The West Wing Question

Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.

This program is dedicated to helping you better understand the Word of God and the doctrines of grace.

The Bible tells us, do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.

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Here's your host with today's lesson, Pastor Keith Foskey.

And welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.

My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.

Today is September the 8th, 2020.

And if you're following along in our daily Bible reading today, you're going to be reading from 1 Timothy chapter 6.

Now, if you want a copy of our daily Bible reading list, you can go to sgfcjacks.org.

That's Sovereign Grace Family Church of Jacksonville, and you can download a copy of our daily Bible reading list.

We're reading one chapter a day through the New Testament, and you'll be finished by Christmas.

So that is our daily Bible reading.

Today is Pop Culture Tuesday.

That's something that I'm going to start doing.

I'm going to start having scheduled days during the week that I do different things.

On Mondays, I'm going to focus on interviews.

On Tuesday, I'm going to be giving responses to pop culture issues and statements that are made.

On Wednesdays, I'm going to be looking at the news and events from around the world, and especially here in our land.

On Thursdays, I'm going to be answering listener questions.

And on Fridays, I'm going to be doing book reviews.

That's going to be the plan going forward.

That may change from time to time, but that's what we're going to be doing to try to keep ourselves a schedule and a daily opportunity to be in the Word, focused on something regarding the Word, learning about the Word together.

So again, today is Pop Culture Tuesday, and I'm going to deal with something that some of you may have heard me talk about before.

I consider this an important question.

I call it the West Wing question because it comes from the television program, the West Wing.

If you've ever seen the West Wing television program, this was very popular between 1999 and 2006.

It was a political drama about the West Wing, about the presidential, of course, that referencing the West Wing of the White House, and the president was played by Martin Sheen.

This show was very left-leaning.

In fact, if you look up the Wikipedia page and you look up the social influence, this is what it says.

It says, while it aired, the West Wing offered viewers an idealist liberal administration that provided a sort of catharsis to those on the left who felt that their political beliefs were largely forgotten or ignored in the era of the Bush administration.

So that's how the show is described, not by me, but by Wikipedia, as it's describing the purpose of the show and what it was about.

It was basically an idealized version of this is what a left-leaning, a more liberal-leaning presidential cabinet could look like.

And this, of course, was the West Wing television show.

So what we're going to do today is we're going to answer a question that the president in the show offers up to a conservative person.

There's a person in the show who is a conservative talk show host, and he sees her, he interacts with her, he obviously does not like her.

You'll hear it on the audio.

You obviously won't see it because this is an audio podcast.

But there is some disdain for this woman.

She has said that homosexuality is an abomination.

He, of course, references Leviticus 18, because that is the passage that says that in the Bible.

And he offers to her a critique and a rebuke.

And she's left dumbfounded.

And so I'm going to let you listen to it.

I'm gonna let you hear it from start to finish.

It's only a few minutes long.

And then I'm going to come back and I'm going to try to give you a response, because I think this is an important pop culture.

And I get I understand this is almost 20 years old, but it still comes up today.

There are people who hear this, see this or share this on social media, as this is a great response to conservative Christianity, especially on the subject of homosexuality.

So let's listen to this again.

Is Martin Sheen playing the president? Hopefully you'll be able to hear it very well.

And and here we go.

Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States.

I wish I could spend more than a few minutes with you, but the polls don't close in the east for another hour.

There are plenty of election results still left to falsify.

You know, with so many people participating in the political and social debate through call in shows, it's a good idea to be reminded every once in a while.

It's a good idea to be reminded of the awesome impact.

The awesome impact.

I'm sorry, you're Dr.

Jenna Jacobs, right? Yes, sir.

It's good to have you here.

Thank you.

The awesome impact of the airwaves and how that translates into the furthering of our national discussions, but obviously also how it can, how it can forgive me, Dr.

Jacobs.

Are you an M.D.? A Ph.D.

A Ph.D.? Yes, sir.

In psychology? No, sir.

Theology? No.

Social work? I have a Ph.D.

in English literature.

I'm asking because on your show, people call in for advice and you go by the name Dr.

Jacobs on your show and I didn't know if maybe your listeners were confused by that and assumed you had advanced training in psychology, theology, or healthcare.

I don't believe they are confused, no, sir.

Good.

I like your show.

I like how you call homosexuality an abomination.

I don't say homosexuality is an abomination, Mr.

President.

The Bible does.

Yes, it does.

Leviticus.

1822.

Chapter and verse.

I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I had you here.

I'm interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21-7.

She's a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always clear the table when it was her turn.

What would a good price for her be? While thinking about that, can I ask another? My chief of staff, Leo McGarry, insists on working on the Sabbath.

Exodus 35-2 clearly says he should be put to death.

Am I morally obligated to kill him myself or is it okay to call the police? Here's one that's really important, because we've got a lot of sports fans in this town.

Touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean, Leviticus 11-7.

If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point? Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads? Think about those questions, would you? One last thing.

While you may be mistaking this for your monthly meeting of the ignorant, in this building where the president stands, nobody sits.

Toby.

Yes, Mr.

President? That's how I beat him.

And so that ends the question and answer between the president and the woman from the radio program and you can tell right away, this is meant to be set up as a home run for the president.

In fact, the last words that he says, and of course this is hard to understand outside of the context of the show, is he looks at one of his staffers and he says, this is how I beat him.

And referring to a conservative person, this is how I beat someone.

You know, I put them in their place, I show them what they don't understand, I show them that they're really ignorant and really that what they are is they're, they're, they're really not the people that they claim to be.

They don't really understand the Bible.

They have, they have cherry picked what the Bible has to say on homosexuality and other moral issues.

But the Bible itself is antiquated.

The teachings of the Bible are so far removed from what we understand in this, our, our enlightenment, even a post enlightenment world.

And therefore this is how you defeat them.

This is how you defeat the conservatives.

You simply show them the absurdity of their position.

So how are we to answer that? And I mean, I almost in a part of me just wants to end right now and say, think about this today.

Think about how you'd answer the West Wing question.

But that wouldn't be fair because as I said, I want to, I don't want to take this into a two part program.

I want to deal with this today.

One of the most important things that we need to understand as Christians is that sometimes there are questions that are asked that require more than just a one sentence answer.

Doug Wilson is famous for having said that in a question and answer period at a, I believe he was in a university.

He was being questioned by a young lady and he said, ma'am, or young lady, I forget how he addressed her, but he said, often I have thoughts that require more than one sentence to describe.

And so it's important that when we think about answering this question, that we understand that it's, it takes more than just a simple tweet or, you know, 160 characters to be able to answer a question like this, because really this is getting down to the heart of how do we understand the question of biblical law? Now last year I taught a class on biblical ethics.

I taught a class on Christian ethics and during that class I said how Christians understand the law of God will affect how they understand ethics.

How we understand law is, will affect how we understand ethics.

And there are different ways that the law of God has been understood within Christianity, within the church.

There are groups out there that would refer to themselves as Torah observant.

Maybe you've heard of this, maybe you haven't, but these are people who advocate keeping all of the laws, or at least most of the laws of the Old Testament.

They believe they're mandatory for all time.

They would say that salvation is of grace, but that a person is still required to keep the law, including things like dietary restrictions, Saturday, Sabbath, the way that you wear your clothes, all these things would be things that are meant to be kept for all times.

We see this in the Hebrew Roots Movement.

We see this in Seventh-day Adventists.

We see this in some Messianic Jewish groups.

These are what are known as Torah observant, but this is a very small minority and some of those groups would not even identify themselves as Christian groups.

They might say they're Messianic, but they would often separate themselves from mainstream Christianity.

Mainstream Christianity, and what I would say is Biblical Christianity, has always made a distinction between those of us who live on this side of the cross and those who lived on the other side of the cross, or what we say pre-Christ and after Christ.

We would say that we live in the New Covenant rather than living under the Old Covenant.

Now does that mean that the Old Covenant no longer has any application? No, we're not saying that.

We're not saying that the Old Covenant doesn't have any more application, but what we are saying is that we do live under the law of the New Covenant and the coming of the New Covenant causes the Old Covenant to be made obsolete.

And this is not my language, this is the language that is made very clear in the book of Hebrews.

The book of Hebrews clearly says that the coming of the New Covenant makes the Old Covenant obsolete and therefore there are laws in the Old Covenant which do not apply within the New Covenant Church.

And so the big difficult part is determining what laws apply and what don't.

And this is where we get to the question of the idea of how do we define what applies and what does not.

There are those who make a tripartite distinction in the law and they say well some laws are moral and some laws are ceremonial and some laws are civil.

And the argument goes like this.

The moral laws are for all time, the ceremonial laws are fulfilled in Christ, and the civil laws were given to the nation of Israel as a nation during the time of the theocracy and even within the monarchy there were moral laws or rather civil laws given within the civil nation of Israel and so that those laws don't apply if you live in a different society such as if you live in America or something else that you have to live under the civil law of those places.

And so the tripartite distinction in the law would be something that would be important to become familiar with but I think that there is some issue, I take some issue with the tripartite distinction, I don't think it's absolutely bad but I do think that it has some issues and one of the issues is that it becomes somewhat arbitrary because nowhere in the Bible is there a list where you could say okay these are the moral laws, these are the civil laws, these are the ceremonial laws, and being able to try to decide what constitutes what kind of law because as you know one of our elders, Brother Mike, and I've had this conversation many times, any infraction of God's law would ultimately be a moral act even if it's a ceremonial thing.

If I break a ceremonial law it's an immoral act because it's because God commanded me to do it and so distinguishing between moral, civil, and ceremonial can be difficult.

And so the New Covenant theology would say that we don't have to concern ourselves with the tripartite distinction of the law but rather what we should do is understand that the New Covenant has laws of its own that are binding on the Christian and the Christians are bound to a new law which we would call the law of Christ or the law of love or the law of liberty and all of the moral law of the Old Testament, all of the moral commandments of the Old Testament are found in that law of Christ.

In fact Jesus said a new law I give to you and it was what? That you love one another as I love you, a new commandment he said, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another as I love you and that becomes the foundation for what we would call the law of the New Covenant is the law of Christ.

So no matter what, whether you take a tripartite distinction or whether you understand the New Covenant as having superseded and replaced the Old Covenant like a church that takes on a new constitution, the new constitution may have new laws in it but it may also have some of the same laws as the old constitution but either way it supersedes the old one because by the new constitution being ratified the old constitution becomes obsolete in the same way when the New Covenant is ratified the Old Covenant becomes obsolete.

However you understand it, it is important that we understand that there are certain laws in the Old Testament that do not apply to the New Testament church and theologians for centuries have, well for millennia now, have understood this that with the coming of Christ for instance the food laws have been abrogated.

We no longer have a restriction against eating pork, we no longer have a restriction against eating shrimp or other types of shellfish, I'm so thankful for that because I love my pork sandwiches and I love my fried shrimp.

So there are certain benefits that we have within the New Covenant regarding the food laws.

Paul makes this clear when he says that circumcision, the whole purpose of the book of Galatians is there were those who were saying you have to be circumcised if you're going to follow Christ and Paul was saying no, following Christ is by grace through faith alone and not by any type of ceremonial works and so circumcision and dietary laws, all of these things have been abrogated, these Old Covenant laws and have been superseded by the New Covenant.

And again a person who is arguing well you're just cherry picking the Bible, no we're not cherry picking the Bible.

We are interpreting the Bible according to the rules of progressive revelation as God reveals himself through the ages, first with Adam and Eve and then with Noah and then with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and then with Moses and then throughout with David and the prophets.

We see a progressive unfolding of revelation and when Jesus comes there is obviously a change that happens, we go from the Old Covenant to a new and what the book of Hebrews says is a better covenant and so when we are speaking to someone if they begin to pound us and hound us with what about this law, why aren't you, why are you wearing mixed fiber clothing or why are you allowing people to plant two different types of crops or why are you not obeying a Saturday Sabbath, why, why, why, why, why? We can clearly say the easy answer is because we are bound by the New Covenant.

We are part of a new covenant in Christ and while all of those laws are important in their time and for the purpose that they were given, they were not all meant to be for all time and as Christians we live in a very, a very wonderful covenant that still has laws.

We are commanded to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.

We are commanded to love our neighbor as ourself.

We are commanded to do what Jesus tells us to do and we see his laws given in the Sermon on the Mount.

We see his laws given over and over in the teachings that he gave us in the Gospels and then through the Apostles.

So we certainly have things that we are commanded to do and this is why and I want to finish with this.

If someone were to ask me, well what are your thoughts on homosexuality, I would not run to Leviticus 18.22.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be appropriate because I do think Leviticus 18.22 shows us a consistency in the mind of God on the subject of homosexuality because it shows us that even back then, one, there were people who were homosexuals and two, even at that point it was something that God considered an abomination and the word abomination means something that is disgusting, something that smells bad.

We think of the word abominable means to have an odor, a foul odor and so when we come to the New Testament, we have passages that refer to homosexuality.

That's where I would go.

I would say even within the New Covenant, there's a transcendent thing.

This law about homosexuality transcends the covenants.

It's not just in Leviticus 18.22 but we see it referenced in Romans 1.

We see it in 1 Corinthians chapter 6.

Very specifically, the language of homosexuality is used and mentioned and it's listed among those things which would be considered sinful and therefore it's something that as Christians, we could say this is something that needs to be repented of.

It's not the unforgivable sin.

It's not the worst sin somebody can commit.

It is a sin that needs to be repented of just like any other sin and so that is a answer that I think is useful and encouraging and hopefully this will help you to see how this would apply to other areas, not just the West Wing but to other areas.

Can you think in your mind of other times where you've heard questions like this and hopefully this answer has been helpful to you to understand how to give an answer to those who might ask you a question like this.

Well again, thank you for listening today to Coffee with a Calvinist, this Pop Culture Tuesday.

I hope this has been an encouragement to you and may God continue to bless you.

I'm Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist.

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On behalf of Pastor Foskey, thank you for listening.

May God bless you.