New Covenant Baptism - 33

Returning this morning to Hebrews chapter 8, looking again at verses 7 through 13, which, as you know, is a precise quotation from Jeremiah 31, 31 through 34. And this text declares to us that Jeremiah's prophecy, which was given 600 years before the coming of Jesus Christ about a new covenant that God would make with his people, that that prophecy has now been fulfilled. And the new covenant has come. And that new covenant is the one that now dictates, I guess you should say, describes the relationship of God with his people. And so this text demonstrates the superiority of the new covenant over the old covenant. It declares the obsolescence and the replacement of the old covenant.

Also sometimes called the Mosaic covenant or the Sinaitic covenant because it was made from Mount Sinai in the wilderness after God had brought his people out of the nation of Egypt. And it has important implications for many areas of truth, one of which we're going to take up today and, Lord willing, another one next week. But today we're going to see how this covenant applies to the doctrine of water baptism.

And I know it's been not much over a year, I suppose, since I dealt with this previously. But it comes up again because now we are systematically preaching through the book of Hebrews. And so we need to look at this again and to consider what this has to say in the light of that particular subject. And especially, this helps us to understand from the Bible who are the proper subjects of baptism.

All right, here we go. Two parts of our message today. Number one, the new covenant reviewed. Number two, the new covenant applied.

Reviewed to make sure we understand what it says and applied in a couple of areas and particularly in the area of the ordinance of baptism. The new covenant reviewed, some of which we will be repeating or at least reviewing what was said last Sunday and other things will be in addition to what was said last week. Now I remind you that a covenant is, by definition, a formal agreement between two or more parties. And when we're talking about covenants in the Bible, we are talking about agreements which God made with men. God originates those covenants. God declares what the terms of the covenants are. God says this is how I will relate to men, what I promise to do for men, and in many cases what men are required to do for me in the terms of this covenant.

Not always. Some of the covenants are unconditional. Some of the covenants are conditional. Some of the covenants have some elements that are unconditional and other elements that are conditional.

But nevertheless, a covenant is a formal agreement between two or more parties and in the Bible between God and men. Now in our text in verses 7 through 13 of Hebrews chapter 8, we see, first of all, the old covenant inadequacy declared in verse 7. For if that first covenant, meaning the Mosaic covenant, had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second.

The statement is clear enough. We are told that the old covenant was faulty. And the succeeding verses will tell us in what way it was faulty.

But the old covenant was faulty and it needed to be replaced. Clear declaration of the inadequacy of the old covenant as we see it in verse 7. Then in verses 8 through 12, we have a few more details that tell us how exactly that old covenant was inadequate. Its inadequacy is described in verses 8 through 12. And we are told that it was inadequate because of Israel's sinfulness.

Verse 8, because finding fault with them, he says. So there's the first clue as to what was faulty or weak or inadequate in the old covenant. It was that it was not able to deal with the sinfulness of man. The covenant itself was fine.

It was God's word. We can't actually say that there was anything faulty in the covenant, but we can say with scripture that it was weak. It was inadequate because it was unable to address the sinfulness of man. Man's sinfulness made him unable to keep the terms of the covenant. And so Israel's sinfulness made this covenant inadequate.

It could not deal with that particular problem, that particular reality. Let me read a few verses out of Jeremiah chapter 7. But this is what I commanded them, saying, Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. And walk in all my ways that I have commanded you that it may be well with you. Yet they did not obey or incline their ear, but followed the counsels and dictates of their evil hearts and went backward and not forward. Since the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt, so he's tracing it back to the inauguration of that first covenant, the Mosaic covenant. Since the day that your fathers came out of the land of Egypt, until this day, the day when Jeremiah is writing, I have sent to you all my servants and the prophets, daily rising up early and sending them. Yet you did not obey me or incline your ear, but stiffened your neck.

You did worse than your fathers. And here are the words of Hosea the prophet in Hosea chapter 1 verse 9. He's talking about why he told Hosea rather to name his son Loamne, Ammi. Then God said, call his name Loamne for, and this is sobering, for you are not my people and I will not be your God. They broke the covenant. You are not my people and I will not be your God. Now that has to be taken into account along with other statements of scripture when we consider God's relationship to Israel. But this is clear. You are not my people in some sense and I will no longer be your God because the covenant was given, the command was given. The requirement was that you walk in my ways.

And if you do, I will be your God. And if you don't, then the promise is null and void. Take that into account. And so because of Israel's sinfulness, the old covenant was inadequate because it wasn't designed. I started to say it couldn't really deal with Israel's sinfulness and that's true. But it couldn't in the sense that it wasn't designed to. It couldn't in the terms of the covenant as it was given. I'm not saying that God couldn't deal with their sinfulness.

He certainly could and did. But the covenant was inadequate to deal with Israel's sinfulness. So it was inadequate because of that reason. It was inadequate, number two, because the old covenant did not provide regeneration. Verse 11 of Hebrews 8. None of them, says the Lord in Jeremiah and now repeated in Hebrews, are describing the promise, the prophecy and the promise of the new covenant. And here's what you'll find in the new covenant, different from the old one. Verse 11, none of them, that is the members of the covenant community, none of them shall teach his neighbor and none his brother saying, know the Lord for all shall know me from the least of them to the greatest of them.

That has puzzled some people because they haven't been able to understand those words in the context in which they are given. And so I remind you again, this is not saying that under the new covenant, God's people will not evangelize their neighbors, their friends and preach the gospel to the ends of the earth. It's saying this in terms of the new covenant community. What it is saying is that under the terms of the new covenant, there will be no one who is a member of the covenant community who doesn't know the Lord. In contrast to the old covenant where many, if not a majority of the Israelites who were bona fide, God approved members of the old covenant but were unregenerate, they were lost. That cannot, that will not, that cannot happen under the terms of the new covenant.

Every single member of the new covenant community is a born again child of God. That's what brings one into the new covenant. Unlike what was required to bring people into the old covenant. But under the new covenant, regeneration is what brings people into the covenant. If they are regenerated by the Spirit of God, they belong to the new covenant community. They are under the terms of the new covenant and they don't need to be told to know the Lord because they do, every one of them from the least to the greatest, from the youngest to the oldest, from the poorest to the richest, from the least educated to the greatest educated, everyone who belongs to the new covenant has already been regenerated. So yes, children can be saved if God regenerates them, if they believe the gospel. Anyone can be saved by the grace and power of God who is regenerated and therefore believes the gospel. They are under the new covenant, they are brought into the new covenant community and all those who truly belong to the new covenant community are already saved. Now you new covenant community members get out there and evangelize those who are lost. But you see the old covenant was inadequate because it did not provide regeneration.

That wasn't part of it. Let me read a few verses out of Deuteronomy 29. It starts this way in verse 1. These are the words of the covenant which the Lord commanded Moses.

And then drop down to verse 4. Yet the Lord has not given you a heart to perceive and eyes to see and ears to hear to this very day. He's talking to members of the old covenant community.

These are the words of the covenant which the Lord commanded Moses to make. He's talking to members of the old covenant community and he's saying God hasn't given you a heart to understand. God hasn't given you spiritual eyes to see. God hasn't given you ears to understand spiritual truth. You have not been regenerated.

You do not understand spiritual things. God in the old covenant did not provide for regeneration. But the contrast with the new covenant is declared by Christ in John 6 verse 45 when he says it is written in the prophets. I wonder what prophets he has in mind here.

I'll tell you what he says and then I think you'll know. It is written in the prophets and they shall all be taught by God. Therefore everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. That's a description that we just read about the new covenant in Hebrews chapter 8 and in Jeremiah chapter 31. And Jesus says the same thing. He says it is written in the prophets.

The Old Testament prophets foretold this and now it's come to pass. They shall all be taught by God. That is every member of the new covenant community will be taught by God, has been taught by God. Therefore everyone who has heard by the work of God's Spirit to open their ears and learned by the work of God's Spirit to put his word in their hearts.

Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. And so what comes first? Coming to Christ and then understanding or understanding and as a result of that coming to Christ. What comes first believing in order to be born again or being born again by the Spirit of God in order to enable one to believe?

Which comes first? It's important to get that sorted out scripturally and this is helping us with that. And so the old covenant was inadequate because of Israel's sinfulness. The old covenant was inadequate because the old covenant did not provide regeneration. The old covenant was inadequate because it did not cleanse away sins verse 12. For I, quoting again Jeremiah and the terms of the new covenant, for I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and their lawless deeds.

I will remember no more. Unlike the Israelites under the old covenant who were regularly faulted with their sinfulness and their uncleansed condition. But the new covenant is different in that under the new covenant every regenerate believing member of the new covenant has his sins cleansed away. Gone, gone, gone, gone, yes my sins are gone. As far as the east is from the west, so far shall he remove my sins from me. But the old covenant did not cleanse away sins.

It covered them temporarily and that is evidenced by the unending repetition. Another sacrifice to cover sins for another year. Another sacrifice to cover sins for another day. Another sacrifice and God will be merciful and not hold your sins against you as long as you are trusting in his promises of the old covenant. And are making the sacrifices and accepting the temporary covering that is being made.

Well when does this temporary covering end? When Jesus Christ comes and completes it, fulfills it, says it is finished and then no more sacrifice for sin. Because now all sins have been completely cleansed away. He pointed to a future day of cleansing. Did the old covenant people of God understand that?

Well some did. It was revealed in the Old Testament Scriptures even clear back to the beginning. What do you think God was indicating in Genesis chapter 3 which I had here but I guess I'll just have to do it the old fashioned way and turn to it. Genesis chapter 3, that promise made in the garden. God saying to the woman, Eve, I will put enmity between you, or to the serpent rather, saying to the serpent I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. Strange language.

Who is that? Well it turns out to be the unregenerate and the regenerate but it also turns out to be the Lord Jesus Christ. Her seed, it's capitalized in my Bible, her seed, the Lord Jesus Christ, he, her seed shall bruise your head serpent and you shall bruise his, capital H, heel. Clear back in Genesis was the promise of a Messiah who would come and would deal thoroughly and completely with sin.

But it was just in briefest form. But nevertheless other prophecies and I could, or other words of the Old Testament make this more clear and I'll just call your attention to one of the most familiar ones by Isaiah the prophet in chapter 53. This great chapter is the gospel in the Old Testament and it reveals a Messiah, a Savior who will cleanse away sin revealed in the Old Testament. It says, surely he, who is this he?

Well this is the promised Messiah. He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Yet we had esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted but he was wounded for our transgressions.

He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him and by his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Not on the bulls, the goats, the lambs, the animal sacrifices. God hasn't laid on them the iniquity of us all but God has laid on him the iniquity of us all. It goes on further in Isaiah 53 to say, yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him.

He has put him to grief. When you make his soul an offering for sin. Not the offerings of the animals, the offerings of this one.

The offering of his soul. When you make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed and so forth. Yes, this was revealed in the Old Testament scriptures but it was not part of the Old Covenant. The Old Covenant was pointing forward to the New Covenant. And those in the Old Testament who believed the promises of God of a promised Savior, a promised Messiah who would come and would thoroughly, completely and finally deal with sin. Then they were trusting the same Savior for the cleansing of their sins that we do. They didn't understand him as clearly as we do but they were trusting the same Savior. They were trusting the promises of the New Covenant to take away their sins because the Old Covenant did not have that ability. It could cover temporarily until the Messiah came to take them away permanently. And therefore no unbelievers belong to the New Covenant. The least to the greatest, the youngest to the oldest, the poorest to the richest, the one of lowest social standing to the one of highest social standing, all who are members of the New Covenant know the Lord. Every one of them have had their sins dealt with.

Question. Does this mean that no one in the Old Testament had a changed heart? Did people have to wait until the New Testament to have hearts changed?

No. But those who were trusting in the promise of God to have mercy upon sinful people, not on the basis of the animal sacrifices but on the basis of God's mercy and upon the basis of God's promised Messiah, they had changed hearts. That's why we read words like this in Psalm 51 from David. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your loving kindness, according to the multitude of your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions, wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. You see, he's not appealing to the lions, the bulls, the goats, the priests, the sacrifices of the temple or tabernacle.

He's appealing to the mercy of God. And so it goes throughout Psalm 51. Here are the words of verse 10. He says, David, praying to God, create in me a clean heart, O God. There's regeneration. In the Old Testament, hundreds of years before the coming of Christ, but there's a new heart.

Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me and so forth. So, yes, people in the Old Testament had, some had, changed hearts, just like people in New Testament days have changed hearts. But it wasn't based upon the terms of the Old Covenant.

That's the whole point. The Old Covenant didn't make provision for regeneration that has changed hearts. The Old Covenant didn't make provision for the complete elimination forever of our sins. The Old Covenant didn't have these provisions in it. And so Old Testament people who believed in the mercy of God and the promises of God for the future had changed hearts by God's mercy and believed in the promise of a Messiah. And then we come to verse 13 where we learn about the Old Covenant obsolescence accomplished.

Verse 13, Hebrews 8. In that he says, a new covenant, he has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. That's an interesting text. And here's how I understand it. The obsolescence of the Old Covenant is going to, in some senses, come about gradually.

In one sense it happens instantaneously, but in some senses comes about gradually. In fact, in the making of the Old Covenant obsolete, we can see three elements or three stages. Number one, that obsolescence was announced by Jeremiah.

Jeremiah 31, the text we are finding examined in Hebrews chapter 8. It was announced by Jeremiah. It was inaugurated by Christ. Of course, on the day before, or the night actually of his betrayal, on the day before his crucifixion, he took the cup from the Passover table and he instituted a new ordinance. And he lifted that cup and he said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood.

It's come. Prophesied by Jeremiah 600 years ago. Now it's come by Christ.

But when exactly was it precisely inaugurated? Well, think of these words of Christ from the cross in Matthew 27, 50 and 51. And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. That rending of the veil between the holy place and the holy of holies in the temple is recorded in all three gospels.

It's highly significant. And when Jesus died on the cross, that thick veil, that thick curtain that separated the holy place from the holy of holies, that thick curtain that curtained off the place where the Ark of the Covenant was that only the high priest could go into one time a year and sprinkle blood on the mercy seat that God would accept as a temporary covering for the sins of his people for another year. And also indicated the separation of sinners from God. They could not come immediately into the presence of God. The old covenant did not provide for that provision, did not provide for that possibility for sinners to come into the immediate presence of God. But as soon as Jesus died on the cross, the temple veil was ripped in two from top to bottom. And theoretically, anybody could have walked right into the holy of holies at that point. Illustrating that now sinners who believed in the death of Jesus Christ upon the cross for the salvation of their souls had full access to the presence of God as much as the Old Testament high priest had only once a year. Any believer has more access to God than the high priest did under the old covenant.

And so the obsolescence of the old covenant was announced by Jeremiah, inaugurated by Christ, and finalized by Rome in 70 AD. Because even though the temple was torn in two, you would think that that would finally convince unbelieving Jews. I mean, all the other things that should have convinced them, but surely that would have convinced them. No human hand, no human mechanism could have accomplished that. And there was ripped in two from top to bottom and wide open for anyone to walk into the presence of God and the holy of holies. And yet that didn't stop them. I guess they pieced the curtain back together.

I don't know how they did it. And kept right on with their sacrifices and with their rituals and with all of their priestly operations going on year after year, decade after decade after all of this happened. Going on for about another 40 years until Titus, the Roman general, came in and destroyed Jerusalem, destroyed the temple. Without the temple, all the sacrifices ceased. No more lambs, no more goats, no more bulls, no more sprinkling of blood.

All ended and has remained ended for more than 2,000 years. Today, no Jew who's still clinging to the old covenant as unbelieving Jews who are religious at all are doing. They're still trying to relate to God in the terms of the old covenant, but they have no sacrifice. They not only have rejected the sacrifice of Jesus, they don't even have the sacrifices of the old covenant.

Not a single one has been offered since 70 AD. God said, you won't see the truth and lay this aside and trust Jesus and receive the new covenant and put the old covenant aside. So I will stop it. It will operate no more. Which should I have to insert this a little early, but which does make it seem unlikely in my mind that that temple is going to be rebuilt and the sacrifices are going to be made again. As some people think by their misunderstanding of the Old Testament prophecies. That's over. God ended it. The new covenant does away with the priesthood. The new covenant does away with the sacrifices.

The new covenant does away with the earthly temple. It's all gone. Not to return in the millennium. It's gone.

Right? Some of you are saying, I'm not so sure. All right, we move on. Now, the new covenant applied. Well, I apply it first of all to salvation because this makes so very, very clear that salvation is number one, not in human relationships. Remember what John wrote in John 1 12, but as many as received him to them.

He gave the right to become the children of God to those who believe in his name. And then this important verse, verse 13, who were born, born again, not of blood, not of the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God. Salvation is not by human relationships. It's not by blood. That is by bloodlines. The Jews are counting on their bloodline to Abraham to save them.

That's not it. No one is saved by their bloodlines, by their human relationships to anyone. Nor is salvation by human determination. It's not by the will of the flesh, not by the will of man. Your free will isn't the primary ingredient.

Of course, you exercise your will. But that's not the critical thing that makes the difference that follows after God has made the difference. It's not by the will of man, but of God. Brought about by the life and death of Jesus Christ as the perfect obeyer of God's laws, a righteousness which is applied to those who believe in him and by the perfect sacrifice to satisfy the judgment of guilt upon all of those who have sinned against God's laws. And so by the life and death of Jesus Christ and by the work of God applied by the Holy Spirit to hearts, this is the way men and women are saved.

It is only by the Lord Jesus Christ and him alone. But now we move on to applying the New Covenant to baptism. And I quickly and simply describe what I will call the Baptist view, what I consider to be the biblical view of water baptism. It is simply this, that baptism is to be applied to believers alone. It's to be applied to those who have been made disciples of Christ.

We see that in the Great Commission. We see that in all of the clear illustrations in the New Testament where baptism is applied. But Jesus said, go into all the world and what? Number one, make disciples. Number two, baptize them who?

The disciples. What next? Number three, teach them everything that I've commanded you. That's the sequence. That's the order. Make disciples, baptize disciples and teach disciples.

That's the Great Commission. And baptism is in the middle of that. Baptism marks those who have given evidence of regeneration by believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, which doesn't come naturally to sinful men and women. So baptism is applied to believers alone where and only where there is credible evidence of regeneration by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ primarily. And those are marked as members of the new covenant through water baptism. Water baptism is indeed the sign of the new covenant, even as circumcision was the sign of the old covenant. But that doesn't mean what some think it means.

We'll get to that shortly. I love all God's people, Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, whoever they may be, if they believe the same gospel. And so the evidence of loving the Lord Jesus Christ, they're my brothers and sisters.

I love them. But I have a special affection in my heart for Bible believing Presbyterians because we believe the gospel alike. And that's the heart of it all.

That's the most important thing. And so I find great comradeship, great fellowship, great enjoyment in the presence of Bible believing Presbyterians. I had the joy of being in the presence of some of them at the funeral meal yesterday, the family of Frances Easley. Some of you didn't know her and therefore wouldn't know that we Baptists stole her from the Presbyterians when her husband died, her first husband. And Ernest Easley, who was a member of our church, his wife died, and this widow and widow were married. Then she, being a Bible believing, obedient wife, followed her husband and that Presbyterian became a Baptist.

In fact, I baptized her right back here and she was sweet about it, never complained about it, became a wonderful Baptist. But she was a Presbyterian. And I had a lot of her family, most of her family are Presbyterians. And I had great fellowship. She has a son in law who's a Presbyterian minister in Tazewell, Virginia.

I have known him for many years and we love to get together and talk and we did that yesterday. So I just want you to know, I love my Presbyterian brethren, those that are true Bible believers, those who are Orthodox, those who actually believe the Westminster Confession of Faith. I get along really, really, really well with them until we get to the subject of baptism.

And then we differ. And though that's not as important as the doctrine of salvation, it is not unimportant because it has ramifications that spread beyond. But let's talk now about the Presbyterian view of baptism. Presbyterians believe that new covenant baptism replaces old covenant circumcision. I believe that too. So far we're on the same page.

New covenant baptism replaces old covenant circumcision. Right. Agreed. They point out, again correctly, that old covenant circumcision was applied to infants. Okay, it was. I'll agree with that.

So far, so good. But the conclusion they draw from that is, therefore, new covenant baptism should also be applied to infants. No. For a lot of reasons, I can't agree with that.

No. And if you didn't catch that just by reading the verses in the New Testament, the deal with baptism, then pay close attention to Jeremiah's prophecy, explained and fulfilled in Hebrews chapter 8. It makes it crystal clear.

I don't really see how you can miss it. I really don't understand. Many of these people are godly and scholarly. I read their books. I read their theologies. But when it comes to this, they're as blind as a bat.

Okay. My dear Presbyterian brethren. And some may be here today.

I don't know who all of you are. I may be talking to some Presbyterians today. May God open your eyes.

All right. They think new covenant baptism should be applied to infants because old covenant circumcision was applied to infants. And thus they believe that new covenant baptism applied to infants should make them members of the new covenant community, just like old covenant circumcision applied to infants made them members of the old covenant community. They believe that the children of believing parents who baptized their children have thereby made their children covenant children. Because old covenant parents who circumcised their infants made their infants covenant children. And thus covenant parents have covenant children. It sounds logical.

It is emotionally appealing in some ways. The only problem is it's contrary to the Bible. I had one Presbyterian brother tell me, describing the baptized children of covenant church members. They're little vipers in covenant diapers, acknowledging that they're unconverted, but thinking somehow they've got a little bit of spiritual advantage here over the ones that aren't in covenant diapers.

They're little vipers in covenant diapers. And so everything gets turned around now instead of first making disciples, then baptizing those who give evidence of having been made disciples through faith in Christ and then teaching them everything. They think that they're going to make disciples by baptizing them. That marks them as disciples.

Then they teach them the word of God to bring them to faith in Christ. And in other words, they are endeavoring to make disciples out of those that they have called disciples through water baptism, but who are not true disciples in the biblical sense, because one only becomes a disciple in the biblical sense by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Presbyterian view is based upon an old covenant understanding. It assumes a very high level of continuity between the old covenant and the new covenant at this point. And yet even that at the beginning of the text says, I will make a new covenant, verse eight, with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, verse nine, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, which I take to mean that there is a significant level of discontinuity between the old covenant and the new covenant. And when it goes on to explain the terms of the new covenant as compared with the old covenant, that becomes very clear to me. But this position assumes a close continuity between the old covenant and the new covenant and dismisses biblical evidence to the contrary, dismisses New Testament evidence to the contrary.

In other words, it interprets the New Testament in the light of the Old Testament, having decided what the Old Testament teaches and decided that this carries over into the New Testament and decided that water baptism replacing circumcision therefore ought to be applied to infants, than any of the texts that might seem to indicate otherwise are dismissed or viewed in some way different from what appears to be the clear language of scripture. Now let me say, and I've got about five minutes left, and I do have a clock that I watch, I guess you know that. Even though I warn you this clock is one hour off, Ken Elliott brought that to my attention somehow, in moving the clock around after the funeral yesterday, it came back an hour late.

We haven't been able to, and it sets itself automatically, so we haven't figured that out. So I guess I've really got an hour and five minutes, so just, no, I already hear objections being raised. All systems involve some level of assumptions and logic, you can't get away from that. Whatever system you have, theologically, you may not even know that you have a system, but you do, whether you call it that or not, whether you recognize it by that or not. All systems have a certain measure of assumptions and logic, because that's what we do, we systematize the Word of God by putting it together the best we can understand in an orderly and logical fashion, and we have to make some assumptions to do that. But having made certain assumptions that seem valid to us does not indicate that they are correct, and those assumptions may be correct or they may be incorrect, and this much is obvious. If we make assumptions and the assumptions are wrong, they're incorrect, then the conclusion is also going to be wrong, and this is one of those areas. The assumption being that New Covenant children of believing parents ought to be baptized because the Old Covenant children were circumcised, that's an assumption.

But if the assumption is not correct, as I think the scriptures make clear it's not, then the conclusion is invalid. This is not what the Bible teaches. Here's the New Covenant view. The Old Covenant was made with a physical people, the nation of Israel, the physical seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It constituted Israel a special people nationally. They became the people of God, but in a physical sense. Inclusion in the Old Covenant community was based entirely upon physical relationships, most upon bloodlines from Abraham, but it was possible for Gentiles to come into the Covenant community, but only by a relationship with someone else who had a bloodline relationship with Abraham. If you had servants that were Gentiles, you could and should, according to the Old Testament, circumcise them and bring them into the Covenant community. It wasn't strictly a bloodline thing, it wasn't strictly a racial thing, as some people have made it, but it all had to do with physical relationships with these physical descendants of Abraham.

That's just the way it was. Inclusion was based upon physical relationships, and inclusion was certified by circumcision. In contrast, in my understanding of the New Covenant based upon the scriptures that we have examined, the New Covenant was made not with a physical people, but with a spiritual people. People like this hear the words of Paul in Galatians 3 29, and if you are Christ's, are you Christ's? Do you belong to Christ? Do you believe in him?

You're afraid to say. If you are Christ's, then you are, listen, Abraham's seed. He's writing to Gentiles. If you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise. The New Covenant is made with a spiritual people, spiritual seed of Abraham, not the physical seed of Abraham, whose hearts, as we have learned here, have been infused with God's word.

I will put my laws in their mind, verse 10, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Who are the people of God? Those in whom God has put his word in their hearts, not written externally on tablets of stone, like in the Old Covenant, but in their hearts. Those whose hearts have been infused with God's word. Those who have been made to know God in saving grace. Those whose sins have been cleansed. That's who the New Covenant is made with.

It's not with a physical people. You can't take Old Covenant circumcision that marked people as part of the covenant community based upon physical and external relationships and carry that over into the New Covenant because the New Covenant is distinctly different, and it's only made with people who have been made spiritually alive by the work of God's Holy Spirit. Therefore, the New Covenant differs significantly, not marginally, but significantly from the Old Covenant. And scripture, and scripture alone, can inform us concerning the degree and details of the discontinuity between the Old and the New Covenant. Scripture, not logic, must interpret scripture. The New Testament clarifies the Old Testament, not the other way around, for the New Testament is the fuller and final revelation. You cannot get to a good conclusion by beginning with the Old Testament and making your interpretation from the Old Testament and then reinterpreting what the New Testament says in the light of your Old Testament conclusions that have already been made before you come to the New Testament.

No, you must allow the New Testament to clarify and interpret the Old Testament. That's my final word because time has run out. Let's pray. Father, teach us thy ways and show us thy prayers. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.