Who's at Fault and Messy Business

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast.

Thank you.

Welcome back to Have You Not Read. I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are Michael Durham.

David Kassin.

And Andrew Hudson.

Adam and Eve, Sin, and Human Guilt

We're gonna jump right in with a question we received from Afton. Is it Adam and Eve's fault that we have sin?

Well, that's a great question from Afton. We appreciate the question. When you go back and you read the story in Genesis chapter three, we discover that Adam and Eve were, of course, the first people that God made, and they also were the first ones to sin.

Of course, the story begins a little bit before when God talks to Adam. At verse 15 of Genesis two says, then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.

So God told Adam, don't eat of this tree. If you eat it, then you're going to die. So that was the consequence of his action, of his sin. So then when we fast forward in the story a little bit, God has made Eve and he gave Eve to Adam to be his wife.

And then we read in chapter three, verse one, now the serpent was more cunning than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman, has God indeed said you shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.

Then the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die, for God knows that in the day that you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate.

She also gave to her husband with her and he ate. Then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves covering. So Adam and Eve sinned.

And how did they feel about one another and about God after they had sinned? Verse eight, then they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

Well, God knew where they were and he confronted them and told Adam and Eve that they had sinned, that they had broken his law, his rules. They had done the wrong thing and because they sinned, therefore they were going to die.

Now, they didn't die right away. God was kind towards them and compassionate towards us all in that they went on living for a long time, but their relationship with God died, their heart died, their relationship with each other experienced a kind of death.

And nonetheless, God made it so that Adam and Eve could have children, that they could have children, that they could have children, that the human race, that those that God had made in his image as a special creation, that we would continue living even though the wages of sin is death.

The right result of sinning is death. So the question is, do we have sin because of Adam and Eve? Well, that's where sin started, but there's a little bit more to the story and I think Andrew found something in Romans.

Oh yes, so in Romans chapter five, well, I would say just read Romans, but specifically to this point, Romans chapter five, and I'll start in verse 12 and read all the way to the end of the chapter. Therefore, just as through one man sin entered the world, which we just heard about, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.

For until the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed, where there's no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned according to the likeness of the transgression of Adam, who is a type of him who was to come.

But the free gift is not like the offense, for if by the one man's offense, many died, much more the grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded to many. And the gift is not like that which came through the one who sinned, for the judgment which came from one offense resulted in condemnation, but the free gift which came from many offenses resulted in justification.

For if by the one man's offense, death reigned through the one, much more those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ. Therefore, as through one man's offense, judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one man's righteous act, the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life.

For as by one man's disobedience, many were made sinners, so also by one man's obedience, many will be made righteous. Moreover, the law entered that the offense might abound, but where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yes.

Right, yeah.

Afton makes, she asks a really great question. Is it Adam and Eve's fault that we have sinned? I mean, if that's, you have to ask the second question. So, well, they're the ones who've made the mistake.

I'm just paying the price. Why am I also guilty? Why does the Bible say that I'm guilty?

Well, what we just read in chapter five here in Romans is that we're not guilty for someone else's sin, but we ourselves sin, even though it's not taking of the fruit, we all have sinned.

All fallen short.

There's a guilt that we bear because we are in Adam, because of his position as the head of the church of the human race, that there is a sense in which we are guilty in Adam, but it's not merely that.

We also sin ourselves. Not only are we guilty in Adam, but we are guilty in and of ourselves, because we also sin, and as death came in through Adam, death is a reality in our lives, because we have sinned too.

So, if Adam and Eve can be seen as the reason for sin today, that would be a legitimate thing to say, yes, but also, we have sinned because of ourselves, too. So, both of those need to be held together, because the salvation that's being described in Romans five addresses both of those things, that in Christ, there is life.

In Christ, there is righteousness. In Christ, there is forgiveness. In Christ, somebody who was born of Adam, and thus bearing Adam's guilt, and somebody who was a sinner, may find forgiveness and righteousness in Christ, and so, Christ is that much of a savior.

So, I think that, yes, because of Adam and Eve, we have sin, more precisely because of Adam, and that, in a sense, everybody in the world who has ever lived hangs from the belts of two men, either Adam or Christ.

The Levitical Sacrifices and the Weight of Atonement

All right, well, sounds like we sufficiently wrapped up that question, and we have another one that we're gonna move on to in this episode. When reading through Leviticus, it seems that there are many reasons why people need to perform sacrifices for atonement for sins and offerings.

With so many people being led out of Egypt, how did the priests manage to keep up with all of these sacrifices? How many priests were there performing these sacrifices? When I think about Leviticus and all the sacrifices, it would seem that the tabernacle would appear to be a huge bloodbath all the time.

Am I seeing this incorrectly when I read the scriptures?

Well, I think that's fairly accurate to consider all the different sacrifices that need to be made. Thoughts immediately would go to how many animals are we talking about, and how many men do we have working it?

What does it look like in and around the tabernacle? I mean, these are good questions because we're just trying to imagine in our heads what does this look like? How does this actually function? And yeah, we're talking about a lot of blood, aren't we?

We're talking about a lot of work. And it's interesting, the question about how many Levites and so on, you don't actually learn a lot about that in Leviticus, but in Numbers, you do. So Numbers counts the people, and some attention is given to the tribe of Levi in the book of Numbers.

Of course, you remember that Moses and Aaron were Levites, and Moses is writing the book of Numbers. But when you begin to read in Numbers chapter three, we read about the sons of Aaron, the Levites who are serving in the tabernacle.

A census of the Levites is commanded. We hear about 22 ,273 Levites being dedicated, the sons of Kohath, the sons of Gershon, the sons of Mereri, all having their different duties. It was a big organizational task to look after all of these different sacrifices.

And if we're going to look at just the ones who were working in the tabernacle all the time, 8 ,580, and that's just one family. Another family has 3 ,200. Another family has 2 ,630, so on and so forth.

You can just read it for yourself in the book of Numbers. So thousands and thousands of Levites. Remember that the number of the men who were brought up out of Egypt numbered above 600 ,000 men, not counting the women and the children.

So millions of people were coming up out of Egypt and with them great flocks and herds. It's no wonder that Pharaoh, watching the entire wealth of his empire marching away from his borders changed his mind again and went racing after them to try to preserve his power.

But yes, so when you read all the different sacrifices of Leviticus, there's a lot of animals that are dying, being slaughtered for various reasons and in various ways, having to do with purification for sins.

And of course, there was always a sacrifice. There was the daily sacrifice, the morning and the evening. There were the annual sacrifices like the Day of Atonement. There were the kinds of sacrifices that were made that each family did like on the days of Passover.

And then there were the burnt offerings for the trespasses that people committed. There were the purification offerings. There were wave offerings in which it was seen that through the Levites, the people and God would eat together.

There are just myriad sacrifices. And yes, how many animals, how many, just imagine that trek through the wilderness, how many dead bodies were left behind? I mean, how many bones were left behind? How many, and then not only that, but the first generation itself was under the judgment of God.

And so hundreds of thousands of people died in the wilderness along with all of these animals that were being offered up on a daily, weekly, monthly, yearly basis. You're talking about, when you think about all of that and you read through there, obviously one thing that you're coming away with is just the seriousness of sin.

The seriousness of God's holiness is really the superior point to be had there in the survey of Leviticus. However, I think that something else that we should think about is the way that Hebrews handles these reflections from Leviticus.

So when we go to Hebrews chapter eight, we read about Christ who is a mediator of a better covenant which was established on better promises. We read about a new covenant which has made the first obsolete and that what has become obsolete in the times of the New Testament was growing old and ready to vanish away.

We read that the blood of bulls and goats were not sufficient. This wasn't the ultimate point that needed to be made. So when you read through the book of Hebrews, great reflection is made upon these various things.

How many priests? Tens of thousands of priests were needed to do this and then they all died and their sons had to take over for them and then they died and their sons had to take over for them and they had to be maintained and what about all the livestock that you had to keep on raising and you always had to have all these extra lambs and bulls and goats and turtle doves and so on because all these sacrifices that needed to be made and you begin to feel the weightiness of the problem.

Would this have been a bloodier system than surrounding pagan systems? We're talking about sacrifice for atonement and we're talking about sacrifice for sins whereas pagan systems usually are to appease to get the right result, right?

And a lot of times it's based on like one thing, I need the rain to come down and cover my crops whereas we are continually offending our most holy God and so much more blood is required than what is required in pagan systems with unholy gods.

Yeah, I'd say some kind of blood was, it would be bloodier in some ways and less bloody in others.

So more morally bloody, immorally bloody in a pagan system, right? Like they're actually sacrificing humans in a lot of cases, children.

Yeah, and also think of it this way, like if things weren't going well in Israel and this is because of the sins of the people and they had to come and repent before the Lord and sacrifices need to be made, right?

Okay, if things aren't going well in a pagan society, well, then let's kill all 45 families of the priest because obviously they're not getting the job done.

Or the one family that we think is responsible for it, that we've convinced ourselves of it.

Yeah, exactly. And so they're always trying to offer up human sacrifices because you're trying to appease the gods because they knew there was wrong, there was guilt, there was shame and so they were trying to fix the problem by offering up human sacrifices whereas, and it was more bloody in that sense.

And then it was very sporadic, episodic, as you pointed out.

Dramatic.

Yeah, and dramatic.

So is that what we see when Christ is sacrificed upon the cross, this ultimate drama of sin filling up and an attempt to have a pagan sacrifice, a human sacrifice from all these people who have been living in a synthesized religious system?

I believe that was the word of the high priest, right? Better for one man to die for the nation.

Yeah.

Yeah, better that he die than all of us die because the Romans catch wind of an insurrection.

They'll take our place.

So they're appeasing the Roman gods.

Yeah, exactly, whom they afforded upon the people. So yes, there's a lot of animals dying in Leviticus, just descriptively dying in Leviticus. Numbers, Deuteronomy, the journeys of the people of Israel and so on.

So yeah, it's very bloody. And then even in the instructions about what happens when they get into the land, they're not always gonna be able to make it down to the place where God has decided for the tabernacle to rest.

And so they're gonna have to offer up these sacrifices wherever they're at. As if there's all these 12 stone altars all over the place where the people are offering up sacrifices to God throughout the entirety of the land.

Yeah, there's a lot of bloody sacrifice going on for sure.

I can't even imagine just logistically getting rid of all the blood. You have all those people moving as a group. And some of the impetus of the question, what'd you do with all of this blood? And you just washed it, washed away, just had this rivers of blood flowing out.

In the, for example, once you get into the Templar, this question about the tabernacle, going around in, well, at least then they can kind of move locations because it got kind of gross, being in one location for too long.

But now you have the Temple in Jerusalem. And even with Roman sanitation systems, there's still a lot coming out. And you can imagine on Passover, on that afternoon when Christ is on the cross, the lambs, they're being sacrificed at that very moment in the Temple.

And rivers of blood coming out and the Lamb of God being sacrificed at the same time. I mean, talk about drama. I mean, it's the greatest story ever told.

Yeah, so again, I think the weightiness of the New Covenant versus the Old Covenant has to be felt, especially when you think of it this way. When John the Baptist points his disciples to Christ and what he says, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

We have to understand what a big reversal this is, that there's just one Lamb and that the blood of this Lamb can suffice for the world versus countless lambs being slaughtered for just the Jews in this shadow economy versus here comes the real Lamb of God.

It's remarkable. The entire freight of the Old Testament is just shoved into this statement, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. In that one statement, it carries the weight of the entire Old Testament.

It's remarkable.

It's the types and shadows are so incredibly important. You are viewing, you just said that all of the sacrifices point towards Jesus and they find their significance in Him and then using Him as the lens, that's where we see the significance of that whole system.

Christ is the Lamb, Christ is the priest, Christ is the temple. All of these things point towards Him and that incredible reversal says now, no longer do we have rivers of blood flowing out of the tabernacle in the wilderness.

No longer do we have these rivers of blood coming out of the temple. We have one sacrifice of all time is appointed for men to die once and after this comes judgment. Christ was a real man, an actual human.

He died once, sat down at the right hand of the Father. The significance of that once for all sacrifice is paradigm changing.

Yes, coalescing of all of the glories of the Old Covenant into a single point. The weightiness of that, you know, you think of all of the generations of the worship of God, the generations of sacrifice, the promises, the shadows, the types, all of it consolidated into this one man, the most glorious man, the most weighty man, Jesus Christ.

You looking something up, Andrew?

Well, this talk about the river reminds me of when our Lord's side was pierced and blood and water came forth. And I was just reading in John where there's an aside talking about how this testimony is true.

So we have this true testimony of our Lord's sacrifice.

Schofield, Dispensationalism, and Reading the Bible Through Christ

And after that weighty discussion, we will go to our parenthetical section of the podcast where David is gonna wrap up C .I. Schofield's rightly dividing the word for us.

All right, so Schofield wrote in Rightly Dividing the Word of Truth. As we had been discussing in the early 20th century, we talked about the fight that he was going through, fighting liberalism, and why we think that he threw the baby out with the bathwater, wanting to fight for a literal interpretation of scripture.

As a general rule, he wanted to keep scripture, especially Old Testament promises, and we talked about some of those, Abraham, Moses, and David. As a general rule, scripture would be read in its local grammatical context with emphasis on what it meant to the original audience at that time, but he also treats all scripture, Old Testament, New Testament, with something of an equal weight, held them side by side, and treated them in isolation instead of using later revelation to interpret older revelation.

And that's really the point of demarcation that we have. Now, we never really said this. This is a operating assumption that you had to glean from his method. So that's really what I did. Digging in, I discovered what his operating assumption was.

So he wasn't really letting scripture speak for itself, and I think that's really the coup de gras. I would say that he used more of a literalistic interpretation of these verses, because even when Old Testament is quoted in the New, he kept the Old Testament prophecy in its old context.

He didn't let the New Testament tell us what it meant. That's really my claim, that he was ignoring that grammatical context and allowed the Old Testament to interpret the New. What I'd like to do is go through an example or two.

This is right out of chapter one, because as we said last time, chapter one sets up the entire book. If you can accept the premises or the evidence that he presents in chapter one, then you can draw the same conclusion, which is there are two people of God with two sets of promises and ultimately two destinies.

Even if they'll both end up in heaven, they just have different plans. But if that falls apart, then the rest of readily dividing word of truth, and really the entire dispensational system just collapses.

So we have a number of examples that he uses just holding these two collection of promises. The physical promises were to Israel, spiritual promises were to the church, and that's why he came to the conclusion that he did.

And he uses Acts 15, 14 through 16 to prove this case. So let's look at it. In Acts 15, James is addressing the Jerusalem Council.

In 49 AD.

So James says, "'Simeon has declared how God at first "'did visit the Gentiles to take out of them "'a people for his name, "'and to disagree the words of the prophets, "'as it is written. "'After this, I will return "'and will build again the tabernacle of David, "'which is fallen down, "'and I will build again the ruins thereof, "'and I will set it up.'".

This is James quoting Amos to the Jerusalem Council on what are we doing with all these Gentiles coming in. So this is under the heading of Israel. This is a verse that Schofield uses to say, see, these promises are to Israel.

And if you look at the Schofield reference notes, what they do is they make the conclusion, or they draw the conclusion that because you have the temple being rebuilt, well, when is the temple being rebuilt?

Well, in the millennium. And you have these Gentiles streaming in when the temple is being rebuilt. That's in the millennial kingdom. So how can you, Jerusalem Council, how can you refuse to have Gentiles come in now?

They're gonna be coming in in the kingdom, so don't let them, so don't prevent them from coming in now. Now I found, I was just sort of slack-jawed at this. I thought that missed the entire point of the verse of the quotation.

So rebuilding the tabernacle of David. If you take that reading out of Amos, just in his local context, well, that means the temple. Tabernacle of David. Possibly the house of David. Could be the house of David, the palace, but I think the tabernacle, it's really tent, but you could take it to be the temple that David helped to put together, Solomon actually built.

Well, when is that gonna come? Well, millennial kingdom. Okay, what about if it's the house of David, you know, the palace, the throne? Well, that's also the millennial kingdom. So he pushes that all into the future and uses this verse as proof that that temple has to be rebuilt.

But as we know, in his scheme, or in his system, these promises can't be fulfilled until the church is out of the way because the churches have spiritual promises. So that is how Schofield looked at this verse.

And what I'd like to put to you, Jens, is what is the correct, or what you think is the correct interpretation of this verse? If you were to respond to someone with, have you not read, what would you read to them?

Well, I would point to 2 Corinthians chapter six. Addressing the Corinthians, Paul says, if you wanna start mid-verse, specifically in 16, or you are the temple of God. You, you Corinthians.

Who are Gentiles.

Who, exactly, yeah. I'm just, I guess, assuming people know that the Corinthians were Gentiles. Yes, they were not Jews.

That's a very simple verse to read.

Yeah, I mean, it's just a pretty matter of fact.

Well, I guess, you know, you're trying to think about, well, what significance is James seeing here in the events of the Gentiles coming to faith in Christ that repentance has also been granted to the Gentiles as we read in Acts 11.

What are we looking at here? When James says that in light of the Gentiles, in light of the nations coming to faith in Christ, in light of this, this is the fulfillment of what the prophets wrote. After this I will return and I will rebuild the tabernacle of David which has fallen down.

I will rebuild its ruins and I will set it up so that the rest of mankind may seek the Lord, even all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord who does all these things. The temple is standing at this point.

Yes.

In Jerusalem, there's a temple there. It was a temple that was overseen to be rebuilt by the ministry of Ezra and Zerubbabel and so on. And well, it's been beautified. It's been overlaid with gold. Herod the Great began a beautification project that was still ongoing at this time.

Yeah, should we read into the fact that it's not finished yet?

I mean, yeah. I mean, it's not even, in some sense, their beautification project isn't even finished yet, okay? But the temple is standing right now. So it would be very strange for James to be talking about the rebuilding of a physical temple when the temple is standing and it has not been destroyed.

Especially when he's looking at the influx of the Gentiles into the kingdom of Messiah. The house of David is being built here. And if we read the passages in the New Testament deal with this remarkable phenomenon of the Gentiles and the Jews being brought together and temple language is once again used.

So for example, in Ephesians chapter two, we read in verse 17, and he came and preached peace to you who were afar off, and that would be the Gentiles, and to those who were near, that would be the Jews, for through him we both have access by one spirit to the Father.

Now therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, household, okay, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone in whom the whole building being fitted together grows into a holy temple in the Lord in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the spirit.

So I would say that this is the very same language that we're looking at from Acts 15 here at the end of Ephesians two. I think the New Testament is robust with the language of a new temple. And every time we read about the new temple in the New Testament, it's the temple that Christ himself identifies as, and all those who are in him are identified as the temple.

The grid that he places on this verse is so strong that he's, that you'll have to explain away verses like that. You know, if you look more into the notes, at least these particular go-forward reference notes focuses more on the title of David as king versus temple, though you could read the verse in both ways.

So how would your answer change if it's focusing on, well, no, we're not talking about temple. We're talking about David, the throne, the king will come back. So this is Christ holding on to title of David's son.

He's gone away and he's gonna come back, and that's when Israel is gonna be restored. That's when Amos is gonna come true. And all of those verses about the Gentiles streaming to Mount Zion, streaming to the house of David, Acts 15's gotta be talking about that.

Would your answer change at all?

No, not really, because the promise of David to reign again on the throne is a new covenant promise, a new covenant promise associated with the gift of the Holy Spirit for all members of the new covenant.

Jesus himself declared the new covenant to be established in his blood. The Holy Spirit has been manifest at Pentecost in Acts chapter two. We're obviously seeing the outworking of the new covenant life in the book of Acts and its superiority over the old covenant.

And for that kind of a theme, you would read the book of Hebrews in which the language of the people coming to Mount Zion, we discover the book of Hebrews particularly says this is not a physical mountain, okay?

So Hebrews 12, 18, and follows, for you have not come to the mountain that may be touched, okay, you've not come to a physical mountain that burned with fire to blackness and darkness and tempest and the sound of a trumpet and the voice of words that those who heard it begged that the word not be spoken to them anymore, for they could not endure what was commanded.

And if this so much as a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned or shot with an arrow. And so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, I'm exceedingly afraid and trembling. So you have not come to this kind of physical mountain, but you have come to Mount Zion.

Okay, Mount Zion is topographical. Mount Zion is geographical, topographically and geographically important to the old covenant. But now we're reading it in a new way, not something you can touch. And to the city of the living God, not something you can touch.

The heavenly Jerusalem, you see, this is where you've come. You've come to the city of the living God, to heavenly Jerusalem, to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect, to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling that speaks better things than that of Abel.

And then the warning, don't refuse this. What was the temptation of refusing this? Well, very simply, it's not a physical mountain. It's not the physical city. It's not the place where I grew up and was told this is the holy place.

This is where God put his name in his favor. They were told this growing up. Now that Christ has come, things are different. Don't refuse the fulfillment of the shadows. The substance has arrived. And very clearly, the chapter ends up saying that there's gonna be a shaking again, and that which can be removed, the physical shadows of the new covenant, the old covenant, things are going to be shaken and done away with.

But what cannot be shaken is going to remain. So come to Christ, come to Mount Zion, the heavenly Jerusalem.

This entire parenthetical that we've been doing is not just how do you read a book necessarily you disagree with. It's not just about what is dispensationalism versus method B. It is how are you supposed to read the Bible?

How does it make sense? It makes sense through the lens of Christ.

Sure, so in 1 Chronicles chapter 11, we see David being king and leading to take over Jerusalem from the Jebusites. And Zion is called the city of David. So you have clear understanding where his kingship was ruled from Zion.

And it dovetails nicely with the passage from Hebrews that was just read.

We're not waiting for a future time when the tent of David will be rebuilt in order for the Gentiles to come. That prophecy has been fulfilled. The Gentiles are coming now.

Well, that's a good example. And there are myriad examples in the scripture. And again, the challenge is simply this, that when we see these texts, that we read them out loud to ourselves, we read them in their context, and we go look around.