Is Your Theological System Any Good? | Theocast

Hi, this is John, and today on Theocast, Justin and I are going to talk about interpreting God's Word. Do we just need

Jesus and the Bible to fully understand everything that God has revealed to us? Are systems, confessions, and creeds bad?

Do they influence negatively? And is it safe to say that we can actually read

God's Word without having a system? We are going to explain what biblical theology is and what the history of Christianity has believed throughout time about interpreting

God's Word, and in our members' podcast, we talk about how all of Scripture is Christian Scripture, including the

Old Testament, some thoughts on dispensational theology, and how your system of interpreting

God's Word will affect your assurance. We hope you enjoy. A simple way for you to help support

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slash give. Welcome to Theocast, encouraging weary pilgrims to rest in Christ.

We hope you enjoy these conversations, and lively ones, at that, about the Christian life from a Reformed perspective.

If you don't know what Reformed means, we just did a podcast on the five points of Reformed theology. You can go back and listen to that episode.

Today, your hosts are John Moffitt, pastor of Covenant Baptist Church in Asheville, North Carolina, and John Moffitt, pastor of Grace Reformed Church in Spring Hill, Tennessee.

It has been a lively morning, as you can already tell this morning. We are off to a rolling start. And it's going to be a lively podcast, so I'm a good full coffee cup in, which always means

I'm ready to roar. JP, hey, give the people what they've been anticipating all week.

Every Wednesday, they're thinking, hmm, I want to know what Justin likes and what he doesn't like. I'm sure that's what they've been up all week, man, thinking about.

Yeah, Wednesday morning, I can't wait. Can't sleep on Tuesday night because Wednesday morning's got it. Well, I am two cups of coffee in, which is normal for me.

I'm in the Eastern time zone, so I'm an hour ahead of John. I don't know how hopped up I am.

Caffeine doesn't seem to do a lot for me, but my morning cup of coffee is a comfort. And now I will go on to the pro con.

So I am pro people eating with utensils, so like using forks and things.

I'm for that. I am con having to teach my children how to do so.

So it's a very difficult process, at least it is in the Purdue house, to get our kids to eat effectively with utensils.

And the thing that I think maybe is, I don't know, it just kind of makes me go, yeah,

I'd rather not do this, is every time I'm trying to work with my small kids about how to use the fork and I grab the fork that they've been using, there's like this layer of just like grimy, sticky mess all over it all the time, all the time.

I mean, let the listener understand, right? I mean, I think if you've been there, you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's like not only are your child's hands all the time just kind of like grimy and sticky and gooey, but like everything they touch is as well.

And so, yeah, I go to pick up the fork and help my little son or my little daughter and I'm just like, oh my gosh,

I feel like I need to put like gloves on to do this because it's just not sanitary and not cool.

I don't know. So there that is. It's good to eat with a fork and I will be glad when the training is over.

Yeah. I don't know. Let people do that. Well, my 14 -year -old son, now I'm trying to teach my son to eat in proportionate manners.

Like, hey, bud, that was a bite for a dinosaur. Let's try and bring that down.

I mean, my wife has it, too. It's like this special show as much as you can.

Yeah, like for a while, my third son, who also is named Titus or my third child, my second son,

Titus, he would do like, hey, dad, big bite, you know, and he would take this massive bite.

How much can he shove in his mouth? And he's like, not even three. It's like this is not going to end well.

It's funny. It's funny when a two -year -old does it. It's not funny when a 14 -year -old does it. It's gross.

You're right about that. No, you're right. The cute factor is not there. My wife has a superpower where if my youngest son knocks, if he asks me to blow on his or if he asks for his food to be cooled down, if I try and do it, it does nothing.

Like, I'll blow on it for an hour. It doesn't matter. My wife has to just blow from across the room, right? And it's like, oh, it's all good now.

It's ready to eat. I'm like, what is this, angel breath? I don't get this. What is with this? There's something unique about mothers.

Exactly. Their abilities. Well, today is a fun subject. I don't have a segue. You couldn't think of one, so it's not necessary.

Other than we're just going to talk about a subject that's very important to the

Christian life. It's important to how the Bible will affect you and affect your relationship with the

Lord. I will tell you, it is a subject that Justin and I probably have already talked about for the last hour and a half and could talk about for another five hours.

It is something we're very passionate about. So today, I'll just throw it.

I'll set us up and we'll just kind of go from here, JP. We are going to be discussing how one engages with God's word in interpreting it.

How is it that we read it, understand it, and then apply it? Everyone would assume, well, let's just back up.

I'm not going to say everyone would assume. I was raised thinking that we simply need to read

God's word in context and just take it at face value and then apply it as we have read it and that we aren't going to allow any creed or a confession or a system or another church or denomination to tell us how to read the

Bible. That the Holy Spirit can come in and illuminate God's word and he can bring the truth of God's word to apply to my heart.

I just need to make sure that I read it and that the Holy Spirit lives within me and I will have proper application.

Justin Perdue Yeah, this is maybe set up 2 .0, but you'll hear people talk about reading the

Bible as though we can come to scripture without any presuppositions, as though there's nothing.

We don't have anything in our backpack already, and so we just come kind of empty, ready to be filled, and we can just take

God's word on its own terms without any notions as to what any of this might mean or might not mean for us.

Also, you use the word system. This is another big thing. There are a number of slogans that are thrown around with the best of intentions.

You'll hear people say, no creed but Christ, no confession but the

Bible, things like that. We're not talking about creeds and confessions so much today, but you will also hear people say that Lambast is too strong, but they will at least imply that it's a negative thing that we would ever come to scripture with a theological system or with a theological framework.

There are a lot of people who are allergic to that kind of language. You need to come not only with no presuppositions, but you need to come with no system of theology or no framework of theology.

Not to bury the lead, I think what we are going to talk about today is the fact that everybody has presuppositions when we come to scripture, and secondly, everybody has a theological system.

The question is whether or not your presuppositions and your theological system are any good.

That's the real question. It's funny, and even recognize that you have them and then evaluate them biblically.

We are not saying that we need all kinds of stuff that we would not get from the

Bible in order to understand the Bible. That's not what we're saying, but we want to look at the Bible on its own terms, in its entire context, and then allow that to help us interpret each individual passage.

Just very quickly, this is not to be punchy, meaning this necessarily, but a lot of people will say, don't read a theological system onto the text, and no creeds but Christ and all this kind of stuff as they wave their study

Bible in your face. What do you think those study notes are?

Those are, you may define these terms, it's systematic theology, it's biblical theology, it's a system and a framework, and whether you think it is or not, that's what it is.

Almost every study Bible comes from a theological system. They're interpreting it from a grid.

Let's put it this way. If you didn't grow up on an island and you had zero context for church at all, and you literally did start with Genesis chapter one, you're going to have to, by page chapter three and chapter four and chapter five, you're going to have to start creating some kind of an understanding.

It's going to be a while until you get the whole, because the Bible is a big book full of different genres.

Let's say you do have just a smidgen, small bit of theological background.

You grew up in the United States or the UK or somewhere where the concept of the Trinity is not foreign.

Almost everyone who reads their Bibles reads it with a Trinitarian system, meaning that the systematic theology of the

Trinity, because when we mean by systematic, we mean you look at all of Scripture and you pull out what Scripture says about a specific topic, and we formulate a conclusion about it.

So we systematize the Scripture into a theological conclusion. We're teaching doctrine, truth claims.

That's right. So we would say that the Bible concludes that God is a

Trinity. He is three in essence, one in person. You have this system that you put upon.

You mean the other, three in person, one in essence. One in essence. Thank you. As soon as I said it, I was like, I think that's reversed.

It's like, hold the phone. Let's make sure. Hold the phone. They're teaching heresy. So anytime that you read

Yahweh, Jesus, Holy Spirit, you are not reading that apart from your understanding that this is a part of it.

So these aren't three different gods. These aren't three different beings that are completely separate. One was created, one is eternal.

You believe that all are eternal, all are equal, all are God, and you put that upon the text.

And why do you believe that? It's because Christians through history have surveyed the entire Scripture and have seen where God is

Father, God is Son, God is Holy Spirit, and He is one God, and then have attempted to articulate that as faithfully as they can according to the word of God.

And we have the doctrine of the Trinity, and you're exactly right. Every Christian in a

Western context anyway, regardless of your theological framework, reads Scripture from a Trinitarian perspective and comes to the text with that presupposition.

And if you don't, you're not a Christian. That's legitimate. If you're not Trinitarian, that's exactly right.

You are not historically Orthodox. That's right. So I would say that that's the simplest example

I can give for people is that if you are historically going to hold to what

Christians have held to from the beginning of time, then you have to be

Trinitarian and you're going to be reading Scripture in that way. So that is where we use our systematic theology to help us interpret

Scripture. And what we're going to argue is that no one comes to the

Bible and just reads it without a presupposition. We all are presupposing upon the text something about the text.

And the question is, you have to determine what your presupposition is. I didn't realize

I had a presupposition when I was growing up through high school and going through college until I learned about presuppositionalism.

And then I learned about hermeneutics and interpreting God's word. And then I was taught a dispensational hermeneutic.

I was taught to read the Bible from that perspective. But what I realized was when I was being taught dispensationalism in college and then in seminary, it wasn't foreign to me because it's what

I had been taught my entire life. No one ever told me. I legitimately just thought I was opening

God's word and I was just reading it for what it was. But I was actually putting upon the text this presupposition that had been handed to me.

And this is, I think, what we're trying to get at is that everyone has these. You just have to be able to identify which one do you have.

So you've used a couple of terms. You already defined systematic theology. Another word that you threw out there is hermeneutics.

And what that means is a method of biblical interpretation. Like, how do we understand the Bible? And then you also talked about biblical theology.

And what we mean by that is understanding the progressive nature of God's unfolding revelation as it pertains to the whole story of Scripture and that story being the redemption of His people.

And so inevitably, when we have this conversation about how we understand the Bible, we are talking in terms of hermeneutics interpretation.

We're talking in terms of biblical theology and systematic theology. And all of these things matter for us as we come to the text and aim to make sense out of it.

And I know that there are people who say, well, do you have to go to seminary in order to interpret

God's word rightly? And I would say a lot of people who went to seminary don't interpret God's word rightly.

That's how we got heresy. No, I don't think so. There's nothing in Scripture that demands that or commands that.

And this is not what this podcast is about. This podcast is about helping us really look at the text and maybe use the text to help govern.

As we concluded Trinitarian theology from the text, there are other overarching theologies that help us interpret all of Scripture.

So one of the things that is very important in hermeneutics when you're giving the explanation of a text, you're exposing the meaning of a text, there are words that are being thrown out there that every interpreter of God's word, no matter what their theological system is, is going to understand this.

We're going to look at the grammar of the text. What is the actual grammar telling us?

If you're a serious Bible interpreter, that's important, right? Justin Perdue The grammar and even the syntax, meaning the structure of the sentences and how things hang together.

Absolutely. We're all going to do that. And this is important in any type of reading. If you're going to read history, a letter, a document, reading comprehension is important.

So yes, we want to start with the basics of the grammar, and then we understand that the

Bible was written in a historic document form most of the time.

Justin Perdue And it's written in a historical context in time and space, like events that are happening.

Right. So we're going to look at the grammar, we're going to look at the history. And there are different, you know,

I would say the dispensational model and the covenantal understanding of Scripture, both would hold to a grammatical historic understanding of Scripture.

The grammar is important, it's vital, and the history is important. Then there's a word that's used and I think is very important.

When you're reading something and you're looking at the grammar and you're understanding it from a historic standpoint, you have to understand the context, right?

Who wrote this? And then there's a really important concept that I was taught in college and in seminary is what is the author's intention in writing what he wrote, right?

So all of that is pushing you towards, you're following the text along the way.

So grammar, history, authorial intent. So that I would say anyone who's serious about Bible interpretation, those are some ground rules that everyone's going to hold on to.

Now, this is where things are going to start to change, right? This is where we would say your system is going to influence what happens next.

Sure. So I'm just going to go ahead and positively state some things that you and I agree about,

John, and that we at Theocast agree about that are, I don't think, controversial at all.

And we'll move forward from there. So you've already talked about the grammatical situation, the historical situation, and how we want to take those things seriously.

And you've also mentioned authorial intent, like what was the intent of the author? Those things all matter, and there is something that we would contend that is perhaps even greater, and that is the historic

Christian confession and acknowledgement that there is one divine author of Scripture, that the

Holy Spirit inspired men. He did not usurp their personalities. He inhabited them and their personalities and had them write down exactly what he wanted written down.

This is a great work of God as he superintended the process of revelation.

So given that there is one divine author of Scripture, we are also concerned not just with the human author's intent as much as he understood it.

Moses, pick your writer, David, the evangelists who wrote the

Gospels, the apostles who wrote New Testament epistles, etc. We are concerned with God's intention.

What did God intend to reveal through these particular passages of Scripture as his revelation continues to unfold?

It would be a great passage that is used just to defend and explain what it is that you meant by the

Holy Spirit is the one governing what is going on. 2 Peter 1 .21 says, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the

Holy Spirit. The belief that God the author is the one who is influencing and moving what should be said and why we can call it perfect and infallible is because it is the divine author,

God through the Spirit, giving. 2 Peter 1 is perhaps the most clear text.

2 Timothy 3 .16 says, all Scripture is breathed out by God. God is inhabiting the personalities and even the minds of men, not overcoming them, but inhabiting them so that they write what he intends to be written down as they are carried along by His Spirit.

We would be irresponsible to not consider the divine author's intent in every passage of Scripture.

What is God doing from Genesis to Revelation? What is God telling us about Him and about Himself, about us, about His ways with us, about the way of salvation and redemption?

We want to interpret every passage of Scripture in light of that grand design that God has, and so then we've got to start asking some questions like, where would we understand those things?

How would we understand the grand authorial intent of Scripture that comes from God Himself?

So Justin, to that point, we now have mentioned context and now the greater context.

So when we are interpreting God's word, we always have to look at the greater context of all of Scripture.

So there is the grammar, there's the history, there's the immediate context. Let's just take, as an example,

Genesis 3 .15. This will be kind of where we end up unfolding all of Scripture for us at this moment.

But Genesis 3 .15, the immediate context, Moses is the author, and the grammar tells us that he is giving us a history in somewhat of a, some would say, a poetic form.

Much of the Old Testament was written often so that it could be sung and memorized by music.

And so there's a poetic nature to what he's writing, but it's clearly the unfolding of a history and the author's intentions.

This is where things can get a little muddy. Because we don't look at Scripture on a greater context, this is where the evolution and creation debate comes in.

Somehow we are thinking the author's intention is to prove seven -day little creation, and we're not even going to get into that.

That's a whole other podcast for another day. But no, the author is Moses, who is writing to the people of God, who just became the of God in this reinstated covenant, or a new covenant, which is the

Mosaic covenant. And they have no idea who God is. 400 years, 430 years in Egypt, completely paganized.

I mean, what do they do the moment they get out into the wilderness, right? They are worshiping idols, they're building idols. It's this gross worship of other gods.

So Moses comes in and says, you need to understand who it is that you just made this covenant with. So the context is important to interpret

Genesis 3 .15 and following, or even the first three chapters of Genesis. You have to read it in the context of the law, and really in understanding

Genesis. So to understand Genesis, you have to understand Exodus. And much of Scripture is reading and then going back, reading and then going back, because it will help explain to you why what was written ahead of time.

Right. So the Bible right now isn't actually structured in, most Bibles aren't structured in chronological order.

They're structured in more of a systematic understanding of different genres.

So when we understand Scripture, we have to understand that it wasn't written as if a story begins in the beginning and then it ends in Revelation.

Yes, that's how those books are structured as far as it literally says in the beginning and then Revelation ends.

But everything in between doesn't quite fit that way. Yeah, no, your example is really good.

So Moses wrote the first five books of Scripture. And a lot of times, I don't know that this registers with everybody, but he is writing at a period of history that is much, much later than obviously what happened that he's writing about in the book of Genesis.

I mean, Moses comes along much, much later. And so what is he doing? Of course, to your point, he's recording history and what happened.

And I mean, we would contend he's recording history in a redemptive historical way. We'll get to that maybe more in a minute.

So he's recording that history, but he's also trying to help, to your point, to help the people of Israel even understand who they are and where they came from and what the point of their existence is.

Because yeah, they were in Egypt for 400 years, and now they've been rescued from slavery and God parted the Red Sea and did all these crazy things.

Now they're wandering around in the wilderness and they've been given this law. And it's like, what in the world does all this mean?

And Moses is giving them that. Yeah. And I just want to interject, if you want to know what the authorial intent of Moses is when he's writing the first three chapters of Genesis, these people are polytheists, means that they believe in multiple gods.

It is part of Egypt. It is what Israel's plugged with for hundreds of years.

It's like in the, it's one of the top 10 commands, right? The 10 commands, you should serve one God. So Moses is writing and proving, right?

Moses is battling and saying, no, you can no longer be a polytheist because there aren't multiple gods.

There is one God who created all things, including you. That's the authorial intent. And he owns you.

And the reason I can say that with confidence is because of the greater context of the law, reading back from Exodus back into Genesis, I can see, oh, okay, this is what

Moses is doing. And I just think that's a helpful example of saying there's the immediate, so there's grammar, there's history, there's immediate context.

And then there's a greater context, which would be all of the law. And now I would say there's even a greater context.

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Yeah, John, let me use some maybe slightly different terms to continue to clarify what we mean here.

You were talking about the immediate context, and that might be the book itself within which these words, these events are contained, and the intent of the author of that book.

There is a greater context that you described that we might even say is a particular epic of redemptive history.

And then there is an even greater context, which would be the entire revelation of God and the grand plan of redemption that God has, that has existed since before time began, and will be consummated in the new heavens and the new earth.

And so we want to understand Scripture and interpret Scripture on all of those levels, all of those horizons.

Immediate context, the epic of redemptive history that we're in, and then the context of the entire

Bible, the whole canon, and the grand story of redemption that Scripture reveals. So an observation from me, bro, on this is you hear some people say and argue that it is wrong to do what you just did, to read something that occurs later and then understand something that came earlier in light of it.

So you just did it with Genesis and Exodus. There will be some who would press back against that idea, particularly when we come to try to understand the entire

Old Testament, and then we will say, well, you need to understand the Old Testament in light of the

New Testament. Some will press back on that idea. So I just want to be really clear that where we stand here at Theocast is that the best interpreter of the

Old Testament is the Holy Spirit speaking to us in the New Testament. And so if we're going to talk about that grand intent of Scripture, the grand authorial intent of God, how would we best interpret an

Old Testament passage? Well, we would want to understand how Jesus and the apostles understood the

Old Testament if we're going to faithfully understand it ourselves. We would not just go to the Old Testament and isolate it in its immediate historical context, but we would say, no, how did

Jesus, how did Paul, how did Peter, how did these guys, by the inspiration of the Spirit, understand Isaiah, understand the

Psalms, understand the book of Moses? And then we take our cue from them in how we would interpret it, preach it, apply it, understand it.

Yeah, no, I think that's really helpful. So we've kind of thrown some big stuff out there, and I think it would be helpful for us to maybe give some explanation.

When you go to the Bible, you do have to answer a particular question.

What is the Bible about? Is it random? Was that the original intention?

Yeah, was it random? Well, here's some information about Israel, and now here's some information about the law, and now here's some

Psalm and Proverbs, and here's some prophecy about when Jesus comes back. Oh, yeah, and there's this

Jesus guy. Okay, well, now let's talk about Jesus in the New Testament. And we chop the

Bible up, and there's no fluidity to it at all. There's no continuity.

It's all discontinuity. It can be a jumbled mess. And we would say when you interpret scripture, there becomes a theme, and I would say that theme is introduced to you at the beginning.

So Genesis 1, you understand there is a God who is the creator of all things, and He is sovereign, meaning there is no other

God than He. He is powerful. He is sovereign, and it's introduced to us in His capacity in the beginning.

And then very early on in the story, we are introduced to the relationship that God develops between humanity and Himself, right?

So God walks with humans. He has a relationship with humans. He even puts them as responsible for His creation, and then even gives them some regulations.

These are things you will not do. Don't eat of the tree. These are things you will do. Govern and procreate.

And then immediately, what does humans do? They're tempted by Satan, and they fall. So within three chapters, it's like this immediate introduction to God, man, and relationship with God.

And the relationship between God and man doesn't last very long until it's separated by sin.

Immediately when the separation happens, there's a promise, and this promise was always lost to me. I don't know why it was never emphasized, but God makes a promise to Eve, and He says,

Eve, through you and your seed, will come. We call him the snake crusher. I mean, He's going to come, and He's going to crush the head of the serpent, and He will bruise

His heel. Well, that's a very weird phrase. What does that mean? You know, it's kind of like, well, it's this metaphor that gets greater and greater explanation, but I will tell you from the story in Genesis, you do see

Adam and Eve anticipating this child being born to fix.

So Adam and Eve lived in the garden. They were cast out of the garden. The garden was protected, and Adam and Eve are anticipating this child fixing what they broke because this is what

God promised. And the question that remains in everybody's mind as you're reading this is, well, who's the seed?

Who's the seed? Right? Who is the seed? I don't know how you can't interpret the Bible with that immediate context influencing you.

It's not like as if God changes plans and goes, okay, now I'm going to do something different. I decided

I'm going to have a nation, and the whole Bible becomes about a nation. And that's disconnected from the previous promise made to Eve.

Right. Well, brother, I would contend in the spirit of what you just said, beginning with Genesis 3 .15,

we understand that the rest of Scripture from that point forward is an unfolding of that plan that God revealed there in that verse, that there will come one who will crush the head of the serpent, who is the devil, who will conquer the great enemy of God's people, who will right every wrong, and who will fix what

Adam and Eve broke. That's exactly right. And so I would contend that if we're talking about the

Old Testament prior to Christ's arrival, the entire Old Testament, it is undeniable that it is forward looking.

There is always this gaze that is fixed to a time in the future when something will happen that will absolutely, unequivocally save God's people, and it will be accomplished.

It will be done. Then that guy shows up on the scene, and then all of the revelation that comes after him is explaining further what he accomplished and then what that means for life in the church, the new people of God.

And so it really burns me up. I'm not trying to be punchy or anything like that, but it burns me up when people will say, well, what

Isaiah is saying is fundamentally not about Jesus. It's really about Israel.

It's not about Christ. What David is writing about is about Israel and about his kingly line.

It's not about Jesus. It's like, well, okay, I want to be gracious to you and understand what you're trying to say and assume well of what you mean and all of that.

I get it that there's an original context and that there's that epic of redemptive history, but holy smokes, is it not clear that Isaiah and David and all the writers of the

Old Testament are looking forward to Christ who would come? Of course, we understand them in light of Jesus and in light of how

Jesus understood them and in light of how the apostles understood Jesus to fulfill everything that was written in the entire

Old Testament. To not do so would be, I think, irresponsible at best and maybe,

I don't know, insane at worst, but I will restrain myself there.

Yeah, dude. I mean, it's just like even Genesis. You talk about the creation account in Genesis. The point of that, like you already said, is to establish who

God is, how humans were made in his image and how he owns us and how he requires things of us, our relationship to him.

But then I would even contend that in reading Genesis 1 to 3, we immediately are thinking about what God reveals in Revelation.

If we're not, we're misguided because you see the fulfillment of that creation in the

Garden of Eden and the tree of life and everything that's in it. You see the fulfillment in the new heavens and the new earth and the heavenly city and the tree of life that's there and how all of this stuff that was broken is restored and God is now with man and he is their

God and the Lord is with them and all of that. Let's go to the words of Christ here real quick.

Luke chapter 24, verses 44 and following. Jesus is in response. It's never bad to quote

Jesus. Right. I'm not going to be that guy. Let's go to the red letters. They're all inspired.

The black ones are inspired like the red ones are, but here we go to the red ones. Exactly. These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the

Psalms must be fulfilled. Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures and said to them, Thus it is written that Christ should suffer on the third day, rise from the dead, and that repentance for the goodness of sin should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

You are the witnesses of these things. And then you have Jesus literally saying that the law and the prophets were written about me and he says it's not in a positive.

This is a negative. This is John six or John five. I can't remember.

John five. John 540. Yeah. If you would have believed in Moses, you would have believed in me for Moses wrote of me.

Now let's make some clarifications. There's some miscommunications here. We are not saying that you can find

Jesus in every verse of the Old Testament, that somehow there's a connection to every little thing that was ever written by Moses.

No, the point of it was the greater context, the purpose of what Moses is writing is the redemption of Israel or of God's people in history.

And so Jesus is pointing back to the law, back to the prophets, back to the Psalms saying they are speaking of me.

The context, the greater context, the overarching purpose I would say of the Bible is to reveal to us how

God is going to fulfill the promise he made to Adam and Eve, which then was further made to Abraham, which then was further made to his sons and then to Moses and then to David and then to Israel and the prophets that there is coming one who is the greater, the greater, the greater, the greater priest, the greater prophet, the greater

King. And then when Jesus shows up on the scene, what is he described as? He is described as our prophet, priest, and king, which is the entire

Old Testament system. The entire Old Testament system is a prophetic kingdom, priestly kingdom.

So yeah, I mean, just John 5 is incredibly important. You already referenced John 5, 46, but in John 5, 39,

Jesus is talking to his Jewish audience and he says, you search the scriptures because you think in them you have eternal life and it is they that bear witness about me.

Jesus shows up on the scene. John the Baptist pronounces him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

And there we should be thinking about a whole host of things, but in particular, the Passover lamb and all the lambs that were slaughtered to fulfill

Israel's obligations in the sacrificial system so that they might have their uncleanness dealt with so that they could then be a part of the people again.

But then, I mean, the book of Hebrews, brother, I mean, my goodness, if we're going to talk about biblical theology and we're going to talk about how to interpret scripture and how to understand the

Old Testament, there might be no book more valuable than Hebrews, where we understand that Jesus is greater than angels.

He is greater than Aaron, who was the first high priest instituted. He's Moses's brother and he's instituted as a high priest.

Jesus is greater than Moses, and Moses was a prophet unlike any other.

And then we understand that Jesus is the fulfillment of everything that has come before, including the sacrificial system.

And we read that the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sin, but the blood of Christ can, and that he has accomplished redemption, and that he is seated at the right hand of God, and that God's people have been perfected for all time, and that he has saved them and it's done, and that all the priests who came before him died.

And so there had to be a lot of them, but he lives forever and makes intercession for them and has saved them, and we'll see to it that they will be with him forever.

So yeah, we are not trying to force something down onto the scripture that's not there.

We are just taking our cue from Christ and the apostles to interpret the entire

Bible in light of God's purpose, which is to accomplish his plan of redemption that he made before the world began.

And we are unashamed, because God is unashamed, that that plan would be accomplished through Christ and him alone.

And so this kind of Christ -centered, redemptive, historical understanding of scripture comes out of the text, and then we read the entire thing in light of it.

I know we say this stuff all the time, but it needs to be said. The drum needs to be beaten constantly, because people always are wondering, is it responsible to interpret the

Bible this way? Is it right to preach this way? Is the point of every passage of scripture

Christ and the redemption accomplished by him ultimately? I would stake my ministry on it.

Yes, that is the ultimate point of every passage of scripture. All right,

I'm going to stop. I'm going to go. Take a breath. No, it's helpful.

So I would say what we're trying to argue here is that the redemption, that the Bible is the story of how

God redeems sinners through Christ, the overarching. Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't sub -stories and sub -categories that uphold that, right?

Everything in the Old Testament is up underneath that, because it doesn't help. Here's the thing, if you're going to base your entire relationship between you and God, the creator of the world, on the relationship and the words of Jesus, because Jesus says you cannot get to the

Father unless you get through me. That's a big statement. If we're going to trust Jesus and believe that that's true, that my eternity is staked on a man named

Jesus saying, only eternal life happens through me. It's the only way.

If you're going to believe that, you better be sure that what he is saying is trustworthy. The Old Testament is the proof that Jesus is trustworthy, but we don't see it that way.

We see the Old Testament as there's these moral values, and there's this whole system by Israel, and Israel becomes the point of the

Old Testament. I mean, everyone today, I can't, Christians, everywhere

I meet them, they're all talking about last times and Israel and this, and they read their Bibles with a newspaper in hand, as if somehow that's the point of the

Bible. I'm like, actually, you're missing the point here.

The majority of scripture is the revelation of how Jesus Christ wins, not how we should be terrified of what the world might do.

I would say there's a couple of examples of this, and then we're going to have to move into the members section, which

I definitely have some thoughts there. So two thoughts, and then Justin, I'll let you have your,

I know you're going to respond to this. I'm going to just say you can respond, and then we'll go to members. First Corinthians 15 .45,

these are the type of passages that I'm talking about that we can use and say, okay, this helps us understand. It's this rainbow effect where we go back to Genesis and say, okay, let's read this again.

Paul talks about there's two Adams, right? The first Adam, this is what he says. The first Adam became a living being.

The last Adam became a life -giving spirit. Well, he's using this language of two

Adams. Well, we understand where Adam failed, Christ succeeds, and we're using all of scripture to answer the question, how is it that Christ becomes the life -giving

Adam? Then you also have in Ephesians where Paul is interpreting all of scripture for you, and he gives you a story that the

Old Testament doesn't hand you. You don't get this story until you get to the New Testament.

So this is Ephesians chapter two, and just for the sake of time, I'm just going to read a section of it.

It says in verse four that even as he chose us in him before the foundations of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him, in love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ according to the purpose of his will.

Paul is saying God's plan of redemption started before Genesis one.

So we have later on Paul interpreting not only the Bible, but all of God's will and all of redemptive history,

I would say of all of history of the Bible, explaining that it is the unfolding of this.

How do you get to the adoptions of sons? Well, he's telling you that started before Genesis one started.

Justin Perdue All right, so a couple thoughts before we head to the members area. Jesus is not only the new and better Adam.

It is quite clear that Jesus is the better Israel as well. How would we see that in scripture?

Well, one example that I think is very clear is if you consider the beginning of Christ's ministry, not only is he baptized for the sake of his people, that also,

I think, would point back to how the language of scripture is that Israel is baptized in the waters of the Red Sea.

But then before Jesus is tempted by Satan, he is in the wilderness for 40 days.

Well, Israel was in the wilderness for 40 years. Then Jesus will quote to Satan, he'll quote scripture from the book of Moses, which is from that era of redemptive history.

Jesus succeeds where Israel failed, and he obviously succeeds where Adam had failed in the garden in succumbing to the temptation of Satan.

So Jesus is the greater Adam. He's the greater Israel. And so even in understanding what

Christ came to accomplish, he is accomplishing what Israel failed to do, and he is the better son of God.

So it's appropriate that we would understand Israel in light of Christ and what he was coming to do.

Just one maybe punchy thing, if you'll allow me to say it, and I'm not trying to upset anybody.

We're Reformed here at Theocast, and we are covenantal in our understanding of scripture, and we have talked about covenant theology at various points.

We've got a teaching series on that that we would commend to you as well that is apart from the regular podcast.

But sometimes friends of ours, John, will levy criticism against us, against Reformed covenantal types, and they'll say, well, we are aiming to read the

Bible literally, and you guys are not trying to do that in the same way.

I would say, well, I don't agree with you because when you say that you are reading the Bible literally, you don't mean that when

Jesus will say something like, I am the door of the sheep. Well, you don't believe that Jesus is literally saying that he's a door, and you'll say, well, of course not.

He's using the language of metaphor there, to which we would say exactly, which is what we say about scripture often is that not all of the revelation is the same kind, that there's a lot of metaphorical, figurative language that has a greater meaning than what is right there on the page in front of you.

Or, for example, these friends of ours who will say, we're taking the Bible literally will then read about scorpions or something in the book of Revelation and say, well, those are

Apache helicopters or something, and it's like, okay, well, I thought you were meaning to read the

Bible literally. Which is it, brother? Help me, because it seems that you too are understanding that there are various kinds of literature in scripture, and you are more or less literal as you frame it, depending on what passage we're talking about and what the text is saying.

You need to understand that that's all we're doing. We just have a different theological system than you, and now let's go to the text and evaluate our systems and see whose is better.

That's right. That's right. Yeah. Well, I'm going to respond to that in the members podcast, because I do have some things to say.

That's so good. Sorry, I brought up Apache helicopters. Anyway. Yeah, that's fine. There are four things I'm going to recommend that will be in the notes.

Let's make sure we put these in the notes. Four resources. One, our new series on covenant theology.

The first two episodes will go into a deep explanation of what we've been trying to say here, as far as a redemptive historic understanding of scripture from the covenant of redemption.

I would also recommend a couple of books. The easiest one, first one would probably be

Sam Renahan's book on the mystery of Christ, the covenant, and his kingdom. His first three chapters are excellent for redemptive historic understanding of scripture.

Michael Williams, Far As The Curse Is Found, The Covenant Story of Redemption is also a great book.

I don't agree with everything he says in there, but I think his opening few chapters are excellent. And then if you want one that's hard to read, but it's the foundation that a lot of guys hold to.

It's called Biblical Theology by Voss, Old and New Testament. Gerhardus Voss. Gerhardus Voss, which, man, what a great name.

Voss, Gerhardus Voss. Anyways, and those would be our recommendations.

You'll find all of those on our website. You can go to theocast .org, find this episode, and you'll be able to find all of that there.

So, in our members section, we are going to talk about how all of scripture is

Christian scripture. There's no such thing as Bible that is just for the Old Testament people and Bible for the

New Testament. Big mistake. We ignore the Old Testament often. And then second,

I believe your method of interpretation will influence how you see assurance and the point of assurance of the believer.

So, I will just say this. I think the redemptive historic covenantal perspective of scripture is what brings assurance to the believer.

It's the point, and other systems tend to cause you to doubt your assurance. So, I don't disagree.

All right. So, for those of you who don't know what we're talking about, we have a membership. It's a way for everyone that would like to support

Theocast can do so, and we just provide extra content like additional classes, some online live streaming, different resources.

You can go to theocast .org to learn more about how to support us and be a part of our membership. We'll see you over there.