The Vision (9.19.13): God's Covenant

The annual Keach Conference will be held Friday evening (6:30 pm)-Saturday morning (9:30 am), September 27-28 at CRBC.  This conference is free (though an offering will be collected in the meetings) and open to anyone to attend.  This conference is sponsored by the Reformed Baptist Fellowship of Virginia.  For the last few years we have had each year’s theme center around a chapter in the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689).  This historic Puritan Baptist statement of faith based largely on the Westminster Confession of Faith serves as the doctrinal confession for our church and other Reformed Baptist congregations.  A confession of faith is always a “subordinate standard.”  That means it stands below Scripture and is to be corrected by Scripture.  A good confession, however, serves the useful purpose of describing how one might correctly interpret the Scriptures.

This year’s theme will be taken from chapter seven “Of God’s Covenant.”  Our keynote speaker, Dr. Richard Barcellos, is a seasoned and respected Reformed Baptist minister and theologian.  The text of this chapter is listed below along with the “prooftexts” cited to substantiate the doctrine presented.  I encourage you to read through this chapter as you prepare to come to the Keach Conference and spend time learning more about the faith “once delivered unto the saints” (Jude 1:3).   

1. The distance between God and the creature is so great, that although reasonable creatures do owe obedience to Him as their creator, yet they could never have attained the reward of life but by some voluntary condescension on God's part, which He hath been pleased to express by way of covenant.1
1 Luke 17:10; Job 35:7,8

2. Moreover, man having brought himself under the curse of the law by his fall, it pleased the Lord to make a covenant of grace,2 wherein He freely offers unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in Him, that they may be saved;3 and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life, His Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe.4
2 Gen. 2:17; Gal. 3:10; Rom. 3:20,21
3 Rom. 8:3; Mark 16:15,16; John 3:16;
4 Ezek. 36:26,27; John 6:44,45; Ps. 110:3

3. This covenant is revealed in the gospel; first of all to Adam in the promise of salvation by the seed of the woman,5 and afterwards by farther steps, until the full discovery thereof was completed in the New Testament;6 and it is founded in that eternal covenant transaction that was between the Father and the Son about the redemption of the elect;7 and it is alone by the grace of this covenant that all the posterity of fallen Adam that ever were saved did obtain life and blessed immortality, man being now utterly incapable of acceptance with God upon those terms on which Adam stood in his state of innocency.8
5 Gen. 3:15
6 Heb. 1:1
7 2 Tim. 1:9; Titus 1:2
8 Heb. 11:6,13; Rom. 4:1,2, and ff.; Acts 4:12; John 8:56

Grace and peace, Pastor Jeff Riddle