Please open in your Bibles to Romans chapter 11. Romans chapter 11, today we are once again in verses one through 10. We began this portion of scripture last week, we walked our way through it, we tried to understand the basic teaching that it contained for us, and we return to it again this week, although it will really just come in at the end of the sermon. But Romans chapter 11, verses one through 10, let us hear God's word. I ask then, has God rejected his people? 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 whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah? How he appeals to God against Israel? Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and 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. What then? Israel failed to obtain what it was seeking. The elect obtained it. but the rest were hardened. As it is written, God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear down to this very day. And David says, let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them. Let their eyes be darkened so that they cannot see and bend their backs forever. Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we humbly ask your blessing now upon the preaching of the word, that our eyes might be opened, that we might know your truth. We ask it in Jesus' name, amen. Well, I don't usually spend an entire sermon arguing against a particular doctrine. It's usually my preference to spend the time in a sermon explaining what the text means rather than what it doesn't mean. But there are times when it is appropriate to focus more directly on a specific doctrine and to show why it is problematic and how scripture teaches differently. And today I want to do that with the doctrine of dispensationalism. Dispensationalism. Many of you grew up as dispensationalists or in dispensational churches, which means that some of the things that I'll talk about today you probably know better than I do, at least have a first-hand experience with it. But, you know, dispensationalism remains a regular presence in the church today, although thankfully not as strongly as it once did. It has been my observation that those who spent a long time in dispensational churches usually still find bits and pieces of that theology clinging to them. And I hope that we can understand a little bit more about what those things might be within ourselves today. I do believe that dispensationalism is a significant error, and it ought to be opposed. I have a pastor friend who has said he believes dispensationalism to be a worse doctrinal error than Arminianism. This Arminianism, the doctrine saved not entirely by grace, partially by grace. And I think that at least in some respects he's probably right about that. And it's because, as we'll see, dispensationalism is a whole system. that invades all kinds of areas of theology and it even changes the way we read the Bible. This is why it becomes problematic, but we'll see that as we go through. Now I want to say very clearly, very clearly at the outset, please hear this. Dispensationalists are still Christians. Amen? Amen. We can worship alongside of them now, for we will worship alongside of them for all eternity. And dispensationalists are welcome in our church and as members of our church. I hope you understand the spirit here in which I'm saying these things, although I'm making a strong critique I'm speaking as brother to a brother, hoping that iron will sharpen iron. I do have a book to recommend to you. I have it somewhere here. The title is Dispensationalism. The subtitle is the question, Rightly Dividing the People of God. It's written by Keith Matheson, who's been heavily involved with Ligonier Ministries. He now teaches at Reformation Bible College in Sanford, Florida. And you're welcome to take a look at that later if you want to do a little more study on the topic. All right, I want to start out by giving you a very brief history of the doctrine of dispensationalism. Dispensationalism was first developed by a man named John Nelson Darby. He began to develop it and to teach it around the year 1830. Now, it's important for you to know and to understand that no one that we know of in the history of the church prior to this time had developed dispensationalism, at least not in the way that Darby did. Certainly there are pieces that are connected to dispensational theology that existed at one time or another, but the system of dispensationalism was brand new early in the 1800s. Now, brothers and sisters, that alone ought to raise significant concern in our minds about the doctrine. Can it really be that a major doctrine that defines how we interpret scripture was unknown and absent from the church for its first 1800 years? Could that be possible? Now this gets compounded because as you may know, many dispensationalists today consider specific dispensational views to be the mark or the test of someone's orthodoxy as a Christian. You are only accepted in fellowship as a brother or sister in Christ if you hold to this particular view. If that's the case, then there were almost no true Christians for the first 1800 years of the church. Clearly, something has happened where this doctrine has crept in and infected many churches in ways that are really harmful. And it has rewritten Christian theology in a way that was unknown to the church for most of its existence. So John Nelson Darby originated it, although it really began to be spread by C.I. Schofield and the Schofield Reference Bible. You've probably heard of that. Others helped as well. Lewis Barry Schaeffer, Harry Ironside, among others. But it was the Schofield Reference Bible, which was not published until 1909. That's what really caused dispensationalisms to spread through the churches. Again, that's just a little over a hundred years ago. It's remarkable how quickly it spread, at least among the Baptists. Prior to that, most people, including Baptists, would have rejected the teaching we now know as Dispensationalism. Now today, dispensationalism seems widespread, especially among Baptists. It almost seems as though when people think of Baptists, they associate it with dispensationalism, but historically that's not been true of Baptists. Today it is very closely associated with Dallas Theological Seminary, which was founded as a dispensational school. Dallas is more favorable to a newer version of dispensationalism called progressive dispensationalism, and we'll talk about that just a little bit, I think. It's a better version because it's moved closer to the traditional teaching of the church, but that's Dallas Theological Seminary, and my understanding is that Master's Seminary, founded by John MacArthur, largely still teaches the older, classical form of dispensationalism. So those are a couple of the places where it gets spread and taught today. So like I said, a very brief history there of dispensationalism, but it gives you a sense of where it's come from. What is it? Let's define dispensationalism. The name dispensationalism comes from the word dispensation, which is a fine biblical word. You find it especially in the Old King James and the New King James in a few places. Ephesians 1.10 says that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times. It's also in Ephesians 3.2 perhaps. A couple different places where you find it in the New Testament. Other translations sometimes give it a different word. The NASB uses the word administration. The ESV translates Ephesians 110 as a plan for the fullness of time. But that's where it comes from. The word does mean something like an administration. It refers to a period of time in which God works in a certain way. It's a dispensation. This period of time in which God is doing this particular thing. And that's a fine biblical word and a fine biblical concept. There is no major Christian denomination that denies the existence of some form of varying dispensations. Every branch of Christianity acknowledges that there are dispensations, there are administrations in the history of the Bible and of the world. That's not what's unique about dispensationalism. What's unique about dispensationalism is the way that it fragments the history of the world into these particular dispensations that are essentially cut off and isolated from one another. That's what's unique. You know, even Reformed folks will acknowledge differences between the Old Testament and the New Testament. We acknowledge that, of course. But we see it as a movement from promise to fulfillment, so that there is an organic connection and growth from one to the other. We want to be able to say God has a united plan that unfolds over time. But the dispensationalist says no. God is doing entirely different things in the Old Testament than what he does in the New Testament. God's doing an entirely different thing. And so the focal point and the argument comes to be about the nation of Israel. What is God doing with Israel and how does it connect to the church? The dispensationalist Charles Ryrie himself says this, he says, the essence of dispensationalism then is the distinction between Israel and the church. He says, this grows out of the dispensationalist's consistent employment of normal or plain interpretation. That's gonna be an important phrase for us to come back to in a minute, but he says, if you just normally read the Bible, you take the plain sense of it, you understand that there is this hard and fast division and distinction between Israel and the church. So dispensationalists understand this to be the main issue. What do we believe about Israel and the church? But behind it... is really a different approach to how we read and interpret the Bible. And that's what Ryrie acknowledges. There's a different way of reading the Bible, of interpreting it. To use the more technical language, there's a different hermeneutical approach, or a different hermeneutic in interpreting Scripture. And this is why I said earlier that dispensationalism is a more damaging error than Arminianism. It's because it teaches people to read the Bible wrong. It comes from a faulty interpretive model. We'll come back to that later, but I want you to keep it in mind. I want to describe just a little bit more about dispensationalism before we come back to that interpretive method. Dispensationalism, in its classic form, as I said, divides the history of the world into periods of time or dispensations. The most common version says that there are seven dispensations, and they lay them out. Different people will give you different numbers, but that's the most common number is seven. And it is believed that each dispensation is distinctly different from each of the others. so that things don't typically carry over from one dispensation into the next. If something is true in one dispensation, and if it's going to be true in the next, it has to be repeated in the next dispensation. It won't automatically carry over. And they believe God works in entirely different ways in each dispensation. Or at the very least, we cannot automatically expect that God will work in the same way. He could choose to. He might in some ways, but you won't know without looking at each dispensation to find out, OK, is he doing something similar that he was doing before or not? You have to look at each dispensation. And so things can vary quite dramatically. from one dispensation to the other. In classic dispensationalism, for instance, the way of salvation is different in different dispensations. In the Old Testament, under the Mosaic law, the way of eternal salvation was through obedience to the law. It was quite literally and unabashedly salvation by works. And I'm not exaggerating. I'm not making these things up. This is exactly what classic dispensationalism teaches, that in the Old Testament, if you are to be saved eternally, it was by your obedience to the Mosaic law. Now, they would say, and that's in contrast to today. We're now in a dispensation of grace instead of a dispensation of law. We are saved by faith in Jesus Christ, but that wasn't true of the Old Testament saints. The dispensationalists believe that when Jesus came, at least at the start, his primary mission was actually to establish a Jewish kingdom on earth, a geographical, political, physical nation on the earth. That's what he came to do in his incarnation, and they teach that he was rejected by the Jews. In his attempt to form a kingdom, they rejected him, and so Jesus left, and he established the church instead. He will save people through the church for now, but will eventually return to his primary interest, which is bringing in the Jewish nation. Of course, it seems to me that there's a glaring problem with this. That is, we know that in the Gospels, the Jews actually tried to make Jesus their king, and Jesus is the one who refused. John 6, verse 15, perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself. See, the Jews were actually quite willing to make Jesus king. It was Jesus who did not want an earthly kingdom. And that right there destroys the entire story that dispensationalists want to tell. Jesus repeatedly taught his kingdom is not of this world. His mission was not to create a physical, political, geographic kingdom, but a spiritual kingdom. What I have taught is that there is a spiritual Israel that has existed since the fall, and God saves them in the same way that he saved everyone else throughout all of history, it is by faith in Jesus Christ. Whether it is in faith in the coming Messiah, who has been promised, or through faith in the Messiah who has already come, Either way, that's how people are saved. I believe that's what the Bible teaches very clearly. But classic dispensationalism will deny that. Now I did mention a bit ago that in the last 30 years, something called progressive dispensationalism has been developed. And thankfully, progressive dispensationalists will diverge from the classical position in some important ways. Especially, they will say, salvation has always been by grace through faith in Jesus. And that change is just such a wonderful thing to see, and I'm so pleased that that has happened, and many today who would call themselves progressive dispensationalists do believe that salvation has always been through Jesus Christ. They are, progressive dispensationalists, still are willing to acknowledge, they are, let me put that, back that up, they are willing to acknowledge a little more of a connection between Israel and the church, so there's not quite as strong of a separation between the dispensations, but there is nevertheless still understood to be these two different people of God. Some people actually argue that progressive dispensationalists aren't really dispensationalists at all anymore. They should come up with some kind of new term. Maybe that's true, I don't know. The difficulty, it's a hard group to pin down because different people will have different views and it's a little bit difficult to just really identify what you ought to call them or not. There's a couple other views that have developed, I won't talk about them for now, but that's my brief definition of dispensationalism. It divides history into segmented periods in which God works in different ways, sometimes wildly different, even on matters of salvation. You could be saved by works under the Old Testament, but by grace in the New Testament. I've offered a little bit of critique along the way, but now I want to do this a little more directly and discuss some of the major problems with dispensationalism, and this is where we're going to spend just about the rest of our time. Here are some of the larger, kind of the bigger picture problems that I would have with dispensationalism. So I'm not getting into some of the finer details about particular passages, but some of the big picture issues here. Dispensationalism leads us with an inconsistent God, an inconsistent God who has an inconsistent plan. We believe that God does not change, that he is perfect in his wisdom, that he knows all things, and this is important, that he always does that which is best. He always does that which is best, which means that he always glorifies himself. See, when dispensationalism breaks up history into separate chunks, and it says that God works differently in each dispensation, that gives us an inconsistent God. Because when God changes his way of salvation from one dispensation to the next, doesn't that mean he's found either a better or a worse way to do it? Jesus came to establish a kingdom in Israel and he was rejected. Now we have to fall back on establishing the church. Isn't that a worse version in the dispensational view? As though God's plan has had to say, that didn't work out. I have to do something not quite as good, but eventually I'll come back and I'll do this better thing again. Or why would he bring salvation by works in one dispensation, but salvation by grace in another dispensation? Where's the consistency in the character of God? Don't we believe that the way we are saved reflects who God is? More particularly, where does the work of Jesus Christ fit into all of this? Classic dispensationalism teaches that there is not the need for the death of Jesus in previous dispensations. Those people did not need Jesus to die for them. God had other ways of saving people. Do we really want to separate the work of Jesus Christ on the cross in that kind of way? I hope I don't have to spend much time convincing you that that's a major problem. That's a major problem. How many times does the Bible have to say that salvation is by grace from first to last? And what's really interesting to me to notice is when the Apostle Paul teaches us about salvation by grace in Romans chapter four, how does he do it? He tells us about David and Abraham. He goes to the Old Testament, points to the Old Testament saints and says, look, this is how Abraham was saved. This is how David was saved. And this is how we are saved as well. You can think of Hebrews chapter 11. It's sometimes called the Hall of Faith, right? You have all these people, these saints from the Old Testament. They tell us things, you know, Abraham, it says, was looking for a heavenly, eternal city. That's what it says. It doesn't say Abraham was looking for a physical, geographical, political city. He was looking for an eternal city. We're called to have the same sort of faith that he and all the rest of the people in that chapter had, which is faith in Jesus. Because you have Hebrews 11, this hall of faith, all these people, and then it starts in chapter 12, looking unto Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. That's who all these people were looking to all along. It was through Jesus. Why? Because the way of salvation has always been the same, because the God that we serve is the same God in all times. So dispensationalism is a problem with an inconsistent God who has an inconsistent plan. Our God is not inconsistent and he doesn't change. Second problem with dispensationalism is that the law of God is diminished. The law of God is diminished. And this has been so damaging to the church in the last hundred years. It's a travesty. Dispensationalism argues that the law was given in a previous dispensation, which means it does not carry over into our dispensation. We no longer live by the law, but by grace, they say. And so they argue the law is done away with for us. Now, sometimes people say that Jesus fulfilled the law, and because he fulfilled the law, that means it's been brought to its conclusion, and it no longer applies. They will say that we are to just live by the law of love that the New Testament gives to us. We're no longer bound by the moral law of God. But again, this is highly problematic for a couple of reasons. One, the moral law, as it's summarized in the Ten Commandments, it is not confined to a single dispensation. It is a reflection of God's own holy character. God says, be holy as I am holy, just like I am. And God doesn't change in his holiness. His holiness is the same in all times. And so, the standard of morality cannot change. It must be the same. The moral law of God applies in all times. It's not confined to particular dispensations. The Ten Commandments apply just as much today as they did to the people of Israel. You know, it's one of those odd things to me, how much of a fuss many Christians make about the way that the Ten Commandments are taken out of courtrooms and schools. And I think it's odd because many of the people shouting the most loudly have already removed the Ten Commandments from their own theology and their churches and their lives. The Ten Commandments are for all people in all time and it is sad. They are being neglected in churches around America. I want them to be present in influencing our courtrooms and our schools. That's not what I'm arguing against, but let's start in our own homes and in our own hearts and our own churches. But this is a result of dispensationalism. God's law has been minimized. It has allowed many Christians to justify not keeping the law. Let me say that better. It has allowed many Christians to justify sin in their lives and allowed them to not be concerned with careful attention to God's law, placating themselves with the idea that they're just being loving. All the while they have rejected the God-given definition of what it means to love. Right? What are the two great commandments? Love the Lord your God and love your neighbor. And those two great commandments are defined by the Ten Commandments. How do we love God? What does it mean to love God? God says you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make any graven image. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain and remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. That's how you love me. And how do we love our neighbor? God says, here's how you love your neighbor. Honor your father and your mother. Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not lie, do not covet. That's how we love our neighbor. The idea that we somehow live by a law of love that's somehow different from the Ten Commandments is just bonkers. God tells us this is what it means to love. It's to keep these commandments. And so this is the second problem I have with dispensationalism, is that it diminishes the law of God in the lives of believers and in the places, and in the churches. The third area of critique I have, and all I have is three, but this one will take a little while, is to get back to that hermeneutic, the bad hermeneutic that dispensationalism has, a faulty method of interpreting scripture. As I said earlier, dispensationalism teaches us to read the Bible wrong. And this is the heart of dispensationalism, really. This is its essence. We think of dispensationalism, we think of Israel, we think of different millennial views. This is the heart of dispensationalism. It's their hermeneutical approach. And the best way I can say this is that the dispensational hermeneutic does not interpret the Bible the way that the Bible interprets the Bible. Let me say that again. The dispensational hermeneutic does not interpret the Bible the way that the Bible interprets the Bible. They argue for what they call a literal interpretation of scripture. The basic idea being what Charles Ryrie said in that quotation, that whatever seems to be the most obvious meaning of the text, that's just what it means. But we won't use things like metaphor, typology, And we certainly don't need to look anywhere else in the Bible to help us to understand this passage. So for instance, if a reference is made in the Old Testament to Jerusalem, it always and only can mean the physical geographical city of Jerusalem, regardless of the fact that the Bible speaks of the heavenly Jerusalem that fulfills many of the prophecies of the Old Testament. This dispensational hermeneutic has come to be known as the historical grammatical approach to scripture. Historical grammatical method of interpretation. Again, I quoted earlier from Charles Ryrie. He said, the dispensationalists consistently take the normal or plain meaning of the text. We use the word literal today, literal meaning of the text. And he's basically saying anyone can just pick up a verse out of the Bible, read it, and immediately understand it. And he says, and if you do, if this is how you approach it, you will supposedly see that it teaches dispensationalism. He wants to believe that there is an obviousness to the way that the Bible teaches dispensationalism, that the plain meaning of the text is always apparent and always points in this direction. Now, this is already problematic. I'll get into why in just a minute. This historical grammatical method of interpretation has stretched beyond dispensationalism, unfortunately, and it is the primary way you will find the Bible interpreted in pulpits around America today, even in many non-dispensational churches. But it basically says that in order to interpret any passage of scripture properly, what you need to do is, number one, understand the grammar. I need to make sure I understand what does this word mean and how does it work in the sentence, the grammar of it. And then you need to understand the historical situation of the original author. And if you can do these two things, you can understand any passage in scripture. Now perhaps you're thinking, what is wrong with that? That sounds like a good method of interpretation. We do want to understand the grammar. We do want to understand the historical context, the historical situation. But it is problematic and here's why. What gets neglected in this approach is what we might call a theological approach to interpretation. A theological approach. See, the historical grammatical approach focuses in on the moment when the human author wrote the words. The human author wrote the words. It says if we can just understand that moment, if we can get inside the mind of the man who wrote it, then we will have understood the text. But this is an overly human-focused or man-centered way of interpreting the Bible. Because it neglects the fact that the ultimate author of scripture is God. Is God. And He, we know, at times He can intend things that even the human authors did not truly understand. God can mean more in scripture than what the human authors intended. But the historical grammatical method will not allow for us to see that. So when David talks about his longing for Jerusalem or for the Lord's promise to Israel, David understood that in a limited way, but we understand God meant more than what David meant in that writing. It is absolutely still important and helpful to know the history and the grammar. I would not want to suggest we get rid of those things. But along with that, and at times overriding it, needs to be a strong theological framework in which the rest of the teaching of the Bible helps us to interpret each passage. No passage of Scripture should be read in isolation. The entirety of Scripture needs to inform the way we read it. We need to have theology in place that helps us to understand each passage of Scripture that we read. Let me approach it this way. If we were to step back and ask the question, how do we know the right way to interpret the Bible? I wonder if you ever thought about that question. What would you say? How do I know if I'm interpreting the Bible the right way? It seems to me that the simplest, most helpful way to ask this question is to say, how does the Bible interpret itself? How does the Bible interpret itself? We have many instances of the Bible where they quote other parts of the Bible and we can say, okay, how did they understand those passages? What was their method? What were they doing? And then let's do whatever they did. So for instance, what is the method of interpretation that the New Testament uses when it quotes the Old Testament? Well, we don't have time to get into specific passages, but just in general ways. You know, Jesus himself says that all of the Old Testament is about him. You can look at his conversation on the road to Emmaus in Luke chapter 24, verse 27, as he walks with those disciples, and they're looking through the Old Testament, and Jesus explained how all of those things were about him. All of it. And here is what Peter says about Old Testament prophets. This is 1 Peter 1, verses 10-12. Concerning this salvation, the prophets, he's speaking here Old Testament prophets, the prophets who prophesied about the grace that was to be yours searched and inquired carefully, inquiring what person or time the spirit of Christ in them was indicating when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the subsequent glories. It was revealed to them that they were serving not themselves but you, and the things that have been now announced to you through those who preached the good news to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven, things into which angels long to look." Peter says the Old Testament prophets weren't just writing for themselves. There is a fulfillment that comes in the church. You now are the fulfillment of the things that the prophets were writing in the Old Testament, and they didn't fully understand that. They were inquiring, they're wondering, the person in the time of the Lord Jesus Christ and his sufferings and his glories, and they didn't really understand it, but now you know. And even the angels wonder and they want to look into these things that have been revealed to you. The Old Testament writers wrote for our sake and they were speaking about Christ and about his sufferings even when they did not fully understand what they were saying. So we are supposed to understand that the Bible itself teaches us how to read the Bible. It instructs us to see a unity of plan and purpose. that progresses by way of promise and fulfillment, and that it's all about the Lord Jesus, in whom all the promises of God find their yes and amen. It's not to be read as disjointed and separate sections that don't have anything to do with each other, but as a unified whole. And so we read the Old Testament and we look there and we find that it is pointing forward to Jesus and we interpret the Old Testament in that way. It's finding its fulfillment in Him. And brothers and sisters, I would say if we don't look for Jesus in the Old Testament, we fail to understand the Old Testament in the way God has intended it. Now, again, I don't know if this sounds strange to you. I don't know if you fear that I'm exaggerating. I was taught a hermeneutics class in college at Biola University, a school that is largely dispensational. And we asked the professor specific questions. And I was taught, we ought not to interpret the Old Testament in the same way the apostles did. We were told, do not do that. You cannot interpret the Old Testament the way the apostles did. He said, they had the inspiration of the Spirit. And so they had the authority and the ability to see things in the Old Testament. And we don't have the inspiration of the Spirit. And so we can't do that. He said, do not follow the hermeneutical method of the apostles. But I'm left wondering, if we don't get our hermeneutic from the Bible itself, then where do we get it from? Right? Dispensationalism requires that we say, it requires that we say that we have taken a hermeneutic from outside of the Bible, brought it into the Bible, all the while ignoring the very way that the Bible interprets itself. That's what dispensationalism requires. To me, at least, that sounds crazy, doesn't it? Maybe that's just me. I hope I'm not the only one that thinks it's just bizarre to say, we know the Bible interprets itself this way, but we're not going to do that. And yet, that's what dispensationalism requires. Now perhaps this is getting a bit tedious for you, I hope this has been somewhat helpful, but I want to show four ways that this historical grammatical approach has been problematic in the Church. Four ways that this particular hermeneutical approach has been problematic. First, it has led to people describing different theologies of different biblical authors. So you have a theology of Paul, and a theology of John, and a theology of James. And in this approach, the theology of each individual writer is allowed to be different from one another. Now we understand God used humans to write this, and the different humans would have different interests, and different background, and different knowledge, and they would write in some different ways. But the historical grammatical approach takes it much further. You are not supposed to assume that John means the same thing by the word, for instance, the word sanctification that the Apostle Paul means. I remember being in class with somebody in college and came across the word sanctification in 1 Thessalonians. the classmate, would not allow us to use our understanding of sanctification from other parts in the scripture. No, you have to find out what it means in 1 Thessalonians, and that's the only way you can interpret what this word sanctification means here. And it's just crazy to me. And the more extreme versions of this, different authors are even at times contradicting each other. So you have Paul and James supposedly at odds with one another about salvation. And Paul says it's by grace, but James says it's by work. And that's the theology of Paul and the theology by James. And if you're among the more liberal, theologically liberal, you'll say, well, they just disagree and that's the way it is. Of course, we would not. There is no contradiction in scripture. And why? It's because there is one author, the Lord. Yes, we can talk about an emphasis in the Apostle Paul and an emphasis in the Apostle John. But it goes too far to talk about different theologies of the different writers. All right. The second concern that I've had is that the historical grammatical approach has led to a weakening of theology just in general. Theology itself has been weakened. There have been challenges in the last two decades on the doctrine of God and the doctrine of the Trinity. Many of you are perhaps aware of this. This is, I believe, a direct result of the historical grammatical hermeneutic. People want to be able, and I can understand this, the simplicity of it is very appealing. People want to be able to read the Bible and just take it on whatever face value is there without doing the work to say, okay, let me make sure that this means what I think it means. So that in the Old Testament, when it says that God was sorry that he did something, They want to leave it as simple as that and conclude, well, that means God made a mistake and he wishes he had done things differently. Isn't that the plain meaning of the text when it says, when God says, I regret that I made Saul king? Well, if we take all of our theology, we understand God hasn't made a mistake. This isn't a surprise to God, but we have to bring in our theology and understand, but the grammatical historical method allows us to isolate passages of scripture, take them on quote face value, and then we have these contradicting passages which create problems for one another. There is an abandonment of theology and it comes from this hermeneutical approach. Third concern about this, I'm way over my time, I'm sorry. Third, it has fragmented the way we study the Bible. We take passages in isolation from each other and from the rest of the Bible. We act as though we don't need to know the Old Testament in order to read the New Testament and vice versa. Both need to be read in light of one another. We can't have a fragmented approach. Fourth, the grammatical historical method encourages a self-centered way of reading the Bible. It encourages a self-centered way of reading the Bible. If it's all about the plain sense of the word, what it just, the words kind of jump off the page at you, We think that we can immediately understand it and apply it, but the only way we can then think to apply it is by asking the question, okay, what does this mean to me, and how do I find myself in this verse? And because we have sidestepped the hard work of thinking theologically, all we are left with is this surface-level approach where we think everything is about ourselves. That's just not how the Bible is meant to be read. It teaches us primarily about Jesus, not primarily about ourselves. When it teaches us about ourselves, it shows us our need for Jesus, or how we are to live in light of Jesus. But the grammatical historical method leads to a self-centered way of reading the Bible. Well, I appreciate your patience with me as I describe these hermeneutical issues. I hope you understand these are important matters. They're serious matters. And for that reason, I hope you will think about them. I also, I would caution you about how much you listen to or read from dispensationalist preachers and authors, even if they are Calvinistic. there are some significant problems with the very way that they approach scripture. And over time, those things will seep into our own reading of scripture in some really unhelpful ways. I'm not telling you to stop listening to anyone who is of a dispensational persuasion or to read, that's not at all what I've said, but just to be guarded and careful. Because these sorts of things can slip in unnoticed because the hermeneutical issues like this are rarely addressed. We absorb them kind of by osmosis, right? As we listen, we start taking in these things ourselves, not ever really thinking about it. So I would encourage you just to be cautious. Well, now that we have reviewed the history of dispensationalism, the teaching of it, discussed some of the major problems, what about Romans 11, 1 through 10? Here we are, 46 minutes through, and we come to our text. I wish we could just take last week's sermon and kind of plop it down here. That's what I'd like to do. If you were here last week, you can just think back upon that. What I attempted to do was to show that the text describes for us that God has always worked savingly in the same way. That was the point that I made last week. Salvation has always been through God's election and according to His grace. There has always been a small remnant, and the rest have always been hardened in unbelief. We saw that there are several Old Testament witnesses to this truth. We have Moses, David, Elijah, and Isaiah, and then we have the Apostle Paul himself. The one who is provided as the clear example that God has not rejected Israel. He says, these things are still true today. We focused in on verse five where it says, so too at the present time. I told you that the way that's written, it's meant to show a principle that is true and continues to be true. Things have not changed. God is still working in the same way. And we saw the way God has been working all along in salvation has been through spiritual Israel, not through physical Israel. And perhaps then you can see why I've chosen to address the issue of dispensationalism here. It always comes up in Romans chapter 11. The things that come next will apply to it as well. But I wanted to get to it right here to show that in my mind, this passage is a clear statement of the unity of God's purposes and the unity of God's spiritual people in redemptive history. The way I interpreted this passage last week is in direct contradiction to a dispensational view. Again, because the dispensational view wants to fragment God's purposes in history and God's spiritual people. But the text won't allow us to do that. God's plan operates from promise to fulfillment, from types and shadows to the fullness. And it is all found in Jesus Christ, who comes to us by his grace. And as it says in verse six, otherwise, grace just isn't grace anymore. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we do thank you for the unity of your plan and purpose and for the faithfulness of your character that you do not change. Thank you that you are the same yesterday, today, and forever. We ask that you would please encourage us as we see your purposes worked out in history, and please help us to be careful so that we might read and understand your word as you have intended and as you have taught us. We ask this in Jesus' name, amen.