Theonomy, yay or nay

Opening Banter and Show Introduction

You can say what you want, but you won't around me. Sheep among misfits. A misfit in the trailer park at night. A misprint with the six cents. Been sick ever since my brother died of an O .D. My two cents never made sense.

Either to me or anyone else inside of the sheep fence. My 9th Smith on my right side. Why you staring at your cop dot sign and my John Hancock on the dotted line? Tell me what's the bottom line. The bottom line is I'm not right.

I'm not left, but this elephant won't fight. There's nothing left but the spotlight. Hold my beer, you can find me in the moonlight. You can say what you want. You can say what you want, but you won't around me.

You can say what you want. You can say what you... I'm wits in the deep end and I can't find my assigned seat to sit in. My theology don't fit in. Black sheep of the Reformation sheep pen. To the Reformed, I'm just another Baptist baptized again.

The bastard child of Anabaptist. Host to child of Reformation society. We don't need your education. Give me a Bible and a bookshelf of dead men. Cigars, bourbons, and beer cans. Bow ties, tattoos, and bearded men.

Making Reformation great again. You can say what you want. You can say what you want, but you won't around me. You can say what you want. You can say what you want, but you won't around me. No, you won't around me.

And we are live. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Jeff. I am one of the pastors slash elders of Covenant Reformed Baptist Church in Tallahoma, Tennessee. If you're ever in Tallahoma, Tennessee, or the surrounding counties, please come and worship with us.

I'm with my good friend, Matt Ford. Matt, why don't you introduce yourself, brother?

Hey, I'm Matt Ford. I am 32 years old. I am married for 10 years. I have been married for 10 years. I have four boys and another boy on the way. I go to Solomon's Porch Christian Community in Smyrna, Tennessee, and I'm the deacon there.

Happy to be on. Very happy.

Happy to be on. Well, I'm happy to have you. A lot of y 'all might notice his name at least. For the most part, when we're doing these videos, he chimes in and asks us really good questions. And so me and Matt met at a church years ago called Solomon's Porch.

It kind of has a—if I'm not mistaken, correct me if I'm wrong, Matt, but you could be a part of—you can hold to the 1689, the Westminster. And was there another one that you could hold to to be a part of that church?

Yeah. Yeah, there was. It's not coming to the top of my head right now.

Has that changed?

It has. It has.

Is it strictly Westminster now?

For eldership.

For eldership.

And you can subscribe to the 1646, and you can still be Baptist. We allow an exception to baptism, but we don't accept the 1689. You can be a Reformed Baptist, but you have to—basically, you have to believe in the covenants the way that we do.

But you can be—you do not have to hold to the mode of baptism.

Okay. Okay. Yeah, so I was going there for a little while, met him. I was able to meet the Sennelias, which Cal—Pastor Cal is my co-pastor at Covenant Reformed Baptist Church. He does all the music there.

And so it was a good time that I had. And also my daughter met Pastor Jeremy's daughter, and they became best friends. So it was a sweet time that I had there. So speaking of not being able to be a Reformed Baptist, 1689 covenant theology at your church.

So that's kind of what we want to look at tonight. So the topic is theonomy, yea or nay? He says yea. I say nay. But we want to come at this as friends, right? I mean, we're not enemies of the gospel.

He knows how I feel. I see his post. I think the thing that most aggravates me about his post is when he's going off on us Baptists, on the mode of baptism in our children. So hopefully he'll feel more comfortable after tonight, and we can come back on and talk about that issue.

We'll stay away from that tonight, but we'll kind of dabble into the idea of the covenant, how his view of the covenant allows for theonomy, and how my view of the covenant does not allow for theonomy.

Would you agree with that statement?

Yes.

Well, your statement about how my view, my covenant view, yea, allows me to have theonomy, and yours wouldn't.

Yes.

Are you familiar with 1689 federalism?

I might be off, so you can correct me the whole time, but I did dabble in it for a good bit. I read Pascal Denault's book.

Good book.

I read it twice. It's one of those books I recommend to people. I tell them, please read it, because I think if you read the book, you will not be Baptist anymore.

Yea.

Well, there's better books out there than that one. I know quite a few Presbyterians who are coming to the Baptist faith because of 1689 federalism.

See, I'm proving wrong.

Yea.

I read that, but that and Jonathan Edwards' History of Redemption. It was a buddy of mine. His name's Tom Agnew. He's a pastor of a church here in Smyrna. He was meeting with me, and he was like, man, you ever heard of 1689 federalism?

I said, no, I've never heard of it. At this time, I called myself a 1689 Baptist.

Yea.

So I started reading. I got really confused by their Venn diagram, where it was like a 21st century Baptist guy in the middle.

Yea.

That was me.

That was me. I was like, I'm a 1689 guy. I'm not 21st century.

Yea.

So I just started flopping between reading Presbyterian people and reading Nehemiah Cox and the John Owen, reading Pascal Denault, reading Keech's Catechism, but I ended up on a different side of the fence by the end of it.

Well, you know, we're still brothers.

Yea.

But hopefully after tonight, you know, if you feel comfortable, we can come back and have that discussion pertaining to baptism, infant baptism. So we'll call it infant baptism, yea or nay, right?

All right.

Kind of work off of what we're doing tonight.

All right.

So do you want to go first or would you like me to go first?

No.

Yea, you talk as much as you want to talk.

This is different for me.

So you talk as much as you want. If you do give me the floor, I went back and I listened to your last podcast one more time. You just wrote down Q &As and stuff.

Yea.

So I went back and listened to that one as well. It seemed to go about 145 miles an hour, right? Hopefully tonight we can slow it down.

Cool.

But yea. Yea, so when it comes to covenant theology, and I'm looking at it from a 1689 Baptist covenant theology perspective, so we would see that the covenant of grace was only announced like it was promised in Genesis 315.

So if you look at Genesis 315, I'll turn there real quick. And so the covenant of grace is really for us the curse given to the serpent. So the serpent was cursed and through his curse we receive a promise of the covenant of grace.

Verse 15 of Genesis 3 says, he's speaking to the serpent God here. I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel.

So this idea of the seed of the woman, we see that it's passed through Abraham, it's passed through Isaac, Jacob, Jacob's sons, ultimately Judah, David. You see this covenant promise that a Messiah is going to come and he will sit on the throne of David and all the nations will be blessed through him.

So what we see here in Genesis 315 as a Baptist 1689 Federalist is that there's only a promise of a covenant of grace, not the establishment of the covenant of grace. It seems from my view that it says that it's not until the offspring of the woman bruises the head of the serpent.

So that would be at the cross of Jesus Christ when Jesus is crucified. And so we would say that that the covenant of grace is the new covenant. The covenant of grace is the new covenant. All right. So if the covenant of grace is the new covenant, it did not begin.

The covenant of grace did not begin until Jesus Christ was crucified on that cross. That means that it was not a part of the old covenant. And so since it was not a part of the old covenant, things pertaining to the old covenant is not allowed into the new covenant.

So that's why we wouldn't we would say that circumcision is not a part of the new covenant. Because it's part of the old covenant system. So when we get down to the judicial laws, the ceremonial law, we say that that's why our our Baptist faith.

I'd like to say Baptist faith message. Don't shoot me, Baptist. Our 1689 lets us know that, you know, once Jerusalem was destroyed 70 A .D., so, too, those laws are no longer pertaining to them or to you and I.

That's just a quick summation of why we see that that the old covenant system is not brought into the new covenant. It's because the covenant of grace was not inaugurated until the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

OK, can I ask you a question about what you said? Yes. So you said that it's promised, but not established. So you are saying that when he when he made the promise, that was not the beginning of the process of the covenant of grace.

Right now, I'm not saying that those in the old covenant were not saved by the covenant of grace. Yeah, it's retroactive, retroactive and retrospective. So they were looking forward to the promise where we are hindsight looking back at the promise.

But yeah, you make it you make a distinction between something being promised and something starting something being started something.

Correct. And we see that from the text of Genesis 315. Now, someone could show me an establishment of that covenant right there in Genesis 315. I'll listen. I'm a text guy.

What are you looking for when you want it to be when you say show me it established? What what does that look like?

Well, what would that look like?

So from my point of view, it says that the offspring of the woman will bruise the head of the serpent while only bruising his heel. And we know from the new covenant that that takes place at the cross.

In John 12, Jesus speaking of something that was about to come upon him, he says, now the judgment is here. Now the ruler of this world will be judged. And that takes place on the cross. We see that also in Hebrews chapter two, that he, through his death, bear on resurrection, destroys the power of Satan.

And actually him itself.

But in promising that is not the starting of the process. Correct. OK.

That's not the covenant of grace established or inaugurated.

No. OK. OK. All right. So this is where I say my my view on how this fits in. Yes, please. OK. All right. So the way that I view the covenants, I view them. Basically, I guess I'll start it out this way.

I view them as covenants of promise. So it's multiple covenants of one promise and the promise being Genesis 315 and the covenants all. They're connecting. So you have the promise that we just read in Genesis 315.

And then when God establishes a covenant with Noah, you would see you see that promise, that covenant that God make with Noah as God fulfilling and continuing his his faithfulness to Adam and Eve and the promise that he made with them.

And that's why he preserved Noah was because he's fulfilled. He's fulfilling the promise that he made in Genesis 315, and he's being faithful to the promise that he made to Noah's grandparents. And then when he does save Noah and his family, puts him in the ark and saves him, he comes out and then he's reaffirming that covenant that or that that that the creation mandates, you know, it's a it's a second world.

You know, it's a restarting, but it's it really sounds a lot similar to the creation mandates. And I think that Noah was familiar with those. Noah knew what his what was taught to his to his father and his mother.

And so when God establishes covenant with Noah, you have this huge arrow pointing back at the promise. So it's this is the covenant of of that promise. And then you have the next one with Abraham and with Abraham.

It's the same thing. So you have Noah, you have Adam here and Adam has Noah has locked in, like locked in with Adam or locked in with the covenant that he made with Adam and Noah's pointing back at Adam.

And then you have Abraham locking in with Noah and he's pointing back. And every time that God's making these covenants, he's he's building upon and bigger and better. And I see him as kind of like one of those little Russian dolls where you you pop it open and then there's like another smaller doll that comes out, except it's the opposite.

With the covenants of God, each one was bigger and better. And every time he made another covenant, he would he would open up a covenant with Noah and it was bigger than the covenant. It was more clear than the covenant he made with Adam.

And then when you get to Abraham, he opens it up and it's even more stuff. And they're going to be, you know, children as much as the dust of the earth. There's going to have a land now. And then you get Moses and it's not only going to be children, but you're going to be like this holy nation.

You're not just going to be a nation with a lot of people in it. You're going to be a light to the nation. You're going to be the example that all the other nations are supposed to be. And then he frees them up.

He gives them a law. So now you got this whole you got you got a way to live. That's even clearer than it was given to Noah in a way that was because I agree with what you said the other day about how the deck log, the time that the Ten Commandments was talked about by God to Moses.

That wasn't the first time, you know, Adam had it as well. But each time the covenant that God establishes with the covenant heads in the Old Testament, he's making Genesis three more clear and they're each connecting to one another.

And so every time that someone from Noah's family would believe in the promises that Noah told them that God was saying or if they heard God or every time that the people Abraham's family would believe the promises that their patriarch, that their mediator Abraham was telling them about God.

Every time they put their faith in those promises of God, they were putting their faith in Genesis 315. And so they were all the covenants are coming back to Genesis 315. And every covenant coming out of Genesis 315 is God being faithful to keeping Genesis 315.

And it keeps getting bigger and better and bigger and better. Then eventually you get to the new covenant and, you know, you have God on both ends of the covenant and we have better promises. We have the mysteries of the old covenant are revealed.

They're no longer, they're no longer can conceal the work of the Holy Spirit is, is, I mean, really, it's really the work of the Holy Spirit. The ministry of the Holy Spirit is really explained to the letters of the apostles and, you know, the words of Christ.

So, yeah, that's, that's how I see it. And so the why mine has, I guess it can fit theonomy is because theonomy was one of the gifts and the graces that was given to the people of God in the mosaic covenant.

And we use, we use those parts that were given in the mosaic covenant, the judicial laws and the ceremonial laws. We use the general equity out of those. Now, the moral law has always existed. Like we agree on the moral laws always existed.

It can't be abolished. It can only be kept.

Hey, just one second. Brayden's trying to get on him in real quick. He'll kind of keep us from fighting. Hey, Brayden, quit it.

Knock it out.

Did you miss everything thus far?

You know, I've, I've got some of it.

I apologize.

I had gotten a phone call and so I was in the middle of doing some church stuff. And so I wasn't able to jump on here when I was hoping to.

And then I get about to get podcast discipline.

So I know, I know.

I feel it.

I feel it's coming. And then it took like another 10 minutes to load my computer up to be able to get on. So I apologize, guys. Yeah, I'm here.

Yeah.

Go ahead and finish, man.

Yeah.

So the moral law, as you know, it's preexisted. I believe the moral law comes from its expression in the nature of God. And so as long as God has been, we, there's been a morality, you know, God is, God is good, even, you know, God is good all the time.

So, yeah, but you have the, you have the moral law that is, you know, all of it transcends, goes through all dispensations. And then you have the ceremonial and the judicial law. And we now, you know, we take the general equity out of those.

We take them. We take them. What I mean by general equity. My definition is we take the moral teachings from those laws.

Well, if you watched our show, we are for general equity.

Yeah. Yeah.

I watched.

We're not for the theonomic.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah.

And but we're not for the theonomic movement because we think that that's more than general equity. You know, they say general equity, but it's actually a lot more than that's coming through. And it leads to what's called pronominalism.

So would you say that that the the old covenant and the new covenant are holding hands? Are they locked arms like you were talking about? Like what's new about the new covenant?

What's new? You have a better mediator. You have better promises. You have a fuller revelation of Jesus Christ. We don't need. We're so full where we don't need another word. The mediator, his mediatorial work is so great.

We do not need another mediator. We cannot have another mediator. The work of the Holy Spirit is on full blast. You know, in the old covenant, the work of the Holy Spirit was very limited because the knowledge of Christ was very limited.

The Holy Spirit is working and getting us to always pointing us to Christ. But Christ was a shadow in the old covenant. So the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament saints is not to the capacity of the work of the spirit in the New Testament saints.

Given that we have a full Christ, the shadows are gone. That's another that's another thing that's different is we don't we don't need the tutor anymore. The ceremony and the ceremonial laws are gone.

So you would say that the tutor, which will get there is only the ceremonial.

Also, the laws given to Israel, we don't we don't have those anymore. Like I don't I'm not if I ever run for local. For a town council or mayor or governor or any of that stuff, I would never say that people need to have fences on their roofs because that was something that was given to Israel.

I would promote fences around pools and that would be me taking a general equity. Yeah. All right. So the reason why they had they had fences around their their roofs is because that's where people were.

Yeah, absolutely. Kicking back. All right. So just so people can understand the reason which, you know, like you're a Presbyterian and you're for theonomy. Most people in your camp would not be for theonomy, but it is consistent Presbyterianism in my view.

So I would agree if I was a Presbyterian, I would probably be more of a theonomist style Presbyterian. So just so people will understand the two views real quickly. I say that the covenant of grace is the new covenant.

It was not inaugurated in Genesis 315, only a promise that throughout all the other covenants, those that believed in the promise would be rescued, saved, received the salvation that you and I receive under the new covenant by looking forward to Christ.

But that the new covenant is distinct from the old covenant. It is not holding hands. They have no part with one another. As you would say that they are not distinct, but the newness of the instead of a new covenant, it's more a newness of the covenant, better mediator, better promises.

And you went through a lot that I just I'm not going to recite right now. So if you hold to what I see as covenant theology, Baptist covenant theology, 1689 federalism, because the new covenant is not the old covenant, but it's new, that means such as infant baptism, right?

The general equity for infant baptism, I mean, for circumcision is not infant baptism. Right. So I would say that the general if we want to speak in terms of general equity, I would say that it's it's it's baptism for those that have been born again.

So I would say that it's the baptism is the sign. But it's not for infants. It's for those that have been born again. I guess you can cliche say infants in the faith. But but so so we would see general equity as well, like we would see general equity, general principles as well, but not taking a one for one.

So we're not trying to establish the mosaic law. And I get my standard for that from the new covenant, not from the old covenant, as you would would would say that there's a new covenant, it's only a newness about it.

I'm not I don't want to misrepresent you. So please correct me if I'm wrong.

Yeah, no, I I think that the new covenant like Haps was talking yesterday when the other day when he said that there's some people that are so crazy and I was and I was listening to him and I was like, all right, what's you know, what's he going to say?

And he said in Jeremiah uses the word Kadesh and it means renew. And he's like, some people are so crazy to think it's just like a re you know, and I was like, yeah, that's me.

Yeah, that's me.

So and he said that it changed when it became like an adjective as opposed to a verb or something. And I really know about that. Yeah.

Yeah. So I guess for the for the most part, my fight in this is that so many Baptists are falling under this camp. I got, you know, members of my church that are that have been dabbling into it. I've been trying to fight it from the pulpit.

But but that are 21st century Baptists.

No, they're there are 69 federalists. Yeah, yeah, they're falling into the theonomy movement. But but but again, I was at one time three years ago, I would have said I was a theonomist. But but then I really got to looking at it, you know, because because I hold a general equity.

But but the movement of the theonomy movement, the theonomic movement is more than just general equity. And I think if it's just general equity, there's no sense in making up a name for it. Like so I don't think Christians, churches or theology should be like rival gangs.

Right. You know, like saying I'm up, you know, like if, you know, postmeal, theonomist, Calvinist, you know, you know, like you had all these things. You see what I'm saying? They try to differentiate us from one another.

What is when you say theonomy is more than general equity? What what specifically do you mean?

Well, well, let me and Braden, please jump in any time, brother. Let me read you something and tell me if you agree with this definition. Is that fair? So if you just Google theonomy, I just wanted to see what Google had to say.

I just put in theonomy and it says theonomy. From from Theos, God and Numos law is a hypothetical Christian form of government, which in society is ruled by divine law. Theonomists hold that the divine law, particularly the judicial law of the Old Testament, should be observed by modern society.

Would you agree with that, with that definition?

Yeah. Yeah. If observed doesn't mean a one to one carryover, then yeah. If observed means it should in some sense guide us for faith and practice, then yes, I do believe that in some sense we use a judiciary law.

Would you say that this is for even like the whole postmeal hope, you know, Christianizing the nations? So would you say that this has to be even for nations that haven't been Christianized? Like like in a way of establishing law for them to as like a a prepping for the gospel?

Yeah, I think that evangelism is going to happen on both on both ends. It's going to happen through just homegrown door knocking. And it's going to happen through street evangelism is going to happen through local churches serving the poor.

It's going to happen. And we're going to make disciples of nations through regular citizens converting and then also through Kings. And I think that's why Paul went to Kings, because nations, I mean, Rome wasn't Christian when Paul was there.

But Paul was like, no, I want I want to go talk to Caesar. I want to go talk to him. And I think it's because Paul saw that, you know, we're going to pray for kings. I'm going to evangelize to him, too, because sometimes it just takes one king to reform and then the whole nation will follow suit.

We see that in Old Testament a couple of different times with the nation of Israel. But yeah, I do. I think that God, Jesus Christ is going to put all enemies underneath his feet. Yeah, I think he's going to put all enemies underneath his feet.

And I think pagan countries that worship false gods are his enemies and he will put them under his feet. And I think that he is. You and I were his enemy at one time.

Yes. And we were put under his feet through the preaching of the gospel, not by establishing a law that you and I or none of the apostles or none of the forefathers could bear.

Well, I don't I don't think you can preach the gospel without also establishing good works. Like that was one of the things that Paul talks about. What do you mean good works? Good works that are in accordance to repentance and faith.

And how do we know it? Like by what standard is something good? And I think you go to the scripture and you look at it.

And I think the scripture or to the law, to Moses.

Both. Yeah. I mean, when I say scripture, I mean the whole thing, the whole counsel of God.

Yeah. Well, I listen to a lot of theonymous, believe it or not. And so when they say by what standard, for the most part, they're holding to the Mosaic law. Like like that's the standard. Because if you use the new covenant standards, we understand that that whenever Paul did preach to the king, he didn't bear.

He didn't try to get them to to to establish the moral law or or the judicial law, which was not the first step.

The first step is the conversion of the heart. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. The first step is conversion of heart because a king is supposed to promote good and punish evil. Well, how do you know what's good and what's evil?

You do through the Bible. Well, how can you interpret the Bible apart from the Holy Spirit? You can't. So a king must be converted. I don't think there should be any political leaders that are not Christian because they're supposed to promote good and punish evil.

And nobody can know what that is apart from the scripture.

I agree with you about the political parties.

They got to have the Holy Spirit. So when Paul came, he came with Christ as king of kings. He died. He buried. He rose from the grave. He is not ascended into heaven. He's been given a name above all names and every knee should bow.

And it doesn't he doesn't say every name, every knee will bow. But he looks at kings and says, you are obligated to bow. You should bow. Well, Paul does.

Every knee will bow and every tongue will confess.

I think it's Ephesians. He says every knee, every knee should bow.

Yeah. I'm not sure if you know the verse. Yeah. So so I definitely want to touch back on the whole idea of establishing law like we see that in the new covenant. I think if you like, unless you have some question, a question for me on that same issue, I think maybe we should go to some text.

I want to ask you what your go to passages for it. And then I think we need to look at the go to passage that everyone hangs on. And that is Matthew five, 17. So just real fast.

Let me interrupt you, Jeff, just because that just talking about going to the text and answering the question. Jaylon Bachman just asked a question that I think it looks like she's definitely on the she would be on the Matt's opinion.

But Jaylon says, doesn't Paul hold to the Old Testament as a standard of righteousness? Every sin Paul mentions that is unrighteous as a sin in the Old Testament with a law against it. Homosexuality, murder, theft, idolatry, etc. Paul's standard in Christ.

Paul's standard is Christ. Christ kept the law. And I believe she's referring to First Corinthians, chapter six.

Well, of course, I mean, because the the the precepts, the ceremonial and the judicial law comes from the moral law, the transcendent decalogue, the 10 words, the Jews call them the 10 commandments. Right.

All that comes from that. So, of course, every bit of the judicial law is there because it's in one sense. You can say they are doing general equity from the moral law as as these these. I keep forgetting what what the Psalms call them.

Precepts. Yeah. Help me out if you know it. The rules of the precepts. And so so, of course, you know, of course, they're going to have that law language. And, of course, Paul is going to be pointing to him.

I mean, I point to him. But the idea that if we establish mosaic law and then the next thing you know, we're we're we're making it to where if someone's a homosexual, they're getting put in prison or being killed.

And there would be no such were some of you such were some of you take place through the new covenant. OK, but but unless you have a question, I think we should go to some text and just. And again, if you have any question or if you I'd like to hear the text that you would go to for me to to really consider.

So so the text I was talking about when I said should bow, that's Philippians two is when he uses the word should. And when it comes to. You said that it ended up being where homosexuals are jailed or anything more or stone.

And you said that such would be some of you.

And I think you're quoting Paul where he said he said in Second Corinthians, it would be that that portion of scripture she's talking about where he he names off a list of of sins and crimes that people were punished under the under the penal code.

And he tells the then believers that such were some of you, but you've been washed, you've been cleansed.

Well, here here is my blue collar. Only in theonomy for a couple of years now, off the cuff hot take on that is that in the law of God, you you saw lots of mercy. And you saw lots of truth. And in Ezekiel in 18 and Ezekiel 33, God says, you know, I don't desire the death of anybody.

And he says, if the wicked man repents, then he shouldn't die. If the righteous man acts wickedness, he should. The righteous man cannot count his righteousness to save him. And the wicked man would not be like put the death for his wickedness if he turns from his ways.