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I could go on and on, but this should be sufficient for now. Don't forget to check out our main YouTube channel, See Answers TV, which stands for Christian Answers Television, also which has over 19 playlists by topic as you scroll down our channel page. Now, on with our main presentation. From 1 Timothy 1.8, it's an application only because there's other things involved in there besides what we're talking about among Calvinistic brethren. We know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully and it has been brought out particularly this morning that what does the law mean and it's been one of the most debated and misunderstood and misused terms since the days of the Apostle Paul. I am convinced that there is a better way to interpret the Bible than traditionally known between dispensational theology and classical covenant theology. Those of you at this conference have heard us quote numerous times, particularly from covenant theologians Murray, John Murray, J. Grisham Machen, and others, godly men, godly scholars, and so we have a lot we owe to them. But we think the system of classical covenant theology has got some weaknesses. They're absolutely strong in the area of soteriology, the doctrine of God proper. But there's some real weaknesses there with regard to their system of one covenant of grace, different administrations. There's a weakness, I believe, in the understanding of the baptizing work of the Holy Spirit as taught in Scripture. I really think Reformed theologians, for the most part, have greatly neglected that doctrine, and the charismatic theology on the other side have greatly distorted it. There is some better way to acknowledge what all is entailed in baptism with the Spirit that was historically accomplished in the book of Acts, just as much as the cross of Jesus Christ was historically accomplished. And just a side comment, we've been talking to others about justification. Do you realize not only are we Christ's righteousness put to our account when we believe, but all of our unrighteousness are put to his account, not just when we believe, but throughout the whole life. When was it that Christ died? Two thousand years ago. I guess we're going to have to add another hundred on there someday, but not yet. But here we're saved two thousand plus years later, and yet that cross was effective for us. And if we died in Christ, that means we were guilty of putting them on there just as much as the Jews and the Romans and the others that put them on Calvary, are we not? Well, anyway, I think there's a lot that needs to be done about a proper use of the law. I refer to 1 Timothy 1.8, but I'm not implying by that covenant theology is teaching what is in the context. I'm only applying a proper use of the law, I should say, okay? The title of the session that I've given this is Adam and the Ten Commandments. I was struck earlier this afternoon by George Caceres when he gave the parallel, if you'll recall, between the Judaism teaching on the law and Roman Catholicism teaching on the law. Did you notice that? It was almost a mirror image. And you know what the Jews were doing at the time of Christ? And if you want to read some of that nice, uninspired, Judaistic literature from Palestinian Judaism, you'll see that they thought the Ten Commandments were eternal. That's true. Now we've got some of our, and so does the Roman Catholic thing, and that's eternal moral law. And that it was a creation ordinance. including the Sabbath commandment. And you can go to Westminster Confession of Faith and they'll say the moral laws of Ten Commandments, and it's also a summary of the moral law of God, and on and on. But I want to take you through a little just common sense looking at the context of the Exodus 20, where the Ten Commandments were first given, and we could go to Deuteronomy 5 and be where it was reissued again on the plains of Moab. But let's just ask ourselves, were the Ten Commandments, are they the eternal moral law, and were they an ordinance? Is this the law that Adam was breaking? And of course, I'm not talking, no one disagrees among us that the fact that they disobeyed the one commandment, not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Let's just take a look. Remember, in the garden before the fall, Adam and Eve were there. The Lord talked to them in the garden before they disobeyed God. And then turn to Exodus, chapter 20, and let's just take a look at something on the giving of the Ten Commandments. And let's see, let's just put yourself in the position of Adam, and if you're a lady, the position of Eve, and you're hearing what's going on. And the Lord gives these commandments in context, not just a summation that you got on the Senate school board, but everything's entailed in the Ten Commandments. And here's what they knew by nature. If it's eternal, it has to be by nature. We're going to explain what is a better way to understand the law of God by nature than the Ten Commandments. Let's just look at this and ask some questions, and I'll try not to be flippant. Sometimes it's difficult. But, then God spoke all these words saying, I'm reading you the New American Standard, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. Adam says, he gives him the old Aggies salute. What does that mean? What's Egypt? You shall have no other gods before me. Well, Lord, you're the only God. He hasn't sinned yet. We know Satan was hanging around, but there was no problem with that. You shall not make for yourself a graven image or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth. And you shall not worship them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers and the children and the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing loving kindness to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments." And Adam says, wow, it's just even me. I'm trying to make a point by making a point. If this is in Acts, this is part of the Ten Commandments. You know, we've already covered the first two, you shall have no other gospel for me and shall make for yourself no graven image or an idol. And then it goes in and talks about the fathers and the children and all of that before the fall and before Cain and Abel were born or any of that. Does that make much sense? Verse 7, you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not leave him unpunished who takes his name in vain. Well, Adam was created in a state of finite holiness, was he not? He had no difficulty with this at this time. Not until later he was given that one commandment that we talked about last night that related to the one trespass that Adam, being the representative head of all mankind, was put to the account or imputed to the account of all his future posterity. Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy. Was that innate? Many of our Reformed brethren say it was. That it's a creation ordinance. Arrested from creation on the seventh day. But even those who hold it, the BCF people, and I don't mean to use the Westminster Confession of Faith, for sake of brevity, I'll say WCF, but many of them will say that it's still in effect for today. If it's an eternal moral law, it really shouldn't change, but of course the day did change according to them. It's moved from the seventh day to the first day, and that Adam knew this innately by creation, you be the judge. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God, and if you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male or your female servant, or your cattle, or your sojourner who stays with you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy." Well, they didn't have any sons, they didn't have any daughters, but they had all the animal But it's a little difficult to see that this was innate in Adam's understanding of the Ten Commandments in the pre-fall Garden of Eden. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you. Now, who was Adam's father and mother? He had a heavenly father, but what do you mean? You shall not murder. Now remember, Adam had not sinned. He was not fallen. What's that? There'd been no bloodshed until later, after the fall, and the Lord took animals and clothed them with the skins of animals and covered their nakedness. You shall not commit adultery. I don't think so. There weren't any other eves around. You shall not steal. Why would he steal? He had everything. Absolutely everything. There was only one thing he wasn't supposed to have. He was there as a test. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. He just lived down the street. You shall not covet your neighbor's house. You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor. And all the people received thunder and lightning and flashes and so on. I think I've made the point, but turn with me to Deuteronomy 9. Who were the Ten Commandments given to? It was given to the nation of Israel. When? It was 430 years after the Abrahamic promise and the Abrahamic covenant, wasn't it? It was given to a sinful people, and what was really the primary purpose of the law? Was it that they might keep it and be justified, or was it to magnify and point out their sin in need of redemption? Yeah, it's to expose their sin. I mean, that's over and over. But just look at Deuteronomy 9 here for a moment. There are those who say, well, the Ten Commandments, they were in the Mosaic Law, but they also are above the Mosaic Law. This is well known in a book entitled In Defense of the Decalogue. But it's not just there. But the Ten Commandments seems to me that when you read like in Deuteronomy 9, when we got the re-issuing of the Ten Commandments to the nation of Israel, the people of Israel, notice in verse 9 of Deuteronomy 9, when I went up to the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of covenant, which the Lord hath made with you. Then I remained on the mountain forty days and nights. I neither ate bread nor drank water." And Moses is telling them what happened. But it seems to me that at this point in time, particularly back in Exodus 20, that the Ten Commandments were the heart of this covenant that came to be known as the Mosaic Covenant, or the covenant made at Sinai. There was a lot of other Laws added to it. I think how many was it George? 613 or 14 time they got through And then verse 11 of chapter 9 Deuteronomy and it came about at the end of 40 days and nights that the Lord gave me two tablets of stone the tablets of the covenant Now what's he talking about here when he's talking about two tablets of stone? Wonder what's written on them Well, it's Anyone that says something other than the Ten Commandments? Most likely it was Ten Commandments on one and had a second copy on the other one, rather than half and half like you have on your Sunday school papers. Verse 15, So I turned and came down from the mountain, while the mountain was burning with fire, and the two tatters of the covenant were in my two hands. They weren't really big or heavy. Didn't weigh five tons. But what I'm getting at is that the Ten Commandments, rather than seeing them as eternal moral law, is to see them as an outworking of what is God's righteous standard that does not change throughout the beginning to the end. You'll notice I didn't say they were God's moral law that did not change. I'll just get ahead of myself since it's late at night, and I owe this to Brother Bill Dorman. The word moral law, moral as an adjectival modifier of law, does not occur in scripture. Is that not right, Bill? Yet the threefold division that's used by traditional covenant theology breaks up the law of Moses into moral law, ceremonial law and judicial or case law, in three different parts. The judicial and the ceremonial was fulfilled and done away with, but that moral of the Ten Commandments just runs right on through from one covenant to another. It's one covenant of grace with different administrations that doesn't really change. And that's where we in New Covenant theology think that there needs to be some clarifying going on. Oh, uh, Sinister... Is it Stallings from South Carolina? There needs to be some clarifying going on. You know? Something's wrong. So what is it? What kind of a law was it that was innate in Adam when he was created, as well as in Eve? And in all, uh, even the Gentiles, like in Romans 2, uh, 14 and 15, they do, by nature, the things contained in the law. But they did not have a law. What is it? Well, turn with me to Matthew 22. I know most of you probably know this, and maybe it's just a review, but I think it's important. We are planning, Lord willing, to start a school of theological studies that's going to emphasize New Covenant theology, the doctrines of grace and the sovereignty of God in Baptistic ecclesiology. And we think it's important enough to stress this new covenant interpretation of the whole Bible, so much so is it important that we feel led to start a school of theological studies because that new covenant, the newness of the new covenant has not been properly assessed in the flow of redemptive history as it should be. particularly among Sovereign Grace Baptists. Look at Matthew 22. We'll start at verse 36. And a lawyer asked the Lord a question, testing him. Verse 36, Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? And he said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is a great and foremost commandment. And it's better understood as the greatest. And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend or hang the whole law and the prophets, meaning all of the Old Testament scripture. What is happening is that our Lord says here that the two greatest commandments, which I'll abbreviate love of God and love of neighbor, what hangs on them? Are all the law and the prophets a phrase, meaning the Old Testament scriptures? Included in the Old Testament scriptures is what? What we're looking at now, of course, is the Mosaic law and other things. And what is the heart of the Mosaic law, the Mosaic covenant? Ten Commandments. You don't have to read this, the Lord can't read it either. What happens in covenant theology to illustrate the point is that we got up here the Ten Commandments. Ten Commandments, and upon them everything hangs, because that's eternal moral law. So they got the foundation on the roof, and the roof is where the foundation is, basically. Now, are the laws of the Mosaic covenant, are they holy, just, and good? Yes, they are. Romans, what, 7? I believe it was, or 13? Anyway, if we make the Ten Commandments eternal moral law, what are we going to do with the fourth commandment, the Sabbath commandment? Remember, the Sabbath day, the kids keep it holy. Yeah, but there's not any two local churches that I know of that practice it the same. If you stay around here tomorrow, you'll be within three miles of where we're going to meet, assuming we were a local church. But you wouldn't be going over to the cafe in the morning and eating, would you? You accomplished that tonight through the banquet. I'm trying to illustrate by being, what's the word? Anyway, I don't know of any two Reformed Baptist churches or two Presbyterian churches who we agree on the soteriology and the doctrine of God and so many of the inerrancies of Scripture that practice the first day of the week. The Lord changes the Sabbath to the first day of the week the same. Some of them will drive cars, some of them will write bicycles, some of them will walk. We have a tough time in modern society of walking to church if you live on the other side of town, 30, 40 miles away and two hours of traffic. But it was a sign of the covenant, and we know that, don't we? Where's the talk about the sign of the covenant? Exodus 31 is a good place. Let's take a look there. And really tonight he's trying to tie some things together, the implications of things that have been taught more formally in the previous sessions of this conference. Exodus chapter 31, verse 15. For six days work may be done, but on the seventh day there is a Sabbath of complete rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall surely be put to death. Verse 17, it is a sign between me and the sons of Israel forever, for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, but on the seventh day he ceased from labor and was refreshed. But what I'm saying, folks, that the Mosaic Covenant had a sign. It was a sign. It was not something that Adam knew about innately when he was created. Now maybe the Lord, and he talked, about creation, sure, but it was not something imposed upon him. It was not imposed upon anybody until Exodus 20. And it was a sign of the covenant. And signs only last as long as the covenant is in force. How long did the covenant, the Mosaic covenant, last? And we'll come back to the the argument from the other side that, well, the Ten Commandments really are in the Mosaic Law, but they arise above it. They can be extracted from it because they're eternal. Where Bill had on his chart this morning, it's the law of God that never changes. What I'm saying is that we just got it out of place. Has not God the right to administer his will upon man? down through the history of redemption in the way he so chooses? Of course he does. And he's so purposed, or it wouldn't have happened, that the nation of Israel would be called out and placed under the Mosaic Covenant, which at the heart of that covenant were the Ten Commandments. Hebrews chapter 10, verse 9. Then the, citing from the Old Testament, the writer Hebrew says, then he said, Behold, I have come to do thy will. And of course this is referring to the Messiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. He takes away the first, the first what? The first covenant in context in order to establish the second one. Sounds to me like if you take away one covenant and put in another one, you've actually changed it. you're not continuing it under the laws of that particular covenant administration. Bill brought out this morning how there are many laws and teachings of the old covenant that do continue, but not all of them, and many of them are caught up into the new covenant law of Christ. Go back to Hebrews 7. Things change, verse 12, when the priesthood is changed of necessity there takes place a change of law also. Chapter 8, verse 6, but now he has obtained a more excellent ministry by as much as he is also the mediator of a better covenant which has been enacted on better promises. So we got a new covenant which is brought to a more excellent ministry because It is a better covenant and it's established on better promises. Verse 13 of chapter 8, when he said a new covenant, he has made the first obsolete by whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear. And so to draw this thing together, folks, if the Ten Commandments are the heart of the Mosaic covenant, and they are, there are a lot of other laws added to it, but if those were the eternal moral law, then they can't change. They really can't change. So I think it's much better if we look upon, if you'll turn with me to, we can go to a lot of passages in Romans and Galatians, but that has been done. But if we look upon what is innate in mankind by being created in the image of God, it seems to me that it would be much better to say that are the two greatest commandments, love of God and love of neighbor. knows it is wrong to do bad things to other human beings. Of course, there's a lot of that going on because of sin, but I mean, it's by nature we know that. And we also know that they ought to know they have a God consciousness, and it's all been darkened and twisted and distorted by sin, but before the fall, Adam and Eve, they knew that they should fellowship and obey God, and apparently they did for some extended period of time. How long, we don't know. And of course, if the Ten Commandments are eternal moral law, we've got something that's just out of place, and having occurred before. They came into existence. I have no problem of accepting the fact that the Ten Commandments are an outworking of the two greatest commandments for the nation of Israel. And they were amplified, but it was also given after the fall, the Ten Commandments and the covenant, after the fall, and they are amplified upon to a sinful people, a nation of sinful people. who needed the law to expose their transgressions, and they said, we'll follow it. And of course they didn't. And so it was never fulfilled by the people of the nation of Israel. It was not fulfilled until Christ came and fulfilled all the law in the prophets, Matthew 5, 17 through 20, not just the Mosaic law, but any other law. even the, I suppose, the fact that man had sinned between Adam and Moses, and also the sin involved in not loving God and loving neighbor, and the outwork of that, because Christ came to fulfill how much of the righteousness? All righteousness, didn't He? But primarily we're talking here in a Jewish setting about the Mosaic Law, and the Mosaic covenant and the New Covenant. And so, if you'll turn with me to 2 Corinthians 3, and just reading a couple of three verses here. Chapter 3, 2 Corinthians 3, verse 3 being manifested. that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts." What are the tablets of stone? Of course they are. At least that. Verse 7, what does the Apostle Paul call these things written on tablets of stone? But if the ministry of death in letters engraved on stones came with glory, so that the sons of Israel could not look intently at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face fading as it was. How shall the ministry of the Spirit fail to be even more with glory? For, verse 9, if the ministry of condemnation has glory, much more does the ministry of righteousness abound in glory. So one of the purposes of the, the main purpose of the Ten Commandments was not to fallen man to keep them and be justified. But what was the main thing that resulted from these commandments? Say this, what does Paul call these tablets of stone in 2 Corinthians 3? He calls them a ministry of, let's put it this way, condemnation and death. And so that book that was entitled In Defense of the Decalogue could be using Pauline terminology. When I use the word Pauline, I call it Pauline, not Pauline. Pauline is a woman, you know. But Ministry of Condemnation of Death, In Defense of the Ministry of Condemnation and Death would be a better title. Because that was his purpose, main purpose, was to reveal sin and in that sense point to a Savior, the coming one. Isn't that right? I didn't call him that. Who did? You see, folks, what happens if we make the Decalogue, the Ten Words, the Ten Commandments, eternal moral law, when Paul calls it a ministry, a ministry of condemnation and death. We've got a problem there. And yet these Ten Commandments were holy, just, and good. And so what I'd like to just reiterate, you've got an unchanged righteous law up here. It doesn't change. I think if we would look at that, is what are the two greatest commandments, love of God and love of neighbor. That never changes. But then in the flow of redemptive history, particularly when we're talking about the old covenant and the new covenant, we've got a way that God administers this and amplifies upon it in the Mosaic covenant under Moses. Then we've got other covenants, but the two main ones that the scripture often refers to And then we got the new covenant under Christ, and God administers his law there. Christ came and he fulfilled that old covenant perfectly, completely, and it became obsolete according to the scripture. Then we got the law of Christ, which is very demanding, but it doesn't change because it's an everlasting covenant. And it keeps going. Now a lot of the things, even though when we get in the new age or the age to come, there's things that won't even apply there because we'll all be glorified and there'll be sin no more. But I'm just trying to explain to you the fact that I think it's time for covenant theology, new covenant theology, anything that purports to be close to that. is to get our act together so we can get on with proclaiming and heralding the gospel. That's why I wrote the book on context on prophecy. I didn't write it to have a great book on prophecy. I wrote it because there are so many, many views out there that it hinders the gospel. And a lot of our questions can be answered from the context of Holy Scripture. Not all of them in the area of prophecy, but a lot of them can be. And I think a lot of our problems and differences with other sovereign grace people over the law of God and over the meaning of covenants and what's involved in those covenants, if we would just look at the context of Scripture, we could get a lot of answers. We'll never get them all because we're all finite and we've all got many reasons why we're not 100% right on many things. But in the center of this chart, I've covered this in the book, I've covered it in past sessions, but just the one line over here on the left, just below the heavy line in the middle, we've got a line there that moves from the left side to the right side, and all it says is it's God's law, righteous and unchanging, Matthew 22, 36 to 40, and Romans 2, 14 to 16. To me that makes a lot of sense. Then we begin what I call a covenant of creation or obedience. I will not quarrel with you if you don't want to call it covenant, but there was a covenant-like situation there that was at least when Adam was in the Garden of Eden and committed his first sin, we know that he was a representative of all mankind. Now, whether you can have representation in that sense without having a covenant, I'll leave that for you to figure it out. I have no problem with it. But if you have what dispensationalism calls the progressive sanctification and progressive revelation, today we probably refer to that as a flow of redemptive history. And you start back here with just small things at the beginning of Genesis and you keep going through the Old Testament And then they have all the fulfillment over here on the New Testament side. And so whether you like the word covenant of creation or obedience, Mark's next to me. I think I probably gained a lot from Meredith Klein on the covenant of creation. I think it was one of his terms, wasn't it, Ed? And we got the promises in Genesis 3.15, it doesn't make any difference to me if you really don't want to call that a covenant, but there's certainly a promise there. But we do have the Noahic covenant, and then we have the Abrahamic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, at Sinai, the Davidic covenant, and then we've got the new covenant in Christ which fulfills all of them. But God's law, there is an aspect that is unchanging and righteous. Couldn't be anything other than righteous, could it? Because God is righteous. infinitely so, it never changes. What is it? I don't think it's the Ten Commandments. Let's say we get over here after the Lord has returned, and we enter the age to come into heaven, as we call it, is it thou shalt not steal going to really apply there, or is it even needed? If we're glorified and confirmed that there's no more sin, we don't really need that, do we? But I'll tell you something we're going to need, and we're going to do, and we'll always do, we're going to love God and we're going to love the brethren. Are we not? I don't feel that that's hard to understand, but I know it's probably a view that's being simplistic in an answer to many, but to me it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure it out, maybe a general surgeon. Adam and the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are the words written on two tables of stone given to the nation of Israel through Moses upon Mount Sinai in the plains of Moab. And there's your scripture references, Exodus 20, 1 to 17 and 24, 12, Deuteronomy 4, 13, 522, 9, 9, 11, and 15. The term Ten Commandments, literally the ten words, is used interchangeably with the term Decalogue. The decalogue is not to be equated with God's eternal moral law, that is, His unchanging standard of righteousness. God's unchanging law is better understood to be the two greatest commandments, love of God and neighbor, upon which all the law and the prophets, that is, the Old Testament scriptures, hang. 37 through 40, that's what the Word of God says. And the law there in Matthew 5, 17, 18 is referring to the scriptures, which would include the Ten Commandments. Lastly, just a word about each of these four different views, a way of explaining God's law. The first one that I've got on there is Reform theology codified in Westminster Confession. It was written from 1647 to 1648. And the law of God, according to traditional Reformed theology, that is, the Decalogue, is commonly called moral. It was given by Adam, God to Adam, as a covenant of works. After Adam's fall through disobedience, the law of God continued to be a perfect rule of righteousness." And that was a quote. It is summarily, quote, comprehended in the Ten Commandments, unquote. It binds, quote, the whole man unto obedience forever. Footnote, Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 19, Sections 1 through 3, and the larger catechism, Questions 98 and 99. The substance of the moral law of God in the Old Testament, summarily comprehended in the Ten Commandments, means that the things commanded or forbidden, which are morally good or evil, cannot be changed or abolished." A quote from Samuel Bolton, The True Bounds of Christian Freedom, and thus bind the believer's rule of life forever. Theonomy, God's law. It just takes the Westminster Confession a little further, because the Westminster Confession will take the ceremonial and the judicial laws, and they're fulfilled and done away, but the moral law is not. Theonomy says it's a theological development within Reformed theology which asserts that the whole law of God, including the Older Testament commandments, is binding upon the Christian as a pattern of sanctification. The heart of theonomy is that all the details of God's law are intrinsic to theonomy. Greg Bonson, Theonomy and Christian Ethics. It's in the foreword. In its outworking, theonomy claims that the Sermon on the Mount affirms that all civil magistrates, past and present, Jewish and Gentile, are responsible to God for their rule and required to enforce the law of God, including its penal sanctions. Again, that's Bonson. The classic passage for theonomy is Matthew 5, 17 to 20. Indeed, as one theonomist has written, I quote, I hold to the abiding validity of the law in exhaustive detail. The Ten Commandments and all the case laws of the Bible are still binding upon us. Joseph Moorcraft, the Christian manual of law. Of course, they understand the law there in Matthew 5, 17 and 18 as referring to the Ten Commandments. rather than the whole Old Testament Scriptures. That's why until heaven and earth pass away, some of these things are not all going to be completely fulfilled because it's talking about everything in the Old Testament, not just the Ten Commandments or the Mosaic Covenant, but everything. And everything that's promised there will be finally completed at the return of Christ. So you don't, when you see that as the whole Old Testament Scriptures and the teaching of the Old Testament Scriptures, and don't restrict it to the Ten Commandments, you don't have a problem. But if it's Ten Commandments, then they're going to continue right on until heaven and earth pass away. You see what I mean? And therefore, because they view it as eternal moral law. I don't think that's the way to exegete that text. Reformed Baptist theology, and I've got after. They, uh, this basically, from a confessional standpoint, and now they're not quite as strong as the Presbyterian brethren on the Confession, but pretty strong, as a fair expression of what they believe. But they hold that the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith of 1689, when it finally went out, which in its American version is almost identical to the Philadelphia Confession of Faith in 1742, which is a baptized version of the Westminster Confession. And I don't say that with a chuckle. You know what was happening at the time? The Second London Baptist Confession was being written. Who was the king of England? Charles II, who was a mama's boy. His mama was a Roman Catholic, and he probably was too. Anyway, a prominent Reformed Baptist theologian in agreement with the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith asserts that the New Testament binds the Ten Commandments upon Christian consciences. The Ten Commandments are, quote, pure moral law, unquote. The, quote, ceremonial or judicial or civil laws of the Mosaic Covenant were rescinded in Christ, but the moral law remains in force, unquote. A friend of mine, still a friend, but we disagree, named Walt Chantry, God's Righteous Kingdom, pages 114 and 118. Another Reformed Baptist has written that the Decalogue, quote, the Ten Commandments, are trans-covenantal and function outside the Old Covenant as a unit. Quote, quote, quote, the moral law of God is the Decalogue written, quote, on the hearts of men by creation. and that is the Ten Commandments. Richard Barcellas, in defense of the Decalogue, pages 40, 56, and 57. We beg to differ with those brethren over their understanding of the law. It's not personal. We just think that there's a major difference here. If the New Testament binds the Ten Commandments upon our consciences, we don't have a lot of freedom. New Covenant theology, and I'm not talking about the charismatic version of that. It should be quite obvious. Confessionally, I suppose we would say that a fair expression of much of what we believe, not without, it's not like inspired scripture, but is the first London Baptist confession of faith, particularly the second edition of 1646. We think there's a real difference between that, when it was written, and the fact that it came out before, just before the Westminster Confession. And the Baptists didn't have a vote on the Westminster Confession. It was Bishop Lightfoot, I believe, they had a tie vote, I think it was 25 to 25 on everything in the Confession except on baptism, whether it was to be by immersion or by sprinkling. And I stand corrected, I don't have the quote with me, but I believe it was Lightfoot who said, We can't have an immersion that will give way to the Baptist. He cast a deciding vote. He was the outlaw of the Senate. New covenant theology, what do they believe in some? New covenant theology believes it's better not to refer to God's law as moral law in distinction from other commandments of God. Indeed, the subjects under any biblical covenant being administered are morally and ethically obligated to obey its law in its entirety. Any law, in one sense, that comes from God, we're ethically and morally required to obey it. But it's another thing to refer to God's law as the moral law of God. I think. It brings in too much confusion. New Covenant theology holds that the Old Covenant, the law of Moses as a whole, that is, in all of its aspects, whether viewed as moral, ceremonial, and judicial, was covenantally fulfilled by Jesus Christ in the New Covenant. And we went over the Scriptures a while ago, Hebrews 7, 12, Hebrews 8, 6, and 7, and 13, Hebrews 10, and verse 9, for a few examples. The law of Moses was done away with as covenant law. It is important to note that the scripture does not use the adjectival modifier moral in referring to God's law. Therefore, it is better not to refer to the moral law of God, especially if it is understood to be in a separate category from his other covenantal commandments. Further, the law of Christ does not bind the Ten Commandments among Christian consciences as a rule of life. New Covenant theology does not teach that the Ten Commandments are, number one, we do not teach that they are pure moral, all written on the hearts of all men by creation. We think that's better expressed in the two greatest commandments of love of God and love of neighbor. And we do not teach that the Ten Commandments were trans-covenantal. And third, we do not say that they function outside the Old Covenant as a unit. 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