Reading the Bible Through Law/Gospel Lenses | Theocast

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Is there a right and wrong way to read your Bible? Well, we're gonna argue, yeah, there is.

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There's a dangerous way where you misapply passages. And one of those is when you read the law as gospel or you read the gospel as law, or it becomes a gospel of some mess.

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Today's podcast is how to read your Bible from a law gospel lens. What are the ways we think about narrative,

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Psalm, Proverbs, prophecy, New Testament, gospels? How do we make sure that we're reading them from the proper perspective so that we gain all of the benefits and we don't muddy up the gospel?

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It's a fun conversation, stay tuned. If you're new to Theocast, you may not have heard of this word. It's called pietism.

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You ever felt like the Christian life is a heavy burden versus rest and joy, that you wake up worrying about how well you're gonna perform instead of thinking about what

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Christ has done for you? It's dread versus joy, really. That's pietism. Pietism causes

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Christians to look in on themselves and find their hope, not in what Christ has done, but what they're doing.

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And we have a little book for you, it's free. We want you to download it. And we're gonna explain the difference between pietism and what we call confessionalism.

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Reform theology, really. How it is that we walk by faith, seeing the joy of Christ, and when

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Jesus says, come to me and I will give you rest, what does that look like? You can download it on our website.

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Just go to theocast .org. Welcome to Theocast.

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Encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ. At Theocast, we have conversations about the

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Christian life from a confessional, reformed, and pastoral perspective. If you're wondering, what are these guys trying to accomplish?

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Well, we're trying to take the clutter off of the gospel. We don't want Christ to ever be obscured. That's one.

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Two, underneath that, in light of that, in that, we're trying to reclaim the purpose of the kingdom of Christ.

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We have a great king and a great high priest. We live life with God now, and we will live life with God forever.

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What does that mean for our daily living? We try to talk about things like that. So, your hosts today are

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John Moffitt, who is pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee, and I am Justin Perdue, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina.

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John, I've already been pretty, I don't know, loquacious about why we even do this podcast, but we are here today, second of two recordings for us on this

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Wednesday morning, and we're gonna record a good one that you're gonna let people know what it is.

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I'm happy to announce a couple of things. Look at me, just grown up in my announcing announcement game.

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Two things, we've got a conference coming up next April, April 11 and 12 in Asheville, North Carolina. Our first ever annual or maybe biannual, we're not sure,

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Theocast conference, and we'll see how this one goes, and if it goes well, maybe we'll do some more of them.

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We've got a couple of friends joining us, Ken Jones and Chad Byrd. You should be familiar with both of them if you've been listening to us for the last few years.

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Friends of the podcast and friends of ours personally. Brothers that we know are gonna do a great job in heralding

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Jesus. We're gonna be thinking about the law and the gospel together next April in Asheville. There's gonna be a lot of time built in to hang out with each other, enjoy the good food and the drink in the city where I live, and so we hope to meet many of you next spring.

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You can register for that event at theocast .org. We do have limited spots available, so if you wanna come, register soon.

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The other thing is we've got something called the Theocast Community. You can find information about that over at theocast .org as well.

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We're just funneling everybody to the website. I think there's some shrewdness in doing so, but that community is a place where you can meet other people, virtually of course, that are like you, who are wrestling with things, struggling with things, learning things, processing things as it pertains to the sufficiency of Jesus and the rest and peace that we have in Him.

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It's kinda like social media, but without the ads and without all the flamethrowing and the nonsense. There's a chat feature there.

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There's all kinds of content there. John's sermons, my sermons, lectures we've given. All kinds of good interaction goes on over there in the community.

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Avail yourselves of it. John, with those announcements being made, tell the dear people who have taken a half hour of their day maybe, the truth in advertising, probably like 38 minutes of their day to listen to us.

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What are we talking about? I forgot to say this last week, so I'll say it this week. I'm in a new studio.

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If you're ever watching us on YouTube, I've got a new background. Yeah, moved locations.

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So the old office and old studio is gone. And it's a little echoey in here. And we'll get it together as we go.

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Kind of like the old man has been crucified with Christ, yet we dragged the corpse of the old man around. So I don't know if that's the most useful analogy, but anyway.

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Yeah, just a church update. Put off, put on kind of things. Yeah, gonna be leasing a new building. And so they let me have an office in the new building for free for now.

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But in January, we'll be in a new building. So anyways, if it looks a little different, there you go. And kind of threw this together yesterday so we could record today.

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So it works, it looks great. So today is a fun one.

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This is a subject that you and I never get tired of talking about. And I was thinking about one of the questions that people often wrestle with is what about this passage?

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What about this passage? What about this genre? So we wanted to have a conversation about reading your

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Bibles from a law gospel perspective. And this is, it's growing. Couldn't be more excited about the concept of the law and the gospel growing.

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People wanting to see the distinction, preach the distinction, live the distinction.

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And so one of the areas that we wanted to kind of speak into the space is give you some tools to handle that.

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So we're gonna take the next 30 minutes and talk about the tools. So first of all,

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Justin, what I'm gonna do is just give a brief definition, let you speak into that. Then we'll start working through some of these tools. Everyone would say,

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I believe in the law. I believe in the gospel, which we agree. A lot of people would say that, but then we asked them to define the gospel.

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And the gospel sounds more like the law than it does the gospel. So we want to be very clear that the gospel is the good news of what

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Jesus Christ has done and will do for you. You'll have to understand that the do part is only on his side, not ours.

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It's very important to understand that. So the gospel is the good news of what Jesus has done. He has earned for us righteousness.

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He has removed our guilt and shame. He paid for it on the cross and what he will do, he will finish the work of our sanctification and he will finish the work of our glorification.

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So it's the good news of what he has done and will do. That's very important.

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So whenever you're thinking about the gospel, we're putting our faith in Christ, all of Christ, our union of Christ, what he has done for us.

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The law is an explanation of, in general, it's an explanation of God's requirement upon men related to his nature, right?

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There could be laws based on nature, there could be posited laws, meaning that laws that God gives that aren't necessarily morally right or wrong, but because he says they are, like the eating of food or the certain kinds of fabrics, that's because God posited in the scripture that those are right and wrong.

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So this is us where we're learning about the nature of God because of what he has stated clearly in his word.

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So these are requirements, whether to do or not to do, whether to observe or not to observe. So those never, we never put our faith in the law, even though we call it good, right, and holy, we love it, we never put our faith in the law to be our salvation or righteousness, okay?

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So we have to make sure that that distinction is clearly in place, thoughts? Yeah, I mean, we never put our faith in our own keeping of the law.

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Even if it is sincere and empowered by the Holy Spirit, we don't trust it.

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The other thing, I agree wholeheartedly with everything you said, the only other thing I would continue to just dovetail with what you said about the gospel and about Jesus is, you're exactly right, it's entirely about what he has done and is doing and will do.

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The do part is completely on his end, not ours. And what that then means is that we are loved by God, we're known by God, we're safe in the presence of the holy one living and true

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God of the universe. And he delights in us as his children and he is thrilled about the fact that Christ is gonna inherit us forever.

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And like none of that is going anywhere. So whenever we do consider the law and even what

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God would, I mean, on the one hand, there's the requirements for righteousness that Christ has fulfilled, you already said that.

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But then even when thinking about the law and the ways that we should live, things that we should flee from, things that we should do, all of that we can consider from a place of knowing that we're loved and that we're safe and that God delights in us and that he's not frustrated and angry with us, but that he actually is working in and through us and he is with us as we walk with him.

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That's significant. And that's what the gospel says to us all the time. And we can't be reminded of that enough.

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All right, so then how do you take this and use it as a lens? Should we only read law gospel where there are law gospel passages mentioned?

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Yes and no. Confused yet? No, so you're not trying to be cute here, but what we are gonna try to do in this conversation is appropriately nuance this, because there are very reductionistic ways that people talk about this that are less than helpful, or there's a lot of caricatures out there where people will say, wow, you're saying that literally every verse of the

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Bible is either law or gospel, and that's not what we're saying. So this is important that we clarify this, yeah.

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It is, and this has been the criticism of those who have been proclaiming law gospel distinction. And I would say, mostly coming from dispensationalists would have a harder time or people who would be biblicists, meaning that there's nowhere in scripture that creates such defining terms as a law gospel distinction.

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And so they would be a little bit more critical of our use of this, we call it a tool, a hermeneutic, a way of an insight, a perspective of thinking.

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And we would always argue that our hermeneutics, our tools come from the text. So we glean them from what scripture says, and then we go back into the text to help clean up our understanding.

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A great example of this before I get started is a Trinitarian perspective of scripture. The Trinity does become a tool for us in that once we learn the perspective, then we could go in and see where the

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Trinity flows and how it actually helps us with becoming heretics and helps explain certain passages of scripture.

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So when it comes to this, really quick, you gave a great example. When it comes to theological and hermeneutical categories, it is actually really good that we would read the

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Bible with those lenses on. If the theological and hermeneutical categories are sound and they have been gleaned from the whole of scripture, then you are actually served really well to put those lenses on and read individual passages.

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Some people will tell you that that's a bad way to read scripture, as though you should approach every passage in some kind of vacuum, not bringing any equipment with you.

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Well, first of all, that's impossible. And second of all, that would be really dangerous, and that's how you can draw all kinds of whack and even heretical conclusions.

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And so these kinds of frameworks are really safe and really good for the saints as we engage the word.

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That's right. So we're gonna start thinking about it, understanding the law and the gospel.

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So that's our definition. And we're gonna simplify this down to really help you out. The law is what all of humanity must do, whether believer or unbeliever, the law is what we must do because God requires it, period.

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That's the simplest way of putting it. The law requires you to do this because thus saith the Lord. The gospel is what

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Christ has done and will do for you. And it is certain. He's doing it. And it is, that's right.

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That's right. You are not involved in the gospel. There is no you in gospel. Yeah. And it's given to you.

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You receive it with an open hand by faith, apart from anything that you do. Yeah, that would be a great shirt.

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There is no you in gospel. There is not. There is not. Okay, moving on.

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We don't need to be advertising. There's no you in gospel. Let's start thinking about just big genres.

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Justin, let's just start in Genesis, okay? Genesis, the creation account. When people are reading that, they were like, see, there's no law or no gospel.

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Well, this is true, kind of, but not really.

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In the creation account itself, what we have there, if we're just talking purely creation, right?

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He's talking about the days of the week and what he's creating. What we have there is a explanation of the backstory.

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This is the narrative. The New Testament refers to it as the law because in its completion, the first five books of the law.

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The Torah, that's right. The Pentateuch, the book of Moses, yeah. Right, so we're not necessarily reading this particular section looking for a law gospel distinction.

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You have to be really careful there. We're reading it as it is presented. It is a part of the law, which means in general it tells us what

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God has required for us, but it's part of the narrative. And as we're reading it, we are reading it from Christian eyes, guys.

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We read the Old Testament as Christians, okay? So it's healthy to read it in that way.

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So I'm a believer who is underneath the love and caring of my God. This is the work that he is doing. So when we're talking about narratives in general, we're learning the backstory of redemption.

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We're learning the backstory of the gospel. That being said, that's right, narratives.

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And the Old Testament is primarily a lot of narrative. I mean, a good portion.

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I'll talk about narrative really quick if you're okay with that. Yeah, go for it. So yeah, in particular, the five books of Moses and then the 12 books that follow that are often referred to as the history books, almost all of that is narrative.

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And then you get into the writings and the prophets, which we'll get to in a minute. But when it comes to narratives sections in the

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Old Testament, are they law or are they gospel? It's like, well, a lot of times, like John is saying, they're narrative where we are learning about the character of God.

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We're learning about what is true of us in terms of our nature, fallen in Adam.

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We are able to see the bends in our frame and the proclivities that we have. But then we see the faithfulness of God and the mercy of God and the love of God in the face of our sin.

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And you mentioned Genesis chapter one and two. You have creation narratives there and there's all kinds of things that we're learning about God and we're learning about his design and the world that he has made, which is important for us to know and understand because it gives us a picture in Genesis one and two of what

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Christ is restoring, even thinking about the end of it all in Revelation 21 and 22. But then you get to Genesis three where Adam and Eve sin against God and plunge us all into death, spiritual, temporal, and eternal death.

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Well, what does God do? There is a message of gospel in Genesis three where he immediately pronounces what he will do between the serpent and the woman and between the serpent's offspring and her offspring and Jesus's promise.

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So in narrative, a lot of times we're learning things about God's character, we're learning things about ourselves, we're watching things unfold where we can rightly have a takeaway where it was like, well, that was, what that person did was really not good.

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And then I see myself there and I am reminded of the mercy that I need and the forgiveness that I need and God is loving and patient and gracious and faithful to this person, even as they have fallen on their face in sin and he will be that way with me.

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I mean, those are good ways to read narrative. But then really when it comes to reading narrative scripture, sections of scripture too,

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I think you've gotta have various lenses on as Christians, like you said, what are ways that this reveals Jesus? So if you wanna call this a law and gospel paradigm, we could quibble and split hairs.

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This might be more typology, but still. There are pictures of Christ and Christ is heralded and foreshadowed and proclaimed throughout the

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Old Testament. And so in that regard, it is full of gospel in that the institutions and even many of the individuals in the

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Old Testament point to Christ, who he is and what he would come to do. And so read the Old Testament narratives with those lenses on, and read them through the lens of redemption and Christ for us and what the

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Lord has always planned to do. So in that regard, I'm reading it with gospel lenses. And certainly when it comes to law,

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I'm looking at failures and successes, even that people have. And I can read that with a law lens on in a kind of secondary takeaway sense, and that can be helpful to me.

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Like, yeah, I should probably flee from adultery and I probably shouldn't hold sin so close and think that I won't fall into it, et cetera, et cetera.

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Those are wise takeaways. Yeah, that's right. But I'm not staking my standing with God on my performance.

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That's right. Because you're going to read certain passages very quickly in the narratives as you're going through the first five books of the law, where in Leviticus and Exodus, you're going to talk about how, or they're going to just complain that if Israel obeys the law that God has given to them, that they will be blessed and prospered and protected.

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Right? And then if they don't, then they're not going to have this protection and blessing.

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At times, you see this where they're punished. And that is a law paradigm for sure.

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Like where, and there's also covenantal things going on there too, where the

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Israelites were promised blessings for obedience in a temporal sense. To which we would say, well, there is blessing for keeping

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God's law, even in a spiritual way. But then we have to get into like, all right, well, Christ kept the law for us for our righteousness and the law is good for me.

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You know, if I live in accord with it, this is beneficial to me and I'm being conformed to it by the power of Christ in me.

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You know? That's right. Well, and I think this is why it's important to read the Old Testament as Christians, because that's what we are.

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We're in, to be a Christian, you're in Christ. You're a follower of the way of Christ.

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And so Jesus says that we read the Old Testament and we learn of Him because He is the point and He is in the

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Old Testament. Therefore, He is the fulfillment of all of those requirements. So all these requirements that were put on Israel to receive the blessing and protection of the

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Father were given to us in Christ. Because in Christ now, we have nothing to fear.

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There's, you know, perfect love is cast out fear. So this is, you know, some people will say, well, John, you're taking the

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New Testament and you're reading it back into the Old. No, we're taking the entirety of the book and we're reading it in its whole.

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We're reading it, understanding how it ends. Right, well, you know, the best interpreter of the

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Old Testament is the Holy Spirit speaking to us in the New. The New Testament is the inspired commentary on the

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Old Testament. I mean, that's how we need to look at that. And so what you're doing is entirely right and legitimate. So really quickly,

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I'm gonna be super brief here. But here's a narrative passage. It's narrative and it's law. So Mount Sinai, Exodus 19 and 20.

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So Exodus 20, three and following, we get the 10 commandments, which are clearly law.

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But in chapter 19, you get this description of the spectacle of Sinai.

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Well, if you read that, it's narrative. But if you're reading it with law and gospel lenses, here's some of the things you can conclude.

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Well, my goodness, Sinai is frightening. It's thunder and lightning and fire and smoke. The word of God, don't come near.

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You touch it, you die. If animals graze near it, they're gonna die. And if anybody comes near the mountain, you need to execute them.

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But don't touch them, lest you be defiled. You need to kill them with a projectile. You know, I mean, it's wild, the scene that's depicted.

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So we can say, okay, the law in all of its holiness, what God requires of me for righteousness is frightening in that sense.

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It's terrifying and it condemns me. Like, I can't come near it.

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Like, I can't have access to God. Like, I will never make my way to God up the side of Mount Sinai.

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But when I view Mount Sinai through the lens of another mountain called Calvary, everything changes.

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Right, where now when Sinai says, you can't come near or you die, Calvary's word is, come all who are weary.

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And heavy laden and I'll give you rest, right? We can't lay a hand to the law. We can cast ourselves into the arms of Christ, right?

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This is law and gospel stuff, right? The law, we can't touch Sinai, but we can run to Calvary, right?

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Like, so this is how we should read even an account that is both narrative and law through the lenses of law and gospel, if that makes sense.

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Yeah, that's good. Hey guys, real quick, some of you are listening to this and it's encouraging to you, but you have questions.

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So where do you go? How do you interact with other people who have the same questions and share resources? We have started something called the

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Theocast Community. We're excited because not only is it a place for you to connect with other like -minded believers, all of our resources there, past podcasts, education materials, articles, all of it's there and you can share it and ask questions.

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You can go check it out. The link is in the description below. So when we're thinking about narrative, always put it in its redemptive nature.

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So the whole Bible is a story of redemption. That's right. So the whole Bible is the story of how

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Jesus redeems. In order for him to redeem, there must be conviction because that means we have been trapped.

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We've been held back by something. So the law exposes us to our need and Christ shows up as the redeemer to purchase us back and be our imputation, right?

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He comes and our sin is put on him and his righteousness is put on us.

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So we have that whole story and we understand narrative is the setup for us to learn the nature of God, learn the nature of sin, and learn the nature of the gospel.

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So when you're reading it, don't necessarily try and go, is this particular verse law? Is this particular verse gospel?

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Sometimes you'll do that. Leviticus, it's law, but it's law unto what, right? Is that law in its context?

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Is that law unto Israel? Is that law unto general? Is this the 10 commandments that we're talking about? Is it moral law or is it positive law?

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That's right. So even when we're doing the law gospel distinction, we need to ask ourselves, what kind of law is this, right?

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Is this third use of the law eventually where if it's lying, then yeah, that can apply to me. But if it's the blessings that come from the obedience to the law, those blessings in particular, the exact blessings, like for instance, the protection of Yahweh amongst a nation is not necessarily promised.

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Like some people wanna claim these type of verses for America or their particular country. That is an improper use of law gospel distinction.

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That is an improper - Well, and an improper understanding of the biblical covenants too. That's right. So let's just go into the, let's say something like the

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Psalms. You and I just did Psalm 1. Why would your argument be not to rehash that Psalm, but in 30 seconds, why is

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Psalm 1 a law and not a gospel passage as we read it? I'm gonna actually contend that it's both.

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If you take Psalm 1 and 2 together. So let me explain. Well, I was gonna say Psalm 2 separately.

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Okay. Well, and even in Psalm 1, with the lenses to see it, I think it's both in that the statement, blessed is the man who, and the implication is that never has walked in the way of sinners, sat in the seat of scoffers, et cetera.

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And then the statement, the pronouncement of - But in its true statement, that would be a law statement. Oh, sure, totally.

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Because you're blessed to perform. That's right. If you have lived this way, you are blessed, and this is what you are like.

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You are like a tree planted by a stream of water, right? I mean, you're an oak of righteousness, effectively.

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And you have life in you, if this is true of you. So that is a law statement.

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And now where the gospel is found is related to Psalm 2, which Psalm 1 and 2 were written together originally.

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That's right. But if you have eyes to say, who is the blessed man? Well, it's the Messiah that is spoken of so plainly in Psalm 2.

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Psalm 1 begins with the words, blessed is the man. Psalm 2 ends with the words, blessed are all who take refuge in him.

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And so we begin to see this through a law and gospel lens in this way. Yeah, this is true.

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Blessed is the righteous one. And blessed are all who take refuge in the righteous one who is Jesus of Nazareth.

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And now I can, secondarily, you wanna talk about how you apply the law. It's like, yeah, it is good that I would not walk in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of scoffers, right?

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It's good that I would meditate on the law of God. Like I would live in light of God's truth every moment of my life. That's a wonderful thing.

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You know, amen. And may that be true increasingly of me as I've been united to Christ and his spirit is at work in me, conforming me into his very image.

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Amen, may it be. And let me live a thoughtful and intentional life along those lines. But let me find my comfort in knowing that it is absolutely true that blessed is the righteous one.

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And I am blessed and beloved of God because I am in him by faith, right? That's kind of a law and gospel way to read the

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Psalms. And even to see the Psalms as, go ahead. I was gonna say that seeing Jesus as the singer of the

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Psalms helps with this. Absolutely. That's another conversation, yeah. Yeah, but this is what

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I would call the full circle of the word of God, the full circle of the law of gospel. So you read chapter one, and if you read it appropriately, you should be utterly crushed, meaning

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I will never be blessed because I can't do that perfectly. As it pertains to you, you should be crushed.

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As it pertains to you, you should be crushed. And then you get to chapter two and you're realizing, oh, I receive all the blessings of chapter or verse one, chapter one, because of the man in chapter two.

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Therefore, my perspective of the law now changes because now I delight in the law because I can see

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Christ fulfilled it for me. And yet I have a desire to fulfill it as well in Christ.

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Not under, if I try to do it outside of Christ, outside of gospel, then I have no hope.

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It's so hope. What you're saying is - I always wanna read every past, go ahead. I'm just gonna say, when we say that Psalm one should crush you as it pertains to you,

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I wanna be really clear. When you're thinking about you apart from Christ, when you're thinking about you on your own steam, on your own merit, like me,

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Justin Perdue, standing before God as I read Psalm one, apart from Jesus, it crushes me. But in Christ, obviously there's the hope of Jesus, but then even the law, like you said, the light, the goodness, the beauty, the truth of it,

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I can actually appreciate, see, and love that in Christ Jesus. And I can say, yeah,

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I failed to do this. And of course, and that continues to humble me. And that continues to show me my need of Christ that's good for me.

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But I also look at this as a wonderful, beautiful thing that is the pursuit of my life that I know is being accomplished in me by the power of the

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Holy Spirit. And so I can see it that way too. So that's kind of even the various facets of the way the law is used in the lives of the saints.

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So narrative, Psalm, what about Proverbs, Justin? How do we view

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Proverbs? Is there no gospel in Proverbs? So Proverbs is a lot of law.

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There's a lot of wisdom as well in Proverbs. So I mean, I think you even need to distinguish between law and wisdom.

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You do, I mean, so there is certainly law in Proverbs. There are certain things that are absolutely in step with the moral law of God that are very clear.

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And then there's also a lot of wisdom in terms of if you do this, your life will generally go well.

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But we need to remember that the same man who wrote Proverbs also wrote Ecclesiastes and both are true. And so you've got to hold those together.

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That maybe also is a separate conversation for another time. And if we've not done a podcast on Ecclesiastes, I'm trying to remember if we have,

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I would happily do one sometime. But there's gospel in Proverbs because there is definitely,

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I mean, even like the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge. I mean, we could even talk about what the fear of the

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Lord is. There's, I think, gospel implications there. Then there's even things about how, like the righteous falls, but he gets back up.

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Like, there's mercy and there's forgiveness. So it's not as though there is no gospel in Proverbs.

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And I think that we need to see Proverbs through the lens of Jesus for us in that Proverbs is written in the era of the

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Davidic covenant. It is a Davidic king writing to his son often. And so even there,

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I think we view it through the lens of Jesus is, of course, the fulfillment of all wisdom.

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Jesus is the one who obviously fulfilled the fear of the Lord, lived in fear of the

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Lord all the time as a human. Jesus is the one who is the atonement for our sins and all of our failures.

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And so we are looking to Christ even through Proverbs in those ways. And that's rarely talked about.

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So I think there is, again, both law and gospel as well as wisdom in Proverbs. Yeah, I think you have to give it, so the law is very exacting.

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It's not necessarily general. It's very exact. Wisdom can be circumstantial and situational, right?

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Because it's like answer a fool not according to his folly. And then it says answer a fool according to his folly, right?

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And I think both of those have a context and those are circumstantial. And we have to be careful because sometimes we apply wisdom passages like Proverbs and we want to treat them like either gospel promises of this is going to happen for sure, or we treat them as law passages where everyone has to do it exactly this way all the time.

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So I'm like, so which one is it? So answer a fool according to his folly or not. And I think you have to understand that these are wisdom situations where Solomon is writing to his son, thinking through the implications of life and how life can navigate these different circumstances.

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And so if you want to try and put law gospel on it, you have to look at the genre and the category by which it fits.

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It really wasn't designed to be read that way. You're not supposed to read it looking for law, looking for gospel.

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You're supposed to read it as understanding general wisdom for general life because life is complicated.

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And these are areas that the law does not speak to. I mean, if you think about it, it's trying to apply the law in different circumstances.

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Like what does it mean not to lust? Well, don't linger out at the middle of the night where the woman is on the corner, right?

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But does that mean we can never go outside at night where there is potentially a woman on the corner? Or if you're a woman, a man's on the corner.

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Exactly. So here's a couple of other things from Proverbs before we move on. Proverbs 16 .6,

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by steadfast love and faithfulness, iniquity is atoned for. Well, that's a gospel word, right?

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I mean, that is a pointer to Jesus if I've ever heard one. Or Proverbs 24 .16, the righteous falls seven times and rises again.

31:45

All right, well, again, how does he rise again? You know, it's like, again, you're thinking

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Jesus here. I've already talked about how Jesus is wisdom personified, wisdom fulfilled, wisdom exemplified, wisdom provided.

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And also, it's very plain that our transformation of life, even in accord with like the wisdom of Proverbs and other things, is gonna occur through our union with the

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Lord Jesus Christ, too. So this is, again, where you read Proverbs through the lens of being a Christian and seeing

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Jesus, for me, as the overarching message of the scriptures. I think we're helped in a whole host of ways by that.

32:22

All right, take us on down the road if you want. Yeah, so we've done narrative. We've done psalms,

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Proverbs. Let's talk a little bit about prophecy. This one will go a little bit quicker. But we're talking about prophetic passages.

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You're dealing, in general, either with the future of Israel or the future of the world in general.

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So like Daniel would deal more with kind of the encompassing of all things towards the end of life. Then you have different of the prophets that are gonna be dealing with either the coming judgment of the people or it could be dealing with the coming of the

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Messiah. So we're typically looking about things that we're projecting what might come.

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Now, inside these, like Isaiah is a great example, we do have gospel glimpses of learning of what

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Jesus will become, how He is the one who bears all of our sins.

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He's grieved by that. So just being able to read those and understand this is part of the story of redemption.

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And part of that, you have God pulling back the curtain on future and kind of letting us know what's gonna come our way.

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And sometimes we get hung up on these promises and we misinterpret them assuming they're gospel promises or we can interpret them as things to obey that relate to us.

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Again, if my people, which are called by my name, humble themselves, which is a prophetic for Israel, that's not a law for every nation.

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That's also not a gospel for every nation. If you wanna glean anything from that is that God does expect and God is a

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God who desires and wants there to be holiness and humility and love of Him by all nations.

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But that particular prophecy was given to Israel and for their benefit, for the nation to advance the gospel or I would say advance the

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Messiah to us. So understanding as you're reading it, you have to keep those lenses in light of is this something that I'm to be doing or is this given to a particular nation for a particular people?

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Some of this is hermeneutics along with law gospel distinction. It's covenant theology too. Yeah, because it's gonna keep you from hurting yourself and creating gospel moments where you're creating promises of hope out of law passages that the

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Bible never wanted you to create promises of hope out of law passages. Those were contextual for those particular people.

34:44

So when it comes to the prophets, I think in one sense we can, within the Old Testament itself,

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I think we can view the prophets as God's commentary on the history. You know, He's pulling back the curtain and telling us

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His assessment of things. And then like you said as well, He is also speaking to future realities too.

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Few thoughts on this, I think that you get a lot of law in the prophets in terms of when

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God makes statements about judgment, when He says, when He indicts His people, when

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He even condemns them and says that judgment is coming, that is a statement of law, pure law because they have violated the scriptures, or they violated

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His word, they violated His law. They have not done what He requires for righteousness and thereby they stand guilty.

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That's a law word. Then there is also law as well, when it comes to like how

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His people are to conduct themselves. Now, and then of course, you made some good points about like covenantal theological categories and the like where we need to think about, particularly like the rewards that are promised and what context is that in, et cetera.

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Then there are gospel words in the prophets and the gospel words in the prophets are almost always pertaining to the coming of the

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Christ. When the Lord talks about, or they're typological, like where the Lord talks about how

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He's gonna bring His people back from exile, how He's gonna bring them into their own land, how He's gonna give them a good land forever.

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But then it's always related to the suffering servant of God or the righteous branch that the

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Lord's gonna raise up for David, who's gonna execute justice and righteousness in the land, who's gonna save Israel and Judah, i .e.

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all of God's people, right? His entire kingdom will be saved by this coming one. And the name by which you'll be called is the

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Lord is our righteousness, right? That's a gospel word because it pertains to Christ. And so that's how we would read the prophets.

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And so you've got a lot of different, when it comes to prophecy, there are various arcs that you need to think through too. This is another conversation.

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Immediate fulfillment, longer -term fulfillment, ultimate fulfillment. There are various horizons that you would read these things on.

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There's a lot of typological and covenantal categories that you need. But in a law and gospel sense, words of condemnation are law, prescriptions are law.

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The words of gospel pertain to the promises relating to the Messiah and what God will do for His people in the face of their sin.

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That's the good news. That's right. We're never afraid of law. I wanna say this again.

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Because we're in Christ, we see law as good. We just have to be careful which laws we apply to ourselves.

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So once we leave the Old Testament and get into the New, that's easier to now understand. But at times we get really confused on which laws we should be applying to ourselves.

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Remember the context, who that's written to, why it was written to them, does it apply to you, by and large.

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And that's how we really wanna use the New Testament. So we're gonna get over into the New Testament. That kinda helps us with the

37:41

Old. But when we get into the New, we still have a couple of genres that we're dealing with, right? We're still dealing with narrative.

37:47

Just because it says gospel doesn't mean it's gospel. Right, well you have the gospels and acts and then you have epistles.

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And then revelation is unique as well because it's apocalyptic and prophetic. Even though the word gospel is given to the four gospels, it really should be the four stories of Jesus.

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It should just be the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth, according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Because not everything that's housed in the gospel is gospel.

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There's a lot of law. Jesus was the greatest preacher of the law. And in one sense,

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I'm charitable because Jesus is the gospel. I mean, I get that. I mean, he is the gospel. But it's not only just about him, though.

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That's the thing. I understand. No, I'm in agreement with you. And then even Jesus, when he speaks, we've said this so many times, we've said it once, we've said it a thousand times, that many of the words he speaks, the majority of them actually are words of law, not gospel.

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And that's because of who he's talking to and what he's meaning to accomplish. So as you're working through the four gospels and you're thinking through, again, you're gonna be dealing with narrative, you're gonna be setting up a backstories, but then you do have,

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Jesus has a lot of sayings, a lot of commands, a lot of demands. There's discourses, too, where he's teaching.

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It's didactic. The narrow road, pick up your cross, forsake your father and mother, right?

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Die daily, pluck out your eye. All of these are commands. Keep the commandments and you'll have eternal life. That's right.

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So all of these are commands at times can be confusing. Like for instance, we've done with this one in the past, pick up your cross and follow me.

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Is that law or gospel? And everyone wants to say that it's gospel because it's related to following Jesus. But it's not.

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This is about what you are. Now, it's good and we need to do it and we will do it, but you can't do it in the point of it.

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And some of it is a statement of fact, too. You're going to suffer. But remember, the gospel is what

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Jesus has done and is doing. If you are brought into the category of gospel, you know you've got it wrong.

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It's just so helpful to believe. The only thing you do with the gospel is you believe it, you accept it, you receive it, right?

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So the moment you're involved in it, you know you've got it wrong. So I'm carrying a cross.

40:02

That's a good way to say it. There you go. The moment you're brought into it and you're involved in it, it's no longer gospel.

40:09

Yeah, that's right. It's law. So if it's carrying up crosses, if it's the rich young ruler leaving money, if it's forsaking mother and father, any of these, any of these illustrations that Jesus uses, the best example is that we build our house upon Christ, which means we stand firm in our faith.

40:29

I love how Peter says this at the end of his letter. He says, this, he goes, this grace that has been given to you is true.

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That's how he ends the letter. And he goes, now stand firm in it. And that's exactly what we do with the gospel. We stand, we find our sure footing.

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We find our hope. We find it there. So this is, as you're reading anything in the New Testament, again, what

40:50

I don't want Theocast listeners to do is to be repulsed by the law. The law, you guys, it's so healthy.

40:57

It's so good. It's so helpful. We're not here to say, oh, law bad, blah, blah, blah.

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Get away with that. Oh, all these gospel passages, yes. No, no, they're both there and God calls them holy.

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And Paul says all scripture is profitable. We just need to make sure we keep things in their proper category so that we don't contaminate them.

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We do not want to contaminate the gospel with the law or the law, sorry, the law with the gospel, but that doesn't mean that the law then is bad and that we're contaminating can be there.

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So we're thinking through the gospels, just be very cognizant of if he's giving me a command, that command isn't necessarily wrong.

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We do need to forsake everyone to follow Jesus. That is true. But that is a result of what the gospel does.

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It's not the gospel. It might be what I do after I come to faith in Christ, but it's not the actual good news of what

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Jesus Christ is for me in the gospels. Really briefly on the gospels and acts, super quick for me.

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I mean, whenever there are words of judgment, even out of the mouth of Jesus, like when he pronounces woe on people or he's calling out the

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Pharisees for their hypocrisy, those are words of law. And then whenever Jesus speaks about believing in him, whenever he speaks in particular words of comfort personally to people, like you're forgiven, go in peace.

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Those are gospel words. When he's tender and he's gentle and he's compassionate toward those who know they need him, that's gospel imagery there.

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So read with those lenses on. When he's talking to people who think that they can achieve righteousness and he's brutal and he tells them to keep the commandments and effectively to do that perfectly, that's law.

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And John's already said good things about how the law is good and guides us and we're being conformed to it. I just want to be very clear on that.

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As we get into the New Testament epistles, for example, all of the imperatives that you read there are law and they're good.

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And be encouraged that the Lord is at work in you. Conforming you to this.

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Now, you intentionally are like, yeah, I want to live like this because it's good and it's beautiful, it's true. And it's going to be good for me, it's going to be good for my neighbor, amen.

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And the Lord is at work in you to conform you to it. Like that's a wonderful thing to know. That's that third use of the law category.

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If you get the gospel right, the law is wonderful. If you get it wrong, the law can be either scary or you don't appreciate it at all and that makes you an antinomian, right?

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And I will stand by this. A proper view of the law leads you back to,

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I'm sorry, a proper view of the gospel leads you back to the law, right? And I'll give you an example.

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If the gospel is what Christ has done and will do for me, so I have nothing left to do for my salvation, for my sanctification, for my glorification, for my future.

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My father won't love me less or more. He won't bless me less or more. All of that is the gospel, right?

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I mean, just go read the first five verses of 1 Peter. It's just, it's glorious. And then not only that, here's the good news of the gospel.

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It's held by His power. It's so good. It's held by His power, right? That means when the law comes and says, hey, you need to do this,

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John. Well, I'm going to do it because it is a good thing to do and I want to do good things because I'm a different person now.

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I am loved by the King. I've been set free by the King and I want nothing more than to reflect who

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I am in Him. This is 1 John. What we will be, we are not yet, but while we wait, we thus hope and we purify ourselves as He is pure.

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So we want to read those law gospel passages this way. We read them actually with joy.

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When it says, love God and love neighbor, we're like, yeah, that's definitely what I want to do. When it says, don't lust, it's like, yeah, that's definitely what

44:45

I don't want to lust. When it says to give, to lay your life down, all these passages from a gospel perspective, we find those encouraging, right?

44:54

But what's hard, and this is what Justin and I have been trying to explain, is that unfortunately people have an anemic gospel or a gospel with clutter on it called pietism.

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And pietism confuses the reading of the law and the gospel in our passages to now we're obeying to gain blessing, to preserve or to really make sure we make it to our final justification.

45:14

To prove our legitimacy, yeah. Truth in advertising, we had a glitch. So I'm gonna come back in wherever they're gonna bring me back in.

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But the point of it is, is that we want to keep the clutter off the gospel, emphasize what

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Christ has done and is doing, remove us from out of that. And you'll read the Bible different. You'll find joy in the law, keep the law categories where they belong.

45:38

You'll find joy in the gospel because the gospel brings us back into the law. Yeah, so my final parting shot along those lines, couple of things really.

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I think the reason that pietism, which we have spoken about for years here, the reason it's so devastating is because it really does collapse the law and the gospel.

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And it then turns the law into something that is now the measuring stick for my legitimacy.

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And so I need to be by the power of the spirit, right? But I need to be adequately obeying the law and the trajectory of my obedience needs to be such that I can have confidence in that when

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I stand before the Lord at the end of it all. That is a way to ruin the law for Christians and is a way to make our study of the scriptures very discouraging and disheartening because we're always gonna come away from it thinking

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I am not legitimate. I am not obedient enough. I am not sincere enough, et cetera.

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I'm never enough. And it's like, well, no, on the one hand, you're not, but Jesus is. And now you've been united to him, which also means that, like we said at the beginning, that God loves you and that he walks with you and that he is not distant from you.

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He's not just wagging his finger at you up in heaven, but his spirit has taken up residence in you and is conforming you now to the image of Christ.

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And so even as we think about the law and my striving to live in accord with it, it's not this thing that's bad, that's like this harsh taskmaster that I'm like, oh my gosh,

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I resent it. But it's like, no, my new heart and the spirit that is at work within me is actually drawing me toward it.

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And I want to do this. It's only my flesh, the old man that wants to live contrary to it.

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So even having those categories of how the gospel and our union with the

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Lord Jesus changes our entire perspective on obedience, I think redeems the law for us as Christians and helps us to see it for the good thing that it is.

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But if you don't have a robust, full understanding of the gospel and the utter sufficiency of Christ and our union with him, you're gonna have a hard time seeing it this way.

47:47

Okay, so I will, I'm gonna take it. I would say that was a good introduction. Hopefully that was encouraging, gave you some tools.

47:54

Great. Introduction, hopefully gave you some tools. We've had some technical errors today. We are hoping that this show actually is able to be pieced together and that it is good for you in some ways.

48:06

We didn't speak to everything exhaustively, obviously. We'll release the audio, we'll tell you that. Yeah, and we will release the audio even if there is no video.

48:13

So anyway, there that is. Yeah, we kind of tipped the iceberg today, but we hope it was helpful.

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And obviously we got into some other stuff, covenant theology and redemptive historical stuff and typology.

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We've talked about some of these things over the years. I'm sure we'll talk about them more. We'll try to put some links to some episodes in the show notes to help you out.

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We're grateful for you tuning in to listen. If the Lord tarries, we'll be back again with you next week. Peace.

48:38

Hey everyone, before you go, Justin and I first wanted to say thank you. And if this has been encouraging to you in any way, please feel free to share it.

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But we also need your support. And it's when you give that it really helps us financially reach more people.

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