Covenant Theology pt 2- Laborers' Podcast

Hello, and welcome to the Truth and Love Network. This is... This looks different.

Anyway. So, welcome to the Laborer's Podcast. My name is Tyler. I'm filling in for Rob as the commander of the operation here.

We are revisiting our conversation on covenant theology from the various subgroupings that exist within that.

And, we will catch you for continuing that discussion after the wipe.

Well that was not the right video, but we will take it. How are you guys doing today?

Doing well, man. How are you? Having a good day. It's been a rough bout.

We've had some pretty challenging weather. It's been varying levels of how people have been affected by it.

It's been rough. It's been challenging. Like I said, my family, we're okay. We're just hunkered down.

We're just kind of bracing for the continued fallout until things find that rhythm again.

Yeah. I gotcha. It's been rough.

It's been heartbreaking watching all the videos and seeing all the posts coming out of Eastern Tennessee and West North Carolina.

Everybody's lost homes, people swept away, having issues getting supplies and relief efforts to the people in need.

It's absolutely heartbreaking. Our prayers go out to these communities. It's truly a terrible thing.

Yeah. So, we are continuing our talk through the idea of covenant theology.

We had ten questions to go through last Thursday that we met, and we got through two of them because we got a bit off more than we could chew,

I think, in an hour. So, I guess the best way to go about this would be to take a step back and kind of recap a little bit, because we threw out a lot of terms last time with Presbyterian covenant theology and 1689 federalism and New Covenant theology, and I'm still not sure what some of the distinctions are myself.

This is not necessarily my bag. This is not something I eat, sleep, live, and breathe. This is not a doctrinal realm that I'm particularly gifted in.

But, Troy, why don't you, I guess, start from where you're coming from, perspectives -wise.

So, perspective -wise, I would be coming from a 1689 federalist perspective.

So all of this is hinged around the difference between the continuity and discontinuity of the

Old Testament and New Testament, right? So, how like is Israel to the church, right?

And it kind of becomes, we're floating around in that distinctions, so there's a lot of similar language, but you can really step off each other's path real quickly, so there's just a lot of nuances to it.

But I would be coming from a 1689 federalist perspective, and yeah.

So just out of curiosity, what is federal about 1689 federalism? I'm still trying to figure out the naming convention there.

So it would be mostly based on the headship. So you are either in Adam or in Christ, that there is no middle area.

There's no, you're somewhat in Adam, or you're either in Adam or in Christ, and that would be the federalistic part.

Okay. You know, Dan's not here to be the straight and true Westminster gentleman.

I personally lean a bit more towards like the Savoy Declaration, because I'm kind of a non -denom

Presbyterian, which is like a unicorn these days, I guess. But Savoy actually,

I think, lines up a bit more with what we were talking about with the 1689 last time, because Savoy puts the covenant of grace, as I understand, in the

New Testament, and the covenant of works in the Old Testament. And that's something I think we got, we went back and forth on last time, was where is the actual changeover?

Because oftentimes with more straight and true Westminster covenant theology, from that Presbyterian vein, it's all grace from about Abraham on.

And so you have the covenant of works in the garden, and you have the covenant of grace at some point with Abraham.

There's a little bit of debate as to when exactly it kicks in, but the

Westminster looks at Moses and says that's covenant of grace. The Old Testament law, covenant of grace.

As opposed to the Savoy, which would lean, I think, towards some of the Baptist veins, that the covenant of grace is ratified by Christ.

Yeah, I do think a lot of what you're talking about with the Savoy Declaration, a lot

John Owen actually brought that kind of to the forefront of saying the Mosaic law, which we'll talk about here in a little bit, was not that of grace.

And so there was that distinction, and I think the London Baptist brothers kind of leaned towards that perspective.

Josh, where would you say that you land? I'm not really sure

I should even be here tonight, because I don't have a real solid position on this. This is one of my weakest theological positions, not that I'm like a stud in anything else, but it's just the one

I'm the least confident in. I am a Baptist.

I go to a Reformed Baptist church. But the bulk of my covenantal understanding,

I have gleaned from listening to so many Presbyterian preachers and teachers, because they talk about it more.

It's hard to find a lot of people who talk about Reformed Baptist covenant theology.

You've got the Renahan and some other ones who talk about the federalism.

But I've not been able to sit down and really get a detailed understanding of the

Baptist side of the argument, and I like a lot of what the

Presbyterians have to say about it. I think it makes sense. I think it's consistent. It puts me in a weird spot, being a

Baptist at a Baptist church. But I'm looking forward to going through that book with Claude for the evening services coming up.

That's going to be very helpful for me. So I'm here. What book is it? It is A Kingdom of God by Geoffrey Johnson, an expression of Baptistic covenant theology.

Let me see if I can get it right. I think I've heard of that. Is that the one from Founders? It is

The Kingdom of God, a Baptistic expression of covenant biblical theology,

Puritan title there. Nice and long. I think it is on Founders.

I do. I do think so. Because I know Founders has a couple things on the covenantal

Baptist perspective. This is all still relatively new for me because I came up dispensational, as did a lot of us.

A little different kind of dispensational than probably you had experience with Troy because of differing backgrounds from the

IFB to the megachurches. So when I say dispensationalism, it's a little looser.

It's probably a little more just the rapture and then maybe a smidgen of antinomianism sometimes.

That's the Old Testament. We don't really have to pay attention to that as much. We get inspiring stories from the Old Testament, but there's nothing really binding or authoritative necessarily in the

Old Testament aside from Genesis. That seems to often be the attitude.

Intentional and unintentional. It's not always where we intend to land or what we intend to mean, it just kind of happens if it will.

Yeah, I think that's what most people are being brought up in just because that's most of what

America is. Dispensationalism. A lot of people, if you hit them with, you know, are you a dispensationalist?

I have no idea what I am, but there's a rapture coming and I'm on the ship, you know.

It's assumed more than understood. Yes. Yeah, definitely don't have to be the case.

So from the, kind of as the jumping off point there, from those three perspectives that we described and that we come from, one of the big questions often is what do we do with the law?

That's a very long -winded answer sometimes, that's something that we can write entire books about sometimes.

We got a couple of books from, I think it was Reformation Heritage last year to give out at the last laborers conference on the law and the gospel.

I forget who wrote it, somebody I probably can't pronounce. But how do we deal with the law from our different perspectives?

If we have this idea of continuity and discontinuity in this, I guess this well -structured set of lenses that we're looking at, the

Covenant of Works, the Covenant of Grace, the Old Testament, the New Testament, how do we approach the law?

Well, a Presbyterian would say that the law is within the

Covenant of Grace, right? It's since the Covenant of Grace was put on after the

Garden that they would say that just runs straight through. I would see that differently as a 1689

Federalist. I would say that the law is part of the Covenant of Works.

And so, flushing that out just as a simple over -the -head view of it is that all of the law is conditional.

It is, do this, I will bless you. Do this, I will curse you.

And so, and even up to scripture texts that we can pull up,

Galatians 3, Galatians 4, where it says the law is not that of faith, the people that were under the law is its own covenant, and then you have the

Covenant of the Promise, pictured by Sarah, could really get into that.

But I do see the Covenant of the Law as being part of the

Covenant of Works, given as a tool to safeguard the people of Israel, right, through whom the

Christ would come. What kind of stance would you take on that?

Talking to me? Anybody. So, I'm a little funny.

Maybe more in the way I word things than what I actually mean by the words, but one thing

I think that is important to recognize with the law is that A, it was fulfilled by Christ, that we can't keep the law, and so if we can be found righteous, it is because it is granted by Christ, it is imputed to our account, which means whatever we do with the law, we have to start with that fact, that Christ has done all the obedience that's necessary, that Christ did all the work, and I think sometimes we get a little muddied in the water sometimes on trying to bring the law back into the conversation, that we've gotta do this, we've gotta do that, because that's what a good

Christian does, and we forget the presupposition that Christ has already done the spiritual requirements here, that we're not required to offer sacrifices, we're not required to do any of this to be a

Christian, but rather that these are things that obedience, there's still obedience, but it flows from a new heart.

I think John Knox put it beautifully when he said that the Holy Spirit is the cause of good works, which is the distinction that I would make here between the

Old Covenant and the New Covenant, is that A. the full body of the law was fulfilled in Christ, and what remains to be followed is what's universal, that there are different laws given for different people for different purposes, i .e.

the ceremonial laws, the civil laws, it's not all just one big blob that we call the law, but that there are different facets.

Like we have the animal sacrifices, we have the dietary restrictions, but I don't believe that scripture presents these things as being universally binding, all 613, for every person that ever lives.

And I think the Westminster statement on the law is that what remains for the believer is what they call the general equity of the law.

That is what is principally applied, which comes down to, as I've heard most

Westminster explanations, it's come down to the Ten Commandments. It's come down to love

God and love neighbor. Yeah. Yeah, the understanding that, like the

Lord Jesus says, he said, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

On these two things hangs all the law and the prophets. So all of the laws, all the 613 or 12 laws that God gave to the people of Israel in the wilderness, those are an exposition, right?

It is exposition of those two fundamental commandments. You can break them down into 10, and then on the

Ten Commandments, the Decalogue, you have a case law system that God gave to Moses fleshing out what the application of that statute would look like.

I personally, I've not tied my understanding of the law to covenant theology per se.

I guess that makes sense if you think about it, but I've always been, well, for the sake of this discussion,

I've always been a general equity, lowercase t, theonomist.

Meaning like the, and I believe that's what the Westminster and the 1689 present is an understanding that what

God had prescribed to Israel was truly just.

There isn't a standard that's more just than God's law. He could have given them anything, and he gave them a law that is consistent with his nature and his character, which is what justice and righteousness is.

It's behaving in a way that is consistent with God's nature and God's character.

But he gave them the law, and we don't apply the law specifically, the moral and the civil laws of the

Old Testament, we apply those one to one, right? So we don't have to build fences around the roofs of our house, but we need to understand the principle, the point being made by that statute in that time was you need to take measures to protect the lives of the people who are in your home, right?

So we wouldn't have to put a fence on a roof, we would put a fence around a pool or around a second story deck. Which you do in Florida.

Right, yeah. And I think it's federal level building codes that you have to have some level of a fence around your pools because we understand life is valuable.

Human life is precious in the sight of the Lord. And you are to act in a way that's going to preserve human life.

And when it comes to building something potentially dangerous, you take precautions proactively to to keep people from harm.

So that's been my understanding of the Old Testament law for a while, and I hadn't really thought about it in terms of covenant before.

So that's that's really that's an interesting question. I like that you you guys brought that up. I'm going to have to dig into that a little bit.

I love that the three of us are like non -experts on this. We're bringing up the

B squad for this one. Forget about the A team.

This is the B team. This is what we got tonight, brothers. This is what we got tonight. We are not the the expendables here.

This is the acceptables. The acceptables. The acceptables.

That's cool. OK, so the law is a fun one,

I think that that that brings a lot of thought into it. I think not just when we're talking about the law with governments, but even just the way we look at obedience with what what does it mean to obey

Christ just as an individual Christian, even when you look at that, when we talk about the distinction between the law and the gospel, that that is a very weighty conversation that I dig into from time to time.

Sinclair Ferguson wrote a fantastic book on it a few years back called The Whole Christ. And I deal a little bit with this because, like I said,

I come from background where there's a lot of oftentimes antinomianism, which is to say there's a rejection of oftentimes of the law in a whole, oftentimes out of a fear of becoming like the fundies, because we don't want to be like the

IFB over here that the women can't wear pants or they're excommunicated from the church. And so we swing that pendulum the opposite end and then just nothing matters.

Like I've been in churches where we sang Taylor Swift to God. I've been in the

Church of the Movies scenarios, I've I've I've been at churches where we did entire series is based on secular songs by Whitney Houston and I'm getting a little long winded here.

But point being that if we swung that pendulum the other way to where nothing matters because we didn't want to take the extreme stance here rather than trying to find that middle ground with what did

God actually mean by this? And oftentimes it's an overcorrection of an error.

And that that's an interesting one to think through, even in the in the context of covenants.

We talked about the covenant of grace and we call it the covenant of grace, but it's not a covenant of only grace.

That there is still, if you love me, keep my commandments, that there is still an obligation to obey, but not just to obey with rigidity, but to obey with joy, to delight in the character of Christ.

So much so that we're doing things that cultivate that character within us. I think that's where we get with with the law.

We look at the civil and the moral and the ceremonial and the general equity and all. What remains for us to do is the things that cultivate

Christlikeness without being grievous or burdensome to the people that we subject to it.

So when we're preaching from the pulpit that you can't wear pants because because that pertaineth to a man, does that align with cultivating the character of Christ both in ourselves and in the people we're talking to?

Yeah, I think that's a good it's a good question. I think there is a

I don't know, putting a real fine point on you can't wear pants.

Right. You can only be as specific as the scriptures are. So we can say without flinching, without equivocation, the sexual immorality, bad.

Don't do that. Stop looking at that. Stop doing all that stuff. And we don't have to.

We can say that without flinching. However, scripture doesn't say specifically women can't wear pants.

Right. It says they cannot wear that which pertaineth to a man. And I like that that rendering of that verse.

I think that's I think that's accurate. That's helpful because I think there is a value there that's being laid down.

There's a statute, a clear statute. I don't think that statute necessarily infers you can't wear any any cut of clothing that a man at the time that you're alive would also wear.

I think it has to do with with a distinction between the masculine and the feminine.

I don't want to get off off into the weeds, but I think having an understanding, a clear understanding of what what the law is getting at can help us in in not binding people's consciences on things that scripture doesn't doesn't command.

And there are three three parts to the law. There's the transcendent law that that everyone has.

Right. It literally transcends. Right. That's what we would the Ten Commandments written on everyone's heart, which everyone sins against.

And then there is the the ceremonial law that was given to the descendants of Abraham.

You know, sacrifice sheep, oxen. Here's your here's your huge list.

And then there was the judicial laws, which is kind of what we're talking about right now. But understanding those those distinct categories and what's what's still around, what's not understanding that the transcendent law essentially boiling down to love

God, love neighbor. That is is the law that we are to work out.

Right. Whenever it's you know, if you know, I'm not supposed to travel to Jerusalem every year in observance of the

Passover feast, you know, those things are types and shadows of Christ.

And so it's really working that out as far as the thing of where do you go with with on this side?

You have legalism and this side you have antinomianism is is going to be found in and then in the

New Testament specifically with with what's what's given to the people post

Christ's resurrection. Of course, we can look to the Old Testament and go, this is this is God's God's character through 100 percent.

I'm not saying unhitch the Old Testament. That is that is not what I'm going at. I'll put my stone down.

I was OK. OK, I just wanted to completely and 100 percent clarify that. But there is so much in the

New Testament about the distinctions between the law and the new covenant found in Christ, whether it be the entire book of Hebrews or the entire book of Galatians or James or or John.

I mean, you could go through. Paul dealt with a lot of Judaizers. He dealt with a lot of people that were trying to to marry new covenant believers with with the law, with circumcision, with these holidays practices.

And he laid his foot down, foot down, hardcore and said, no, this is you are you are leaving

Christ. You are forsaking the gospel because of this. Because our righteousness are even our righteous deeds that we do nowadays are are tainted by our sinful nature.

Our righteousness is in no part based on us. It is solely based on on Christ, on Christ's sacrifice.

We have his alien righteousness. So segwaying into the next question, we've kind of we've touched on that a little bit so far with this idea of believers in the

Old Testament, believers in the New Testament. So how does how we understand the covenant of grace in each camp?

I guess, if you will, how does that differ in applying the Old Testament to the New Testament and vice versa?

Well, I think first and foremost, none of the Old Testament saints, none of the

Old Testament church were saved by observing the law. Right. So they were they were saved by fearing

God and keeping his commandments in faith that God would send the

Messiah. But they were saved by faith looking forward. We are saved by faith, looking backwards and trusting what

Christ has done. They were trusting something they hadn't seen yet, something that was that was hidden. It was foreshadowed.

It was it was failed, but they didn't know what it was going to look like. But they when they obeyed the law to the best of their human ability, none of them kept it perfectly, but they obeyed the law in faith of what of what

God had promised, trusting that God would send the Messiah and that that that they would be saved.

And it was it was their faith that saved them. Nobody was saved by keeping the law. And it's different for us because we were not born in Old Covenant ethnic

Israel. Right. We've been born now 2 ,000 years roughly after the revealing of the

Son of God. But the one who was promised in Genesis three and was continually promised with with ever increasing clarity and specificity, he was revealed.

And now now we have the whole picture. The puzzle is complete. Right. And we can look and see the whole thing.

We have to trust that Christ was who he says he was and that he did pay for our sins on the cross.

And we put our hope in his perfect righteousness, whereas they were trusting in something that they didn't actually know exactly what it was going to look at look like.

But the both Old Covenant church and New Testament church were saved by Christ and by faith in the promises of God.

Yeah. Same answer. That was that on all of our Old Covenant, Old Testament brothers and sisters, you know,

Abraham, David, they were looking forward to the promised seed. Adam, Eve, you know, to the promise of the seed that would come.

It was the promise of that seed that would take away our sins.

And through it, it kept being unveiled more and more and more of the picture of him gets clearer through all these types and shadows that we have the beauty and the hindsight to be able to read back through our

Old Testament and go, there's Christ, there's Christ, there's Christ, there's

Christ. But but, yeah, they were saved looking forward, were saved looking back.

Yeah, we're all on the same page there. Yeah. Regardless of whether you're Presbyterian, dispensational,

Reformed Baptist, doesn't matter. That's the biblical view.

Should be. Should be. It should be. It is the biblical view. It should be your view. It's not.

I've talked to people who genuinely believed that the

Old Testament Israel was saved by keeping the law. Right. So which

I could I guess I could understand why you would why somebody would come to that conclusion. It's not a very informed conclusion.

There's there's some key passages that they have not read. If that's if that's what they take away from from the scriptures.

But it's even all of the conditions that were given in the Old Testament, their conditions.

But those conditions in and of themselves don't save you. Right. It's it's it's the keeping of the law in faith.

It's still the faith that does the saving, even in the Old Testament. Yeah. So.

And if righteousness came from the law, then Christ died for no purpose. That's right. Galatians 2 21.

There's an interesting subject that that Calvin talks about when he's working through the book of Job. Have you guys read about what he said on double double righteousness?

No. This was a new one on me as I've been working through Job on bread, the word for a year and a half.

But he talks about a few of God's righteousness that is, he said, double in the idea that what we see in the law is a is an expression of God's righteousness,

I guess, in terms we can understand. It's almost like God's righteousness in shorthand. But if you could peel back the law and see the fullness of God's righteousness, it is far greater, far grander, far fuller than even the law can capture.

So much so, I think it's Eliphaz that said even the heavens are unclean in his sight. And so he this is how he works through the idea that God was just and he's dealing with Job because it doesn't seem very fair or just from our perspective, but it's still just from God's perspective.

And I bring that up because regardless of how we how good we are with the law and dealing with the law and we may come close to all 613, but we're not going to get that back half.

We're not going to get the fullness of that righteousness that exists in God, even if we kept all this, because there is more to God than thou shalt not murder.

This is a I guess a sliver of his character that shows us a bit of what God is like in a way we can understand it and we can recognize that God is good, that God values life.

We can see these things. But if the fullness of God can fit in this this this eight pound brain.

There's a problem. That's right. Yeah. I mean, I think that's one of the many stumbling blocks to thinking we can keep the law and we can be perfect is the fact that God's not just a law.

But back to back to back to the podcast guide here again, we touched on that.

We keep getting a couple of questions ahead. But Josh, you said a really interesting talk about the Old Testament church.

What is that? So that that is the saints of the Old Testament, right?

If we've established that everybody in the Old Testament who was saved was saved by faith in Christ, even if they didn't know what that would look like or didn't understand what had been foreshadowed, but they they were obeying

God in faith and they were saved by that faith in Christ, then that makes them a member of the church.

Right. If the Gentiles were grafted in to that covenantal olive tree and the ethnic

Israel who didn't believe were broken off for that unbelief. Right. So so the only people on that olive tree were people who believed and Gentiles were grafted in through faith that that olive tree included

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the patriarchs, David, Rahab, all of the all of the

Old Testament saints were members of that olive tree. There's one covenant people of God.

God doesn't have two covenant peoples. There's one covenant people. There is I do believe that there is a full continuity of covenant between Old Testament and New Testament.

There's a set there's a change in covenant, like the terms are changed, but it's there is only one covenant people of God.

God doesn't have two covenant peoples. So if the church is now God's covenant people and we've been we've been grafted in to the covenant people, but it's not our thing, we're grafted into what has already been existing.

So I refer to the saints of the Old Covenant, the

Old Testament as the Old Testament church. That tends to be a bit of a point of contention on social media, doesn't it?

It does. Yes, it does. I've seen that get called replacement theology, and I think there's some other funny terms for it out there.

But it's it's almost controversial sometimes to say that the church and Israel are one in the same in some sense.

Yeah. Yeah, it's very controversial. And like Troy pointed out earlier, it's because the dispensationalism is kind of baked into the default understanding of Americans in general.

You can you can talk to somebody who's never been to church in their life and they still have some level of understanding of the rapture, right?

Yeah, it's on the sentence. Right. Yeah. Everybody has an understanding of that. And what goes along with that is this understanding that God is doing his thing with Israel over here.

And I don't have a lot of experience with dispensationalism personally or independent fundamental

Baptist. So, Troy, if I misspeak, feel free to clarify. I don't want to I don't want to paint with too broad of a brush.

But there's an understanding that God's doing his thing with Israel over here. Israel rejected him.

He's like, well, I'm already here. We'll say some Gentiles and then we'll finish doing. Hey, buddy,

I'm doing a podcast. Can you go out there? Yeah, I need you to go out there. Can you go out there for a little bit? OK, he's just going to watch.

Sorry, I'm going to say some Gentiles while I'm here, but then I'm going to do what I really came to do, which is save just the physical offspring of Abraham.

And that's not what the scripture teaches. Right. It's it's clear that it's clear that God made a covenant with Abraham that would that would bless and affect all the families and all the nations of the earth.

Right. That it's through the promised heir. Right. So global salvation, not universal salvation, but global salvation and global impact and global dominion of the

Christ was in view from the beginning. So it's not two covenants.

It's not two peoples. It's one covenant. Well, one one covenant people, there are there are two two covenants, but it's one covenant people.

So to to get at what the what the question is asking here, how do Presbyterian covenant theology,

Reformed Baptist covenant theology and New Covenant theology each view the role of the church in relation to Israel and the

Old Testament covenants? And so really the the whenever you have whenever Israel is brought up, it's important to realize that we can really start start jumping over over each other, because even

Paul says Romans nine, not all of Israel are of Israel. And then again, in Romans 11,

Israel has been hardened until the fullness of the

Gentiles come in. Then it's deliver will come out of Zion and the saying will be said, all of Israel will be saved.

So I believe that's two spots in which that Paul uses the word

Israel in the same sentence, but meaning two different things. So you can say

Israel is that the church is true Israel. All right.

I like using the word true, true Israel. Right. So the true Israel are people that have faith in Christ, whether that be

Abraham or or us three that are sitting here talking right. And you can go down the list, everyone that's in the church.

But then you have this geopolitical nation out in the

Middle East that is called Israel. And so the question is, what what is the distinction between the the people called

Israel and the people also called Israel, a .k .a. the church. And so it really comes down to whenever you're

Presbyterian or coming at this from a Presbyterian covenantal theology framework, you're going to say, well, the people of Israel were actually inside the covenant, whether or not they were of true

Israel, they were in the covenant people of Israel. And then you would have dispensationalists on the furthest side from that that is saying, no, that was

God's chosen people, Israel, the nation. But now he is dealing with a parenthetical, his chosen people, the church.

And one day he will go back to dealing with his chosen people,

Israel, the nation. And so where I would be in my Reformed Baptist theology, covenant theology, would go that there is one people of God, the true

Israel, the church, and a lot of them were inside the nation of the people

Israel. But the nation of the people Israel did not guarantee that you were within the covenant of grace.

And a spiritual Israel. Exactly. A spiritual Israel. I think it's in Romans 2 where it says that a

Jew is one inwardly. Yes, I am a Jew. Romans, what is that, 229? I think it is.

Right at the end of, I think it's like the last verse in chapter 2. But I've got a comment here that I think ties into this quite nicely.

No doubt the saints of the Old Testament had faith in Christ, but it's interesting that the

Lord didn't mention the church until, upon this rock I will build my church. Unless I'm pulling that out of context.

And personally, I think that the word church, or ecclesia, alludes to the

Old Testament in a really backwards way. Because the word ecclesia is where we get the word ecclesiastes.

That in the Greek copies of the Old Testament, there was a precedence of using this word ecclesia, referring to gathering the people, whether that was in the temple, that was for certain processions.

So we don't call it the book of Koheleth, we call it the book of ecclesiastes. And I think there was a precedence of understanding this idea of a spiritual assembly as an ecclesia during that period where the

Jews started learning Greek, and started copying things down in Greek. And so when you get to Christ at that point when he says, on this rock

I will build my ecclesia, I think in some sense he's hearkening back to Solomon, he's hearkening back to that Old Testament practice of the people gathering.

Yeah. Another thing that I always like to point out is that when

Christ said that, he was speaking to Jewish men, right? The first few thousand members of the church were

Hebrews, right? They were Israelites. It wasn't until Peter goes to Cornelius that you start seeing

Gentiles come in. And so there's not a discontinuity between what

Christ established and what was promised, but also of the ethnic people.

Christ is of ethnic Israel. The 12 apostles and Paul were of ethnic

Israel. And the first, I don't know, 7 ,000 converts were of ethnic

Israel. He didn't come straight to the Gentiles and build something else.

It was something that was established on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets.

Israel, right, that was thoroughly Hebrew, thoroughly

Jewish. And he established that foundation, but he grafted the

Gentiles into that. And he broke off those of ethnic

Israel who rejected him and didn't believe. Claude preached maybe two months ago on Zechariah 11, right?

I don't want to get off on a rabbit trail, but I feel like there's a lot of misunderstanding about this position.

So I'd like to bring a little bit of clarity to it, just for the sake of the listener. Zechariah says in chapter 11 that he will become the shepherd of the sheep, right, who are doomed to slaughter.

He will cast off the three shepherds that are wicked and the sheep traders, but even the sheep will turn against him because he got rid of their three wicked shepherds.

And he'll break the rod, right, the rod of... What is it?

Was it the rod? It was the rod that represented his covenant with him. He'll break his covenant that he had with the people. And he can do that with people who are unbelieving without nullifying the promises that he gave to Abraham and to David.

He can do that without... It doesn't... It doesn't... It's not... He's not breaking what he promised he would do to Abraham if he breaks off those unbelieving olive branches and grafts

Gentiles in. So that's just a little point of clarification. Yeah, I like that.

Do you think that was, I guess, foreshadowed by some of the passages in Hosea? Because you got

Hosea that talks about the promises being taken away from them, but then you have, like, Hosea 6, come let us return to the

Lord for he has torn and he shall heal us. Do you think that's a foreshadowing of this grafting and this restoration?

Go ahead, Troy. So I think regardless of nationality, right, because we're putting that emphasis on it, the command is always to come to Christ through the covenant of grace.

Through Jesus Christ. Come to God through Jesus Christ, right?

It is the effectual working of the new covenant that is how people are reconciled to God.

What I have pulled up here, Galatians 3. I just want to read a few verses because we were hitting on it.

Does he who supplies the spirit to you and works miracles among you do so by works of the law or by hearing with faith just as Abraham believed

God and it was counted to him as righteousness? Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham and the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the

Gentiles by faith preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham saying in you shall the nations be blessed.

So then it is those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham the man of faith.

The righteous shall live by faith. But yeah, it's that foreshadowing of the

Gentiles being brought in. And I think it's also important to remember with Old Testament prophecy.

You know, Isaiah, Jeremiah, they were preaching pre -exile, right?

They were saying, hey, this is coming. But then you also have your exilic and post -exilic prophets who were preaching during the exile.

And as the Jews were coming back to rebuild Jerusalem and to rebuild the temple. And you have two things coming in and out of focus during Old Testament prophecy.

You have the promises of Christ, the coming of the Messiah and what work the

Messiah would do. And you also have, because God's still going to bring this exile people back into the land to bring about the

Messiah. You have temporal, very... I can't think of the word.

You have temporal, physical things that are imminent. So a lot of it, it goes, the

Messiah finished work. We're going to go back to the land, right? So we're cast off now, but we will go back.

A lot of times, I think people tend to overlook the context in which a lot of these prophecies were given where they're saying, oh, see, the temple will be rebuilt, right?

There's no temple now. So the temple is going to be rebuilt instead of realizing there was no temple then and it was rebuilt, right?

So there's two things coming in and out of focus. Sometimes within the same chapter.

So it's easy to misunderstand it. I don't fault people for missing it.

I missed it for 20 years of my life. I was really bad.

So I'm preaching to myself as much as anybody, but it's important to remember that there can be more than one thing being spoken to at the same time.

Yeah. You know, in the book of Hebrews, we know that the tabernacle is a picture of the heavenly tabernacle, right?

That Christ went into, you know, a lot of what they actually showed was the fact that these are types and shadows of Christ, right?

Whenever all the temple sacrifices that happened were all big pictures pointing to the finished work of Jesus Christ, right?

Pointing to that moment to where he would walk into the holy of holies and spread his blood, acting as the priest and both the lamb that was slaughtered, spreading his blood on the mercy seat every year at Passover.

That's what was pictured. Yep. Yep.

If you ever get a chance, there's a dear brother. It was a mentor of mine. He's Jewish, but he's a dear believer in the

Lord, and every year he does a Passover Seder demonstration where he goes to the elements of the

Passover and he shows you from scripture and from Jewish tradition, but he shows you the elements from Jewish tradition, but he points from scripture how these things foreshadow

Christ. So does he do like the four cups and all that? Yeah, he does all of it.

It takes maybe like an hour and a half to get through it, but it's phenomenal.

I got to go with him one time and help him drive him for me.

We had to drive over the mountains, but I went with him one time and I got to watch it, and it was wonderful.

If you get a chance to watch, his name's Neil Silverberg. If you get a chance to go to one of his

Easter seders. I have heard that name somewhere. He goes into South Carolina a lot. Actually, we were in South Carolina.

I went to South Carolina with him that one time that I went. So he's all over the country.

He goes to Cuba. He goes all over the place. But if you have a chance to catch one of those, it's worth it.

I found out fairly recently that there was more than one cup when Jesus did the

Lord's Supper in the Gospels. We had somebody come to our church and preach on that as well and did a sort of demonstration as well probably two weeks ago with the cup of redemption, the cup of blessing, and that whole thing.

It was really interesting, and that's a rabbit for another day. But back to the promises aspect as we try to land this plane, because I don't think we have time to get into baptism.

Definitely. Definitely not. I might just feel outnumbered.

Anyway. But back to the promises component, because I think sometimes that pops up in the limelight a bit is how we're working through or sometimes misunderstanding how we look at the promises of God, how we look at the promises in the

Old Testament. I think sometimes we've seen that influence like our foreign policy in the

United States, if I could poke that bear in the eye. That the way we look at what

Israel is has led into what we send money towards as a nation.

Because we should support Israel militarily, Israel the nation militarily, because God said

Israel will not fall. And so I think we're of the mindset that that is not necessarily a faithful handling of the promises of God there.

Agreed. And so I guess what is the metric by which we look at these promises so we don't twist things for different gains?

They are typological and always fulfilled in Christ. Yeah. Yep. And they are promises that a lot of them we can hold on to because we are

His. Yeah. Yeah.

I agree. I don't really want to open that kind of worms now of geopolitical dealings and commitments.

But I will say, because I am, I do hold a covenant theology and I'm a partial cleterist,

I don't believe that there is a biblical mandate to support the nation state of Israel today, right, as a way to keep or obey the passage of Scripture that says, everyone who blesses you,

I will bless. Everybody who curses you, I will curse. I don't think that verse,

I think that verse is good and it's true. But I don't think that the implication of that is you must fund and support the nation of Israel today.

That doesn't mean I have any ill will towards the nation of Israel. I don't. But that's again,

I don't want to open up a can of worms on that one. I just wanted to throw out a thought.

Just a caveat, when we look at the promises of God, it's about Jesus. Yes. I think it's

Luke 24, 27, when he walked down the Emmaus road and he spake from the law and the prophets and the

Psalms, all things concerning himself. Yeah. And so I think when we look at the promises, we should aim to have that view, that this is concerning Christ, that these are things concerning himself.

And if we're not coming away with something that points us back to the gospel, points back to the saving work of Christ, we may not have the right understanding here.

I think once again in Galatians, he points out that the promises are not to offsprings, plural, but offspring, singular.

Talk about the Abrahamic covenant. I believe that is, let me see if I can find that.

I want to say 15. He mentions it in Galatians too, is that what you're looking at?

Galatians 3, 16. And so, to give a human example, brothers, even with a man -made covenant, no one annuls it or adds to it once it has been ratified.

Now the promises were made to Abraham and to his offspring. It does not say, and to offsprings, referring to many, but referring to one, and to your offspring, who is

Christ. This is what I mean. The law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant preciously ratified by God so as to make the promise void.

What were you going to say, Josh? No, I was just agreeing with you. That's a really, that's a very key verse in understanding what is in view with that promise.

It's not a blanket promise to all of Abraham's physical descendants.

It is a promise specifically referring to the coming of Christ. Amen. And by extension, those who have faith in Christ.

Yeah. Really, Galatians 3 and 4 is slapped full of covenant theology, especially whenever you get to chapter 4, and it starts flushing out the two covenants of Abraham and then saying his wives, he had two sons, he had

Hagar and Ishmael, and then Sarah and Isaac. And he says, these are two covenants, and then takes

Hagar and Ishmael, and then says, this is Mount Sinai, the slave woman.

Yep. And so ties the Mosaic covenant to Ishmaelites saying that, look, you are essentially no better than all of the other people because their foundation is in the law.

Yeah. He says, the current Jerusalem, this is in chapter 4, is in slavery, but we are of the

Jerusalem which is free, the Jerusalem that's above. Yep. Amen. And so it really crushes that geopolitical nation as the chosen people of God.

It takes away the physical descendant talk and puts it all into the spiritually in Christ.

Yeah. Yep. Which is, again, it goes back to why I point to the continuity of the saints in the

Old Testament and the New Testament church. It's my understanding, feel free to disagree with me or push back,

I'll still love you even though you're wrong. It's my understanding that the new

Jerusalem, the heavenly Jerusalem depicted in Revelation is actually, it's a metaphor or a type of the church, right?

Because the angel says to John, come let me show you the bride of the lamb, and he shows him a city, right?

And it's not necessarily showing the people in the city, he's showing him the city itself. Yeah. So that heavenly

Jerusalem is true Israel, it is those who are joined to Christ through faith.

I think that harkens back to Ezekiel a little bit with how Ezekiel ends, doesn't it?

With the city at the end there, when it says it has one name, the Lord is there. Yeah.

Just random thought there. Yeah. Well, Troy, would you please, as we close, give us the gospel?

Yes. Josh, would you please pray after? Sure. All right.

The gospel is solely based on two things. It is who

Christ is and what Christ did. So first and foremost, every single person that is alive today knows that they have sinned and they have fall short of the glory of God.

You just know this by your nature, that you are sinful. And since you are a sinner, that has to be paid for.

That has to be reconciled with God. You cannot pay for it with moral do -gooding.

It's already tainted by how sinful you are. All your righteousness is as filthy rags.

It's to be compared with dung from Philippians 2. But the gospel is who

Jesus Christ is, the son of God, the virgin born promised

Messiah that came and lived a sinless life, died on the cross.

Three days later was risen again, showing us that his sacrifice was accepted by the father.

And so the gospel is you are putting your faith in Christ. You are trusting on him, trusting on his righteousness to be placed on your account through all of what, through who he is and what he did.

Amen. Amen. All right. Heavenly father, we thank you for this time together.

I thank you for these dear brothers, these faithful men who love you, who fear your name.

I pray that you would bless them and their households. I thank you for this opportunity to discuss the truths of your holy scripture.

I pray that you would just use this to encourage the people listening, that this would be edifying and encouraging to your church.

And I pray that you would use it for your glory. I pray that everything that we've talked about here, that at the end of the day, father, that you will be glorified above all else.

And thank you for this time. I want to pray also for the communities in North Carolina and East Tennessee and Georgia who are hurting, who have lost homes and businesses, loved ones who've had their entire towns swept away.

Father, I pray that you would be with them, that you would use this for your glory and for the furthering of the gospel.

I pray for all of the rescue personnel and first responders and people going to bring food and water and all the relief efforts.

Father, I pray that you would help everything to go smoothly, that you would protect the people who are going into very dangerous situations to try to help people.

And I pray that you would just cause all of this to work together for the good of your people and for the praise of your glorious grace.

I pray all this in Jesus' mighty name. Amen. Thank you for joining us tonight.

This has been The Laborer's Podcast, part of the Truth and Love Network. Remember that Jesus is

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