What is a Reformed Baptist..

Welcome to Cornerstone Reformed Baptist Church. Thank you for using and sharing our resources. What you're about to hear is God's Word from one of our teaching elders. We trust that God's Word will inspire, instruct, and bless you. For further teachings or information on our ministry, please visit us on our website at cornerstonerbc.

com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. Good evening everyone and welcome once again to our Bible studies on Wednesday. So if you have your Bibles, would you please open them up to Colossians?

Colossians chapter 2. And beloved, this evening we are going to continue with our Bible studies that we are trying to answer the question of what a Reformed Baptist Church is. And this evening we are reaching the last level of the four levels that we defined in order to answer the question of what a Reformed Baptist Church is. That is the level of the distinctives of a Reformed Baptist Church. So we have addressed that which an evangelical church is, what a Calvinistic church is, and also the distinctives of a Reformed church.

Within the Reformed camp you find Presbyterians, or Dutch Reformed, and also Reformed Baptists. This evening we are going to start even going deeper and deeper in theology and in the studies that we are doing in the Bible and trying to identify those distinctives that set a Reformed Baptist church apart. And I really hope that the Lord may give us grace this evening because the topic that we're going to be addressing is rather is very important for the identity of the Church, but it is not simple to communicate. So may the Lord give us grace in clarity in words and also in clarity as you understand. And the passage that I want to call your attention to is found in Colossians, as I said, in verse 16, in chapter 2.

And I want us to read this carefully, just not to see the contents of the text, but rather to take the main point of what I want to explain this evening. This is the Apostle Paul, and he's going to say something very important in verses 16 and 17. He's going to say, therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. And if you pay attention to what Apostle Paul says here, he lists a number of different things.

He says, therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in question of food, drink, festival, new moon or Sabbath, four or five things. And those four or five things, he says in verse 17, that these are a shadow of the things to come. Now, if you think about the things that the puzzle is listing there, if you think about food, drink, or festival, or new moon, or sabbath, something that should come into your mind is the Old Testament. These are realities of the Old Testament, right? He's speaking of food and drink The old testament is the one that provides the law or the regulations for food and drink or festivals in leviticus or moon or sabbath, which is the fourth commandment and other sabbaths that the people of israel will have these are things or realities of the Old testament of the old covenant and now the apostle assumes and says something very important.

He says these are a shadow of the things to come but the substance belongs to Christ. Now what is the Apostle doing in this verse? The Apostle is doing many things and he's provided a lot of teachings in these couple of verses but the things that is related to the study that we're going to be seeing or conducting this evening is that of understanding the things that were contained in the Old Testament and applying them correctly into the New Testament. The thing that I've said has divided a lot of people throughout many centuries and years. How do we understand the things of the Old Testament and how do we apply them or how do we take them into the New Testament?

Here we have Sabbaths and festivals and moons, all of these things that belong to the people of Israel. And the apostle says that the use of these things were a substance or a better a shadow of Jesus Christ. And Christ is the substance of all of these things. Now, beloved, The Bible says, and the Apostle Paul says, that Scripture, that all Scripture is profitable for teaching, for reproving, for exhorting, and for training in righteousness. That all Scripture is breathed out of God.

It is inspired by God. And when the Apostle says, all Scripture, he was referring to the Old Testament, but by the inspiration of the Spirit, he refers to all Scripture. So that means that that which comes from Genesis 1-1 and goes into revelation in the end of the book, everything is for the life of the Christian. So that means that as Christians and as believers, beloved, we have to invest much time and effort in knowing how we have to understand the book. This book is the rule of faith and obedience for everything that we believe and everything that we do.

Therefore, When I come to this book, I should spend not only time in reading it, but also invest time in searching in the book on how I should interpret the book. Because when the Bible says that it is sufficient, it is even sufficient to teach us how we are supposed to understand and to research the Scripture as we have it in our hands. If you pay attention to many of the letters, beloved, that we find in the New Testament, you will find that the letters in the New Testament are filled with quotations from where? The Old Testament. Every letter that you will find in the New Testament, they are filled with quotations and citations that go to the Old Testament.

So, what the apostles are doing is that they are taking information from the Old Covenant, they are taking information from the Old Testament, and they are interpreting that. Now, Scripture is sufficient for us, and it's clear, and it's everything that we need. But also, we should invest time in knowing how we are supposed to understand Scripture. Why is this very important, beloved? Because this evening we are going to start with something that is called covenant theology.

And those two words may not make any sense in your minds now, but they will, I hope, by the grace of God, when we finish this. But we are going to study the way that Reformed Baptists have interpreted Scripture from the Reformation onwards. What is the system that Reformed Baptists apply to scripture to come up with different conclusions? Because, beloved, the reason why we baptize believers and we immerse them in water and then we take them out of the water is not because this is the example. It's not only because this is the example that is given in the New Testament, in the Book of Acts and then in other books.

This is a shallow reason. And then if you go and ask many Baptists in the world, and then you will ask them, why do you baptize believers and why do you immerse them in water? They will say, well, you know, this is the example that we see in the in the New Testament. And that's that's good. That's very good.

But when we go and dig a little bit deeper into theology, we will find that there are brothers and sisters in the world reformed, that they baptize infants. So when a baby is born, they will baptize the child of a Christian family, they will baptize that infant eight days after the child has been born, or a time after the child has been born. So we find that there are different practices, ecclesiological or church practices in the world, in the church, and we need to understand why brothers, real brothers and sisters, who are not only evangelical, who are not only Calvinistic, but are also Reformed, why they have come to the conclusion that we should apply baptism to infants. Well, they have a different system of church government. Churches will be organizing big organizations that will belong, let's say, in a simple way to national organizations of groups of churches, while Reformed Baptists will believe more in the localness and the independent aspect of a congregational church.

Why do we come to those conclusions, beloved? This is because our system of interpretation is different. Now, I remember spending lots of hours and many nights with Bernie, studying and speaking about these things. And when we said that this is the deepest point that we can reach and go into understanding of the different doctrines of theology and why we are Reformed Baptists. And actually, beloved, Even though the things that I'm going to be saying tonight are a little bit complicated to understand, and you may probably feel that they may go a little bit over your head, these are very important.

And this is why, by the providence of God, we have things like recording these things, because we can then come to these videos or these teachings, and we can listen to them again, and then just try to understand why we do things in the way that we do them. It's very good that the Lord has given us providentially the means that we can just inherit from church history many of our practices. But it's even a bigger and a deeper blessing to know why we do things in the way that we do them. This is going to be edifying for our souls and also edifying for our hearts. So beloved, covenant theology.

We're going to be speaking about covenant theology. It's a system of interpretation of the Bible. So when the Apostle Paul is here quoting and citing things of the Old Testament, and he's coming to the conclusion that these are shadows of Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ is the substance of those things, he's applying a system of interpretation for scripture. So he has a presupposition, he has assumptions in his mind that help him to come to the conclusion that he's coming to. Of course, He is inspired by the Holy Spirit and he's carried by the Holy Spirit, as Peter says.

But he is also using his mind. He's also using his intellect and his mind. So. What is a system of interpretation? And here is when I require much of your attention, because I'm going to start just giving you a little bit of details that probably are things that we have not seen before, but are very important.

Beloved, when people come together, when theologians come together, when pastors, they come together, or when people that study the Bible, they come together and they say, how are we going to understand the Bible? Or how we are going to move? from the text into practice. They say different things, but generally speaking, theologians and pastors, they have come up with a system of understanding Scripture that has four different levels. a system of understanding scripture that has four different levels.

And I'm going to do it here, and this is the reason why I have this whiteboard here, because I want you to see it first of all with your eyes. This is how theologians, this is how pastors, or this is how people who understand the Bible define the framework that we should use to not only understand the scripture, but to apply it to our life. And this is usually, they do it with a triangle, with a triangle that is divided in four different levels. And each one of these levels is going to be foundational for the one that follows. And I know, brothers and sisters, that this might not be or sound like a Bible study, but more like a theology study.

But I ask you to pay much attention because this is very important on how we interpret the Scripture. four different levels or four different systems of how we interpret scripture. Beloved, there is one, two, three, and four, and each one of them is going to be foundational for the other. That means that this level that I have up here will be based on these other three levels that I have down here. This is what theologians call the divisions of theology.

And there is a guy whose name is Abraham Kuyper, hundreds of years ago, 120 years ago, who came with these divisions of theology. Now, the first level of this, I'm not going to give the technical names, but it is simply a system of interpretation. A system of interpretation, that is, how we interpret the text. This is what some people will call that exegetical theology, or probably you've heard exegetical preaching, right? Or exegesis of the text.

This is the foundational level, is how we interpret the text, the immediate text that we have in front of us. So when we come and ask that question of how we understand the text or these systems of interpretation, some people call this exegetical theology, this speaks about understanding the Greek, understanding the Hebrew, understanding the grammar, understanding the cultural context, understanding the background of the letter, understanding the canonical aspect of the book, So then you might listen to us when we are preaching, for instance, that we say, and Peter was writing this to a church that was being persecuted 30 years after the Lord was ascended. So what I'm doing is I'm giving you a background for the text, or when I say to you, pay attention how Paul uses the pronoun and follows we, we, we, or I, I, I. What we're doing is that we're dealing with the text itself. So the text, beloved, is the foundation for everything or every single conclusion that we arrive to.

The text, the book that we have in our hands, that is the most foundational level. Now the one that follows is what is called systematic theology or doctrines. Once we have come, beloved, into the text, once we have come into the text and into the lines and into what we have here, into the statements, we move, we formulate different doctrines. So what do we believe about sin? What do we believe about baptism?

Or what do we believe about preaching? It is not only coming to the text, but also coming to conclusions about the text. So we move from the text into doctrines that are derived from the text. But it's not only that. There's also a comparison that we have to do with history.

we do something that is called, beloved, historical theology. We compare the thing that we have seen in the text, the doctrine that we have come up with, and we compare that doctrine with what our brothers and sisters have believed throughout the centuries. This is historical theology. Why do we do that? Because we want to make sure that that which we are coming, or the conclusion that we are arriving to, that corresponds to a historical system of theology, and that is not something that we are just creating from our minds.

If I come to you and I say I have discovered something in the Bible, when I say that, just please run and flee from me. Because probably I'm just making that up and that is dangerous for your soul. So we have to always track everything that we see in the text and the doctrines that we arrive to with historical systems. So once we have done that, we can move into practice or pastoral theology or practical theology. So the text defines the doctrines that I believe, how I correspond them to history, and how I apply them in the pastoral life or in the practical life of the Church.

They built one upon the other." Now, beloved, What I'm going to be teaching you tonight, and I'm going to try to be concise, is covenant theology, which belongs to this label here, covenant theology. Covenant theology is a system of interpretation that is foundational for systematic theology or doctrines, historical theology, and pastoral or practical theology. For instance, baptism is a practice of the church that has to be rooted in the text, comes as a doctrine, and has to be compared with history. church government, for instance, how what is an elder or what is a deacon, that is a practical aspect of the church that has to be rooted in the text, becomes a doctrine, the doctrine of the Baptist church, and then it has to be compared with historical theology.

You analyze, you know, the Baptist of the 17th century, or try to track the Baptist back into history, and then that becomes a practice of the church beloved. Even if you do not understand this, you apply this mechanism or this method in your lives. Because you come to the text, you interpret the text, even if you do not know Greek or Hebrew or difficult words, you come to the text every day, every morning or every night when you read a scripture, and then you are interpreting that which you read, and then you are coming to conclusions. They say, wow, Lord, I had not seen that before in this text. Thank you very much, Lord.

You're coming to doctrinal conclusions. And then usually you are able to map that with something that you've been taught, of something that you've seen, of something that you've heard, and then by the grace of God, and we hope that by the help of the Spirit, that that becomes a practice in your life. That's how theology operates. These are the divisions of theology. So as you can see, beloved, systems of interpretation or exegetical theology or covenant theology in this way is a system of breaking apart scripture and coming to conclusions.

So this is foundational. So the reason why we baptize believers and we do not baptize infants is not because our practice is only different, or because in history Baptists and Paedobaptists have been performing different things, or because our doctrines are different, but rather because we see foundationally and deep, deep, deep, our system of interpretation is different. Now, I'm going to give you, beloved, the three... I'm trying to decide if it's three or four, but let's say that it's three systems of interpretation, systems of interpretation that are very popular in the world. And how I'm going to do it, not to lose your attention and just to keep you with me, is that I'm going to give you a person that believes in those systems.

So that will help you just to relate in your mind and then just to keep it in your mind. I'm not trying just to call names or saying anything I'm just doing it for the sake of your attention because it is people you know them and because you know these people when I name these people Then you're gonna pay more attention I hope and they were gonna be able to understand the system a little bit better Okay, so let me delete and get rid of this that I have here on Pedro's whiteboard and now I'm going to give you a systems of interpretation now what do systems of interpretation try to do what do they try to do what they try to do is that we have the sequence of time here we have old testament and then we have new testament I hope that I don't go in Spanish at any point. We have the Old Testament and the New Testament. What systems of interpretation try to do, beloved, is to define the continuity. You understand this word, right?

Continuity. The continuity of the Old Testament into the New Testament. Let's say that generally, this is what a system of interpretation tries to do. There are many other things that they try to do, but let's say that generally, and for the sake of clarity and simplicity, that what a system of interpretation tries to do is to understand the continuity of the Old Testament into the New Testament. But at the same time, when you define the level of continuity, you're also defining the level of discontinuity.

What things continue into the New Testament and what things do not continue into the New Testament. And when you come to those two answers, you need to define then how we understand those things that do not continue into the New Testament. Why? Because you cannot get rid of them. All Scripture is sufficient for everything that we need, so you need to interpret them and you need to understand them to the best of your ability according to your system.

So, covenant theology, beloved, is a system of interpretation that tries to answer the question of what things continue into the New Testament and what things do not continue into the New Testament. Now, if I take the different systems of interpretation that we are going to address, three or probably four. Let's say that we have here a line in which the Old Testament continues, the level of continuity is very high, and then here we have a level of discontinuity which is very high, okay? Let's suppose that I have a scale here, and those systems that are very close to your left are systems that say that many things of the Old Testament continue into the New Testament. And they say that the systems that I'm going to place on the right-hand side of the whiteboard are systems that say that things do not, or that things do not continue as much into the New Testament.

So the first one that I'm going to give you, I'm going to place it somewhere like here. Mikey, do you have any idea which one I'm going to place here? Yeah, discontinuity. Very good, very good. So I'm going to place here a system that is called Dispensationalism.

My writing is not that bad, but it's just because I'm serious, so I'm sorry for that. So Dispensationalism. Dispensationalism. And now I'm going to do something very risky here, because when I name the person who hosts this system, I'm going to have a huge challenge saying that this system is not that accurate. It's not the best system.

So you're ready for this? John MacArthur. So John MacArthur is a dispensationalist. but now he will call himself a progressive or a leakage dispensationalist. That means that he is not that strong as a dispensationalist or he doesn't hold to dispensationalism.

Now, this is very important because our brother John McCarthy is evangelical, he is Calvinistic, and he has lots of teachings that are very reformed. But when it comes to the distinctives of a Reformed Baptist, he is Baptist, but he's not precisely a Reformed Baptist, and many people, many Reformed, will not call him Reformed. He's more a Calvinistic who believes in baptism. Why? Because his system of interpretation is dispensationalism, and I'm going to explain to you where the distinctives of dispensationalism.

So let's just have in our minds that dispensationalism is for our brother and that we have been blessed by his ministry, John MacArthur. Now, beloved, the systems that I'm going to be explaining here, I'm not saying that they are outside of orthodoxy, of course, right? You understand this. What I'm saying is that when it comes deep into theology and then you're trying to answer very important questions, that we have differences with these brothers and with these sisters that hold to these systems. Now, let's have this very difficult task now of saying that what John McArthur believes is not precisely that which we hold as a church which is a big challenge.

Now this pensationalism, beloved, what they do is that they take this line of time of the of the Bible, okay, so we have the line of the Bible here that is progressing here. And now we understand, because we're Christians and we're believers, we understand, beloved, that this book has been written by who? Who wrote this book? the Holy Spirit. So there is the Holy Spirit writing this book through many authors, but ultimately this book has been written by a person who is the Holy Spirit or by God himself.

So when you're writing a book, like I don't think that we've written a book, but a person who writes a book, usually they have the end of the book already in their mind. Some people might be writing this story and then just coming up with different things, but the author knows everything that is related to the book. So there is a sense, or now there is a sense, everything that happens in history belongs to a story that God already knows what the end is. So because He knows what the end is, everything is related to the points, like in the future is related to the past and the past is related to the future. We are so small that we cannot see those things, and not even in our own lives we know what is coming, and sometimes we don't understand the things that are happening, but God knows everything in our lives, and He has everything in His hands.

He is the author of everything. So there is a sense in which there is only one story in the Bible, and then if you, I don't know if you've seen these very good videos of the Bible Project, There is a channel that is called Bible Project and then you can just go and check some videos and they will tell you the story of the Bible with very cool videos that will help you to understand each one of the books of the Bible. Now, the Bible, therefore, is only a single story, beloved, that has been written by God. So it is united. It is only one.

But we can see that the Lord in his will and in his in his wisdom he has decided to divide things even our bibles our bibles are divided into two different sections old testament and new testament so having that into our minds let's go with this system dispensationalism so If you think about how the story of creation or how the story of the world has been given to us, you probably can point to particular times that are very important. Think about a very important point in the history of redemption from the very beginning. What would be a very important point in the history from the very beginning, from day one of creation? What would be a very important point that defines the rest of the story of everything that we see around us? What would you say?

Creation. Creation will be the beginning, right? We have creation here. What other point is crucial and is important for this story or history of sin? Very good, the fall.

So we have here the fall. What other point will be very important in this whole thing? You don't have to go very detailed, but just think about very important points that define redemption history or the history of redemption. Any other point? The flood could be one, but then we have the most important one, which is Christ, right?

And if you think about after Christ, what would be a very important point? The death of Christ will be here with the cross, but let's just put here the coming of Christ and the taking of the church, okay? And I'll just divide this into these. Let's say that we have creation, we have the full, we have the cross, and then the coming of Jesus Christ. Actually, our brothers and sisters dispensationalists, they are very famous because they have very cool graphs of how they explain history and how they divide history.

Now, why is it called dispensation? You love it. Or dispensationalism. And now you know what I'm going to... It's called dispensationalism because what they do is that they divide the story of redemption in something that is called dispensations.

Okay? They divide the story of the history of redemption into dispensations. And dispensations is just simply a period of time in which God related to people in a particular way. So, depending on the type of dispensationalist that you speak to, they will have six or they will have seven different dispensations. But I'm just going to point you to a couple of them.

So they will have one that is called innocence, that goes from creation to the fall. They call this the dispensation of innocence. Why? Because Adam was innocent. He had not sinned.

Okay? Now they will call between the full and then between Moses, which is Moses is also a very important point, when the law, the Ten Commandments are given, this will call, some of them will call the dispensation of conscience or dispensation of Abram. Different names they will have. but now they will call here from Moses to Christ and some will create a little bit of a period of time with John the Baptist but let's just let's just call it this dispensation here they will call the dispensation of the law because Moses brought the law and please bear with me try to make much effort just to be stay with me after Christ they will say and I'm just going to summarize it that they're here we have a church age churches. So our brothers dispensationalists, they will divide the story of creation into different dispensations.

Dispensations of innocence, the dispensation of Abrahamic dispensations, and many other dispensations. But what they believe, what makes them very different, beloved, is this. If you want to get something, and then you will understand many of the sermons of John MacArthur, is these two points. That dispensationalists hold to these two points strongly, strongly. The first one is a literal interpretation of the Bible, a literal interpretation of the text.

Remember when I created here the triangle and I said that the foundational level was the interpretation of the text? Our brothers, dispensationalists, they hold to a literal explanation or interpretation of the book. And then many of you will say, wow, but that's actually something that is good. It's good that we hold to literal interpretation of the Bible. The only issue with that, beloved, is that the Bible does not interpret itself always literally.

There are some points in which the Bible interprets itself with a spiritual meaning or a spiritual sense. For instance, you might remember Paul when he speaks of circumcision, and he says that circumcision of the flesh was a shadow of a circumcision of the Now, circumcision, for you to become a Christian, you don't need to open your chest and then circumcise your heart. This is a spiritual language. But there are some brothers, dispensational, that they will take, of course, not that passage, but generally their hermeneutics, or the way that they interpret the Scripture, is very literal. To the point that, for instance, when they come primarily to prophetic literature, like Apocalypse, now i'm speaking in spanish revelation revelation or the the writings of the prophets then they will interpret that literally they will interpret that literally and they will come to conclusions something you know some type of conclusion that sometimes most of the church has interpreted that as spiritual meaning they will interpret that literally.

Now, there's no problem with interpreting scripture literally. Actually, I think that this is a very good thing. As long as you understand when scripture is speaking in a prophetic way, or in a song of Solomon, I just forgot the word, in a poetic way, when you understand this type of literature, then you're safe. But the second point of dispensationalism is the one that causes a little bit of trouble in interpretation. I don't know if any one of you think what that could be.

If you think, you're just welcome just to say. But the second point is, beloved, that dispensationalist, they have something that is called, the technical name is dualistic redemption. But put it in simple terms is that there is a distinction between Israel and the church. So they say that there is a dualistic redemption plan of God, that there is a distinction between Israel and there is a distinction between the Church. And then some very strong dispensationalists, John MacArthur will not say this, by the way, he will not say this, but some people, very strong dispensationalists, they will say that people of the Old Testament, Israel, that were under Moses, that the way they were saved was by keeping the law, because the church age had not come yet.

Christ, who came with full of grace and full of light, and he was the revelation of God, he brought the grace, and because the atonement was not performed yet, that people under the dispensation of the law were saved by keeping the commandments of the law. And I don't know if you can see there, but there's a bit of issues there. There's a little bit of problems and challenges there. Of course, John MacArthur will never say that. And John MacArthur acknowledges that salvation is by grace through faith from Genesis 3.

15 that all the time has been like this. But generally speaking, dispensationalists will believe that God has a particular and special plan for the people of Israel. That they have a specific, redemptive plan and way for the people of Israel. And as you will see, covenant theology acknowledges that. But the problem with dispensationalists is that sometimes they will say that this plan of salvation for Israel is not necessarily the same plan of salvation that the Church has, which is through Jesus Christ by grace through faith.

So that creates a little bit of a problem. And then once we explain what the Reformed Baptist view of that is, you will see a little bit of the gaps, I hope. than by the grace of God. But then when you think about dispensationalism, this is what I want to have in your mind. They divide the story in different dispensations, and they believe in a literal interpretation of the scripture, and also they have a distinction between Israel and the church.

Now let me move to the other one, and depending on how your faces continue, I will see if I do three or four, but let me just go into this one. This is very important. This one is called Presbyterian covenant theology, okay? Presbyterian covenant theology. Now, if we have the line here, again, of time, okay?

We have the Old Testament and the New Testament, beloved, and then if I had again here the line of discontinuity, and then the continuity, and I have here dispensationalism, and then I was going to place Presbyterian covenant theology, I will place it a little bit more like here. Presbyterian covenant theology. I will place it more like here. You see, a dispensationalist will divide the story of redemption in a more radical way. Why?

Because they will say salvation or the plan of salvation in the Old Testament was different for the New Testament, so they are cutting They don't have this type of continuation of grace, grace between the Old and the New Testament. And some of them will say the law in the Old Testament is completely removed. Nothing applies to the New Testament believer. There's no use for the law in the New Testament. So we have to forget everything about the law.

So it is a very clear discontinuation between things of the Old Testament and things of the New Testament. And even for dispensationalists, they will have a clear eschatology, you know, those things that people say about the end of time. So they will have clear periods of time that each one of them have a particular form in which God relates to people. But now if we come to Presbyterian covenant theology, first of all what we have to acknowledge here is that Presbyterians are the strongest reformed stream in the world and in history. Presbyterians, Presbyterians are the strongest, the largest and the most important even.

reformed stream in history from the 17th, 16th century up to this point. So even all the seminaries, all the schools, all the books, even probably most of your favorite preachers will be Presbyterians. So this is a very strong tradition that is very close to the Baptist Reformed tradition. That's why we call also Covenant Theology. They have Presbyterian Covenant Theology while the Baptists will have Baptist Covenant Theology.

And then if I can attach this to a name, I will also be doing something really bad because now I'm going to say R.C. Sproul, for instance. R.C.

Sproul will be on the side of Presbyterian covenant theology. I know there is a good point for us and that is that Archbishop Paul and John MacArthur were very close and very close in their theology and everything they understood but when you go deep into their systems of interpretation they were just a little bit apart from it. But what I'm trying to show you is that these systems do not affect the orthodoxy of the doctrines that we come to. There's some important practices that are defined by this. Yes, absolutely.

Like baptism or church government or some other things which are important for the life of the church, but they will never affect the substance and the core of the gospel. Now, what is about Presbyterian Covenant Theology. Presbyterian Covenant Theology, beloved. As I said, this is a system of interpretation. Presbyterians, sometimes I might mention the word paedo-baptist.

Paedo means in Latin, infant, and baptist means baptism. So Presbyterians are paedo-baptists, and baptists are credo-baptists. Credo is the Latin word for believer's baptism. So sometimes I might say paedo-baptists, which means Presbyterians. So, paedo-baptist covenant theology, what they do is that they divide the story of redemption basically in two periods of time.

And those two periods of time are not necessarily here between Old Testament and New Testament, but rather the point of division is found in Genesis 3.15. Genesis 3.15. So when you go to Genesis 3.

15, let's just read it together. Mikey, you can say if I'm misrepresenting at any point. Okay, Genesis 3.15. This is a key and very important passage for Paedobaptists or for Presbyterians.

Genesis 315 is the passage that is known as the Proto-Evangelion, or the first gospel that was given, okay? And Genesis 315 says, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. So now, what is the thing with Presbyterians and this passage. If you go, and I'm not asking that you do this, but if you were interested in doing it, if you go and check all the teachings that we've done in Genesis, and you pay careful attention, you will see that we're very careful that every time that we refer to Genesis 3.

15, we always use the word promise. We always were very careful when we're referring, when we're doing our Genesis, we're very careful to say, this is the promise of the Messiah. This is the promise that God gave. We're very careful in using that word. Why?

Because our brothers Presbyterians, or our brothers Pate of Baptists, they say that in this point, That in this point, God did not only give the promise of salvation, but that he instituted, that he established, that which is called the covenant of grace. So a covenant, that's why it's called Presbyterian covenant theology or Baptist covenant theology. A covenant, beloved, is an agreement between two parties. So in this case, it's an agreement between God and people. That is a covenant.

So when I'm going to buy something from you, we sign an agreement. We are entering into a covenant. And in that covenant, there is stipulations. I say, I'm going to give you this money, and then you give me this product, or you give me this thing. There is an agreement.

There is a covenant. There is stipulations that we have to fulfill. Now, our brothers Presbyterians will say that in Genesis 3.15, we have the institution or the establishment of the covenant of grace. And that after Genesis 3.

15, everything belongs to an instituted covenant of grace. Everything is a covenant of grace. So now they will call here grace. Now, we have to acknowledge here that, and the reason why, this is personal comment and personal opinion, the reason why I think that they came to this conclusion is to to counter arrest, and I don't know if I'm making that word up, actually to kind of like balance the discontinuity that some other camps will have. Because some other camps will divide the history of redemption in two, and they would say in the Old Testament, because there was no Christ, people were saved by the law.

And then when they come here and they say after the fall everything was grace, so then salvation by grace through faith falls very neatly into this model. It follows very neatly. If you say the covenant of grace or the agreement of grace was established upon the fall and everything after that was a gracious relationship with his people, then salvation by grace through faith follows very neatly. And this is actually something very good, because of course we believe that salvation is by grace through faith, but Reformed Baptists do not believe that the covenant of grace was instituted after the fall. And let me just explain what the problems with this are.

When you say that grace or a covenant of grace was established upon Genesis 3.15, everything that follows after Genesis 3.15, you got to take it into the category of gracious. But we have a little bit of a problem because we have a person here that is called Moses. And Moses was the recipient of the law.

And the covenant that Israel received at Mount Zina is very clearly a covenant of obedience. Do this and you shall live. And then even Paul quotes the law that is given under this Old Testament as obedience. But our brothers, Paido Baptists and or Presbyterian Covenant Theology, they come to the conclusion that in substance, the law contains grace and that the obedience that substantially the covenant the mosaic covenant is a covenant of grace but when you go into you know what moses receives and what paul says of moses you can see that is purely obedience actually the people of israel will receive blessings and curses if they did not obey or if they actually obey now but this is not the only problem beloved everything that comes here it says that they say that it's grace and then we have Jesus Christ that come here so basically we have the new testament and then we have the old testament and these people beloved will say or these brothers and sisters will say that these two covenants the new covenant and the old covenant are dispensations or are administrations to use the word that they use administrations of the same covenant of grace that the covenant of Christ, the new covenant, is an administration of the covenant of grace, and that the covenant of Moses, the law, is also administration of the covenant of grace. So they make this grace a connecting substance between the law and between grace that is given by Christ.

They make it a connecting substance that connects obedience with the grace that comes with Jesus Christ. So when they come to define the nature of the church, and this is the only thing that I want you to pay attention for this beloved, when they come to define the nature of the church, because grace is that which comes from the Old Testament, then therefore the practices of the Old Covenant of Obedience need to be carried and taken into the New Covenant. So, in the Old Covenant with Moses, children were circumcised when they were eight days old in order to enter into the Covenant. Now, because the new covenant is substantially a covenant of grace, then when the children of Christian parents are born, they should receive the sign of the covenant, which in this case is baptism, to enter into the covenant. Now, I hope that you got that, but let me show you the huge problem, and I'm very happy, I'm happy and satisfied if you only get the big problem that we have with Presbyterian covenant theology.

Beloved, Pedro Baptiste believed that for a person to enter into the covenant of Jesus Christ, baptism is sufficient. So, when a child is baptized, that person enters into the new covenant of Christ, even if that person is not elect. even if that person is a reprobate, even if that person is not elect and then diverts or goes away from the faith when the person is 20 or 25, that person they will call is a covenant child, a person who has entered into the covenant of Christ by baptism. So I don't know if you see it there, but there is a huge problem for the Baptist because we say that the covenant of Christ the new covenant is the new covenant and that the new covenant was established by the blood of Christ and that the blood of Christ accomplishes the purpose for which it was shed and the purpose for which it was shed was for the salvation of for those of whom he died so that means that those who enter into the covenant of Christ are saved, and therefore they receive the sign of the covenant, which is not baptism eight days after they have been born, but rather baptism after they have been born again in the spirit. Beloved, this is the main complication that paedo-baptist theology or covenant theology will have.

They make a distinction between the membership of the church So the church, please bear with me, the church is comprised by two levels, okay? It's comprised by that which is the invisible church and that which is the visible church. As Baptists, we believe in the same thing, but our brothers will say that you enter into this visible church by the application of baptism. That baptism is that which makes you a covenant member with Christ. That is the baptism that is applied eight days after you are born that makes you a covenant member of the covenant for which Jesus Christ died and shed his blood.

Even if you are a reprobate, even if you have been chosen from eternity past not to be saved, even if you're going to depart from the faith, once you receive baptism, you are inserted by that baptism into the membership of the covenant. And then we'll have something that is called double election. Election into the covenant and election into the visible church and into the invisible church. Beloved, I don't know if you can see it from your background as Baptist, but this produces a lot of conflict and a lot of problems. There is a brother, a Reformed Baptist brother who wrote a very important book.

He's from France. And in his book, he says that there is a sense in which Presbyterians are Armenians. There is a sense in which Presbyterians are Armenians, because Armenians say that salvation is available for everyone, that Christ died for everyone, and then Christ dies, he does his part, he died for everyone, and then people give their faith, and those two items, that saves people. And then he says that in a sense, Presbyterians are Armenians. Why?

Not in the same sense in the universal sense of Armenians, but rather in the sense that entering into the covenant of Christ requires something that is performed by the person. Just as Armenians believe that in order to be saved you have to produce faith in and of yourself, something that you do, there is also a sense in which covenant members of the new covenant according to the Presbyterian point of view, it is something that is performed by the works of the parents of the child that perform baptism on the child and then this child becomes a covenant member. So there is a sense in which salvation or covenant membership is available upon baptism. Now this is a very important point of difference, beloved. I was going to I was going to move now to a different one, which I think is important to mention, but let me mention it, please, in 5 minutes or 10 minutes, because this one that I'm going to mention now, I've mentioned briefly Presbyterian covenant theology, I've mentioned briefly dispensationalism, and now I'm going to mention another one, and actually I want to mention this because this is becoming a challenge for Reformed people.

And this, I can see it even in our immediate environment, this is becoming a challenge. And this is something that if these ones are within this timeframe here of orthodoxy, this other system, it is very close to getting away from orthodoxy. And this is something that I don't know if you've heard, but it is called Kingdom Theology. Kingdom Theology. So Kingdom Theology, another system of interpretation, and I'm gonna give you that one very quick, just for the sake of mentioning it, and then I will move into the Baptist.

Kingdom Theology divides the history, beloved, divide the history into two. And they would say that this is the promised kingdom, and this is the kingdom established. Established with the E or with the S? Established, like this, in Spanish. Kingdom established.

They will say that when Jesus Christ came to the world, he divided the history in two, and we agree with that. But when Christ came, he did not only inaugurate it, as we will say, reformed people will say that Christ inaugurated the kingdom and the kingdom is going to be consummated when he comes. They say that the kingdom has been already established. And because the kingdom has been already established in its fullness, that all the things that Christ did when he was here, believers can do. So these are the people that will go and say that we should preach the gospel with mighty works, with wonders, that we should not be sick.

Why? Because Christ died upon the cross, and by his wounds we are healed. We think that this is a scatological healing from our sin, that we're going to be glorified and sin will be no more. But then these people, these brothers and sisters, will say that because the kingdom is already established, that the cross has already achieved everything that Christians have, and they have access to all the spiritual blessings. And because we have access to all the spiritual blessings, we should not be sick.

We should be rich because we have treasures in Christ. So then we should be prosperous and we should be rich because we have access to all of these things by faith. Why? Because the kingdom has been already established and the preaching of the gospel is the same way that the kingdom was preached with Jesus Christ, with mighty works, with wonders, with healing of the sick and all of these things, resurrection of the dead. so this is they divide into promised kingdom and the kingdom already established this is what is called kingdom theology and this will be very characteristic of very strong charismatic camps and churches but this is infiltrating beloved many calvinistic circles this is what is called kingdom theology i just wanted to mention that and now let me just move into Baptist Covenant Theology, Reformed Baptist Covenant Theology.

So if we have this again and we divide it into the Old Testament to the New Testament, if we have Dispensationalism here with John MacArthur, and then we have Presbyterian Covenant Theology here with R.C. Sproul, and then probably we will have down here Kingdom Theology, because they divide history in two, very divided into two. We will have Kingdom Theology there, but let's just not put it there. I would say that we will put here Baptist Covenant Theology.

Now it seems a little bit of a graphic manipulation here, in which I'm putting the system that we believe in the middle, and then usually those things that are in the middle, are balanced, right? And not that I'm trying to do that with the graphic, but that's the truth. It's a middle point between the discontinuity of dispensationalism and the continuity of Presbyterian covenant theology. So it's a middle point. We will have something here, for instance, more that is new covenant theology that we are not going to address here.

We will have discontinuity here. We will have Catholics here. and some other systems of interpretation will be in that stream. But now, Baptist covenant theology, beloved, simply put, and I'm going to put it very simply, very simply, what we do is that we divide, it's very simple, we take the Bible and we divide it into two sections, Old Covenant, New Covenant, and that is defined by Jesus Christ. Okay, so we don't have dispensations, we don't have a covenant started here in the beginning, we simply have the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, and this comes from Hebrews.

Hebrews says that the covenant with Christ is a better covenant, it's a better promise. And we have the Old Covenant here, and we have the New Covenant here. We say that the covenant of grace, which the Presbyterians will say that is established in Genesis 3.15, that that covenant was established by the Lord Jesus Christ, because He came and He shed His blood upon the cross. This is the new covenant that I give you in my blood.

This is what we do when we partake of the cup and the bread. So the covenant is established here. This is the new covenant, the new covenant or the covenant of grace, which our brothers, Presbyterians will say that was established here. And then we say that simply it's established here, and all of that is the new covenant. And this here is the old covenant.

Then the challenge that we have then is, then how were people saved under the Old Testament? And the answer that we give to that is that God gave us the promise of salvation in Genesis 3.15. that believers in the Old Testament were saved not based on an established covenant, but based on the faith that they have in the promised Messiah that was to come and to establish the covenant. So salvation has been always by grace, through faith in Jesus Christ, but not because the new covenant or the covenant of grace was established here in Genesis 3.

15, but rather because in eternity past, God promise to his son or gave his son before the foundation of the world and we were chosen in Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world and the overarching theme of the story of redemption is not the covenant that was established in Genesis 3 15 but the promise of salvation that the father gave to the son in eternity past or the covenant of redemption. So now all covenants that we have in time are not dispensations of a covenant of grace, but they are covenants in and of themselves. So then when we see the Noahic covenant, for instance, that you, brother, you mentioned the flood, there is a Noahic covenant here. We have a Noahic covenant. We have an Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 12, 13, 15, and 17.

Or we have, some people will say that there is a covenant, well, we have a covenant with Moses. Or some people will say that we have a covenant with David, the kingship covenant. Some people will say that there's a covenant with Palestine. And all of these covenants are to be understood how? As shadows of the substance that was to come.

So these covenants here were pointing to a person. that is Jesus Christ, these covenants were covenants in and of themselves that had a purpose of communicating eschatological or foreshadowing information about the Messiah who will come and establish the new covenant upon his blood. So the church, beloved, is everyone for whom Jesus Christ died. You enter into the membership of the universal church of Jesus Christ by grace through faith. Once you have grace and faith in Jesus Christ, you are inserted into the universal church of Jesus Christ and nothing will remove you from there.

So how you become a covenant member of the new covenant? by grace through faith. And once you are inserted into the covenant, nothing can remove you from the covenant. Why? Because covenant membership is equal to salvation.

Covenant membership is equal to election. Covenant membership is equal to eternity. While for the Presbyterian, there is a sense in which covenant membership can be equal to condemnation. Or covenant membership can be equal to lose your covenant membership. Or covenant membership could be equal to damnation.

Because It's baptism what inserts us into the covenant and not faith that imputes you the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Now, we do acknowledge that there is an invisible church, that there is an invisible church and that there is a visible church. we do acknowledge that among people in the physical building of the church, that there might be some people that come themselves to be Christians, and they have not been really saved. But because we don't have the ability to say who is saved and who is not, we simply apply the biblical conditions or the biblical methods that the Bible has given us to identify those who are really in Christ and who are not. You shall know them by their fruits.

So then we come and assess the fruits of our brothers and sisters, and then when we see a real profession of faith, we come in charity, in love, and we assume that when a person says that he's a brother or sister in Christ, that they are. But truly and honestly, we don't know, because we don't know the hearts of every single person. We know our heart, and God knows our heart, and then He knows who this church is. That's why we call it invisible church. But we acknowledge that those who are inserted into the church are those from whom Jesus Christ died, and that everything in the past was pointing to this reality that was to come, beloved.

I know that this is not probably the best topic to address, but I've tried to make it as simple as possible. And if I gave you John McArthur here, and if I gave you R.C. Sproul here, then I have to give you, what do you call it, a weighty person. I'm not going to put myself there because then it will collapse.

But for instance, we will have Charles Spurgeon. Charles Spurgeon was a Reformed Baptist. Or we will have in history John Bunyan. John Bunyan was a Reformed Baptist. Or we will have, perhaps, the best theologian that has existed in history.

John Owen. John Owen was a Congregationalist, and he actually baptized infants. But his covenant theology was Baptistic. And many people believe that had he lived three more years, He died 1683. Had he lived two or more, three years, he would have become a Baptist.

And some people call him John the Baptist, because his covenant theology was turning into reformed Baptist theology. Now, beloved, being a Baptist these days is the general train of the church. Being a Baptist in the 17th century meant that you might lose your life. Baptists were persecuted and Baptists were, many of them lost their lives in the 17th century because Now they said baptism is not for infants. Baptism is for those who believe.

And this went against not only our brothers Presbyterians, but this went against the Catholic Church, the Anglicans. Everyone was baptizing infants, or most of people were baptizing infants. So Baptists were highly persecuted. So we have the Confession of Faith that was published in 1689. The first draft of the Confession of Faith was written in 1644.

Guess what? Not by people of the high level of society in theology, but was written by seven pastors that came, studied scripture, and they came to the conclusion that baptism was for believers, and not only for believers, but also by immersion. And then it's later that this confession is published, and many years later, the people started to acknowledge this as part of the Reformed tradition, and then baptism started to have more power and more strength. Now, beloved, this is Very important, and I love this type of topics, even though they might be a little bit difficult and boring sometimes to hear, and then they might just go over our heads. Why?

Because, as I said to you, beloved, this is the Word of God. You know, when we study things, when we study engineering, or when we study whatever we study, or the thing that we like, or even in the things that we do, if they are just simple things that we do, we invest a lot of effort trying to do those things the best that we could. The best that we can, we try to do in that way. God has given us His Word, and this is not only sufficient and good for our lives, but beloved, I'm telling you, this is the most profound message available for the mind of people. There is no science, there is no field, there is nothing that compares to the level and the depths of the wisdom that is contained in this book and spending time even breaking these things even we have mistakes of course we make mistakes but spending this time with an honest heart with the scripture produces in us Christ's likeness because we see how God has worked through our time and how these things have been pointing to Jesus Christ and how he came and saved us he died for us and he has revealed all these things in this book so this should This should draw us closer to the book, to a study, to meditate upon it.

And that's why people have given their lives to study the book. And that's why people give their lives to study and to teach it to others. Why? Because our faith and our life is based upon this. Now, beloved, next week, I hope that I can go a little bit deeper into Baptist covenant theology.

My intention was to give you just a little bit of an overview. I hope that it was not overwhelming to your minds. If you're interested in that, please just go to the video or just ask any question and then next week I hope that by the grace of God we can come and then just speak a little bit more about Reformed Baptist Covenant Theology. Amen?