salvation that God gave to his people Israel.

That doesn’t mean that salvation was the only thing God promised to Israel. It doesn’t mean that God’s now not going to fulfill those other things to them. So that’s going to be what defines modified dispensationalism. one way of salvation, but the Church and Israel are still distinct in a lot of what God is planning to do. One way, but distinctions. Now we get to where most of us would be at today in the dispensational camp, which is what we call progressive dispensationalism.

This view gets its name from the idea that the fulfillment of God’s covenants is happening progressively. This view often uses the terminology already not yet to refer to Christ’s rule in David’s throne. So there’s a promise of an eternal heir to David’s throne that’s going to sit on his throne and reign forever. Has that happened yet? Yes, it’s already happened, but not yet. That would be how the progressive sensationist would answer it. There’s a degree to which every time a person is saved, they enter into the kingdom of God under the Lordship of Christ. So there’s a spiritual sense in which he is currently reigning over the kingdom of his saints. But he has promised to do that from David’s literal throne on this earth, we would say for a period of a thousand years in the Millennial Kingdom, and that is when that covenant will be fully fulfilled. So is Jesus fulfilling the promise of a future descendant of David who will reign over his people on David’s throne? Yes, but not yet.

That’s progressive dispensationalism. The Church is seen as being synonymous with the redeemed of all time, Israel and the church are still viewed as distinct, but the distinctions are even less than the other two views. So that’s going to be where progressive dispensationalism is at, and that’s where the majority of dispensationalists today will be at, and that would be, I double-checked with Dave Light, where they would identify what he’s teaching here. So that’s, if you guys want to be really particular, many of you just became progressive dispensationalists. Great. Great. Alright, a couple quotes to make some mis-ations here.

For the covenant theologian, the unifying principle is the so-teriological covenant of grace. Just kind of summarizing what we said. For the covenant theologian, what binds scripture together is God’s plan of salvation, the essence of which is never changed throughout history. The dispensationalist on the other hand emphasizes the doxological method of God, that God glorifies himself through many ways, saving people and cursing them, creating the universe, recreating the universe, different things, and all his dealings under different dispensations. Ryrie notes in Dispensationalism, the different dispensations reveal the glory of God as he manifests his character in the differing stewardships culminating in history with the millennial glory.

So we’re going to see God doing different stuff and the crown of that jewel is going to be, or the crown on that jewel, it’s going to be the millennial kingdom. All right, everybody feel like, okay, I know exactly what you’re talking about. I am practically a covenant or dispensational theologian, and we’re going to take on the world. I know your head’s maybe spinning around, and mine has been for three months, so don’t feel bad if you’re, feel like you’re swimming in the deep end. For now, here’s what I want us to really latch onto. When you hear dispensational, think this. God is doing different things at different periods in history, all for His glory.

When you hear covenantal theology, think primarily this. God is growing one great plan from beginning to end, and so we should see lots of connections all throughout scripture. And that great plan He’s doing is primarily called the covenant of grace that He is working out. Does that make sense? That’s what we’re talking about. Now you might be thinking, I’m not sure if I really disagree with either of those statements. And I think there’s a lot of truth there. And it would be my prayer that through lectures like this, hopefully taking place in many places, we could get our covenant brothers and sisters and our dispensation brothers and sisters in this today room and tell them you’re not allowed to fight, now talk about God.

And I think that we would see a lot of growth in our church in America if we could do that. spend some time at the very end of the series talking about what I think we really desperately need to learn from each other. So if you’re feeling like I’m not like really feeling on one side or the other here yet fiercely, that’s okay. That’s okay. Alright so I think I’m just going to kind of try to introduce covenantalism briefly as we try to define this. I’m seeing about five minutes left in the clock, is that right? Make sure that pops in, correct. So I’m going to try to introduce this briefly. This is where we’ll pick up next week.

Covenantalism. Douglas Wilson and his book Future Men, which is a great book but also interesting that I found one of the best definitions of a covenant in a book about how to raise young men. Does this theology affect how we live? Yes, it definitely affects it. So he says, a covenant is simply a solemn bond, sovereignly administered with attendant blessings and curses. What’s a covenant? There you go. A solemn bond or promise, sovereignly administered, that has blessings and curses associated with it. For the covenant theologians, they’re going to see primarily three of these major covenants. Now you’ll notice that covenant of redemption is an italics.

That’s because not every covenant theologian will recognize that as a distinct covenant. A lot of them will roll it into the covenant of grace. We’re going to address it independently just so that you can get the full meal deal. Same thing when we get to dispensationalism. I’m going to talk about nine different dispensations. Many, most dispensationalists will not see that many. But I want to give you guys, you know, super-sized, big mac meal version. Question? Okay. So, so far, we’re good. Okay. First one, chronologically, they would see be the Covenant of Redemption, which was an agreement made in eternity past.

So let’s say this covenant redemption took place before time began between the Father and the Son. This isn’t between us and God. This is between the Father and the Son. The Father, we are told, devised the plan of redemption in which the Son would die as a substitute for those given to Him by the Father. Presumably, the Spirit was a participant in this covenant agreeing to help implement the plan. Father orchestrates it, the Son enacts it, the Spirit implements it. And we would agree that’s how our salvation works. The Father chooses His own, the Son died to redeem them, the Holy Spirit does the work of transforming our soul and sealing us for salvation, right?

So they’re just going to say that whole plan was hatched as a covenant before time began. That’s from Robert Leitner, that quote. Yes? What we’re going to see here, I’ll notice at the bottom of this slide, it says, scriptural evidence. There’s no direct support for this. The covenant guys that I was reading will agree with that. They’ll say that we see evidence of this throughout scripture. That because the Father agreed to orchestrate this plan, because the Son did fulfill it, because the Spirit implements it, that implies that there was that covenant made.

If you see somebody says, I’m fulfilling a promise, That would imply that at some point they made a promise and that’s what they’re going to say happened here So the best I could find when I read the different guys They didn’t go to anyone versus a here’s where the covenant is being made But they will wash you down with a wall of verses to show evidences of this is why we see it Implicitly throughout scripture not necessarily explicitly I will see specific verses for the other two covenants that they’ll point to as being indications of of those covenants. But they don’t have any direct scriptural support for this one.

And do we believe in doctrines that aren’t explicitly mentioned in scripture? How many of you have found the word Trinity yet in your Bible? Anybody want to deny that doctrine because it’s not found in scripture? So you want to be careful by just saying, well it’s not explicit so you’re a heretic. Right? The question though is, because it’s not explicit we have to make sure we’re very careful that we have to believe that from Scripture. That Scripture requires a belief in that. We are required to believe in the Trinity because the Bible does teach it, just not explicitly. Anyway, this covenant, like we said, is bilateral, meaning it was a two-way agreement.

The Father made a promise, the Son agreed to it, and the Father said, I’ll do this if you do that. A Trinitarian bilateral covenant is a good thing because if God says, I require this and the Son says, I’ll do it, guess what? It’s going to happen. Well, notice bilateral covenants made with us are very problematic. Because God says, do this, we say we will and guess what? We don’t. That’s why we keep getting cursed about history. It’s because we don’t do what we’re supposed to. But a bilateral covenant within the Trinity is a great thing. It’s a great thing. The covenant participants who was involved, we said, was the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And again, what were the stipulations? What were the requirements of the covenant? The Father will give his Son a people if the Son will die to redeem that people, and the Holy Spirit will participate in implementing that plan. We talked about there’s no direct support, but it’s implied from the eternal nature of the plan of redemption. When was the Lamb slain? When were we elected? Right. I think somewhere in that rumble I heard, before the foundations of the New World, something to that effect for both of those. Right. So because the Bible teaches that, that’s when we’re just going to say that this covenant of redemption took place.

Does that make sense? Yeah, it’s not crazy stuff, right? It’s not like, well, it was a crazy covenant. Oh, guys, there’s a lot of reason to believe this. Now that’s the thunder, so we’re done. No. Praise God. Whether you believe the covenant of redemption, as a theological concept or not, we’re redeemed because the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit did work together for our salvation. Amen.