Hebrews Lesson 114 February
7, 2008
NKJ Isaiah 40:31 But those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with
wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not
faint.
As Jack noted, it has been since
January 3rd since we
had Bible class on Hebrews. I want you all to tell me – what was the last
thing I said?
“Amen.”
Somebody took a nap this afternoon.
You’re almost as much of a smart aleck as Norm Geisler. Some of you may not
know who Norm Geisler is. Dr. Geisler is probably one of the foremost
apologists today. He has got multiple degrees, multiple doctorates. He has
written dozens and dozens of books. He is a writing machine. One of the
interesting things is to get to know Dr. Geisler personally because he grew up
in a home where learning was not prized; learning was not emphasized. He did
not know how to read until he was a senior in high school. Now he has a couple
of doctorates. Of course he writes and writes and writes and writes. It was not
discovered that he couldn’t read until he was in an English class and they were
given an assignment. They were to read The
Tale of Two Cities.
So the teacher thinking that there
was something amiss with this young Norman Geisler said, “Well, Norman, how
does the book end? How does the story end?”
He looks at the teacher and said,
“With a period.”
So while he was down at the
principal’s office, they decided that he needed to have some remedial courses
and learn how to read.
So y’all are just as quick and
smart-alecky in saying, “Well, you ended with amen.”
I ended by saying, “It’s gonna be a
month before we are back here again. So when we come back we’re probably going
to have to review everything so we can get back where we were.”
So, we won’t review everything in as
much detail, but we will hit the highpoints and begin to move on.
Our passage is in Hebrews 8. You
don’t need to turn there. We’re not going to be there long other than the first
two or three slides to orient us. In verses 6 through 8 we are introduced to
the major passage in the New Testament on the New Covenant. The writer of
Hebrews says:
NKJ Hebrews 8:6 But now He
That is Jesus Christ through His ascension and session
at the right hand of the Father.
has obtained a more excellent ministry,
That is “more excellent” in comparison to the high
priestly ministry of the Aaronic High Priest in the Old Testament.
inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a better covenant,
which was established on better promises.
So it connects His high priestly
ministry to the New Covenant in contrast to the Aaronic high priesthood in the
Old Testament and its connection to the Mosaic Covenant. Now in His high
priestly ministry today, Jesus Christ functions as our High Priest and He is
seated at the right hand of the Father; and we have all these passages we have
seen from Hebrews 4 through 5 and into 7 dealing with His intercessory ministry
as a major aspect of His priesthood, His high priesthood for the church. That
is connected to this New Covenant. So that’s one way in which the church
participates in the blessing of the New Covenant; and it is by virtue of our
relationship to Jesus Christ. I pointed out last time that there are within
what is known as dispensationalism…there are four views on how the church
relates to the New Covenant – four different understandings. The fourth
is the view of progressive dispensationalists. They are neither progressive nor
dispensational in my opinion, but we will be a little gracious and at least
give a measure of credence to their pious fraud.
So in Hebrews 8:6 Jesus has a more
excellent ministry in His priesthood because it is connected to a superior
covenant which is enacted on better promises. So, priesthood, covenant, and
promises are all linked together in that verse.
NKJ Hebrews 8:7 For if that first covenant
Notice, that’s in italics in your
Bible.
had been
faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second.
His argument has been that the
Mosaic Covenant was been unable to do what needed to be done in terms of
salvation. It had a limited priesthood, limited application for salvation. So
his argument is that if that first covenant had been faultless and it wasn’t,
there would have been no occasion sought for a second. This is really his whole
argument. He is going to quote these next 6 or 7 verses only to establish the
fact that because it is called a New Covenant in verse 8, that necessarily
implies that the older covenant had to be replaced and was always understood to
be temporary and not permanent. So in verse 8 he says:
NKJ Hebrews 8:8 Because finding fault with them,
That is with the older covenant.
He says: "Behold, the days are coming, says the
LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the
house of Judah --
That is the opening of Jeremiah
31:31-34, four verses that are quoted directly into Hebrews 8. That’s another
issue we will get to later on. The point that he is making simply draws on the
fact that it is called the New Covenant. He’s not getting into any of the
details. That’s important I think because it helps us understand how Peter is
applying another New Covenant passage, Joel 2 to the coming of the Holy Spirit
in Acts 2.
Most of you were here last week, the
week before when Arnold was here. Arnold taught on the fact that Jews had four
different way of interpreting Old Testament passages. As they interpreted these
passages sometimes they took a literal prophecy and applied it literally.
NKJ Micah 5:2 " But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, Though you are little among the
thousands of Judah, Yet out of you
shall come forth to Me The One to be Ruler in Israel, Whose goings forth are from of old, From everlasting."
Jesus would be born in
Bethlehem.
Or they took a literal historical
event out of Egypt – I called My children – referring to the
Exodus. That was applied typologically to Jesus coming out of Egypt after they
had escaped from Herod.
The third view was the view called
literal historical event. There may be one point of similarity that is
connected to an event. In Matthew 2 there is a quote from Jeremiah dealing with
the women, the mothers of Judah weeping over their children. So this applied
simply to the weeping of the mothers of Judah over the loss, the death of their
children in Matthew 2. That’s the same kind of thing that you have in Acts
2.
Now this may seem a little abstruse
and like a minor point for some of you. I’ll connect these dots, but it is very
important to understand how the writers of the New Testament use the Old
Testament. When you get a passage such as the passage related to Jesus in Hosea
11:1:
NKJ Hosea 11:1 "When Israel was
a child, I loved him, And out of Egypt I called My son.
When you exegete it in context (I
think that’s Hosea 11:1) you would never ever think from the context of Hosea
11 that it applies it to the Messiah. But, Matthew comes along and applies it
(And that is the correct word to use.) typologically to the Messiah. There was
a term that was used by the rabbis for this type of interpretation. I don’t
remember what it is off the top of my head right now, but that’s in contrast to
another form of interpretation that was used in the first century called pesher
interpretation. And, pesher is spelled p-e-s-h-e-r. If you want a fairly
succinct understanding of what pesher interpretation is just Google it. Look it
up on wikipedia and the article in Wikipedia is pretty accurate. In pesher
interpretation, this became popular in the intertestamental period in
rabbinical literature. They allegorized or spiritualized prophecy. Now there is
a difference between applying a passage typologically to an event and
spiritualizing or allegorizing it. One of the differences is that applying it
typologically you’re not denying the original historical, grammatical,
exegetical meaning of the passage.
But in spiritual or allegorizing you
say, “Well that’s the literal, historical, grammatical meaning is not important
spiritually. What’s important is the spiritualized or allegorized sense.”
It may have nothing whatsoever to do
with the literal historical grammatical sense of the passage. I guess the best
term is rabbinical imagination.
Now the reason I have gone through
this little detour for you is because I recently learned from a very good
source (an excellent source by the way) that in the New Testament department at
Dallas Theological Seminary to a man the Old Testament faculty holds to the
validity of pesher hermeneutics. This is why I go into some detail like this
for you because it’s so easy for people to get misled. All of us operate at
certain levels in our lives with basing our trusts on other peoples opinions or
on some sort of historical tradition with certain (I shouldn’t say this but)
political parties or certain seminaries and certain churches that because they
have a history or track record of being in one way that we continue to trust
them and we don’t really understand a lot of the politics, a lot of the
changes. A lot of these changes are the result of generational changes as
younger leadership takes over in key positions. Policies change; procedures
change; outlook changes.
I have been accused of bashing Dallas at times. All I am
trying to do is recognize that there is a tremendous misunderstanding about
Dallas based on what it was. It no longer is a school that teaches the theology
of Chafer, Walvoord and Ryrie. It just doesn’t. It’s not present in the Old
Testament Department; it is not present in the New Testament Department and
it’s not present in the Theology Department. The only department that’s still
solid is the Bible Exposition Department and there are very good men in the
Bible Exposition Department. A number of them are excellent. But, this is one
reason that I’m so concerned personally about the establishment of Chafer
Seminary because if we want to have quality individuals, quality pastors,
trained pastors the only way we are going to get it now is one of two ways.
Number one is to have them go to a well qualified seminary with qualified
professors who are teaching within the historically received tradition,
doctrinal tradition, that we come from that we identify basically as
Scofieldian, Walvoord, Dallas Seminary type tradition going back into the 19th
century and beyond.
In our history of doctrine class on
Monday night we are going to see how we really do fit and in much of what we
believe fits within a historical flow that goes all the way back to the times
when these various areas of theology were first crystallized and
articulated. So we’re not some
sort of aberration or something that just sort of invented popped up on the
scene maybe 100 years ago or 150 years ago, but it is the natural progression
of understanding of doctrine from the second century all the way up to the
present. Yet what happens and has happened when I studied under Dr. Hannah when
I was ThM and later doctoral studies. He used to say the life of a seminary
historically (He had spent a lot of time studying the history not only Dallas
but other seminaries.) is about 75 years. It’s that third generation that loses
the vision of the first generation. That’s really where we are today. The first
generation was Chafer. The first generation he trained was Walvoord, Ryrie,
Thieme, Pentecost, that generation. That generation passed on a vision to the
baby boomer generation that didn’t connect the dots. My generation failed to
connect the dots and part of the things that I have said for years – one
of the trends of the baby boomer generation (and I saw this a lot when I was at
seminary) is an anti-authoritarian way of thinking. That manifested itself
culturally in anti-establishment, the hippies, anti-Vietnam. We’re seeing that
come home to roost at a national political level.
Within the Christian tradition, it
obviously limited ways in which people could express their rebellion against
authority. One of the ways they did it was to within the framework of so called
scholarship overthrow the teaching of the fathers of their tradition which is
what has happened today in not only schools like Dallas; but it’s happened at
Talbot which was really a sister school to Dallas and most of the faculty that
taught at Talbot out in southern California graduate school for Viola which is
the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. That was an acronym. Also you had Western
Conservative Baptist Theological Seminary up in Portland which basically died
in terms of its tradition. It lost it in around 1990 or the early 90’s. It made
a major shift. Major shifts happened at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
Those were the major block seminaries in the 60’s and ‘70s.
Yet today if you have a faculty
member that is under the age of 45, they are not teaching in the classroom the
fundamental truths that were taught forty years ago. That is going to create an
enormous vacuum. Training for pastors is going to come either because you have
well-grounded pastors with a vision in the pulpit who are training and
mentoring young men who will take a class here a class there sort of a melting
pot experience to get their basic skills together because there is not one
school to go to or you will have a new school develop that will embody these
principles for the next 60 or 70 years until they go the way of all flesh.
That’s where we are today.
It all boils down to interpretation.
It’s interpretation, interpretation, interpretation. That’s the battlefield. We
see it not only at the doctrinal theological Bible study level, but you see it
at the national level. How do we interpret the Constitution? How do we
interpret law? How do we interpret the history of the nation? How do we
interpret the vision of the Founding Fathers? Once you cut yourself lose from
any form of absolute where you have strict guidelines on how you understand
things. In a literal grammatical historical interpretation you still have
disagreements, but they are not at the level you do once you sort of slip your
anchor to the meaning of words and their historical grammatical context in
allegorical or spiritualized interpretation because anybody can come up with
their own view of what they think these words mean.
So the boundaries start breaking
down. The same thing happens when you interpret law. Nobody understands law in
terms of absolute objective sense anymore. We don’t live in a nation or in a
world that believes in objective knowledge of anything anymore. It’s just your
opinion. What’s even worse is how you feel about it. Who do you feel about
that? Who do you feel like voting for? It’s all grounded in subjectivism and
emotion and experience and nobody wants to think through the issues any more.
If you listen to most all of the
candidates running for office today, you need to be asking yourself, “What
specifics are you telling me when you want change? What do you want to change?
What do you want to keep? Why do you want to change it? What policies are you
going to change here or change there? How are you going to improve the economy?
Let’s have some specific proposals. How are you going to improve the situation
in Iraq? Let’s hear some specifics.”
But, you don’t hear that. You hear
these wonderful sounding statements that have emotional overtones to them and
everybody goes home and says, “Didn’t he say wonderful things?”
He didn’t say anything. She didn’t
say anything. I want to be equal. Now you know who I am talking about. Nobody
said anything. Nobody has said anything. You get very little content. So nobody
knows what they are voting for. They’re just voting for an image.
That’s what has happened in our
culture. It was really boosted by film and then television in the 20th
century. As Marshal McClune observed, the medium is the message. The medium
really communicated a lot of things so a lot of people became more concerned
about how things appeared than reality. That’s exactly where we are in an
existential world where we don’t know how to get in touch with reality. All we
have is appearances and feeling. Since we have this little thing running around
in our genetic system called the sin nature that is oriented to suppressing the
truth in unrighteousness, and when you reject truth all you are left with is
lies. You’re left with fantasy. You’re left with fiction. That’s what people
construct is – their own fictionalized, fantasized account of reality.
Somehow they can make life feel good, feel comfortable, feel good about things.
No matter what happens, within 24 hours we’re going to spin it in our heads so
that it really isn’t that bad and it isn’t going to happen to us. It would just
happen to somebody else. We build these castles in the air. Then we move in.
That’s called psychosis. We are a nation of psychotics living in dream castles
constructed out of thin air. Then some politician comes along or some
theologian comes or some pastor comes along and makes us feel all warm and
fuzzy. Everybody quits thinking because that supports everybody’s little
fantasy castle.
Somebody sent around today a link to
a 60 minutes show that I think appeared a month or 6 weeks ago having to do
with a rather large church in Houston. It meets down there where the Rockets
used to play basketball.
In the blog following it where
people could listen to the video segments and comment on it, one of the most
enlightening came from a Moslem woman who said, “Isn’t it wonderful to listen
to this pastor because what he says isn’t offensive to Jews or Christians or Muslims.
We can all come together and listen to what he says and nobody is offended.
That’s really what we need – is love.”
Anybody want a coke? All we need is love……yeah.
Anyhow it is important to get down
to these nitty-gritty issues on interpretation. A lot of people don’t want to
do that in churches.
“Just tell me what it means.”
In fact I was talking to a pastor
the other day and he has got 3 or 4 people in his church that give him a hard
time every time he mentions anything about grammar or anything else. But see,
you have to understand something about the details of these different views,
these different positions, where they come from, why they’re important, how the
interpretation of this passage is going to affect your interpretation of Acts 2
and Acts 2 and Acts 3 fit together in terms of a Millennial Kingdom offered to
Israel. In those passages there is reference to David and David’s throne. You
have amillenialists and progressive dispensationalists.
This is why I say they are not progressive
or dispensational claiming that on the basis of their hermeneutic, their
interpretation that Jesus is now sitting on David’s throne in heaven. It’s not
a literal throne on the earth. It’s a heavenly throne. That is going to change.
It dominoes.
Theology is like anything else. If
the thinking of God is all integrated and it’s all internally consistent, it’s
up to us to try to understand Him and what He has revealed. When we start
spinning the dials and changing the relationship of different things to one
another, it changes other things. It has all kinds of ripple effects through
your thought system - how you understand the spiritual life, how you understand
the future, how you understand grace. These things all start to domino. What I
am trying to do is at least give you enough information so you know one that
maybe what I’m saying isn’t something that is just based on an opinion or a
knee-jerked reaction or some sort of theological prejudice that I have on the
one hand. And on the other hand, it is enough tools so that you when you read
the Scripture and when you hear what other people say … and you never know when
you’re going to be someplace, somewhere and you’re going to hear somebody say
something and it may even sound good at first; but then you think about it and
some of this stuff will come back to you as you think it through and avoid
being led astray. That’s part of the job of every pastor – is to teach
people to think so that they are not lead astray so that they are not deceived by
the false teachers, the wolves that Paul warned the Ephesian pastors about that
there would be wolves in sheep’s clothing that would come in amongst the flock
trying to destroy them. So the pastor can’t be everywhere. So a pastor has to
teach these kinds of things.
There are some really interesting
interconnections in all of this some of which I am just beginning to - each
time I go through something like this I don’t know who learns more you or me.
But I always learn more about what it is I believe and what I’m teaching. You
just get the overflow from that.
So this passage is a direct quote
from the Jeremiah 31 passage. He only quotes it for one reason - to emphasize
this word “new”. Because it is called the New Covenant, it means the old was
temporary. And he quotes four verses to do that. That’s the same methodology
Peter has in Acts 2. He quotes that whole Joel 2 section, 6 or 7 verses, only
to emphasize the point that there is just a similarity between what the Holy
Spirit did on the day of Pentecost and what the Holy Spirit is going to do on
the Day of the Lord. So it’s an application. But there’s only one small point
of contact. Everything that
happens…nothing that is mentioned in Joel 2 happens in Acts 2. Nothing that
happened on the Day of Pentecost is mentioned in Joel 2. So why does Peter say
this is that? Because, he is making a point of application. But he’s also
talking about what happens on the Day of the Lord which is a technical term for
the final intense judgments at the end of the Tribulation immediately preceding
and accompanying the return of Jesus Christ to the earth to defeat the enemies
of Israel and the enemies of God and to establish His kingdom. What happens
when He establishes His kingdom? Well, as we are going to see as we go through
these Old Testament passages, that’s when he establishes the New Covenant. So
these things are not disconnected because that’s what Peter says in Acts and
this is over here in Jeremiah and that’s over there in Hebrews. They’re all
talking about things that happen at the same time in the future. To properly
connect all of these things together you have to have a well thought out
rigorous system of interpretation.
So that’s my little rant today about
why all of this is important. You have to get into the details because details
are really important. It is amazing today. Lazy minds don’t want to know
details.
“Just give me my fast food at the
drive through window and I’ll take it home and eat it…but don’t make me sit
here and learn how to cook or how to go to the grocery store and how to shop or
how to make a rue. I will just go buy it somewhere.”
Okay. The backdrop to all this are
the 8 biblical covenants. You have the gentile covenants that are all basically
forms of the same covenant, but there has to be modifications because of sin.
The original creation covenant replaced after the fall with the Adamic Covenant
which is replaced after the flood with the Noahic Covenant which is still in
effect.
Three reasons you’re glad the Noahic
Covenant is still in effect.
That’s what you are reminded of all
three when you see a rainbow.
Then you have your Jewish covenants.
The Abrahamic Covenant is the foundation covenant. The three elements are land,
seed, and blessing. That lays the backdrop for understanding the rest of
history. There is a Land Covenant with Israel that gives Israel the right to the
land, but they don’t have the right to live in it and enjoy it unless they’re
in right relationship to God. That’s the condition that’s embedded within the
unconditional covenant. The land is permanently theirs, but they can’t live in
the house unless they are a good tenant. They can’t live on the land unless
they are good tenants. They have certain rules and if they break the rules they
will be removed from the land. But
God promises to bring them back.
That’s the New Covenant issue – is the return to the land.
Then you have the Davidic Covenant which
speaks of ultimate ruler. They can’t rule themselves. No man can because of
sin. So God is going to give them
the right kind of ruler who is a righteous ruler. Then because a righteous
ruler has a hard time dealing with unrighteous people, God is going to bring
into effect the New Covenant which is going to give the people a new heart. So
then both the ruler and the people will be righteous and there will be a
righteous kingdom. So God is the one who is going to ultimately going to have
to do all the work because fallen man can’t. So the Abrahamic Covenant focuses on the Land Covenant, the
Davidic covenant. And the New Covenant and then the Davidic Covenant promise an
eternal house, and eternal kingdom and an eternal house. This is the basis for
Jesus Christ being the Son of David, why He is the Son of David that He will
establish a kingdom. He will rule on the throne of David. It’s a literal
earthly throne just as David’s throne was.
Now how and when do all these come
into final effect? The covenants are all made early but, they don’t come into
effect; they aren’t established until the Second Coming of Christ. So we have
our timeline here. The promises are made in the Old Testament. God makes these
promises to individuals and to the nation in the form of the covenants. In the
future the promises will be fulfilled. They are not fulfilled yet. They are not
in the progress of being fulfilled which is where you get the term progressive
in progressive dispensationalism – that they are progressively coming
into effect. They’re not. The covenants have been given. The basis for the New
Covenant has been established at the cross, but there is no inauguration of the
covenant until Jesus returns.
Here is our timeline. We have on the
left the Old Testament dispensation, the cross, the Church Age and then the
future millennial reign of Jesus Christ. The Abrahamic Covenant is given at the
beginning of the dispensation of Israel, the Age of Israel in the Old Testament,
the beginning of the dispensation of patriarchs. Out of the Abrahamic Covenant
you have the Land Covenant, the Davidic Covenant, and the New Covenant. Now the
Land Covenant isn’t fulfilled until the Jews are brought back as a regenerate
people and put in the land, which occurs at the Second Coming. The Davidic
Covenant is fulfilled when Jesus Christ returns and is welcomed by Israel as
Israel’s Messiah. The New Covenant is put into effect at that time. I have the
dashed line there because the relationship of the church is by application in
reference to our position in Christ. It’s not that we are a direct participant
in the covenant.
So last time I covered about five
things. The key scripture we’re going through more of these tonight.
Then there are ten provisions. Did I
go through those ten provisions last time? I was going to do that this time? I
skipped them last time, okay. They were in my notes the first that’s why I was
confused. There are ten provisions which reinforce this unique state of
salvation and the unique covenant with Israel in the Millennial Kingdom.
So what are those ten provisions?
Let me go through those now. This is a summary of what you find in primarily
Jeremiah but also some of the other passages such as Ezekiel 36 and Joel 2 and
some of those passages that are listed. I am going to leave that up on the
screen so people can write down all of those references and then we will talk
about these ten points
Now some of you may be saying, “Wait
a minute. What about volition?”
Well, I think that what I see
through the trauma of what happens to Israel and to Jews in the Tribulation. It
becomes so clear in the testimony of the Tribulation of history is so clear and
the testimony of those who survive is so overpowering that you won’t have any
Jews reject Jesus as Messiah in the Millennial Kingdom. That’s why you‘ll have
universal salvation – not because God is reaching in and tweaking
something and so they are all going to be saved. It’s that the testimony is so
overwhelming that none will reject it.
So those are the ten points. First
point, I will review them real quick.
Now Romans 11:26 alludes to this. In
Romans 11:26 it says:
NKJ Romans 11:26 And so all Israel will be saved, as it is written: "The Deliverer
will come out of Zion, And He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob;
The houtos there indicates that the writer is getting ready to explain
how all of Israel will be saved. They will be saved when the Deliverer will
come out of Zion and He will turn away ungodliness from Jacob. Some people have
had trouble with this. Well, all Israel is going to be saved. Well, how do you
know that? Don’t some of them have volition? And in a nutshell what happens is
that in the Tribulation 2/3rds of the Jews are going to be killed. Only a third
is going to survive. The ones who survive in Israel (and that’s the focal point
here) are the ones who obey Jesus warning in Matthew 24 that when you see the
abomination of desolation you are going to head to the mountains and you’re
going to hide in the mountains and those who obeyed Jesus and go hide are
probably either about to trust Christ as Messiah or they already have. So, this
is the believing remnant and those who flee to Petra – Basra area down in
southern Jordan…hide out there are the ones who are gong to be delivered.
That’s the focal point there is on deliverance not soteriological
justification, but on the fact that they are all going to be delivered because
the ones who obeyed Jesus and left. That’s the same thing Jesus said in Matthew
24. Those who persevere to the end will be saved. See the problem that has
entered into church history from the time of Augustine on is that people took
the same there in Matthew 24 to be soteriological justification. That’s where
you get the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints – that if you
persevere to the end of your life then you’ll be saved. That’s not what it’s
talking about. Those you actually live to the end of the Tribulation and
survive and call upon the name of the Lord to come and deliver them will be
delivered. The physical deliverance nuance to say are not spiritual salvation
justification. So that’s New Testament confirmation there in Romans 11:26.
The key issue for us for the church
(by us I mean the church) is the fact that Jesus refers to the cup in communion
as the New Covenant of My blood. In Luke 22:20 Paul quotes I Corinthians
12:25.
Then II Corinthians 3:6 Paul says:
NKJ 2 Corinthians 3:6 who also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the
letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.
Hebrews 9:15 then says:
NKJ Hebrews 9:15 And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new
covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the
first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the
eternal inheritance.
He being Jesus is the mediator of a
New Covenant. So it seems from these passages on the surface that there is a
relationship between the church and the New Covenant and that’s been expressed
several ways in the history of dispensational theology. One is that there are
two New Covenants – one with the church and one with Israel. Chafer
taught that; I think Scofield had that; several others have held that view. I
don’t think that’s right. There is no place in the New Testament that
specifically states that the church is a covenant partner with the New
Covenant.
The second view was that the church
participates in the New Covenant only by way of application. This was Darby’s
view. The New Covenant with Israel hasn’t begun though it has been that the
sacrifice that it establishes has taken place. I wrestle with the right
verbiage to use here. The covenant is cut to use the Old Testament term. The
covenant is cut on the cross. The sacrifice that makes it possible is what
happens on the cross, but it isn’t put into effect until the Second
Coming.
The third view was that the church
has some part in the covenant. A number good dispensationalists have taken this
view. They try to attach our role soteriologically, just within the realm of
soteriology. I would say the second view is probably the closest view. I have
modified it a little bit. The church participates because of our position in
Christ.
Then the fourth view is the
progressive dispensational view that it was inaugurated on Pentecost but it’s
not fully put into effect. The key word you will hear is already-not-yet. We
are already in the kingdom but not-yet fully here. Or it is progressively
coming into existence and so it’s just the gradual thing. Already-not-yet
terminology really comes out of a theologian from Fuller Seminary in the 50’s
and early 60’s named George Eldon Ladd. Ladd was also a post-tribulationist,
but that terminology got picked up by a lot of Charismatics and the Vineyard
Movement because if we are living in some form of the kingdom now and the New
Covenant is actually already here and the New Covenant is going to have these
expressions of the Holy Spirit and your old men dreaming dreams and your young
men seeing visions and all of that in Joel 2, then we need to see that today.
That’s what they were doing.
I remember pigeon holing one of the
architects of progressive dispensationalism in a stacks of the library of
Dallas Seminary in 1988 and saying, “Can you give me a clear theological
exegetical reason why progressive dispensationalism isn’t going to end up
validating signs and wonders in this age because of the way you handle Joel 2
and Acts 2?”
The answer was basically, “Well
that’s not really a legitimate application.”
But then there was a guy who came
out of Moody who was a progressive dispensationalist and he also argued that we
ought to be seeing signs and wonders like that today. You can’t escape the
implication. If we are already in the kingdom and we already have some form of
the New Covenant, then we ought to be having these miraculous manifestations of
the Holy Spirit that are descried in Joel 2 and these other passages. But we’re
not!. That’s just similarities. That’s why understanding that this is that.
This is what the prophet said in Joel 2 is so important. How you understand
that phrase…how that phrase is understood in relationship to the Church Age and
the New Covenant basically is a watershed interpretation. It changes how you
understand the church, how you understand the Holy Spirit, charismatic issues.
All these things are related. Just in one little phrase, how you take that can
be taken so differently.
Then last time we looked at the
first place the New Covenant is really mentioned historically, Hosea 2:17-18
where Hosea said:
NKJ Hosea 2:17 For I will take from her mouth the names of the Baals,
And they shall be remembered by their name no more.
NKJ Hosea 2:18 In that day I will make a covenant for them With the
beasts of the field, With the birds of the air, And with the creeping things of the ground. Bow and sword of battle I
will shatter from the earth, To make them lie down safely.
That’s millennial terminology. No
more war. So this is the first indication of a future permanent covenant. Then
we get into Isaiah and the various passages in Isaiah and that’s where we will
stop tonight. Isaiah 49:55, 59 - all these passages add different elements and
they are very important because they connect the role of the Messiah. Isaiah 42
is in the second part of Isaiah. The first part of Isaiah, 1-39 is all about
future judgment on the nation – how God is going to punish Israel. The
second part from 40 on is how God is going to redeem them. Liberal scholars in
their wisdom say two different themes had to be written by two different
people. You have this same kind of breakdown all through the prophets. There is
a message of judgment and there is a message of grace. So Isaiah 42 is the
message of grace dealing with My Servant which is a technical for the Messiah.
NKJ Isaiah 42:6 "I, the LORD, have called You in righteousness, And will hold Your
hand; I will keep You and give You as a covenant to the people, As a light to
the Gentiles,
Jesus Himself is that covenant. He
embodies the covenant with His work on the cross. He will be a light to the
Gentiles. That is quoted in a couple of passages in the New Testament related
to Jesus’ work on the cross because it breaks down the barrier between the Jew
and Gentile. So – a lot to get into here. It’s going to be fun and
interesting to work through these passages.
Let’s bow our heads in closing
prayer.