Stop Taking Jesus Out of the Bible | Theocast

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Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, Justin and I are going to have a very pointed and lively conversation about why people find it necessary to remove

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Jesus from all of the scriptures. We do wholeheartedly believe that the

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Bible is about Jesus from verse one to the end of the book, and there seems to be a teaching and instructions today that would encourage one to not see

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Jesus in every part of scripture. We possibly name names and give examples. It's a very lively conversation.

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We hope you enjoy. Stay tuned. If you'd like to help support Theocast, you can do that by leaving us a review on iTunes and subscribing on your favorite podcast app.

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You can also follow us on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Plus, we have a Facebook group if you'd like to join the conversation there.

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Thanks for listening. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

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Conversations about the Christian life from a Reformed, confessional, and pastoral perspective. Today, your hosts are

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Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina. I'm John Moffitt.

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I'm the pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee. If you're just now tuning in and you didn't hear the introduction, you might want to go back and find out where Justin and I pastor.

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I had someone email me recently, and they're like, wow, you're in my same town. I didn't even know that, so you might even...

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People skip the early portions of the podcast. They do. Apparently. Justin, we normally just get right into the topic, and we will, so just bear with us for about three seconds.

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I had an experience that I had to share, that 15 years ago when I was in Biloxi, Mississippi, this

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California boy, for the first time, had crawfish. And the last night

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I went to the restaurant, and I had me four pounds,

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I shared four pounds of crawfish, boiled potatoes, and sausage from Cajun Steamer.

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So if you're in Nashville, you live near Franklin, go to Cajun Steamer. It's fantastic. And one last thing, just going to throw this out there.

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We are bringing in some fun products. We have Trust Christ and Calm Down coasters. I mean, I'm ready to get me one of them now.

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I don't know when they'll be available, if they will, but we've got them, and it's kind of cool. Justin, that has nothing to do with what we're talking about.

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As a matter of fact, it's very absent from the very thing that we want to talk about. So please take us right into this subject of stop taking

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Jesus out of the Bible. We talk about stuff on the show that is stuff that's going on in our minds and hearts, like stuff going on in our churches, things we're preaching through, things we're learning, things we're studying, conversations that we're having with members of our churches or other people.

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Those things often serve as fodder for episodes on Theocast. I mean, that's normal,

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I think, because we're Christians living the Christian life in our respective churches, and we're also surveying the landscape of Christianity in our day.

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And that's, I don't know, in one sense, easy to do with Christian social media, a lot that can be said about Christian social media.

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But you can observe things, trends and hot topics and discussions and debates that are going on.

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And so those things also inform us here in terms of what we're talking about on the show. Today's episode is really birthed out of some social media stuff and what that's produced by way of conversation and thoughts and the like.

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So this past weekend, the other guy on our staff who was preaching on Sunday, he posted this on Saturday night.

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Christian pastors, if you don't preach the law and extol the mercy and grace of Christ tomorrow, you're not preaching a

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Christian sermon. The gospel is news of what Christ has done and who we are in him by grace through faith.

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And then he adds a little P .S. This is also what is to be found in the Lord's table. Now, I wholeheartedly agree with what this guy wrote.

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I know you do too, John. That post sparked a lot of controversy and debate and interaction on social media.

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Not surprising. And the interaction and the objection to that, that if you're not preaching law and you're not extolling mercy and grace, the mercy and grace of Christ, you're not preaching a

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Christian sermon, the main response is like, well, maybe we should let the text drive our preaching because law and gospel are not in every passage.

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And good expositors know that is effectively the response. I'm just trying to,

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I'm putting it charitably. And that was, so that was that. So this obviously has sparked some conversation amongst our elders, amongst our staff.

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And John and I today, when we get on, like we always do, we're talking about what we're thinking about and what we're, what we're wrestling with, whatever, what's going on in life.

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So I was sharing this with him. I just have to like cut in real quick. It is interesting how we both take turns.

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I'll come into the office super hot about something I want to talk about. And you're like, great, let's do it. Today, I literally on my drive in goes,

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I don't know what we're gonna talk about today. And then you're like, I got it. And I was like, let's do it. Yeah. So I've kind of said this all in a personal sense.

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Like, here's what's going on in our world here in Asheville. And I've shared this with John. And here's what I'm seeing on social media.

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I'm just an observer. I didn't put the post up, which is why I'm a little more happy to talk about it. I'm just observing this.

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And I am struck. I am concerned. And in good ways, man,

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I am. I'm irked, I'm I'm indignant about the fact that so many people who are evangelicals, who are

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Calvinists, who would maybe self professedly be reformed, at least as they understand themselves, who mean to take the

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Bible seriously and all this kind of stuff. Wig out over historical reformed categories like law and gospel or the redemptive historical framework of Scripture with Christ at the center and in the name of good exegesis, in the name of a grammatical historical approach to the

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Bible or whatever it may be, using very pious sounding language, effectively are saying you need to be careful about preaching

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Christ or seeing Christ in all the Scriptures. And I am convinced,

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John, that that has massive fallout for everybody that's listening to this podcast, because we have all grown up and cut our teeth in an evangelical context where we have not been taught to positively go to the

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Scriptures and read all of it in light of Christ and His work. Read it in terms of law and gospel.

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Read it in terms of covenant theology. We've not been taught that and oftentimes have positively been encouraged, or maybe

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I might put it in the negative, have been discouraged from doing so. Yeah, man, there's so much to be said here,

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I think, so people understand what we're trying to do. Part of Theocast, and you're going to learn about this later, but GRN, Grace Reformed Network Churches, we are trying to clarify and in many ways uncover what has been cluttered by evangelicalism, by modern

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Christianity, and we have put us at the center of our hermeneutic, our science of interpretation, the way in which we read the

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Bible. We put us at the center of that and we've removed Jesus and kind of put Him in the background, which is kind of the reason why we titled it

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Stop Taking Jesus Out of the Bible. What ends up happening is this. I've seen this recently on the

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Facebook group as well, it's like, I don't have any type of tradition, I just take the Bible for what it is.

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Well, I am very thankful for that. There are definitely traditions in history that have been wrong and have interpreted the

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Scripture wrong, and we shouldn't use those. Those are bad. But when it comes down to studying

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Scripture, when you say, well, I just take the Bible at face value, I just read it in its original context of what it means, the danger in that is that you assume that you're going to interpret it correctly in absence of the rest of Scripture.

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And this is what I mean by that. There are traditions that have been handed down to the church, and what

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I mean by traditions, traditions are a good thing, they're not a bad thing. Traditions in how we have understood and interpreted the

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Bible. In other words, the word Trinity is a word that's been handed down throughout the ages as a very good, solid way of understanding

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God. And thankfully, it was brought to us early on in Christianity. And basically, if you deny the

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Trinity and our historical understanding of that word, you are no longer orthodox. The word gospel, unfortunately, is a great word we use as well.

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But at times it can get cluttered and it can be changed. I mean, the Mormons will say they believe in the gospel.

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Seventh -day Adventist, I mean, there's different, I would say, not Christian denominations that would hold to the word gospel, but they don't mean the same thing that we do.

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So one of the things that's important, and this is why we say confessional perspective, is that a confession is examinable.

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I can look at it and tell you right or wrong. When someone says, I just believe the Bible, there's nothing to examine there, and therefore you cannot determine whether it is right or wrong.

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And to be confessional, I just want to say this and we'll talk about it maybe another time, we hold to the confession because it's biblical.

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It's important that we say it that way. We're not like, well, we use the confession in as much as it's biblical.

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That's actually not what we mean. We mean, no, we are confessional and we use this confession and confess this confession because it's biblical.

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That's important. It is. So to kind of capstone what I'm saying, a lot of what we learn from tradition in history is about Bible interpretation.

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So when we interpret God's word, we aren't the first. I mean, I love this quote from Spurgeon, you know, we take so much great confidence in the

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Spirit, giving us insight to interpreting the word of God, but we seem to lack confidence in others who've interpreted the word of God by means of the

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Spirit before us, and we tend to just throw that all out the window, which is not safe.

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So when we talk about a law gospel distinction or the confession, which is where we learn law gospel distinction throughout history, that has been examined and has been pulled apart and has been shown time and time to be biblical.

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And that is why it's a proper hermeneutic to use because it's not new and it hasn't been pulled apart and attacked.

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I'm okay with, Justin, I'm okay with people using different wording or different phrasing or different titles to help us explain theology.

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I'm okay with that, right? If you're going to say, well, this is like the internet, right? Or this is like a car,

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I'm okay with that. But the thing is, is that it can't contradict what's come before.

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And if it is, then we should have a problem. And I'm just going to do this really quickly because it might help, especially those who are newer.

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When we talk about, for example, a law and gospel distinction, we mean that there is law and gospel in the

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Old Testament. There's law and gospel in the New Testament. And the law are, in any portion of the

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Bible, are the things that we read that we would need to do for righteousness before God, do these things and you'll live forever, that kind of language.

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Do these things and you'll be blessed, that kind of language. You'll be accepted. Right. Gospel, on the flip, is completely the unconditional promise of God grounded in the grace of God.

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It's what God gives us through the person and work of Jesus Christ. We simply receive that by faith.

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That's gospel. And so we understand that the scriptures contain law and gospel and that it's appropriate to go to any portion of the scripture with that framework in mind.

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And that's helpful to us in understanding the scripture. The same could be said of a redemptive historical framework of the

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Bible with Jesus at the center. What does that mean? It means that the scripture, first and foremost, is a revelation of God's work in history to redeem, and all of it centers on the person and work of Jesus Christ to accomplish that redemption.

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That's the main point. And so what we're contending for is that we would go to any passage of the

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Bible with these tools in our backpack so that we interpret any passage of the Bible in light of that main point, that is redemption through Christ and the coming of Christ to redeem, and we would also go to any passage of the scriptures and understand that the law of God that is holy, upright, and good, that we can't keep as fallen men in Adam, is revealed in all of the

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Bible, as is the gospel revealed in all of the Bible, namely the promises of God to save us through Christ, and we want to understand any passage in the whole thing in light of these great truths.

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Or we are prone, as Martin Lloyd -Jones said, if you don't understand the whole, you are going to do terrible things with the parts.

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That's true. So you need to understand the whole of the Bible from these historical, tried -and -true perspectives.

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Redemptionist law framework, law and gospel, covenant theology, those things, so that you don't blow it up when you go to a part of the

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Bible and then interpret it here and do bad things with it. We don't want to do that. No, that's why

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Paul says that the elders cannot be novices. And I think in many ways he says they have to be able to properly defend the gospel and all of scripture, be able to give a defense of the hope that lies within you, and you have to do that from all of scripture.

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And so we're going to get into some dangers here and some examples of what we mean by this by multiple sources.

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But a lot of what Theocast is about is that we are trying to say a lot of the frustration and the confusion is happening because we're ignoring tried -and -true sound biblical structure and theology that's been handed down to us to help us to interpret rightly how the

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Bible is supposed to be understood. Yeah, and our podcast, so much of what we have talked about over the years and so much of what people have gravitated toward over the years is we aim to herald

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Christ and His sufficiency, and we aim to point the center to Christ, not themselves, and that's a historical reformed posture, extra nos, right?

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We're looking outside of ourselves to Christ always, and that's all we're trying to do here, but we have observed along the lines of what we're talking about today,

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John, you go to many, many, many evangelical church services. You go to many church services in places or in churches that would even claim to be

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Calvinistic, and you go in there and there's a lot of things said about God and His sovereignty and all these kinds of things and His holiness and His mercy and His grace maybe as well, but then there's a lot said about us and how we need to live and our sincerity and our reverence and all of these kinds of things, and with all due respect, you go and you hear all this stuff, and you're kind of like you said earlier before we recorded, you're like, where's

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Waldo? Where's Christ? We ought not have that takeaway.

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When we gather on the Lord's day, this is just an indication of a systemic problem, right? When we gather on the

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Lord's day, if you're asking the question, like, where is Christ for me? Where's Christ for me in what we're doing today?

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Corporate worship. That's evidence of a real problem underneath in terms of our theological framework and grounding because we're not understanding that the scripture ultimately, according to Christ Himself and according to the apostles, is a testimony about Jesus.

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Moses, the law, the prophets, the writings, it's all a testimony about Christ, and we're clearly not understanding that well when we go to church and we're having to ask ourselves, like, where is

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Christ for me in what we're doing, and so that's sparking this too, and I think if you hear

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John and I passionate about this, it's because, my goodness, this is wrecking people, and this is why folks are exhausted.

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This is why people are discouraged. This is why everybody's like, deep down, if we're honest, we lack assurance.

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We're troubled, and God, oftentimes, we struggle to see

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God as benevolent and loving and merciful and gracious because we've been so often presented with a

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God that's harsh, and man, it's just not helpful, dude. No, no, it's not, so let's definitely jump into some issues here that we might show as examples, and these are just so that you can understand, maybe giving some clarity on what we mean as far as preaching

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Christ and all the scripture, you know, I'm okay with you using different titles, you know, Justin and I, when we talk about, like, if someone asked me, what is the point of the

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Bible, I would say a covenant of redemption. It's a promise between the Father and the Son and the Spirit that they would save sinners.

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Absolutely, bro. And well, how do you defend that? I said, well, when God creates the world, what happens to Adam and Eve? They step into the trap, and they break the covenant that God had made with them, the promise, however you want to word it,

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I don't care, but there was a promise, do this, and how do we know it's live? Because later,

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Paul says, where the first Adam failed, the second Adam succeeded and brought many sons to glory, where Adam would have obeyed, he would have entered into glory with the

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Father. And what's the first promise that we get in Genesis 3? That from Eve is coming the

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Messiah, right? And how do we know that? Because of further revelation. So we know when the story begins, the promise of Jesus is in the beginning of the story.

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Well, you just mentioned the covenant of redemption. That was made before the world began. That's right. So we get the kind of flashback to before scene one, and we read of this in Ephesians 1 and many, many other places where even

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Jesus, while he's on earth, is talking about coming to do what he and his father agreed on or the charge that my father's given me and all this.

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It's like, well, where does this come from? This comes from before the ages began. So your point is entirely made.

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How do you guys defend understanding all the Bible to be about that? It's like, well, because God said that, and God said that before he made anything, and then that literally, that redemption is what is playing itself out on the stage of history in time and space.

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Well, it's almost like act two. You know, if you've ever seen any of the Avengers or any kind of movie that's got a part one, part two, right?

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What do they do at the beginning? They kind of go back and do a replay, but they also will kind of loop in some new information.

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Well, when we were getting about act two, this is like the church age and the return of Christ.

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And, you know, Paul is introducing kind of like, all right, this is before we get into what act two is, let me give you a reminder of what act one was.

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And then he gives us a recap. He doesn't really give us anything new, but he kind of concludes it in a way where he adds in a different flavor, a different thought and perspective.

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And he's like, by the way, this whole thing that happened, yeah, that was predetermined before the world began.

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Just so you know, and his recap is helpful because then you can stop and go, oh, wait, well, let's go back and read it again, because that's going to, that's going to kind of change the perspective here.

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It's going to, I wouldn't say change it. That's not a fair word. It's going to bring some high level of clarity.

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If you're new to Theocast, we have a free ebook available for you called faith versus faithfulness, a primer on rest.

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And if you struggled with legalism, a lack of assurance, or simply want to know what it means to live by faith alone, we wrote this little book to provide a simple answer from a

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Reformed confessional perspective. You can get your free copy at Theocast .org

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slash primer. So one of the charges that's often levied against us and other

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Reformed people is that we don't read the Old Testament the way we should. We are always reading it in light of Christ and trying to see types and shadows of Christ throughout the

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Old Testament, and we're reading the Old Testament, understanding that Christ is the point of it.

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And people object to that. And they're like, well, you know, I mean, when the Old Testament was written by such and such author, he didn't have full understanding of what

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Christ would come and do. And so we need to emphasize original authorial intent. We need to deal with the words on the page and what people would have understood at the time and all this kind of thing, and we need to preach it that way, to which we would say, with all due respect, that makes no sense.

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When Christ himself has showed up and has said it was all about me, and then when the apostles, from Paul to John to James to the writer of Hebrews, make it very clear that all of this was about Christ, and all of this finds its yes and amen in Christ, and the apostles understand the

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Old Testament this way. So that is our argument in reply is always that, look, we're not trying to be irresponsible with the scriptures.

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We're trying to be faithful to the Bible, and in being faithful to the Bible, we need to read it like Jesus understood it, and we need to read it like the apostles understood it and wrote about it.

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Amen. So sometimes people think that, you know, we're picking this fictitious boogeyman that's out there, or it's this obscure section of Christianity that nobody ever pays attention to, and unfortunately, that's not the case.

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So a lot of very influential Calvinistic evangelical guys are definitely leading pastors and teachers and just, you know, those who read their

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Bibles in this direction, and we just want to offer just some, you know, a perspective that says maybe this isn't being presented historically the way, you know, maybe there's some misunderstanding, and so we want to try and offer some clarity just so people understand this isn't us offering our wisdom.

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This isn't us offering our interpretation. We're actually trying to defend the interpretation that's been handed down for like hundreds of years, so this is not new.

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We're looking to the apostles. We're looking through the history of the church as the church has understood these things, and we're just, in our generation, in our day, humbly and sincerely trying to stand on the wall and point some things out.

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So just like a 30 -second overview, and then I'm going to get into some objections here, I think it's fair to say if you're reading

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Genesis 3 .15, you have to ask the question, well, who's the man? Who's the seed? Who's the promised seed?

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Who is he? And then all you do is you start reading about how God brings about the people and then eventually the

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Messiah, and then you go to the New Testament, and if you don't conclude that that's how it's supposed to be done, Jesus says, the

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Old Testament is about me, the law and prophets are about me, Peter and Paul, I know, the apostles use that very hermeneutic saying, if you go back and read the

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Old Testament, you should conclude that they are the progressive knowledge and purpose of Christ and his work.

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That's what that is about. Yeah. I mean, you already said it. I mean, Paul connects Adam and Christ, so you have from the very beginning with the creation of humanity, you know, you've got

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Jesus there, I mean, like in view, you've got the promise in Genesis 3 .15, you've got the promise to Abraham that through his offspring, the whole world's going to be blessed.

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You've got the Mosaic covenant and everything that that entails, the sacrificial system and all of it, right?

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Like the priesthood and the day of atonement and the Passover, you got all this stuff, and then you got David and everything that goes, all of this, dude, it's like, how would we go to that?

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Having the New Testament revelation, understanding that from the jump to the end,

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Christ is in view. How would we then go to any portion of the scripture and not seek to understand it in light of that reality that Christ is in view in the whole thing?

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Well, let me just state it this way, Justin, the Bible is the biography of Jesus, that is what it is.

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Because think about it, when you've ever read a biography, sometimes you have to start with the back terrain, like where their history is, but you always understand you're reading about this person, the whole thing is about this person, and I find it safe to say, the

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Bible from beginning to end, Jesus is the creator and sustainer of the world, and he is the one who comes and restores all things in Revelation, and so everything in between is about him.

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And so it is safe to say that it doesn't matter where you are in the text, you can stop and say, where am

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I in the biography of Jesus? Where am I in the story of Christ? It is safe to say that.

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All right, I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to aim to not be punchy in a bad way, but I'm going to say it.

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I'm just going to say the things, right, and hope that people receive this well and that it's helpful.

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Right. So I'm just going to begin. Our biggest concern, as we've alluded to in the titles there, and we've already been kind of talking around it, is that when people jettison or object to these historical categories, what ends up happening is you, with the best of intentions, end up removing

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Christ from vast portions of the Bible, and you actually end up encouraging people to do that.

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So, like for example, referencing back again to the whole social media thing that started this whole thing off, what happened this weekend, and you've got people replying to posts about preaching the law and then the mercy and the grace of Christ, we need to do that to preach a

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Christian sermon, and people are like, yeah, we shouldn't do that because law and gospel aren't in every passage. That's the argument.

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The argument is if you guys use these tools, law and gospel distinction or covenant theology or redemptive historical framework, pick your thing, you guys are going to end up forcing the

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Bible into your categories, and you're going to manipulate the text, and you're not going to be faithful to the text.

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That's the argument. Let me respond to that really quickly, and I'm not trying to be a sarcastic guy here, but I'm going to say it this way.

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If the argument is don't preach Christ that way from all the scriptures or don't preach law and gospel from all the scriptures because those things are not in every passage and we shouldn't read them into it or shouldn't force it in there or whatever the argument is.

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If the argument is it's not in there, then you shouldn't say it. Okay, reason with me for a minute.

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The book of Esther, I'm just going to pick some low -hanging fruit here, the book of Esther, famously, the name of God is not in it, so my question to these people who would object to a law and gospel distinction or Christ in all scripture because, oh, it's not in the text.

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It's like, okay, well, are you going to talk about God when you preach through Esther? Are you going to read

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Esther and see God underneath and behind it all? And the answer is like, well, yeah, of course we're going to see

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God. Of course we're going to preach God because God is underneath and behind everything. Exactly. Genesis 37 and following, the life of Joseph, the

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Lord's name is hardly at all mentioned. Are we going to preach God? Are we going to read

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God when we read about Joseph? Well, of course we will, brother, because God is behind and underneath everything, exactly.

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Today, John, I spoke in the chapel at the school that my kids go to, chapel service.

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I'm on the rotation this spring where every guy, each time you're up, we've divided it up.

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There are these topics from Proverbs that we're talking about, and we're trying to do this in a way that's Christ -centered. That's over here.

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Today, I was assigned with speaking on riches from Proverbs, and I had a number of verses that I ended up reading just to give the kids an understanding of, under some headers, here's kind of how

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Proverbs talks about riches and poverty and whatever. My question to a Christian person or a

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Christian preacher who's going to speak about riches from Proverbs, are you going to talk about God because his name ain't in it?

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Are you going to talk about the good news? Are you going to talk about the gospel because it ain't there? Or are you just going to literally say things about riches and poverty that any reasonable secular person would agree with, that every

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Muslim's going to agree with, and every Jew on this planet's going to agree with? Is that what you're going to do and call it Christian? That's right. I don't think so.

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You're going to say things about the Lord, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You're going to say things about Jesus and the gospel.

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Why would you do that? Because you understand that underneath everything that Proverbs is revealing is the

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God who is speaking through the scriptures and the God who planned to redeem sinners through the person and work of God the

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Son, who took on flesh, whose name is Jesus. That's what we should do. I'm just trying to point out the irony and the inconsistency of this argument.

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Well, if it's not in the text, you shouldn't talk about it. Then there are a lot of sermons, there are a lot of passages where you should never talk about God because he's not there verbatim.

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He's not on the page. There are plenty of sermons. You talk a lot about our obedience and our sincerity.

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Well, that's not on the page either, and you're talking about that, and that's apparently all okay. But then as soon as we say we need to preach

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Christ and we need to preach law and gospel, you jump off the rooftops and scream, that's poor hermeneutics and leads to bad preaching.

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Are you excited about this? I am. I care about this, John, and I don't care what people think about me or you.

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I don't. And it's fine. I care that the saints get the good news. Christ is muted, and it is sad.

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It is sad to see that, and I understand people are trying to be faithful to the text. You know, Joseph, one of the things that happens in Christianity, all of Christianity is about responding and overreaction, right?

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I deal with this in my own life. We always respond and overreact. I'll just mention this now.

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I mean, we just watch. I mean, I didn't watch it. It showed up on my newsfeed. But, you know, Will Smith gets up and he slaps

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Chris Rock, right? And then later on, Will Smith says, hey, I overreacted. Well, this happens a lot in humanity.

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We just do this. We just overreact and we stop and we don't contemplate what we have done until kind of the act is done.

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And then sometimes we defend it because we're so arrogant and prideful. We defend our actions and we shouldn't have.

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So when I'm thinking about this, we had mentioned this earlier, there was a hermeneutic early on in during the early periods of interpretation in church history where men, faithful, godly men, were trying to understand scriptures and they were excited to see

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Christ in scriptures. And so they would allegorize the text in such a way where they were making conclusions about Jesus that seemed a little far stretched.

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In other words, yeah, it's like, well, I'm not sure that's the original intentions of the author or of the text in general.

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And so they would make conclusions about Jesus from the Old Testament that I would say those who criticized them had fair criticisms.

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Right. Well, allegorizing the text has been an accusation against the hermeneutic of the

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Reformation, a hermeneutic that Justin and I hold to, that we are not taking the text literal, that we're allegorizing it, we're putting

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Jesus into the text where it should not be. And that is not the truth. We do not allegorize the text.

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We're not trying to make applications from the text that do not fit with the whole arching story.

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The whole arching story of the Bible is redemption. It's God redeeming sinners. And so our application should fit inside of that.

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And I think it's fair that if any part of the text we can ask ourselves, where are we in light of the redemption of sinners and what should be our response to that as far as faith in Christ?

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Two probably main sources that I want to reach to right now that are new. So these aren't old.

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These are new. They're still on their websites. We'll put the links in our show notes. One of them is from a very well -known expository seminary.

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Most of you who've listened to this podcast probably know this name, John MacArthur Seminary, the Master's Seminary. One of the professors at the

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Master's College wrote for the seminary an article. His name is Abner Chow.

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And in this article, the title of it is, Is Christ in Every Verse?

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To which we would say, if you're going to say from an allegorical stance, then no, we were going to agree with you that Jesus isn't meant to be seen as far as like in every word that is there, as far as it's about specifically his personage.

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You know what I'm saying, Justin? But that does not say that Jesus isn't the point of every verse at which we would make that argument for sure.

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And you can go and read the argument. But the conclusion that he makes in this particular statement and what he's arguing for,

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I think he's fighting against an allegorical interpretation of scripture, to which

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I would say that interpretation hasn't existed for a very, very long time. I agree, since the patristic era, really.

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Right. Especially during the formation of the confessions, they also rejected, the

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Reformers also rejected an allegorical interpretation of scripture in that way. And so at the ending paragraph, he says, we need to have confidence that the method prescribed in scripture is sufficient to showcase the complete glory of Christ.

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And so they're presenting the grammatical historical interpretation of scripture that the immediate context and the immediate verses have to drive the interpretation, which

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Justin and I would say, it is a part, but it's not the whole part. Explain what

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I mean by that. Say that again. That the immediate context has to drive the final interpretation, which we would agree, but that's a part.

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It's not the whole part of interpreting. What's the whole part? Yeah. So you've got to interpret scripture on various horizons, right?

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You need to look at the immediate context. Absolutely. You didn't need to look at the text in light of the epic of redemptive history you find yourself in.

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And then finally, you need to look at the text in light of the whole canon and what we would contend, Christ and the apostles, right?

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They're very clear about what the point of the whole Bible is. If you're going to understand any part of scripture, you must understand it in light of the whole.

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If you divorce it from Jesus, and if you divorce it from God's plan of redemption from before the foundations of the world accomplished through Christ, you are prone to make errors with it.

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That's what we're contending for. I may give a few examples of how we don't allegorize in just a minute, but I want you to continue.

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So what he concludes is this, we do not need to force a text to connect with Christ, but rather we need to invest the time and effort to seeing the way the biblical writers connect

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God's word with the word. Well, I understand what he's saying. But to say that one can go down in and look at a twig in a forest that's growing up out of the ground, and then at the same time, hop on a helicopter and pop out and say, this is where it fits in the forest.

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There's nothing wrong with that. And that's what we're saying is that every text fits within the forest of God's story of redemption about Jesus.

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And to not see it that way, I think you're going to look at that twig and start making interpretations that don't fit within the forest.

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It's like you're on a whole nother planet now. And some examples of that, real quick,

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Justin, before you give into these positives, when you read scripture like this, John MacArthur himself wrote an article,

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I'll put a link on this. It's called Reexamining the Eternal Sonship of Christ. And this is an older debate that happened back in the 80s.

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But John, in his commentary in 1983 on Hebrews, made the conclusion and the interpretation that Jesus wasn't always seen as the eternal son.

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Like there was a time when he wasn't eternally the son of God. And thankfully, through different readings, and he has this whole story on there and how he changed his mind.

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But in the argument, he basically says that he was trying just to read the text as literal as it is in Hebrews.

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He says, my early position arose out of my study of Hebrews 1 .5, which appears to speak of the father's begetting the son as an event that takes place at some point in the past.

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So his argument was, I was just taking the text at its face value.

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And we're saying, great, but you have to take it at its face value in light of all of scripture and the tradition of how we've interpreted it.

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And I mean, he's got an unorthodox position. I mean, what he's effectively saying is that based on Hebrews 1 .5,

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he understands that the word, the divine Logos has always been God, but that God the father and God the son have not always related to one another as father and son.

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But that occurred at a point in history, and that is not the orthodox view. Because we understand from all of eternity that God has existed, one

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God in three persons, father, son, and Holy Spirit. And so exactly, this is an example of like driven to the wall.

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If you take this kind of reasoning and you take it to its logical conclusions, you can do things like that, where you conclude something that the church historically has said, you shouldn't go there because of your own personal exegesis of a text as you're studying it in its immediate context or whatever it may be.

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And he was taking the text literal, which, praise God, he did, but you have to take it literal in the whole, in the part and the whole.

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And I want to be clear that we're not advocating for some kind of weird, hokey allegorizing of the passage where we see

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Christ in every rock or in every chariot or like, oh, well, let's examine the pieces that are on the

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Ark of the Covenant and talk about how that relates to Christ. That's not at all what we're saying. But for example, just two or three high level ones, the

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New Testament is very clear that the tabernacle and the temple were all a pointer to Christ and the fact that God tabernacled among us.

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He took on flesh and dwelt among us. And then we see some fulfillment of the temple and the tabernacle in the church.

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And then finally, we're going to dwell with God forever. All right. So in view of that, whenever we're thinking about the tabernacle and the temple in the

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Old Testament, we would be remiss to not talk about it and preach it and understand it.

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And with all of that in view, that the fulfillment of the tabernacle and the temple is Christ and then the church and then the new heavens and the new earth where God will dwell with us and we'll see

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Christ as he is. That's one. Another one. The Passover. The Passover or the day of atonement.

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That's right. The sacrificial system in general. Let's just say that, right? Well, again, the apostles, the

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New Testament is very clear that the sacrificial system and even these special feasts and days were all about Christ.

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So whenever we go to study those or preach those in the Old Testament, we would be wrong as Christians to not do so in light of Christ.

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Another example, take the angels in Genesis 3 who are there to guard the way back to the tree of life.

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Then fast forward to the tabernacle and temple where there's a curtain that separates the holy of holies where God's presence uniquely dwells from everything around it with a curtain and what's on the curtain?

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Angels with flaming swords, right? That's a connection to the garden. Well, what happens when Jesus dies?

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That curtain in the temple is torn in two from top to bottom indicating what? No longer separation.

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All of this, the separation between God and man because man had broken the covenant of works, all of that alienation has now been rectified.

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Everything has now been made right through what Jesus came to do. So in other words, whenever we see this idea of the angels in Genesis 3, the curtain in the tabernacle or the temple and separation and alienation from God and all that sin has brought, we should be seeing that in light of Christ and his person and his work and he came to make that right.

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He came to rescue us from that and restore us into the benevolent, kind, loving, delighting presence of God, right?

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I mean, this is what he did. Why would we not do this? That's not allegory. That is understanding the

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Bible faithfully. What you just did, Justin, is you showed how you beelined to Christ easily from Genesis, Exodus— Without doing gymnastics.

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Right there. Yeah, you did. And you can do the same thing from the Proverbs and the Psalms. You can do it from all of Kings and Samuel.

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Listen, I'm sorry, dude. I just want to say this. It's not like if I'm preaching a sermon on the tabernacle. Of course,

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I'm going to talk about it in the context of Israel and what the Lord is doing with the people and what he's trying to teach them.

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But then I would be loathe to think that I'm not going to land the last half of that sermon on Christ, who is the fulfillment of the tabernacle and the temple.

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That's right. Well, I'll put this link in our description as well.

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John Piper put in a whole sermon out about exposition versus imposition, and it was his critique of gospel -centric preaching.

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And redemptive historical preaching. Redemptive historic preaching. And he basically says that you guys end up hovering over the text, but you never deal with the text.

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And I understand. Are there guys that do that?

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Sure, sure, sure. But for instance, I'm about to go through the book of Hebrews, I'm sorry,

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Ezekiel. And I'm going to be preaching through Ezekiel, which is where do you think I'm going to end up? I'm going to end up at a lot of places in Hebrews, right?

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The two, there's one prophecy, one, and then the other fulfillment. You're going to end up with the apostles understanding of the prophets.

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That's what you're going to end up with. Right. But the point of it is I'm going to deal with the text as it was originally written. You're going to interpret Scripture with Scripture.

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But it's not the end. You know, Ezekiel is not the end of the story. Thankfully, it's not the end of the story. And so it's always,

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I feel like that if you don't end where the story is supposed to end, that you leave people helpless and confused, and you leave them confused about their assurance and where the hope and joy is.

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Ultimately, you either allegorize the text, which is not appropriate, or you end up moralizing the text.

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And it all becomes about how we must obey, as you said earlier. Or we talk about God in very general terms.

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We're not talking about God in Christ for us. You know, you're saying things about God's attributes and all of this, which is great.

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But outside of Christ, God is terrible. That's what Richard Sibbes said, and I agree with him. Because it's only in Christ Jesus that God is now a good thing for me, because I'm a sinner, you know.

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And so I think that's too often assumed. I just want to say this, because I know you do the same thing, John. And this is not us defending ourselves in any way.

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I don't really care what people think of us. We care about this content and the fact that Christ needs to be understood and proclaimed from all the

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Bible. You and I, I know when we preach or teach the Bible, are constantly pointing people.

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Bibles are open, and we're pointing people to words on the page. Look at verse whatever. Look at verse whatever.

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See what it says here. We're doing that. But then what are we doing on top of just pointing people to words on the page?

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We're connecting that to other places in the Bible. You interpret Scripture with Scripture. We're teaching people to do that.

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And we're explaining, all right, what does this mean? In the context of biblical revelation, what does this mean?

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You see these words. How do we understand it? Now let me explain it to you. That's the job of the preacher or the teacher, and that's what any student of the

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Scripture is trying to do when you go to the book. And so this accusation that you hover above the text but you're not in it is certainly not true of Reformed, redemptive historical guys and gals

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I know. I do agree there are caricatures and straw men out there that do exist who you can grab and say, well, see, that's reductionistic preaching.

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I know it exists. But just because it can be done poorly doesn't mean that the thing is wrong. Justin Perdue Anyway, I don't need to say anything else.

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Jon Moffitt A couple of resources I will recommend. There's a couple of books we can put in here about Christ -centered preaching and understanding

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Christ in all of Scripture. There's a great book by Dennis Johnson who walks you through all of Scripture and shows you how

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Christ is a part of every single book of the Bible. It's a fantastic book by Dennis Johnson. I would encourage you. We have a free class that we did,

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Justin, Jimmy, and I, on covenant theology, an introduction where we help you see this perspective where Christ is in all of Scripture.

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It's very accessible, super simple, like 30 minutes each. We'll put that in the link below. That's available on our website and on YouTube as well.

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Justin Perdue I'm going to leave this as a parting shot. It's pretty strong before we transition over into our other podcast for today.

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I'm confident that I don't impugn anybody's motivations. I trust everybody means well that raises these concerns that we've been talking about today or objects to law and gospel or redemptive historical understandings of the

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Bible. I know they mean well, but with all due respect and humility, I'm confident that it is not the project of God to discourage the saints from seeing

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Christ in all of Scripture. I don't think it's true. Don't take my word for it even. A man who's much more learned and respected than me, just listen to what

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John Calvin says in his commentary on Colossians 1, because he's dealing with what's

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Paul writing to the Colossians about, what's Paul really trying to accomplish in this letter, and his argument is that Paul is trying to give these saints the one thing that would protect them from false teaching and aberrant practice, and that is a clear view of the person and work of Christ.

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That's what Paul's doing in Colossians, says Calvin. I agree. Now, but listen to what he says, though, to the point of what we're talking about.

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There is nothing that Satan so much endeavors to accomplish as to bring on mists with the view of obscuring

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Christ, because he knows that by this means the way is opened up for every kind of falsehood.

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What we're saying in agreeing with that, and many saints through history, is let us never obscure Christ from any portion of the

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Scripture, because it is a testimony about him. He is our hope. He is the atonement for our sins.

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He is our righteousness. He is our life. Let's not obscure him. John and I are about to record another podcast called

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Semper Reformanda, and John's going to tell us about that, because I did not intro the episode today. There we have that.

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I'll take it over from here. I've already started the list for you. It's off the ground. You take us home, dude.

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Sounds good. Now, Justin and I, we started a second podcast a while ago. We love it. It's kind of our family time.

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We do a couple of things here. Last week, we answered one of your questions. We played that on the podcast. We're looking for more of those questions to come in to us.

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As we weed through those, we will answer those. It's kind of a great way. We also interact with people on our app.

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We have a Semper Reformanda app that is just for our members, and that's a simple way for you to come in and just ask questions.

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We're going to go over to that podcast. We're going to continue this conversation, because we weren't able to jam -pack everything in here that we had to say.

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We got most of it in, but we have some additional thoughts, some ways that we would like to add that as an offer. If you want to be a part of supporting us through a monthly donation, you can do that by going to theocast .org

47:56

and joining one of our membership there. We'll see you next week. Thanks for listening.