Systematic Theology (part 13)

Bethlehem Bible Church

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Last week we talked about covenants, and I said we were a court in controversy, but that's this week for sure.

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We are going to spend probably more than half of our time talking about the other two covenants.

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We talked about the covenant of redemption last week, and then we're going to spend a little bit of time talking about dispensationalism.

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It probably doesn't represent a fair shake, I will acknowledge that, but Pradeep was excellent and on point last week in talking about the fact that as we move farther away from Scripture, which we know to be absolutely true, we get into doctrine, which is a human interpretation and understanding of Scripture.

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And so as we work through covenant theology, the right thing to do would be to talk about dispensationalism.

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And then, when it gets really, really controversial, that's eschatology, so I'm just going to not teach next week, and Corey's going to do it.

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So it's going to be perfect. All right, so, we have a lot to cover,

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I'm not going to rehash too much, but can someone define for me a covenant? What is a covenant? Remember, I picked on Danny and he's not here, so maybe

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I shouldn't pick on him next time. That's that weird nuance that we talked about last week, that's that weird thing.

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So Packer, covenants in Scripture are solemn agreements, negotiated or unilaterally imposed, that bind the parties to each other in permanent, defined relationships with specific promises, claims, and obligations to both sides.

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And we see this, like the Abrahamic covenant is a really good example of a covenant where like the two parties didn't really agree, right?

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So let's talk about covenants, what are the three biblical covenants according to covenant theology? The three biblical covenants according to covenant theology,

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I already mentioned one of them. There you go, covenant of redemption, covenant of works, covenant of grace.

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So if you don't have a worksheet, by the way, I miss all of my announcements, there's worksheets on either side, please get one so you can at least follow along.

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That was the answer to question two, so we're really moving. What is a covenant? We already talked about that, and if you want some more answers, you can come talk to me after, that's totally okay.

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So the covenant of redemption, we spent a lot of time talking about this last week. What is the covenant of redemption?

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Who are the parties involved? What is the agreement? Covenant of redemption.

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Nope, I'm not calling on you again, not back -to -back, that's not happening. Okay, Corey, fine. Right. Burkoff, the covenant of redemption may be defined as the agreement between the father giving the son as head and redeemer of the elect, and the son voluntarily taking the place of those whom the father had given him.

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So there's this idea in the covenant of redemption that there is a party that is handed from the father to the son, and then from the son to the father, but that party is not defined.

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It is a known entity, but it is not defined in terms of covenant of redemption.

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And remember, most likely, almost certainly, God, being all -knowing and immutable and all -knowing as we were, if and when the covenant of redemption was instantiated, right?

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But again, this is a framework by which we can understand. Okay? Correct.

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It's the way that we understand it, right? If we were to look at something like the Ordo Salutis, and look at the correct order of salvation, some of those steps happen functionally at the same time, but it helps us put things in perspective and really understand, like, does grace come before fear, or whatever?

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So it's a method for us to understand, so that as we look at Scripture, it's a hermeneutic, effectively.

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We can see things through that lens. Well, thank you, past Andrew, via Pradeep, for perfectly explaining.

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But I appreciate that very much. Okay, so that's the covenant of redemption.

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That is all of our review. We're at 9 .06. I think we might do okay.

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So, we have a choice now. We can either look at the covenant of works or the covenant of grace. And, if we were to open the

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Bible to Genesis 1, and just read, what would we come to next?

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The covenant of works or the covenant of grace? Covenant of works, totally. And yet, listen to what

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Burkhoff says. Burkhoff says, That's why

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I mentioned it. I thought it was interesting. So, when we think about the covenant of grace, and what it represents, and if you're hazy on that, don't worry, we'll get there.

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It's kind of obvious, when you think about it, that the development of the doctrine of the covenant of grace would precede the development of the doctrine of the covenant of works.

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Why? Let me ask an easier question.

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What does all of Scripture point to? Jesus Christ and what Jesus Christ accomplished.

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What is the covenant of grace? The application of what

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Jesus Christ accomplished onto us. The covenant of redemption is the framework, remember we talked about this, is the eternal framework of the covenant of grace.

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And so, when we look at what Scripture points to, the pinnacle of human existence in history was

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Jesus Christ on the cross. And so, it kind of makes sense, if you think about it that way, it makes sense, as doctrines are developed, that we would figure that out.

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But that, again, goes back to this proper understanding that doctrine is a human understanding, a fallible human understanding of the perfect revelation of God.

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So, covenant of works comes first. I think maybe,

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I don't think the mechanics of sin, salvation, redemption, I don't think you're seeing that.

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And that's really what the covenant of grace articulates. So, one thing at this point

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I think would be helpful for me to draw out, which I mentioned last week briefly, was, there's kind of another name for covenant theology, does anybody know what it is?

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Federal theology. When we think of federal in a scriptural sense, what do we think of?

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This is a softball question. Headship, federal headship, right?

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We think of Adam, okay? Pat Avendroth, the other Avendroth. Sometimes covenant theology goes by the name federal theology.

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This is for good reason in light of the representative nature of humanity's relationship with God in Adam and Christ.

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Respectively, the word federal comes from the Latin word, fluidus. I'll go with it, come on, you can laugh at me, it's okay.

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Meaning, covenant. So, covenant of works.

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Remember our definition, there's multiple parties involved, there's an agreement of trade, there's binding articles or consequences for failure.

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And we've kind of alluded to this already. What are the members of the covenant of works?

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Or who are the members of the covenant of works? Is it better? God and man as represented by Adam.

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Man, she's got a good teacher. It's not me, it's whatever.

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So those are the parties involved. Birkhoff, on the one hand, there was the triune

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God, the creator and Lord, and on the other hand, Adam as his dependent creature.

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So, for us to define the elements of this covenant, we can speak about it in the abstract, or, if we want to look at the agreements and the articles and consequences and things like that, maybe we could go to scripture, where, what's the proof text for the covenant of works?

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That proof text is Genesis 2, specifically verses 15 to 17, where it says this,

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Now we come to this and we're like, wait a minute. The word works is not there.

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The word covenant is not there. How is this a proof text for something that's not mentioned?

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And the easy answer is, well, the Trinity is not mentioned in scripture as the

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Trinity, right? But there's clear doctrinal evidence for the Trinity, and so we can understand this doctrine clearly, despite the word not being there.

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So if we look at this, this is actually the first command with consequence that God gives to Adam.

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And what is that command? You can call out if you want, you don't have to raise your hand.

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Do not eat. Do not eat. If you eat from the tree, what's the penalty?

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You will die. The converse of that is, don't eat from the tree and you won't die.

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Yay! That seems good. Is this a hand? Is your hand up?

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I can't tell, it's like half up. Okay, I'm just checking. I don't want to miss anything. Lisa will not be denied.

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This is... True, true.

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But there's no, if you don't work and keep the garden, then... Right.

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No, you're 100 % right. So with this being the only thing where there is a, if you don't obey, this is the consequence of that.

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It's not hard to expand that to Adam. Obey God. Right?

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Because like Steve said, God certainly tells Adam to tend to the garden and watch over the animals.

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But death hasn't entered the world. So I actually, that's really kind of, that's one of those thought questions, right?

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Like, I mean, okay, you can tend the garden, but nothing's going to die. So... I don't know, that's very confusing to me.

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Alright. Adam, obey God and you will not die. And that is the core of the covenant of works.

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God promises eternal life to Adam if he obeys him. And we can kind of see this articulated a little bit more in other passages in Scripture.

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Hosea 6 is another great place to go. Hosea 6 and 7, talking about the sin of Israel and Judah, where it says,

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For I desire, this is God talking, steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.

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But like Adam, they transgressed the covenant. There they dealt faithlessly with...

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I mean, that is... The covenants of redemption and works and grace are not the only covenants in Scripture.

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There are many, many covenants in Scripture. God is a covenant -keeping God. But, and we'll talk about this a little bit more, especially when we start talking about the differences between this and dispensationalism.

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This is a framework under which we can look at everything. Paul refers to the covenants of the Old Testament as the covenants of promise, just kind of generally.

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And a lot of this stuff, these are the... That is basically a restatement of the covenant of works to Israel, to say, if you do not obey me, there will be consequences.

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When you are subjugated by another nation, especially back then, a lot of people die. That's just what happens.

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You become slaves, you lose your agency, or you die. That's it. I don't know if that answers your question.

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Yeah, I mean, it's kind of an application of the covenant of works. It's a reminder to Israel. As we'll see with dispensationalism, there are periods of testing of the human race throughout history under the framework of dispensationalism, and the

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Old Testament is a lot of failure. So, yeah,

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I mean, effectively, you can see it as God reminding Israel federally, hey, this is the law that you are under.

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It's a little bit different, because at that point you have the Mosaic Law, right? So God can say, look, these are the laws.

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He doesn't really have to say anything. He's reminding them at that point. They know better. They have the Ten Commandments.

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But, yeah, I don't know if that kind of answers your question. Abraham gets a little tricky, because when you talk about the seed of Abraham, we're going to talk about that a little bit.

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What does that really mean? What does that really represent? Abraham, as the father of the

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Jewish people, there would be some kind of physical thing there. But, Steve, are you just reaching for something?

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But that doesn't prevent God from reminding people that they are bound to obey him. He doesn't stop doing that.

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He doesn't say, these are the rules that you will obey me. I think that's fair.

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I mean, it's certainly not a reinitialization of the Covenant of Works.

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I don't want to get kind of pedantic about it. But Corey went first. Sorry, Dave. We really won't super get into that.

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This could have been the summer series, right? Like, yes and no.

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So the reason why the Covenant of Grace provides us with assurance is because it's sealed by someone who can actually accomplish it.

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So the Covenant of Works, as a concept, exists, and yet it's over.

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Like, it's done. Now, to what Dave said, before I began this study, if you had said to me, does the

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Covenant of Works deal with Moses, I probably would have said, yeah, I think so. That's a very easy mistake to make.

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Very easy mistake to make. So don't feel too much shame. That's the

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Covenant of the Elevated. Yeah, that's what the Covenant of the Elevated says. Oh, look, in my notes it says, obviously this can warrant deeper study.

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All right. How about we do this? Westminster Confession. Chapter 7, paragraph 2.

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The first covenant made with man was the Covenant of Works, wherein life was promised to Adam and in him to his posterity upon condition of perfect and personal obedience.

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Adam. Okay. So now we're going to turn from the

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Covenant of Works to the Covenant of Grace. I'm going to do it by using a quote from Martin Lloyd -Jones.

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I'm just going to keep hiding behind greater theologians than myself. God originally made a covenant with Adam.

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You remember that he put him into the garden and told him that if he did certain things, he would have a certain reward. That is called the

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Covenant of Works because Adam's inheritance of this promise was entirely dependent upon his works, upon what he did.

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But, you remember, Adam broke the covenant. He failed and landed himself and his posterity in the terrible plight that we have been describing.

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So, from there on, God has made a new covenant, which is called the Covenant of Grace. So, whether we define the

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Acts of Jesus as the Covenant of Grace or the Covenant of Dispensation, I do want to point out, and this is my one nit to pick with the way that Martin Lloyd -Jones says this, it was always part of the eternal plan of God.

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It was not a plan B. It wasn't like, oh, well, Adam messed up, so now I've got to figure something else out. It was always part of God's eternal plan that Jesus would come and die for the sins of his people.

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Do you have something? I thought I saw a hand in the back. No? Okay. So, let's move on to the

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Covenant of Grace. The idea of it, the doctrine of it, the development of it preceded the development of the

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Covenant of Works because all of Scripture points to Jesus, and so it's kind of easy for us to understand the

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Covenant of Grace, the idea that Jesus accomplished redemption for his people. We get that. That's the point of all of Scripture.

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And so, kind of codifying that into a doctrine makes sense. And I mentioned this already, but I'll ask the question again to see who's paying attention.

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With regards to the Covenant of Grace, what did we say about the Covenant of Redemption last week?

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This was my programmer joke. Anyone? Anyone remember this? Abstract class.

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See? Somebody remembered. Thank you. The Covenant of Redemption was both the eternal foundation and prototype of the

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Covenant of Grace. The Covenant of Redemption was the eternal foundation and prototype of the

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Covenant of Grace. It defined the mechanics by which everything would happen in the

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Covenant of Redemption, in the Covenant of Grace, but not the application of the Covenant of Grace. Was there a hand?

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No? No hand? Okay. All right. Hebrews 8 .13

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would call this a better covenant. And speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete, and what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.

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Now I can answer your question. No. I mean, yes, yes, yes, he did do away with the Covenant of Works in the sense that it's not the

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Mosaic Covenant. And when people think about what did Jesus do away with, he did away with the idea of the

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Mosaic Covenant, not the covenant with Adam. So did

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Jesus abrogate the Covenant of Works? I mean, he didn't really have to, right? It was done. It was broken.

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It was over. Yeah. Okay. Surprisingly, maybe not, throughout church history, the

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Covenant of Grace, although developed as a doctrine pretty early on, there was a lot of debate about who the parties of the

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Covenant of Grace are. Okay? I think one of them is probably pretty obvious, which is?

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God? I like how you said it. God? I mean, obviously, right? Who is the second party in the

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Covenant of Grace? I will give you four possible answers, and then we can vote or not.

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I don't know. We actually have more time than I expected. I really did run through that. Okay.

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Here's the four possibilities that have been debated over the years. One. All of fallen mankind.

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Number two. Abraham and his seed. Number three.

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God's elect. The elect sinners in Christ. This is starting to sound very

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Saturday morning. I don't know. Number four. God himself.

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Well, who are the parties in the Covenant of Redemption? All right.

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This is bringing me back to, we went to a Shepherds Conference. I don't know. Are we allowed to say those words at BBC still? I don't know. We went to a

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Shepherds Conference. Wow. Maybe eight years ago. Pastor Steve was there.

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Do you remember the Southern Baptists or whatever that were hooping and hollering the whole time? Well, the first or second

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General Assembly, and then somebody had a conversation with him. Do you remember that? Oh, man, I remember that.

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That was hilarious. Because it was so, like, the speakers were so clearly not used to it.

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You know what I mean? It was something else. So you can continue humming or whatever it is. I don't know how to describe that.

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Yeah. Okay. So what do you want to do? Who wants to, we can take a vote.

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All eyes covered. Covenant of Grace. Voting.

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Was there a question? We're going to raise our hands. Who thinks of all of fallen mankind? God and all of fallen mankind.

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All right. No unlimited atonement people here. All right. Abraham and his seed.

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What's the difference between Isaac and Ishmael? We haven't finished voting yet.

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Come on. I can't give it away. God's elect. All right.

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God himself. All right. The conventionally accepted answer.

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According to Burkoff. Is God and his chosen people the elect?

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Oh, good. No more hands came up. Okay. I was expecting like, what? All right. We'll talk about some quick hits for these.

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All of fallen mankind. If this is a covenant that needs to have a penalty for failure, it implies that there are some parties that have perhaps failed.

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That's the argument for it being all of fallen mankind. Therefore, if you consider that all of fallen man could be the second party, some have succeeded, some have failed.

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That's the argument. It's a bad argument, but it's an argument. Abraham and his seed.

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God makes a covenant with Abram in Genesis 15. We've talked about that a lot.

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But later in Genesis 21, 21 -12, God says, what?

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For through Isaac shall your offspring be named. So it can't be all of Abraham's seed if Abraham's seed is physical.

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But, of course, for us, we know that we are the children of Abraham in a kind of representative spiritual sense.

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The argument for the covenant being with God himself is simple because of what we said about the covenant of redemption.

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It was a prototype for the covenant of grace. So if it's a prototype, it kind of makes sense that maybe it's the same parties that are involved.

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The argument is that in the covenant of grace, there's an extra object, right?

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John 6, the Father gives this to the Son. The Son redeems, gives back to the Father. But the argument, again, for the constant to understand this, the argument is, yes, that object is involved, but the agreement is still between the

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Father and the Son. So that's the argument for the covenant of grace being between God and God.

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God's elect. God and his chosen people.

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Question 6, who are the parties in the covenant of grace? God and his people. But what are the agreements of trade?

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What are defined as the benefits of completion or the consequences of failure? Covenant of grace.

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What do you think? Any thoughts? So, easy follow -up question, is the covenant of grace a conditional covenant?

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Are we saved by works or are we saved by grace? Whose works is the answer to the question?

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So, depending on whether or not, you know, it's very poetic that I'd elected to put my contacts in this morning, so I can't do this and say, well, actually, right?

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But, so if we were to, you know, be super, super technical, pedantic, whatever about this, we could say that the covenant of grace is a conditional covenant in the sense that we are saved by works because they're

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Jesus' works, not our works, right? So, this is one of those, like, technical things.

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Pradeep, are you getting ready to run out the door? Okay, all right. But remember what

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I said before, the covenant of grace gives us assurance. Why?

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Because the guarantor is Jesus. We can't mess up to that degree.

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We can't sin our way out of salvation, as Mike says. So, technically, the covenant of grace, right?

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But when we look at it in terms of us and our relationship to God, it is functionally unconditional.

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God says that he will accomplish both sides of the transaction of redemption, and he will change us to fulfill our side, which is responding in faith.

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Right? That's Ephesians 2. I mean, that's, well, 1 and 2. Yes? If true.

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Right. Right. Right. Okay. So, if we look, remember,

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Jesus stands as the surety and guarantor of the covenant of redemption, and thus the covenant of grace.

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And so, Burkhoff says that this covenant may, in a sense, be called a testament.

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We talked about this, this is foreshadowing that you didn't know about last week. What is a testament?

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When we think about testament in popular culture, or not popular culture, but modern culture, where do we think about it? In a last will, right?

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Last will and testament. This is a statement, a declaration by the person, the entity in power, and that is to be applied or worked out.

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And so here we are. Oh, that sounds an awful lot like the covenant of grace, doesn't it? And that's what

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Burkhoff is saying. He cites Hebrews 9, which makes sense.

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9, 15 to 17. Therefore he, Jesus, is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance since a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant.

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For where a will is involved, the death of the one who made it must be established.

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For a will takes effect only at death, since it is not in force as long as the one who made it is alive.

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So when Adam broke the first covenant, eternal life was no longer on the table.

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But because Jesus perfectly obeyed, which is why when we work through the covenant of works, we simplified it to obey

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God and live, which is effectively what the Mosaic covenant also says, but that's not the covenant of works in this framework.

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Obey God and live, Adamic covenant, Edenic covenant, however you want to describe it, Jesus has perfectly fulfilled

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Hebrews 9, 15 to 17. So, we'll close kind of talking about the covenant of grace with another quote from Burkhoff.

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Remember, we're working through Louis Burkhoff's Systematic Theology. That's kind of our general framework text for this study, although I have borrowed a lot from Pat Abengoth's book,

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Covenant Theology, which we now have copies of out there on the Spinney Tower, which is the quick hits from the bookstore or something like that.

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Which, if you do want to learn about covenant theology, by the way, it's a very easy read. So, if you want to,

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I would commend that. I also have a book that Pastor Mike pointed me to. He said he hadn't had the chance to read it, but he has heard that it's good about comparing covenant theology to dispensational theology.

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So, at the end of this, if you're like, what? I can give you that link as well. But here's how

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Burkhoff defines the covenant of grace. So, when we look at number seven, Burkhoff, Covenant of Grace. The covenant of grace may be defined as that gracious agreement between the offended

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God and the offending but elect sinner, in which God promises salvation through faith in Christ, and the sinner accepts this believingly, promising a life of faith and obedience.

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Again, that is only possible because we are changed by God. Right? Okay.

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So, in our eight plus minutes that we have left, we're going to talk about dispensationalism. I said it at the beginning.

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It really deserves kind of more time than this, but this is what I have. Would anybody like to define dispensationalism for a donut hole and the answer to question eight?

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Would anybody like to define dispensationalism? Okay. All right.

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Here we go. Dispensationalism is an evangelical theological system that addresses issues concerning the biblical covenants,

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Israel, the church, and end times. It also argues for a literal interpretation of Old Testament prophecies involving ethnic and national

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Israel, and the idea that the church is a New Testament entity that is distinct from Israel.

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I'm aware. I can email it out if you want. You can just kind of take some notes.

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Honestly, if you took the right side of the seven dispensations and classic dispensationalism, you could write out the definition there because you won't need the left side.

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But, anyway, okay. So, I kind of said this before about covenant theology. I wanted to make sure that it was clearly understood that, much like covenant theology, dispensationalism is a framework, or what some commentators call a meta -narrative, that seeks to organize

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Scripture in a certain way that will help us understand it. I mentioned this before, as what

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Pradeep said last week, rightly. The more we move away from Scripture to dogmas, to doctrine, i .e.,

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an applied framework on top of Scripture, the less we can be sure of its accuracy. I know we have both dispensationalists and covenant theologians at BBC.

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I promise I'm not trying to alienate anybody. Nor do I want to get rocks thrown at me. So, I just want to be super clear.

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These two frameworks do lead to different conclusions. In the words of Rodney Smith, you don't know who he is.

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I'll let you find that out for yourself. Okay. So, what dispensationalism doesn't do is deny the existence of covenants in Scripture.

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It would be foolish to do that, to deny the existence of covenants in Scripture. Those covenants are dogmas.

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I read to you out of both the Old and New Testament, God talking about being involved in covenants.

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Dispensationalism does not say that covenants don't exist. You might see a dispensationalist define covenants differently.

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You would hear things like Adamic covenant, Edenic covenant, Mosaic covenant, Noahic covenant, all these things.

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Because, for a dispensationalist, these covenants do not define the structure, the hermeneutic, by which you understand the salvation story through Scripture.

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Does that make sense? Okay. This is a really important point to understand that. They don't provide the actual framework or hermeneutical interpretive lens for Scripture, according to the dispensationalist.

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Okay. So, dispensationalism. What is a dispensation?

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In this context, not the Catholic context, that's a different thing. What is a dispensation?

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What are the dispensations that dispensationalists believe in? I kind of mentioned this before.

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I kind of talked about it. Does anybody know? Does anybody have an answer? I have four half answers.

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Can I put them together for one answer? I don't know. Janet, we'll start from the back. Ladies first.

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Yep. That's good. That's the beginning. Corey, you're next. No, no, no, no.

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We'll get to that. What is a dispensation? Yeah, what is it? When we talk about being a dispensationalist, what are the things?

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Yeah, I know. It was pretty good. It was a good foundation.

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Kind of. Yeah. Dave? That's pretty okay.

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Right. And, I mean, that's where you see the things about the distinction between Israel and the church, right? So, some pretty big names in church history.

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Schofield was a dispensationalist. Darby was a dispensationalist. So, those, I could name a lot more people.

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Here's Schofield's definition of dispensation. Do you want to add anything? You're kind of enjoying saying nothing, aren't you?

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Yeah, again, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We have, I think, I think

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Steve's going to come flying at me with a Luke Hang style, like, flying kick if I go past 950.

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So, I have seven minutes. That's the dispensation word.

37:40

Yeah, right. Okay. Schofield defined dispensations like this.

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A dispensation is a period of time during which man is tested in respect of obedience to some specific revelation of the will of God.

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Each of the dispensations may be regarded as a new test of the natural man, and each ends in judgment, marking his failure.

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Right? Go ahead and end it on a down note, Andrew. So, talking about the dispensations, just like you said before,

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Corey, there's a whole spectrum of numbers of dispensations that various dispensationalists believe exist.

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Classically, there's seven. And I'm pretty much going to list those, and we'll see what we do.

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All right. The first dispensation, the dispensation of innocence.

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Adam under probation prior to the fall of man. This ends with the expulsion from the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3.

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Adamic period, Adamic covenant, Adamic law, these are all names of the same thing. So, the first dispensation, dispensation of innocence.

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Next, dispensation of conscience. This is from the fall to the flood. Okay? So, God looks out across the land.

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He is unhappy with what he sees. We see his covenant with Noah, and then we see the worldwide deluge.

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From the fall to the great flood, the second dispensation, dispensation of conscience. The next dispensation, human or civil government.

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So, again, no Moses, no law. Right? So, we're still working through how are you right with God when you don't have a law.

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Right? After the great flood, humanity is responsible to enact the death penalty, and as such, is the authority to govern.

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This ends with the dispersion at the Tower of Babel. This is the third dispensation, human or civil government.

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Fourth, the dispensation of promise, or the dispensation of patriarchal rule.

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So, this is from Abraham to Moses. This ends with the refusal to enter

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Canaan, and the 40 years of unbelief. This is where we get the term Abrahamic law.

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This is the kind of Abrahamic covenant era as a description of this dispensation, this period of dispensation.

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Then we have the law, dispensation of the law. Okay, now our finite human brains in the 21st century are like, okay, finally, you're giving me a bunch of laws that I can understand, and that's how we relate to God and all this stuff.

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So, we have the 1, 2, 3, 4, 5th dispensation, the dispensation of the law. This goes from Moses to the crucifixion of Jesus.

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It ends, according to this, with the scattering of Israel in AD 70. We've talked about Mosaic law and Mosaic covenant.

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That's kind of this era. Then we have the dispensation of grace, from the cross to the rapture.

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1 Thessalonians talks about kind of this thing. I don't want to get into that.

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That's Corey's job next week. He'll talk about that. He will also talk about the 7th dispensation, which is the millennial kingdom, 1 ,000 -year reign of Christ on earth, centered in Jerusalem, ending with God's judgment on the final rebellion.

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So, covenant theology framework for scripture. Dispensational framework.

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Which one's right? I'm not taking a vote. It's not happening. Don't worry. But one of the big things that we see here is, because the dispensational view clearly separates the dispensation of the law and the dispensation of grace, there is an idea that Israel and the church are fully distinct.

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They are different things. And dispensationalists would say that the world ends with Israel being fulfilled or brought as a nation, being kind of reconstituted.

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That sounds weird. Like McDonald's chicken nuggets. I don't know.

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So this whole thing is Dave's fault, basically. This whole conversation about whether or not

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I was going to do covenantalism came from your conversation about is there one church, is there one people of God or two peoples of God.

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That's where it all started. It's all your fault. Okay. So generally speaking, proponents of covenant theology would very clearly say there is one people of God, but dispensationalists would differentiate between Israel and the church with a strongly held belief of a future restoration of the nation of Israel.

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There's a lot of other key stuff. I mentioned eschatology. Most dispensationalists are pre -trib, pre -mill.

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That's Corey. Okay. It is 948. I said

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I had to finish before 950. Are there any questions? All right, let's pray.

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Heavenly Father, we thank you for this morning. We just thank you for these studies where we can look at your word, try to do the best we can as finite people to understand an amazing and infinite

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God. We praise you for the truths that you've allowed us to see. We praise you, Lord, for knowing that as we look to you, we are looking, as it were, through foggy glass, and we all have hope of salvation found only in your son,

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Father, and we can all look to that day when we can see you clearly. We praise you for this time to come together and to fellowship and to praise you both through learning, through listening, through singing and all of these things.

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And we pray, Father, that you would just bless this time, bless Pastor Mike as he preaches to us this morning.