The sermon, delivered by Eric Bechler, explores Chapter 7, Paragraph 1 of the Second London Baptist Confession, focusing on God's covenant. It emphasizes the vast difference between God and humans, noting that despite humans owing obedience to God as their creator, they are incapable of earning eternal life without God's condescension through a covenant. The sermon explains the concept of a covenant, highlighting its elements: promises, conditions, and penalties. It discusses the covenant of works, where perfect obedience promised eternal life, but Adam's failure brought sin into the world. Despite this hopelessness, the sermon highlights the covenant of redemption, offering hope through faith in Jesus Christ, which will be further explored in the next sermon.

Our reading from the Second London Baptist Confession this morning of a new chapter, Chapter 7 of God's Covenant, paragraph 1. The distance between God and the creatures is so great that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience to Him as their creator, yet they could never have attained the reward of life, but by some voluntary condescension on God's part, which He hath been pleased to express by way of covenant." Okay, this morning we move into the next chapter of the London Baptist Confession of God's covenant. This is an important topic and I would encourage everyone to take what time they can to read further in more detail about God's covenant. The paragraph today we will touch on the covenant of works. In the subsequent two paragraphs we'll touch on the covenant of grace.

This paragraph starts in making clear that there is an insurmountable distance between our sovereign Lord, the King of the universe, the creator, God, and his creatures, and in this case mankind only. This is not meaning a spatial distance, but a difference in being. From Psalm 113, 5 through 6, who is like unto the Lord our God, who dwelleth on high, who humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in earth. In fact, we're not even able to fully comprehend who God is from Isaiah 40 verses 13 through 16, who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord or being his counselor hath taught him with whom took he counsel and who instructed him and taught him in the path of judgment and taught him knowledge and shoot him to shoot to him the way of understanding. Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket and are counted as the small dust of the balance.

Behold, he taketh up the aisles as a very little thing, And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering. We can only see God as he has revealed himself to us both in nature and by his holy word. And how do we respond to the knowledge that God created us? He's given us all that we have, everything, breath, life, blessings, gifts. We should be thankful.

We should obey Him and we should worship Him, yet we seem to forget and fail at this time and time again. Our paragraph continues that all reasonable creatures owe obedience to him as their creator. Why should we owe him obedience? Because He's our Creator. Everything we have comes from Him.

In Acts 17 24 through 25, God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is worshiped with men's hands, as though he needed anything, seeing he giveth to all life, breath, and all things. Yet somehow we are still unable to give him the obedience he is due. Thus we cannot attain, as it says here, the reward of life, eternal life, not on our own, and not without God's intervention. So as we read, God voluntarily condescended to covenant with his people to communicate blessings and curses. So let's start with the word covenant.

What is a covenant? Covenant is a binding agreement, a contract between two or more parties. We find that when God is making a covenant, it is God making the covenant, not us, a sovereign arrangement. In general, there are three basic elements to a covenant. There are promises, there are conditions, and there are penalties.

If we turn to the 1928 Noah Webster dictionary, it takes down the word covenant in theological terms into two parts. With respect to a covenant of works, the promise of God to man, that man's perfect obedience should entitle him to happiness or to life. For example, this do and live, that do and die. And with respect to the covenant of redemption, it is the mutual agreement between the Father and the Son respecting the redemption of sinners by Christ. So starting with the covenant of works, obedience to the law, obedience to God's command.

The promise here is eternal life. The conditions are perfect obedience, and the penalty is death. This started with Adam, who was created in the image of God and who was created good and righteous. We touched on this in the previous chapter. Adam as a representative for mankind only had to obey God's command to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Adam was righteous up until that moment, but Adam was unable to obey God's command and sin entered into the world and by his sin death. His posterity with the exception of Christ were all born into sin. We all have a corrupt nature, a sin nature. All that we do is tainted with sin. As the paragraph states, we can never attain the reward of lotto life.

If we turn to Romans 3, 10 through 12, as it is written, there is none righteous, no, not one. There is none that understandeth, there's none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way. They are together become unprofitable. There's none that doeth good, No, not one.

Thus our case is hopeless on our own. We can never attain this reward of life. We all deserve death. I believe one of the reasons for this paragraph being included in the confession is to acknowledge where we are coming from, a place from inability and hopelessness. Fortunately, we have a loving and merciful God who has provided a way, the way.

Through a covenant of redemption, a covenant of grace, we have hope. Through faith in His Son Jesus Christ, we can attain this reward of life. This is where we'll pick up next week as we move to the covenant of grace. Amen.