The sermon titled 'Covenant Theology, Part 1' by Robert Bosley is part of a series on theological foundations. It explores the core doctrines of faith and focuses on covenant theology as a defining doctrine of the Reformed church. The sermon introduces the concept of the covenant of redemption, an eternal agreement within the Trinity to redeem a chosen people. It also discusses the covenant of works, a pre-fall arrangement between God and Adam. The comprehensive summary emphasizes the unity and consistency of God's plan, the assurance of salvation through the unbreakable covenant, and the gratitude for Christ's fulfillment of the covenant of works. The sermon urges listeners to repent and seek the covenant of redemption in Christ.

Amen. Well, good afternoon, church. What a delight it is to be before you again. We're going to continue the series that I've been working through the several sessions on theological foundations. So what are the foundations of our theology as Christians, as a church in particular?

What do we believe? It's one thing to say you believe the Bible, everyone says that, heretics say they believe the Bible, but what do you believe the Bible actually says? That's the question. And so that's my purpose in this Theological Foundations series to go through and examine and explain key points of doctrine from a perspective that we share in this church. Previously we talked about some of the core doctrines of our faith, really the essential, most foundational, most essential doctrines.

Simply doctrines that decide whether or not you're a Christian. We talked about the doctrine of the Trinity. We had one session on the nature and person of Christ. So a session on Christology. And those were doctrines that all Christians, no matter what denomination, any true Christian, affirms what we went through in those sessions.

Now we're going to narrow our focus in a little bit more. Not merely doctrines that all Christians share. I want us to look at a doctrine that marks us apart as being a reformed church. And when I say that, your first thought may be Calvinism. And then the cage stage Calvinists start rattling their cages and get all excited.

Does everyone know what I mean by cage stage? Someone who's new to Doctrines of Grace, they get so excited about it, they need to be put in a cage for a while till they calm down. That's not actually what I'm talking about, because you can be a Calvinist and not actually Reformed. So Calvinism is not definitional to Reformed. What I'm talking about is really the core of reformed theology.

We're not going to be talking about Calvinism, we're going to be talking about covenant theology. As several writers have put it, reformed theology is covenant theology. And this is going to be merely an introduction. Today is going to be part one and next week will be part two, but even then those two sessions are still going to be an introduction. There's only so much I can do in half hour sessions.

This is going to be a very surface level introductory 40,000 foot view of the doctrine of covenant theology, similarly to what we had for the Trinity in Christology. So if you're a note taking person at all or somebody who wants to study this more, I would highly encourage taking notes. And I also wanted to do this because my goal further on, a few weeks after we do the sessions on covenant theology, is this kind of lays the foundation for not only why we're Christians, not only why we're Reformed, but why we as a church are Reformed Baptists. I want to get in and talk a few weeks about the doctrine of baptism because our debate with our Pato Baptist brothers is fundamentally not really a debate about the ordinance itself, it's a debate about covenant theology. And so we're going to start that really today as we look at this doctrine.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. What do we mean when we say covenant theology? What is covenant theology? This is an approach to interpretation of the Bible, to biblical theology and systematic theology that says that the overarching narrative of Scripture and the whole story of redemption is centered around the idea and the establishment of covenants. Now we, as we're reading our Bibles, we can take this for granted and we can miss the centrality of covenant just by sheer familiarity with our with our bibles but this emphasis on covenant is consistently throughout the scriptures the The Greek and Hebrew words translated as covenant occur more than 300 times in our Bible.

More than 280 of those are in the Old Testament scriptures. The Bible is truly a covenantal book from beginning to end. But we say that, what exactly is a covenant though? Now often covenants are described as being similar to a contract and there is a level of truth to this. However it's more than merely a contract.

A contract usually implies some sort of mutual benefits where each party exchanges something that the other has that they want. They are merely transactional. Contracts are merely transactional and usually commercial in nature. A covenant is much more than this though. Joe Beeke in his excellent Systematic Theology series, the second volume of it, defines a covenant as, a solemn promise that functions as a legal instrument to define a relationship of loyalty.

One more time, a solemn promise that functions as a legal instrument to define a relationship of loyalty. And then, so Dr. Beeke, of course we know him well, I think most of us anyway, a well-read scholarly Presbyterian brother. Similarly, Sam Rinahan, a Baptist, a reformed Baptist theologian, in his fantastic book on Baptist covenant theology called The Mystery of Christ, His Covenant and His Kingdom, he defines a covenant as, quote, a guaranteed commitment, end quote. And then that guaranteed nature comes from the presence of sanctions or threats, where he says, quote, a commitment in and of itself is not a covenant.

Sanctions or threats must be put into place to guarantee the fulfillment of the party's commitments. This adds a degree of legality and formality that generic commitments would not carry." So both Renahan, a Baptist, and Beke, a Presbyterian, are in general agreement, and other scholars define a covenant similarly. Generally, the idea of a covenant, a covenant is a pledge among parties that defines and establishes some kind of mutual commitment and loyalty, complete and reinforced with threats against breaking the covenant, against breaking that agreement. That's what a covenant is. And these covenants unite the story of scripture.

It can be really easy to go to our Bibles and just see kind of a hodgepodge of stories that we aren't entirely sure how they connect to one another. But they are related by covenant. The covenants of the Bible explain the essential unity of God's plan of salvation throughout history. And so when we study the covenants and we develop a covenant theology, we are really seeking to understand the consistent plan of God throughout all of history. What is God doing in time through his son?

It is a covenantal work. And foundational to this essential unity of God's plan throughout history is this first covenant that we're going to discuss this afternoon, the covenant of redemption, the covenant of redemption. Now this term the covenant of redemption is actually not found in Scripture but like when we went through the couple sessions on the Trinity We should understand that this should not cause any issues for us. We should not be bothered by calling something by phrases or terms that are not found explicitly in the pages of scripture. I would argue that this is an example of what's called the word-thing fallacy, the idea that an item or a thing is only present when a specific word is used in the context.

We need to reject that idea, otherwise we cannot affirm the Trinity, even though it's clearly the biblical teaching. We use phrases, we use theological terms to describe what the Bible teaches all the time and that is also what we're doing when we talk about the covenant of redemption. It is a non biblical term but is used to describe a very biblical concept. So what is the covenant of redemption? The covenant of redemption refers to the eternal agreement within the Trinity between God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, where they are covenant together to redeem a certain people and grant them eternal life to the glory of the triune God.

Or simply put, as our confession puts it in chapter 7 paragraph 3 the eternal covenant Transaction that was between the father and son about the redemption of the elect. So we were talking about an intra-trinitarian agreement And this at first can strike us as odd. I understand that because as we read through scripture, we're used to seeing covenants between men and even covenants between men and God. But do we see evidence of a covenant within the Godhead itself? Is there any evidence that the persons of the Godhead make a covenant together with one another?

And I believe we do see evidence of that in Scripture. First, consider what it means that Christ is called the Chosen One of God. And you see this in Matthew 12 18, I believe we even saw him called the Servant of God today. This is a section in Matthew 12 18, a quote from Isaiah 42, God's chosen one. Peter similarly calls Christ the elect and precious one of God in 1 Peter 2.16, who was foreordained before the foundation of the world, 1 Peter 1.20.

All these different ways of describing the Son as one who is an object of his Father's choosing. He is somehow chosen or elected or foreordained by his father. Well, in what way? How does that make sense? We see throughout the New Testament, and even hints of it in the Old, that the Father determined before the creation of the world that his son would be the Redeemer of God's elect people.

And this choice of the Son is an essential part of God's decree. But because the Son does not come into existence after that decree was made in eternity past, he is not merely an object of that decree. Rather, he is both the subject of the decree and the one making the decree. He is the decreeing and electing God as well as the subject of that election. The necessary implication of this is that the Son not only comes into the world as a servant or as a chosen one, but he comes willingly.

There is agreement and harmony between him and his father to accomplish this work. And we see this especially prevalent in the Gospel of John where Jesus goes out of his way over and over again to affirm that he is there to do his father's will, but not under compulsion. He's doing it willingly and voluntarily. And so Christ is the chosen one of God, the elect one. There is in some sense the Father chose him and the Son willingly took up upon himself this responsibility to be the one who would redeem God's people.

So the Son is not merely sent into the world as if he was simply another servant. Rather, he fulfills an obligation laid on him by his father, and he willingly takes up that obligation and fulfills it perfectly. There is an agreement between the Father and the Son to accomplish this work. That's the foundation of a covenant, a command and a promise relationship. Second, on the other side from Christ's election and receiving this command from his father to die for his people.

We also see the father makes an oath to help and to preserve his son in this work. And not only that, to give him an inheritance as his reward. There are almost countless places it seems like that we could go to see this clearly but we'll only consider one and in the Old Testament Psalm 110 verse 4. The Lord has sworn, made an oath, and He will not relent. You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek." And we know from the New Testament use of this, this is referring to Christ.

He is the one who is a priest and king in the order of Melchizedek. The father directly makes an oath regarding the work of his son that he will make him into a priest-king like Melchizedek and earlier in Psalm 110 he promises that he will make his enemies a footstool for his feet. Remember, a covenant is a solemn promise or a guaranteed commitment. Other biblical covenants are described as sworn promises throughout Scripture. Just as we see here, the Father makes an oath.

He swears a promise to his son to accomplish this work regarding the redemption of his people and the defeat of all Christ's enemies. And I do not believe this is merely a reference to the New Covenant. The writer to the Hebrews picks up the language of Psalm 110 and says that it is the foundation for Christ's work as a priest. When did Christ do his work as a priest? It began before the New Covenant was fully brought into force.

And so this covenant that established Christ as a priest must precede the incarnation itself. A covenant establishing him as this priest-king must have existed before Christ took up his priestly work. This covenant precedes the Incarnation. It even precedes David who wrote the words and Moses who mediated the Old Covenant. It is best to understand this oath sworn by his father as an eternal promise that coordinates with Christ's election as the Redeemer of God's people.

And so we have here another essential part of a covenant transaction between the Father and the son. The son is chosen and the father promises to fulfill his end of this obligation. Third, consider the language that Jesus uses when he describes the kingdom that he will inherit and then confer to his people for whom he dies. Particularly in Luke 22, 29, Jesus says, "'I bestow upon you a kingdom, "'just as my Father bestowed one upon me.'" Now this is said in a covenantal context with the establishment of the Lord's Supper on the basis of Christ's soon-to-be shed blood and the establishment of a new and better covenant. Interestingly here the verb that in our New King James Version is translated as bestow is related to the Greek word for covenant.

They share a common etymology. And that verb itself is used over seventy times in the Greek translation of the Old Testament to refer to people making a covenant. Dr. Beeke in his systematic argues that this could be translated as saying Jesus to his disciples, I make a covenant with you, just as my Father made a covenant with me for a kingdom." And even if we don't change the translation, we come to the same conclusion that there is a covenant related to this kingdom. We see repeatedly that the Son is promised to receive a kingdom and eternal glory, not merely as a gift, but as an inheritance and as a reward.

It is His payment. It's not simply simply a gift. Christ receives it as a payment for the accomplishment of doing his father's will He obeys the father's command to die for the church and in response the father promises that he will give him a kingdom And so Christ is able to stand as the representative for his people and as the head of the new covenant and offer his kingdom to those in that new covenant because his father first made a covenant with him and promised to give him a kingdom that then Christ covenants to give to his people. The covenant with his father comes first and is the foundation for Christ's covenant with his people. And this is what we mean when we talk about the covenant of redemption.

An intra-Trinitarian pledge where the Father will give a people and a kingdom to his Son and The Son swears to be incarnated and die and raised from the dead in their place, to take away their sins and to secure for them eternal life, all while being empowered by the Holy Spirit. And so while yes, the words covenant of redemption are not found in Scripture, I believe we clearly see that it is a biblical doctrine. There is an agreement within the Godhead to accomplish this great work of salvation. And so we have the covenant of redemption that unifies all of scripture and indeed all of history. This stands as the overarching plan of God over time, but what about in time?

How does God deal with men? Are His dealings with mankind likewise covenantal? I would say yes Indeed they are, even from the very beginning. As our confession says, Chapter 6 of our confession, paragraph 1, Although God created man upright and perfect and gave him a righteous law, which had been until life had he kept it, and threatened death upon the breach thereof. Yet he, Adam, did not long abide in this honor, Satan using the subtlety of the serpent to subdue Eve, then by her seducing Adam, who without any compulsion did willfully transgress the law of their creation and command given to them in eating the forbidden fruit." That's a long way of describing what happened in the garden, a little bit of a long sentence, but it's saying that God not only created man, but also imposed on him an additional law beyond what his nature as God's creature required.

And then chapter 20 of our confession, paragraph one begins with this covenant of works being broken by sin and made unprofitable under life. God was pleased to give forth the promise of Christ. And so in the garden we have God not merely making man but also making a covenant with our first father. What the confessions call the covenant of works. Instead of letting man merely go his own way, God condescended and revealed himself as not merely creator, but as the covenant Lord.

And he made a covenant with Adam. Now today This is often called the covenant of creation or the Adamic covenant, but historically in our confession and other Reformed confessions it is called the covenant of works. What is the covenant of works? By this we mean a covenantal arrangement where God promised to Adam and through Adam, the whole human race, God promised them eternal life and happiness on the condition of obedience to the law of God written in his heart and particularly conditioned on obedience to the command to not eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That's the covenant of redemption.

Now like the covenant, sorry, that's the covenant of works. Now like the covenant of redemption, the covenant of works is often denied because people will open their Bibles and read in the first couple chapters of Genesis to see the word covenant doesn't appear there. But again we have to reject the idea that a concept can only exist where a particular word is used. It isn't until we get to know it that the word covenant actually appears. But if we look at what God says to Adam and how that arrangement is laid out in the beginning chapters of Genesis, I think we do clearly see elements of a covenant.

Genesis 2, 15-17 says, Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the Garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die." I think if we're careful and we pay attention to the language that's used, we have to see that there is a solemn and legal or law-based new revelation given here to Adam. This is something beyond what Adam would have known merely as God's creature. This is a revelation of a agreement. This is a creation of a covenant with God.

God gives a command. He gives a law. He gives a sanction, a penalty for breaking that law and all of this is beyond what God does by merely creating Adam. He enters into this additional agreement And the language reflects that this has a legal and covenantal purpose. The language of freely eat in verse 16, at the end of verse 16, of every tree of the garden you may freely eat.

This actually reflects a common function in Hebrew where two verbs are, verb is repeated for emphasis. And this often appears in legal documents more formally translated it could be read as eating you will eat and Then again we see the same idea at the end of verse 17 you shall surely die dying you shall die This type of repetition even those exact words of dying you shall die appear in covenants in the rest of Scripture and we see it in history. This emphatic repetition is used in covenantal and judicial settings. This reflects a covenantal oath as well as a sanction. And if death is threatened to Adam, right, we all agree with that.

Adam is threatened with death. If you break this commandment, you shall surely die. Well, if death is threatened on condition of breaking this law, what is implied? If you keep it, you will live. There's an implication of life, of a promised life.

Remember there are two trees in the middle of the garden. There's the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. He is only forbidden to eat from the first tree initially. He was only forbidden to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The mere presence of the tree of life and the apparent freedom to eat from it until the fall occurred clearly conveyed that there was a promise of life if Adam obeyed the command to not eat from the other tree.

And so we have on one hand the sanction, the punishment of breaking, but we also have the promise, the core elements of a covenant. There are other things we can go into, but my time is escaping. I will move on to what I think is one of the most helpful things to see us, to help us see that there is a covenant transaction in the beginning pages of Genesis. Other passages in Scripture best make sense if we understand that there is a covenant transaction between Adam and God. Romans 5, as we just went through last week, that passage really only makes sense if Adam is in a covenantal headship position just as Christ is a covenant head.

Christ is the new and better Adam. He redeems and gives life to all he represents just as Adam represented and brought death to all he represents because he failed the covenant of works. Similarly I believe we see another hint of this covenant in the book of Hosea, actually. Hosea chapter 6 verse 7, if you want to look at that later. The new King James translates Hosea 6, 7 as, but, this is God referring to Israel, but like men they transgressed the covenant.

There they dealt treacherously with me. And you say, how does that reflect a covenant with Adam? Well, the word for man in Hebrew is adam. So when God made Adam, he made man. And that's what we have here in Hosea 6-7.

It literally is, but like Adam they transgressed the covenant. And some versions do render this as like Adam. And I think that's the better translation. Because how else, it seems if you render this as like men or like a man, it defeats the analogy. How else are men going to break a covenant?

They're going to break it like men. There's no real comparison if you say like men, men broke a covenant. But he's making a comparison. Israel is just like their first father Adam. Like Adam, they've broken my covenant.

So it seems clear if we look at what all of scripture says about what happened in the garden, that there was some kind of pre-fall arrangement, a covenant of works between God and our first father, Adam, in the Garden of Eden. A covenant where God gave a particular command and threatened death on the breach of it, and gave a promise, at least implicitly, of life if Adam kept that command. And this covenant extended beyond Adam. It was not just for him. It was made with him, but as a federal head, as a representative for all his descendants.

And the proof of that is that every one of us, even today, is born a sinner. In Adam's fall, we sinned all, as the old primer puts it. We sin because Adam fell And that affects us because he was a covenant head and violated this covenant of works with his God. But Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. God did not leave us merely with a broken covenant of works.

Immediately after the fall, God seeks out Adam, and he calls to him, and he draws him to himself, and an animal is killed blood is shed and Adam and his wife are clothed and they are let they they are freed again I'm getting ahead of myself. We will look at this covenant of grace that God promises when He says that there will come one who will destroy the serpent. We'll look at that next week as we consider the covenant of grace and the rest of the biblical covenants. But in conclusion, What do we make of all this? We can look at it and say, okay, yes, the Bible teaches that there's a covenant of redemption.

We can say, yes, there's a covenant of works, but what does it mean for us? Is this mere theological speculation, ivory tower theologians talking about how many angels dance on the head of a pen? Is that what we're dealing with here? No. This is immensely practical for us.

It is immensely meaningful for us. First of all, this should cause us to see and rejoice in and be astonished by the unity and consistency of God's plan and his revelation. God did not have plan A and then have to come up with plan B when plan A failed. God is working out an eternal covenant whereby He has already determined how He is going to bring the world to its appropriate end. God is not trying to play make-up as time goes on.

There is a consistent unified plan throughout all of history and so there is a consistent unity in our Bible. It is coherent and consistent as the story of the covenant making God, glorifying himself through the redemption of a chosen people. And so we should love and appreciate all of divine revelation, not simply the parts that we like or think may be most applicable to us. We should rejoice in all of God's Word as the revelation of the Covenant God. Second, we should have tremendous confidence and assurance of our salvation if we are in Christ because it is founded on an eternal covenant within the Trinity itself.

It is unbreakable. Your salvation cannot fail because it is founded on a covenant that is unbreakable. Because the parties in that covenant cannot fail, they cannot lie, they cannot even change. So if you're in Christ, how sure is your salvation? It is founded on unbreakable promise of God to God.

You cannot slip through his hand. As Gerhardt as Gerhardtus Voss put it, I love this quote, the best proof that he will never cease to love us lies in that he never began. His love for you didn't begin. He has loved you with an eternal love and so his promises to you will not fail. His covenant will not fail because it is founded in an eternal covenant of redemption between God the Father and God the Son.

And so thirdly, be thankful Christian that Christ has perfectly fulfilled that covenant and he has taken away the guilt and the threat of the covenant of works as well. The threat you shall surely die hung over your head just as surely as it hung over Adam's but you have a better Adam you have the second Adam who redeems his people and saves them from the threat of eternal damnation. You have a better Adam who took your place and bore the weight of that judgment in your behalf. So be thankful and praise your God for what he has done for you in sending his Son to be our covenant keeper in our place. And lastly, if you are outside of Christ today, Understand that that broken covenant of works still hangs over your head.

That threat, dying you shall die, is threatened against you today. You will stand before your Creator and on that day the question will be, what covenant are you in? Are you in the broken covenant of works with your father Adam? Or will you be in the covenant of redemption and the covenant of grace with Christ as your head? As we heard today, repent therefore and be converted that your sins may be blotted out so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.

The threat of death is still upon you if you are not in Christ, but there is a better Adam that you can go to, to be your covenant keeper in your behalf. Go to him and by faith in him and by faith in Him alone, you can be made perfectly whole and have the forgiveness you need. Let's pray. Father, we Thank you for your kindness toward us. Thank you Lord for being the covenant God who not only makes promises but keeps them.

And even when we fail, you do not fail. When our Father Adam failed, you sent a better Adam. And you've given us eternal life through him and the forgiveness of sins through him and Lord we are just overwhelmed at your grace and your mercy And we thank you God. We thank you that you have made this covenant of redemption to save your people. That All the power of God working together among the Godhead came to bear against our sin and you are rescuing sinners even today.

God we thank you for your grace. Thank you for the redemption that we have in Christ. May you save souls even today. May you be glorified in all that we do. And may Christ receive the reward, the inheritance, the kingdom that He earned through His sufferings.

Amen.