Okay. Well, now we come to the law of God. This is the topic for Sunday school course for the fall. And last time we were talking about how important it is that we see the law as part of a larger context. Anybody remember what that larger context is? Review question here. What's the larger context of all those laws in the Bible? Give you a hint, it starts with a C. All right, I'll just say it, covenant. Covenant is the context. And so it's the idea is just, look, God doesn't just say, look, here's, you know, a hundred things I want you to do. Instead, it's, I have saved you, therefore, here's how you can love and respond to my love. We love because he first loved us. And so laws are showing us how to love. Jesus said, if you love me, you'll keep my commands. That's what commands are all about, is how to love well. How do we love God? How do we love our neighbor? Those are the two great commands, and they summarize all the commands. Every single command is about those two things, loving God and loving our neighbor. And so, last time we started to talk about, okay, so what is the law? What are we talking about? And we talked about how in the Old Covenant, there's all these laws scattered through Exodus, through Deuteronomy, and then in the New Testament, they're kind of scattered throughout all the books of the New Testament. And so for the class today, we're going to start tackling a really big question that will shape really the rest of the class, which is how we relate as Christians to the Old Testament laws. How are we supposed to apply these to ourselves? Are these things a thing of the past? These are really, really important things here. And it's going to be so, I guess, deep. The question of answering is going to be deep enough that it's going to require two classes. So this is just part one of two. This class will lay out the basic framework. And next time, we'll actually start using that framework and start applying. But let me just start by asking you this. When we ask the question, how do Old Testament laws apply to Christians? Why is that so important? What's at stake in our answer to this question? Why is it so important that we're asking how Old Testament laws apply to Christians? Hold on one second, let's just have the mic. Yeah, thanks. My first thought is because it is something that represents a people of God. It represents our witness of Him to understand how that applies. That's what I'm thinking. Yeah, yeah, like how we obey reflects who we are. And when people, when Christians don't obey God's law, People can rightly say, well, you guys are a bunch of hypocrites, right? And it doesn't reflect well on God or his reputation. Yeah. Well, also, Pastor, what you had just said earlier is that God had commanded us to respond to His love for us. And so this is what He said He wanted us to do. So now that the New Testament and the New Covenant is here, we need to clearly understand, does that still apply? And if so, how? Good, yeah. Yeah, we know what it's like to be under law. We don't get to pick the laws we're under. We're not allowed to sort of cherry pick, well, I like these laws of the Bible, I'll keep those, and not these other ones, right? That'd be preposterous. So we need to, we can't just sort of say, well, those are all gone, unless we have good reason to say that. Yeah, Chuck. Yeah, coming from the construction field, It would be like starting to build your house on the third floor. You got to know what the foundation is. You got to know where it began and why this law follows this law. Good. Yeah. Obviously, lots of what we hear in the New Testament is building on the old covenant. And yet there's development too. So we need to start with the foundation. Yeah. Christ came to fulfill the law, not abolish it. So, it's important as followers of Christ to live in light of that. Good, yeah. Yeah, Jesus himself said in that very important passage, which we're gonna look at today, you know, if you remove just even the slightest jot or tittle of the law, like you're really dishonoring the law giver. So yeah, thank you. And I think we can really just get to the heart and like ask like, you know, with the law, are we loving God properly? Is he commanding something that I'm not doing? Is he forbidding something that I am doing? All of that's a reflection of our love for him. Yes. Yeah, that was part of what I was trying to bring out in the class last time. Do we think of the law as a gift? Is it something that God has blessed us with and that we want to keep? If that's the case, we should be embracing all that God has spoken, including the old covenant law, and asking ourselves, well, okay, how do I respond to these things that God has spoken to his old covenant people? So there's basically three answers to this question among evangelical Christians. So evangelical just simply meaning Bible-believing Christians, so Christians who take the Bible seriously. And the first is dispensationalism. And I'm painting with a broad stroke here, because within each of these, there's lots of nuances and different subcategories and stuff. But essentially, dispensationalism, at least classic dispensationalism, would say that the Old Testament laws are for Israel, which includes the present-day nation of Israel, all present-day Jews included, and that they don't apply to us as Christians. We're in the New Covenant, and so we should only look to the New Testament for how we should live. So it would be wrong, according to the classic dispensational perspective, to take the Old Covenant laws and apply them to New Covenant believers. We're not under that old covenant. What are you doing? Those are for the Jews. So that's one perspective. And then theonomy would be the opposite side of the spectrum. And under theonomy, we would basically say we're bound to keep the Old Testament laws in their entirety. And they would also say not just we the church, but also the state are bound to keep the Old Testament laws in their entirety, except for those that are explicitly fulfilled in Christ, like the Old Testament sacrifices. So as much as possible, theonomy is underlining the continuity between old and new covenants. Using texts like was raised earlier, Matthew 5, Christ came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. And there's a bunch of other texts too. And I put those texts there under each of these points to say, like, these are not Christians who are just sort of like, well, I think this, you know, like both of these sides are studying the Bible hard. And they love the Bible, they love Jesus, they wanna honor God, and they point to a lot of passages to support their claims. The position I'm gonna argue for is covenantalism, and really, theonomy is kind of a breed of covenantalism, so it's sort of a slight category issue here. What I'm defining as covenantalism is both continuity and discontinuity. I'm trying to bring together the good parts from both one and two, and this is how I'd frame it, that we're no longer in the old covenant, so yes to dispensationalisms, and you know, theonomy would agree to that to some extent, but the Old Testament laws reveal the unchanging character of God and therefore they are relevant to us who are living under the new covenant. So we still care about the old covenant laws even while we're not under the old covenant as a covenant order. So what I mean by that, we'll explain here in this second part. So I have a little diagram for you that tries to illustrate what really is the teaching of our confession. that the old covenant is something that continues from Sinai until the cross. And then the new covenant takes its place. So you could call me a supersessionist. This is the technical term for it. The new covenant has superseded the old. It has replaced it. And the new covenant will never end. It begins on the cross. Jesus says, this is the new covenant in my blood. When did the new covenant start? When he died through his blood and his resurrection. And yet, this is our confession's deep insight, that underlying both of these is basically one unified covenant of grace founded on the promises to Abraham and David. And so like, you know, we have basically one religion that runs through the whole Bible. The religion of Abraham, of David, those guys, they had the same religion as us. They related to God in fundamentally the same way, by grace and faith, and then honoring, living out that faith through love, love of God and love of neighbor. And underlying even the covenant of grace, is something that really founds all the covenants. So we could talk about the covenant of works as well. The first covenant that God founded with Adam, which is the unchanging character of God. Like that's the foundation for absolutely every law. is who is God? What's he like? It says, be holy as God is holy. Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect. You are bearing God's image. And so what does God love? That's what you should love. What does God hate? You should hate that. You should have his character. So that's the diagram, but now let me try to defend it from the Bible. So Old and New Covenant, they're both expressions of God's grace for different phases of history. So the point being that there are these different phases of history that both are based on God's grace. So the Old Covenant, we talked about this before, it's founded on God's love. And we saw that in Exodus 20, verse two, we already read that. You know, I'm the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. But even as Moses gets going in Deuteronomy, he's reminding them of these promises. So like, look at with me at Deuteronomy 1, verse eight. He says, see, I have set the land before you. Go in and take possession of the land that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give to them and their offspring after them. So what's the foundation of the old covenant? What's the saying is the foundation. promises to the fathers. I swore to your fathers that I would give you this gift, now I'm going to follow through. This is God's gracious love, steadfast love seen throughout history. And so there's this promise of God's faithfulness to the fathers despite their sin. And then there's also the fact that both old and new covenants are expressions of God's holy character. So both old and new are founded on God's grace. I don't have to really demonstrate that for the new, you understand, but it's true for the old as well. But there's also this idea of being holy. And so, Be holy for I am holy. That's in both testaments, right? Leviticus 11.45, 1 Peter 1. Both of them have this quote. In other words, nothing has changed here, everybody. Be holy. Why should we be holy? Because God is holy, right? And yeah, love of God and love of neighbor. What's the two greatest commands? Doesn't change between Old and New Testaments. It's still the love of God and love of neighbor is the core for both. Yeah, and that God's commands are a requirement in the New Covenant as well. You know, let's just take a look at a couple of these texts. First Corinthians 7. These are just sort of like offhand comments in the midst of something larger that Paul's talking about. But it shows that for him, like, well, of course, we're going to keep God's commands. We're not going to, like in the New Testament, say, oh yeah, that law-keeping stuff, that's like old covenant stuff. Yeah, so 1 Corinthians 7.19, for neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. Galatians 6.2, it's another similar passage. He says, bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. That Christ gave a law, and the law is based on love, just like the first one. So these are signs of continuity between the covenants here. But then there's also discontinuity. You know, the old covenant's only a shadow of the good things that are to come, Hebrews 10 tells us. And we know that the old covenant came to its end on the cross. when Jesus inaugurated the new. So here's just a couple passages. And I think it's like reformed people, we really need to hear this because there is an idea abroad among reformed circles that the old covenant never really came to an end. That is not actually the teaching of scripture. So look with me at Romans 7 verse 2. He's using the analogy of marriage and he's saying sort of like Israel was married to God. What was their marriage? The old covenant. So just like when a man and woman get married and they make vows, what's their covenant to each other? I will love you until death do us part, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer. That's the covenant. So what was the covenant between God and Israel? Well, the entirety of Exodus through Deuteronomy. And then it says this, a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives. But if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. In other words, you're not married when your spouse dies, like that covenant has come to an end. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she's free from that law. And if she marries another man, she is not an adulteress. And we're like, okay, we understand Paul, yes, yes. But now here's the punchline, verse four. Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law. In other words, the old covenant. Paul will use the word law to say the whole old covenant. You have died to the law through the body of Christ. When did we die to the law? When the body of Christ died. So that you may belong to another, to him who's been raised from the dead. In other words, now we're reunited to the new covenant Messiah, Jesus, so that we may bear fruit for God. And I want to read one more passage before I get questions here, actually two more passages, just to build my case. So Ephesians 2 is another key text here in terms of what is the status of the Old Covenant now after Jesus' death? So, Ephesians 2 says this. Yeah, let's look at verse 14. So it's talking about the Gentiles being alienated from the covenant of the old covenant. They were far off. They were strangers to the covenants of promise. But then it says, verse 14, He, Jesus, is our peace. who has made us, Jew and Gentile, both one, and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility. What's the dividing wall between Jew and Gentile? Well, here it is, by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances. that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, in other words, Jew and Gentile, so making peace, and that he might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. So what happened when Jesus died? What happened to the law when Jesus died, according to Ephesians 2? according to Ephesians 2. Send it on down. I think it was abolished. Yeah. And so it was fulfilled. It's not that it's no longer important. It was fulfilled, and so we're no longer under the old covenant. That is why there is a new covenant. Now we're under the new covenant. Yeah, and I appreciate your wrestling as you're answering, because it clearly says it was abolished. Yeah, but then we just alluded to, we haven't read it yet, but Matthew 5. Yeah. Yeah. So it's our foundation. And I think that's right. And the point I was making is like, it says the law was abolished here in Ephesians 2, but Jesus came not to abolish the law. Yeah, and that's where that's kind of the big question. It's how we can bring these two together. And I should point out that it's two different Greek words. I actually put them on the back of the sheet, but we'll get to that later. But yeah, like it's clearly stating it has come to an end, and yet we know it hasn't completely come to an end as if like, well, we can kind of get rid of those books of the Bible, don't need them in our Bibles anymore. I mean, Ephesians 6, he quotes the fifth command and says, children, honor your father and your mother, right? So he's clearly still gonna use it and uphold it. And then one other passage just on this is Hebrews 8. So Hebrews 8, talking about the new covenant coming. And it says in verse 13, in speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one, in other words, the Sinai covenant, the old covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. And this is one of the verses that people use to say that Hebrews is probably written before the destruction of the temple in 70 AD. There's kind of this period of overlap where the old is already been made obsolete through the death and resurrection of Christ, but it still kind of lingers along. and the time where Jews are hearing the gospel preached and becoming new covenant Christians hasn't completely passed away yet. So yeah, we have to take these passages seriously. When Jesus died on the cross, the old covenant came to an end. Did they have a question about that, Ryan? Yeah, I had a question regarding some of the marriage language so The Old Covenant God speaks to Israel in marital terms Taking Israel as a wife and and then there's a lot of divorce language as well when he's rebuking them for their adultery their idolatry stuff like that. Yeah, and I've I know that there are some Christian writers that speak of the old covenant passing away as kind of the final, I guess, divorce. However, with the reform understanding that there is continuity between the one people of God through both covenants, how do we view that? Should it be viewed as a divorce and the new covenant is kind of a new contract? How do we view that? Yeah, thanks for the question. So the question's like was the, you know, ending of the old covenant, was that basically like a divorce? And does that mean like the new covenant is like a new marriage or something? The short answer is that like actually Israel had already been divorced by God in the exile. And so that's Jeremiah 3, Hosea 2. He says, he will call, instead of calling them my people, and he will instead say, you are not my people, that's your name now. In other words, they are divorced, they're cast out from God's presence, out of the land, and no longer in fellowship with God. And so the covenant is in a basically a state of curse, like they're under God's wrath and curse. And so what really, what comes to an end when Jesus dies is that period of the people of Israel being unforgiven. as a people. Individual believers could be forgiven through faith, but the people as a whole were under wrath, and so that came to an end when Jesus died on the cross. He took all that wrath on himself, and the old covenant passed away. That covenant that Romans 8 and 6 say basically could only condemn because it lacked the power It didn't give them the power to obey. And so what's happened now is that both bride and groom have both died through Jesus on the cross and are union with him, and both have been raised as basically brand new people. And that's how they're able to be remarried anew because they've been raised anew. And so the church, which was, we were like all in our idolatry harlots, we are now basically made clean, pure virgin people again, spiritually speaking, through his resurrection. So it's part of the amazing, like astonishing good news of the gospel, yeah. I know there's volumes written about this, so it's hard to untangle, but both 1 Corinthians 7 and Ephesians 2 seem to be centering around circumcision and the particular dividing wall between Jew and Gentile. Right. And I'm just wondering if that's not the real focus of what's being torn down. Okay, yeah. Yeah, so by focusing so much on circumcision in both of those passages, is it really just sort of saying like that's what's being removed and not the Old Covenant as a whole? Is that kind of what you're asking? Yeah. Yeah, and I think that to understand circumcision to pass away would mean that the entire Old Covenant passes away, because it's the sign of the entire Old Covenant. And that's why Hebrews 8, not really talking about circumcision at all, just says the whole thing is obsolete. It's all come to an end. It was a shadow that now has been replaced by the ultimate reality, the ultimate way we relate to God. So just like, you know, we don't have sacrifices anymore because we have the ultimate sacrifice. We don't have the temple anymore because we are the ultimate temple. We don't have the, you know, fallible, mortal sons of David, because we have the immortal, infallible son of David as our king. All these shadows have passed away because the reality has arrived. And so the same is true for covenants. The old covenant was a shadow, it was a good shadow, of what was to come. But now that it's here, now that the new covenant is here, the shadow is no more. It's a thing of the past. And so yeah, that's the conclusion I have there on the handout. There's the old covenant has passed away as an institution that is in effect for the people of God. So the whole thing, we're no longer under the old covenant. But it still remains good like God inspired it, and it will always remain a glorious inspired expression of God's gracious and holy character is sort of what Doug was getting at. And so as an institution, the old covenant is over. As revelation, it will never end. So like Jesus saying, you know, until, let's just look at this passage. I keep on alluding to it. We need to just plain read it. Matthew 5. This is what I think Jesus is getting at. He says, Matthew 5, 17 through 20, And we're like, teach us, Jesus, what do you mean? For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. This is pretty cool language because the word iota, really it's talking about the smallest letter in the Hebrew, the word iota. alphabet it uses the greek letter but it's actually the smallest letter in the hebrew alphabet is the yod that smallest letter will not pass away and then the word that's translated dot technically is the word that we now use, serif. So you know, when you have a serif font, how it has, you know, like the little things on, like this Bible is printed in a serif font. So you can see the little hooks, like for example, on the word, the letter four, you see all those little like lines, you know, hanging off of the letter four. is saying, look, not even the little strokes that form the letter will pass away. from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever relaxes one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven. But whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. And so, this is where we gotta be careful. When it says abolish in Ephesians 2, it's saying that the order has come to an end. But that's different from abolish in Matthew 5, which says that the ethical standards will never end. Like we'll always need to love God and love our neighbor. And the Old Testament teaches us how to do that. And so this is where I'm kind of landing on it, that in the New Covenant, we are held to the same core ethic as the old, love of God and love of neighbor. Be holy as God is holy. But that core ethic has different outworkings depending on where you are in history, before or after Jesus. So like, I said this last time, I'll say it again. Before Jesus came, How do you show love of God? One of the ways you show love of God is keeping the Passover. If you didn't keep the Passover, if you didn't circumcise your kid, would you be sinning? Yes, you would be sinning. You would be dishonoring God's covenant to the point where God says, if you don't circumcise your kid, you're cut off from the covenant. Whereas now in the new covenant, if we were to keep the Passover, or if we were to say that every male must be circumcised or you're disobeying God, we would actually be disobeying God. Right? Particularly the sacrifices. Like if we offered a Passover lamb as a sacrifice, that would be a heinous dishonoring of the one great sacrifice of Jesus. So like the same exact act in In the Old Covenant and the New, in the one case it's an act of holy love towards God, in the other it's an act of disobedience to God. And so the big idea is where you are in God's story, whether you're before the cross or after the cross, will shape how you then obey God and these core commands of loving God and loving your neighbor. Love God and love your neighbor, those things never change. So like, you know, don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't be an idolater. Like, just as bad in the old as it was in the new, right? But loving God by recognizing we need to sacrifice to stand in our place, how we express that in Old and New Covenants is different now. Yeah, do you have some of the questions? Yeah, go ahead. I'm with you, but I suppose, I mentioned this in a Sunday school a few weeks ago, where I guess I would just, I don't know, have a different view is, like you were saying, circumcision in the Old Testament, it was something you did in the natural to show your faith towards God. And now we have that in the new covenant where it's the spiritual circumcision of the heart. And you could do that with like, oh, this, sorry, this means that, and then how it's applied usually spiritually, not that there aren't outward things that you still have to do. There are a couple of things that I guess I would have a different take as far as the Presbyterian view on it. One being the Sabbath. So not that I don't believe it's in play, because I do, but in the Old Testament, you would have the Sabbath day would be sundown Friday, sundown Saturday. And it seems like the Presbyterian view is that it's 12 o'clock Sunday to 12 o'clock midnight, and then it's over. and everything else is applied, whereas when I look at passages, let me, do you mind if I reference them real quick? That's fine, yeah. Colossians 2, 16 through 17 says, therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are shadows of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. And then Romans 14, one man is seen with one day above another, another is seen with every day alike. let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. He regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord, and he that doth not regard it." So, and there what I see happening in scripture is the Jew or Jewish converts, they were keeping the Sabbath, but he was saying, don't put this on the Gentiles on this day that it could be. And then he said like every day could be holy to the Lord. So what what I wrestle with with a Presbyterian perhaps the view of Sabbath is from what I'm understanding is that you believe that is Sunday and I do believe it's a command to assemble together. We're given that in script in the New Covenant. I think there's wisdom. I see the beauty and tradition of why we meet on the Lord's Day but I also see the Lord's Day being something very distinct from what the Sabbath was because In the New Testament, many people, especially those with a Jewish heritage, were keeping the Sabbath, but they were also meeting on the Lord's Day as well. John references this in Revelation, talking about on the Lord's Day. It was something they were doing to honor Christ. As far as the Sabbath, I think Where you might view, it seems that you guys think that the Sabbath transformed into a different day and that you can't work, you shouldn't go out to eat at places because then people are serving you. You shouldn't watch something like the Super Bowl because people are being paid to work or something like these kind of restrictions. That's what I'm trying to get, these restrictions on it. Whereas my view is that the Sabbath isn't It was a natural thing, but now it's a spiritual thing more so, because the Sabbath isn't really a day. My view, where I'm convinced, is it's the person. It's the person of Christ. He is our Sabbath rest. And then I suppose I could go into already and not yet, because obviously our full eternal rest will be when sin has been wiped away. But Hebrews 4 makes the argument that we enter that rest. we are entering that rest. It is, when that was written, it was a present thing. Like, it wasn't just, yes, one day, the full, you know, understanding of that, but something now. So, when I view the Sabbath, it is our rest that comes from Christ, not a day of the week. So, where I'm not, you know, as far as, like, I do believe in assembling. I see the wisdom and beauty and tradition in these things. If I were to go to Cracker Barrel afterwards, I don't, in my mind, I'm not convinced I'm sinning, is what I'm saying. So I guess what I'm asking, not asking you to let each one be fully convinced, because it is a sin to do, to know whatever is not of faith is sin. If somebody else is convinced differently, I'm not telling them they need to change or anything, but I guess I just want to know what the church's view is. If I'm fully convinced on a matter this way, do you see me as being in a state of sin, of unrepentant sin? Or is that something where you would say, you're convinced this way, I am this way, but we can agree to disagree on it? Does that make sense? Yeah, well, lots of layers to what you shared and I really appreciate all the texts you shared and just the way you're thinking about it. Using the New Testament to guide your thinking about this law, right? And that's gonna be a key feature of what we're gonna do actually next week is using the New Testament to guide us about how we negotiate between Old and New Testament. Old Testament laws, bringing them into the new, how do we apply them in a new covenant context? So, I gave a really in-depth answer to your question a while back in another Sunday School that I can forward to you to help you with a lot of your particular texts. So, the short answer, let me try and make it as short as I can. All right, essentially, when we look at the Sabbath, what we understand to be going on in the Sabbath is that the Old Covenant Sabbath is actually a particular expression of a creational reality. So if we're made in the image of God, we are therefore going to rest the way God rests. And so God worked six days, rested the seventh. And so the way that the Old Covenant kind of enfleshed that this is how you bear God's image, is you're gonna rest on the seventh day. You're gonna rest the way God rested. And this is part of what it means to be human, not just under the old covenant. And so in the new covenant, as we think about this sort of creational reality, what we realize is that God has made us still as human beings, enfleshed human beings, to rest in him. And so yeah, Christ is our Sabbath. And yet, we see multiple passages, so like Isaiah 56 and other ones, looking towards the new covenant as a time of great Sabbath keeping. And so that then makes it so we're not surprised that when Jesus enters his rest on the first day of the week, that we see all the new covenant people joining with Jesus in his Sabbath rest by resting on the first day of the week, which actually I think we'd want to say begins just as Jesus' resurrection begins at dawn on the first day of the new creation. It goes from dawn until dawn. It goes from an old covenant shadowy thing to the eschatological manifestation of it. And so in those texts that talk about, you know, don't let people hold you to new moons and Sabbaths and things like that. I think it's talking about like, don't let people say that the old covenant arrangements, like the old covenant feast days or the old covenant, you know, new moon days or the old covenant, like Sabbath is still binding on you. rather live in the new covenant realities that Jesus has inaugurated. And I know that doesn't answer all the questions, like I'm not answering Romans 14 and other stuff, but I just don't have time to really, really give you the full answer. But I think that what you're bringing out is that like, when we think about how we go from Old and New Testament, we really have to be careful to think about like, what's changed since Jesus came? What's new now in the new covenant? And does that mean that the law that we had before no longer applies in the same way? We would say yes, actually, to the fourth command. I wish I had more time for more questions, and I've probably just utterly muddled everybody now. But I do want to say that our relationship to the law is based on Jesus's relationship to the law. So this is just another kind of way of seeing what I was trying to say in my previous point, that Jesus was born under the old covenant. He was born of a woman, born under the law, under the old covenant. He was under it, Galatians 4.4. He had to keep the old covenant. And he did it. He fulfilled all the human side of the covenant as well as all of God's side. So it's like that picture from Genesis 15 where Abraham's sleeping and God's saying, I'm gonna take on both sides of the covenant. And then what happened, he died. And when he died, he died to the Old Testament law, like he endured the curses of the Old Covenant in our place. And after his death, he was no longer under the Old Covenant. He died to it. And so if you're one with Christ, you have also died to the law. And this is something that keeps on saying in the Bible. We already read Romans 7, 4. Romans 7.6, we are now released from the law having died to that which held us captive. Galatians 2.19, for through the law I died to the law so that I might live to God. So we are no longer under the old covenant anymore than Jesus is. And yet, the New Testament keeps applying the Old Testament laws to Christians, and I list a bunch of them there for you. How can this be? If we've died to the law, why are we still being, why is he still quoting, you shall not muzzle an ox, as if it were authoritative scripture to New Testament Christians? We'll find out next week. Alright, thanks for your patience today. Let's thank God for His Word. Lord, thank you that even when we come to a really challenging issue like how to apply the Old Covenant to New Covenant believers, and all the thorny particulars that involves like how do we keep Sabbath and what are these specific laws mean for us now that Jesus has come? We thank you that you've given us your word and you've given us infallible guidance through the New Testament in particular about how to think Christianly about these things. And so we pray, help us to follow and think your thoughts after you. And we pray that as we do so, you would clear the murkiness of our mind and that light would shine on us. In particular, the light of joyful obedience to you in the power of Jesus. And it's in his name we pray, amen. All right, thanks everybody.