Heavenly Father, thank you so much for your love to us and for your faithfulness to your covenant promises to your people throughout the generations. Father, you keep every one of your promises. Not a word that you have spoken ever fails. And so, Father, we thank you that your faithfulness is the one thing we can truly rely on in a world of change, with hearts that are deceitful, with people who break their promises. We know that we can always look to you, we can always cast ourselves upon you, we can always depend on you. and that you are never lacking in strength or wisdom or love or faithfulness. And so we thank you. We ask that you teach us this morning as we take a look at your people and your covenant relationship with your people. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay, we're going to start by just doing a basic sort of look at Something the New Testament says about us as the people of God. A couple of things that the New Testament says about us as the people of God. And we're going to look at the language and see that it's very striking language given the background of what's being said here. The first is in 1 Peter chapter 2. 1 Peter 2. First of all, even the way that Peter opens this letter, which we're gonna see a little bit later in class, the way Peter opens this letter is striking. He says, Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect, exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. according to the foreknowledge of God the Father in sanctification of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with His blood." So he's calling the recipients of his letter, elect exiles of the dispersion, which the exiles of the dispersion is language that had been used for the scattered Jewish people since the Babylonian captivity in 586 BC. So for about 600 years, this language had been used about the scattered Jewish people. And what's interesting is that Peter is writing a letter to Christians, most of whom are ethnically Gentile, most of whom are not Jewish by ethnicity. And we can pick that up in various places, But it's clear from this letter that he's writing to people who are coming out of the Greco-Roman world, out of a Gentile background, culturally, ethnically, and yet he opens his letter by calling them the elect exiles of the dispersion. And then in chapter two of his letter, he's talking about Christ, the living stone who was rejected by men, but in the sight of God was chosen and precious, He says, you yourselves, like living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, that is, a temple, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. So he says to this group of Christians, you are coming to Christ, the living stone, who's the cornerstone of the temple, and you are being built up as living stones into a temple, and a priesthood so you are a temple and you are a priesthood this is very uh... jewish language and then he's building this case and it really reaches a climactic arc in verses nine and ten which you see up on the screen but you are a chosen race a royal priesthood a holy nation a people for His own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." The background of these verses is rich in Old Testament language. The chosen race, has always been used to refer to the descendants of Abraham, the descendants of Jacob, the royal priesthood, the holy nation has always been used to refer to Israel, the holy nation, a people for his own possession. This is what God says to his people throughout the Old Testament, you are a people for my own possession. And then this last verse, verse 10, is actually a reference to Hosea, which also Paul uses this same reference in Romans. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. If you remember the story of Hosea, Hosea was told to marry a woman of immorality, Gomer, who was unfaithful to him. And she bore three children, the first of whom, we can just go look at it real quick, Hosea chapter one. Because both Peter and Paul make reference to this passage in Hosea, it becomes something that we really need to pay significant attention to. as we're doing our background. So in Hosea 1, God tells Hosea, go take yourself a wife of Horeb and have children of Horeb. So take a wife of Horeb and have children of Horeb. Okay? Verse Verse two, so he went and took Gomer, the daughter of Deblame, and she conceived and bore him a son. And the Lord said, call his name Jezreel, for in a little while I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel, and I will put an end to the kingdom of the house of Israel, and that day I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. Now listen to the language here. She conceived again and bore a daughter. And the Lord said, Call her name No Mercy, for I will not have mercy on the house of Israel to forgive them, but I will have mercy on the house of Judah, and I will save them. When she had weaned No Mercy, she conceived and bore a son. And the Lord said, Call his name Not My People, for you are not My people, and I am not your God. Do you see a difference in the way that her pregnancy and birth is described in verse 3? She conceived and bore him a son. And in verse 9, she conceived again and bore a daughter. And in verse 8, when she had weaned no mercy, she conceived and bore a son. Do you see a subtle difference in the way that's described? Yeah, in the first case, it's explicitly said, she conceived and bore him a son. And then it's missing from the second two children, both of whom are given negative names, No Mercy and Not My People. Given the fact that God had told Hosea, take a wife of Horeb and have children of Horeb, it is not unreasonable to draw the conclusion from the text that the second two children of Gomer were not Hosea's. He was not the biological father of those two children. And yet, what happens later is they are gathered to him. They are brought in and they are made his children. So the specific reference here is at the end of chapter two, will have mercy on no mercy and I will say to not my people you are my people and he shall say you are my God now Paul in Romans and Peter both pick up on that verse on that story and they're extending it to the Gentiles they're saying this is a picture to us of what God has done for Gentiles they were illegitimate children they were not rightfully the children of God by birth, but God has had mercy on them and God has made them his people. But even without understanding the fullness of that background, just the terms that are used here, chosen race, royal priesthood, holy nation, people for his own possession, those are all specific things that are used in the Old Testament to refer to Israel or part of Israel. So Galatians 3 is the other place we want to look at. The whole purpose of the book of Galatians is to lay out for us our understanding of who Gentile Christians are and how Gentile Christians are saved. opposing the false teaching of the Judaizers. The Judaizers were those who believed that if you wanted to be saved, you had to come into Israel, the nation, you had to convert into Judaism. You had to be circumcised, you had to keep the dietary laws, you had to keep the ceremonial purity laws, because salvation was found by coming into the people of Israel as they were constituted by God in the Old Testament. The whole purpose of the book of Galatians is to show us that it's by grace alone through faith alone that we're justified. It's Christ alone that we need to be joined to and that in Christ we receive all the spiritual benefits of being children of Abraham without identifying as being ethnically Jewish and without joining in the Jewish nation in the ceremonial and civil laws that God had given them. And Paul is building a case which reaches a crescendo in chapter three and then is applied to our lives in chapters four and five. But in chapter three he says, know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. So who are the children of Abraham? Who are the sons of Abraham? It is those who are of faith. And then at the end of the chapter he says, there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. So, those of faith are sons of Abraham. If you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. And the case that Paul is really making here in Galatians is to say, God promised Abraham that through his seed, through his offspring, singular, one, through one of his offspring, through one of his seed, God was going to bless all the nations of the world. And that seed is Christ. That offspring is Christ. So Christ is the true son of Abraham. Christ is the fulfillment of the covenant promises to Abraham. And by joining ourselves to Christ, it's not our faith. It's not because Abraham had faith and we have faith that makes us like Abraham and thus his son. That's not what he's saying. He's saying is our faith unites us to Christ. And in uniting us to Christ, we become children of Abraham. If you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring. You are Abraham's offspring, and you are heirs according to promise. What these passages, among others, tell us is that we, even though we are Gentiles, even though we're born on the other side of the world, 2,000 years after Christ, we are joined in, we are grafted in by our faith, by being united to Christ. We are part of the people of God. We are the chosen people of God. We are the holy nation of God. We are God's own people for his own possession. We are the sons of Abraham. We are Abraham's offspring. We are the heirs according to promise. So this is who we are according to scripture. Now let's take a closer look at the implications for this and where this all comes from. God's covenant with Abraham begins really with his call of Abraham. So formally, God makes the covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15. But It begins with God's call of Abraham, which had happened about 15 years earlier, we think. We don't have an exact timeline. But God calls Abram, already an older man, and he says to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. and I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So there are some theologies that say, well, really, God's plan was to save Israel, but when Israel rejected God, then God turned and decided to bless the Gentiles. No, God made it very clear from the very beginning, before he even made his covenant with Abraham, when he first called Abraham, he said, I'm going to bless all the families of the earth through you. It's always been God's plan that all nations, all peoples, all tribes, all tongues would be blessed and would be brought in. And so you could tie Genesis 12 to Revelation 5, where we see all the people of God around the throne of God, and they say, worthy is the Lamb who was slain, for with your blood you have bought us out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You have made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God forever. You can tie that together and say the whole of scripture is about this. It's about the gathering in of God's people from among all the peoples of the world. It's after this that God gives the land promise. When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, the oak of Morah. At that time, the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, to your offspring, I will give this land. So he built there an altar to the Lord who had appeared to him. So God makes this promise, but he makes the promise to Abraham and to his offspring. It is a promise of land, and it's made in the context of this calling and blessing that is promised to all the families of the earth. Now, let's fast forward a little bit and come up to the Gospels. and Matthew chapter 21. This is after Jesus has entered into Jerusalem. He's come in on the triumphal entry. He's been praised by the crowds, but he's also been challenged by those who are in authority. He then does two things that are very much connected to each other and very much symbolic of what's going on. He goes and cleanses the temple for a second time. He had done so earlier, John's Gospel tells us, toward the beginning of his ministry. But now he goes toward the end of his ministry, and he cleanses the temple again. And then he goes and curses the fig tree. A lot of people have puzzled over the cursing of the fig tree. Why in the world would Jesus curse a fig tree? What did the fig tree ever do to him? And besides, the fig tree wasn't even supposed to have fruit. The Gospel writers tell us that specifically. It wasn't the season for figs. Okay, so it wasn't that there was something wrong with the fig tree. Jesus is showing us something. What he's showing is that the fig tree had leaves, but had no fruit. It had a show of life, but it was not being fruitful. Now it, as the tree, wasn't supposed to be. But having just cleansed the temple, and about to give this parable, what he's showing us is that Israel, his people, and the temple, They were showing signs of spiritual life. Look, we can memorize the Psalms. Look, we can gather for the festivals. Look, we can build a glorious temple with the help of Roman sponsorship. Right? We can do all these things, but there was no fruit. It was just leaf. No fruit. So Jesus curses the fig tree as a living parable. of the curse that is on the nation of Israel, and then he tells a parable to explain the cursing of the fig tree. There was a master of a house who planted a vineyard and put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, built a tower, and leased it to tenants and went away into another country. When the season for fruit drew near, he sent his servants to his tenants to get his fruit. The tenants took his servants and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. These are the prophets, right? Read the Old Testament. What does Israel always do to the prophets? Shut up and leave us alone. We don't like you. Tell us good things or we're gonna stone you, right? So this is consistently what they do with the prophets. And he sent other servants, more than the first, and they did the same to them. Finally, he sent his son to them saying, they will respect my son. But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, this is the heir. Come, let us kill him and have his inheritance. And they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him. When therefore the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? They said to him, the crowd answers him, they said to him, he will put those wretches to a miserable death and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the fruits in their seasons. And if you keep reading, verse 45 tells us, when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they perceived that he was speaking about them. And although they were seeking to arrest him, they feared the crowds because they held him to be a prophet. So he was clear enough that even the Pharisees, thick-headed as they could be, understood that he was talking about them. Notice what the implication here is. It is not the case that the religious leaders of Israel did not know that Jesus was the Messiah. It's not the case that they said, oh, well, we just don't know if he's the Messiah or not. Jesus had done enough things, enough times, and enough places. He had said enough and done enough that the evidence was incontrovertible. They knew, but they also knew, hey, if we kill the Messiah, then maybe we get to stay in power. Because this Messiah doesn't look like he wants to respect us and keep us in our positions of authority. So come let us kill him and have his inheritance. So in the context of history, The fulfillment of this parable comes in the year 70 AD, when the Romans march on Jerusalem and burn it to the ground. And then later, they actually kick all the Jews out of Jerusalem, and for the better part of basically 1900 years, it's actually illegal for Jewish people to live in Jerusalem. They are removed. And they are removed, the Bible would tell us, because they knowingly rejected the Messiah, the Son of God. Jesus knew this was coming. And so in a little more positive light, we can look at a passage we just recently looked at together, John chapter 10. And we can see Jesus as the good shepherd gathering up his sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father and I lay down my life for the sheep. And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd." The other sheep that are not of this fold, okay, Joseph Smith and Mormonism, they teach that the ten lost tribes of Israel ended up in North America as North American Indians. and that Jesus had to go and preach the gospel to them because they were the other sheep. And so in the days between his resurrection and his ascension, he supernaturally traveled to North America, preached the gospel, gathered together a group of Native Americans to follow him and worship him. And then sometime later, there was a great war, and that tribe of Native Americans was wiped out by the ones that were still around. Historically, nonsense. Also, biblically nonsense, but this is what he used as sort of his prompt for that. The other sheep that are not of this fold must be other Jewish people in the world. This is the whole point of what Jesus is saying. The other sheep not of this fold are not Jewish people. They're non-Jews. But notice, when they're brought together, there will be one flock, one shepherd. There's not two flocks and two shepherds. There is one flock and one shepherd, Jesus, over all of his people. Romans 9 is a key chapter for understanding this relationship. Paul begins by pouring out his heart and saying how grieved he is over the fact that he, a prominent, well-educated Jewish man, was one of a very small minority of Jews who were believing in Christ. and that if you look at even by the time of the letter of Romans, which was written in the fifties, so within twenty so years of Christ, if you look at the Jewish people, the vast majority of the Jewish people are not believing in Jesus. Most of them have decided not to believe in Jesus. And also if you look at the church, the vast majority of the church is made up of people who are not Jewish. So already within twenty to twenty-five years of Jesus' earthly ministry, You have this case where being a Jesus-believing Jew puts you in a double minority. A minority among your own ethnic people and a minority within the church. And this weighs on Paul's heart. I'm speaking the truth in Christ. I'm not lying. My conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. for I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen, according to the flesh." Paul is saying in the strongest possible language, I would willingly volunteer to die and go to hell forever if it meant that my kinsmen, my Jewish Brothers, according to the flesh, would come to Christ. He has such a heart, such a passion for them. They are Israelites. To them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen. But... But... It is not as though the Word of God has failed. What word of God is he talking about? He's talking about the covenant promises made to Abraham. The word of God has not failed. Well, how can you say that? Paul, how can you say that God's covenant promise to Abraham hasn't failed? For, because, not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel. And not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring. What does that mean? Paul is making a distinction between physical Israel and spiritual Israel, between the children of the flesh and the children of the promise. Through Isaac shall your offspring be named. This means that it is not the children of the flesh who are children of God, but the children of the promise are counted as offspring. He makes a double Example here, this is the distinction between Isaac and Ishmael. Later he's going to make the distinction between Jacob and Esau. So if it's just a matter of being a physical descendant of Abraham, if you get tied into the covenant made with Abraham because you are a physical descendant of Abraham, then what about Ishmael? Ishmael was just as much Abraham's son as Isaac was. but he's not included, right? What about Esau? Esau was not only Abraham's son, but Esau was also Isaac's son, but he's not included. So, it's the promise, it's the grace of God, it's election, it's faith that marks the true children of Abraham, is the case that he's making, and he's going to continue building it. I asked then, has God rejected his people? This is a couple chapters later. By no means, for I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people, look, whom he foreknew. He says, look at me, I'm Jewish. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel? Lord, they've killed the prophets, they've demolished the altars, I alone am left and they seek my life. But what is God's reply to him? I have kept for myself 7,000 men who have not bowed the knee to Baal. So too at the present time there is a remnant. chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works. Otherwise, grace would no longer be grace. There was then, and there is now, a remnant of ethnically Jewish people who believe in the Lord Jesus. But their salvation does not come because they are ethnically Jewish. It comes because God, in his grace, has given them faith in the Lord Jesus. And then Paul paints this picture of the olive tree. Some of the branches were broken off of the olive tree. You, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others, and you now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree. Do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. You will say, branches were broken off that I might be grafted in. That's true, they were broken off because of their unbelief. You stand fast through faith. Do not become proud, but fear. For if God did not spare natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note then the kindness and severity of God. Severity toward those who have fallen, but God's kindness toward you, provided you continue in his kindness, otherwise you too will be cut off. And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. For if you were cut off, from what is by nature a wild olive tree and grafted contrary to nature into a cultivated olive tree? How much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back into their own olive tree? Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery." This is so important. I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers. A partial hardening has come upon Israel. Now he's talking about ethnic Israel. A partial hardening has come upon ethnic Israel until the fullness of Gentiles has come in. And in this way, all Israel, here he's talking more broadly about the whole people of God, in this way, all Israel will be saved. As it is written, the Deliverer will come from Zion. He will banish ungodliness from Jacob. This will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins. As regards the gospel, they are enemies for your sake. But as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers, for the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. Just as you were at one time disobedient to God, but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so too they have been disobedient, in order that by the mercy shown to you they may also receive mercy. For God has consigned all to disobedience, that he may have mercy on all." So that's what the Bible says. Here's what that means. The covenant promise of God given to Abraham ultimately is about Christ. That covenant promise grew up over time and produced an olive tree, a cultivated olive tree. God watched over, tended, cared for His cultivated olive tree, the nation of Israel, the people of God. However, so many of the branches were unbelieving. They rejected Christ. They didn't repent. They didn't believe. And so they were broken off. They were broken off from the covenant promises, from the root, the Abrahamic covenant. They were broken off. And then God took wild olive branches and grafted them in to that same Abrahamic promise, from that same root. Paul tells us that this is a mystery, but there is a hardening of the Jews until the fullness of the Gentiles comes in, which means, I believe, that at some future time there will be then a softening of the Jews and a large number of Jewish people will turn to Christ. It says, until the Gentiles come in, so it must be after the coming in of the Gentiles. It must be at a time when it's close to Christ's return, and the gospel's been preached to all the nations, and those who are going to come to Christ have come to Christ. But notice that both ethnic Israel, those who trust in Jesus out of ethnic Israel, and ethnic Gentiles, those who trust in Jesus out of the ethnic Gentiles, are the Israel or the Church, because they are the recipients of God's promise. They are the cultivated olive tree. Paul never talks about two trees or two sets of promises, just as Jesus never talks about two flocks and two shepherds. It's always one It's always the covenant. It actually goes back to the covenant of Abraham, which is fulfilled in Christ. Or we would say the larger picture is the covenant of grace, which finds its substance in Christ. So you see, it's always one tree. Three more verses really quickly to show you other language used in the New Testament that is striking. Paul says in Galatians 6, for neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. As for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God. This is my direct challenge to someone very famous, John MacArthur. And John MacArthur openly, a few years ago, challenged covenant theology and said, nowhere in the New Testament does God use the word Israel to refer to the church. And I think that this is it right here. You see, circumcision doesn't count for anything. Uncircumcision doesn't count for anything. It doesn't matter if you're Jewish, Gentile, by birth. It doesn't matter what's happened in your flesh or not happened in your flesh. All that matters is the new creation. And for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God." And if you take this and connect it to Romans, this Israel that Paul is talking about is the people of God, the church, the believers, the true believers. We would say the invisible church, which we'll get into that language later in this class. The true company of the redeemed, believing, elect saints is the Israel of God. What about God's promises made to Abraham? Well, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1.20, for all the promises of God find their yes in Him, that is, in Christ. That is why it is through Him that we utter our amen to God for His glory. So, the land promise? It's always the one that kind of gets to be the... Do you mean the land promise is yes in Christ? Yes, it is. In fact, it's greatly expanded to be the whole earth. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." The land. And when Jesus comes again, the new heavens and the new earth will be the possession of His elect people. All the promises of God find their yes in Christ. There is not a promise that we can separate from Christ and say it's given apart from Christ. All of them find their yes in Him. And then this is the one we already looked at. addressing a group of largely Gentiles. He calls them the elect exiles of the dispersion, which is a distinct Jewish term that had been used to apply to Jews. The diaspora, you've heard of the diaspora Jews. That's what this is. It's been used that way for almost 600 years, but Peter uses it of believers. So, There are three other views that we need to distinguish this view from. This view is the covenantal view. If you hear people say, isn't that replacement theology? I do not like the term replacement theology because it implies that God had one people and then he replaced them with another people. That's not what he did at all. God always has and always will have just one people. He grafted us in. So it's grafted in theology. It's not replacement theology. So it's covenantal theology. So let's contrast it to what it's not. Classic dispensationalism maintains a clear and permanent distinction between Israel and the Church within the purposes of God. There is a purpose that God has for Israel. There is a purpose that God has for the Church. And a classic dispensationalist, if you ask them, Who are God's chosen people? They would say, the nation of Israel. Ethnic Jews? Yes, ethnic Jews are God's chosen people. Really? Because pretty consistently, the New Testament uses that language of believers, of Christians, of the Church. So, this is a clear distinction between God's purposes for Israel and God's purposes for the Church. And it's not biblical. Two-covenant theology is an even worse version of this separatism than classic dispensationalism. Classic dispensationalism would still say the only way to come to salvation is through faith in Jesus Christ. So, even though God has a different purpose for the nation of Israel, the only way you come to salvation is through faith in Jesus Christ. Two-covenant theology, which, what's his name, John Hagee? He holds this view. It's really bad. I think some of the people on Trump's spiritual advisory council also hold this view, by the way. It's really awful because it says, God's original covenant relationship with his ancestral people, Israel, remains separate from his new covenant relationship with the Gentile nations through our Lord Jesus Christ. And what that means is there are two ways of salvation. You can be saved either by being an ethnic Jew or by believing in Jesus Christ. Which means all ethnic Jews are saved. Some 65% of the Jewish people who live in the land of Israel are atheists. I don't know if you knew that or not. They are not religious, they are not practicing, and they believe there's some sort of higher power, but they're not even sure what his name is. Some 65% of the Jews who live in Israel are functionally atheists. But this theology would say they're saved because they're ethnically Jewish. That's really... This is just bad. This is just bad. This is heretical. What's the difference between bad and heretical? When you start messing with how you come to salvation and you start setting up a system of salvation apart from Christ, you cross over from just faulty theology to heresy. And then there's extreme replacement theology, which would say that God's program for and interest in Israel has ended. So you can't even talk about ethnic Israel. You can't even talk about the Jewish people and have anything to say because God has no interest whatsoever. I think Romans 11 contradicts that. I think it pretty clearly contradicts. In fact, Romans 9 through 11 contradicts all three of these. These quotes, by the way, are from Cornelius Venema in Table Talk from October 2012. So we believe in covenantal theology, in one people of God, not a replacement theology, but a one shepherd, one flock, one olive tree theology. What difference does it make? Well, it unites all of scripture as being the story of God's people, as being our story. All promises thus apply to believers. All the promises of God apply to believers. The Psalms are for the church. It's one of my favorite things. You can pray the Psalms. Now, you pray them through Christ, and there's ways to interpret that that we're dealing with in the summer of how to interpret the Psalms. But when you read, you know, pray for the peace of Jerusalem in the Psalms, that's a call to pray for the church. Pray for the unity and the peace and the purity of the church. It's not not talking any longer about a geographical city, although it's good to pray for peace everywhere. And having been to Jerusalem, I did pray for peace among the people in Jerusalem, because it's terrible the way that they're divided. But you can't use a scripture, pray for the peace of Jerusalem, to say that means you should pray. It really should be applied to the church. I was glad when they said to me, let us go up to the house of the Lord. That was originally written about the temple. It's now about the gathering together of God's people for worship. The prophecies are fulfilled in the church. one of the biggest, Ezekiel's end times temple, the final chapters of Ezekiel. We're not waiting for a physical temple to be built in Jerusalem that will look like Ezekiel's temple. That's the church. That temple is the church. How can you say that? Well, because Paul says it in Ephesians 2, because Peter says it in 1 Peter 2, and because Revelation says it That's, we are the temple. You're a stone, and you're a stone, and I'm a stone in Ezekiel's end times temple. That's what it's all about. And we're reminded that the gospel is the same in substance in the Old Testament and the New Testament. There never were and never will be two ways of salvation. God always brings people to himself by his electing grace through faith in the Messiah. There's no other way of salvation. And it simplifies and clarifies God's purposes for his people. Okay. Questions. I'll take questions for two and a half minutes. I tried to hurry and leave time for questions, but there's just too much. Yeah, go ahead then. Yes. God is not a polygamist. Amen. Yeah, Doug Kelly from RTS is excellent. Excellent. You know who else is from RTS, by the way? Me, yes, I graduated from RTS. But the Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator, Frank Reich, is a graduate of RTS, and he also actually used to be the campus president of RTS Charlotte. So he's a pretty, was pretty high up with RTS before he got the call to go back to the NFL. He did go to Maryland. He led the greatest comeback in NFL history up until this past Super Bowl with the Bills. He was a backup quarterback. about the Eagles. This isn't about the Super Bowl. But they're going to be led by their backup quarterback in the Super Bowl today. Both the offensive coordinator and the head coach were career backup quarterbacks. So it's just kind of interesting little tidbit. Anyway, questions about this topic? Sorry. Yeah. So classic dispensationalism will say that although it's about Israel and it's not about us, they do lean heavily on typology. So they actually do believe that all these things are types of Christ, which is the way that we can connect with them, because we believe in typology as well. So there are actually some really good books on typology written by classic dispensationalists, because they would say, while on the surface none of this is about Christ, And so implied in that is that, well, it was always God's plan then to have Christ come along. And they'll sort of say, well, yeah. So how do you reconcile that with what your theology says? Well... Right. Right. They tend to view Old Testament stories more as a moral inspiration, so on the surface of it, the way it can apply to us is as a moral inspiration to us. I don't know if you've ever seriously tried to approach the Old Testament as looking at the lives of Old Testament people as a moral inspiration, but it's not a good idea. I wouldn't tell my kids, Follow the example of, like anybody in the Old Testament, pretty much, a couple of exceptions, Daniel and Joseph come to mind, but yeah, they're not moral heroes. The Bible only has one hero, Jesus, and it's all about him. All right, let's pray. Father, thank you for your love for us. Thank you for your covenant faithfulness. You keep your promises. You have been gathering together your people from the very beginning. And you will continue to gather us until all are gathered in and not one will be missing from your one flock with one shepherd. We thank you. Help us to worship you in spirit and in truth for who you are and all that you've done for us. In Jesus name. Amen.