In his sermon 'Covenant Theology, Part 2,' Robert Bosley continues his exploration of covenant theology, focusing on how God has structured scripture and history around His covenants. The sermon references Genesis 3, Galatians 3, Romans 3, and Hebrews 8. Bosley begins with a prayer and a review of the covenant of redemption, which serves as the foundation for all redemptive history. He explains that the covenant of works, although broken by Adam, still affects all his descendants. Following the covenant of works, Bosley discusses the covenant of grace, introduced immediately after the fall of Adam, and its connection to the covenant of redemption. He elaborates on how the covenant of grace is progressively revealed through the Abrahamic, Mosaic, and Davidic covenants, culminating in the New Covenant established by Christ. The sermon emphasizes the continuity and consistency of God's work through these covenants and challenges listeners to consider whether they are in Adam or in Christ. Bosley concludes with a benediction from Hebrews 13:20-21, highlighting the completeness and grace found in Jesus.

Well good afternoon church. As always it is a joy to be before you. We're going to be continuing our theological foundations study and building off of our session last week and we're going to continue looking at covenant theology considering how God has ordered not only the scriptures but all of history around his covenants. And if you want to follow along, I am gonna turn to, there are so many places we could turn to, but we're gonna look primarily at four different texts. So we've got a group of threes.

We've got Genesis three, Galatians three, and Romans three, and then Hebrews chapter eight to throw everyone for a loop. So Genesis three, Galatians three, Romans three, and Hebrews eight. And Let's begin with prayer. Oh Heavenly Father, we come before you this afternoon so grateful for all your gifts. Lord, thank you for feeding our bodies this afternoon with this wonderful food.

Thank you for feeding our souls with your word and these different means of grace. Oh Lord, I pray that you would continue to fill us, that you would continue to feed us and give us good things. And as we turn to consider your word again this afternoon, Lord, help me to speak as I ought to speak and help us, Lord, to see and to understand wonderful things from your law. In Jesus' name, amen. So As I said, we're continuing what we started last week, looking at covenant theology.

I started last time with the covenant of redemption. The covenant of redemption has the basis of all redemptive history. And then we looked at how there are covenants that comprise that history. So the covenant of redemption stands over history, it orders all things, and then in time God works through covenants. And we began looking at the covenants in time by looking at what is called the covenant of works.

And we saw that even though these these terms, these theological titles, covenant of redemption and covenant of works, do not actually appear in Scripture, the ideas behind them and what those terms mean and communicate are thoroughly and clearly biblical. The Scriptures testify to there being a pre-creation, intra-Trinitarian covenant, an agreement within the Godhead where God is going to redeem His elect. The Father covenants to give a people to His Son, and the Son covenants to die in their place and redeem them, and the Spirit covenants to work helping the Son in His ministry as well as applying that redemption to the elect. That is the covenant of redemption. And then we saw that there is a post-creation but pre-fall arrangement between God and man through our first father, Adam, as the head of a covenant of works whereby God gave a positive law.

Beyond the law written in the heart, he gave him a particular command, and he threatened death on the breach of that command, and implicitly at least, promised life as a reward for obedience. And this covenant was made with Adam, but also extends to all his descendants, even to us today. This is why we were born sinners, why our children are born sinful, because in Adam's fall we send all. Adam fell, he broke the covenant of works. But a broken covenant doesn't mean the covenant is abrogated.

It doesn't mean the covenant is wiped away. It means we're all guilty. And so we are born in the guilt of Adam and that is what predisposes each of us to sin. So we considered the covenant of redemption, the covenant of works. And today we're going to look what follows, what followed in time after the violation of the covenant of works.

History thankfully did not end with Adam's fall. God did not withdraw and leave man to himself. God intervened immediately after Adam's violation of the covenant of works. And we see that in Genesis 3. So if you did open your Bible to Genesis 3, look with me at Genesis 3 beginning in verse 14.

We'll read 14-15 and then jump to Verse 21. Enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel." Verse 21, also for Adam and his wife, the Lord God made tunics of skin and clothed them. God came to His image-bearing creation and called them to Himself, and He pronounced on them curses for their violation of the covenant of works. They would now die.

They would now be removed from the garden. Work is now going to be difficult. Life is going to be much harder. But while he pronounces these curses of the broken covenant on them, he also reveals a promise of salvation, a promise of grace. In verse 15, we read that there will be a seed of the woman who will come and will crush the head of the serpent.

The heel of this Redeemer will be bruised, but the head of the accuser will be crushed. And This is often called the first promise of the gospel, and that is truly what it is. In Genesis 3.15, we have the first promise of a savior, the first promise of the good news that God is not leaving mankind in this state. And then he seals it in verse 21 with the blood of an animal and he clothes our first parents with the skin from that animal. And this is the foundation of the next covenant that we see in scripture which is often called the covenant of grace.

The covenant of grace. As our confession, the second London confession says in chapter seven, paragraph two, moreover, man having brought himself under the curse of the law by his fall, it pleased the Lord to make a covenant of grace wherein he freely offers unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ. That's the first sentence of paragraph 2. Then paragraph 3, I'm going to read the whole paragraph. This covenant, this covenant of grace, is revealed in the gospel.

First of all to Adam, in the promise of salvation by the seed of the woman, and afterwards by farther steps, until the full discovery thereof was completed in the New Testament. And it is founded on that eternal covenant transaction that was between the Father and the Son about the redemption of the elect. Again, we talked about that last week. So the covenant of redemption is the foundation of this covenant of grace. Back to the confession.

And it is alone by the grace of this covenant that all the posterity of fallen Adam that ever were saved did obtain life and blessed immortality, man being now utterly incapable of acceptance with God upon those terms which Adam stood in his state of innocency. Now, if you compare our confession, the Baptist confession of 1689, to our brothers in the Westminster Confession of Faith or the Savoy Declaration, which is the Congregationalist Confession of Faith, all three of those confessions are very similar to one another. Intentionally so. First, the Westminster published in 46, then the Savoy in the 50s, and then the Baptist in 1689. And they intentionally mirrored the Westminster to say, hey, we're not that different from you.

That was intentional. But this section is where the Baptist confession deviates the most from the Westminster. And we may think that's interesting. Why not baptism? Because that's what we think of.

It was really distinguishing us from our Presbyterian brothers. But no, the section on baptism, yes, it's different. But this is the greatest difference. Because ultimately our debates with our Pato Baptist brothers is really a debate about covenant theology. And so there's language used in the Westminster that the Baptists dropped and replaced related to how the Presbyterians and how the the Congregationalists viewed the covenant of grace in relation to the other biblical covenants.

I'm not going to focus on that today. That will come up in several weeks when we start actually engaging the topic of baptism in particular. Today is simply going to be a broad overview of the covenant of grace and the biblical covenants that all point to that covenant of grace and I'm hopefully going to do this in a way that most covenant theologians of different stripes would affirm, maybe with a few tweaks here or there, until we get pretty much to the end. Then we'll see our Baptist tendencies coming out. But these paragraphs in the Second Lenten Confession define the covenant of grace for us.

What is the covenant of grace? It is a covenant transaction between man and God that's founded on the covenant of redemption where he freely offers to sinners salvation and the forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ. That is what the covenant of grace is. Now you hear that and you immediately think, well wait, isn't that what the new covenant is? And yes, you're right, it is.

That is the new covenant. But the scriptures also teach that even though Christ came at a particular point in time about two thousand years ago the effects of his work were felt before his incarnation before his ministry before his death We even heard about that this morning in our elders sermon. The effects of Christ's work preceded his actual work. The book of Romans is especially clear on this. A few chapters earlier than what we were looking at this morning we read in Romans 3, if you had opened up there, Romans 3 24 to 26, Paul writes, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by his blood through faith to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed, to demonstrate at the present time his righteousness that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Now this is just a short excerpt of a much larger conversation and teaching that Paul is engaging in. But what he's saying here is that redemption has only ever come through Jesus. Even the Old Testament saints, they were only redeemed by Jesus. No one has ever earned their salvation because the covenant of works is broken. Christ was crucified to secure the propitiation, the divine satisfaction for sins.

Through His blood, God is demonstrating His own righteousness. Why does God need to demonstrate His own righteousness? Paul says because in His forbearance He had passed over the sins that were previously committed. God had forgiven many sinners long before Jesus came into the world. How was that possible?

Because the blessings of the forgiveness of sins and the gift of eternal life only comes through Jesus and being in covenant with him. So how is it possible that before Jesus came to the world, men were saved? There had to be some way, in some sense, the covenant blessings that Christ gives to his people. There had to be some way in which those blessings were effective even before Christ's incarnation, His death and resurrection. The blessings of union with Christ were present immediately after the fall of Adam.

Remember David when he sinned with Bathsheba. Nathan the prophet came to him and exposed his sin. David confessed and without any sacrifice, without going to the tabernacle, without even speaking with a priest, Nathan declares, the Lord has put away your sin, you shall not die. How? How could God do that?

Or consider Isaiah. He sees a vision of God in his temple in Isaiah chapter 6 and he confesses that he is a man of unclean lips and he lives among a people of unclean lips and one of the seraphim takes a coal from the altar and touches his lips with it and declares his sin is purged and done away with. No sacrifice offered, no works done, Free and full declaration of the forgiveness of sins. How could God do such a thing? How could sinners like Isaiah, David, Moses, Abraham, and even Adam, how could they find forgiveness?

It's because God passed over their sins because in His decree as part of the covenant of redemption, He knew that Christ would come and pay for their sins. He could pass over their sins for a time because he knew there was a payment coming. They were under the old covenant, but they were not saved by that old covenant. The blood of bulls and goats could never take away sins. Rather, they were saved by Christ and His covenant in an anticipatory way.

Like our pastor said this morning, they were looking ahead, we look back. But all of us who have ever been redeemed are looking to the same place, Christ and his work on our behalf. And so there was a promise of the gospel given to Adam. And this was a foretaste, this was a promise of the covenant of grace that was going to be in time fully revealed in the new covenant. And so God establishes a covenant of grace after the fall.

The possibility of fulfilling the law of God and thereby earning salvation is utterly done away with. Adam breached the covenant, but God promised a redeemer to Adam. Now we read in the rest of scripture there are many other covenants. It's one thing to say that God made this covenant of grace, but there are a lot of other covenants. How do those things interact with what theologians term the covenant of grace?

Well again, our confession gives us very helpful language to hold onto here. And re-reading part of chapter seven, paragraph three of the confession, This covenant, the covenant of grace, is revealed in the gospel, first of all to Adam in the promise of salvation by the sea of the woman, and this is the key phrase, and afterwards by farther steps until the full discovery thereof. The covenant of grace is revealed by farther steps until the fullness of the covenant of grace came with the ministry of Christ and the new covenant. Now what are these other steps? These are the rest of the biblical covenants.

All of them serve this one ultimate purpose. They pointed the people of God to Jesus and His grace and His covenant. So we're going to fly through these and consider the Abrahamic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the Davidic covenant, and then finally the New Covenant. We're going to fly through this pretty quickly. The Abrahamic covenant.

God promised to Abraham that he would give him a seed, He would give him an inheritance and a blessing that would reach and extend to all nations. And I mentioned we would read Galatians 3. This is where we're going to be in Galatians 3. Galatians 3 beginning in verse 16 Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He does not say, And to seeds as to many but as of one and to your seed, who is Christ.

And this I say, that the law which was four hundred and thirty years later cannot annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God and Christ, that it should make the promise of no effect. For if the inheritance is of law, it is no longer of promise, but God gave it to Abraham by promise. That is Paul's interpretation of the Abrahamic covenant. The covenant with Abraham is absolutely critical to our understanding of God's covenants and how he has worked throughout history and how we should formulate our covenant theology. We read about this covenant in several places in Genesis.

It's first promised in Genesis 12. It's then established in Genesis 15. And then it's more either there's debate about what exactly happens here, but in Genesis 17, you have the sign of circumcision given. Is this an addition to the covenant or is this more fully explicating what's already been promised? There's debate.

But Genesis 15 is fascinating. This is where God actually establishes his covenant with Abraham. And how does he do it? He tells Abraham to take some animals and cut them in half. And then we can be disturbed or bothered by this imagery, like this is weird, why is God having Abraham do this?

But this was a common way of establishing a covenant in that era. A covenant would be sworn over the bodies of dead animals. The reason for this is this was a way of affirming, if I don't keep my end of the deal, may what has happened to these animals happen to me. It was a way of affirming that the sanction for breaching the covenant was death. But what does God do?

He puts Abraham to sleep and God alone passes between the corpses. It's an unconditional promise. God is going to take the sanctions and God is going to take all the all the effort of the covenant on himself. He is going to be the guarantor of the covenant. He is going to be sure that it happens.

Abraham receives it all as a promise and as grace. God takes the burden on himself. He swears to accomplish it. And Paul tells us that the promises and the blessings of this covenant are promised to a singular seed which Paul tells us is Christ in Galatians 3. Ultimately, the Abrahamic covenant and the seed of that covenant is Jesus.

He is the one that inherits that covenant. Now, there is obviously an earthly and corporate fulfillment of the Abrahamic covenant. The people of Israel come from Abraham. And the Mosaic covenant that's added builds off the promise to Abraham with the people who descended from his body but this is key for us many of these covenants have two kinds of fulfillment they have an earthly physical fulfillment that is a type or a picture of a greater fulfillment that finds its full expression in Christ and in His people. So we miss the point if we think that the whole purpose of the covenant with Abraham was an earthly and physical promise.

We miss the point if we think that the whole purpose of the covenant with Abraham was an earthly and physical promise. We miss the point if we think that the Abrahamic covenant was totally fulfilled in the Hebrew nation. That was part of its purpose, but it was not the whole, and ultimately not even the main purpose. It was from the beginning chiefly intended to bring Christ into the world and to point to him as the true son of Abraham who blesses all nations. Now the Mosaic Covenant.

When we think of the term the Old Covenant, primarily we are thinking of the Mosaic Covenant. The Covenant established at Sinai with Israel through Moses. Now much more can and will be said about this in the next session when we consider baptism about the Mosaic Covenant, but suffice to say for now this covenant was the next necessary step in the revelation of God's covenant of grace. This covenant established Israel as a unique people, receiving the earthly promises that were given to Abraham as his physical descendants, and calling them to a greater knowledge and responsibility before God. But as with all the other covenants, this pointed forward.

It didn't end in itself. As vital as it was, it was still another one of those farther steps. It was the next step on the staircase leading to the new covenant. In Galatians 3, Paul tells us that the law was added not to give man a way of earning salvation but as a way of revealing sin through a written law. The same law that was already in the heart was now written on tablets of stone.

And the reason for this was not so that man could earn his salvation by law keeping, but to show how much we cannot keep that law. It pointed forward to Christ and the need of His sacrifice, not the sacrifice of animals, but the need of a Redeemer that would do far more than the blood of bulls and goats. The old covenant, the Mosaic Covenant, pointed to Christ and His all-sufficient sacrifice by types and shadows in the sacrificial system, the priestly class, and all of these things. That was the purpose of the Mosaic Covenant. It was another one of the steps.

In interest of time, I'm not even going to really be able to deal with the Davidic Covenant. Suffice to say, God made a covenant with David that he would give him a son who would build a temple fulfilled in Solomon but ultimately pointing to Jesus, the true son of David who is building the ultimate temple for God, the church. At the end of all these covenants, at the end of the whole discussion stands the New Covenant, what our New Testament scriptures are chiefly concerned with. Hebrews chapter 8, which is largely a quotation of Jeremiah 31, which again we'll look at next time. Hebrews chapter 8 verses 6 through 12 reads this, But now he has obtained He being Jesus, has obtained a more excellent ministry inasmuch as He is also the mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises.

For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. Because finding fault with them, he says, Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt, because they did not continue in my covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord. For this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their mind and write them on their hearts and I will be their God and they shall be my people. None of them shall teach his neighbor and none his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for all shall know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them.

For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and their lawless deeds. I will remember no more. That is God's promise in the new covenant. Now up to this point, up to this point, we would largely be in agreement with our Pato Baptist brothers when we've discussed these other covenants, but here I have to part way. And again, we'll discuss this more in the future.

But contrary to our Pato Baptist friends and brothers' formulation of the New Covenant, they will say that the New Covenant is new only in the externals. The only thing that separates it from the Mosaic Covenant is the outward forms, that in essence it's the same, and therefore it still contains a mixed body of a remnant of believers and unbelievers, as was true under the Mosaic Covenant. And we have to say that's not what we see when the Bible talks about this new covenant. We have to say no the new covenant is not better only in the outward form but it's better in its substance. The new covenant formalized and fulfilled by Christ's ministry, His death, His resurrection, is a new and better covenant compared to the Old Covenant.

It's not like the Old Covenant, we're told. It's not like it in that the old covenant was broken and there was only a remnant of true believers. Rather this new covenant is an unbreakable covenant. Christ is the surety of this covenant. He accomplishes redemption for all who are in that covenant and all those in that covenant know the Lord.

We just read in Hebrews 8, quoting Jeremiah 31 and the promise of what will happen in the new covenant, in this new covenant, none shall teach his neighbor, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know him." Their sins, those who are in the New Covenant, their sins are forgiven, and not only forgiven, they're forgotten. This is why we believe that the new covenant is the covenants of grace brought into time Because it is the full and final and perfect display of God's grace through Jesus Christ where sinners find complete forgiveness of their sins, where they find the absolute satisfaction of God's wrath in another. The New Covenant is the New Covenant of Grace, where sins are forgiven and they are given eternal life, not based on their works, as would have been the case in the Covenant of Works, but on the basis of the work of Jesus on their behalf. The new covenant is given by grace. It is the covenant of grace.

It is given by grace to us, unconditional and free on our part, yet paid for and accomplished by our covenant head, Jesus Christ. So what do we do with this? That was a 40,000 foot overview of what could be, what we could spend hours talking about. In fact, I had some guys at my house the other day, we literally spent three hours talking about this. We barely began, it felt like.

But what does this mean for us? If all these things are true, and this is what our confession teaches, and I believe it's absolutely what the Bible teaches, what does it mean for us? First, we should see the consistency and the continuity of God's work in history. He has dealt with his people, yes, by different covenants throughout time, but these covenants are not ones over here and over there and over there. They're not completely separated and cut apart from one another.

The covenants all work together to build by these farther steps to the full revelation of the grace of God. They all point to and develop this great covenant of grace. And so when we consider what God has done throughout history, we should not look at the church, we should not look at us as some new people or some kind of Plan B in God's economy and God's work of redemption. Rather, the Church is the fulfillment and the recipient of all God's promises through the covenant of grace in Christ. So we should see the consistency and the continuity of God's works in history and in scripture.

And secondly, you should consider where you stand in this. Who is your covenant head? Whose covenant are you in? If you were to stand before God right now, who would He regard as your head? All of us have a covenant head.

It's either Adam or Christ. Who do you stand in today? Has Christ, by His covenant of grace, taken away the wrath that you deserve? Or are you still in Adam with the threat of death and the broken covenant of works hanging over your head. Are you still, as we heard this morning, under law as a threat?

The curse of a broken law, is that still over you today? Or are you under grace, having full and free forgiveness of sins? Where do you stand today? And if you find that you are still in Adam, Run to the better Adam. Turn to him and live.

Turn to Christ. Repent and let the blood of his covenant wash you whiter than snow. So I want to end with the benediction of Hebrews chapter 13 verses 20 to 21. Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you complete for every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight through Jesus Christ to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this time. We thank you, God, that you are a covenant making and covenant keeping God. That when we were hopeless, you extended your grace and you are redeeming a multitude of sinners. God, we thank you for your grace.

We thank you for the full revelation of that grace in our Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you Lord for giving us such a Savior and King as Him. Lord I pray that you would go with us today knowing that if we are in Him We have full forgiveness of our sins, that we would be those who walk knowing that we have been made right with you by the righteousness of another. And so Lord, may you help us to do the things that we heard about this morning that we would walk in newness of life because of this covenant of grace that has rescued us from darkness and death. In Christ's name, amen.

We are dismissed. Missed.