is under his parental authority. That's what I said. Jacob, so I'm right down the line. And then the whole teaching in Romans 11, the tree if the root is holy, the branches are holy. So that's my understanding of it. And there are no problems with it, as I can see. And so it is. The infants are brought into the holy covenant community by this sign simply because they are under our parental authority. And my general thought is that the main question is is simply when God organizes the family of the covenant, the family of Jesus, does he or does he not honor the natural of family authority structure which he has set up? So the Lord has set up the natural family authority of parents over children. Now does he bypass that ignore it, or does he honor it and incorporate it in determining the constituency of this covenant family? And as I see it, the consistent climate biblical testimony from beginning to end is that he honors that the family authority and that is precisely the basis for baptizing infants. And an assumption about their election or regeneration is simply not what is going on there. Apply the same categories that you did to the old covenant and those things, the biological experience of the King of God and the covenant of work, the national election. Can you apply that? In the same way to the church as it represents... No, absolutely, no, we are not. We are in an age of, which is completely... I mean that that is a distinctive age, characteristic precisely of that second layer of the mosaic economy or if you wanted the characteristic of the old covenant, if you want to identify the old covenant as such with that second layer. No, that belongs to that, but of course, circumcision wasn't just initiated in connection with that. Circumcision was initiated to Abraham before that. And so you might say that the New Testament continuity then you could trace back in terms of being an age of grace rather than an age of works back to its patriarchal origins. So circumcision gets taken up into this other arrangement here and as such, then it takes on the particular meaning... the curse it symbolizes takes on the particular meaning of the curse that's going to overtake corporate Israel. But that is a specialized function that it performs in that context but in itself before that. And after that it is pointing to the more general judgment of God and the nature of the New Covenant Order then it's clearly then not of works. It's clearly one of grace and so on. I guess I wondered if clearly in both cases, elections doesn't depend on. But salvation doesn't... You offer that matter, election is not on the basis of forcing works or anything else. But still, life in the kingdom, in the church today, I mean, we recognize that for its function, for it to live peacefully with one another, we have to live out certain from doctrines and we have to live according to the law. What does that mean? Did you mean that we are under a works principle? Well, just explain how you're using law, whether you're using it in terms of works and inheritance, whether you're using it in terms of standard of conduct. Standard of conduct. That's another question all together. Right. Well, I guess what I'm getting at is in order to truly experience the kingdom of God here on earth in the church, we... What's necessary? Right. What would you say? What would you say? What is necessary to be truly in the kingdom of God? And to experience its blessings of justification, peace with God and fellowship with the saints, what's necessary? How do I... Is it by faith alone or where the reformers run? Oh, come on now.
It was by faith. I'm sure you would agree. It was by faith alone. So whatever you want to say about works after that, just say something that's consistent with the fact that it's by faith alone. And then the question of law as standards of conduct is a separate question which I hope... My mind... To get to later, but that's a completely separate issue. But the important one that we want to keep straight on is this one. We were in the kingdom and it's blessings by faith alone. And whatever works are still demanded. I was simply functioning in some other way, especially by validating the faith alone.
Is there any connection between that standard of conduct idea and the covenant of works that God made a vision? Because they were not... working towards the experience of the kingdom of God. That was still by grace. Yeah, but that's the bottom level. That's the bottom level, okay? Remember we keep talking about covenant of grace. And so far as you're talking about individuals getting to heaven and from the fall to the consummation one way by faith alone. All right? And that's true under the old covenant as well. Now the whole problem comes up in terms of this peculiar other dimension that comes into the picture in connection with the Mosaic and covenant, namely national election to a typological kingdom. That's that second of there is where works is functioning. All right, so that's where the works principle is functioning. Now standards of behavior are the same throughout the function. The function of the obedience is different, however. The function of obedience at this level is attesting to the validity of the faith whereby they get to heaven. The function of the obedience of corporate Israel at this level was actually the meritorious ground of hanging on to the blessings. And so the continuity then in the new covenant is with this bottom line. And it's in discontinuity with that. And therefore Paul says that this is not a faith. The law was not a faith. He's not talking about the bottom line now. He's talking about the top line. But he says then there was a difference in the operative principle as to the meritorious ground. Faith alone here. Here it was the obedience of Israel's function at a different level. So that's the question as to the function. There's always the standards. There's always the demands. There's always the commandments for four of the good works. But the question is what is the function of the good works? So the function of Adam's good works back there would be that's the meritorious ground of his moving on to the eschatological blessings. The function of Jesus in terms of the authoritarian covenant, the function of Jesus obedience was that it was the meritorious ground of his receiving the blessings which then he as mediator of the covenant bestows on us by grace. The function of Israel's obedience was like Adam's and Jesus' meritorious ground of hanging on to at least the typological version of the eschatological blessings. So obedience functions one way in a works arrangement and it functions altogether differently in a grace arrangement. That's the whole problem as to distinguish these things. Now we'll move. Okay, just wait. What was that? Yes. No, I would think of that as not involved at this point where he is not in his preaching concerning the kingdom and I think we will want to keep moving here to do at least some of these things I wanted to do this last evening together folks. And the next one that we deal with is the promises of the Abrahamic covenant. So we had dealt with the Abrahamic covenant in so far as who belongs to it and by a study of the sign of circumcision. And now of course there are other aspects of it. So here again is this covenant of grace. And it has had its earlier particular covenantal expressions, especially in the covenant with Noah and the R. Before that there was the covenant line of Seth after that there was the covenant line of Shem leading up to Abraham. And with Abraham we have this covenant that gives shape and color to all the rest of the redemptive history. It is as we were just suggesting. It was a covenant of promise. It was a covenant of grace. It was not in itself a covenant of works. Paul makes a strong contrast between these. He speaks about the law coming those four centuries later as one that did not annull the promise. So that in itself shows that he saw that the law was different than the promise. And therefore he had to raise the question of whether being different it didn't annull it. And of course he says it didn't annull it and our answer to how come it didn't annull it. If law is the opposite of promise and it comes later how come it doesn't obliterate the promise. And I submit to you the only way you can answer that is if you do what I am doing is to recognize that the law was functioning up here. And down here in terms of individual salvation the same thing was going on under the mosaic periodis was going on under the Abrahamic promise, namely the principle of promise. So even though the law came later and was different it didn't annulled because it had application only within this peculiar area up here. Now then this particular period does however represent stage number one in the fulfillment of the Abrahamic promises. Now that's a different Abrahamic covenant as a covenant of promise is saying that it is an arrangement of faith and grace and spirit that's over against works. Now we're asking about the specific promises by grace God was going to bestow the kingdom and ultimately here is the kingdom, the Sabbath kingdom, the kingdom of heaven which will be realized through the coming of Christ in two stages. And so we look then at these Abrahamic promises and what we discover is that there is indeed the promise of the ultimate kingdom but also involved in it is the promise of an earlier stage and so that on our covenantal typological understanding of the thing the book of Genesis as we say is kingdom prologue. And the whole patriarchal age of Abrahamic and Jacob and so on the kingdom hasn't come yet not even in stage one God comes to Abraham and he promises him a kingdom and a kingdom we will try to break down into the ideas of the king, the people and the land. Those components make up the kingdom and that kingdom hadn't come in any sense yet within Genesis 12 through 50 the time of Abrahamic covenant with the coming of Moses we come to a fulfillment of those kingdom promises. But it is only a provisional not the perfect thing it's only a passing fulfillment it's not the permanent one it's only a typological fulfillment not the real thing not the anti type it's only a restatement of the promise really it's not the fulfillment. And but it is stage number one the typological fulfillment therefore this this hermeneutical approach i'm using the word type of typological for covenantal or typological because it understands the nature of of this mosaic economy as precisely having that provisional shadowy typological function but that's not the ultimate fulfillment as we said from the outside what God was promising to Abraham Abraham was the ultimate kingdom and so there's continuity indeed between them and so we can keep the chalk on the board while we're doing this in no big break at this particular point and now you come to the new covenant and here you get the perfect not the provisional the permanent not the transient in the passing you get the anti type not just the type here you get the fulfillment not just a symbolic restatement of the promise again. However, it unfolds in two stages related to the first coming of our lord and the second coming of our lord now that that's the way in which we will be interpreting the promises which we will then be running through and looking at the biblical evidence and some detail is the time allows it here and what we will be opposing then to this and being critical of is the dispensationalist non which is a non typological hermeneutic because they don't understand the relationship between this old covenant the new covenant as having that type anti type promise fulfillment continuity between them but what is characteristic of at least the and especially let's say of the oldest gofial Bible classical dispensationalist position is to inject a discontinuity between what we would regard is just two levels of fulfillment they wouldn't like to decide to have two levels of fulfillment at all because they don't see any connection in fact they repudiate the connection between the two the church the ledges is not in the old covenant at all so classical dispensationalism classical dispensationalism then all right so here you have the Abrahamic covenant and here you have a fulfillment in the Moses the old covenant which then gets interrupted at the point where as we've seen there is a failure to recognize the lord of the vineyard's son when he comes home so there is a break in the continuity of that arrangement but nevertheless it isn't that it was really only passing and transient and now obsolete as we would say but it is something that was intended to be really permanent it's not that this was the old covenant and it's been replaced by the new covenant it's just that it is the older covenant and the new covenant is a newer one but the older one hasn't been replaced the old one isn't obsolete it's on the back burner for awhile and this other deal is on the front burner but this church deal will be taken off the front burner one day and the old deal the older covenant will be put back on the front covenant meanwhile then we do take the chalk off the board here and we come to a point which very precisely they might want to identify with the triumphal entry into Jerusalem as they would expound this thing in terms of their misinterpretation of the seven eight weeks passage in Daniel 9, 24 through 27 they would say that the first 69 weeks of the 70 weeks end at the triumphal entry and then prophetic clock stops ticking going to them and we have this parenthesis which is now the church but as discontinuous with it church is something which is injected into the picture which had not been spoken of even at all in the old covenant before that and the church will fulfill its mission in the world not as that which fulfills this but as something which sort of runs parallel to it might have some analogies and that's the word that they would use instead of typology we seek typology this is the anti-type and that's the type all dispensationalist would allow is some sort of similarities at certain points certain analogies between the two but it's not the same program it's a parenthesis it's something else is going on which will be removed from the world in terms of what they conceive of as a secret rapture and followed then by the 70th week of identity. Daniel, as they understand it at that point, culminating then in a resumption of the old order the older covenant in a millennium experience which resumes the features of the old order including land, temple and so on and so on and at the end of the millennium then you have the question of whether the church which has been raptured out of the world and is experiencing something elsewhere and whether the experience of whoever is up there ultimately melds and blends with the experience of this Jewish community down here or whether or whether they continue the same but that was the classical or pre-mill scheme now all kinds of problems have been seen with that which and especially I won't get it to the whole word space business but I'll have to and I'll have to make the next one. In talking about the older covenant the classical dispensationalist recognized that there was a work principle there so they weren't so far off they were right that there is a work principle operating in the old covenant their problem was that they don't do what climbed us with the thing which is the recognize that there were two levels there and that the work principle applies only to the top level not to the bottom level if you obliterate that distinction and you say that there's only one thing going on there and it works that's very difficult to say to avoid saying that salvation the inheritance of the eschatological kingdom is salvation and so you're in a position then we seem to be saying that salvation is by works and that's where they were and of course they were criticized very heavily on that score and the criticism then has sunk in through the years and then that's good so they have made some improvement and now there may be other ways that some of you have worked this out that are better than this but I know that one standard way of analyzing the developments and dispensationalism is to speak next of a revisionist so there's the classical position that's in the scophial Bible then there's the revisionist position who take up especially this problem of whether salvation was by works then it's over against you know to their credit that they recognize that it's not the right thing they recognize that the message of the church here was one of grace so that the whole business of a law gospel contrast they got straight which a lot which a lot of covenant theologians are messing up on but their problem was as I said that they didn't distinguish the two different levels back there now the revisionists come along they recognize that salvation is always by grace so they refuted that idea and they say that whatever blessings came under that older covenant and presumably therefore in its later resumption would be by grace it's only in Christ that anyone can be blessed that they would be recognizing and which is a big step in the right direction but at the same time then it is messing up in other ways. It's throwing out the baby with the wash here because now they say that all that's going on there is grace they no longer recognize what I insist is also going on which policies was going on that there was actually works in other words they don't have this scheme straight they don't have a straight but most covenant theologians don't have a straight either right but in terms then of the dispensationalist they have rejected the element of truth they had before which is that there was a works principle operation at one level there all right so now they say everything indeed is by grace but still they haven't given up the parenthesis bit so Israel's blessings come to them by grace the churches blessings come to it by grace but they're different blessings they're different kingdoms and so they would still have this whole eschatological thing as part of the futures they see it so that there would still be coming then the day when after the churches raptured you go through this whole business again including the Jewish kingdom for the Jews and the some other heavenly realm for the non-Jewish believers. Now the next step of improvement in this evolution of dispensationalism is then these types of offices called the progressives and they take the next step which is one of recognizing the unity of the Jews the unity of the new covenant people with the old covenant people so we get rid of the parenthesis now so here's Israel, here's the church, salvation is by grace all the way through and there's continuity of the church with the Old Testament people so we're getting there but now inconsistently see they they have recognized that now that there is blessing only in Christ and the problem is of course that if you are in Christ you are no longer a Jew nor a Gentile the middle wall of partition has been broken down and in Christ which is the only place where there is blessing there is no Jew Gentile distinction and so if they have recognized that all blessings are only in Christ then they can't resurrect again the idea of a distinction between Jewish believers and the non-Jewish believers but that's precisely what they do and so inconsistently then they still project two different futures for the people of God depending on whether they are Jews or non-Jewish and that they would still conceive of it in millennial terms too so there is a millennial kingdom which involves an earthly Canaanite type of kingdom inheritance for the Jewish Christians and some other distinctive heavenly kingdom inheritance for others and so that is just an inconsistency where they haven't carried the thing out properly now then beyond all of these there is a straightforward standard old pre-millennialism which is non-dispensationalist so now you have just a pre-mill position which is non-dispensationalist and they would be just like the progressives here except when it came to this point they wouldn't have a distinction between a Jewish kingdom and a non-Jewish kingdom all believers would have the same one the only place in which they are wrong which I'm saying is an Amul and the only place where they are wrong is that then that they say that after the second coming of Jesus is where there will be a millennial coming of the kingdom in power and glory very little earlier on we discussed millennialism and we said that the main distinction to be aware of in analyzing the different millennial views is where these views place the coming of the kingdom in power and glory and do they place it as pre-mills and post-mills through do they place the coming of the kingdom in power and glory before the consummation of the world or do they place it afterwards and so pre-mills of course place the coming of the kingdom in power in the millennium it's one that's shared by all believers that's fine but it is a millennium which for one thing is wrong and saying that it follows the paracetia but it is also wrong and saying that this coming of the kingdom in power and glory precedes the consummation of the world we argued when we were talking about common grace remember and we said that common grace guaranteed political coexistence and equal rights for believers and unbelievers as long as the earth and doors and so for the consummation it is intolerable it's a contradiction of God's covenant of common grace to have a kingdom of the coming of the kingdom in power and glory which would obliterate the equal political rights of unbelievers to have that before the end of the world pre-millennialism does that and as we argued post-millennialism also does that post-millennialism does it post-millennialism doesn't make the same mistake of making the millennium come before the paracetia post-millennialism recognizes the millennium is now before the paracetia but they do think of the millennium as consisting in this coming of the kingdom in power and glory before the consummation and so they, too, are involved in this basic theological fallacy of contradicting the guarantees of the principle of common grace. So here are the options that we're dealing with the various forms of dispensationalism and then classical pre-millennialism as well. I'm not sure about revisionist progressives let's take the present of the seminary down there in Hamilton, Walt Kaiser. Yeah, would Ryrie be a revisionist? I don't know. Ryrie's written this new book, I don't even know the difference between Ryrie's revision and his earlier but I'm not sure of the individuals but I think Willem and Gameren would probably also fit in that category. Now, Walt Kaiser would be an example of a progressive and I know he cringes when I tell him he's a dispensationalist but he is because he still holds to this and when it comes to Daniel 9, 24 through 27, that whole 70th week thing he is still with three and a half weeks in a great tribulation and all this jazz in the millennium. He still has that whole dispensationalist eschatology tacked on a scheme. Now, those are the options that we're thinking of and over against all of these non, well I don't know if they're all non-typhological but over against all these dispensationalist views then we are contending for a typological approach. Let's take the several elements as we said, the promise of the king and the people and the land and just by going through the biblical evidence we want to demonstrate that the biblical evidence, the data confront us with these promises and each one of them at two levels and not just one or the other. And now here maybe we should get our Bibles in at some places if we are wanting to read verses maybe some of you can help me by reading some of these verses where if I just mention them and you can find them for me. And in support of the fundamental structure that we're talking about that there is a two stage fulfilling of these kingdom promises. There is the appearance of the language of divine remembering at the beginning of each stage. God remembers His covenant in the development of the mosaic and not the mosaic, the noeic covenant, the art covenant, right in the middle of things when the waters are covering the earth and so on and things seem disastrous. Right in the middle of it now says that God remembers His covenant with Noah. The promise that God had covenanted of course that there would be deliverance and so on. And so in the middle of the whole apparent disaster now God remembers the promises he made and he proceeds to fulfill them and other waters begin to assuage and so on. So the language of God remembering His covenant equals God fulfills the promises of His covenant. And that language of God's remembering is promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the thing we're talking about is found in the beginning of this in the book of Exodus. And it's found at the beginning of the second stage in connection with the Gospels and more specifically let's just check out some of the verses in Exodus 2 verse 24. Someone else who might be looking at Exodus 6 for us and be prepared to read verses 5 and 8, but Exodus 2 then verse 24, God heard their groaning and he remembered His covenant with Abraham with Isaac and with Jacob. And we know what that meant. He proceeded therefore to deliver his people and to lead them up to their promised land. Someone else have available. Read first please chapter 6 verses 5 to 8, 5 and 8. So what God's doing through Moses is a fulfilling clearly of the Abrahamic covenant. On Psalm 105 verse 8 looking back on this experience says the same sort of thing. He remembered his covenant forever. The word he commanded for a thousand generations, the covenant he made with Abraham, the oath he swore to Isaac. He confirmed it to Jacob as a decree to Israel as an everlasting covenant. So there the Abrahamic covenant is seen as one that was made not just with Abraham but with Isaac and with Jacob so that the whole patriarchal period can be conceived of as the time of the making and confirming of that Abrahamic covenant and the mosaic period is launching a fulfillment of it. And then in the Gospel of Luke especially as for the New Testament of someone can be a finding for me Luke 1 verse 54 and also verses 72 and 73 perhaps. Anyone have that Luke 1? Yes, place verse 54 and then 72 and 73. 54? Yes, 54. He has given help to Israel to serve him and remember his mercy. 2 and 73. To show mercy toward our fathers and to remember his holy covenant the oath which he swore to Abraham our father. Okay, so what is about to happen now not through Moses but through Messiah is also a remembering of the mosaic covenant. It is just a very simple fundamental biblical structure which serves to show that these two things are two stages in fulfillment of the one set of promises given to Abraham. So that package within those promises is this complex progress in eschatological history, typological and anti-typhological stage. We take the promises so one by one and see how they did find fulfillment at these two levels. First is the promise of the king and within the patriarchal narratives themselves that that comes out especially in the circumcision chapter there in chapter 17 of Genesis where God promises then two Abraham and also to share that among their descendants there will be kings that they will have a royal dynasty. In their descendants so we won't take the time to read them but Genesis 17 you're familiar with them verses 6 and 16 involve the promise of a king or a royal dynasty. As the patriarchal age moved along we come toward the end of the book of Genesis and we come to a point where this promise of the king is picked up and made the particular subject of Jacob's dying deathbed blessings on his sons in particular is blessing on Judah. So in Genesis 49 there is Jacob's words Judah your brothers will praise you and next year when you will have had your Hebrew course and we're studying prophets and using the Hebrew and we'll look at this passage again we'll see how he is punning on the word for praise here. As indeed that Judah's mother already the pun on the decided the word praise when she was giving in the name Judah in the first place so Judah your brothers will praise you and that word praise is related to the name of Judah. Your hand will be on the neck of your enemies your father son will bow down to you all right so Judah is the one in whom the leadership of the 12 tribes is to be invested at the particular time that Jacob gave this prophetic blessing. He himself Jacob was the patriarchal head and in terms of the immediate situation in Egypt Joseph was the head but now beyond that Jacob foresees the day when Judah will emerge as the leader of the 12 tribe system. And indeed kingship will be invested in them and it goes on to describe this this leadership which is related to their military victories as well as we've seen. It is said forth under the figure of the lion the lion of the tribe of Judah you are a lion cubo Judah you return from the frame my son like a lion he couches and lies down like a lion is who dares to row us and then we come to the key verse the crux of the thing in verse 10 where things turn on especially on the meaning of the Hebrew term she lowest to whether it is a proper name or what it is. If it's the name of the city Shiloh or it's the name of the coming Messianic king himself a proper name or whether it is a composed of a couple of words that describe that Messianic king now I have an NIV here the NIV takes the third of those approaches the reads the sector will not depart from Judah now from the preceding two verses it has become clear that kingship symbolized by the sector was going to be invested. Judah is going to have the supremacy all of the 12 tribes will be bowing down recognizing his leadership kingship and now once that happens and by the way when did that happen when was kingship invested in Judah clearly with David at which time it was registered in the form of a special covenant the divinity covenant of kingship with David that's when it happened. And once it happened it was going to stay there the sector will not depart from Judah nor the ruler staff from between his feet and so kingships going to remain in the dynasty started by David until he comes this here is how the word Shiloh is treated by the NIV translators and if we had the time we could make out the plausible case that led them to adopt this it consists of taking the elements of Shiloh. And so the writers representing the relative pronoun on the one hand and then followed by a preposition and phenomenal suffix literally which to him so which is understood then that the kingship will remain in the line of Judah until that one comes namely Christ the Messiah that all these use could be understood messianically until the Messiah comes and he is the one to whom the sector really belongs doesn't him. In other words then that this promise kingship will not pass away permanently of course it was interrupted wasn't it started with David it continued until the days of the exile and then it was interrupted but the promise was still to be fulfilled not at this level anymore but nevertheless in the career of the coming Messiah and in him of course it is consummated and it does continue forever. And so that's what this prophecy is predicting the kingship promise to Abraham and already we can see here how there is continuity between the old typological divinity and the second level fulfillment in the Messiah until he comes to whom it belongs. Now notice how when he comes the realm of commitment is not just in terms of the Old Testament 12 tribes but now it says the obedience of the nations he got the theme of universalism which is characteristic of Messianic prophecy the nations now are going to be recognizing this ultimate king promised to Abraham. The following verses are fascinating and cryptic take too much time to defend the particular interpretation I would just point out to you that there seem to be mysteriously enough conveyed here some suggestions about the fact that this glorious lion of the tribe of Judah will also be the Prince of Peace the Lamb of God who must suffer and so we get this double theme in this Messianic prophecy that we find in all Messianic prophecy namely the sufferings of Christ and then the glory that will follow. So we've had the glory the glory of the king as universal dominion and every one is bowing down to him and recognizing his promise and so on but nevertheless there is the suffering hinted at here by the reference. Earlier on when we were talking about the covenants and I used the illustration of of covenants were cut by taking certain animals and cutting them you remember that business and we talked about the donkey here the particular donkey that would be used to cut the covenant of the covenant sacrifice and here's a place then where there's a reference to that covenant the donkey a peculiar type of animal that was used to be sacrificed in order to make covenants. So there's a suggestion here and this reference to that peculiar kind of technical language for a special breed of donkey here there's a suggestion here especially when it's related to the idea then of washing garments in wine and then robes in the blood of grapes and so you get this mysterious imagery of blood and the washing of grapes and elsewhere later on in the Bible this is picked up in terms of the blood of Christ the sacrificial donkey. The saints have their robes washed in that blood so there's this kind of suggestion and then this hastening on this also reference his eyes will be darker than wine his teeth wider than milk is this some reference to the general prosperity of the Messianic age which is a common theme or not but in any case here my main point is clearly that Jacob in this blessing on Judah picks up the promise of the king. He finds it more precisely for us and shows how it is something that would become made permanent in terms of that ultimate Shiloh figure. I would prefer myself the interpretation of Shiloh as a proper name where it's related to a Hebrew words like Shala verb and Shalwa noun that have to do with the idea of peace and prosperity so it becomes almost a virtual synonym for Shalom peace. So that's the other option you might have and I would guess the King James first in that Shiloh down as a proper name so that's what we'll be going on there until Shiloh.