Welcome to Christ the Center, your weekly conversation of Reformed theology. My name is Camden Bucey, and I'm very excited to be here for a special episode of the podcast from Cahaba Park Church, a PCA congregation outside of Birmingham, Alabama, or technically inside Birmingham, Alabama.

This is out of my depth.

It's out of your depth. You're only from Aliceville, so we don't know. But we have a very special occasion in which we're recording an episode with a live audience here at the church as part of a seminar that we are attending and producing with Birmingham Theological Seminary. So I do want to thank Ike Reeder and the whole team for the opportunity to come and to speak here and to present on Discovering Christ in all of Scripture. And we're here on a Friday night, delighted to be able to speak about biblical theology and its importance and its role in the church. Let me introduce to everyone our panel. I want to introduce first, we have Dr. Dan Ragusa, who serves as Minister of Messiah's Reformed Church in Messiah's Reformed Fellowship, sorry, Church of the United Reformed Churches in North America in Manhattan, New York. Welcome, Dan. It's good to see you.

Thanks, Camden, and it's great to be here with everybody.

Dan was a student of mine when I taught adjunct at Mid-America Reformed Seminary a couple times, and then after Dan graduated with great distinction, he went on and completed a Ph.D. at Westminster Theological Seminary under Dr. Lane Tipton, who I'll introduce in just a minute. So it's wonderful to have Dan back with us.

I was going to say, if anything I speak, anything is wrong, you can blame Camden.

Or Lane. Or Lane.

I learned from them, so.

Don't speak. I'm just kidding.

We're also very happy to welcome a friend we've got with us, according to Ike, the almost doctor, Derrick Brite. Derrick is a pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Aliceville, Alabama. We've been getting to know Derrick over the years, not only at PCA General Assembly, but he's been out for a pastor's scholars fellowship. And we just overall have a wonderful time.

Twin Lakes Fellowship, all of the wonderful opportunities.

So I'm glad to have you here, representing BTS and being able to pitch in on this subject. Thanks, brother.

Yeah, I'm glad to be here. You'll notice doctor, doctor, not doctor, doctor. One of these is not like the other. So just be prepared for that.

Well, you're going to do well, I'm sure. We're going to have a great time. And then, of course, certainly last but not at all least, we have Dr. Lane Tipton. Dr. Tipton's been with us for ages, and we're delighted to have him with us this evening. He's a pastor of Trinity OPC in Easton, Pennsylvania. Also has taught so many courses for us at Reformed Academy. You can check that out online at reformedacademy.org. And, of course, Lane and I recently, back in April, just completed working through all of Vos's book, Biblical Theology, Old and New Testaments. We're looking forward to picking back up and working on Vos's teaching of Jesus concerning the kingdom of God and the church soon. So welcome back, Lance. Good to have you with us as well.

As always, it's a delight to be here.

Yes. Well, thank you very much. Well, I couldn't be happier to be speaking about this topic. I mentioned to Derrick a while ago just asking, hey, what do you think we ought to do for this podcast? And we're trying to think of something that would be maximally helpful and beneficial and sort of in our wheelhouse, so to speak, but also something that would be useful for some of the people that have been with us for a long time and have cut their teeth with us and have listened to lots of podcasts and they're well-versed in the material. But also, this is tough to thread this needle, but I think we're going to be able to do it also for people that are brand new or people that are kind of new to the Reformed faith or new to biblical theology or might not even know exactly what that discipline is. And so we're going to be speaking about the importance of biblical theology for the life of the church. And we'll define our terms and even define what biblical theology means because sometimes we say, well, shouldn't all theology be biblical? Yes, it should. But when we're speaking of biblical theology in this context, we're speaking of it as a particular theological discipline, distinct even from systematic theology, but mutually beneficial. So this is a field that has really changed my life. And I don't overstate that. I'm not being hyperbolic, but I remember coming to seminary and speaking with a dear friend of ours, Danny Olinger, and I went into his office at the OPC offices. And I did not come up in the OPC or the PCA. I was born and raised in a PCUSA church, a rural church in north central Illinois, and a good church with wonderful people. You know, Calvinist pastor, we believed in the word of God, and relatively speaking, especially for a mainline church, very conservative. But at the same time, I wasn't catechized. I wasn't very familiar at all with Reformed hermeneutics or understanding that Christ is the sum and substance of the whole Bible, not just parts of it. And, you know, throughout college and other places, as many of you, I'm sure, have been very influenced by dispensationalism, and what you hear in evangelicalism often is not what we hear in Reformed churches. And I was just very confused, and it didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And I really cut my teeth at a church, a very dear church, that was more in the tradition of John MacArthur and the Master Seminary. And I'm always grateful for them and for Dr. MacArthur from a distance, because he taught me and demonstrated to me that we can work through the Bible in order. You know, let's do a continua, and we should care about the words of the Bible, and, of course, the word of God as a whole. But that grammatical, historical exegesis and verse-by-verse exposition of Scripture was new, and it was enlightening to me. But still, there's something missing if we don't see the whole picture, the big picture, if we don't put it all together, if we don't see that, you know, Jesus doesn't just appear in Matthew or in, you know, four or five chapters of the Old Testament, and then pops onto the scene, and then all of a sudden, then the New Testament's about Jesus, but the Old Testament was about Israel. That's the predominant view out there for many people. And so, for me, that's more or less what I came from to Danny Olinger's office. And people who know him and know him from the, you know, know the inside scoop will realize and be amazed that he didn't have a heart attack when I told him this. But he asked me, what would you like to do? You just joined the OPC, and you're in seminary? You're looking forward to possibly becoming a pastor? And I said, well, yeah, I think maybe becoming a minister would be good, but I don't know if I want to preach every week, I said. And I was like, you know, I don't know if that's for me. You know, I think I might want to be somewhere and help out and, you know, preach once in a while and maybe do some Bible studies and teaching and that sort of thing. And he about fell out of his chair because that's typically, if you know anything about the OPC, they're usually very tiny churches with one pastor. And he just looked at me like I was kind of crazy. But he bore with me, bared with me. And then, thankfully, I was introduced to a redemptive historical hermeneutic and biblical theological redemptive historical preaching. I started to see Christ revealed on all the pages of Scripture, and it was like the lights turned on. It's kind of like the Wizard of Oz where it went from black and white to color. I don't want to sit here and just speak myself and just talk about all my biography, but I introduced that to you because I imagine that many of the people are listening here now in Cabba Park, but also on the podcast have also had a similar experience. And if those lights haven't turned on for you, I hope maybe even tonight or tomorrow that they will. Because once you start to see that the whole Bible is about Jesus Christ and about God's plan for calling his covenant people that he chose from before the foundation of the world into fellowship with him so that we would all worship with him and be what we would worship him and we would be present with him for all eternity in the new heavens and the new earth. And the whole Bible is about that story. It's amazing. And it's wonderful. And that's really what biblical theology helps us to do. Lane, I might ask you a leading question if you would, brother, because you're a senior, but we also learned all from you either directly or indirectly. But I wonder if you might share with people a more technical or maybe the historical beginnings of biblical theology. What does that phrase mean? And how do we distinguish biblical theology from other disciplines like church history or historical theology or systematic theology?

Now, it's a discipline that really began to be developed in a pioneering way by Geerhardus Vos when he entered Princeton Seminary and gave an inaugural lecture and began to develop the actual discipline of biblical theology. There are several ways to contrast it. But systematic theology, which is a discipline we probably all understand more intuitively, is a topical study of the Bible. The Bible speaks of itself. The Bible speaks of itself. The self-witness of Scripture speaks about God. It speaks about man. It speaks about sin. It speaks about Christ. It speaks about salvation. It speaks about the church. It speaks about sacraments. It speaks about the last things. And those topics are all taught in various places in the scriptures. And we can focus in on particular biblical texts that tell us about God, man, sin, Christ, salvation, and the last things. And that is a wonderfully life-giving way of understanding the Bible because it helps us become systematically aware, topically aware of what the Bible teaches. And that is, Geerhardus Vos, in his early years, wrote a dogmatic theology, the Reformed Dogmatics. We've talked about it on Christ the Center and various venues. But he also began pioneering a discipline that was operative under the dark star, as it were, of theological liberalism, where theological liberals were studying the Bible not as dogmatic theology, not interested in its dogma or doctrine, but they were studying it historically. They were looking at the origin of biblical texts and the original historical milieu in which texts were written and events that are narrated in those texts occurred. But what they began to do is categorically desupernaturalize the Bible, treat it as though it is not a history of special revelation, something revealing God, revealing his promises, revealing his deeds, revealing his words, but just a loose collection of documents that are gradually redacted over time by primitive people. And the discipline of biblical theology as it's being exercised or as it's being developed under liberal theologians really becomes nothing more than a history of religious experience, of those who are very distant from us, whether Hebrews or Jews, whether Old or New Testament. And the thing that the discipline was doing under liberalism was destroying the unity of the Bible, turning it into a series of redacted and disconnected and even contradictory texts that wind up not telling us about God, but about the religious experience of pre-enlightenment human beings. And what Vos did that was so useful is he took the same discipline that the liberals were doing and he framed it in light of at least three fundamental things. There's more, but this is just a brief thing. First, he said that the Bible is a history of special revelation from the triune God. The Bible is the disclosure of the triune God's mighty words and mighty deeds that fall in time. And there's a history to it. There's a genesis, there's a development, and there's a consummation to it. He said, secondly, that that history of special revelation from God is organic. It is about the glory of God condescending to dwell with his people. And after the fall, the glory of that condescension comes only in the promised and now glorified Messiah, Jesus Christ. So the organic center of biblical revelation after the fall, as Camden has said, is Jesus Christ. Vos was insistent on this. Promises, types, and sacrifices leading to the substance that comes in Jesus Christ. Third, and entailed by what I just said, that history is progressive. It moves toward a telos, toward a goal, toward a climax. And Vos said, underwriting all of that is a full-orbed supernaturalism to the history of special revelation in its organic and progressive character. And what does that do? That helps us recognize that the Bible is not only something that teaches us on the topics of God, man, sin, salvation, and last things. But it is also a history of special revelation aimed at the glory of God that finds its substance and its consummation in Christ and in his church. And in a sense, what biblical theology in the Vosian tradition did is it took a discipline from the liberals and put it in its properly God-centered, supernatural, organic, and progressive context. And we owe him quite a thank you. And we are continuing to try to thank him. But even more basically, we love this because it helps us see the glory of God in this wonderful historical process of which Jesus is the center. So it's a wonderful supplement and wonderful enrichment to our standard systematic theology that we love so much. Much more can be said. But that's kind of getting to the heart of it from my standpoint.

Amen. Thank you for that. I want to ask both you, Derrick, and Dan, a bit about your experience. I'll start with Derrick first, and then I'll come to you, Dan. But I'd love if you might share, you know, I know a bit about your story, but I'd love for you just to share about your work as a theologian and as a pastor and how biblical theology, you know, coming to understand these things Lane has just expounded for us, how that's changed your study of the Bible or your consideration of the text and how you share that with your people. You're preaching every week, but you're also developing theology and writing theology and doing a lot of work. And a lot of people in your community, I presume, were raised in churches that gave they understood about the historical Jesus and he was truly God and truly man. They have a real love for the Bible, but they might not have put all the pieces together. I'm wondering if there's any example or any history or personal stories you have for yourself and how that's really clicked for you and for the people in your congregation.

Yeah, well, I think it might be helpful if I give three formative experiences that I had when I came to Christ. Some people know my story, but I did not grow up in a Christian home. And I didn't join a reformed church until basically the time I started seminary at Reformed Theological Seminary in Atlanta. And I had three formative experiences that all happened around the same time. One was I had a really good pastor who preached biblical theology really well. And in fact, this was in Chattanooga. He's now in Birmingham, Robbie Holt at Covenant Press in this area. And he preached Christ through all of Scripture in a way that my wife and I would leave every Sunday and we'd say, How did he do that? How did he get there from that passage? I don't understand. The second thing that was very formative is my first semester of seminary, I took Covenant Theology with Dr. Derek Thomas. And one of the required books was Geerhardus Vos Biblical Theology. And that is not easy sledding, especially for a first-year seminary student who's not the brightest in the world, admittedly. But that's your last name? That's right. That's correct. You have no idea how many times I've been called. They're not so bright. Even my wife says that now. But I read that book and I read some other things that Vos had said. And I was just blown away at this grand redemptive story and the fulfillment, the unfolding mystery of Christ throughout all Scripture. It was so formative for me and it really set me on a trajectory. The third is my Hebrew professor who also teaches at BTS, Dr. Judd Davis. He teaches both Greek and Hebrew. And he's one of these guys who he hasn't seen an English translation of the Bible in probably two decades. You know, he just doesn't. And he was one of the most difficult professors I had. But he was one of the best because everything pointed to you are learning Greek and Hebrew, yes, to understand the Bible, but to understand this unfolding redemptive historical history here and redemptive historical fulfillment. And so he would do things like we would have a ridiculously difficult Hebrew test, as they often are. And, you know, and we would work through and we'd plot. And this class met on Monday nights. And it only met, I want to say, eight times or something during the semester. So we were in there from five to nine doing a Hebrew nonstop. Nonstop. Okay. And he would see that our brains were starting to melt. Right. And he would say, all right, guys, let's do a break. And he'd say, we're going to take a five minute break because y'all need a rest. And we're going to start off and we're going to do some Chuck Norris jokes. And we would do Chuck Norris jokes. He'd get everybody laughing. He'd say, okay, now let's get back to Hebrew. And he said, but before we get back to our lesson, can I show you some biblical theology? And we'd say, yes, please. And he would turn to some obscure passage, you know, or what we thought was obscure at the time. And he would begin in the original languages tracing how this pointed to Christ and how it was fulfilled and bringing in the New Testament passages. And he would marry these things so well together. It's almost like you could feel it in the room. And then he, with a smirk on his face, would say, you want to get back to Hebrew now? We'd say, yes, let's study more because we wanted to see that. We wanted to be able to do that. And so those three experiences for me were very formative. And what that's done now is, you know, my primary calling is I'm a pastor of a small church in Aliceville, Alabama. And some of the best, I think, fruit that's been born, at least that I can see from my sermons, often has been teaching biblical theology and people from the text and people coming up afterwards and saying, I had no idea. How did you tie those two texts together? And I'd say, well, you know, ultimately the answer is crossed and we'd work through it. But it honestly, it changed. Those experiences formed how I try to teach and preach now. And biblical theology is almost this. And I'm a, you know, I'm a systematic theology Ph.D. student. But biblical theology is that thing that's always in the background. You know, it's always it's kind of always under the surface. I can't get away from it. And so it's impacted how I teach and preach because I want to. There's something about when you're excited about something. And Lane actually displayed it really well just a minute ago. You can tell Lane is passionate about biblical theology and Geerhardus Vos. And when you hear him say that or when you hear any preacher who's passionate about a particular topic and a preacher who says, let me show you how Christ is the fulfillment of all these things. That's contagious for your church. Yeah. And if a church, so often people in the pews, one of the ways they learn to read the Bible is how their preacher preaches. And so if a preacher is constantly trying to to show Christ fulfilling all these things and this grand unfolding mystery, that's going to cause the people to want to to dig and do the same. So. So, yeah, those three experiences set me up. And now it's it's kind of the the lens, I think, where I end up seeing everything through it, you know. So that's great.

Dan, I know you're the URC minister here, at least on this panel. But we've gotten to know each other through Mid-America Reform Seminary, which is a small seminary in the Chicagoland area. Might be the home of the Chicago Bears soon in Indiana if they move, sadly. Yes, exactly. But there's a really rich tradition in the URC and coming out of the CRC before them. Geerhardus Vos, of course, was involved in the CRC many, many years ago and a Dutch tradition as well. So the Dutch Reformed, the URC isn't specifically Dutch Reform. It is a heavy, heavy dose of Dutch history. Dan's Italian. So he's very proud of that. But the Italian reformers are also very, very strong and formidable. But it's it's it's it's an important tradition and one that you're you're well versed in. And I imagine, you know, you came more or less to seminary with with more awareness than Derrick or I ever, ever did about these subjects. But I'd love if you might share some of what you're doing or, you know, specifically even in Manhattan, because I imagine a lot of people are coming to your church from who knows where all over the world.

Yeah.

And coming from a much different context.

Yeah, absolutely. That's a that's a great question to think about here. Just to kind of first touch on the Dutch Reformed history. Like Camden said, I'm not Dutch at all, but but glad to be part of this this rich history. Some of you are familiar with the Heidelberg Catechism and the catechism begins by asking the question, you know, how do we come to know our sin and our misery? The law of God tells us. And then it asks the question of, well, then, you know, how can we be set free and be delivered from our sin and our misery? And it's like, well, no creature could pay for our sins, whether in heaven or on earth. We could not do so. And so we need to seek a mediator. And that mediator needs to be true God and true man. And then it asks this beautiful question. Well, and then it says, well, that true mediator is the Lord Jesus Christ. But then it asks a very beautiful question. How do you come to know this gospel, this mediator? And it tells us that God began to reveal that promise and that gospel already in paradise. And he foreshadowed it through the law and the prophets. And he proclaimed it through the prophets and ultimately fulfilled it in his son of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so contained within our standards is a rich biblical theological consideration of the scriptures that sees it all in terms of promise and fulfillment in Jesus Christ. And that was something Geerhardus Vos himself grew up on. So that preceded Vos, right? And Vos himself learned that Heidelberg Catechism and learned to understand that. And in many ways developed it, utilized it in response to what Lane had mentioned previously regarding the rise of a kind of liberal biblical theology that didn't take the scriptures in its own right and in its own story, but instead sought to impose some kind of historical narrative upon it in order to bring about contradictions and differences within the text itself. And so Vos is drawing, I would say, from that rich Dutch Reformed history along with Herman Bovink and others. And then you have a plethora of Dutch Reformed writers in Dutch, then some later in English, even think of like a Herman Ridderbos later on, developing these things. And so it's a wonderful tradition and a very helpful one. Now, thinking, you know, there's a number of ways in which that approach to the scriptures is helpful. Derrick mentioned many of them in terms of it focusing your word ministry on Christ. And it's only in seeing Christ that people are changed, right, from one degree of glory to the next. And so you could have some interesting, you know, psychological insights or different approaches to politics or economics. And those things people might find interesting. And in fact, people might flock to those things. But it's not ultimately going to change people and set their hope on Christ and ultimately give them a heavenly mindedness that actually is impactful and changes things. And so biblical theology, as it focuses on Christ's promise and fulfilled at the heart of the gospel, helps to maintain focus on the right things and the right person on Christ. Now, in Manhattan, and this is true of anywhere, maybe gets heightened in Manhattan just because there's so many people and so many things going on and events and causes and activities and activists and everything you can imagine. And the kinds of people you can imagine are all there. So maybe this is not unique to Manhattan, but maybe it's just exasperated there. But people are all over the map, right? Like, and some things are good, some things are bad. People are interested in many different things. My congregation is made up of people in all different fields of work and so on and from all different backgrounds and countries. But what biblical theology helps in the midst of all of that diversity is to provide a really beautiful unity, which is the unity of our faith, right? One Lord, one faith, one baptism, one spirit, right? Like, biblical theology helps us then to keep the scriptures at the center of things and Christ at the center of things. And it actually brings about a wonderful unity. There's a couple people here, or at least one person here from, who used to be at my church in Manhattan, and they could testify to this where, you know, there's just this, to the world, a very peculiar unity and warmth and a welcoming environment there. And it's not because we told people, I mean, we did encourage them, of course, right? Love one another and so on. Those are the exhortations of scripture. But it was never meant as a forced thing. It was simply, let's focus on the scripture. Let's preach Christ. And then you see the fruit of that in the family of God, uniting around what actually matters. And so there's plenty of differences within the congregation, you know, in different areas and spheres of life. But there's also just this really beautiful, tangible unity. And I think that's not only just because of my preaching or anything, but even the previous pastor there as well. This focus on Christ and biblical theology really helps us to do that. And it helps, you know, we've been kind of talking about pastors doing that, but it also just enables the person reading the Bible, you know, under this teaching and kind of having this harmonious to do it for themselves as well. It's not like a, as we're going to talk about, it's not like a secret code, like here's Christ and pulling Christ out of the hat here. But it does require some discipline and skills to be able to put the text together and to see the storylines of scripture, which seminary helps us do. And so pastors hopefully are equipped to do that very well. But in many ways, it's not meant to be this sort of, you know, off in some higher realm kind of like approach to the scripture that only your pastor can do. It's like everyone can do that. Secret knowledge. Yeah, no secret knowledge of anything, right? But it's gaining those skills to be able to put the text together and then to see how the story unfolds, to see how, you know, these seemingly random laws in Leviticus like find their fulfillment in Christ and so on. So a lot more could be said, but yeah, I think those are some of the implications.

Can I just add really quickly that biblical theology helps you avoid two great pitfalls that run rampant through the evangelical church? One is moralism, which he really just touched on now. You know, how many times have you heard a sermon from, let's say, the Exodus account? And the greatest or the main point of the sermon is trust God like the Israelites did. That's a good application to trust God, you know, even in the face of uncertainty and great danger. But, you know, there's actually something greater going on in the redemptive historical story. And if I had time, we could go to Luke chapter 9 and there's something about the Exodus there. But so it helps you avoid moralism. But it also helps you avoid that famed question that every Bible study has. And it's well intended. And there's probably a place for it in some sense. What does this passage mean to you? You know, who cares what it means to me? You know, I don't know anything. What does it actually mean? What does it mean to Christ and about Christ? And it helps you avoid those two things. And by avoiding those two things, your knowledge and therefore, Lord willing, your love for the Lord Jesus Christ expands.

Yeah, I'd like to maybe help us lay a bit of the theological and even hermeneutical foundations to kind of explain the warrant for this practice of biblical theology and a redemptive historical hermeneutic. You'll hear more if you're able to come back tomorrow. We'd love to have you here. And for those who are just listening or watching the recording after the fact, we have plenty of resources available, booklets and books and studies on this subject. But tomorrow, especially, Lane will be speaking quite a bit about seeing Christ in all of Scripture and understanding and a trans-testamental gospel. And he'll explain and unfold what that means. But tomorrow, we'll be asking, we'll be answering, we're speaking in three points. Just the, and just emphasizing the fact that God has spoken the unfolding message of his son to his people. It's a very simple 3.3 address message. And especially in that middle one, you'll get to see some of this in action. But many of us, certainly, if we were raised in a church or if we grew up in one or attended one even later in life, at some point, I hope, that you came to learn that there were at least a handful of messianic predictions scattered through the Old Testament. You know, there are passages like Isaiah chapter 53 or Micah chapter 5 speaks about the birth of the Messiah or Psalm 22 about the sufferings of Jesus. These are fairly, in my mind, just indisputable. But I mean, I would, I think we might be very hard-pressed to find any church who might call themselves Christian to deny that those passages are about Jesus. But we want to go so much further than that. And Jesus goes much further than that. If we go into the gospel account of Luke, toward the end of the gospel in 24, Luke says and records Jesus meeting the disciples, these men, on the road to Emmaus. And Luke says that beginning with Moses and all the prophets, Jesus interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. So even beginning with Moses, we go back even further. He's talking not just about when Moses was born in the Exodus account, but even everything Moses wrote, you know, the whole first five books of the Bible, all of it. Beginning with the whole Bible from the very beginning, it concerns Jesus. So I want to introduce a distinction, and then we'll ask, and I'll have the brothers fill in here. But this little distinction between Jesus being predicted in the Old Testament and Jesus being the subject, or I go even further, the substance of the Old Testament. Certainly he's predicted in the Old Testament. We're not denying that. I just want to go further. And I would like for us to talk about that. It's a very important distinction. There's a difference between saying that Jesus Christ is predicted in the Old Testament and then saying that he is the subject and the substance of it. The first one, you can hold with a highlighter, you know, and a list of verses and just go to the few parts of the Old Testament. That one's about Jesus, but this other stuff isn't, so I'm going to get over to these. But the second one, understanding that Jesus is the subject and the substance of all of scripture, changes how you read every page. I had a friend sometime in a Bible study that he would love to highlight so much, and he ended up highlighting the entire book. And then he started doing different colors, and then he ran out of colors, and then he started to use those Post-it note things, and then he ran out of those. And then he started to staple the pages he really liked. This book wouldn't lie flat anymore. But in a sense, it's like, if we're trying to read the Bible in light of Christ and mark every part of the Bible that is about Jesus, we'll end up like a book like my friend had, you know. You can't even close it anymore because all of it is about him. So, brothers, I love maybe if you want to talk a bit about this or explain. I don't know, Lane, if you might be willing to give us a little bit of a preview at least or talk about this trans-testamental gospel idea. But what are some of the hermeneutical foundations and why we can say this? This isn't just the conjecture. This isn't just, you know, well, reader response theory, you know, in which we love Jesus so much, so we're just going to make the Old Testament about him by shoving him in there or just trying to find him, as Dan kind of alluded to, pulling a rabbit out of a hat. But he's not really there on its own terms. We made it about him the way that modern English departments make books about that were written 200 years ago about contemporary sociological issues we're dealing with today, you know. So how is a trans-testamental gospel, a proper redemptive historical hermeneutic, really something that arises from God's own design and the nature of the Bible itself rather than from our thoughts?

Yeah, that's a wonderful question. I don't want to summarize everything I'm going to say tomorrow because I'm going to speak quite directly to that. But I want to plant something that I hope will prove useful to you. When you think about men, prophets, who thousands of years ago wrote about Christ, it's very easy to think of them as though they were simply heightened theological geniuses, that they were the theological Einsteins of their generation. They simply had a vision for the future that was unusually heightened by certain gifts that they possessed and others don't have. And there is certainly a sense in which Moses and Isaiah and the writers of the Old Testament were remarkably gifted, but it really has nothing to do with their aptitude or gifts per se. One text that is quite useful when you ask the question, how is it that Christ was not only predicted by prophets in the Old Testament, but known and received and believed on by prophets in the Old Testament? Peter, in 1 Peter 1.11 speaks of the prophets of the Old Testament scripture and says that the reason why they knew Christ, spoke of Christ, and wrote of Christ, had nothing to do with them because, quote, the spirit of Christ spoke in advance of his sufferings and his glories and revealed that speech to the prophets. So if you ask this hermeneutical question, how is it that the Old Testament scriptures, thousands of years before the coming of Jesus in his incarnation, in his suffering, in his resurrection and ascension, how can he be known in advance? Well, Peter makes clear that the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ himself, supernaturally, sovereignly revealed Christ prior to his coming. So that the Spirit of Christ, so that the Spirit of Christ spoke and wrote of Christ's suffering and glory. Once you see that, and to plug this into the biblical theology I was talking about, once you see that, the supernaturalism, God-centeredness, and Christ-centeredness of the Old Testament flows directly from its divine author. Now, he doesn't override or bypass the unique gifts or idioms or ways of speaking in the prophets. Moses writes differently than Isaiah. But the words that are breathed out, 2 Timothy 3.16, are from the Holy Spirit. Once you see that, and that's all I'm going to say for now, but once you see that as one fundamental starting point, everything begins to make sense. Because this is God-breathed, Christ-centered scripture, to pull a line from 1 Corinthians 2.12, in words taught by the Spirit himself. That's quite remarkable, right? That's what's underlying so much of this. There's much more to say, but certainly no less than that.

You know, three years ago, we celebrated the 100th anniversary of the publication of Jay Gresson Machen's book, Christianity and Liberalism. And that's a significant book in our Presbyterian and Reformed heritage, and especially the OPC. It was 13 years prior to the founding of the OPC. But it was so significant because Machen was speaking out and demonstrating that what was going on in the mainline Presbyterian church in the north, but the south, sadly, wasn't too many years behind them in similar things. But what was going on is they were fighting a battle not with a different accent of Christianity or just a different variety of Christianity, but with a different religion altogether. It's Christianity and liberalism, not Christianity and a different type of Christianity. It's a different religion. That's his basic thesis. And one of the core things that he speaks of there is to speak of liberalism as effectively paganism or naturalism. And classic liberalism, we're using it specifically here in a specific historical way, not just speaking of a relative term with these are liberals. Well, liberals as opposed to what? Like, who are the conservatives, who are the liberals? And that's always moving. He's speaking about classic liberalism, of which Gobbler was a type, the kind of the man who kind of made the bad form of biblical theology famous. I think Vos corrected. But Machen is dealing with people who just see the Bible as a collection, essentially, of aphorisms, of ethical teachings, that you need to kind of strip the Bible of any of these claims of supernaturalism and just read it and learn the lessons that you can. And it has nothing to do with God becoming incarnate for the liberals, or especially of God actually acting in human history and doing something significant to redeem his people. And sadly, liberalism in the 60s, often much of it morphed into Bardianism with the teachings of Karl Barth. And some people thought he was going to be the savior to defeat the big bad enemy of the liberals. And here comes Bard with a dimensionalized version of Christianity to save us. But he effectively did the same thing. He removed God acting in history, in our time and space, and he excised that and trapped it in some other dimension. God's time for us. Some other place. You know, effectively a different timeline. Like, if you're watching, if there's a Bard version of Avengers movie, it would be in this multiverse, you know. Somewhere over the rainbow. The spider-verse or something, yes. But the reason I bring all this up is not just talk about Machen or a completely different subject, but it's right on point. Because what Machen was so concerned to maintain is that the supernatural God, God acts supernaturally in history. That Jesus is the eternal son of God who has taken on human flesh and bore our sin. He lived a perfect life for us. And he died to pay the penalty for the sins of his people. He remained in the grave for three days. Then he was raised imperishable by the spirit. And he ascended on high and he intercedes for us. He's triumphed over the grave. This actually happened. And we believe this really happened. He physically died and was physically raised from the dead. But the beautiful thing here to connect with what Lane and Derrick were speaking about is that God acts redemptively, mightily, with great power to do things, to demonstrate his glory, but to save his people. But then he also interprets his acts. He speaks to say what he did and why he did it. So it's not one of the Bible is not a mystical document. In the sense where it's just a spiritual communication with no historical context or no historical reference or meaning. But neither is it naturalism, just a story of earthly events. And then we import or we extract ethical teachings from it or import, you know, spiritual teachings upon it. No, it's both. It's God acting supernaturally and then supernaturally inspiring the words that record the redemptive acts. So often that's behind what we mean when we're talking about redemptive history and a redemptive historical interpretation. It's God's word. But that word is an interpretive word interpreting his mighty redemptive deeds. Are there any thoughts on that?

Well, I was just going to say if we were, and we may have some Baptists in here, but after that sermon you just gave, we could pass the plate, sing just as I am. All right. It is open down front, brothers and sisters. No, in all seriousness, you know, the Bible does biblical theology for us. And there are layers to biblical theology. There are some things that you can see kind of on the surface in a text that make you go, huh, there's a connection here. And then there's some things that you have to dig a little deeper. But as far as prediction versus substance, I think a good example is 1 Corinthians 10. And, you know, you'll forgive the king's English here, God's double inspired word. But it says, He's writing to the Corinthians and saying, Our fathers, there's something there. But notice, what did he do? He gave you a historical event and then said, Here's the substance of this historical event. They drank that same spiritual rock from that rock, but the rock was ultimately the Lord Jesus Christ. So the Bible does biblical theology for us, or at least it helps us to do biblical theology.

Yeah, just for shorthand, you know, the Westminster Confession of Faith 7, Chapter 7, Section 5, and then Chapter 8, Section 6 are so helpful on that exact point, because we wonder, well, how are people saved in the Old Testament if Christ had not yet come? They looked forward to the coming of the Messiah. But those sections of the Westminster Confession are so helpful to explain a biblical teaching that even the Old Testament saints, as they looked forward in faith, they had faith in the coming Messiah, but God was providing for them in types and shadows. But those types and shadows, though they looked forward to the historical coming of Christ, nevertheless still mediated the same grace of Christ, even before he came, because in God's eternal plan of redemption, it was certain and secure that Christ would come and die and be raised for sinners. So as they faithfully participated in animal sacrifices, we know the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sins, can never atone for sins, but they looked forward. It anticipated the coming of the once-for-all sacrifice. So if those Old Testament saints were obeying the word of the Lord, and doing what he commanded, and participating by faith, the same way we participate in the Lord's Supper by faith, the same Holy Spirit can work even in an Old Testament believer. It's really, when you think about it, no more difficult for the Lord to mediate God's grace to us 2,000 years after Christ died and was raised from the dead, than to mediate the grace of Christ 2,000 years before, because it's certain in God's plan.

Well, actually, perfect to follow up on that. So the question would be, to follow up on Camden's point, who mediates in the Old Testament? Who's mediating the grace of God to the saints in the Old Testament? And you have a very clear statement in 1 Timothy 2.5. There is one God and one mediator between God and man, the Lord Jesus Christ or the man Christ Jesus. And so the scriptures themselves testify to the fact that there is one mediator, and not just when it comes to the New Testament, but to the Old as well. It's Christ pre-incarnate mediating by his spirit, his grace, to those saints in the Old Testament, even as he does now as one who has been incarnate and now glorified. So there's one mediator. And when we begin to see then through biblical theology, that storyline of the unfolding of God's covenant of grace, we realize that there is one mediator to that covenant of grace, even as it was being administered in the Old Testament through types and shadows. And so I think the scriptures are very clear that it has to be about Jesus, and it has to be Christ at work in the Old Testament. Otherwise, you have the Old Testament saints saved in a different way by a different mediator. But again, the scriptures testify that there's one mediator. I want to add one more kind of further argument kind of toward this. And it goes to consider the relationship between the Father and the Son. If we believe the Bible to be God's word, we might ask the question, well, what is God supremely concerned about, right, as he's writing to his people? And when we come to the New Testament, what he's supremely concerned about is the glory of his Son, right? This is my beloved Son, listen to him, right? The loved Son of the Father. And so, you know, you might reflect on that and say, well, what else would the Father seek to make known but his Son? Even in the types and shadows in the Old Testament, right? God, the Father, loves his Son with this eternal love and is intent, focused, resolved on making him known. And even as the Son is resolved to make the Father now, right? If you've seen the Father, you've seen the Son. Or if you've seen the Son, you've seen the Father, right? So this mutual love between the Father and the Son, I think, actually also supports a biblical theology that keeps Christ at the center, but not just as like an intellectual point, but as one to be adored and loved, even as the Father loves and adores his Son. And so I think, yeah, when we consider these broader points, it gives us a very rich view of the Scriptures and their unity in Christ.

Yeah, I was going to make a different point, but you brothers have moved to something so rich, I'll just say this, that when the Apostle Paul in Romans 1, 1 through 4 defines the gospel, the apostolic gospel, the gospel of God, he defines it as the gospel concerning God's Son, who descended from David according to the flesh, and who was raised and declared the Son of God in power by the Spirit of holiness. So the gospel concerns God's Son crucified and raised. In verse 2, he says that gospel was promised beforehand in the Scriptures of the Old Testament, in the prophetic Scriptures. What's so fascinating is he uses a very similar term in Galatians 3.8 to say that that gospel promised beforehand was preached beforehand to Abraham. And further, that Abraham believed that gospel, and as he believed that gospel, he was united to Christ, justified by faith alone. And then the Apostle says in 3.9, Galatians 3.9, that we who believe are blessed along with Abraham, the believer. What is he saying? He's saying there's one gospel horizon shared by old and new covenant believer alike. That gospel concerns the Son of God crucified and raised. Abraham believed it. We believed it. And we therefore share the same Christ-centered gospel horizon by the Spirit. That's quite remarkable and quite beautiful. And it's to our point.

Amen. Abraham longed to see my day, Jesus said. John 8.56, yeah.

I love this, talking about this. And I would like to probably, unless we have any final comments on this segment, open things up. If people have any questions, we'd love to be able to continue the conversation. And since we, I don't think we have a mic to pass, we're not expecting to do that. But if you have a question, we can reword that or repeat it into the microphone for the people that might be listening after the fact. Do we have any questions from people here this evening?

The question is, for me in this instance, how I became a Christian and how I began to feel a call to minister. My mother and grandparents on my mother's side were wonderfully strong Christians. My father and the people on his side of the family were wonderfully strong pagans, if you can even speak of wonderfully strong pagans, intensely strong pagans, I guess is a better way to put it. And my mom took me to church, Southern Baptist Church, every Sunday until I hit about 12 and then gave me a little bit of freedom. But I heard the gospel every single Sunday in some form or another. And I didn't believe it. I knew it was true, but I didn't believe it. My grandparents, I would spend summers with them and they would share the gospel with me, take me to church as well. And so I was gospel saturated, but I wasn't catechized or anything like that. And then I would attend periodically as a self-conscious unbeliever, young life meetings that athletes would attend, football players, basketball players, things like that in junior high and high school, heard the gospel from that. And really wasn't, just would not believe. I knew deep down it was true, but I said, I have too many sinful things I want to do, I suppose was the way I was thinking. And one day, my grandparents gave me a Bible. And one day after my freshman year of college, I played football at Eastern New Mexico University, my freshman year, decided I was just going to pick up the Bible and to compress this because I don't want to go too long. I turned to Matthew 23 and Jesus was speaking of the Pharisees as whitewashed tombs who are clean on the outside and inside are full of dead men's bones. Now I was an athlete, a football player. I didn't drink, didn't smoke, didn't do anything like that. I was all about football and all about being athletic and whatever. And I realized I was going to hell because I was a whitewashed tomb. I was full of dead men's bones. About a day or two later, turned on the television and there was a sermon where a televangelist was preaching on Leviticus 16 of all things. And he said that on the day of atonement, a scapegoat was taken outside the camp, bearing away the sins of God's people. And another goat's blood was taken into the most holy place. And he said that scapegoat is a picture of Jesus Christ bearing away the sins of his people by his own suffering on the cross. And I have to tell you, my whole life I'd heard that and thought, I'm so bored. Let me go work out or whatever. You know, let me go train or whatever. And it was, and I saw the gospel and I went, that is so beautiful. And then I was broken in my heart, confessed my sin before the Lord, trusted in Jesus Christ, walked into my mother's room. She was, it was early. And I said, mom, guess what? And she looked at me, taking me to church all the time, prayed for me countless hours. She said, well, I just became a Christian. And I explained how, and she just started pouring tears and hugged me and said, I've prayed for this for so long. And so I was converted and it was very, just very sudden and very dramatic. Fast forward a few years with just a couple of years, I'm in the OPC. And, and a, a guy who was doing young life in Texas just started feeding me books and I started reading them. and he said, you're, you know, you shouldn't like these that much unless you are called to ministry somehow. And so he had given me Louis Burkoff. I'd read a bunch of it and asked him a whole bunch of questions. And after about four or five years, I met Char and the people in the congregation, especially the elders, they said, Lane, you need to go to a seminary and study and pursue ministry. And when they told me what a seminary was and that you just get to sit and study the Bible and original languages and theology all the time, I said, I'll go tomorrow, you know, as I was so excited about it. And that's how the Lord just, it was through the church and through that, that they just directed me towards seminary and I, my feet didn't touch the ground in seminary. I can tell you that. I just loved it. Just loved it. And so the Lord converted me and turned me into seminary within a few, just a few years after conversion, to be honest.

You know, over here first and we'll go over there next. Derrick, Dan, any thoughts?

Well, I have a great resource to recommend.

Can you repeat the question maybe or summarize it at least in your answer? Yeah.

So I believe the question was, you know, how do you in a very simple way, not within a seminary context, teach people to see Christ in the Old Testament and to bring it forward in the storyline? I just wanted to recommend one resource. It's a lesser known one, but within, you know, the Dutch Reformed Treasury by S.G. DeGraff, Promise and Deliverance. And he actually wrote those, I think it's four volumes, four Sunday school teachers so that they would not teach the Old Testament, you know, the story of David and so on, just like a moralistic story, but that they would see Christ in it. And it's very, I don't want to say basic because it's very rich, but it's clear and presented in a simple way where he'll take sometimes a chapter, sometimes a larger section, and he'll say, here's the basic idea and here's Christ at work here and then he'll flesh it out in a few pages. So it's not extensive, but it's four volumes because he goes over just about the entire Old Testament into the new. But there is a host of materials that will look at specific themes. My own little book in the back and not to be self-promoting at all, but shameless, shameless, but I actually... It just means you've thought about this before. Yeah. So this is good. But actually, that book really was written as an introduction to this topic so that people would, you know, in 70 pages or so, less than that, be able to be brought through the storyline, through the lens of God's covenant and dwelling with his people. So there's resources out there that, yeah, hopefully can introduce people to them.

Yeah, well, similar advice, let me tell you more about the experience we've had at our church. Of course, I preach and, you know, utilize biblical theology about teaching and preaching, but even our particular Bible studies, for example, our women's Bible study, they will grab a resource, you know, like Nancy Guthrie, for example, who does really good biblical theology, and they'll work slowly, plod through those things, you know, without a seminary context, how else are you really going to get it unless you grab understandable resources and take a group along with it and work through it with it or work through it together. A lot of times those resources have good questions at the end of each chapter that you can ask. That's one thing. I'm sure Reform Forum has some lectures that they could follow and watch on this topic, but I would say, yeah, grab some very basic resources. You may not want to start off with, you know, biblical theology by Vos, but you might start off with Dan's book or you might pick a theme and you might say, all right, we're going to go through the book of Exodus together as a study, but here's what we're going to do. We're going to grab, is it Michael Morales? Is it he that wrote the book on Exodus, old and new? Okay, we're going to grab his book and we're going to read it together as a study. So the thing is, is what I would encourage everybody on this towards is when you start doing this and you kind of inject it into the veins of your people, your friend group, whatever the case is, it's kind of like a, I would say a virus, but that's not a good thing, but it's very contagious. I don't know what else to say, but it's very, it's like a flame, all right, and it just sets everything in place. No, it really is contagious and it, you start to almost, it almost becomes a second nature in some way because when you do it once, when you go through like the book of Exodus, for example, or Genesis, which is another great one to do to start off with, what happens is you start to learn what questions to ask when you go through studies of books and that's a big part, in my opinion, of biblical theology is knowing what questions to ask. How does Christ fulfill, how is this fulfilled in Christ is one, is the main question. Well, here's the second question. Are there New Testament texts that help enlighten, you know, if maybe Warfield was correct, which he was, that the Old Testament is like a room that's fully furnished but dimly lit and the New Testament is like flipping the lights on, right, to give a rough, rough translation of Warfield there? Well, if that's the case, then there's probably some New Testament texts that enlighten us on, you know, this grand metanarrative of scripture. So, I mentioned Luke chapter 9 earlier. In Luke chapter 9 at the Mount of Transfiguration, two figures appear and speak to Jesus. One is Moses, the other is Elijah. And in verse, chapter 9, verse 31, it says, and they spoke to him concerning his, now your English translation is going to say departure or, if you're reading the King's English, it's going to say his deceased. And you look at that, now, you don't have to know Greek but what you could do is look up, what's the, what's the word here? I wonder what departure might mean. Well, it's the Greek word for Exodus. It's Exodus. and you go, wait a minute, you're telling me that Moses and Elijah, now we know Moses has an Exodus, right? But what about 2 Kings 2, right? Wait a minute, they both passed over water. Then you start to make connections, you go, oh, wait a minute, is Jesus leading his people through a new and greater Exodus as the greater Moses and the greater Elijah through the waters of judgment, destroying what's held us in slavery and sin, or what's held us in slavery and bondage, namely sin? Okay, now what did I just do? I gave you a very short example. Now, how do you get there? You start small, you learn to ask the right questions, and you learn to ask them together, and eventually, it kind of all starts to become second nature to you.

The best example of this is learning how the Bible interprets itself, and that is the supreme example where we can go to the New Testament, especially with the apostolic teaching there, specifically, look at Peter's sermon in Acts 2, or many other examples of Paul interpreting the Old Testament text. Those are not specifically unique examples. They're unique in the sense that the people writing them are inspired by the Holy Spirit to write God's word, but they're not just giving us discrete, hermeneutical, you know, super interpretations. the Bible's also teaching us how we're supposed to read the rest of the Bible as well, and so doing it in that way, looking at the examples kind of helps you to learn a better way to read. I like to say, and it's not always true, but for me, it certainly was, and for many people, it is as well, but biblical theology is often perhaps caught more so than it's taught. It's taught. I don't mean to say it shouldn't be. We're trying to teach even right now and then tomorrow, but for me, you can learn the textbook lessons or the lessons in the lecture hall, but it's not until you spend time with people in Bible studies and you're sitting in sermons or you're talking with your family or with other like-minded believers about these things. Talk to them about the word of God and explain what you're seeing and ask others what they see and you're not just looking for your own private interpretations, but I'm saying seek counsel in all of God's people because the Spirit is among us all who believe on Christ. That's a good way to also start to learn, but listen to good sermons. We can recommend some examples for you. I pray and I trust that many of you are in good and faithful churches that do this. We have our Vos Group podcast as well. We try to model this as we not only expand on what Vos has taught but also try to amplify it. There's a bunch of resources like good commentaries. There's a dictionary of biblical imagery and other things that have been helpful when you're looking at examples like Derrick's talking about and books by guys like Greg Beale on the New Testament's use of the Old. But one more thing I'd like to say and I think this is significant for us too. Whenever we're reading a portion of Scripture, whether Old or New Testament, I think it's useful for us to stop and to consider the big picture of what we call and what is known as Historia Salutis or more or just the history of salvation but more or less to simplify it, the accomplishment of redemption. So, ask yourself in a passage, what is God doing in the big scheme of things? What is he doing at this moment in redemptive history to save his people and to bring them into his glory, to glorify himself? So, you look at big events like the crossing of the Red Sea. Well, that's not just a demonstration of God's mighty power or an example of a miracle. It is those things but it's highly significant in the sense that he has called the people out of slavery and brought them through a water judgment ordeal and he's also judged the Egyptians and then he brings them into this, into a pilgrimage on which they're on their way to their ultimate rest in a promised land. So, that whole is a redemptive historical arc which becomes a context or a platform for us to understand the entire Christian life as we're redeemed from the slavery of our sins and brought through a judgment ordeal. Christ takes a judgment for us but then we live as pilgrims in this earth being led into our eternal homeland in the new heavens and the new earth. That's one big example but another recently I've been thinking about is think of the Jesus high priestly prayer in John 17. Now, it's easy enough to sit there and think about what Jesus is about to do with his death and resurrection but think about the big picture. Jesus has not yet died and been raised but he's incarnate, he's been ministering, he's been teaching his disciples but now he's praying to the Father. He's talking about those that the Father has given him. He's not lost one and he's talking then he teaches the disciples what's going to happen. He says, I'm not going to be here. Like, I'm leaving. I'm going away. Think about what they might think about that. They don't, well, frankly, at the time they kind of don't understand what's going on. You're very confusing. Just speak plainly to us. But then he says, no, though I go away I'm going to send to you a helper, the Holy Spirit. That's not just an important lesson for them at that time. That's a giant point in the whole arc of redemptive history that we're thinking about the accomplishment of redemption that we're going to enter into an entirely, not entirely, but a distinctly different phase in which God now is sending and pouring out his spirit to a New Testament church. So sometimes it's just helpful to stop, zoom out, and ask, what's going on big picture? I think, I think, we talked about this at a little Reformed Forum get-together a couple weeks ago, but one thing we're missing a lot in our preaching, we need to turn up the dial on Historia Salutis, not to make it exclusively that. We need to talk about the application of redemption. We need to apply the text in people's lives, but I think we're woefully inadequate on the whole, on average, in at least American Reformed churches on emphasizing the accomplishment of redemption and trying to situate particular passages within that scope of redemption because when we do that, we start to see the bigger picture, I think, much better and then understand the details even more. I'll stop on that. Well, go ahead.

Well, I was going to say, yeah, to just reiterate one point, Greg Beale's New Testament use of the old, buy it yesterday. It's probably still like 50 bucks, buy it. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. You got to get it, you will love it. Another resource is, I think it's Crossway, it's put out these smaller volumes of biblical theology. I think they even have one, like biblical theology of like the serpent, for example. But it does the same thing just in a smaller, bite-sized, yeah, smaller, bite-sized form that'll help you kind of get your arms around this topic in general. So I just wanted to pass those two resources.

Lots of good stuff. And there's been a renaissance on this in the last 30 years and thankfully so. Lane. Lane, did you, yeah, yeah,

just a very, just a very, very practical thing that is designed to supplement everything they said, not replace anything because they just gave you what you need to hear. But that being said, Psalm 119, 18, open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your word. Luke 24, 45, after Jesus taught them all of the things beginning with Moses concerning himself, he opened their minds to understand. And then in Ephesians 1, 15 and following, Paul prays that the spirit of Christ would open the eyes of your heart to see Christ, to have the spirit of wisdom and understanding and insight. So, one thing to always remember to do is that understanding is not a function of IQ. It's not. Understanding is a gift of the spirit of the ascended Christ and he, and he opens the eyes of babes. He opens the eyes of his children and that's why Paul says that not many of you might be wise by worldly standards but guess what? The secrets of the kingdom of God are yours by the grace that is in Christ by the power of the spirit. So, as you do all these things, always ask for the Lord to illumine your mind and show you wonderful things in his word beginning with Moses.

Amen.

There was a question back here.

Sure. I think that's suitable for Lane because that's explicitly the subject of the middle session tomorrow morning. But maybe you can preview that.

Yeah. I have, I don't remember exactly where all I've done this but in the festschrift for Vern Poitras I wrote on this topic just a little bit and it really depends on how you define your terms and how you understand particular passages. So, let me do those two things. Let me define some terms and just give you one illustration in a passage. The best way to define Christocentrism is that Jesus Christ is the central redemptive subject matter of the Old and New Testament scriptures. central redemptive subject matter. The way to define Christotelism is that Jesus Christ is the consummative telos or end or goal of the Old Testament scriptures. And I have said before turning a phrase from Kant it could be illuminating it could be obfuscating a hope for the former. Christocentrism without Christotelism is blind. It's not going anywhere. It's a static thing. Christotelism without Christocentrism is empty. There's no central redemptive subject matter. Right? So the two are mutually supplementary of one another. The one never exists apart from the other. So trying to polarize them is trying to separate what God has joined. It's trying to isolate what is integrated in the scriptures.

Where?

Well let me give you an example. And this is partly what I exegeted in the volume for Poitras. Romans 1 1-4. Paul is preaching the gospel of God. It's a gospel from God and it's a gospel owned by God. That's the force of the genitive in 1-1. But it's a gospel concerning what? His son. And he could not be more explicit. So the gospel of God 1-1. 3-A concerning his son. Well who is that son? That son is the one who descended from David according to the flesh and who was raised by the spirit declared the son of God in power. That is the substance of the gospel of God's son. Jesus Christ crucified and glorified. That's the substance of it. But in verse 2 bracketed by 1 and 3, what does he say? It's the gospel promised beforehand by God through the prophets in the Holy Scripture. Well that gives the gospel an Old Testament mooring. It is located in the scriptures by the prophets. 1 Peter 1-11. Remember that earlier? And as such embedded there, but where's it going? It's promised beforehand, verse 2, fulfilled in the crucified and resurrected Christ, verse 3. So you have Christotelism in 2, Christocentrism in 1 and 3, perfectly integrated in Romans 1, 1-4. Reminding us that Christocentrism without Christotelism is blind, Christotelism without Christocentrism is empty. Where do you go? Romans 1, 1-4. Man,

that was good.

Yeah. Very good. Yes, maybe two more. Go ahead.

Yeah,

yeah, sure. Do you have any thoughts?

Well, I would just say I'm in Warrior Presbytery and we've got several churches that have three or four people. We have one church that hasn't met since COVID and because they don't have anybody to meet. I'm in Aliceville, which is a, you know, one red lot town, a lot of farming. I don't know the answer. It's something I've been thinking about a lot and I've actually had conversations with different men about this very thing. You know, we've even considered what would it look like maybe to, so just taking Warrior Presbytery, for example, calling, starting them out as an intern, getting intern licensed and having preach at two churches, you know, every other Sunday, for example, starting out something like that because my contention on a lot of small church ministries is a much larger topic, but I think the selling point that people miss and that guys who want to go to ministry miss with small churches is what it, typically what it lacks in, you know, aesthetics or resources, it makes up for with friendships and bonds and there's a connection you have with the people and often, and it's hard to get people to see that, but those things actually end up becoming more and more important the longer and longer you're in ministry. So I don't know what the answer is, but I would say that we've got to begin to think about, I hate to say sell to people, but we've got to begin promoting rural ministry with the same vigor that we, that the PCA did with city ministry, and city ministry is a lot sexier when it, you know, and there's nothing against it, you're in Manhattan, Dan, so you're part of the problem, but so, yeah, thanks. You want to move to Alabama by any chance? I have a small church of four people that would love your expertise, but, you know, there was a time in the PCA where city ministry was the thing, I mean, and everybody wanted to go to the city ministry and all the opportunities that came with it, and what I found personally is the minute I moved to one red light town where they get tornadoes every other weekend, somehow we visit the first time and we say, I don't know that I want to leave these people. I don't think I want to leave them. I think these are our people. I think we found our tribe, if you will, and has it been long? I mean, I've only been there seven years, but have we seen fruit? Yes. Has it been explosive? No. But the church has grown steadily over seven years, and we've got some transplants from other churches in other areas, and one of the reasons, I think, is not because I'm a great preacher, but I preach a great cross, and I do it through biblical theology, and I labor to really love those people in that town, and it kind of, again, it's infectious. And so, again, I don't know what the answer is. I'm just giving you my experience, but I think we've got to, I think us smaller churches and Presbyterians with dying churches, we need to, I think we need to start coming together in a collective manner and really start promoting the benefits and the glories of small town ministry. Otherwise, we're kind of just sitting back and saying, well, nothing we can do about it. No, we need to come together. Let's form a plan, get our heads together. And the last thing I'll say on this, see you open a can of worms here, but the last thing on this I would say is it may also require, it may also require some churches sadly closing so that a new work can be planted, and I think it's going to require larger churches to devote resources to help revitalize a church. Church revitalization revitalization is an important thing, and again, it doesn't get the play that church planning does, but if you have some churches that band together and they say, we're going to fund this for this amount of time, we're going to call a young guy, and we're going to get him in here and we're going to say, look, we're going to provide, you know, you're going to be provided for, and you just inject him in there and say, okay, for the next three years, you don't have to worry about your salary, you don't really have to worry about the church budget because there's not much of one here, but we're going to take care of you, and your job is to go out and take a parish ministry attitude and see what happens. I think if we start doing things like that and start thinking about it in those terms, I'm not saying it would be 100% success rate, but I think we'd probably start seeing more fruit.

Yeah, there are lots of practical strategies like that that I think are really useful. I mean, an older strategy even is like a, you know, a yoked call that sometimes they have one pastor for two congregations, that's happened. I remember reading about what C.W. Grafton did that. My predecessor pastored two churches. It still does, actually, in his 80s. It's more not as common as it was once upon a time, but I think also just the bigger picture here is it was just a great shortage of laborers and we're to pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers and there's a pastoral shortage across denominations and it doesn't look good. By earthly standards, it looks horrible, but this is why we need to pray to the Lord and ask that he would raise up men for gospel ministry in particular, but even beyond that, we also need to have sober minds and always be looking at what are we doing here? Like, we're not trying to raise up men to start successful careers, but you know, we're not professionals and there needs to be an emphasis here on the importance of engaging in the Great Commission and we need to go to minister to God's people and especially to churches that are maybe struggling. We, in my own opinion, it's much often, yes, sometimes churches do need to close. We need to, you know, the Lord does bring some churches and congregations to an end. That does happen. But we need to be spending a lot more effort in treating our churches analogously to the way you might treat your own family. If you've got a special needs child or a child that's, you know, going through difficult times or a mother, you might have a mother church that's old and needs some extra help. Well, why wouldn't we support our churches that way or use that as a mental model for helping? That's useful, too. But I think really deep down, we need to understand the stakes. We need to understand what we're doing in ministry, the Great Commission, and we need to have a pilgrim ethic and a cruciform heart to say that we need to go and serve and be faithful to the Lord. And that often leads us into difficult, uncomfortable places. It's like the Lord isn't calling us to ministry or just raising up missionaries to go to high society and, you know, make lots of money and have a nice car and a nice house and live a comfortable life. We're not called to live comfortable lives. We're called to be pilgrims and to labor hard in service of our Lord because of the joy set before us. Christ even endured suffering, and we too are called to be conformed to the sufferings of Christ now so that we too will share in his subsequent glories. So that's, I'm preaching to myself there, and to everyone else, we struggle just with earthly desires and those types of things. We need to mortify those desires and destroy them and kill, be sanctified, but especially in pastoral ministry, we need to have a more willingness, more of a willingness, because you know, if you take a church like that, you know, how many pats in the back are you going to get, and those are worldly accolades, but we need not worry about those things. We need to be faithful to the Lord and say, he has sheep here, and they need to be fed and cared for.

I think as a seminary professor, I need to do a good job of, when I have young men come before me and talk about their ministry plans, and maybe I take them out to lunch, I think as a

church of pressing

the joys of faithful plotting labor, I heard Carl Truman once say that he would ask some incoming seminary students, you know, who's your favorite preacher, and they would always name everybody that, you know, that speaks at all these major conferences, and he said they rarely ever mention their own pastor. And that really is upsetting, because they have it in their mind, oh, this person has a 10,000-member church or whatever, and that's their aspirational model, and I don't know quite how you fix that, but I think as a seminary professor, I probably need to do a better job of when I take guys out for lunch and just say, I mean, you know, God may call you to, he may not, but he may call you to a place where there's 40 people. You fix that with the gospel.

That's right. That's exactly right. Amen. Any final remarks?

Just one person to consider, not Presbyterian or Reform necessarily, but George Herbert, who I believe he was in the 1600s, he was someone who was accomplished academically, an orator before, you know, kings and queens and so on, and he ended up taking a parish in the country, and he wrote a country, a country parson, I believe that's the name of the book, and it's an encouragement toward, yeah, country or urban, not urban, rural ministry, highlighting, there are beautiful things about that, and I think even some of the things the brothers brought out, like, it's not, yeah, sure, there's not the broader public awareness of it, but there is a beauty to it. Anyway, just a book that maybe some men might want to consider reading that could inspire them towards going there.

Amen. I think for the sake of time, we'll continue maybe our conversation out in the foyer, if that's the proper term for out there, but this has been really fun, and it's fun and encouraging to me to see all of you here this evening. Thank you for joining us. We're looking forward to a wonderful seminar tomorrow. We hope you can come back. As I'm told, we'll have our breakfast at 8, we'll begin with the first session at 9, and we'll be done before lunchtime around maybe 1130 or noon, but I'm very thankful that the Lord has brought us together this evening, and I'm thankful that there are people also listening around the world who also care about these same things, and so let's labor together as the people of God to tell more people and share the good news of Jesus Christ, crucified and raised for sinners. So that being said, head on over and learn more about Birmingham Theological Seminary. We'll have links to all of that in the episode description, and also, all of our information is available at reformedforum.org. You'll find links to all of our books, our courses, upcoming events, other things we have going on. With that being said, I want to thank everybody for watching and listening. For those of you, especially here present with us this evening, we hope you join us again next time on Christ the Center. Christ the Center. Thank you.