Jeff Ro.

Bison.

I'm not sure where the spaces should be in there, but he says, I. I think a lot of reformed just.

Robinson.

Robinson.

There we go.

Yeah.

Hey, it matters.

Geo Frabinson.

It all matters where you put the space.

Wow, you got your syllables wrong.

I'm sorry about that.

Jeff.

Jeff Robinson.

Sorry.

All right.

That's why you got to have underscores so idiots like me know where to put the space.

Let's go.

Geo Fribitzing.

This is Apologetics Live to answer your questions.

Your host from Striving For Eternity Ministries, Andrew Rapaport.

We are Live Apologetics Live here to answer your most challenging questions of God and the Bible.

I gotta admit that that is.

That intro makes me crack up more than.

Than any since we had the, you know, do babies exist?

Even though I know it makes me look foolish, but it's just so funny that.

Oh, so.

So, yeah.

So welcome to Apologetics Live.

What we do here is answer your questions you have about God in the Bible.

We can answer any question.

So just come up with a good question.

Go to apologetics live.com.

i should actually have started that little streamer that goes.

So let's see where that is.

No, it's not that one.

All right, I'll find where we have that banner.

But the.

Just go to apologet live.com and that's where you could join the discussion.

Go scroll down to our new duck icon.

We've been saying the duck icon because we used to use Streamyard and we don't use Streamyard anymore, so we have a different duck icon.

So we could still tell you to go to the duck icon, but Dan Craft made that for us, of course, using AI, but very nicely done.

I liked it.

And so that is where you go to join the discussion.

And so if you want to join us, just go apologex live.com.

this is a Ministry of Striving fraternity.

What we're doing here is answering your questions.

And we usually have a topic to start us off until you come in with questions and comments, things like that.

Let me bring in my co host, Mr. Tom Shepard.

How are you, sir?

Good, how are you, Andrew?

You love that opening, don't you?

It's fantastic.

I think Jeff Robison liked it too.

Oh, I can't believe that.

So some.

Some housekeeping things I should mention.

The topic today is going to be the question of asking, is the Old Testament still relevant for the church today?

It's a topic of as we have a. I put out some time ago a List of apologetic questions, people one answered.

And we're just working our way through those as we, as we have time for them.

But folks, you can always come in, ask any question.

I do have to start off with some show notes.

Joe88 1 just became a member on YouTube, so thank you very much for that.

That's a way you can Support us on YouTube.

Another way if you're on YouTube is you can give us super chats.

Haven't had any in a while and we didn't know if that was working or not.

Supposedly it is, but we won't know.

And so Brother John is saying he's here to learn.

So if, if John is here to learn, we should talk about why the charismatic gifts ceased.

John, that's what we should do.

John's a good brother, good evangelist up there in Canada, eh?

And so, I mean, that's, you know, why they, they say A in Canada, right?

I don't.

Well, just look at the word C A N A D A actually Saitam Brung Gate's the one that told me that joke.

So.

So yeah, the other.

I do want to give a shout out to whoever is sharing these podcasts in, in Ireland.

Somehow we became the 9th most listened to or 9th in the charts of podcast in Ireland for Christianity.

And I was like, wow, okay, what, what is going on there?

So, hey, welcome to all of you in Ireland and we, we appreciate you listening, appreciate you sharing these episodes.

And brother, Brother John is commenting in the chat.

He says a. Yeah, so, so let's talk about.

Oh, did you just hit studio mode?

No, I didn't.

You know, trying to.

I hear some background noise, so I was just trying to adjust it, so.

Forgive me, folks.

Oh, well, it's sounding good now.

It was not sounding good before we went live, so.

Okay.

But it is sounding good now.

And you know, Tom is playing with the new.

So we switched from Streamyard because, well, they used to be 200 a year and then last year they doubled it to 400 and this year they doubled it to 800.

And so we went to EV Mux, which is still like 400 and much more reasonably priced.

So yeah, I've been happy with it so far.

It takes a little getting used to, a little different.

I wasn't setting up shows correctly, I guess.

But now I think I figured out what I have to do and so Tom's starting to use it and he may switch over as well to, to this.

We'll see.

To save $400 a year.

I. I think it's Definitely.

Great idea.

So.

So Streamyard sends a thing after I switch to evmux and pay for it.

They send a thing saying, hey, you give you 30% off for a year.

I ignored it, 40% off, 50% off.

And they, so they, they stuck at the 50.

They sent me two or three weeks in a row to 50%.

I responded back and said, too late.

I already went to your competition.

You know, you.

You doubled your price.

I, I went with the people that didn't.

Yeah.

So, yeah, that's interesting.

You know, for some reason I see.

I actually think the video looks better on this, on the emux.

It.

I don't know.

It might well have to.

I actually should do that.

I should go back onto YouTube and see how it.

I do agree with you here.

It looks better.

Right.

But I think Streamyard didn't do as good in what we would see, but it was better for what others saw, I believe.

Okay, so.

So Brother John puts this comment since we were joking with him about the, the gifts.

He says the greatest gift continues to the day of salvation.

And there's not one Bible verse that says the gifts have stopped.

Well, there is a Bible verse, the greatest gift is salvation.

But the, the Bible verse John is First Corinthians, chapter 13, verses 9 and 10.

Yes, absolutely.

Says three gifts have ceased.

So there you go.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, Fatima, welcome from the Philippines.

Fatima is saying, Andrew, your guest.

That's Tom Shepard, guest.

Audio is very soft.

I can hardly hear him.

Okay, I'm going to make one adjustment and you guys tell me how's.

How's that?

Is that better?

Testing, testing.

I'm not hearing any difference, but okay.

But it will wait to speak into the microphone.

How about that?

Yeah, that helps.

Yeah.

Okay, let's do that.

This is a microphone.

It's good to talk into it.

All right, all right, enough banter.

Let's get.

Let's get to some serious stuff.

This is something that I'm going to say up front, right, Tom, when we go through this, the idea of some of the topics that we have here, your wife Debbie is saying much better.

So.

Okay, good.

It.

You know, just for the record, your wife says you're much better.

I, I'm.

I'm.

We have that better, right?

Yeah.

I mean, maybe she was referring that you're much better than me.

You're much better.

I mean, we could just fill in the blank.

Yeah, Yeah, I think that's a good thing to do.

Matter of fact, I, I can use that for, for an abundance of things.

There you Go.

When I say that, kind of.

You said I was doing much better.

Yeah.

So it's.

Yeah.

I mean, okay, so this is my wife, probably.

She's heard this probably a million times, gets sick of it.

But, you know, when we're.

We go to, like, a store or something and someone goes, oh, you're perfect.

Or.

Or you're good, you know, you're fine.

I just go, can't.

Can you just tell her that I've been trying to convince her I'm perfect for 31 years, you know, oh, the volume is better.

Look.

Oh, look, she's.

Yeah, I didn't see that comment.

You see a comment that says delete part?

All right, so when it comes to the issue of Old Testament for the church today, there are differing views that people have.

You're going to hear Tom and I have some differing views, being I'm more of a dispensational and Tom is more of a Reformed Baptist, 1689 Reformed, Covenantal, Covenantalist.

So you're going to see differences that we're going to have, especially when we talk about the law.

What the law is, how we divide the law.

And in that sense, it's not going to be my dispensationalism that comes in there.

It's going to actually be my Judaism when we get to that.

I'm just saying.

But the.

The thing, though, is that there are some differences.

So you're going to go to extremes where people will say, within.

I'm going to say broad Christian circles, Tom.

You know, just kind of.

So we're not saying everyone in these camps are genuine believers.

Okay.

But you can go.

Hebrew roots go to one extreme.

And there's many Hebrew roots that deny the deity of Christ.

So I wouldn't say that they're saved.

But when you get to those that are in the Hebrew roots movement or what my friend R.L.

solberg says Torahism, that's his book on it.

And I think that's a great title because it is talking about the.

Not just Hebrew roots, but all the people that put themselves back under the Torah, under the law.

And so you see people like that that actually will be looking to say that the law from the Old Testament is something that you have that should be applied today.

So we should be under that same law.

So they keep kosher.

They will keep the festivals.

So that's one extreme.

Okay.

There's another extreme that would be what I refer to as hyper dispensational.

And I don't know how often any of you have run into this group.

I have.

But you have some people that believe that we shouldn't look at any of the Old Testament.

In fact, we shouldn't even look at the Gospels because that was for the Jewish people.

And they'll say we only look at the letters of Paul, Paul and following.

So they, they would toss out everything other that they would start at the book of Romans to revelation and that's all they would say that we need to, to have for today.

Okay, so those, those are the extremes and they're extremes we want to talk about the, the more rational in the middle.

Right.

Right.

And so we're going to have even within that.

Well, let's just start with this.

This will be a fun start.

And then we can get to where it's more, I think where we're going to have a lot more agreement with Christians, with genuine Christians.

But Andy Stanley made well known some comments where he talked about unhitching the Old Testament from the New Testament.

Yeah.

And I really should have grabbed that clip and played that.

But you remember that, Tom, when he did that?

I do.

Do you remember why he felt we needed to unhitch the Old Testament?

No, I just think he didn't think that it was relevant for today at all.

And now that Jesus has come, as if, as if the Old Testament wasn't anything about Christ in the first place.

Now that Christ has come, you know, why even go back there at all ignoring what God had said in the past.

So that was the old covenant and now we're under the new covenant.

And so none of the old covenant applies to us.

I believe that was the gist of it.

Unless you know of anything else.

Yeah, well, it's a little bit more.

But yeah, you're right.

You're right.

And because part of what his hang up is he doesn't like when people say thus says the Lord.

You know, like the Bible says.

Yeah.

We would say that we find our authority in scripture.

Scripture is what is.

You know, when we look at what we're going to use to defend Christianity, it's scripture.

He argues for the.

You know, Andy Stanley, by the way, is Charles Stanley's son.

So if folks don't know, but Charles Stanley, Andy Stanley said that, you know, we needed to unhitch it because he thinks that the, the authority is the resurrection, not the scripture.

So we just got to keep that in mind.

Welcome to the show.

Dan Kraft, the seven foot apologist, one of the speakers at Striving fraternity who just came in.

How you doing, Dan?

Sorry, I'M late.

I had to take my daughter to soccer practice.

Ah, hey, we got.

We got a. Greetings from Pakistan.

So welcome.

I like the fact that we got Canada represented.

Pakistan, Philippines.

So folks that are.

That are watching live, just shout out where you're from, if you're.

And we could, you know, we have.

Even the United States.

That's a strange place.

But one of the reasons that Andy Stanley wanted to unhitch the Old Testament from the New was not just what you had said, but it was also.

He didn't like, one thing that's kind of prevalent in the old.

It's also somewhat prevalent in the new, but not as much judgment.

No, no, it wasn't.

It was slavery.

Now, here's the irony, okay?

I. I did do a look through the New Testament, and I looked to see, hey, is there anywhere that we have books of the New Testament that refer back to the Old?

Right?

Yeah.

And do you know I discovered that 26 out of 27 New Testament books refer back to the Old Testament.

So they're not unhitched.

They actually hitched themselves to the Old Testament.

Now, would you like to know which one book is not.

Doesn't have any references or allusions or quotations to the Old Testament?

Maybe Philemon.

You're right.

It's Philemon.

And what's Philemon all about?

Slavery.

Slavery.

So the only book Andy Stanley is left with is the one that's all about slavery.

Slavery.

The thing he wants to avoid.

You know, it's like, yeah, these.

These speakers that they do this and they think they sound really smart, and then they do sound like this, and it's like, yeah, just a little bit of research.

Leads, you believe.

Oops.

Yeah, so we got.

We got some folks there saying.

So we got Brian in Colorado.

We got a number of people in Pennsylvania, because we got Jeanette is in Pennsylvania, and we have Kathy, who's in Pennsylvania.

So now you two have to figure out where in Pennsylvania, maybe neighbors.

We got Knoxville, Tennessee.

I will be flying into Knoxville, I think, twice.

Once in September, I think.

Is it Knoxville I fly into?

Yeah, I think.

I think.

Right.

Aren't you flying into Nashville?

Yeah, that one's Nashville.

That's right.

I'll fly to Nashville for the total HOMA Conference.

And then I have another conference in.

Let's see, where.

When is that coming up?

That's for Fight Left Feast, right?

That's.

Yeah, that's the one that's gonna be in.

That's in Nashville too, isn't it?

So you are flying into Knoxville at all.

Maybe not.

It's Tennessee.

Isn't that the same thing when you live in a state like New Jersey?

Everything's close.

So we got Illinois, we got Melissa, who is there in California.

A.

So.

All right.

So with that, I think that we can effectively say that there are some who say that we should unhitch the Old Testament, whether it is the hyper dispensationalists or Andy Stanleyites.

I think we're.

We would disagree.

I think all three of us would disagree with doing that.

Correct?

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So.

Oh, here we go.

Kathy's answering the question.

She says, lol.

Andrew, Janet and I are friends and attend the same church.

I told her about sfe.

So there you go.

Kathy, you gotta tell the rest of your church because you're.

I mean, your pastor and I were roommates once, long ago at the First Ambassadors Academy that I went to.

He and I were roommates and so did some evangelism together.

So the thing, though, is that when we look at how should the Old Testament affect the church now, I said, you and I, Tom, are going to have some different views when it comes to law.

So let me give you a chance to explain your view of how you divide the law.

I don't know if Dan is going to have a different view.

So I will.

I'll let you go, then I'll go, and then we'll see if Dan disagrees or he just, you know, maybe he just says we're both wrong.

So.

Yeah, so maybe.

Yeah.

So that we would say that because God is holy, because the law describes who God is in his character, his.

His holiness, his righteousness, his.

His just anger against sin.

It's a summary of who God is.

And all the way through the law and the prophets, God has revealed himself as holy.

And he said he would be treated as holy.

And he summarized the law.

We would say that as a reformed Baptist, that.

That the law is eternal.

It doesn't go away, that it's his mortality, moral character.

So God's moral law, because he's an unchanging God, he doesn't, you know, say the law doesn't matter anymore.

We are still obligated not to lie.

We are still obligated not to commit adultery and covetousness.

We are still obligated to obey our parents.

And so all of those things are eternal.

Those are.

Those are eternal laws.

And it's based on his character.

And so when we would look at the Mosaic covenant, the Mosaic law, even as some.

The moral law summarized in the Old Testament being the Mosaic Law, we would say that all of those laws are still applicable for today, including the Sabbath.

And that's, that's probably the one area where we would disagree that yes, he's our Sabbath, Sabbath rest, but at the same time, we still have a time.

We're still in the flesh.

There's going to be.

Be.

We would still apply that for today because we would say that the Sabbath actually transcends the Mosaic law.

You see it given in Genesis 16, you see it given in the very, very first part of the Bible where there was a day devoted one day and seven devoted unto.

Unto the Lord.

And so we would say that the moral law is always eternal.

The reason why that's important is because that is the standard for anybody to come and have a relationship with the Father.

To have a relationship with the Creator is because God doesn't change and he's so holy.

He didn't give us the law so that we might be able to climb up and earn our way into heaven through the law.

He gave us the law so that we would recognize that we can't do it and that we need a Savior.

So it was always intended to point to Christ.

Would you call yourself a theonomist then?

So, no.

So theonomy.

So I wouldn't say, I wouldn't say that the positive laws.

I think that there would be a distinction between the positive laws that are attached to the Mosaic covenant.

So when we talk about the judicial laws and, and the consequences of breaking those and the ceremonial laws, those things have been done away with when Christ came and fulfilled all of those things.

But the eternal law, God's moral law, it goes on forever.

Okay, and now you would have a tripart division of the law, right?

Yes.

You mentioned moral.

So explain your view of that three part division.

So there were the God's moral laws, who he is, it's based on his character, and even positive laws that were given to God's people, Israel.

In the Old Testament, then there were positive laws that were good, that distinguished a way for the people Israel to be distinct.

A distinction people set apart unto God.

Being God's people, they were obliged to obey certain things in God in the Torah, you know, dietary laws, holidays, you know, things like that, sacrifices.

Those things were positive laws.

And they're good.

So what's a positive law?

A positive law would be, for example, you know, you wouldn't allow your children to put play with an outlet.

They would go.

And what would that be tied to?

It's still tied to God's moral law in the way that it's good for our children to know that that positive law is attached to the moral law.

You should love your neighbor.

It would harm them if they were to go play with an outlet.

And so but all of these other, the judicial laws and all those, those things that they were required to remain in the land.

So for example, circumcision that was given to Abraham was a positive law because he, he was told to be circumcised.

And if, and to remain in good standing in that covenant and that if you weren't circumcised, you would be put outside the camp.

And so there's conditions in that covenant.

That's why the new covenant, it is greater.

The new covenant is for God's elect.

It's for all those who are regenerate, we would say, as in 6989 federalism.

And so those laws are still binding.

The moral law is still binding.

The positive laws that were attached to the old covenant are no longer binding.

Okay.

And typically, right, if you read Westminster Confession 1689, it's going to refer to a civil, a ceremonial and a moral law.

Right.

And so there's these divisions that you'd see within reformed circles of a moral law being the Ten Commandments.

As Tom said, the morality is rooted in the nature of God.

So that's coming from there.

Yeah.

Your ceremonial law, the way they would view it.

And I'm saying they because obviously I'm going to, I don't hold to the same division.

I do have a three part division.

It's just different.

What you end up seeing as a ceremonial would be the sacrificial system, keeping kosher, things like that.

And then there was civil laws for that for the nation of Israel.

Things like what to do on the Sabbath and things like that now and consequences of those.

If somebody was committed to commit adultery back in those days based on that covenant back then, you were to stone them.

Well, we don't stone people anymore.

So yes, we're still a block.

Obliged to obey, do not commit adultery.

But the laws that were attached, the judicial laws that were attached to those laws are no longer binding, you know.

But maybe, you know, someone should talk to Trump.

Maybe, maybe he should start a thing and make, make stoning great again, you know?

Well, the one, the one great thing about the New Covenant, the new Covenant that, that, that we are regenerate, we can no longer, ever, ever be put outside the camp.

Christ has come in.

All those laws did was point to the Savior, even The sacrificial.

You know, the sacrificial system.

It was pointing to the ultimate sacrifice where.

Where.

Where Christ would die on the cross and pay the penalty for our sin.

So Jesse is asking the question, why don't we stone them according to the scripture?

And this would be back to what Dan asked is, are you a theonomist?

Because a theonomist would say, yes, we are to keep that law today.

Right.

And we should be stoning.

Now you get some who will say, well, because it's not a Christian nation yet, we don't hold them under that same law, but we should evangelize so that there's enough Christians so that we could have the law in effect today.

The theonomist position seems on its face to be more consistent, at least in that regard.

So, so I would.

Yeah, so I think there's.

I think what they're doing is they're, they're applying positive laws that were for an old covenant.

We are no longer under that covenant.

Those are positive laws.

Yeah.

Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah, I was just gonna say.

So we, we are.

Everybody else that was outside the camp of Israel, they, they weren't obligated to be stoned.

If, if.

I mean, you know, they were never inside the camp.

They were in.

Never in the camp.

So, so if I am not a theonomist, if I'm, if I'm saying I'm going to go back to the Mosaic Law and that we should invite.

Enforce all those laws.

Yeah.

But, but in general equity, you know, there, There are, There are laws that we, we still have to face the consequences of the land.

The land laws.

Now, when you say general equity for folks who are not familiar with theonomy, that.

That.

Yeah.

So I have.

Let me, Let me, let me go back to that.

Let me look up to 16.

I want to be accurate when I quote the 1689 London Baptist confession of Faith on that.

Okay.

Okay.

So the.

So let me.

What I'll do is I will give my view, which.

Which is a bit different, and it may be something that folks have.

Have not heard.

Okay.

So it is something where.

And I'm doing this based off of.

Remember, I'm coming from a Jewish background, so I wasn't influenced with the Westminster Confession.

1689 confession, I wasn't influenced with those.

I'm approaching it from a view that those what, in the Westminster Confession, they would refer to as civil laws or, sorry, ceremonial laws.

In Judaism, we call them holiness laws.

They were laws to keep the nation Israel separate from the other nations.

Okay.

And so, and then, Tom, I'm asking if you just mute when you're not talking, we're getting that hissing noise again.

I sure will.

Let's see if that ends up taking care of it.

Yep, that's it.

So just unmute when you want to talk.

Yeah, that'll be good.

So, okay, so what we have is the.

Those in the reform circles where you have ceremonial law being the, the sacrificial system, kosher laws, things like that, the civil laws being things like stoning, if your children are disobedient, if someone commits adultery, things like that.

And then moral laws, the Ten Commandments.

And within that, there's some people that differ on how the Sabbath is kept, because Sabbath is the only, the only one of the Ten Commandments that's not reiterated in the New Testament.

So I'm going to touch on my view of that.

I break it down differently.

I think there are.

Because I, when we talk moral, I always had trouble with that, because every law is moral, okay?

A law by definition is do or don't.

That's, that's morality.

So kind of by definition, every law is moral.

So I think calling it a moral law just kind of makes that confusing.

Can I push back on that just a little bit?

Because we would not say, because there are laws of our land even right now that are not moral, it is legal in some states to commit abortion, right?

I mean, so.

But that doesn't make it right.

But it is.

But so, so now you're getting into a different thing thing here.

What you're, what we're discussing now is it is a law.

It is saying this is right and this is wrong, right?

It's.

It.

So by the law, it's saying it's right where it makes it legal.

By God's law, it's still wrong.

So now it's.

By what standard?

Right?

Our standard is, well, God, because that's where all morals come from, right?

Is the nature of God.

And so I agree with you, but it's still, it is still the, the government saying this is good and this is bad.

It's just got a bad standard.

So, so now what I, I see is that there are what I refer to as universal laws, so believers, unbelievers, the Ten Commandments fit into that.

You, it's not.

Oh, you should, you shouldn't lie if you're of the nation of Israel, right?

No, it's.

No one should lie because God's not a liar, right?

No one should covet because God's not covetous.

No one should murder because God's not a murderer.

It's founded in the nature of God.

No one should steal because God's not a thief.

We're created in his image.

And so there are some laws that are universal to everyone, everywhere that ever lived.

Okay.

And I would argue that includes the Sabbath that we had on the seventh day, a day of rest.

But I'm going to come to the Sabbath because I think I'm going to come back to that because I think this is where it get the, is an interesting way of how I see and how I break down these, because I think that it shows a bit of a difference with the looking at this and, and breaking it down.

So universal laws for Jews, Gentiles, believers, unbelievers, everybody.

Okay.

I then think there are laws for the nation of Israel.

If you want to use the, you know, the reformed language, they would call it civil law.

But see, it had more than civil law because it would be the civil and ceremonial.

Right.

It's not just civil and it's not just ceremony because you have all those laws that were given to Israel.

So let's stick with the example of the Sabbath where there's a Sabbath for all mankind to have a day of rest, which is an interesting thing because even when Russia went communist, they wanted to get rid of God.

So they wanted to get rid of a seven day work week because that was grounded in God.

And so they decided to go to a 10 day work week.

And it didn't last.

Huh?

The metric system.

Yeah, well, it failed, it didn't work.

And, and people were not well rested, they weren't as efficient and they ended up going back, back to a seven day week with a day of rest.

Why?

Because that was what was most effective for people.

But I think it's because of the created order.

So when you get to the time of Moses, you have a lot more laws for the Sabbath.

You can't carry sticks.

You can only go so far.

You could do this, you could do that, you could be stoned if you break these things.

You didn't see stoning for the Sabbath on the seventh day that came with the law of Moses.

And so I think that you have laws for the nation of Israel.

So universal laws for everyone, whether believer, unbeliever, nation of Israel or gentile.

Okay, Everyone, you have nation.

Do you have laws that are just for the nation of Israel and then you have laws for the church.

Okay.

If you're a progressive Covenantalist or New Covenant theology, it goes by different Names, they would call this the law of Christ.

And I'm kind of okay with that name.

And so there you have laws that are given to the church.

Now, the nine Commandments, they're all repeated there.

Why?

Because they're universal.

I would say the church is not under the Sabbath the way Moses had laid it out for Israel, but under the Sabbath that was created on the seventh day.

That is universal to all people.

Okay.

So we should have a day of rest for the purpose of worshiping God, where that's always been the case for everyone.

But the nation of Israel had extra laws for it.

So that's how I break up the law.

I know it's different, but it's because of the fact that we talk about kosher laws.

Okay.

The holiness laws.

And the purpose of them is to keep Israel separate until the Messiah would come.

Well, now that he came, we don't need that.

So the question is, I guess I'm.

I'm.

So when the Sabbath was given in Genesis to take one day of rest to worship the Lord, you're saying that that was universal, given to everybody when the.

When the Sab.

In Genesis.

Yes, yes.

Okay, but.

But not when given to Moses.

I think there he gave extra.

That was just for the nation.

In Exodus 16, before the.

The.

The Ten Commandments were actually given, they were told to go out and gather all the mana and.

And everything off of the ground.

And they were told, but don't do that on Sunday on that one day, because that was the Sabbath day.

That was.

That obviously been given before the summary of the Ten Commandments, because that didn't come until Exodus 20.

Yes, but again, that was to the nation of Israel, which did exist, even if the law had not been given by Moses.

Doesn't negate that.

Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, through that line, became the nation of Israel.

And so even though Moses was giving more law.

Right.

Would you agree that it's principally in principle, the same setting apart one day as holy unto the Lord?

Well, I think, yeah, I think that there's one day that would be set apart for the Lord for all people.

I just think that under the time of.

For Israel, there was, you know, God gave to Moses extra laws for Israel.

And, and I would say they were limited to Israel.

Okay.

Okay.

I mean, you don't mind turning on a light switch in your house on.

On the Sabbath day, right?

Why?

Because you're not under the law to have that where you can't start a fire.

Right.

Now here's the thing.

You mentioned the new covenant and this is where we're in a battle.

Better covenant as the church.

Because with the new covenant, what Jewish people look forward to in the new covenant, this is Jeremiah, was it 29 and 31, 29 following.

And then, then you have Ezekiel.

I'm trying to remember if it's 25 or.

But in Ezekiel it's, it also refers new covenant and we.

And what was the new covenant?

That we would no longer need a priesthood because the Holy Spirit would indwell us and teach us his word.

He would illuminate his word to us.

Well, I think it's fulfilled in the ultimate priesthood.

The one who is prophet, priest and king.

Yes, we still need a priest, the one who sprinkled his blood in on the mercy seat, you know, in real time at the resurrection or when he died on the cross.

Well, we would be referred to as a priesthood of believers.

Right.

Because we, we have the Holy Spirit.

Indwelling us only because we are in Christ.

Yeah, but we don't, we don't need a.

So the difference being is we don't need a man to act as a mediator between us and God.

We have the one mediator in Christ who is God.

Yeah, right.

So.

So we no longer need a class of priests to act as a mediator between us.

Right, right.

That's what Jewish people would be looking forward to in the Old Testament is this new covenant where Spirit would indwell us.

So, so I, that's how I end up breaking up the law.

And I think that there's, I mean there's different uses of the law we can get into and things like that.

But I think that's beyond the old, how the Old Testament affects us today.

And so with, with the way you laid it out, I'm going to give Dan a chance to give what his thoughts are.

But the way you laid it out, it's like, okay, the moral part counts today, but maybe not so much the other two people might argue with the way I laid out.

People will go, oh, so you're saying the universal stuff is good, the New Testament's good.

But maybe they're going to try to argue, well, you're saying the Old Testament isn't like we don't need it because that's just for Israel.

Well, we're going to, we're going to get to that.

The answer is obviously going to be.

Yeah, I think that's where the general equity would, would come in that that many of those things were always pointing to Christ.

They were always pointing to the, the ultimate sacrifice.

All the Positive laws now are, are effective by, in principle, it was always types and shadows pointing to a greater to, to the greater, from the lesser to the greater.

Okay, okay.

Now so Dan, what, what is, what are your views?

If you've thought, you may not have thought this through as, as deep, but.

Yeah, it's, this is one of those things where, you know, I grew up in, in Presbyterian and then, sorry, Lutheran and then Presbyterian and then then Baptist and then most of my life spent in non denominational churches and I've always heard taught the threefold division of the law, the civil, ceremonial and moral law.

But then as I think it was, Kathy pointed out in the comments that Jesus and Paul never make such a three part division.

And James even says if you break, if you're, if you do not commit adultery, but you do commit murder, then you're still a law breaker.

Right?

Because he seems to be saying that, you know, all the laws are joined together.

But in response to Kathy's comment, you'll note that both of those are moral laws.

They're not, there's, there's no crossing over that division.

But anyway, so then I, I listened to the entire seminary level course that the Greg Bonson taught on theonomy and listened to that over a course of many weeks and trying to wrap my head around it and I'm like, okay, I see where he's coming from.

But it just didn't really sit well with me probably because of, you know, the history that I have of, you know, decades and decades and decades of being taught the threefold division.

And I kind of swung over towards the, towards the James position, you know, that what Kathy was articulating that.

No, it's, it's all, it's all one ball of wax.

You can't, you can't parse it apart.

But then I don't know.

So I'm, I think I'm kind of in flux with regard to this.

I think the, the error that the theonomists fall into is they wind up, it feels to me like they wind up defining themselves by their relationship to the law.

And if I remember correctly, John MacArthur had a sermon wherein he said the legalism and antinomianism, which is, you know, a total rejection of the law, you know, do whatever you want.

They're basically same sides of the, they're two sides of the same coin.

In other words, what they're doing is they're defining their relationship to God through the law rather than through the, the finished work of Christ on the cross to, to fulfill the law on our behalf.

Right.

So we are to be defined by grace and, and, and, and, and Christ's commandments, not, not the, the written letter of the law.

So, yeah, my, my, my views on this are.

I think they're, they're still in flux.

They're not firmly.

I haven't, I, I like completely congress that I haven't, haven't spent a whole lot of time studying them because frankly, this is not something that I find myself talking about a whole heck of a lot.

Yeah.

When I get around you guys, I.

Think, I think that's a great.

I mean, I really like what you said there because I think theonomists can look and validate their salvation, but instead of looking to Christ, they're looking to their moral goods.

And how can we.

How can we if we're not saved by our works?

Why would we look to our works and our obedience to, to validate our faith?

It's always what Christ did.

He accomplished everything.

He accomplished exactly what we couldn't do, which was to live a perfect life.

So I think your argument carries much weight.

The only thing I don't get, when somebody says the law of Christ, and we would say, okay, well, Christ is God.

He is the King.

King.

How can we separate and make a distinction between Christ's law and the law of the Father?

I just don't.

Well, I think, yeah, I think that the reference to the law of Christ is the same way you make reference to the moral law when all law is moral, but you're giving it a title to be more specific.

So it's really the law of the New Testament.

Right.

So that's why I call it universal.

The laws for Israel, the laws.

Laws for the Church.

So that phrase actually comes from 1st Corinthians 9:21, and again in Galatians 6:2.

So I was actually inadvertently quoting Scripture.

That's good.

It's bleeding.

Adity, Let me see.

Let's back up to First Corinthians, chapter nine.

Let's start, I guess in verse 19, that's the beginning of the paragraph.

For though I am free from all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I may win more.

And to the Jews I became as a Jew so that I might win Jews.

To those who are under the law as under the law, though not my being myself under the law, so that I might win those who are under the law.

To those who are without the law, as.

Without the.

As without law, though not being without the law of God, but under the law of Christ, so that I might win those who are without law.

To the weak, weak I became weak that I might win the week.

And I have become all things to all men, so that I might, may by all means save some.

And then Galatians 6:2.

I'll start in verse one.

Brothers, if, even if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness.

Each of you, looking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted, bear one of his burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.

And if I'm going to.

Again, I have not studied this deeply, so I'm kind of shooting from the hip a little bit here.

But I think when he's speaking of the law of Christ, I think what he's referring to are when Christ summed up the two greatest commandments.

Love God, love people.

And so by bearing one another's burdens, you are fulfilling the law of Christ, which is to love one another as you love yourself.

Right.

Which is also a definition of the two tables of the law.

Right.

Of God's more law.

So then the only other thing I would add to that is Matthew 5:18, where he says, for truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass away until the law is accomplished.

And in that passage, it just seems.

And then you read the Psalms, reciprocal.

Can we back up there for a second?

Yeah, sure.

So first of all, can you.

Is there any way you can turn up your microphone a little bit?

I know it was a little oversensitive before, but now it's like really hard to hear you.

Okay, let me.

How is that better?

That's a little better.

Yeah.

So in Matthew 5:18, when he says, until all the all is accomplished, was it not accomplished on the cross?

Or are we talking about the end of.

End of days?

Or, you know, what does he mean by until all is accomplished?

Well, I. I think until the consummate.

Until the consummation of things.

Right there.

Because he's talking until.

Until heaven and earth pass away.

Not an I.

So that's where I'm seeing the God's moral law as, as he's given it to us in the Old Old Testament as we read all about it.

And then all, all in the Psalms where he's talking about we love the law of the Lord.

Nothing, not.

Not a jot or a tittle will pass away until all is accomplished.

And so I think that's actually talking about the consummation of things where Everything is done.

So we.

I would agree with you, Andrew, that when Christ came and he died on, he accomplished everything that he was told to do because he was a Jew, because he was Hebrew.

He had to accomplish all the.

He had to live perfectly, which included all the positive laws that were attached to the moral laws.

And he did that on our behalf as well, on the Gentiles behalf.

He didn't just do that for the Jews.

He.

He did that for everybody.

Yeah, I think there are many.

There's.

I will say for folks to just see that when in that passage, Matthew, what is the law?

There is lots of dispute over that.

Okay.

Theologically.

So is that the law given to Moses?

Remember, Matthew is writing to a Jewish audience.

What would they think of the law?

They wouldn't have the division that we would see in the Westminster Confession.

Right.

Because that didn't exist that way.

So sometimes we have to be careful that we have over centuries of theology added precision.

And so one thing when it comes to studying the Bible is to always remember not all the same precision that we have today is in the Scripture.

Right.

So would you say that this is the same law that all that everybody was to live by in the old covenant?

That's what it's talking about.

It could be.

I think that.

Yeah, I think it, I think that.

So I'm not going to be as dogmatic to say this is what it is because I'm really not sure.

I, I don't think he's making a distinction between the moral civil ceremonial because, well, a Jewish people wouldn't have divided it that way.

Right.

So that's some.

That the vision came after Christ.

So if you'd have to understand what it meant at the time time to the people there and they would have been thinking the law of Moses.

So it seems to me that there's, there's a bit of a hint in Matthew 5, 17 what he's talking about here because he uses, he says, do not think that I came to abolish the law or the prophets.

Now, my understanding of the Jewish understanding of Scripture is when you talk about the law and the prophets, doesn't isn't that encapsulate the totality of the.

So, well, you use the word Tanakh.

What Tanakh actually is, is there's the ta is the first letters for Torah.

Okay.

Then you have the letters for the next letter vowel is going to be for the prophets and then the writings.

And so the complete.

The way that we'd say it is the law, the prophets and the Writings, or if you want to shorten it, the law and the prophets.

If you want to shorten it more, the law.

So this is why I'm saying it's not.

Is this referring to strictly the first five books of Moses, the law of Moses, or is it referring to the word of God?

I would say based upon the fact that he's using the law and the prophets in conjunction with one another in verse 17.

That seems to me to point to a.

He's like saying, don't think that I came to abolish the entirety of the Old Testament is what I read.

Yeah, right.

I would agree with that.

And not only that, we have to remember what was the purpose.

And we would say that there's several purposes, but one of the purposes was to point us to Christ.

This is God's standard living.

He is so holy, he is so righteous that if you want to have a relationship with.

He says, I am God in Exodus 19.

And then he lays out the table of the law.

And the silly Israelites back in the.

He goes, we'll do it.

You know, we'll do it.

And they.

And it wasn't.

They were looking at the law back then, I think, to try and keep it as if they were to earn their way into God's favor.

But the fact of the matter is, we learn in the New Testament that it was a tutor.

It was to point us, to show us that we couldn't keep the law, that.

That we don't live up to God's standard and that we need a substitute.

Right.

Yeah.

And so I mean, where I was saying, where I guess I wouldn't see is, you know, Tom, is that the law in verse 18 is a.

You know, just.

The Ten Commandments is moral law.

I know that some will use that and say, well, see, the moral law continued continues until the end.

I think that this is either saying, hey, the.

The law to Israel is going to always be.

Now, this.

This was.

Would work in a dispensational view, wouldn't work in.

In a covenantal view, but if you're viewing that God is going to bring Israel back into center stage, he's going to continue.

They're going to continue obeying the law, then that law would continue.

Yeah.

So I would.

I would definitely agree with you because.

And here's.

I mean, he.

He was.

He had to be circumcised.

He had to.

That was not.

That was not a pot.

That positive law was not given to anybody outside the camp of Israel.

But he had to come and he had to be circumcised on the eighth day.

So that, that was.

He had to fulfill the judicial law.

He had to fulfill all the law laws that were given to the people, Israel.

You know, Tom, we come into these things with saying that you're going to dis.

Disagree with me.

And then you, you seem to agree with me an awful lot.

You're going to be dispensational before, you know, it.

Just shows how leaky you are.

So, so the, the thing though, if it is, and, and I think a really good reading of it is, was not, as Dan had said, if, if it's referring the law to the word of God, that's not going to go away.

So it could be either two.

If I'm going to lean any which way, I'm going to lean to the last one that it's saying the word of God's not going to.

Which is something that, if you think about it, you're going from a very Jewish mindset of God's people being in a Jewish mindset, and all of a sudden it's having more of a gentle mindset.

What is it that people are going to be wondering, well, you have all these promises to Israel, did God break his word?

Did he break his promises?

Did he?

No.

I mean, that's what Romans 9, 10, 11 is all about, is that God's faithful to fulfill the promises he made to Israel.

So you have him saying, hey, God's word's not going to, it's not broken just because Christ came.

It's that now God's people are going to be gentiles.

Well, not only Gentiles, but mostly Gentiles or maybe not.

I mean, the reality is we don't know how many people got converted from Judaism to Christianity and, you know, have a Jewish line.

But so, but in the same, in that same way we would also say.

Well, I would, I would think that you would with.

Agree.

Agree that everybody who is ever saved is always saved by the blood of Christ.

Yes, by virtue.

And so we would, as a Reformed Baptist, 1689, because there are some Reformed Baptists that would agree with Presbyterian Covenant Theology.

And we would call those 20th century Covenantalists.

I think, matter of fact, I think James White, as John Gill was, he would hold the Presbyterian Covenant Theology.

Now, I forgot where I was going to go with this.

But, but in that, that all people, we would say that in the New Covenant, everybody is saved by virtue of the New Covenant.

Well, even in the old test, in the Old Covenant, they were still Saved by virtue of the new covenant.

They, they looked forward to what Christ would do.

So just because Christ hadn't come yet, people in the Old Testament were still saved the same way as, as those in the New Testament.

Right.

So but we wouldn't say that they were saved by the old covenant because we would say that the old covenant were a covenant of works.

You had to do things.

There were conditions to be to remain in the land.

There were conditions to remain God's people.

So a 1689 Federalist would say that you're saved by virtue of the new covenant.

And the new covenant is the covenant of grace.

Yeah.

And so what we're seeing.

And so to get to the question, because some people may be going, you're focusing on the law.

What does that do?

Well, where's all this Old Testament law from?

The Old Testament.

Right.

And so how does this apply to us today?

Right.

This is the law hasn't been abolished.

Okay.

It's just now some of it doesn't apply to us as, as Christians.

And that's, that's the point that we're, we're trying to bring out.

Now I'll say to, to a point Dan made.

I remember, you know, when you said you're dividing the, the three part division.

I, I remember John Riesinger, who he's well known in the New Covenant theology camps.

John, John had told me, he said he one day decided to go through the following five books of the Pentateuch and he put a column one for civil, ceremonial, moral.

And he tried going through all 614 laws that are in the Pentateuch and figure out which one they would go in.

And he discovered that you really, there's no list anywhere where you can go, okay, this fits here, this fits here.

This.

And it's because it's a man made distinction.

That doesn't mean it's wrong.

By the way, if I say it's a man made distinction, it doesn't make it wrong.

It's man making that distinction.

So we can better understand, I'm going to be preaching this Sunday at my church on the Trinity.

And I argue the Trinity is a solution to a problem, not a problem.

And so that's a man made distinction.

The Bible doesn't mention Trinity.

We have defined that because we see this problem.

I'm using that loosely in the Bible that God the Father is referred to as God, the Son is referred to as God, the Spirit's referred to as God.

They have the title, they all three have titles of God.

They do the have the attributes of God, they do the works of God, and yet they're all distinct from one another.

How do you resolve that?

I would, I would, I would offer a gentle correction there.

I would say that the Bible makes the distinction, but what we did was we man applied a label to it to try to systematize it.

So.

Yeah, and that, that'd be good clarification.

I mean, yeah, I mean, because.

And you look at, you look at God's.

All laws are rooted in God's moral law.

They're for the beneficial of his people, they're benefit of his people.

So to love God and love neighbor, this is, this is a good thing, you know, but then the other, the other laws that are attached to it, you know, the dietary laws, that was good not only for a distinction to make the people of Israel separate, to show them separate from the other people, but also there were some good in the laws that were given to be able to rem.

To remain in that land.

It was good for the people.

It was good for the people.

But I wouldn't say that that law comes from the nature of God.

No, I was.

That was for the purpose of.

Yeah, the purpose of God to keep them separate.

Absolutely.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hey, Andrew, this is at least the second time I've seen Jesse Heller say huh or what.

I'd like to know what he's whating about.

About.

Yeah, I didn't know if he was referring to Fatima's comment or someone else's.

So, Jesse.

Yeah.

So is it possible to enable us to, to interact with people in the comments?

Because I can't.

I can't do anything but private chat.

Yeah, the.

I don't.

That's the one difference with this tool.

You, I think you have to log into to YouTube to do that.

Yeah.

Jesse, tell us what you're referring to, bro.

Yeah, so now let me get to the thing of.

So we talked about the law, which is important for this, but a big part of this is how now do we take this Old Testament and apply it to us as Christians?

We already said some will throw it out, some say doesn't apply.

We disagree with that.

Now, do we have to keep the kosher laws?

No.

Okay, well, now here becomes the question, what is the purpose of those laws?

See, I'm going to go the step saying I agree with you.

No, I don't think we have to keep kosher.

I think in Mark we see that before acts, by the way, is when the kosher, the cleanliness laws of what to eat, the Dietary laws were done.

Away with into a man that makes him unclean.

But what comes out of a man that makes him unclean.

Correct.

In so doing, Jesus declared all foods clean.

Correct.

So that's from Mark.

Peter had the revelation.

Well, that came.

But that came later.

It did.

And.

And I would argue that the revelation he had is that wasn't declaring it clean.

That was that Peter seeing the food come down only made sense if there was no more dietary restriction.

Okay, so the.

What Dan had quoted from Mark is what is because Jesus declared all food clean.

Why?

Because the purpose of those laws, the.

Their holiness laws, laws of separation, they were to keep Israel separate from the nation.

That's why they had to wear certain things.

They had to, you know, eat certain things.

But what we have to recognize is the principle of that still exists for the church.

We are to be separate from the world.

Now, that doesn't mean the way we eat and the way we dress, but it does mean the way we behave is still that.

The principle of the kosher laws still applies to the church, but it's applied differently.

So instead of being applied to what we eat and how we dress, it's applied to how we behave and how we think.

Right.

We are to be separate from the world.

And so the principle is still there.

So I could look at the Old Testament and still see.

I could look at things like, well, let's take everybody's favorite verse, Jeremiah 29:11, right?

And people love this verse.

Let me.

Let me just read it for those who may not have it on their refrigerator.

But it says, for I know the plans I have for you declares Yahweh, plans for peace and not for calamity, to give you a future, a future and a hope.

And people love that verse.

It sounds so good.

I can do all things through a verse taken out of context.

Yes, well, here's my question.

Why does nobody just go like seven verses, eight verses later, and have Jeremiah 29, 17 and 18 as their life verse which says, thus says Yahweh of hosts, behold, I am sending upon them the sword, famine, pestilence, and I will make them open, split open, fit like split open figs that cannot be eaten due to rottenness.

I will pursue them with the sword, with famine, with pestilence, and I will give them over to be a terror to all the kingdoms of the earth, to be a curse, to be an object of hope, horror, and hissing, and a reproach among the nations where I have banished them.

I mean, that's.

It's gone that's in the same verse, right?

Same chapter, Right, Right.

Why is that?

Not like, why do we pick the.

One that doesn't sell, Andrew.

Exactly.

No, you don't get the warm and fuzzies from judgment.

Yeah.

So the question is, you need a marketing expert, man.

I mean, you can.

I do.

It's.

It's.

It's the Bible.

It's good enough for me.

Right.

But, you know, here's the thing.

Wouldn't it be nice if we knew who Jeremiah 29:11 was for?

Okay, well, actually, wouldn't, you know, what do you know?

Jeremiah 29:10 says this?

For thus says Yahweh, when 70 years have been fulfilled for Babylon, I will visit you and establish my good word to you to return you to the place.

For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord.

So if you have lived through the 70 year Babylonian captivity, then Jeremiah 29:11 is for you.

Now, I know Tom looks like he's old enough to have lived through that, but he didn't.

And so, so the reality is that that is specific to those people who lived through that 70 year Babylonian captivity.

Now, does that mean that it has no application for us?

No, it does.

What's the application?

What do you see in that?

This was 70 years.

They were going to go into captivity.

Some of them were not going to live through it.

Okay, but what did they see at the end of 70 years?

God fulfilled the promise he made 70 years before, just as he was faithful to Israel in a prophecy that he would bring them back in the land 70 years later.

So he will fulfill the promises that he makes to you and I, such as the fact that Jesus said he goes to his Father to prepare a place for us.

We can trust in that.

The same same way Israel could trust that 70 years after the captivity, they would return to the land.

So there's still a principle that we can see in the Old Testament that still carries through to the church today.

So, and what that is, is that Yahweh is faithful.

Yes, he's faithful.

You know, if we learn anything by looking back, I mean, even when Stephen preached, he went back, he goes, this, this is, this is Yahweh, even Yahweh, even God says, I, I brought you out of the land of Egypt.

You know, he's showing people who he is, his faithfulness.

You know, and this is basically the.

Principle, the Old Testament principle between behind Romans 8, 28.

Right.

I mean, you look at it and you think, oh, man, this is awful.

This is terrible.

It's you know, that God.

God has meant it for your good, for his glory and for your good.

That's right.

And even, even how many times you look at, read, read judges, how many times did the people, Israel, turn their back away, do what is right in their own eyes, you know, and then they.

And then God caused a calamity to bring them back and they repented.

And you see that cycle over and over and you see God acting.

You seem him intervening, you know, because he is faithful.

And that's, you know, so when.

How can we unhitch from the Old Testament when he shows himself, who he is to his people, that he is loving and that he has every right to throw everybody in hell, but continues to come back and to reveal himself as a loving Savior.

So Fatima says this Andrew's Biblical hermeneutics.

I think she's referring to the course we have at Striving Fraternity Academy on Biblical Hermeneutics, which says Andrew's Biblical Hermeneutics taught me to read two or three verses earlier whenever someone sends me a verse.

She said, so when Josh Gerber gave a chapter in Bible counseling class, I read two or three chapters earlier.

And that is a good principle to do.

It's not.

Look, I always find funny when I do street evangelism and I'm on the street somewhere, someone challenges me.

What about this verse?

And all I do is say, let's back up a few verses.

Yeah.

And there's the answer.

Right.

But hey, if you rip it out of context, you can try to make the Bible say anything you want it to.

It just doesn't say what it does say.

Right.

What is it?

A text without a, without a context is a proof text.

Pretext is a pretext.

Yeah.

Right.

So the thing that we're seeing though is that we hold to the fact that we do have the Old Testament does apply to the church, but not necessarily always in the same way.

There's some things that were specific to the nation, but there's principles that we can learn and those carry forward to us.

So we don't throw it out.

We don't unhitch from it.

We don't reject it.

We still read it.

We can agree that many of it.

And, and I, I think you would much of it is types and shadows of a better thing to come.

Yeah.

Now where we would disagree.

And so this, this, that's a great segue, Tom, into the next part of what I wanted to cover, which is.

And, and this is where we would have more disagreement.

You and I Don't know where Dan's gonna land.

He.

Maybe he's just going to be in the middle, you know, as I usually am.

I'm up here, down here, going.

That'S not a bad place to be in the middle.

Yeah, sometimes.

Yeah.

But no, the, the thing though is, is how do we interpret the Old Testament?

Right.

That's, that's really the key now is are we going to see the Old Testament as you.

You just mentioned, as types and shadows to the New?

I would say there's some of it you would see more than I would.

Right.

So.

So let me give my view and then I'll let you talk a little bit about types and shadows because I think you'll go on a little bit more.

So I, Anyone that's.

That's Presbyterian understands the regulatory principle of worship.

This is so that there's the normative and regulatory.

If you want, go to my Theology Throwdown podcast, which is a podcast.

All of the Christian podcast community podcasters join together and we do different topics.

We did the regulative principle recently.

So if you want more on that, you can go find Theology Throwdown podcast.

The regulatory principles.

The idea when it comes to worship is when we worship God, we only worship God the way that the Bible says to do it.

So in other words, if the Bible doesn't say do it this way, you can't.

So if the question is, can you use a guitar?

They would say, well, did the Bible say we could use a guitar?

If it didn't, then, no, you can't.

Now you might say, well, the law, the, you know, the harp is like a piano or is it like a guitar?

You know, you could do a stringed instrument, but, you know, use drums maybe, because I don't think those were around then.

Right.

But whatever it is, they would say, well, if it's.

If the Bible doesn't say you can, then you can't.

The normative principle says if the Bible doesn't say it's a sin, then you can.

So if the.

As long as the Bible doesn't say you can't do it, then everything goes.

I would hold to the regulatory principle when it comes to, to interpretation.

Okay.

In other words, unless God says that this is a type and a shadow, I don't believe it's a type and shadow.

So let's give a good example of it.

Jonah is a type of Christ.

Why?

Because Christ said, just as Jonah was in the belly of a.

Of a fish for three days and three nights, so the Son of man will be in the, in the earth for three days and three nights, what you have there is a type because Jesus said it's a type.

Okay, is the offering of Isaac a type of Christ?

I say no, because there's nowhere in the Bible that it says that Isaac is a type of Christ.

Are there a lot of similarities though?

Yeah, they were both went up to the same mountain.

They both, you know, there's, there's.

So there's a lot of similarities between those.

And where I think, and this is where Matt Slick and I, when we did a debate on this, we got to the point of the, the Isaac as an example, Isaac as a type of Christ.

I say there's a lot of similarities.

And Matt would say he's a type of Christ.

Now why do I stop where I stop?

Because unless the Bible says it's a type, I don't take it as a type.

And that's where I think you and I would.

You probably look at the covenants the same way, right?

Because the covenant theology tends to see what is it?

The covenant of works in the garden.

And then you got the different covenants that follow that, which I always found a little bit mind bending.

So I tend to look at it the same way.

They say there's a covenant of works, but I'm like, well, God didn't say he was establishing a covenant with Adam.

They would say, well, there's covenant language being used.

But I'm like, I don't feel comfortable with that.

See, and this is one of the things, as a dispensationalist, I would see each of those covenants as a new dispensation because that's actually the agreement to that dispensation.

God's saying to his people, this is how I'm going to deal with you.

Here's the new instruction, here's the new rules, here's new blessings and cursings from following or disobeying the law.

And that's what define.

So, so we, we as dispensationals, we hold the covenants because the covenant is what defines the, the new dispensation, the new way God's going to work with his people.

Right?

And so, so there's, we wouldn't hold to just three of them though, right?

Right.

The covenant of grace, the covenant of works, the covenant of, Of.

Wait, grace works.

Which one am I missing?

I just went blank.

The one in the middle?

No, it's the first one.

So we would say that the covenant of the garden is the same as the covenant of works.

We would also say the Mosaic covenant was the covenant of work.

We would also say the Abrahamic covenant was the covenant of works according to 1689 federalism.

And the one covenant of the grace is the new covenant covenant.

But to answer your question, what we would see as similarities, what you would see as similarities or parallels, we would look at the scripture in a different way in that we would also incorporate the overall redemptive story that God, that the divine author is communicating to his people, which is to make himself known, to make Christ known, and that we could have redemption in him.

And so, and so when we see stories like for example, Jacob sending Joseph a special son that, whom he loved, had a special way, you know, that love for him, and he sent him out to go rescue his brothers.

So we have a father who had a special love for this son Joseph, who is going out to rescue and look for his people, his, his brothers, the same way the Father in heaven sent his only begotten son to go send his after his brothers.

And then his brothers rejected him the same way the people Israel rejected him in the same way that he used Joseph in the time.

And to, you see, you see the gospel there in it.

And so what you see is similarities and I'm seeing parallels and it's, I don't think that anybody can ignore that, that, that is there purposefully.

And we would see a type of a gospel being presented in that story.

And then he saves his brothers.

He saves his brothers.

And you know, through, through Egypt.

And there was a whole purpose, there was a redemptive plan.

And you see those redemptive plans all the way through the Old Testament that are types and shadows of Christ.

So I just don't see how we could.

So maybe it's semantics even.

I mean we could even call it that.

Well, I think there's, there is some difference.

So first off, let me just say that.

So Troy said, correct.

This is the, the covenant of redemption.

That's the first one that, that you're not going to see in, in, in the scripture.

It is, it's a, it's understood as being so.

And Tom, for the Trinity.

Yeah, Tom.

Yeah, correct.

Just like we have to just, you know, someone is saying your sound is still low.

So I don't.

So maybe try tuning up a bit.

Okay, now, now the African sheep says that Isaac's story should point you to Christ.

Well, in, in one sense we would.

Some say that the, everything in the Old Testament should point you to Christ.

This, this again becomes the difference as a, as a dispensationalist.

I don't think every verse of the Bible has to be about Christ or point you to Christ.

I, as a dispensational, say that every verse of the Bible is doxological.

It's about God's glory, but not so basic.

Basically a difference in being theocentric and Christocentric.

Correct?

Correct.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, now everything that's Christocentric is going to be theocentric.

He's God.

Right.

So it is.

But if, if, if God is revealing himself, if it, what is the purpose of this book?

Yeah, so that, so that we would have salvation in him.

Well, see, and okay, one mediator between.

It's about.

So, so here's the thing, and I know Tom isn't going to take this the wrong way, but I, I don't want the audience to take what I'm going to say negatively toward Tom.

But you know the thing though, Tom is I think the reason we as people do think that it's Christocentric is because we think it's all about us, about what God did for us.

I think it's doxological because quite frankly, it's not about us.

It's about God and we're the benefactors.

Like, why did God save us?

He didn't save us because we needed it so badly.

He saved us because he, he wanted to put his attributes on display of his long suffering, his grace, his mercy.

We are the benefactors of it.

But it's, we're not the center of it.

It's.

It's God that's the center.

I think that's important because when we say, when we believe in the solas, when we believe in the five SOLAs, we wouldn't, we wouldn't take one of those out.

We wouldn't just say, you know, just.

It's only for the.

God's glory.

I mean, we would say that we are saved by, you know, Christ alone through faith alone, in Christ alone, for God's glory alone.

We, we would, we would include all of it.

But when we say so, when we look at the central theme of the scripture, the theme and the subject isn't only about God's glory.

It is Christ centered.

I think the whole book is about Him.

Yeah, well, and I'm going to, they push back a little.

And I know you and I aren't going to come to agreement this side of heaven probably, but the thing that I have is, and maybe it's because I dealt so much with the cult and I'm not saying that covenantalism is a cult.

But dealing with the cults and seeing how they would spiritualize the Bible to make their points, when we allow for the spiritualization, how can we say that these different groups are wrong when they're doing the same thing?

They're just spiritualizing it to a different conclusion.

Because the way that I view hermeneutics, that's how we interpret.

Because I'm following the laws or the rules for grammar, for language.

It's.

I'm not.

I will grant the Bible is a different book than any other book.

Right.

It's the only book written by God.

It is a spiritual book.

I agree with all that.

But I don't believe that just because it's a spiritual book that we have to have some spiritual harmeneutic.

So at the same time, at the same time, I think that you're putting covenant theology people in a category where we're dismissing the grammatical, radical, historical.

No, I don't think we're doing that at all.

No, I think just going beyond.

I think what we're doing is including, including the historical redemptive.

So you would say what the scripture, what the, what the human author meant at the time it was written to his audience is what it means today?

Well, and I would say nine times out of 10.

Yes, absolutely.

I would go beyond that and say, what is the divine, Divine author communicating?

You know, and, and, and I think, I think that's where.

I think that.

Where, where.

And but how, how is, how is he communicating it to us?

What's he using through, through the instruments.

That he's planned to use?

Well, language.

Absolutely.

And, and so I wouldn't divorce that.

I, I agree with you.

That I wouldn't, I wouldn't divorce those things.

I would just add, yes, that we needed sometimes.

We could be so, so tied, Andrew, with the text that we're missing the force for the trees.

Well, but it could be the reverse.

We could like.

So, so here's the thing.

And I've used this illustration before on this show, right?

I had a girl in girlfriend in college who was really into the horoscopes.

And she'd be like, it always comes true.

And she was into it until I made her read all 12 of them every day.

And she realized they're always true because she was looking to make them true, right?

Every day she's like going, oh, yeah, that fulfilled this.

That, you know, when, when we look at it and we go, oh, look, this is, there's so much similarity here.

This must be this.

What the, the thing, the thing I don't want to be accused of is saying thus says Lord to something the Lord didn't say.

You, you may say that I'm being restrictive.

I'll agree with that.

Right.

But I, I'm not going to go beyond what the Lord had said.

The Lord may say, hey, I, I, you know, had some more things there that you missed that could be.

But I'm, but I'm never, I don't want to ever be have the Lord say, you said I said something I didn't.

Right.

So that, so, so the difference being is I am more restrictive.

That's why I said I have I, I apply the regulatory principle just not toward worship to interpretation.

I don't want to go back beyond what God says.

So if, if, or can there be double meanings?

Absolutely.

We see that we see in, in the Old Testament where out of Egypt I call my son is referring to the nation of Israel, but in Matthew it's referring to Christ.

Well, now that's a double meaning.

Nobody in the before Christ.

Well, actually before Matthew.

Well, maybe it's before Christ.

I don't know when where Matthew got that from when it was known.

But no one before Christ would have seen that verse referring to Messiah until Christ.

Right?

So now I will say that's a double meaning.

Why?

Because Scripture said so.

But I'm not going to take something and say, oh well, this means this when Scripture doesn't say so because I don't so when you say, well, this is a type and shadow, I don't know.

And this where this plays in, folks, because we will have to start wrap it up.

But where this plays in is going to be how we interpret the Old Testament.

Right?

So now I'm going to explain my view and then I'm going to let you, you know, Tom, I'll give you let you get your view so that you get to give yours last.

But what I'm going to do is I'm going to interpret the Old Testament in its context, in its setting first.

What did it mean to its original original hearers?

What did the what was the author's intent to his hearers?

Now when we after we interpret it to his hearers now I'm going to look to see how that we bring that forward into the New Testament.

Now if the New Testament refers back to something that's going to be so first, I may interpret okay, out of Egypt I call my son is clearly referring in the Old Testament to the new nation of Israel in that context.

But now I see the New Testament and it says, out of Egypt, I call my son, referring to Christ coming from Egypt.

So I'm first going to interpret it to what it meant to the Old Testament readers.

And then I'm going to see, oh, but it also had this meaning that we have in the New Testament.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to interpret the Old Testament in the Old Testament first.

Look at if there's new New Testament references back to that passage that give us more light to the meaning of the passage.

Now, Tom, you might.

You're going to differ, I believe.

Yes.

So I would think that that would be the interpretive, the interpretive starting point, that we have more now, now that Christ has come, fulfilled everything that he was going to do, that we should look at all scripture through the lens of Christ if it calls for it.

And so there are certain things.

I mean, you look at Abraham when he was to be circumcised, you look at Galatians, it says, well, that actually meant that he was required to keep the entire law, you know, and so we learn more now that we have Christ.

You know, when Jesus said that John the Baptist was greater than all of the Moses and the prophets and the.

And then in a couple verses later, he says, and you are even greater than he is.

Why?

Because you have more.

We have more now, now that Christ has come.

And we would even say that we have more now than John the Baptist had.

All of us here standing in this room, in this podcast have more because we have the complete canon.

We have a more sure word.

We have all of it.

And so we have a lens to go through, which is Christ.

And the only other thing I would look at, you know, when we look at language, I think Dan had mentioned, you know, when we were looking about the covenant of works not in the garden.

And I know there was a little bit of pushback.

And where I would just disagree is, and I think I gave this last time the example that if I was to say, hey, guys, let's.

Let's go get nine guys over here and nine guys over here and grab your.

Your bats and your balls and let's run around some bases, you know, And I would say, okay, what are we going to go do?

We're going to go play baseball, even though I didn't use the word.

Yeah, even.

I mean, hey, it could be right.

Yeah, I hear what you're saying, but even though I didn't use that language.

Angry Football.

Yeah.

All of the, all of the ingredients of a covenant were there.

And so, and so that's, that's, that's what we're looking at.

But, but I think that there last thing.

And I'll, and I'll be quiet when I, I think that there's sometimes when you had said that, you know, that you're, you're tight, I think that there's times that we can be too tight.

And you would probably agree where somebody's looking at a text and they're, they're a mechanic and they're giving us all the components of everything that's under the engine of a car.

You know, they're telling us what this component does, what this little screw does, all this other stuff.

Meanwhile, they're missing the whole point of what kind of car are we actually looking at?

Is it a vet, is it a van, is it a diesel?

You know, what are we looking at?

And so I think that's what happens is sometimes we could be so tight with the text that we're missing the big picture.

You.

Yeah.

And there is some.

Let me put this up.

This from Troy.

And this is where we get into some of the semantics.

He says the Old Testament says, do not muzzle an ox.

Paul, under the inspiration applies that to our pastors as its meaning typologically is.

Typology is fine, but we have to be cautious.

Now, in that example, I don't think that that's a type.

Okay.

I think Paul is using an illustration from the Old Testament.

So he's going back and quoting the Old Testament.

Just the application of a principle.

Correct.

He's taking a principle that we have in the Old Testament, using that to illustrate something that he's doing in the New.

And that's kind of like I was saying with the Jeremiah 29:11.

I wouldn't be saying 20.

Chapter 29:11 is for you and I, that God has plans for us of good any more than I would say he's got planned for us for sword and famine and pestilence.

Right.

But you know, to push back on you a little bit, you could say that.

Right.

And if you're, if you're qualified, because we see that in Romans 8.

Right?

Yeah.

Have plans for our good, but it doesn't look like what we think good ought to look like.

Point that we should take from that.

But see what the point I'm going to take if I'm going to apply Jeremiah 20 and this, this becomes a difference.

Right.

If I'm going To apply Jeremiah 29:11, I'm going to look at it and say, okay, that was for the people who went through the Babylonian captivity.

But the principle is God's faithfulness to his promises.

Now, if I was to use that, I would use it as an example of God's faithfulness.

Right.

And I could go back to that Old Testament passage and use it and say, well, God is going to.

Well, Tom's going to disagree with this.

But I could say God is going to bring Israel back into the land of Israel and fulfill all of the land that he promised to them, just as he did have plans for Israel in the Babylonian captivity.

See, I could do something like that where I'm going back to that illustration and I'm illustrating the primary principle of it and applying it to something in the New Testament.

I won't open up a can of worms on this one.

We could talk about it later, you know, because, well, maybe I will open up a can of worms.

I mean, when we look in Joshua where he said all of the land promises were filled, everything that God had promised, his promise to Israel had been fulfilled.

And then we read in, in Romans 4:13, I'm going to have to get there now.

So I don't misquote the scriptures.

I'm there if you want me to read it.

Yeah, go ahead.

Okay.

So Romans 4:13 says for the promise to Abraham or to his seed, that he would be heir of the world, which is not through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.

So when I read that, I'm thinking that if I'm looking at, through the lens of Christ, through the lens of the New Testament, that the promise to Abraham wasn't this little piece of land, but it was that the Gospel, through the seed, through the promised seed, Jesus was going to flourish through all of the world.

And that the land that we're looking at is not only just this little piece of land, but it's going to expand to the entire world.

And not only that, it's even going to be.

It's typological of a new heavens and a new earth, not just simply a little piece of land.

Yeah.

So now this is, this is a great verse because this is great for us to be able to illustrate the difference of what I'm trying to mention between how we do it.

Right.

So you start with the New Testament and then you go back in and you're interpreting the old in light of the new.

Correct.

Where what I'm doing is I'm interpreting the Old first and then interpreting the new and seeing what new information we have to it.

So It's a question of where, you know, so folks can see the difference between what Tom and I are doing.

Tom starts with the new, goes back to the old.

I start with the old, go into the new.

So, so with this, first I'm going to say, okay, but see, I'm going to look at all those promises to specific land areas and say that was literal land areas.

He made it really clear that he meant these literal land areas.

And so Israel never owned that land.

It was never over that land.

And so that would be something that I would say still has to be fulfilled because if it isn't either, either God, God deceived them.

But wait a minute, let's take this little Joshua 21.

It says, so Yahweh gave Israel all the land which he had sworn to give their fathers, and they promised to live in it.

And Yahweh gave them rest on every side.

Now let's, let's, let's read this literally.

What is the, the author communicating that Yahweh gave them rest on every side according to, according to all that he had sworn to the fathers and no one on the enemy stood before them.

Yahweh gave them their.

The gave their enemies into me hands.

Here's the verse, the last verse in 45.

Not one promise of the good promises which Yahweh had promised to the house of Israel failed.

All came to pass.

Yeah, he already did it.

Yeah.

And, and see, I know.

Here's the thing.

When we look at this, I agree that that is how people read that because they're starting with the, they're starting with the new.

Right.

But this is.

So here you have this.

Okay.

Joshua is giving.

I'm saying, I'm saying if we read this plain language, in plain language, if I'm starting here, it sounds like to me that all the promises that, that are fulfilled that, that he had given him.

It says that.

Not.

It says all came to pass.

It says that it was done.

How do we make that mean something other than it says.

Well, okay, so let me ask a question.

Did the promises that were given to Israel having a king fulfilled at this point?

No, it couldn't have been because they didn't have a king yet.

Right.

So therefore there were promises that couldn't possibly have been fulfilled yet in time.

No, it's, it's just basically talking about the promises of the land.

Yeah.

So, so the, the, the question becomes when is this a.

To be taken literally?

In other words, when.

Let me give a different verse from the New Testament.

When it says all Israel, all Judah came to, to John the Baptist.

We don't take that to be.

Every single person in Judea came.

Right.

Of course not.

It's right.

You, you.

We have in language generalizations.

You know, I'm so hungry I can eat a cow.

It, it doesn't mean I can eat a literal cow in one sitting.

It just means.

I just think that that's, it's all inclusive.

No stretch here.

I'm just saying.

Course.

This is why we disagree.

Yeah, this is why we disagree.

And, and, and, but this is good for people to see.

It's because you're starting with the New Testament.

I'm starting with the Old.

I start with reading it first in its context, then bring it into New.

I think this is actually showing that if I was to approach this verse from your point of view, from your point of view, that you can't make this mean something other than it says and that, and that if all came to pass, that not one promise.

Well, did, did they have peace?

So it seemed.

No, because they disobeyed.

Okay, but, but Judges follows this book.

Yeah, but you, you said that the verse says that they had peace on all sides and they didn't.

Right?

Well, so, so no, it says here.

It says that.

Yeah, it says that all the land which he had sworn to give into the fathers, they possessed in it and they lived, lived in it.

That God accomplished exactly what he said he was going to do.

And, but, but in verse on every side, in, in verse 44, and no one of their enemies stood before them.

Did they still have enemies?

They didn't stand against him.

You know, but what did we find out in Judges is that they actually didn't do what the, what God told them to do.

They were supposed to annihilate everybody and they left people.

They left, left people here.

Yeah, but they came and came back.

And, but you're saying to take it, you're saying to take it literal.

But the, the part about the enemies we can't take literal because they did have enemies still in the land, but they didn't.

They weren't standing before them according to scripture.

And Yahweh gave the enemies into their hand.

Into their hand.

But, but yet they still had enemies that were in the land, in that area.

So there's, they weren't all gone.

As, as this passage says.

That's why I would say it's a.

Generalization, I think that they were surrounding the land, but all the land that.

Yeah, I mean, I just see that, see that Yahweh gave all the land that he had promised them to Israel here and that there were enemies outside the land.

But, but yeah, I mean, we, we could go on and on.

Now, let me give, let me give some, some arguments for you.

Your case.

From the Hebrew in verse 43, it says Yahweh gave Israel all the land.

Now the interesting thing there is when it's saying the land, that's a definitive argument article.

Okay.

So it's not just land in general, it's a, it's the specific land.

Right.

Okay.

So that would be an argument for your case, you know, which he swore to give to the fathers and, and they possessed it and lived in it.

Now the question here is when it's all the land because there was area that they were told they would possess that they didn't.

Right?

Yeah, we would have to look at that even in a broader context.

But I think this does illustrate.

Well, when we look at how does the Old Testament, is it still relevant for the church?

Yes, it is, but there's going to be differences in how we apply these things.

Yeah.

Okay.

I want to tackle one quick thing before the show's over, which is from the Old Testament and that is prophets.

We have seen a resurgence of people claiming to be prophets today.

And they want to say they're prophets.

Well, not exactly like prophets of old, but they hold the same office as the prophets Old.

Well, they're not the same in the sense that they claim that they can give prophecies that could be fallible.

You know, they'll argue that they could get hear from God and speak God's word, but misinterpret it.

Okay, so that's not the same prophets of the prophets that the prophets of the Bible.

It was told that if they had to be 100% accurate, that was the proof that they were a prophet.

Right.

And so a lot of people will go into the Old Testament and they look at things in the Old Testament that are descriptive.

This is again another hermeneutical principle.

They look at something that's descriptive and they make it prescriptive.

What do those words mean?

Descriptive is a text that is described describing something.

Okay, so when it says that Solomon had a thousand women, that's descriptive.

It's describing how many wives and concubines he had.

It's not prescriptive.

In other words, it's not instructional.

It's not telling you you should have a thousand women.

Okay, can I give another example of that?

Sure.

When they, when they went out witnessing it Says they went out in twos.

That's descriptive.

It.

It doesn't mean that every time you go out and evangelize that you should go out with a partner.

Correct.

Right.

Or only with two.

Or only with two.

Yes.

And when you have the woman at the well going to town and talking to all the men, she's proclaiming in the open air what she saw.

Okay, that's descriptive.

It's not saying what she did was right or wrong.

Right.

Dan, you have something you want to say?

I just.

I got to take off.

Time for dinner.

Enjoy your dinner.

Make it to the finish line.

It's.

It's, it's.

It's late at night.

Oh, that's right.

You're on the.

You're on the left coast.

I'm on the left coast, yeah.

Great discussion, guys.

Thanks a lot.

Thanks, Dan.

Hey, Dan, are you.

Got any speaking events coming up that we shouldn't let folks know about?

There's a.

A pro life slash anti abortion conference being held out here in Washington.

Washington, My neck of the woods, on September 13th.

It's called the Crucible Conference.

It's going to be.

It's a very, very small conference, but I'll be delivering my.

The Awful reality of Truth or the awful reality of Choice presentation there.

That's the only thing I got coming up.

Got family vacation coming up later this month.

Yeah.

So three of the four speakers are going to be out in different places.

Three of the four striving fraternity speakers are going to be at the same weekend in different, different states.

You will be in your home state there in Washington.

Aaron Brewster will be in my home church in Pennsylvania, in the Philadelphia area, doing a.

Doing a whole weekend seminar on, you know, basically our relationship to God, to the church, to unbelievers and to the family.

And so then I will be that weekend at Tullahoma, Tennessee, at Jeffrey Rice's conference there with his church on revival and the roadmap.

The road map to revival.

Yeah, roadmap to revival.

And so three of three of the four speakers will be out speaking that weekend.

So we're going to be busy.

All separated.

I'll be in Longview speaking at the Grace and Truth Conference in late August.

But yeah, that's not the same.

That's not the.

That's.

That's before.

Different.

Different.

Yeah.

So you can, you can do that, get on the road to get to the road map of revival.

You know, it's interesting.

It's a roadmap of Colorado, but it's going to Tennessee.

Dan, thanks.

For coming in.

All right, later, Dan.

Have a good one.

So I think one of the things we have to look at when we look at prescriptive and descriptive is one of the concerns I have when it comes to hermeneutics is many people will take.

A lot of the cults do this.

You'll see this, this should be like a red flag when you talk to people and they're taking a descriptive part of the Old Testament because they always seem to want to do the Old Testament.

I'll explain why I think that is.

They always want to take the Old Testament and make it prescriptive to them.

I think, you know, so we talked earlier, the New Covenant.

We no longer need a priesthood.

The Holy Spirit's going to endure.

Right.

And what is the, what are the unbelievers when they, when they get into the, the church and claim to be Christian?

Because they, they want the Emperor's blessing, you know, because Constantine says, oh, we're all Christian.

That's not how people become Christian.

They all want to claim special privilege that they're priests, right?

Then they, then I know Tom's going to cringe at this.

Then what do they do?

They start saying, well, they are the Israel, that the church is Israel.

Okay.

You have the Mormons.

They'll say they're the 10 tribes, the lost tribes of Israel.

You'll see them saying that they're the Aaronic priesthood and even a Melchizedek priesthood, which I think is blasphemy because there's only one person of that and it's Christ.

But you believe Melchizedek is Christ?

Oh, yes.

Yeah.

Actually, so this is a funny story, but we were, I was co teaching a Wednesday night Bible study with my pastor in a pre in my church in Jersey and we were going through the book of Hebrews and he knew that I believed that this is.

That Melchizedek is Christ.

He believed Melchizedek was a type of Christ.

Okay.

So he started off by saying, he explained what a type is and all this he says now this week I'm going to teach that Melchizedek is a type of Christ.

That he's a real person, but he was a type of Christ.

Next week I'm going to ask Andrew to teach the same passage and he's going to have a different view.

He's going to tell you he thinks that this is the pre incarnate Christ.

Well, as we're going through, I'm asking questions and I just said, well, how come Melchizedek didn't have a father and mother.

No genealogy?

No.

And, and he goes, he, he literally, he goes, I think you just convinced me that this is the, this is the pre incarnate Christ.

I said, oh, does that mean I don't have to teach next week?

He goes, no, still teach.

Doesn't it say resembling though, in the text?

Maybe not in the original?

I don't know.

I mean, well, just for the sake of time, I'm going to table that.

But yeah, it's in Hebrews that we'd have to look that up.

Okay.

But yeah, so the thing though is that what you see is you see people that take descriptive things in the Old Testament and start applying it to them in a spiritualized way to give them an authority.

When they're saying they're Israel, they're the priesthood, it's like they're, you know, they do this stuff.

I think why a lot of the cults do it is to give themselves an air of spirituality, an air of authority.

The Mormons will take.

There's a reference to two sticks and they'll say, oh, one's the Bible, one's the Book of Mormon.

When the context says one is the northern tribes of Israel and one's the southern tribes of Israel.

Okay, the context tells you what it is, but they ignore that to go, oh, you know, Joseph Smith focuses a lot on which of the 12 brothers Joseph.

Right.

So they have a lot of focus on the tribes that come from Joseph's two sons.

Okay.

And it's like, why do they do that?

To give themselves this authority.

And so a lot of times you see, and this is what I think is going on with this modern day new apostolic reformation where they want to say that they're prophets and everyone's an apostle, everyone's a prophet.

They want to claim some spiritual authority that they see in the Old Testament that's descriptive and they apply it prescriptively to themselves to give them an authority they don't have, to give them a spirituality they don't have.

I think this to go back where we started the show with, I think that's the allure with the Hebrew roots.

The allure is that people feel there.

And I've had people tell me this, they just feel more spiritual by obeying the law.

But why would you feel more spiritual?

Because there's something special with Israel or special with the laws they had to keep.

No, there isn't.

But they think there is.

But why do they think there is?

Because it makes them.

What was the word they say?

Feel More spiritual.

Well, that shows you that it's about their feelings and they're trying to get some experience out of it rather than look at what Scripture actually says.

Yeah.

So we've kind of covered a wide range here on how the Old Testament still applies today, both good and bad, both profitably.

Profitably, and also dangers of it.

Yeah.

So, Tom, let me.

Before we get to just some, you know, things.

Announcements and.

Anything you want to share to wrap this up?

No, so.

Well, yeah, just.

I think.

I think that's a really good point that you just had about, you know, people making it about themselves.

When we look at what the New Testament says, you know, that we need to die to self, you know, it's not about us, you know, and if we.

If we're thinking about our own glory, our own good, if I'm only thinking about me, then that's a problem.

I mean, we need to die to self.

We need to die to our sin, take up our cross daily and follow Christ.

So it's all about Christ in our life.

And we shouldn't want to be popular.

We should say with John the Baptist that.

That I would decrease and that Christ would increase.

And that's what's most important, that we die to self.

I agree.

Yeah.

So first off, let me just put this up here because I'm just curious.

I don't know where this person is from that says, good morning, so tell us where you're from.

Because I'm thinking somewhere on the other side of the world because it's nighttime here by us.

But so I'm just curious where you're at.

And so let me just tackle a couple things.

Well, actually, before I get to a couple of these things, let me give just a couple of places for folks to know where we'll be speaking.

So I will be in Washington, Washington, Indiana, on the first weekend of September.

This is Powerhouse Ministries.

So if you go search for them, a conference they have going on that is going to be in.

The website is cbc washington.com.

that's the website to get the details.

Calvary Baptist Church there.

And so that is there's going to be a conference that we're going to have there.

And so my topic there is it's about God's sovereignty.

Okay.

Is the overall purpose.

So I will be having the topic of God's sovereignty over man.

And part of that will be the message.

Part of it.

A small part of it will be the message I just preached in my own church of God's, God's sovereignty, human responsibility, I already mentioned roadmap traffic revival.

September 11th to the 15th to 14th there is a pre conference debate with James White that will be at that conference.

So if you want to do a search for roadmap to revival to get tickets, I think tickets are, I want to say $50.

I'm just saying that because I heard Jeffrey Rice on your program, Open Air Theology, which I'm going to come back to.

I do think he's, I think he's going up to 65.

Okay, so did they just, they just raised.

So you want to get those tickets soon?

Because I do know they, they go up as we get closer.

That same weekend, as I mentioned, Aaron Brewster will be at Oxford Valley Chapel.

So if you are in Philadelphia area, can make your way there.

I encourage you to do that.

It's going to be a Friday Saturday conference and then he'll preach on Sunday.

But he will be covering different areas as far as answering questions of our relationship to God, to the church, to unbelievers, to our family.

It'll be a very practical seminar.

Then I will be, and I want to just mention this for folks, even though my audience may be like, what?

But October 16th to the 19th, I will be out at the Fight Laugh Feast conference and people are going, wait a minute, isn't that those, those Presbyterians, you know, post mill guy.

Yeah.

And I, you know, look, I disagree with a lot of what the, those guys would hold to theologically.

But one thing I really appreciate about the Fight La Feast is what it says in the name.

Okay, you go there, you can fight over your theology.

You can laugh about it right afterwards and then go to dinner.

Okay.

I really like that they've created an atmosphere where people can go and disagree.

And it's not all the tribalism that we see where, oh, you have to go to only this conference because everyone agrees with me.

I like the fact that they really want to open it up to people who have differing views and can share them openly and feel comfortable doing that openly.

And so this year's topic is going to be on really the war for our children, the battle over the public school.

I think they're going to make a strong argument.

My guess for homeschooling, which I think is probably the best means.

And so I encourage you to check it out.

And so Jesse says, need to come to Minnesota.

Well, Jesse, that's an easy thing to fix.

Talk to your pastor and invite us out.

That's, that's how that happens.

We, we don't have a speaking fee by the way, folks.

That's how we make all our money.

Oh, wait, no, we, we don't.

We don't have a fee.

We don't, you know, have something where we're.

We're saying, well, there's got to be X number of people.

No, we, we will specifically target the smaller churches that need help.

Yeah.

So don't feel bad about inviting striving fraternity to come to your church where we might not make the money back.

Okay.

Our monthly donors help that.

Which is an appeal to you guys if you want to help support that.

We, we only can do it because of our monthly donors.

So please, you know, if, if Lord, Lord would put it on your heart to consider that.

Now, I asked the question of where someone was, and he says, being I am praying, I don't know how to speak the emojis, but I know that's the praying love angel.

I don't know.

It's not for everyone.

So he didn't tell us where he's from, but he's saying it's only that I am.

That I am in this life.

He said it's morning here, but I don't know where here is.

Yeah.

So those are some places we're speaking.

Now let me get to some things.

Brother John asked this earlier when we were joking about the.

Brother John's being charismatic.

He says John MacArthur is probably the most famous cessationist who argues First Corinthians 13, 8, 10 isn't talking about the.

The continuation of gifts.

Actually, I don't know that he isn't saying it's not the continuation.

It's just that he believes that MacArthur believes that the.

That the teleos there with the word perfect is referring to the second Coming.

Okay, I disagree with him.

Which John said.

Are you Disagreeing with John MacArthur, Andrew?

Yes, because he's wrong.

He's not wrong.

Now.

Now he agrees with me.

You would say that's closed canon?

Yeah, I would say it's closed canon.

The context you have to look at verse 9 and 10.

Verse 9 is talking about something being the prophecy and wisdom are partial things.

Verse 10 says that when the perfect comes, the partial is done away.

So whatever the teleos is, it's directly connected to wisdom and prophecy.

It has to be.

So the wisdom and prophecy has to be something that's partial and the teleos completes it.

And you would also.

I actually think the better argument is that those gifts went away with the apostles.

Yeah, I'm familiar with that.

I think that that did happen, but I don't think that's why it happened.

I think that.

I think that it was the closed cannon.

Yeah, well, when God closed the canon, there were no more apostles after that, so it went away.

Now Kathy's saying, I must have missed this, but she said that that person said they're from the Philippines.

So.

Okay, I had missed that somewhere.

So sorry about that.

So the.

So that would be.

And then we had one other comment here that we could tackle.

Maybe Troy had said this earlier.

He says, what do you gents think about the kingdom aspect of law?

A kingdom has a law to govern.

To govern it.

We are in Christ's kingdom, so we obey the law of Christ.

The kingdom of the Old Testament Testament was Israel with its laws.

I mean, that kind of describes.

I don't know that I would use that same language, but that kind of described what I was saying.

Right.

As far as the law to Israel, the law to the church.

But I don't know if you.

I just.

I guess I just.

I'm not sure I like the language because I think that unbelievers are also.

I think that those that are.

That were of the nation of Israel, that were believers, the true Israel, I think they were in the kingdom of Christ as well.

Now I would say that unbelievers are in the kingdom of Christ because everything is under Christ's rule.

So I don't know that I'd make the distinction.

I guess I just don't like the language kingdom of that we're in the kingdom separate from the way Israel would be.

As if Christ isn't God or something.

So.

Yeah.

So in our position as an amillennialist, we would say that Christ has come to inaugurate his kingdom now and that we are in his kingdom spiritually reigning from heaven and through his people, that we now have the Holy Spirit and then going back to the law.

If God's moral law is based on his character, that's transcendent.

Any trouble eternal.

Everybody is still under that.

That law.

And we all fall short.

Every.

Every one of us falls short of it.

So that's why we need a substitute Jesus, our king.

And as goes to king, so goes to people.

So.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I know I didn't do any of the sponsor ads, but I.

Let me just.

I'll give a shout out for.

For Squirrelly Joe's coffee though.

So if you guys want to get some good coffee, just go to StrivingFraternity.org Coffee if it's your first time ordering a Squirrelly Joe's use the promo code SFE for striving fraternity.

That gets you either a free bag or 20 off your first order.

But do us a favor.

Every time you reorder, would you consider going to StrivingFraternity.org Coffee every time?

Because that is how Joe knows that.

That you heard about him through us, and that helps him to continue sponsoring us here, which we greatly appreciate.

And so if you wouldn't mind doing that, that would be wonderful.

Now, let me do a programming note.

Unless, and this is always a possibility, but unless Tom and Drew decide to overrule my decision here, which they have every right to do, there will be no show for the next two weeks.

I will be packing up to move.

So this Thursday, I'm going to be packing up, getting everything packed so that I can get it into a moving truck on Saturday.

And then next week, I'm still going to be unpacking, and I don't know that I'm going to have all of my equipment fully unpacked in time for the show.

So I'm not going to be able to do a show for the next two weeks.

I will update the website and it'll say whether there's no show or not.

So just go to striving or just go to apologeticslive.com you'll see right there, it'll be a big rolled lettering in red if there's no show.

But, you know, we'll see Tom and Drew may.

Maybe we'll get them to tackle a topic that, you know, they'll make fun of me on something.

But that.

That might be the show.

Yeah, well, hey, you'll end up.

You'll end up agreeing with me.

You've been agreeing with me a lot.

So.

So, yeah.

So, you know, I hope this has been helpful for you guys.

It's.

This is.

This was a question that came in.

It's a broad topic.

There was a lot to it.

And I mean, I. I think, Tom, it would be fair enough to say that you and I could have taken any one of these and done two hours.

Hours.

Yeah, like any one of those, you know, so it was kind of hard for us to.

To rein this in, but I. I wanted to see that we could try to cover the breadth of the question.

We.

Great.

We.

We really appreciate and like it when you guys come in, when you come in and ask questions, that's the best.

I know a lot of people don't want to do that.

You ask questions in chat.

A lot of people do email me questions and you could do that if you want to.

To do that, just email us.

An easy way to do it is just INFOSFE Bible.

Okay, That's a new web, a new email we have set up infosfe, that stands for Striving Fraternity at SFE Bible.

Nice and easy, short for you.

So you can email us there, you can ask the questions you have, and we will add them to our very long, growing list that I have of questions which this was one of them.

So with that, just want to remind you guys to strive to make today an eternal day for the glory of God.

And we will see you next time.

Have a great night.