Have You Not Read S3:E4 - The Conflict in Israel (Part 3)

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints.

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Well, I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are Michael Durham, Chris Giesler, David Kassin, Andrew Hudson, and I'm gonna pitch it over to Michael to introduce this subject again today.

We are dealing with Israel, but we're gonna try and narrow our questions down that way we might more accurately describe the way that we're looking at this conflict between Hamas and Israel and how the

Bible speaks to it. Michael? Yes, so over the previous generations of the

Christian church, last few generations, especially in United States of America, there has been a great deal of support for the nation state of Israel that was established in 1948, and there always seems to be another dust up in the

Middle East, another conflict, another war, another conflict, how are we to respond?

How are we to think? And there seems to be a lot of instant support for the nation state of Israel, and I think

Christians very often instinctively will just be pro -Israel, support

Israel no matter what, because as we read our Bibles, we find

God talking about Israel and to Israel, a people group, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who were promised a land in that exact same area where we find the modern state of Israel today.

And I think that there is a lot of instinctive support for Israel because Christians see these promises in the scriptures and they think the world is not going to be the way it should be until the

Jews have all of their land, not just some of it, until they control the Temple Mount and have a temple there in which they can offer their sacrifices again the way that God told them to, or some version of that.

There's just a sense that because there's promises in the Bible to Israel as a people group and concerning their land, that those things are to be our guiding light in understanding the current conflict.

So with that in mind, I think that we should build on that momentum of looking at the promises in the scripture to consider how it is that God described those promises and how he says those promises get fulfilled because we want to be a people of the book.

We want to be a people of the scriptures. And I think that by looking carefully at the word of God, we're going to understand how precious these promises are and how they inform our faith even today.

And I think it will bring a lot of light and a lot of clarity to how we think about the conflict going on between Israel and Hamas.

So when we read the Bible, where do we find the promises that God made to Israel concerning them as a people group and made promises to them concerning the land that is in the exact same geographical place where the political state of Israel exists today?

I mean, the easy answer is, you know, you have Genesis 12, 15, 18, and I think it's Genesis 15 specifically that says from the river in Egypt to the

Euphrates, you know, it gave you this geographic boundaries from here to here. And then you have

God saying, I will take you to this land, go to the land that I will show you. And then he said, the land of your sojournings,

Abraham. So that's kind of where we start to see it. But that's not the only place that God has promises or curses for Israel's actions within the land, but that's the place where most people would start.

Yes. So I think a lot of people would start there. I think you're correct. I think that, you know, reading the promises that God made to Abraham and how he repeated those promises to Isaac and to Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel after he wrestled with God.

And then we see that these promises seem to be in jeopardy as the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob end up as slaves in Egypt.

And yet God works miracles to deliver them from Egypt and to bring them back to the land where Abraham sojourned, back to this promised land.

And he forges a covenant with them at Mount Sinai and tells them how it is that they need to live if they want to remain in the land.

And in those lists of blessings and curses that are repeated for Israel at Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim in the land, they are instructed there that if they do not keep covenant and are not faithful to God, they do not get to stay in the land, but that in more than one passage,

God describes that if they become like the other nations and they become canonized, full of idolatry and immorality and injustice, that the land will spew them out and they will be exiled from the land, which of course happened in 586

BC. But there were many progressive phases of exile reaching all the way back to 722 when the

Northern Kingdom fell. And over time, successive exiles finally resulted in the overwhelmingly vast majority of Jews being taken out of the land and they were all living in exile.

The imagery is amazing, it's horrifying, but God's like, I'm gonna send hornets and there's someone to drive these people out before you, these interlopers, they're here in this land, but it's not their land, it's my land and I have chosen you and you will go into this land and I will be with you and you will drive them out.

But if you do not keep my covenant, just like I drove out those previous people groups,

I will drive you out. And so that happened. And then the question of some of the prophets and some of the psalmists became, what now?

What happens now? How are we to understand our situation in the world and what comes next? Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, all asking the

Lord, what now? How are we to understand what our future looks like? Psalmists writing about the promises of God in the past, lamenting their current condition.

How does this get resolved? And so in a sense, the Old Testament concludes with a huge question mark.

How is this going to be resolved? What is the situation of the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob when we leave off Malachi, when we leave off those final notes in 2

Chronicles? What is the situation of this people with whom God has made a covenant?

You have the minor prophets, you have Zechariah, you have

Ezra, Nehemiah, you have these works that say we're coming back,

God is restoring us, but there's just this element of those of you who are alive, you remember what this temple used to look like and this isn't it.

The latter glory will be greater than its former glory. There's like this imagery, there's something going on at this big, at this collection of these minor prophets, of these post -exile prophets who say a restoration is coming and it's going to be bigger and more amazing than anything any of you could possibly remember, anything that you've ever heard of.

It's gonna be bigger and bolder and more expansive. And there's all these little snippets about how the nations are gonna be judged and the nations are gonna be drawn in and these nations will be pushed out and these nations will actually become one of the tribes of Judah, those kinds of things.

It's this giant question mark centers on what is this restoration going to look like?

But they did return, these ethnic people did return. And these ethnic people were pulled out of different areas, were pulled out of what was

Babylon and now became Medo -Persia. They were pulled out into this geographic area. So in a sense, we have to acknowledge that this ethnic group did return to that physical location.

Yes, when you think about the situation that they found themselves in, as they were brought back out of exile during the empire of the

Medes and the Persians, they end up back in Jerusalem. Their numbers are nowhere near the multitude of the stars of the heaven and the sand of the seashore.

They don't even get close. They don't have the Ark of the Covenant. Many of the priests cannot trace their lineage.

They're trying to figure out whether or not they can even serve. They're not sovereign over their own territory.

They're a vassal state and a lesser one at that. And yet God is miraculously preserving them.

As you read the book of Esther, you're encouraged by that. And there are promises you see that Isaiah gave that Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Daniel and Zephaniah or Zechariah and Malachi reflect on and they know that there's something greater, but this isn't it.

They've rebuilt the temple, but it doesn't look like the one that Haggai said would be built. I mean, it's supposed to be bigger.

Like you were saying, it's supposed to be better. The way that the temple is described in Ezekiel, the dimensions of the temple in Ezekiel are larger than the original dimensions of the land itself.

So how is this going to work? What is this going to look like? And for many of the

Jews over those centuries in between Malachi and the arrival of Christ, they believed it looked like something, the restoration of their own autonomy.

We get to rule ourselves. You have the Maccabeans and the Hasmonean dynasty where they had some autonomy and self -rule and you had all manner of messianic expectations that were tied to political independence, the casting out of all

Gentiles out of their lands so that they could have real true purity. The temple rebuilding project that was going on, that was instigated by Herod the

Great, who was known as the builder, that was still going on during the time of Christ where they were overlaying their gold with more gold.

This was them trying to make the vision of Haggai come about by their own means, their own efforts.

What they weren't ready for was for Christ to come and say, I have not come to abolish the law and the prophets.

I'm not come to abolish and set myself against the Levitical code and the prophecies of all that is in store according to God's plan.

I've come to fulfill. He comes to fulfill. And he begins to say things that they can't wrap their head around because it doesn't look like what they have been anticipating for all these centuries.

There's a place that kind of had me questioning. We talked about the land promises, like specifically the land.

So you've got the Abrahamic covenant. He promised these things to Abraham. He goes around setting up altars and worshiping

God and all over the land he goes. And then there's the promise that his people would be let off and captive for 400 years.

We have that in Egypt. They're delivered from Egypt. They come out and you've got

Joshua going around conquering the lands, the Battle of Jericho and all this stuff and they're conquering. And so a lot of the discussion talks about, well,

Israel has never had the land. Those promises have yet to be fulfilled. They've not been fulfilled yet.

In Joshua chapter 21, I'm reading it at verse 45. It says this, let's start at 43.

So the Lord gave to Israel all the land of which he had sworn to give to their fathers and they took possession of it and dwelt in it.

The Lord gave them rest all around according to all that he had sworn to their fathers.

And not a man of all their enemies stood against them. The Lord delivered all their enemies into their hand.

Not a word failed of any good thing which the Lord had spoken to the house of Israel.

All came to pass. So you have that saying that that promise had been fulfilled.

We're not waiting for that promise to take place. And then when you take the

New Testament commentary, I'm thinking of Galatians four, when Paul talks about Jerusalem, the

Temple Mount, and he says to go back to the present Jerusalem is to go back to Sinai, is to go back to something older.

The land promises had been fulfilled and now they're occupied by somebody else.

And if you look at Jerusalem now, the Temple Mount is occupied by somebody else.

I think that's one of the concerns and questions that I think Christians have when we look at the conflict going on in the

Middle East today. We recognize geography, like, oh, there's the

Dead Sea. Oh, there's the Sea of Galilee. We recognize these from the stories of Jesus' own ministry.

There's the Jordan River where Joshua and the tribes crossed. Oh, this is the land that God promised to Israel.

And that's a good thing to recognize. And when we open our Bibles and we read in Joshua that God kept his promises.

And by a central southern and northern campaign under the leadership of Joshua, they broke the back of those

Canaanite tribes and they truly became the ruling people group in that land.

They took that area and they were even beyond the Jordan with the tribes who were across the Jordan. So there they were in the land, possessing the land.

And we read all of God's promises were kept. And we should rejoice in that.

As we read that in the text, it's pretty plain. It's pretty obvious. But those weren't the only land promises that God gave.

He gave other land promises, didn't he? Those included promises that if they broke covenant with him, then he would exile them from the land, remove them from the land.

They would lose their land. Those are also land promises that God made. And those also have been fulfilled.

And you read in, this is Daniel reading Jeremiah. Hey, the 70 years are up.

You read in some of the minor prophets and they're talking about the 70 years. We've come back after that.

And the language that is used is God says, I remembered my covenant.

So I think this is an illusion. I may have said Genesis 18, or it's actually Genesis 17, where is right before he institutes, it's like the third time he's talked about this covenant with Abraham and it keeps getting expanded more and more each time.

He says, and I will, verse eight, I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession.

And I will be their God. So God remembers his covenant and says, yes, you are in exile and I'm bringing you back.

So that tends to be the crux of the argument that people make, that this is an everlasting covenant.

Everlasting. And God himself was the smoking pot and the torch that went through the two halves.

God himself is the one that's responsible for keeping this covenant. So how do we address this?

Yes, they've left and they've come back and they left and they're coming back in. And so he says it's an everlasting covenant.

So the argument that is made today is that based upon this, even though Jews have been scattered throughout history, they've been regathered and now they're in that same piece of land and this is 1948.

And now they have a country again in fulfillment of God's promises to them.

And they base it on this everlasting promise. How do we address that? I think it's a really important question because when you take up the word of God and you see time and again,

God say, and use language like this is an everlasting covenant, everlasting promise, he says the same thing about many, many, many different aspects of his relationship with, well,

Noah and Abraham and Israel and David.

And so when we see these promises that are qualified by the terms eternal, everlasting, a very real sense of permanence in which

God is staking his own name and his own glory upon these promises, we must take them by their full weight and measure.

And we cannot finagle around those things but embrace those things and rejoice in those things.

So for example, other promises are given such as the keeping of the Passover, the keeping of the Day of Atonement and offering up the sacrifices on the

Day of Atonement. These are to be eternally observed. The Sabbath is an eternal sign for the people of God to be observed.

It is an eternal sign, everlasting sign. It should never, ever be stopped observing. And as we read very clearly, the

Sabbath was on a Saturday, something that the Seventh -day Adventist often will bring up. Circumcision was an everlasting, eternal sign always to be administered to the sons of the people of God who were in the covenant.

These things were never to stop, eternal signs, eternal observations, eternal promises.

Even the Levitical priesthood was said to be eternal. Absolutely. So we have to take these with their full weight and measure.

And then we have to, I think, come alongside the weeping prophet Jeremiah, the lonely prophet

Ezekiel, the visionary prophet Daniel, the heartbroken psalmists and deal with what they're saying because they're looking at what has happened and they're saying, how is this eternal and everlasting when it's not the case in our present day?

Because eternal and everlasting isn't something that says on occasion, sporadically, and possibly sometime in the future it'll come back.

That's not the meaning of the term eternal and everlasting. For instance, when we speak of God who's eternal and everlasting, we do not then describe

Him as one who pops in and out of existence and is only occasionally there and maybe sometime in the future we'll meet up again when

He's finally gonna do His thing. That's not how we talk about God being eternal and everlasting. So then the question is, how do we understand these eternal and everlasting signs and promises?

Is God really true? Is He actually telling the truth? And of course we know that He is. So how are we to understand these things?

I think first of all, it's important to recognize that God was making a covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai and that He was basing this covenant in connection with, in very close connection with the covenant

He made with Abraham, which is a building on the covenant He made with Noah.

These things all run in a line and they go from considering the entirety of the created order and humanity's role in it, after the fashion of the image of God, into a specific family group,

Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to a particular nation, Israel. And this is even further consolidated down to the

King of Israel and God's covenant with David. And how does God keep all of His promises? How does

God keep all of His eternal, everlasting promises and signs and so on and so forth so that they are unbroken and God always tells the truth?

This is why it's so important that we pay attention to the way in which Jesus interprets

Scripture. How does He say it's fulfilled? How does He say it comes to pass?

How does He understand it? And He says, this was all written about me, right?

2 Corinthians 1 .20 says, for as many as are the promises of God in Christ, they are yes.

We wanna see how these promises are kept, how these things are fulfilled. The Bible is clearly telling us they're fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

Now the question is how? You're talking about the basic, you're talking about a basic biblical hermeneutic.

I mean, there are those who say the Old Testament stands on its own. I think by definition, the

Old Testament stands incomplete and the writers of the Old Testament knew it and expressed themselves in that way.

And the writers of the New Testament were aware of that and says, this is to fulfill what was spoken of by prophet

X. This is what was talked about. You read about it in this story in the Old Testament and now in the light of something very new, we have this.

That'd be a profitable exercise for someone to pick up the book of Matthew and to underline how many times it says, this was to fulfill, this was to fulfill, this was to fulfill.

That would be a very profitable exercise and that would be, I think, very helpful. You know, I was talking to a young man yesterday evening who was agreeing with me about, hey, the

Bible has truth of God, that's where all our solutions are. I said, you know, I think there's a lot of agreement among Christians about that.

I think one of the things that we're all wondering is how are we supposed to interpret the

Bible? Because the manner in which the Bible has been interpreted and let's just take the past generations where it's safe.

We'll talk about old historical ways of interpreting the Bible and how often strange interpretations of the

Bible rose in a night and died in a night, historically speaking. Why?

Because they were so tied to, you know, present day circumstances, fashionable philosophies and those hermeneutic, that way of interpreting the

Bible was like being tossed to and fro by every, you know, wave of doctrine, by every wind of doctrine.

It was just, it was not stable. But if we really believe that the word of God is sufficient and reliable and true and all that we need, that means that the word of God tells us how to interpret the scripture.

We get our hermeneutic from the scripture itself. So with that in mind,

God made these promises to Israel in the old covenant. The New Testament calls it the old covenant.

So I think a critical question, I think a critical question is this, are these promises of God to Israel concerning the nature of their people and the nature of their land?

Are those promises of God, as David mentioned, standalone promises, they stand on their own, or are they to be interpreted as fulfilled in Jesus Christ?

In other words, should Christians just support Israel, you know, right or wrong, just support

Israel at all costs because, you know, God made these promises to them in the old covenant. My question is, is the old covenant still in effect?

Is the old covenant simply maybe possibly on pause and has yet to be resolved?

Are we still living in a time when God's old covenant promises with Israel are standing on their own and Christians just need to be in support of that?

Or has the old covenant passed away, having been fulfilled in Jesus Christ? That's the question that we need to answer.

Yeah, you had mentioned the old covenants in the Old Testament and how they are very broad and they narrow down and each one narrows down until we get to the king, a narrow.

We had brought this up on a previous episode, Isaiah 42 .6. I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness.

I will take hold of your hand, I will keep you, and I will make you to be a covenant for the people and a light to the

Gentiles. Israel was supposed to be the light to the Gentiles and we see that that did not take place and then we have a new covenant.

What was the need for a new covenant if the old one was the end all, be all?

Instead, it narrows down, it seems to be pointing to a person, that person comes and the

Old Testament says he has made a covenant and then he says, this is my body, this is my blood, this is the new covenant.

Yes, so Hebrews chapter eight says, for if that first covenant, meaning the old covenant, had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second.

Because finding fault with them, he says, behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when

I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt because they did not continue in my covenant and I disregarded them, says the

Lord, for this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord, I will put my laws in their mind and write them on their hearts and I will be their

God, they shall be my people, 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, for I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and lawless deeds

I will remember no more. Now, verse 13 is key, chapter eight, verse 13, 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.

So clearly he's saying that there is the old covenant, God found fault with the members of the old covenant, with the steward of the old covenant, with the mediator of the old covenant, no good, we're done, we're gonna have a new covenant and this new covenant is better and greater, better promises,

Hebrew says, than the old and now when you have a new covenant, the old is obsolete and is ready to vanish away.

Question is, when does it vanish away? Yeah, well, even in there previously, it said, and I disregarded them.

So maybe we're trying to interpret what that means, but that is in there and has to be addressed that I disregarded them in order to do something new.

Yes. I wanna make sure that we clarify terms because Michael, you had said something earlier that Jesus said himself,

I have not come to abolish, but to fulfill. So how can Jesus say that I'm here to fulfill all of that and yet still have,

I've disregarded them, it's passing away, I found fault with them, this is obsolete, how does that mesh together?

Yes, so in that case, we have the constant metaphors in the scripture of here is the son who failed, but here's the son who succeeds, here is the servant who fails, but here's the servant who succeeds.

And we talked about last time that Jesus Christ, the Messiah is spoken of as Israel for the salvation of not only

Israel, but also the Gentiles. So in fulfilling, he's not abolishing

Israel, he's fulfilling everything that Israel was supposed to be. If you take all of the promises of God, all the covenants of God in the

Old Testament, and you bring them together as a patchwork quilt, this is laid as a mantle upon the shoulders of Christ, it all belongs to him.

So that, okay, think about this, day of atonement, is that fulfilled? Yes, in Christ.

Passover, is that fulfilled? Yes, in Christ. What about circumcision, is that fulfilled? Yes, in Christ.

What about the Sabbath, is that fulfilled? Yes, in Christ, he is our rest. Now I have a question, what about the land?

Nope. Oh, we had such good momentum. We had such good momentum.

What about the number of the descendants of Abraham? Galatians 3 says this is fulfilled in Christ, that innumerable multitude is of the promise of Abraham.

So every single time we run into a promise in the Old Testament scriptures, what are we looking at? Okay, is this fulfilled in Christ?

The answer that the New Testament gives to us time and again is yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. This seems not only fulfilled, but expansive.

It's even better. In the same way that he deals with the law, he says, you've heard it said, thou shall not kill. And I say, if you hate your brother, you're guilty.

Same thing, oh, you want to talk about a small section of geographical land or the whole world?

And you talked about earlier, the prophets mentioning that the temple actually exceeds the boundaries of the old parameters for Israel.

Is that looking forward to the expansiveness of New Covenant as well to not just mean in Israel itself?

Yes, and to do it even better, the dimensions of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21 and 22 is larger than the whole

Middle East. Right. So what are we being taught here? Are we supposed to get out our measuring tapes or are we supposed to understand that the promises of God are bigger and better than we ever thought before?

And there's something about growing up in the revelation of God where it just gets bigger and better as we go.

It's not that God is reneging on his promises. It's not that he's going against his promises, failing his promises.

If a father says to his two -year -old son, I promise that when you get older,

I'm going to give you a house to live in. And every year, the father repeats that to his son.

And when his son grows up, his father gives him a compound, a mansion, and there's a shop, and there's some stables, and it's 180 acres of land.

Does the son then say, you didn't keep your promise. You said it was a house, but this is not a house.

No, he does not say you have failed to keep your promise. Not only has the father kept his promise, but he has kept it in a far bigger way.

The two -year -old couldn't understand what the father, the father was saying to the two -year -old,

I'm going to give you a multi -room mansion and a massive estate. And so the two -year -old says, huh?

But the two -year -old can understand a house. He gets that. The promises that God made in the

Old Testament are being fulfilled and have been fulfilled and will be fulfilled in Christ.

And the way they're described is that they are bigger and better than we ever thought before. So just very quickly in the

Beatitudes, the meek shall inherit the earth, not just the land.

Quoting the Old Testament, making it bigger, the promise that Abraham and his seed would inherit the world, not just the land, the world,

Romans 4 says. Oh, well, that's a little bit bigger than what we found in the Old Testament. And so once again, the question is, when did the old covenant pass away?

And what is the relationship between the old and the new covenant? It's not one in which they're running in parallel for different people, but it's one in which the old covenant is like John the

Baptist. The new covenant is represented by Jesus Christ. Jesus said John the Baptist was the greatest of all the prophets of the old covenant.

So what did John say about Jesus? He must increase, I must decrease. Well, there's your relationship right there.

That's how that works. So they were both existing for a short time at the same time. And that's the mystery of the

New Testament. Because you have the old covenant still in effect while the new covenant is being talked about in the New Testament.

Now, I was taught that the old covenant ended at the crucifixion because that's when the veil was torn from top to bottom, reveal the

Holy of Holies. There's no longer any important sacrifices in the temple. All those are now done.

The one sacrifice to whom it all was pointing has come and made it. All that is done.

And what you're saying, or at least what you're referring to in the scriptures, that the scriptures say it is not yet complete.

It's passing away, but at some point it does. So I was taught then incorrectly that the old covenant didn't end at the crucifixion of Christ.

I can see why someone would say that. But I would think that the same logic would have to maintain, well, that should have been the same in 586

BC. There's no more Ark of the Covenant. How can you have the old covenant without the Ark of the Covenant? That seemed pretty important.

More important than the veil ever was. Sure. But when we get to Hebrews 8, it just clarifies, it says, what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

But Hebrews 8 doesn't say, Hebrews 8 verse 13 doesn't say that the old covenant has passed away, but we're on the cusp of it.

And I think that's something we're gonna say for a future episode, but that is the expectation of all the New Testament writers that the old covenant is just about to pass away.

Now, I think to put this into context in Hebrews 12, I think this will kind of bring some focus in where do we look for the fulfillment of these promises to Israel?

Because that's kind of where Christians want, hey, Christians, we have these, we wanna believe the Bible, okay? Well, when we get to Hebrews 12 verse 18, remember that,

I think this is probably a sermon of Paul written down by Luke, but the author of Hebrews is addressing

Jews who are tempted to go back to the old ways, go back to the sacrifices, go back to the temple.

There's still a high priest in Jerusalem. They're still offering up daily sacrifices in the temple grounds. That temple is beautiful.

It is covered in silver and gold. It is very, very impressive. And all of their family and friends are saying, what are you doing following this cult, this crazy

Jesus of Nazareth thing? You need to come back home, okay? Well, writer of Hebrews is saying there's nothing to go back to.

And he's describing for them in Matthew, sorry, Hebrews 12, beginning verse 18 and following, he is describing the contrast.

Verse 18, for you have not come. Okay, he's talking to Christians, Jewish Christians. You have not come to the mountain that may be touched.

Now, Mount Sinai is a mountain that can be touched, right? Mount Moriah, where the temple is located, is a mountain that can be touched.

People who go on pilgrimages to go see the Temple Mount, where the Dome of the Rock is today, that is a mountain that can be touched.

But the writer of Hebrews says to Christians, Jewish Christians, you have not come to the mountain that may be touched and that burned with fire, oh, that's

Sinai, and to blackness and darkness and tempest and the sound of a trumpet and the sound of words so that those who have heard it beg that the word should not be spoken to them anymore.

That was Exodus 19, Exodus 19 and 20 in the forging of the Sinai Covenant, for they could not endure what was commanded.

And if so much as a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned or shot with an arrow. And so terrifying was the sight that Moses said,

I am exceedingly afraid and trembling. Oh, wow, that that is the old covenant. And the writer of Hebrews to these

Jewish Christians is saying, you have not come to that mountain. But verse 22, you have come to Mount Zion.

Have come. You have come to Mount Zion. Why? Because you have come to Christ. You have come to Mount Zion. Now, in contrast, there's a mountain in verse 18 that can be touched, but they've not come to that one.

They've come to a mountain that cannot be touched called Mount Zion. This is a spiritual mountain, a mountain that cannot be touched.

You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God. Okay, so this would not be the

Jerusalem that could be touched, right? The city of the living God is described very quickly. The next phrase, the heavenly

Jerusalem. You have come to Mount Zion, a mountain that cannot be touched. You have come to the city of the living

God, not a city that has walls and a stone and brick and mortar.

This is the heavenly Jerusalem. That's what you've come to, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, that would be

Christ, who are registered in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant.

So to come to the new covenant means you come to a mountain that cannot be touched and to a heavenly Jerusalem.

The old covenant was a mountain that can be touched, something that is very scary, it can be shaken up, but now you've come to the new covenant, to the mediator of the new covenant and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.

The blood of Abel cried out from the ground and asked for justice. The blood of Christ cries out, it is finished.

Now, having given us this contrast, then the writer addresses those to whom, he's making application now.

He's given them these two pictures and now he makes application. Verse 25, see that you do not refuse him who speaks.

For if they did not escape who refused him who spoke on earth, meaning that rebellious generation from Mount Sinai who died in the wilderness, much more shall we not escape if we turn away from him who speaks from heaven.

Who's greater, Moses or Christ? Christ is greater. Whose voice then shook the earth?

Well, it was Christ's voice who shook the earth back in the old covenant, but now he has promised saying yet once more,

I shake not only the earth, but also heaven. So there's something about heaven and earth that is a little shaky.

Now, this is a building on of a passage from Matthew five that we're gonna talk about in a future episode, but he says now this yet once more indicating the removal of those things which are being shaken as of things that are made and the things which cannot be shaken may remain.

So the quotation that he gives in Hebrews 12, yet once more, I shake not only the earth, but also heaven comes from the book of Haggai and the promise that God would make a new temple, one that was far greater in glory and scope and authority than the previous one.

He talks about shaking the nations and shaking those nations wealth and shaking all that into what he is building.

Yes, and although there was a glimmer of that in Cyrus marshaling resources from the empire to help finish that temple in Jerusalem, the rebuilt temple, it did not exceed in glory and power and authority than the previous one,

Solomon. In fact, it was very clearly stated as lesser than. So here's the application, verse 28.

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken.

We've already come to Mount Zion. We've already come to Christ. So there is a sense in which we have received the kingdom, but have we received it in full?

No, we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken. There is much more to come. Let us have grace by which we may serve

God acceptably with reverence and godly fear for our God is a consuming fire. So with that in mind, we see that the old covenant is manifestly inferior to the new covenant, but we can say something better than that.

The old covenant was designed to anticipate the new covenant. That was part of its purpose.

And in fact, we'll find that stated very clearly throughout the scripture that the purpose of the old covenant was to anticipate and ready things for the new.

So I do not think that it would be wise for us to hold out for shadows of the old covenant, which were purposed for the glory of Christ.

So that would be in contrast to how a lot of people read the Old Testament. We just, we said, this is everlasting.

This is everlasting. They hold onto those words. And when you look through the lens of the new, you see what's really everlasting is the

God who made the covenant and the person and work of Christ to whom it was all pointing.

If there's something that cannot be shaken, it's really God and is the person and work of Christ.

Yeah, and Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He's the only reason it can be everlasting.

Yes, because it's a kingdom that cannot be shaken. This kingdom that we are receiving, it says we're receiving the kingdom.

What I find interesting, you mentioned the old covenant points to the new. Who are we receiving the kingdom from?

We talk about Israel much today. You read Daniel two, Daniel seven, that talks about the kingdom being taken away.

That's Old Testament. You get to Matthew and Jesus is talking to the

Pharisees and he says, the kingdom will be taken away from you. And the Pharisees get angry because they perceive he's talking about them.

And then in Revelation 11, it says, this is 11, 15. Then the seventh angel sounded and there were loud voices in heaven saying, the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our

Lord and of his Christ. That seems to be pretty definitive, given that Jesus said the kingdom of God is at hand in his earthly ministry.

Because he was at hand. Because he was at hand. Yeah, the kingdom is wherever the king is. Yeah, and where he establishes his authority and his image and his territory is staked out so that he is the heir of all things.

He has inherited all things. So all authority has been given to him in heaven and on earth. So there is not anywhere you can go to escape the authority of this king.

And the question of course comes back, are you in rebellion to this king? Or are you in submission to this king?

That doesn't negate the fact of his authority. As Hebrew says, we do not yet see all things put into subjection to his feet.

But that doesn't deny the fact that all should be bowing the knee.

Yeah, it calls back to the warnings given at the end of Psalm 2. Exactly, Psalm 2, warnings.

And so that's where people say, look at the mess that the world is in today, and you say, yes, wouldn't it be more blessed if all would bow the knee to Christ?

And there's a massive difference when that does occur. What a world of difference. What a world of difference in a man or in a woman or in a child when they bow the knee to Christ.

What a world of difference submission to Christ means for a family. What a world of difference submission to Christ means for multitudes of families and tribes and nations to bow the knee to Christ.

It's like a new creation. Who'd have thought? Yeah, yeah.

So when we think about the conflict between Israel and Hamas, we say, you know, I wanna be biblical, I wanna be on God's side of things.

And I think that's great. And I believe God's promises. That's wonderful. And I think that we should be very, very familiar with all of the promises of God and that we should consider how does

Jesus say they get fulfilled? How did he teach his apostles about how they get fulfilled?

And we should follow the biblical trajectory of promise and fulfillment.

No matter where that leads us, we know that our good shepherd will lead us into the brightest, best possible hope that we can possibly have.

And I think that'll bring some clarity to the disasters and the tragedies and the violence and the problems that we see going on today in our world, whether it be

Russia, Ukraine, or Hamas and Israel. So we have to keep in mind that Christ is the heir of all things.

He is the heir of the world. And those who are of Christ, in Christ, with him are joint heirs of that world.

And that is an exclusionary statement. It means that there's no place over which

Christ is not king. And there's no place that's reserved for someone else.

It's the entire world, including this small piece of land.

It belongs to Jesus, the king, and all of those in him are joint heirs with him, whether they be

Jew or Gentile. But it belongs to one. And we can't read the

New Testament and deny that. Correct. So I think that that puts us into a position of what to anticipate and how to begin to understand the larger pictures.

I think it is wonderful that Christians trust God's word, believe God's promises, and anticipate

God always keeping his promises. And that should never be an expectation to be quashed, but only strengthened, edified, and I think clarified.

You know, we come across all kinds of people in the Bible who were very zealous about the things of God, you know.

But in combination with zeal, there needs to be wisdom and understanding and knowledge.

And that's an area in which we all can grow. And we know that the Bible is not gonna contradict itself. We know that God doesn't make any mistakes or errors, and he's always gonna keep his promise.

So I think just by reading the whole story and tracking along the arc of the story of Scripture along the lines that Christ draws,

I think that's when we're gonna see the harmony and the unity of the Bible. Amen, well, I think that about wraps up that section of this discussion because we might have more to come.

But we'll move on to what we have to recommend today. Michael, we'll start with you. Okay, I've got a book by one of my favorite theologians,

Herman Bavink, who was a Dutch reform theologian following in the footsteps of Abraham Kuyper in the

Netherlands. And he wrote a four -volume systematic theology called

Reform Dogmatics, which, you know, my copy is just full of highlights and underlines and dog years and everything.

And he's very warm. You know, he worships as he writes. And he's also very studious and has to do all the hard work.

But he wrote a book called Saved by Grace. Obviously, he wrote it all in Dutch originally. So this has all been translated and so on.

It's called Saved by Grace, subtitled The Holy Spirit's Work in Culling and Regeneration. And no, it's not about what you think it is.

This book is about all of the spirited internal debates of Pato -Baptists,

Pato -Covenantalists about how are they to understand what it means that they baptize their babies and call the members of the new covenant and why, and is it biblical?

And all the variety, wide variety of positions within that camp, how they disagree with one another and all the mix up in between.

I've never read a book, I've been more disappointed in a theologian before because his systematic theology is so just chock -full of Bible.

And then when I read this book, it's so chock -full of supposition and back and forth and citing confessions and disagreeing with various people within the

Pato -Covenantalist group. But all along, I've got underlines and writings and just irritated emojis.

But it was very educational as to all of the pressures and tensions within the

Pato -Covenantalist camp. So if you want to know the inside baseball of what they have to debate, it is no unified front indeed.

Saved by Grace, Herman Bavick. So you're recommending disappointment? In a sense, but.

Well, it humanizes these guys. It shows that they're not these stained glass window saints, they make mistakes.

So for instance, one line, we'll kind of maybe sum up some of it. The covenant of grace precedes faith.

Faith is not a condition unto the covenant, but a condition within the covenant. Ah. Wait.

What? See? See? Right. Yeah, so anyway, if you're interested in rowing your little

Baptist boat into a fog, and into this - We just read in Hebrews 8.

We just read in Hebrews 8 about how you won't have to tell your father, your son, your neighbor to know the

Lord. They will know the Lord. That seems to precede, that seems to be faith preceding.

Yeah, well, as I said, not much Bible shows up, but normally it does in his writings, but in this one, my experience was

I was in the fog in my little Baptist rowboat while two super freighter of pedo -covenantalist thought was colliding into each other, and I had no idea what was going on.

So if you're interested in that kind of experience, I recommend this book. All right,

Chris, we'll move on to you. What do you recommend? I was turned on to this series by you guys, actually.

It's a theocratic critique of theonomy, and I thought, what, that's the same thing.

What are we talking about? Nope. And it's very interesting just to see the different positions and some of the history, a little bit of infighting, and this group is this, and well, we've got the market on this word or whatever, and how to kind of interpret law, what is law, and then how does that apply broadly speaking?

Are we talking about the church ruling over countries or like ecclesi, you know, ecclesiocracy?

Yeah, ecclesiocracy. Or bibliocracy, you know, and so he makes the case, he's critiquing theonomy, but it's a theocratic, which

I'm like, I can get behind that. So, so far it's been very interesting. It's by James Jordan, a theocratic critique of theonomy.

So would you say that Jordan split a hair that needed to be split? I think so, particularly because we talk about, you know,

Presbyterians and theonomy. I think a lot of Baptist aversion to theonomy is, well, that's

Presbyterian. You're trying to say the church is Israel, so you just wholesale yank the, you know, yank the

Mosaic law and plop it down and that's what we need to do, which there are some people that are that way, but he seems to be arguing for something that's not how it was meant to be interpreted.

When you look at it, it's not just do this, don't do that. There's motivations and things in that, and so I found that really interesting.

He raised the right questions, I think. Yeah, and I think, you know, Bonson was a huge, you know, he's a huge name, and so for someone to kind of critique that position, and so far,

I think he's doing it great. He doesn't seem to be attacking him as so much the idea, so.

Well, David, what about you? What do you recommend this week? I was linked to this, the article from Founders.

Founders, ministriesfounders .org, you can find them, but they have a Founders Journal, and this is an article written in 2012 with their winter edition of Founders Journal by Robert Gonzalez, Jr.,

and it's entitled, Why I Am Still a Baptist, and he is,

I think at the time, it was Reformed Baptist Seminary, RBS. It has a new title now. They're out of Sacramento, and it has multiple congregations, but he goes through this love for Puritans, love for his

Paedo -Baptist brothers, love for Reformed writers, and systematically takes apart a lot of their arguments and says,

I have come away with a great appreciation for these writers, and I'm still a Baptist. I went through something not nearly to this degree, but something similar when

I was going through some of the writings of the Puritans and then reading Sproul and reading

Sinclair Ferguson and says, how can I disagree with these great men throughout history, these men who believe the

Bible and take it so seriously? Am I wrong, am I wrong? And I struggled with that, but I think he really does go through it well, addresses some of their arguments.

He said, this is why I still hold to believers' baptism and brings up some of the things that you guys said, but I will say this.

He does say, accordingly, and the passage that he's talking about, John's teaching in John 1, it says, accordingly, the passage is not simply explaining the way of salvation or de salutis, that is,

God's method of saving sinners at all times is primarily highlighting a shift in redemptive history. Historia salutis, that is,

God's manner of administering the paradigm of redemption. Commonly called the covenant of grace in history.

So he does presuppose some of the terminology, uses some of the terminology, and I really think that if you take

Pado -Baptist terms and their idea of covenant theology, it logically brings you to Pado -Baptism.

So I think you do have to take it with a grain of salt, but the article's interesting, why he still maintains his believers' baptism and has a great respect and love for a lot of his

Pado -Baptist brothers currently living and throughout history. So I liked it. I enjoyed the article. It's, you can find it on founders .org,

which I love a lot of their stuff, but he is a Reformed, classical Reformed Baptist, and many of them have a

Westminster formulation of covenant theology. Amen. Andrew? So I attend a university here in Oklahoma, and I have semi -weekly interactions with cult groups, and the one that I've been able to talk to most recently, most consistently, are the

Jehovah's Witnesses. And you may be wondering why I'm bringing it up in this section. There is nothing like conversations with sub -Christian organizations or non -Christians to get you to maybe more topically in what they're talking about, to take it and think about it and to read the scriptures.

I have read so many different places in the scriptures, and just being, for instance, the deity of Christ, it shines through in so many different places that it's not just the proof texting style of discussing it with Jehovah's Witnesses where you could go to John 1 .1

or in Colossians, because they have their own, they have their own translation of the text. They can't hide it all.

And so I thank God for the opportunity to meet with these people on a weekly basis, to talk to them and talk with them.

But really, reading through the scriptures has been a great part of that.

And I would say, don't shy away from conversations with people that you disagree with vehemently, because it will drive you to the truth.

And that truth is found in Christ and his word. Dillon, I want to talk to you about Dogecoin.

We can do that off mic. Vehemently disagreeing. Does it vehemently disagreeing?

We're going to have to dumb down the linguistics when we start talking about Dogecoin, right? Jehovah's Witness is to Christianity as Doge is to Bitcoin.

Oh, inside jokes. This week, I'd like to recommend

Rudyard Kipling's poetry. I know he's pretty famous for some of his longer form storytelling.

And I'm the guy who throws the wrench into the suggestions here. But I think all of his poetry is online in alphabetical order in the kiplingsociety .org

or .com. And when I can't sleep at night, sometimes that's what I go to. I'll flip up some of that stuff and kind of see what the rhyme scheme, the meter he is using, what he's talking about.

Because he wrote a lot of poetry that dealt with a lot about the empire, the English empire during that time period.

And a lot of it is just fun. And then a lot of it is out there and you don't know what's going on.

So researching some of it and reading it has been quite fun, but I'm recommending Kipling's poetic works.

But we'll move on to what are we thankful for, Michael? I am thankful for small churches. I am thankful for the wisdom of our good shepherd that he so robustly and in the majority works through small churches throughout all of church history, even till today.

In many ways, small churches are despised for being small. And yet our Lord reminded us never to despise the small things in the growth of his kingdom.

And I am thankful for how effective small churches can be in the growth of Christ's kingdom and the sanctification of his saints.

And as an added bonus, being so decentralized, we make an effective resistance against tyranny.

So are you a Dunbar's Law guy? Explain Dunbar's Law. Dunbar's Law, it's a law that states basically that the human can only handle a certain amount of other people within their community.

Like once it gets past a certain number, things either start to fall apart naturally or just decentralized naturally.

I have a lot of Facebook friends. What are you saying? Exactly, but how many of them are actually close?

Exactly. How many can we handle in close conversation or close relationship over time?

Because it's another one of those things that reminds us of our finiteness. That's an important thing to observe.

The way that we see the growth and expansion of the church in the New Testament, thousands and thousands and thousands, and they stopped counting because there was so many.

And yet the stories, the letters, there were groups of names of people who were in close association.

And it's a good reminder. Yeah. Well, what about you, Chris? What are you thankful for? I am grateful for living paintings.

I left work today a little bit late. And usually when I get out, it's like bright and sunny and 4 .30.

I left and I looked to the east and I just was amazed.

I literally took my breath away. I just stopped in the parking lot. I just stared. It was like, and this is all from the mind of God.

And then he puts it out there and just the clouds smeared across the sky, the pinks and the blues and the purples just mixed together.

The fact that we have light from the sun that illuminates the water in the sky, all of that.

And he was just, and he does it every day. He does it every day, every morning. There he is doing it again.

So I'm grateful for that. Re -enchanting you every day. David? I am very grateful for the celebration that we had yesterday as a church family, just gathering together and eating.

And I mean, there was so much food that people just made out of love that we had to have multiple rooms to organize it all.

Even though we're a small church, we had a smorgasbord, it's a cornucopia.

It was great. And I just got to sit down and chat with people that I hadn't seen in a while.

It was a lovely time that I got to be here for, my family got to be here for, and I am incredibly grateful that our church does that and wants to be together and likes being together.

Even, we may not agree on everything, but we love each other and we share meals. And it's a, well, when you're away from your family, then my side of the family, which is in Texas, and Amy's side, which is in Virginia, to have a church family here is, it's even more important.

You feel that fellowship even more. So thanks. Amen. Andrew? Along those lines, yesterday,

Brother Michael asked, what are you thankful for? And I didn't speak up. I wish I should have, but I'm thankful to God for the work of the spirit among his people.

The fact that we are being conformed into the image of his son, brought to maturity, is something that is happening within each of the living stones and being built together into the community, the congregation that is inhabited by the spirit.

It looks different in different places, but it is such a blessing. A temple without life is just a building, but he is alive and we are alive.

I thank God for that. Amen. And to just piggyback off of you two,

Heather and I were, we looked busy yesterday during the gathering, during Thanksgiving meal, and we were, because our boys were hungry, they were energetic, and then they had sweets at the end of everything.

But on our ride back home, we talked about together how we were thankful to God for the way that individuals within our church gravitate toward one another.

You've talked many times before about Mr. Bullard and my presence, Michael, and how there's a certain gravity to that, ma 'am, how in the

Bible we see glory as something that pulls others to itself. And I see in each single member a pulling toward one another and gravity with one another.

And even though you can tell which groups or which families prefer each other, it's not cliquish at all, but it's a coming together as one and there's a greater weight in the room at all times.

And I was able to sit back in my corner dealing with my boys and feeling the weight that I'm feeling with them and watching everybody else have the same, same thing happen to them with their kids, their parents, their grandparents, other families, and it's just a room getting weightier and weightier.

And it wasn't just the food being brought into the room. Yeah. It was the conversation. It was,

I heard people talking about Jesus around the whole room. And that's where the weight comes from. And I am so, so thankful for that weight being present in my life, in my son's lives, in my wife's life, and anybody else that walks in there.

And that wraps it up for today. We are very thankful for our listeners and hope you will join us again as we meet to answer common questions and objections with Have You Not Read.