Q & A: Christ in the OT (Part 1)

Welcome to No Compromise Radio Ministry. My name is Mike Ebendroth. And today on the show, it's part two of the

Q &A on Friday night at the Pillars Conference. John Tucker, Pat Ebendroth, and myself.

But before we get into that, just a little bit of housekeeping, housecleaning, house sweeping.

You can order the book Cancer Is Not Your Shepherd on Amazon .com. And I don't know if it's going to turn into Kindle or not.

It's harder for me to do Kindle work. So if you're an expert out there and you know how to do Kindle work, and you'd be able to take the documents and turn them into Kindle, that'd be awesome.

So let's start off asking for free. If you could help me, I need...

I think Gospel Assurance is not Kindle. Sexual Fidelity is not Kindle, the newer one.

Cancer Is Not Your Shepherd. So if that's the kind of thing you'd like to help with, we'll even put your name in the front of the

Kindle book. How's that? Right on. Oh, I just saw the Harrison Perkins Reformed Covenant Theology book.

A systematic introduction is out. That looks fantastic. Don't forget

Pat Ebendroth's Active Obedience of Jesus or Active Obedience of Christ is out along with his book, one -year -old book,

Covenant Theology. Pretty amazing. Also working on right now a parenting book, 31

Day Guide to Suffering. Just kidding. 31 Day Guide to Parenting.

Very, very funny. Also, you can go to Heidelblog, my friend

Scott Clark, and I've been included in a bevy of great writers there that he has published three or four days a week.

Of course, his podcast is wonderful. And you can get my articles there from flannel graph stuff to from Lordship to Law Gospel.

That's putting me in a tight spot. It is written so kindly, nicely.

You can go there. But anyway, great website, heidelblog .net. Today is part one of the second

Q &A that Pat and I did on Sunday School Hour with John Tucker at the Pillars Conference.

Talked about things in general and things specifically and things about the Lord Jesus. That's a great question.

Can you go too far? How do you avoid going too far? That's it. We need to be aware of that.

But we need to be careful that we don't interpret the Bible like unbelievers. So we do have the apostles and we do have

Jesus. We do have the model. And I just can't help but follow the model.

But one reason why I went to Isaiah is because it's common with dispensationalists to say, hey, that's a foul.

If you only read the Old Testament, you wouldn't come to these conclusions. And I want to go, ah, hold on. You need to read

Isaiah closer. He himself does it. So I think we're seeing a lot of good progress here, but it's creating conflicts.

Conflicts with seminaries, conflicts with scholars, conflicts with pastors. But I think good things are happening.

I'm getting, same is true for all of us sitting up here. Getting more and more calls from pastors, more and more calls from seminary students, you know, kind of missionaries don't tell.

It's one of those things I like to say, as I say on the pactum a lot, once you see it, you can't unsee it. And you just start seeing the connections.

And we're not doing weird things like, well, you know, there's wood used in the temple. And you know, they used wood for the cross too.

We're not, that's not what we're doing at all. So another thing I didn't talk much about in my message would be the nature of progressive revelation.

It's progressing. So in Hebrews 1, in these last days, he's spoken to us through his son.

Don't go back. Whatever you do, don't go back. So I realize

I sound like I'm critiquing and complaining, and that's true. But I'm super excited. I mean, the world right now in evangelicalism, not entirely, but in a good way, the world is a changing.

And it's exciting, I think. And it's exciting to be a part of it and helping people to see.

Brian, I think there could be an error with some Christ -centered redemptive historical folks, and there has been an error when they take, for instance, the book of Judges.

And instead of even understanding what Judges was about, every chapter just turns into this is who

Jesus is. And so I want to make sure when I'm teaching through an Old Testament book that I'm not ignoring what's happening there and just immediately pointing to Christ.

When I preached through Ecclesiastes a while ago, and I wanted to make sure when you're listening to me, you're understanding

Ecclesiastes better, but then you're also appreciating this Christ who's going to come, who's the opposite of vanity, and all is vanity.

So we want to make sure we don't do what—and I'll name his name—Tim Keller would do that very often.

In Judges, I didn't really learn Judges. I just learned that there was one who didn't do—people did what was right in their own eyes, and at least

Jesus came along, and He didn't do that. He did what the Father did. The other thing that's happening is, if you think about analogy of Scripture, when you put all the

Scripture together and form a cohesive whole in a systematic theology way, the dispensationalists say, you can do that, but in Bible interpretation, push that to the very end to check to see if your results are fine.

And we're saying your presuppositions that you have in systematic theology and understanding even of the word

Lord Yahweh or the triune God, that's front -loaded. When you come to the text, don't you already have a lot of preconceived notions that you have about the

Scripture and systematic theology and biblical theology? You're coming to the text knowing what the

Bible says later, and so we're saying, analogy of the faith, systematic theology, progressive revelation tied together in a bow starts early.

They say, push it to the very end so they can keep the future for Israel. What's analogy of faith?

Analogy of Scripture is if you look at other passages that are similar to the passage you're looking at, kind of a cross -reference.

But analogy of faith, I think it's more, I look at all the Bible together, it teaches a coherent, divine mind, systematic theology like, what's the

Bible teach about? The names of God. And I have that already in my mind before I come to the text that I've already been taught about.

So maybe you've got a better definition. No, you just mentioned it a couple times. I just wanted to make sure you explained how it was.

Any questions from the congregation? Anybody want to ask anything about the topics covered tonight?

Not anything. I think it's such a good question.

Um, none of us are perfect. We're all learning. It's good to learn to say the word that Arthur Fonzarelli could never say on happy days, right?

I was rrr, rrr, right? To say you're wrong. I tend to, I don't trust people very much if they'll never say they were wrong about something ever in the past, because we're growing and learning.

So there's that. I guess my appeal is going to be before you trust anybody, trust scripture.

And that's why the historic confessions that those have gone before us have said, that's why we interpret scripture with scripture.

The only infallible interpretation of scripture is scripture. I think that's reasonable.

That's way better than saying, you know, you should trust me or you should trust

R .C. Sproul. You could trust him now if you could talk to him because he's in heaven, but you get the idea, right?

So it's good to have teachers, but I so badly, even tonight in reading texts with you, wanted you to see it yourself.

Because if I don't think you're seeing it, I don't think you're buying it. And I think that's good. So it's good to trust people, but only insofar as you should trust people, trust the

Lord ultimately. But it is good to see what did Jesus say about this? We are called to be

Bereans. And that's interesting because the Bereans worked together. There was no one single Berean. They were working together as Christians to try to find out if what

Paul was saying is true. So I'm longing for the day that we get back to being good

Bereans together, paying attention to what scripture says about scripture. And I think most of your gut level instinct probably is when you hear someone say you're not allowed to interpret scripture with scripture, you're like, that's baloney.

That's a bunch of goofball stuff. And I think that's a good instinct. But your next pastor, when

John goes to heaven or Jamaica or something, I don't know.

But your next pastor may be being trained right now in a seminary that's conservative, evangelical,

Bible -believing, maybe fundamentalist even, and being trained in post -enlightenment hermeneutics.

And you should know that ahead of time. So I love it that you're asking the question, then who should we trust?

And then secondarily, it is healthy to see what Christians before us have taught. How is it that Christians have been talking and speaking for a long time?

They've not been saying things like, don't interpret the new in light of the old and the old in light of the new.

They've been saying one divine author, ultimately, many human authors. So it's fascinating to think about the enlightenment and its effects.

And if I could add to that, when you study the confessions, as Pat was talking about, and you realize, okay, in the 1600s in Switzerland, they believed the same thing as the 1500s in Germany and the 1700s in England and the 1900s in Princeton, New Jersey.

And they're all different time periods, different languages, and they're all coming to the same conclusions.

That really helps me. Secondly, aren't you glad for the main things in the

Bible, a child could understand them. We understand what sin is. We understand what death is.

We understand what a sacrifice is. You read about Jesus, and we don't know how the virgin conception happened, but we know it's true.

And we know he's sinless, and he dies for sinners. He's raised from the dead, and those who look to him will never be disappointed.

And so whether that means there's a future for Israel or not, or all these other things, we know we can trust the Lord Jesus. And so it's important to study these things tonight.

But I didn't want it to go without me saying, so many things in the

Bible are super simple. The fool says in his heart, there's no God. What does that mean in the

Hebrew? The fool says in his heart, there's no God. And so how can children understand

Bible stories about Jesus? Because they're easy to understand. There are difficult things in the

Scriptures, of course. Peter says that about Paul in 2 Peter 3, but there are so many super simple things in Scripture that we just take by faith, right?

It's a glorious ruin. I mean, most of us have been influenced by Dallas Seminary, and they're the ones that filled the majority of pulpits in the

Baptistic world. And so you think of like a Charles Stanley, or you think of Chuck Sendall, you think of John MacArthur, you think of Moody, Jay Vernon McGee.

Most of the people on the radio that we would know about or popularly write books are dispensationalists.

And so that's probably why we're all in this environment of dispensationalism.

You only get one tonight. This is your last one. Last week,

I had lunch with a good friend, pastor of mine, and he's a dispensationalist, and we had a great lunch.

So understand that because we agree on the gospel, life, death, resurrection, ascension of Jesus. And I think it's a matter of time before he prays the prayer and comes over to the other side.

But go ahead, I didn't let you ask your question. Okay, so one thing

I think is, okay, one thing that's kind of interesting is, okay, think

Protestant liberalism, whether it's the United Methodists or the Presbyterians or the

Lutherans or the Baptists. So we've got, you know, that Machen was having a fit, okay, 1920s, 1900s.

And so they're denying supernatural things. And you've got guys like Darby, the founder of dispensationalism, 1800s.

You've got then Lewis Barry Chafer, founder of Dallas Seminary, Presbyterian. Hey, those guys don't even believe the

Bible is the accusation. So what should we do is how Chafer's thinking.

Let's get rid of the Westminster Confession of Faith because that's Presbyterian, and Presbyterians are liberal.

And let's start over just reading the Bible. And we're going to start in Genesis.

Well, he's going to come to some good conclusions, because he's taking the Bible seriously, doing word studies, trying to figure it all out.

But he's, he's coming to immature conclusions, right?

It takes him a while to get to the New Testament. And if you don't have the New Testament, you come to some interesting conclusions about the lesser son, the nation,

Israel. And so they're taking all that and not looking at the whole. They don't have maturity on their side.

And Chafer says some really weird things like, you know, just, Jesus was raised only for the church.

He wasn't raised for believing Jews. That's crazy, McCrazy sauce, okay?

So, because he's raised for our justification, that means Jews wouldn't be justified. I mean, he tried to reinvent the wheel, and when you try to reinvent the wheel, it's usually square, right?

It's just not helpful. And Walvoord did the same kind of stuff. And so I kind of am sympathetic. If you throw away all of the history and the confessionalism, and you try to start over, think about how many crazy mistakes

Pat Ebendroth is going to make. Lots of them. Oh, how about there were

Presbyterians who still believed the Bible was true. They weren't all liberal. And how about the Westminster Confession?

It's not inspired, but actually there's a lot of really good water under the bridge there. So I'm kind of sympathetic.

When you try to just start over, you start saying really weird things that ought not be said that way.

So I'm kind of sympathetic toward dispensationalists in that sense. But I don't know if that helps, but it helped me vent.

So thanks for allowing me a little time on the counseling chair. I love dispensationalists.

I love helping them because they believe the Bible is true.

And you just start showing them things, and you can't unsee what you see. And guess what?

Guess who God's firstborn son is? Israel. Oh, keep reading. Guess who his ultimate firstborn son is?

Jesus. And guess what? They both can't be ultimate. And now all of a sudden you're on your way to not being a dispensationalist anymore.

Thank you. All right. Any other questions? Sure. Well, to repeat the sentence for the tape, digital,

VHS beta. Is the Cancer Book written for believers or unbelievers, or would an unbeliever benefit?

I wrote it as a Christian to Christians, but I wrote it in kind of—it's not really technical.

And so it's amazing when people are in a foxhole, are on their deathbed, what they'll read.

And so I already have a connection with people as I was writing it, because I've had cancer now. This is the second time in that brush with COVID death.

So it's not just a theoretical thing. And so I've already had people from our church say, I bought the book and I'm giving it to my unbelieving friend.

And if the Lord wants them to pick it up and read it, they will. And so the back of the book, it says in quotation marks, you have cancer.

And I talk about hearing those words for the first time, you know, right where you were, who was there, how it affected your family.

And so I'm really hoping, since the gospel is presented in most every chapter, that I'm hoping unbelievers will read it.

Kind of a neat little story. I said to the nurses at Dana -Farber two weeks ago, when I went in for my monthly checkup, they asked me how

I am. And kind of emotionally, I'm not really as happy or joyful, and the medicine kind of affects me that way.

Sometimes I just feel like crying. And so they were asking me about that. I said, but I did finish the cancer book.

And she said, well, how long did it take you to write it? I said, oh, about 12 days, 10 days. And they couldn't really believe it.

And I said, well, AI works wonders. And I said,

I'll have a copy for you next month. And she said, oh, that would be wonderful. And I showed her a picture of it.

She said, oh, that's really neat. And I said, oh, my daughter helped design this, that or the other. And she said, well, why don't you put it in the gift store downstairs?

And I said, that would be a great idea. At a Jewish hospital? OK. I said, it's distinctively

Christian. She said, I don't think that'll matter. So I went downstairs to the gift shop. And there's a little book nook there with a bunch of keto for cancer books and how to eat right if you have cancer and some

Buddhist books on cancer survivors. So I'm going to try to get it into the bookstore, the gift store at Dana -Farber

Cancer Hospital. And if I can do that, then I'm going to call up John Hopkins, MD Anderson, Mayo, UCLA, et cetera.

So I'm hoping that it will really help people, even if they're unbelievers, because I think they will listen, since I can say,

I have cancer. I know what you're going through. Yeah. And I think, Lynette, too, on page 101 of his book, he notes from a quote from Octavius Winslow.

He says, we must remark in the outset that in the sovereignty of God, sickness has often proved a means of conversion.

Speaking figuratively, the sick bed has become a converting bed. And so ultimately then, you can use this book as a means to communicate with your relative and tell her about Jesus Christ and use this book as a springboard to do so.

And maybe it will become a converting bed. So we'll pray to that end. Well, thanks, folks, for being attentive tonight.

We appreciate your time. And we look forward to seeing you tomorrow morning at 930. Have a good evening.

Thank you. Well, that wraps up the Q &A. Lyons, Ohio, Community Bible Church, John Tucker, Mike Abendroff, Pat Abendroff.

You can get my books at amazon .com, Cancer Is Not Your Shepherd. It is out, 31 -day guide.

I wrote the first 16 days. The last 16, 15 days are from Thomas Watson, Thomas Brooks, and some of those guys.

you need bulk, that is 10 or more, you can email me, Mike, at nocompromiseradio .com.