Covenants and Ages
"Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your
own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will direct your
path," Proverbs 3:5-6. "They that wait on the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall
mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not grow weary, they shall
walk and not faint," Isaiah 40:31. "Fear thou not; for I am with
thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will
help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of My
righteousness," Isaiah 41:10. "Be anxious for nothing, but in
everything through prayer and supplication with thanksgiving to God let your
requests be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all
comprehension, shall defend your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus,"
Philippians 4:6-7. "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is
stayed on thee because he trusteth in thee," Isaiah 26:3. "For the
grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God shall stand
forever." Isaiah 40:8.
One of the questions
that came up several times last week I want to address one more time before we
move forward had to do with the definition, and I am emphasizing the fact that
a dispensation means an administration. Now why do I do that? There are several
of us who grew-up hearing definitions based upon Scofield's definition that
starts off, "a dispensation is a period of time." Even though it may
include the idea of administration in there, it introduces the idea of
administration as a secondary characteristic. The primary characteristic when
you say something is 'x' that should be the primary thing. Now, if you look at
the King James, which is about the only translation that used the English word
dispensation, at passages like Ephesians 1:10 as we define this, it is
translated from a Greek word, OKONOMIA, with the English word "dispensation." So if we
are going to define dispensation for all of us who are fans of the original
language, then we have to start with what the Greek word means, not with a
subsequent theological definition that is read into the Scripture. There are
reasons for this.
So when we look at
the Greek word, for example on this first slide I have pasted in the three
meanings given for OIKONOMIA in the Bauer, Danker, Arndt, and
Gingrich Version (BDAG), Third Edition Greek Lexicon, the three
meanings listed for OIKONOMIA are:
1. Responsibility of
management, management
2. State of being
arranged, arrangement, order, plan
3. Program of
instruction, or training
Now at the risk of
over emphasizing my point, does anybody see a time word in those three
meanings? No.
We look at the
Liddell, Scott, Jones Dictionary (LSJ), the meaning of OIKONOMIA is:
1. Management of a
household or family, husbandry, thrift
2. Generally,
direction, regulation, administration
3. Arrangement
4. In Egypt, office
of OIKONOMOS
5. Stewardship
6. Plan,
dispensation
7. In bad sense,
scheming
Again, time is not a part of the denotation of this word; so, the same thing in
the Abbott-Smith Lexicon.
Now the reason this
is important is if you define dispensations primarily a period of time, you
don't include important factors that are related to stewardship. If you
emphasize the primary meaning as being an administration, then what you get
with that word are aspects related to responsibility and accountability where
we develop the fullness of our understanding of a dispensation related to these
tests of revelation. If it is simply a period of time you don't have a Biblical
exegetical foundation for bringing in those important ideas. And that is what
is significant when we look at an administration of God's plan for history: the
emphasis on the human responsibilities, revelation that God has given for that
time period and how God is holding mankind accountable for that revelation
during that administration. This is what the essence of dispensationalism is.
One of the things I was pleased to hear from so many people from the Chafer
Conference we just had was that they were awakened to the fact that most of us
have been awakened to.
I remember realizing
and coming to grips with some of this as a student at Dallas Theological
Seminary, studying dispensationalism; that dispensationalism isn't a time
chart; it isn't just a timeline of the plan for the ages. Dispensationalism is
a fully orbed theological system that is the result of a consistently applied
literal interpretation of Scripture. So to reduce it as it has been in many
minds popularly as simply understanding God's plan for the ages does a
tremendous injustice to the concept and the theology of dispensationalism.
There is a lot to unpack here when we talk about dispensationalism,
understanding the responsibilities that God places in each one of these
periods. If you have something other than administration as the primary idea in
the definition you have also failed. There is a big debate on this and you can
read about it anywhere online. But you are describing a term and not defining
it. And what we have to start with is a good definition to understand it rather
than simply describing it.
That is hard for
some words. Love is a notoriously difficult word to define. Most definitions
are simply describing characteristics of love, but they are not defining or
giving the core meaning of the word love. There are a number of words that we
have in English, especially the abstract words that make that difficult. So we
have to emphasize this concept of administration because it brings such a load
of significance to understanding these periods of time. They are aspects of the
administration of God.
Now when we talk
about dispensational schemes I pointed out last time that the Scofieldian idea
of seven dispensations has sort of taken root because of the popularity of the Scofield Reference Bible. And for some
dispensationalist that has taken on a life of its own, an authority of its own
and they really don't want to get away from Scofield's breakdown. But I think
that there are some areas that we can tweak with Scofield's understanding.
Scofield was not the final word. In fact, if you look at the development of
ideas within dispensationalism, within traditional dispensationalism, there
have been notable changes but they have not caught the popular view because
they don't have a vehicle such as the Scofield
Reference Bible to promote them.
This is a historical
chart that is in Dr. Ryrie's book on dispensationalism and it shows some
breakdowns in the periodization of human history according to the Bible. Pierre
Poiret, who was a French theologian, said the:
1. First
dispensation was the "creation to the deluge" or creation to the
flood
2. Second the
"flood to Moses"
3. Third, from "Moses to the prophets"
4. Then,
"prophets to Christ"
He doesn't have an
Abraham in there at all. He doesn't see what we call the "age of the
law" start until Moses. Then it is Moses to the prophets and the prophets
to Christ.
5. Then he has a
period "manhood and old age." So he is using sort of a maturity model
as he is breaking this down.
6. Then he refers to
the final kingdom, Paul refers to it in Ephesians 1:10 as the "fullness of
time"; here it is the "renovation of all things."
Isaac Watts, who was
a premillennialist and also a well known hymn writer, saw a breakdown at the
beginning, a period of "innocence." He see a clear break between the
period before the fall and after the fall, which he identified as the
"Adamical" dispensation; then the period from the
"Noahical" dispensation, from Noah to Abraham, and then from Abraham
to Moses. He saw the entire period of the Law as one dispensation; then after
that, a "Christian" dispensation.
James Hall Brooks is
interesting because he was a pastor of a Presbyterian church in St. Louis,
Missouri, and he was a mentor to C. I. Scofield. When C. I. Scofield was in St.
Louis he learned much about dispensationalism from James Hall Brooks, so he did
not attend his church and there was a certain mentorship there. James Hall
Brooks held to a first period, the period of "Eden," then the
"Antediluvian," which means before the fall, then the
"Patriarchal" dispensation from the Flood to Moses, the
"Mosaic" dispensation. Then he is one of the few who (has there are
several) who had the life of Christ as a separate dispensation, which he
identified as the "Messianic" dispensation. Now that is interesting
because some of us have been exposed to others who have taught that, and I
believe there is a Biblical defense for it, but we have to understand why.
You can't just say
it is distinct, it is unique, and so it ought to be. There needs to be a solid
theological rational for why you break these periods the way we do. And that is
what I will show as we go through this. That you don't just come in and say
because something changed here or there, or there is a major figure, that that should
be a dispensation. There needs to be a specific reason for that and I think
Scofield provided that with his concept that there is a new revelation, there
is a responsibility given, a test that is in relation to that responsibility, a
failure and then a shift takes place with new revelation. That provides a very
solid paradigm for identifying why you are making your period shift, your
dispensational shift, and the administration shift at each time. I think that
on that basis we can see, and we will see it when we get there, that the age of
the Messianic dispensation, the first advent, is distinct and unique for a
number of reasons. The last one is Scofield's breakdown: innocence, conscience,
and human government, then promise—this would be from Abraham to
Moses—the dispensation of the law, the dispensation of grace, and the
dispensation of the kingdom.
So the question that
we really need to address is: How does God advance the dispensations? How do we
know when we have gone from one dispensation to another looking at it from the
lens of Scripture? What are the keys to being able to address that question? I
believe that the key is understanding a covenant; that covenants are a form of
divine revelation which spell out specific responsibilities to the human race
as well as spelling out certain consequences for failure. Now those are not
present in every covenant, but when there is a new covenant that is given, then
that covenant has new revelation and new accountability. We will look at ages a
little later on. This is why an age is not a dispensation, because when we look
at the broad time periods that have certain similar features such as the age of
the Gentiles when God is working through the entire human race between creation
and the call of Abraham, that is the age of the Gentiles. You have numerous
things that shift inside that age and that is why the dispensation has to be
narrower than an age.
Sometimes an age is
basically identical with the dispensation. For example, some people will refer
to the church age as the age of grace and there is debate as to whether you say
church age in the dispensation of grace or the other way around; but whatever,
they are identical. It started at the day of Pentecost and ends at the rapture
in this time period. We will look at the characteristics later on.
So what moves
history in terms of divine revelation has to do with the concept of covenant?
What is a covenant? A covenant is a form of a contract. It is not identical to
a contract. There is a little bit of a difference between a covenant and a
contract but they are similar in that they are legal documents where one party
is bound to another party in a legal agreement. So we define a covenant as a
contract between God, who is the party of the first part—God initiates
the covenant—who makes a sovereign disposition obligating Himself in
grace to bless man, who is the party of the second part. What that means is
that God is willing to limit Himself to a written or verbal contract with man
in terms of what God is going to do for the human race under that contract. So
God obligates Himself and is willing to bind Himself to that contractual
agreement. He is not operating in a willy-nilly sort of fashion, which is what
you have in every other religion. No other world-religion has God binding
Himself in a legal agreement of this nature to the human race.
Now when we look at
the covenants there are three covenants between God and the Gentiles:
1. Edenic covenant,
which is the creation covenant
2. Adamic covenant,
after the fall
3. Noahic covenant,
after the flood
The Noahic covenant
is still in effect and is in effect until God creates the new heavens and the
new earth. The covenants are closely related. There are clear modifications of
the covenant because of the impact of sin on the human race.
Then there are five
covenants between God and Israel:
1. Abrahamic
covenant
2. Palestinian or
Land covenant
3. Mosaic covenant
4. Davidic covenant,
2 Samuel 7:8-16; Psalm 89:20-37
5. New covenant,
Jeremiah 31:31-34
So let me put this
up in terms of a chart and in terms of what I just said. We start with the
Gentile covenants. There is the Creation covenant that is spelled out in
Genesis 1:27-28 and there are elements of it in Genesis 2 as well. It is clear
that the language God uses is language that becomes part of covenant language
later on in Scripture even though the word covenant is not used there. We will
get into this a little later on to show why I believe this is a covenant. It is
clearly a covenant that takes place. This covenant ends with the fall. It
brings a totally new set of circumstances to the human race and to Creation and
therefore, the original covenant has to be modified to meet the new
circumstances, the new realities brought about by sin. That revision of the
original Creation covenant we call the Adamic Covenant that is described in
Genesis 3:14-19.
That is the primary
governing document until the Flood occurs and after the Flood the earth goes
into another stage of deterioration due to the corruption of sin and God
modifies the covenant again and we refer to this as the Noahic covenant given
in Genesis 9:1-7. The Noahic covenant is in effect until the new heavens and
new earth. So every time you see a rainbow it is a reminder that the Noahic
covenant is still in effect and all of the provisions of the Noahic covenant
are still in effect. So we have these three Gentile covenants.
Then there are the
five covenants that are between God and Israel:
1. The Abrahamic
covenant
2. The Palestinian
or Land covenant
I don't like the
Palestinian covenant because from the time that Scofield wrote, the early
dispensationalist in the 19th century, Palestine was a synonym for Israel. The
term Palestine has been cooped by the Arab population after Arafat turned the
term over to the Arab inhabitants of Israel. So it has a different meaning
today then it did a hundred years ago. So it is better to refer to this as the
Land covenant, sometimes I call it the Real Estate covenant, when God promises
a specific piece of real estate to Israel.
3. Then there is the
Mosaic covenant
4. The Davidic
covenant
5. And the New
covenant to Israel
Of these covenants,
we usually talk about them and I will describe these terms a little more in a
minute, as conditional versus unconditional; that the Mosaic covenant is a
conditional covenant and the other covenants are unconditional. That is
important concept that is traditional terminology. I think that, especially
when you look at Hebrews 8, which develops the application of the New covenant
to the church. The point that the writer of Hebrews is making is that the New
covenant replaces the Mosaic covenant and the Mosaic covenant was never
intended to be a permanent covenant. That is why the New covenant was given to
replace what was always intended to be a temporary covenant.
So it seems from the
theology of Hebrews that the emphasis that God has in distinguishing these two
types of covenants is more the idea of temporary versus permanent. There are
conditions even in so called unconditional covenants, but the covenant itself
and the existence of the covenant is not conditioned upon the obedience of
Israel, so a little more technically accurate term is really a temporary versus
permanent. Now these Jewish covenants— there are five, the unconditional
or permanent—are grounded on the Abrahamic covenant. There are four of
these. The Abrahamic covenant which promised to Israel a specific piece of
land, a blessing through the seed or descendants of Abraham, and worldwide
blessing. Each of the three elements was expanded on in subsequent covenants so
that the land promise is expanded in the land or real estate covenant in
Deuteronomy 30. The seed promise is expanded on in the Davidic covenant in 2
Samuel 7 and the promise of worldwide blessing is expanded in the New covenant
of Jeremiah 31.
Those are permanent
covenants that God promised in which the blessing comes to the entire human
race as mediated through Israel. From Genesis 1-11 God is working exclusively
through all human beings—all the Gentiles, but He limits Himself starting
with the call of Abraham to work through the entire human race and bless them
through Abraham and his descendents. One temporary or conditional covenant is
the Mosaic covenant as described in Exodus 20-40, as well as other passages in
Leviticus and Deuteronomy. So that is the breakdown of the covenants. Each time
God modifies a covenant or gives some new revelation there is a shift in terms
of the dispensation. So now let's talk about these two terms.
Now we have the two
terms, conditional covenant and unconditional covenant. In a temporary or
conditional covenant this is where there is a proposal of God whereby He
promises in a conditional compact with man, by the formula "if you
will", to grant special blessings to men providing he fulfills certain
conditions. God says basically, if you are obedient then I will bless you. This
is what is seen in the Mosaic covenant. If Israel fulfills the Mosaic covenant
then God will keep them in the land and God will bless them, but if they are
disobedient to the covenant God will remove them from the land. Those
conditions also sort of relate to the Abrahamic covenant because God promised
Israel the land unconditionally but they can't live in the land unless they are
spiritually obedient. So there is an implied condition there. If they are
disobedient God is not going to cancel the Abrahamic Covenant but they are not
going to benefit from it because God is not going to let a spiritually
rebellious people live in the land.
So that is sort of
how the Mosaic covenant will connect to the Abrahamic covenant. There is a
temporary nature. That is what the writer of Hebrews brings out. God never
intended the Mosaic covenant to last forever. It was just a temporary law code
for Israel until the Messiah came to fulfill it. So the permanent or
unconditional covenant is when God by a sovereign act establishes an
unconditional contract with man or He declares this in the sense that
announcing to Abraham, "I will do this." It is not at all conditioned
on Abraham's response. In fact, in the covenant ceremony with Abraham it was
typical or traditional in the ancient Near East that when you were signing a
serious treaty or contract, you would have your sacrificial animals, split them
in half, lay the halves of the carcass on each side of a path and the two
contracting parties to the covenant would walk between the halves of the
sacrifice, indicating that they are both bound by that covenant to bring it to
pass.
When God was
establishing this contract with Abraham, He caused a deep sleep to fall on
Abraham, so that God symbolized by a smoking torch that passed alone between
the sacrifices, the halves of the animals, that that indicated that God alone
was binding Himself to that contract and He was going to provide and make sure
that that contract would be fulfilled. So that the Abrahamic covenant becomes
an eternally bound promise of God to the Jewish people, and that means that God
ultimately will fulfill every aspect of that covenant regardless of how the
recipient responds. The existence of that contract is not dependent upon the
behavior of the second party of the human party. So the Jewish covenants are
all unconditional and God will ultimately fulfill them. All of them are
unconditional except for the Mosaic covenant.
Some say the Edenic
covenant is conditional, because God would bless them, they would have eternal
life within Eden as long as they were obedient and once they were disobedient
then they were out of the garden. So I can understand that as being a
conditional covenant. Usually we don't talk about the concepts of conditional
and unconditional with the Gentile covenants. They are connected to one another
as we will see and they govern how man is to operate under God's authority in
relation to the creation. So we can say that the Edenic covenant or the
Creation covenant is conditional, in some sense more so then the others. The
Mosaic covenant is clearly conditional or temporary but the unconditional
covenants that continue are the Adamic, Noahic, Abrahamic, the Land, the
Davidic and the New covenants.
Just looking at the
covenants with Israel, what can we say about the nature of these permanent
covenants with Israel?
1. First of all they
are understood as literal covenants. They are not to be spiritualized; they are
not to be allegorized in some sort of sense where the terms of the covenant no
longer refer to the literal physical statements.
What I mean by that
is that is that when God promises a land to Abraham and his descendants that is
bordered by the great sea, the Mediterranean, the River of Egypt, the River
Euphrates, that doesn't get transferred in the church age to be an illusion to
heaven. If you read Genesis 15 you can't get out of that, that those dimensions
that God gives to Abraham for the land that he promised him. God is just really
talking about heaven here. A literal interpretation means that God is talking
about a literal piece of real estate. But in Covenant theology what they will
say is because Israel broke God's law and Israel rejected the Messiah, then
that land that is bordered by the River of Egypt, the Great Sea, and the River
Euphrates no longer applies, that piece of real estate is no longer promised to
Israel, and that promise now becomes a spiritual promise to the church and it
refers to our heavenly destiny.
So that you have
phrases like the "Promised Land" now in the Old Testament become
allegorized to relate to heaven. Crossing into the Promised Land would then be
allegorized to mean crossing into heaven, so that crossing the Jordan River
becomes allegorized as death and being transferred to heaven. And if you listen
to some old Negro spirituals then that is what you are hearing when it talks
about crossing over the river. You are going into heaven. They are taking a
spiritualized promise and there was a lot of influence from Presbyterian
Covenant theology in the South during the time prior to the American War
Between the States.
In the mid to late
1700s there was an enormous migration of Scot-Irish Presbyterians cross the
Atlantic Ocean and they primarily went to the South. There was a number that
went North, but the vast majority of them went into the South, went into the
Carolinas, went in to Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama. Most of my ancestry was part
of that migration and they were all influenced by Covenant Theology. In fact, I
ran across a genealogy that was done on my family going up through my father's
side and his mother's side. I had never seen this before. This was done during
the 1930s and 1940s. All these people are Scot-Irish Presbyterians and their
names are that way. I have got one ancestor who was imprisoned by the British
along with Andrew Jackson back during the time of the American Revolution.
That is what they
were, but I got into one side of this family and there were seminary presidents
and theologians and Presbyterian pastors. The fruit on the tree was just about
to kill the tree with all these Presbyterian pastors on this on side. Going up
through the period of World War II a number of them became chaplains in the
Marine Corp and in the Navy. It was almost exclusively the Navy and Marine Corp
type military service. In fact, on that side it also went back to one who
listed in the Marines and in the first six months we had a Marine Corp and then
after the American War for Independence he went to seminary at what was the Old
Log College before it was Princeton. Then he became the first chaplain in the
United States Navy. So there is a rich heritage there. But that influenced a
lot of these Negro spirituals.
People like
Stonewall Jackson, Thomas Jonathan Jackson, who was from Virginia, and he was a
profoundly committed Calvinist and Covenant theologian in his thinking. He
would spend every Sunday afternoon teaching the Bible to a group of slaves, and
since they didn't have watches they weren't always on time. In order to teach
them time discipline Jackson would lock the door of the church promptly at
three o'clock so that if they weren't there on time they could not get in. He
would teach them the Bible from a Covenant perspective. His chief of staff
during the Civil War was Robert Lewis Dabney, who later became a founder of the
Austin Presbyterian Seminary and is known as one of the greatest southern
Presbyterian theologians. So these covenant ideas, the spiritualization and
allegorization of the Old Testament, was very popular especially in the South.
That is what they would do.
I remember years ago
when I was first up in Preston City I went to an Evangelical Theological
Society meeting in Boston. It was one of those moments when you become the fly
on the wall and Elliot Johnson, who as the speaker at the last Chafer
Conference, and Ed Bloom who is one of my favorite professors had pastored
Bethel Independent Presbyterian here. I did not always agree with Ed, but he
made me think. Those were my favorite professors at Dallas and were the ones
who made you think. And Ed Bloom was standing there and Bruce Waltke came over.
Now Waltke was one of the great names for Old Testament Theology at Dallas. He
was Charlie Clough's mentor when Charlie went through seminary. Dr. Waltke was
the Head of the Old Testament Dept. But after he left Dallas he sort of was
like a chameleon, every school he went to he became influenced by their theological
system. He kind of morphed over a period of five years to being a
dispensationalist to being a five-point Calvinist and holding to Covenant
Theology. And these guys had all been through seminary together back in the
early 1960s and they were close friends and allies when they were on the
faculty at Dallas.
So it was really
interesting. I had just gone over to talk to Ed and to Dr. Johnson, so I was
standing there when Dr. Waltke came over. I am just like the fly on the wall
and they were sort of joking with each other and Elliot said, "Well, are
you still mistranslating the Old Testament thinking that the land God promised
to Israel is heaven?" and Waltke said, "Of course it is." Ed
Bloom said, "You need to go read Romans 9 again." So it is interesting
to see that little banter between them. But that shows that this is real. This
is what is out there and you run into a lot of people who are influenced by
Covenant theology who no longer interpret those passages in the Old Testament
and those covenants in a literal manner.
2. The second thing
we observe with these permanent covenants is that they are eternal. They carry
their results into eternity itself.
In the new heavens
and the new earth there will be a New Jerusalem and there will still be a
destiny for Israel that is distinct from the destiny of the church. Now much
later on in this series we will talk some about progressive dispensationalism
but one of the ideas that came out of early dispensationalism, and was still
held by traditional dispensationalists, is that there is an eternal destiny for
the church that is different from the eternal destiny to Israel. In the new
progressive dispensationalism all the people of God sort of just merge together
sometime after the millennium. So they are covenants; they maintain those
distinctives; they go on for eternity.
3. The third thing
that we note is that the permanent covenants with Israel are unconditional;
they do contain certain conditions within them for experiencing the blessings
promised. They are not conditioned related to God's promise. They do not bind
God or condition God's ultimate blessing. God will fulfill His promises and
that is not dependent upon Israel's response.
4. A fourth
observation is that these covenants are made with a covenant people with
Israel; they are not made with the church.
The covenants are
made with a distinct group. So that when you come to the New covenant and it
says I am making a New covenant with the house of Judah; you can't say once
Jesus comes that the church becomes a covenant partner. The church will benefit
as we see from the New covenant, but God did not make a New covenant with the
church. You don't have that language. Now there are some verses here that are
important to understand about the permanence with Israel. For example in Romans
9:4 Paul describes the Israelites as those "to whom belongs the adoption
as sons and the glory and the covenants and the giving of the Law and the
temple service and the promises." In the church age Paul writes that these
covenants still belong to Israel. God has not negated His covenants to Israel
because they rejected Christ as the Messiah.
Again in Ephesians
2:11-12 Paul writes, "Therefore remember, that formerly you the Gentiles
…" the Ephesians were mostly Gentiles; they were "Gentiles in the
flesh," you "who are called 'uncircumcision' by the so-called
'circumcision,' that is the Jews who were emphasizing their relation to Moses;
you "…who are called 'uncircumcision' by the so-called 'circumcision,'
which is performed in the flesh by human hands…" Remember that you,"
that is you Gentiles, "… were at that time separated from Christ, excluded
from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of
promise…" Those covenants of promise refers to the Abrahamic promise, the
Land covenant, the Davidic covenant, and the New covenant. "… strangers to
the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world." So
these covenant promises are with Israel and they are made with Israel and those
promises do not get transferred to any other group.
So finally the
principle of the timing of the provisions that the covenant can be made at a
certain point in time, but that doesn't mean that every feature of the covenant
would go into effect at that time. The Davidic covenant, for example, is made
with David, but the ultimate fulfillment of that covenant occurs when the
Messiah comes and establishes His kingdom. The New covenant was given in
Jeremiah or described in Jeremiah 31. The sacrifice that establishes that
covenant is the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, but it does not begin the New
covenant. The New covenant does not begin until Jesus returns at the Second
Coming and establishes the Messianic rule,
because that is our destiny to participate in the messianic kingdom and the New
covenant and to be blessed by that. Paul says we are ministers of the New
Covenant today, not because we are in the New covenant, but because by
proclaiming the gospel the people who respond to the gospel will be secured a
place and a role and a position in the New covenant when it is established. So
in that sense we are ministers of the New covenant, but that is still a future
concept. It does not mean that the New covenant in effect today.
So in some of these
covenants some provisions go into effect immediately. For example, with the
Abrahamic covenant; some provisions went into effect immediately and remember
in the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 15 God promised there would be a 400-year
period of enslavement in Egypt. That did not come about until a couple of
hundred years after the beginning of the Abrahamic covenant. So just because a
covenant goes into effect does not mean that all of its provisions immediately
went into effect.
The last thing about
covenants is that some covenants become the basis for a new dispensation when
they go into effect; not necessarily when they are announced. The Davidic
covenant and the Land covenant and the New covenant don't really go into effect
until the Messiah returns. That is why they don't start new dispensations. The
Abrahamic covenant started a new dispensation. The Mosaic covenant started a
new dispensation. But the other three covenants, the Land covenant, the Davidic
covenant, and the New covenant don't go into effect until Jesus returns; of
course, that is the basis for the new and final dispensation, the age of the
Messiah. Mentioning the age of the Messiah takes us to the next concept, which
is understanding the ages of human history in contrast to dispensations.
Anybody have any questions?
Question: With
technical terms such as Rapture and Trinity we have an advantage over the
apostle Paul who was not able to frame his understanding with these terms. Is
the same thing true when we speak of dispensationalism?
Answer: Yes, I think
so. I think there is clearly what theologians call "development of
doctrine" which really means the development of our understanding of
doctrine. I believe that the writers of Scripture understood more than what we
know that they understood. For example, when you read Genesis you don't get any
idea that Abraham understands the doctrine of resurrection at all, but in
Hebrews 11, the writer of Hebrews says that Abraham had full confidence when he
was going to sacrifice Isaac because he knew that God would raise him from the
dead. But you can read Genesis 22 all day long and you never get that out of
Genesis 22. So it is obvious that the writers of Scripture and these heroes of
the Old Testament knew a lot more than what the Old Testament tells us. I think
that the apostle Paul knew more than what is revealed in Scripture and why he
can say what he says is because he understands this broader framework. But he
does not have the terminology clearly.
We understand the
Trinity better than Paul did because he did not have a term for it. We
understand the hypostatic union better than Paul did because he did not have a
term for it and vocabulary is important. That is how God wanted us to go
through that. So yes, I think we have a much better, clearer understanding on
the details of Scripture because we've been thinking about it longer than they
did. That is not to say that what they knew and understood was wrong; it is
just that it was not as fully developed as what we understand today.
Follow-up: All dispensationalists
are premillennialist, but not all premillennialist are dispensationalists. Can
you provide an example of this; what does the covenant theologian's view of the
millennium?
Answer: In Covenant
Theology they are primarily amillennialists or postmillennialists. But you do
have some, and I am not sure that it is not Covenant theology. It is a
different system, sort of a hybrid, but there is a view called historic
premillennialism. An example of that is a group that founded the International
Christian Embassy in Jerusalem. These are people who are very pro-Israel. They
are premillennial and believe God is going to fulfill all of His promises to
Israel literally, but they write all this anti-dispensational stuff. They
really do not like dispensationalism. They are premillennial and they are
pro-Israel and they interpret all of the prophesies, all of the covenants,
literally. That is known as historic premillennialism. There are some other
differences to that, but that is a quick answer.
Let's look at
"ages". The term age as we are going to use it is an era or an epoch
of time marked by certain boundaries or occurrences where there is a definite
fixed period of time. The Scripture uses the term ages numerous times, whereas
a dispensation is an administration within an age. There are certain features
that bind an age together. For example, in the first age, which is the age of
the Gentiles, God is working through all the Gentile people. There is no
distinction between Jew and Gentile. There are three covenants given that
change how God is administering history, which is why we can't just say we are
going to call it an age of the Gentiles, an age of Israel, and leave it at
that. There are clear administrative shifts that take place in Genesis 3 and again
in Genesis 9. That is what demarcates these as dispensations and subdivisions
of an age.
Same thing with the
age of Israel. There is a massive shift that occurs in Genesis 12. God is no
longer going to work broadly with the entire human race. They failed before the
Flood; they failed again at the Tower of Babel. From Genesis 12 on God is going
to work exclusively through the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. How
many people knew that? God called Abraham out of Ur, how many other people in
the world knew that there was a shift and how God was dealing with the human
race? No one, but the shift nevertheless occurred objectively and historically.
God from that point on was just going to work through Abraham, but not
everybody knew it. You see that same kind of a transition period that occurred
at the beginning of Acts.
We just studied Acts
and we saw that: how may Old Testament type saints, believers in the coming of the Messiah,
Jewish believers in the coming of the Messiah, who were living in Rome or
living in Spain or living in North Africa or living in Babylon who were
believers in the Messiah just like you have with the prophet Simeon in Luke 2.
They were believers in the Old Testament Messiah, but Jesus came and died in AD 33. How many of them knew? They did not
have internet; they did not have telegraph, they did not have even a pony
express, and so if they died two, three, four, five years after Jesus died on
the cross they would not have heard that everything has shifted now. The church
started. They were living in that kind of transition period but nevertheless,
there was a shift that occurred. They are caught in that transition period.
So we are studying
about age versus dispensation.
The first age is the
age of the Gentiles. This is covered in Genesis 1-11 and it covers three
dispensations (see slides #24-25):
1. Dispensation of
Innocence
Innocence is a great
term to use. There are two different meanings to innocence. Someone who is sort
of naïve, someone who is easily taken advantage of, someone who is young; but
it has a legal concept. Remember, the Bible is built around the concept of law.
Justification is a legal concept; righteousness is a legal concept. Prior to
the fall man is legally innocent; he is not guilty of sin. He is innocent. So
this is a good term to use for the first dispensation. It fits the legal structure
of the Scripture. So from Genesis 1:28, the creation of man to Genesis 3:8
which is when they fell, begins a new dispensation.
2. Dispensation of
Conscience
Now I have never
been real happy with that term, the dispensation of conscience or human
conscience, but that is the term that has been used so I will leave that alone
for right now. This covers the Scriptural period from Genesis 3:9 to the Flood,
Genesis 8:14.
3. Dispensation of
Human Government
Genesis 8:15, a real
foundational document is the giving of the Noahic covenant in Genesis 9.
So those three
dispensations are dispensations because there is:
1. New revelation
given
2. New
responsibility given
3. New test given
The way God is
administering human history shifts based upon that new revelation, but what it
has in common is that God is working through the entirety of the human race. It
has certain characteristics:
1. One language
throughout all of the human race
2. One race. They
still did not get along, which shows that unification of the human race is not
a solution to the problem because the problem isn't communication; the problem
is sin. But ever since the Tower of Babel man has tried to identify the problem
as communication and that is a real problem. Anybody who has been on the
mission field and tried to communicate the gospel to somebody who is in another
culture with another language knows how difficult the language barrier is. A lot
of problems can be solved if we just spoke the same language. But it does not
solve the real problem in the human race, which is sin.
3. Skipped [No canon
of Scripture (revelations, but not in written form)]
4. In the age of the
Gentiles salvation is by faith in Jesus Christ, in the promised messianic seed,
which we know as Jesus Christ. They did not know the name, but the salvation
looks forward to the promise of the seed of the woman who will provide
redemption for mankind.
5. No distinct administrative
entity in the age; there are in the dispensation, but not in the age. That is
the difference between an age and a dispensation.
6. The divine
institutions are all developed in the age of the Gentiles. All five divine
institutions are developed and are attacked by Satan, and that brings in the
angelic conflict aspect
Now I am going to
stop there because the hour is up and the next topic I am going to cover is an
introduction to the divine institutions. I think I am going to wait and bring
in one other aspect before we go further and that is to relate the angelic
conflict to the dispensations before I get into the divine institutions. So
this is one of the things that I am doing. I am bringing in trying to connect
all these dots for us as we go through the ages and the dispensations
connecting the angelic conflict because that is significant to dispensational
theology.
Just on a note, we
live in a world today when not everybody really gets it. I have a man who
participates in my Friday morning pastors' group. He is a little bit older than
I am. He has a background, retired military, retired pilot, calm disposition,
and he has been going to a seminary. I am not going to mention the name. And
sitting in some lectures on Isaiah and the professor is teaching that Isaiah 14
has nothing at all whatsoever to do with the fall of Satan. This is a very well
known dispensationalist, so this is not uncommon. It is common today; it was
uncommon thirty years ago and before because traditional historical
dispensationalists all related the dispensations to the fall of Satan.
You go back and read
Ryrie; you read Clarence Larkin; you read Scofield; you read Chafer; you read
Talbot; you read all of these guys. They all start with the Fall of Satan. But
now that you have people who have bought into a false hermeneutic on Isaiah,
you divorce the message of the Bible and the overall understanding of God's
plan and purpose from a whole segment of God's creatures, which are the angels.
This is a really serious problem and it shows. Everything seems to be sort of
falling apart and fragmenting in our culture including theology. So that is a
point of contention. I just thought you should be aware that these are all
battlefields. Almost every point I am teaching is being contested by somebody
today; it is just a crazy world out there.
Anyway, let’s go ahead
and close in prayer. Father, we thank you for this opportunity to study to
think through the aspect of dispensations again and begin to work our way
through how you work through the Old Testament and the different ages and dispensations and to come to
understand that all of human history has a plan and a purpose. You are
administering human history for a purpose in order to teach certain key
principles through the experiment or the laboratory of human volition. Father
we pray that you will us to understand that that it might make the Bible come
alive for us in a new and fresh way. We pray this in Christ's Name, Amen.