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Alright, well we are in our second week of looking at a comparison of covenant theology and dispensationalism. You'll remember last week I sort of went over the basics of covenant theology and dispensationalism, and we read the description from our book which describes both of them.
And today we're going to go to the second point, and that's where it says God's people. So if you're looking at the sheet here for you, you'll see where it says God's people. This is really the dividing line.
If you wanted to say what truly divides the covenant theologian from the dispensationalist is how you understand the people of God historically and how you understand the people of God today. Under covenant theology you'll see that it says God has one people, represented by the saints of the Old Testament era and the saints of the New Testament era.
But under dispensationalism it says God has two people, Israel and the church. Israel is an earthly people and the church is heavenly people. This is a huge point of contention. And you can understand why.
Because when you want to ask the question, well, who are God's people? That's not really a secondary issue. Even though we can say that a dispensationalist and a covenant theologian can disagree and both still be Christians, this is of primary importance.
Who are God's people? And what do we mean when we say God's people? Because oftentimes I think that even that phrase is confused. We talk about God's people. You'll hear someone say, and I know that you've probably heard this, many of you have said this, well, we're all God's children, right?
And the reality is we're not all God's children in the way of most people mean it. Most people mean we're all God's children, i .e., we're all in a relationship with God as our Father. That is not the case.
You can go to John 1, and it says very clearly, Jesus came unto his own, his own received him not, but to as many as received him. To them he gave the power to become what? Children of God. So children of God is not something you are by nature.
Children of God is something you are by a work of God. He makes you his child by the work of Christ through the power of regeneration, the work of the Spirit in your heart, and through adoption you become part of the family of God.
So the idea that, well, we're all children of God. In fact, there's a very famous statement. What is it? Oh, goodness. The universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man. That's a, I don't know if you've ever heard that, but it's a pretty popular statement.
Universal fatherhood of God and universal brotherhood of man. Neither one of those is really true. Because the universal fatherhood of God is, well, God created everyone. In that sense, God is the father of all people in a creative sense.
But the relationship of God as father comes only when we're adopted into his family by grace through faith in Christ. And the brotherhood of man, well, we're all brothers in the sense that we're all sons and daughters of Adam.
But the true brotherhood of the relational familial family of God comes from being a part of the body of Christ. So there's no universal fatherhood. There's no universal brotherhood. But it's something that we're born again into.
You know, you're born into the family of humanity. You're born again into the body of Christ. So the question again with dispensationalism covenant theology is, well, who are God's people? And covenant theology would say, well, in the Old Testament, you had the saints.
We'll say Old Testament saints. And in the New Testament, you have those who are also identified as saints. Now, interestingly enough, would we all agree that in the Old Covenant dispensation, now I'm mixing language.
In the Old Covenant, wouldn't we say that not every Jew was a saint? Because what is a saint? I talked about this last week in my sermon. Who are the saints? Yes, saints are those who are saved, right?
They are called ahagiosmos in the Greek, means the holy ones, right? The saints are the ones who've been made holy. I want to ask you a question. Was Korah a saint? We say probably. We don't know for certain, but we know that he was swallowed up.
The earth opened up. And because of his rebellion against Moses and ultimately against God, the earth opened up and swallowed him and his family. So we have this person in the Old Testament who was not considered to be a believer.
Now, move on past the time of Moses, past the wilderness wanderings, and in the time of David. Are there not those in Israel who were not of the faith? Well, yes, there's a description of those who were Israelites by blood, but not by faith.
Think about during the time of, who was it? Elijah, where he said, you know, I alone am left. And God said, no, I have, what? I have kept 7 ,000 who have not bowed the knee to Baal, right? And what was God saying there?
They're saints, but he's saying that there is always a remnant chosen by grace. There's always a remnant chosen by grace. It has never been in the history of God's people that everyone of a familial line is part of that group.
All the children of Abraham are not all the children of Abraham. That sounds like I'm misspeaking, but what did Jesus say? You say you're sons of Abraham, but if you were children of Abraham, you would believe in me.
But you are not children of Abraham, you're of your father, the devil, right? So even though they had the physical lineage of being children of Abraham, they were not children of Abraham by faith. Yes, by nature they were children of wrath.
So even in the Old Testament, the remnant was chosen by grace. In the New Testament, the saints are also chosen by grace, right? So God's people are always those who have received the gracious choosing of God.
So we could say God's people in the Old Testament are those who were chosen by grace. God's people in the New Testament are those who were chosen by grace. In the Old Testament, God did his work primarily among one nation.
Not absolutely, but primarily. Because if you say he did it absolutely, then why is the Moabite Ruth included? Or why are the people of Nineveh during the time of Jonah included? I mean, you go on and on, right?
You go down the lineage of Jesus, you'll see several people that were not Jews by birth. So one nation primarily, but not exclusively. Exactly, and she's in the list. Primarily, but not exclusively. One nation primarily, but not exclusively.
You go over here to the New Testament, and what's the New Testament? All nations, right? Every tribe, tongue, and nation. So, that's a big change. If you want to talk about what's new about the New Covenant.
Well, the primary newness of the New Covenant is that you've gone from the primary focus being upon the singular nation of Israel, with some exceptions, to now moving out to every tribe, tongue, and nation.
And what does Paul say? There is now neither Jew nor Greek. We've moved away from that. That was the Old Covenant distinction. Jew and Greek. And even in the Old Covenant, and you have to be honest about this, even under the Old Covenant, if somebody wanted to become one of God's chosen people, part of that meant becoming a Jew.
That was part of how you were made part of the Covenant family, was you went through the process of becoming a Jew. Even though you weren't by birth, you could become a Jew by proselytization, or by going through that process of, if you're a man, you're circumcised, and those things.
But I think back then it wasn't necessary.
Well, that's a good point. The Ninevites, obviously we don't have any record of them being circumcised or being brought into the family of God, and yet they repented, and yet we would say they were brought under the umbrella of God's people.
So this is where, if you're looking at it from a dispensational perspective, the dispensationalist would say, God still has two people, and the two people are still Jews and Gentiles. So the dispensationalist says, okay, you still have two people, they're still Jew and Gentile, but this is where the distinction is made for the dispensationalist.
He says the Gentile, which, well, we could say the Christian, because that could include Jews too, because there are Jews who have become Christians, right? But they would say that the two people are the Jews and the Christians, essentially.
The Christians are the heavenly people, in that they will receive the blessing of eternal life and the new heavens and the new earth. But that God has not stopped His promises to His earthly people. So this becomes the earthly people.
And here is the biggest issue that the dispensationalists hold to as the reason why they're committed to this position. They say God made promises to the Jews that were absolutely unbreakable, because God made them.
And if God makes a promise, He doesn't back off of that promise, He doesn't give up that promise. If God did that, how can you be confident in your eternal life, because He promised it to you? Could He just take that promise back, and is He that type of God who speaks out of one side of His mouth and then out of the other?
And because God has made promises to the Jewish people, He is honor-bound by His own integrity to maintain that consistent promise forever. And there are promises that the Old Testament says are forever.
So this is where the dispensationalist has his strongest argument. He says God has made promises, and unless you want to make God a liar, you have to believe that God has maintained certain aspects of His covenant with the Jews to this day.
Alright, that's their argument. I'm not saying I agree or disagree, I'm just saying that's the position. You've got two people. Covenant theology says there's one people, it's the saints. Whether they're the Old Covenant saints or the New Covenant saints, it's a remnant chosen by grace.
In the Old Testament, it was primarily out of one nation, but not exclusively. In the New Testament, it is reaching out to every tribe, tongue, and nation. The dispensationalists would say in the Old Testament, the primary focus was the Jews.
In the New Testament, the primary focus is the Gentiles, but the Jews have their ongoing promise from God that they're getting. And so what you have in dispensationalism is sort of like a set of train tracks.
Imagine a set of train tracks. At one point in history, this track was closed. We'll call this the Gentiles. But this track has always been open, the track of the Jews. So you've got this track, which always has been open, and this track was closed until the cross.
When the cross comes in, now this track is opened up. The door is open to the Gentiles now, right? So now you have two parallel tracks where you've got the Gentiles who have their thing, and you've got the Jews whose thing didn't stop.
You understand? The Jews' thing just keeps on. Keeps on going. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is the dispensation. I'm sorry, I didn't write it up here, but this is more covenant. This is the dispensational passage.
So the perspective is you've got the Jews who've had their thing, and their thing continues. The Gentiles didn't have a thing. The only way the Gentiles had a thing was to become a Jew, right? Well, now that's not necessary anymore.
Because of the cross, you can remain a Gentile and be saved. So you've got this track is the track of the Gentiles. This track here is the track of the Jews. The two do not coincide. In fact, this is where you get the whole argument about what happens during the Tribulation.
Because the idea of what happens during the Tribulation is that this part stops again, and it becomes focused on the Jews. God was focused on the Jews here. He's focused on the Gentiles here. But there will come a day when He stops being focused on the Gentiles anymore, and He starts focusing on the Jews again, and they say that's during the Tribulation.
That's why there's 144 ,000 saved out of the 12 tribes of Israel. You all heard that argument from Revelation, right? So that He was focused on the Jews here, and He's going to be focused on the Jews again.
But now He's focused on the Gentiles. And it sort of becomes a back-and-forth situation here. That's, again, if you've ever grown up around dispensationalism, you've heard all this. You've heard, you know, because they'll go to Romans, where it talks about the times of the Gentiles being fulfilled.
And they'll say, see, there's coming a time where the times of the Gentiles will be fulfilled. And then the Gentile time will be over, and God will go back to dealing with the Jews. But He's left them hanging for a while.
2 ,000 years is quite a while. But He's left them hanging for a while. But here's where the question comes up. If the Israelites, who are Israelites by birth, are God's people by necessity of their birthright, number one, where are we today when you have people who are no longer Jews thoroughbred?
The ten tribes were lost, and they all...
Yeah, when you talk about thoroughbred, you understand what I mean. People who are absolutely Jewish. People today are of various lineages. People can be Jews and yet still have various types of backgrounds, you know, because somebody married outside of the Jewish family.
Well, for 25 ,000 years ago, the ten tribes disappeared completely. I mean, they just intermarried right then, and so now their descendants are... 2 ,500 years. What is it? You said 2 ,500. There's 2 ,500.
2 ,500. 2 ,500 years. Yeah, yeah. About somewhere, give or take. No, you're right. Yeah. And so there is no ten other tribes in actuality by genetically speaking. Yeah. And Paul was wrong.
Yeah, yeah. Well, and that's why I say this tries to solve some problems. How do you make God's promises true? Well, they interpret it this way.
Huh? They didn't do it because on that top line where the Jew line is, there needs to be a stop right there, and that's AD 70. That's exactly why they didn't follow that.
Exactly. And again, this whole thing is fraught with issues because here's my question, and this is, I think, this is an important question. If the Jews are God's earthly people, meaning that they're the recipients of His promises here on earth, He is in a covenant relationship with them simply based on their genetic makeup, are they saved from their sins?
And you get two answers. You do. Most dispensationalists would say, no, they're not saved because Jesus is required for salvation. If they don't believe in Jesus, they're not saved from their sin. But they still get the promises of God here.
And I say, well, what value is that? If all you have is maybe 80 years of promise from God here, but you're still going to hell, how can you be called God's people? How can you be identified as the people of God if God has given you over to wrath?
Well, don't the 144 ,000 during the tribulation wash their robes, like come to Christ during that time?
Yes, yes. And that's the, this is why they would say, well, they're coming to Christ. I say, but what about all the Jews who've died the last 2 ,000 years? I'm sorry, that's their luck. Well, but you understand what I'm saying?
You're telling me, I had to sit for a minute, my knees hurt. You're telling me that a person can be God's person or God's people, and that people still go to hell. You have a much different interpretation of what it means to be God's people than I do.
Because I believe if you're God's people, that means you're in a covenant relationship with God whereby your sins have been atoned for. If you have not had the atonement of sins, you are not in a relationship with God that is eternal.
Saving faith is saving faith.
Exactly. And they can't have it prepared. If they were still doing those, then they might have a case. But it doesn't mention anything in Revelation about them performing that. They're just coming to Christ.
Well, I've heard the argument that there will be sacrifices which begin again in the temple. But still, I'm concerned. And I have to ask this question. We've got 2 ,000 years of Jewish people. And a lot of that 2 ,000 years, there have been a lot of anti-Semitism.
There's been a lot of times where Jews have been treated poorly. Look at the Nazi regime. And even before that, there were things that happened opposing the Jewish people. There have been a lot of negatives for the Jewish people.
So they have suffered a lot. And somebody says, well, God's promises to them is this land. Okay. Well, they were out of the land for a long time. They came back, what, in the 40s? Yeah, yeah. So they were out of the land for a long time.
So you're basing your promise on the last generation. See, a lot of people don't think much historically. They don't go back and look at how long they were out of the land. You know, and again, this all boils down to the question, does a Jew go to heaven simply because of genetics?
And some people believe they do. I remember I told you this last week. Pat Robertson sat across the table from the guy. And the guy says, well, do I need to believe in Jesus? And he goes, well, you're a Jew.
And the Bible says all Israel will be saved. So you don't have anything to worry about. Yeah, oh, absolutely. I remember watching it going, yikes, what are you talking about? You know, Pat Robertson's office rocker anyway.
But on that particular issue, I thought to myself, that's hyper-dispensationalism. That's taking dispensationalism to the extreme degree. Yeah, the obsolete nature of the Old Covenant in Hebrews. Again, they would say it's not obsolete for them.
It's very, yeah, yeah. And that's how Joseph Smith got the thing that they were the lost tribe.
I want to be careful. I don't necessarily compare them to Mormons, but I understand what you're saying.
But the idea still was there's the Jews again.
Well, let's look at the plan for his people and the plan of salvation because here's the two points I think that we really need to understand. The plan for his people. Under covenant theology, God has one people, the church, for whom he has one plan in all ages since Adam, to call out this people into one body in both the Old and New Testament ages.
That is one thing that you have to understand about the covenant theologian. The covenant theologian will call Israel the church and will call the church Israel. And that's a language thing that a lot of people have difficulty with, talking about the church and the Old Covenant.
Well, the word church in the Greek simply means the assembly. And so you can talk about the assembly of the faithful in the Old Testament or the assembly of faithful in the New Testament, but that word church in dispensationalism becomes a new, more specific word which talks about an age.
In dispensationalism, there's the church age, and it's the time that comes after Christ. And it's talking about the body of Christ, which to them is the church. So the word assembly is less effective than church.
So church is very specifically used. So in the covenant theology, they'll talk about the church here, all of God's people, the church here, all of God's people. And if you think the word church bothers you, use the word assembly.
The assembly of God's people here, the assembly of God's people here. You understand? There's, you know. Also called out. Yeah, the called out ones, the ecclesia, those who have been called out. But under dispensationalism, God has two separate peoples, Israel and the church, and also has two separate plans for these two distinct peoples.
He plans an earthly kingdom for Israel. The kingdom has been postponed until Christ's coming in power since Israel rejected it at his first coming. During the church age, God is calling out a heavenly people.
Dispensationalists disagree over whether the two peoples will remain distinct in the eternal state. See, there are some people who believe, I remember this specifically from one of my seminary classes because I had a very strong dispensational teacher, and he talked about Christ.
And I don't remember the passage. I'll have to look it up. There's a passage that talks about an unknown group or something during the marriage supper of the Lamb, and he said, that's the Jews. He said, they're the Jews.
They didn't receive Christ, but they're still there. And I was like, wow. Okay, that's it. That's actually what Jesus said. That's a different passage, but I know the passage you're talking about. Jesus is talking, I think, there about the Gentiles.
He said, I have sheep who are not of this fold. I think he's talking about the fact that there are sheep that are not of Israel. So that's sort of the opposite. But, yeah, there's something about the marriage supper of the Lamb, and there's a group there, and my professor would always say, that's the Jews.
That's what he's talking about here. So, again, dispensationalists don't all agree. And, again, the millennium becomes the issue because in the millennium, the Jews reign. They have their sacrifice. Well, we reign with Christ, and the Jews have their sacrifice and things that are going on during the millennium, according to the dispensational plan of what's going to happen in the future.
But here's the big one, the salvation issue. Under covenant theology, God has one plan of salvation for his people since the time of Adam. The plan is one of grace, being an outworking of the eternal covenant of grace, and comes through faith in Jesus Christ.
And you say, well, how did Abraham have faith in Jesus Christ? Well, he believed the promise of the gospel, which was given to him in Genesis chapter 12, that all the nation of the world would be blessed through his seed.
His seed was Christ. And though he probably could not articulate all that was going to happen in regard to who Christ was, what the cross was, and what was going to happen on the cross, he had the faith that God was going to do this promise, and his faith in the promise of God was the faith in the gospel.
And so that's what the covenant theologian would say. This group is saved by Christ. This group is saved by Christ. This was saved by what Christ was going to do. This group is saved by what Christ has already done.
And if you think about it, in the eternity past, it was already done in the mind of God, because he's the lamb slain from the foundation of the world. So both are saved what Christ has done, but this is looking forward, this is looking back to what Christ did.
Okay? Whereas the dispensational will say this, God has only one plan of salvation, though this has often been misunderstood because of the inexactness in some dispensational writings. Some have wrongly taught or understood that Old Testament believers were saved by works and sacrifices.
However, most have believed that salvation has always been by grace through faith, but that the content of the faith may vary until the full revelation of God in Christ. So here's the point I have to say.
This is why I don't condemn dispensationalists. I don't agree with them, but I don't condemn them either. For the most part, dispensationalists will say, yes, salvation has always been by grace through faith.
And just like I said earlier, the faith has always been a faith in whatever God has revealed at the time in regard to his promise. And I would say that I don't think Abraham knew specifically what Christ was going to do and how Christ was going to affect it perfectly.
He knew God had made a promise about his seed, and that promise continued. And it's always those who had faith in the promise of God who were his people throughout the Old Covenant. And then when Christ came, it was the fulfillment of those promises, and that faith continued.
So my point in this is to simply say dispensationalists for the most part believe pretty much the right way in regard to how people are saved. They're saved by grace through faith. Where the issue becomes is, well, what does God then do with the Jews who aren't in Christ?
And that's where sort of the vacillating comes. What does God do with the Jews who aren't in Christ? Some people would say, well, they get saved by virtue of their Jewishness. Some people would say they're not.
And there is the big distinction. But as it says in this notes, there is an exactness in the writings, meaning they haven't really nailed it down in a lot of areas. So that's the... And if we look just very quickly at the next part, and we're going to finish this next week, but just very quickly, the place of eternal destiny for God's people, because this is what really matters, right?
I mean, if you have 80 years of really good, and then an eternity of bad, 80 years of really good ain't that good because it's just storing up wrath for yourself. So what is the eternal destiny? Well, covenant theology says God has but one place for his people since he has but one people, one plan, and one plan of salvation.
His people will be in his presence for eternity. Under dispensationalism, there is a disagreement, and this is where I think the biggest issues stand. There's a disagreement among dispensationalists regarding the future state of Israel in the church.
Many believe that the church will sit with Christ on his throne in the New Jerusalem during the millennium as he rules over the nations, while Israel will be the head of the nations on the earth. What I said earlier, we're going to rule with Christ, and they'll have a position of authority.
Again, the issue becomes, why is it that these Jews are participating in the kingdom of God when they have not come to the king who is Christ? I think that's a major question. And if somebody says, well, it's because of the promises of God, I believe all the promises of God are fulfilled in Christ.
I believe all of the promises of God have their fullness in Christ's work and what he did. And so if somebody says, well, do you believe that God lied? No, but I do believe that we've misunderstood some of his promises and how they are fulfilled in Christ.
I believe that if we look at what Christ has done and that we will experience the New Jerusalem and we will experience a promised land beyond any measure of any earthly promised land that has ever been given, and we will experience a place where the lion will lay down with the lamb and there will be eternal peace and eternal joy and eternal milk and honey.
That time is coming. That promise is still yet to be fully fulfilled because the new heaven and the new earth is not here yet. But I believe that that promise that God gave to Israel is a promise for all of God's people and that it's something that we're looking forward to even as of yet.
So the argument that, well, God hasn't fulfilled his promises, well, maybe not all of them yet. But to say that he's limiting those promises just to the Jewish people and just to one geographic piece of land over in Israel, I think is to limit the Scripture beyond what Christ did and beyond what the Apostle Paul did.
So... How long is this dispensation? Is it about mid -1800s or something?
Yeah, and I would say from what I understand, and of course I'm willing to be corrected if somebody wants to correct me, but from what I understand, it was John Nelson Darby who was influential in sort of producing the idea, particularly Pre-Tribulation Rapture and the Millennium and all that.
And then it was C .I. Schofield whose notes were added into the study Bible and the Schofield reference Bible became sort of the... It was the Bible for so many people and it was so influential on so many people.
And I would say Schofield has had some of the most influential... or some of the most influence on modern dispensationalists. And then, of course, you have Charles Ryrie and others. Dallas Theological Seminary is very dispensational.
John MacArthur is a dispensationalist. So there are still guys today who would hold these views. And their big argument, God's not done with Israel. God's not done with Israel. Okay. Is there coming a time where God may grant a revival to people of Jewish ethnicity?
I hope so. That would be a wonderful blessing to see a revival among any people. Is that what Romans 11 is promising? You know, Paul did give it. He says, what if God chose to take the blessing and give it back to them?
The country itself is almost totally secular. Absolutely. And that's the other point.
People talk about the Jewish nation. It is almost, like you said, almost completely... The Jewish is a heritage more than it is a faith. And so... Anyhow, I hope this was helpful. Hopefully next week we're going to talk about the church and a little bit more of what we talked about today.
The church as a New Testament concept or the church of, you know, whether the Old Testament and how the New Covenant is different in the fact that it is new. So hopefully you guys will be here for that.
Father, we thank you for this time of study. Pray that it has been fruitful for your people and that we would use it to grow closer to you. In Christ's name. Amen.