Okay, it's good to see you all again. Let me review book two up to the point where we are now very very briefly before the prayer. Book two tells us that that we are not what we were created to be. Not what we were meant to be because of Adam's sin and because of our own sin. We are radically disabled and and depraved. It's the first six chapters. And then 789 tells us that God has provided a redeemer for us in Christ and answers the question, where did we find Christ? We find Christ, of course, in the Bible. In all of the Bible, yes, in all of the Bible. So Calvin is told us so far. Now today chapters 10 and 11 in all of the Bible equally and in the same way. Do we find Christ in all of the Bible equally and in the same way in his answer is yes and no. So that's what we'll look at today. If we find Christ in the Bible, find Christ in the Old Testament, find Christ in the New Testament equally and in the same way, yes and no.
Let's pray using a prayer that comes from Calvin.
Grant Almighty God that since Thou hast dain in diversity together us to thy church and to enclose us within the boundaries of thy word, by which Thou preserves us in the true and right worship of thy majesty, O grant that we may continue, continue in this obedience to thee, and those Satan may in many ways attempt to draw us here and there, and we be also ourselves by nature inclined to evil, O grant that being confirmed in faith and united to thee by that sacred bolline, we may yet constantly abide under the restraint of thy word, and thus cleave to Christ thine only begotten Son, who has joined us forever to him, and that we may never by any means turn aside from thee, but be on the contrary, confirmed in the faith of his gospel, until at length he will receive us all into his kingdom, amen. Sunday after church, I was invited to a home for dinner, this beautiful cat there, and I asked the lady in the house, the name of the cat, and she said his name is Calvin, and I had a good time playing with Calvin, a little boy, a son in the family, about five or six years over his name John, and he took quite a bit of delight in telling me a story that his mother was trying to get his attention, and the cat's attention too, so she was shouting, Calvin, John Calvin, he thought that was a great story, but all right, what does Calvin say about the old and new testaments? And this is really one place among the number in the institutes where Calvin discusses covenant theology, so this is a lecture on covenant theology, as well as his discussion of the similarities and differences of the old and new testaments. I need to say a little bit first about covenant theology, its history, and we'll use that as a kind of introduction to Calvin's discussion of covenant theology. There's not really much use of covenant theology until the 16th century, you can find some some uses, some covenant thought in Arranius, in Melito of Sardis, Augustus in the city of God would use the language covenant occasionally, but it is sparingly used until 16th century Switzerland with a Zwingli and Bullinger, and then from that beginning it seems to be in the Protestant side of things, in the reformed Protestant side of things, just about everywhere. Remember a seminar that I had at Princeton, Dr. Ed Dauy was the professor and the question came up, why is covenant theology somewhat almost totally unknown until the 16th century, and then it becomes so prevalent, and I've been sure to have an answer to that, and that is that people were reading the Bible in the 16th century, and find covenant theology in the Bible, so if I'm covenant theology everywhere, after people start reading the Bible, Dr. Dauy thought that was a very poor answer to that question and said, well people were always reading the Bible, but I still think my answer was better than he thought at least because people were not reading the Bible, or hearing the Bible read and preach consecutively before the 16th century, like Zwingli and Zurich preaching through the books of the Bible. You're not going to understand covenant theology is taking bits and pieces of the Bible, but by a consistent reading of the entire Bible, I think the covenant theme becomes prevalent in one's theological thought. So Bullinger and Zwingli and really Bullinger is the pioneer here, and you might remember from Church history that the occasion for his delving into this in great detail was the Anababdis challenge, when the Anababdis challenge the validity of infant baptism, Bullinger attempted to answer that, and his answer was a rather detailed and solid exposition of covenant theology showing the unity of the Old Testament and the New Testament. It was Calvin, a covenant theologian. This has sometimes been raised and debated, and generally people have said no because what they mean by a person being a covenant theologian is that the idea of the covenant is the dominant theme in that person's theology. It's not, I think we would say, dominant in Calvin. We don't see it everywhere through the institutes, and it's not an organizational concept. It's not something that Calvin concept that Calvin brings in in order to structure his theology. His theology is simply knowledge of God and knowledge of ourselves, twofold knowledge of God as creator, redeemer, and twofold knowledge of ourselves as created and sinful. We could say that is organizational for Calvin, that is his organizational concept, as far as he has one. But Calvin doesn't play that role in Calvin. He doesn't say now we can look at everything under the rubric of covenant, covenant of redemption, covenant works, covenant of grace, that is absent in Calvin. In fact, he doesn't really mention covenant of redemption and doesn't use the language, covenant of works, although I think an argument could be made that Calvin has, quotes, the covenant of works, that he certainly does talk much, right much, about covenant of grace.
In the institutes, here are the places where we will find covenant, and I've scattered throughout, but concentrated in a number of places. Book 2 chapters 9 through 11, we're looking at today. Old and New Testaments will come back to another treatment of the covenant in book 3 chapter 21, election, yes I'm sorry. Most people think today, and I agree with them, that he doesn't have one. He doesn't really have one kind of single idea that everything flows from that. It's not the decrees of God, it's not covenant theology. He has many themes that he puts together in a very good way, but he doesn't have one single dominant controlling. Well, even providence, I don't think we would say providence is controlling the theme. It's a very important part of the institutes, but some people would perhaps argue that election is. I don't think it is. Others would say union with Christ that may come closer to Calvin's theme, but I don't think we could say everything just flows from that concept, and certainly not from the idea of covenant, even though it's very important to Calvin. Calvin's theology is more like the Bible. What is the theme of the Bible? Well, you can make a good argument that the theme of the Bible is Christ, and perhaps we could explore that in terms of Calvin's theology too. It's the theology is very Christocentric, but it's also very trinitarian. His father, son, Holy Spirit, related to the topics of the first three books. It's an interesting question, and an ongoing debate among Calvin scholars, is there one dominant controlling organizational theme in the institutes, and I think most are inclined to say no, and I wouldn't agree with it. I would say covenant is basic. It's important, but it is not the overarching theme of the institutes. You'll find it in 321, book 3, chapter 21 on election, and then you'll find it particularly as you would expect in book 4, chapter 16 on infant baptism. Someone has counted all the places in the 1559 institutes that uses the three Latin words that could be translated, a covenant, a pact to faith us and test them into them, and they have come up with 273 times that Calvin uses these words. The Bible uses the covenant idea, language, and idea, 314 times. So Calvin's pretty close to the Bible here in the number of times that covenant language occurs, and then another place where you can find significant treatment of the covenant in Calvin is in his sermons on New Oranomy. Of course, after Calvin, covenant theology plays a major role in reform of theology, such as we find in the 17th century, especially in the Westminster Confession of Faith. So, was Calvin a covenant theologian? Well, I think we would say yes in the sense that he makes significant and important use of the covenant, but probably we'd want to say no if we're thinking about covenant being an overarching organizational theme of the institutes. Okay, questions on that term. We're ready for the next point. Let's go then into what Calvin tells us about the old and New Testaments, chapter 9 of book 2, Christ under the law, and in the gospel. Now Calvin, we use law in gospel in different ways, but here he's using it this way. Christ in the Old Testament, Christ in the New Testament. If you ask Calvin, is there gospel in the New Testament, he would say, of course, but here he's using this language chronologically, law first, then gospel, Old Testament, then New Testament, and the point that he wants to make is that Christ is known in both Testaments. Christ, although he was known to the Jews, under the law, he was known to the Jews, under the law, Christ was known, Christ is there, theme of the Old Testament, Savior of the Jews in the Old Testament. Christ, although he was known to the Jews, under the law, was at length clearly revealed only in the gospel. So those are the two ideas that you'll see throughout these three chapters, 19 and 11, known under the law, clearly revealed in the gospel. 291, he talks about Christ known in the Old Testament as a shadowed outline, outline is there, but in the New Testament, we have far more light. So it's always comparative, less and more, darker and lighter, but never absent in present. Christ is there in the Old Testament, shadowed outline, now it's present, in the New Testament, with far more light. So as I said, Calvin can use the word gospel in two ways as he does, and you have to kind of look for this as you read these chapters, or it gets a little confusing. Sometimes when he uses the word gospel, he means the promise in the law, that is the gospel, the promise, beginning with Genesis 3, 15 and repeated throughout the Old Testament, the promise in the Old Testament, the promise in the law, 292, those testimonies of his mercy and fatherly favor, which God gave to the patriarchs of Old Abraham, Isaac and the others, receive the gospel, the promises of God's mercy in favor. So you can use the word gospel for the Old Testament. Good news, they are from the beginning, but Calvin says gospel in a higher sense is the fulfillment of the promise. They are, but it's still promise until the proclamation of the grace manifested in Christ, Christ comes and fulfills the promise of the Old Testament. So gospel can be promise or it can be fulfillment of promise, Old Testament, New Testament, but in both testimonies Christ is present, Christ is known, he's known in the promise, he's known in the fulfillment of the promise. So what Calvin does in the next two chapters that we'll look at now is he really struggles, and I think succeeds, you'll have to decide for yourself whether he does or not, but he tries hard to preserve both the the identity of substance of the Old Testament and the New Testament and the genuine newness of the New Testament. So he doesn't want to put the Testament so tightly together that nothing new happens in the New Testament, and he takes then two chapters to make this point or these two points and we'll start with chapter 10, the similarity between the two testimonies. Calvin has four points there. You'll notice this frequently in the Institute, Calvin will devote a section or a chapter to something like this, and he'll say these two testimonies are more similar. In fact he ends up by saying they're identical, and then you think, well there's no difference, and then the next chapter says there are huge differences between the Old Testament and the New Testament. We'll see you do the same thing when we come to book three on the Christian life, when he spends a whole chapter saying that what we should be doing is meditating on the future life. It's not this life, it's the life to come, it's important. And then we come to the end of that chapter and we think, well there's no significance then to this life, and the next chapter is, this life is very important. And we should be about the business that God has given us to do in this life. So it's a kind of it's a kind of way that that Calvin will treat different topics, and here he treats the Old and New Testaments that way. So let's go through these four points. First the goal, he says the goal of the Old Testament is the same thing as the goal of the New Testament, and that is to point people to heaven, to immortality through Christ. But you would say, and I read the Old Testament so much of it is taken up with earthly promises, promise of a land, promise of a nation, promise of earthly descendants, and so on. And Calvin says that is true, but the goal, the real goal of Old Testament believers was not carnal prosperity and happiness, but the hope of immortality. In the context of all those earthly promises, those were just promises that God used to lead the people on in the childhood of the Christian faith, to lead them on to the greater promise of heavenly reward, the heavenly city, not the earthly city. So Calvin says, the Old Testament Saints lifted up their hearts to God's sanctuary, in which they found hidden what does not appear in the shadows of the present life. They lived in the shadows of their present life, but then they lift up their hearts from that present life to God's salvation, to God's sanctuary, not to God's Christ. Much of chapter 10 is what we could call the salvation history from Adam to the prophets, proving that the Old Testament Saints sought forever lasting life, that these earthly promises were not done in themselves, but only indications of the greater promise that God was making to the Old Testament Saints a heavenly life. There is behind all of this, there is the specter of contemporary people who were denying that. So Calvin spends a good bit of time making this point, partly because there were people that would deny it, and mainly the anababdists, a certain group of anabdists, so no good in the Old Testament, or at least not very much. And remember in 2101, Calvin says, these people regard the Israelites as nothing but a herd of swine. They don't rise above that, but Calvin's point is that they are the children of God, with the same goal, the goal of heaven that we have. Okay, that's the first similarity. The second similarity is they have the same mediator. How do we get to heaven? We get to heaven because of the mediation of Christ and the Old Testament Saints got to heaven because of the mediation of Christ. But you would say isn't the Old Testament full of priests and sacrifices and all of these things? Yes, but again not as an end in themselves, Calvin says. The Old Testament believers had and knew Christ as mediator 2102. So it's not just that Christ is some future promised Messiah. He is there, active on their behalf as their mediator. Since this context that Calvin refers to Hebrews 138, Christ remains yesterday and today and forever. And Calvin says that refers not only to his everlasting divinity, which is the way I think we would usually think of that. He is God forever, but to his power which is perpetually available to believers. Yesterday, the Old Testament, he was the mediator and today he's the mediator and forever he will be the mediator. It's interesting, I had two 1023, Calvin's use of Matthew 27, the resurrection of the Saints in Jerusalem at the death of Christ, that one place in the Bible where we have the account of the tombs breaking open at the death of Christ and people coming forth from the tombs. What's that all about? Why did that happen? Calvin says in this, he has given a sure pledge that whatever he did or suffered in acquiring eternal salvation pertains to the believers of the Old Testament as much as to ourselves. So as the tombs burst forth and these people come forth, it shows that the efficacy of the cross extended to them as it extends to us. Same goal, same mediator, in the same means,
saved by grace. That's an Old Testament message as well as a New Testament message. But you say the Old Testament is full of works. You've got all these commands and these laws and things that people have to do. Yes, but again, not as an Indian themselves. These commands, these works pointed toward not salvation by works, but salvation by grace. Calvin said, Old Testament believers were saved not by their own merits, but solely by the mercy of God who called them. Two, ten, two. It's hard to be expressed stronger than that, could it? Old Testament believers saved not by their own merits,
but solely by the mercy of God who called them. And finally, the same signs, signs of the covenant, signs of God's grace. Two, ten, five, the Lord manifested His grace among them by the same symbols. What do we have? We have baptism and the Lord's Supper and so did the people in the Old Testament. Baptism in the Lord's Supper. And you probably say, well, where is baptism and where is the Lord's Supper in the Old Testament? Calvin's favorite text for this to answer this question is, First Corinthians 10, first four verses, which says, our forefathers were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ that uses that text from First Corinthians 10 to illustrate that the sacraments of the Old Testament were of real efficacy. We just quote a couple of sentences from his commentary on that passage, which I think will make that point. He says for day that is the Israelites had the same benefits which we enjoy today. The Church of God was in their midst as it is in ours today, and they had the same sacraments to be testimonies to them of the grace of God. Those sacraments were not exactly administered the same way or in the same form, but they had baptism into Christ, and they were fed through and by Christ. So the meaning of baptism and the meaning of Lord's Supper would extend to these Old Testament symbols. In the same commentary passage, Calvin, faults the schoolmen. When he uses schoolmen, he means the medieval scholastics. Generally, he's going to disagree with those scholastics. When he says sophist, he generally means the scholastics of the Sorbonne, and he disagrees with them even more. So the schoolmen, he says the schoolmen teach the sacraments of the Old Law merely figured grace, but that hours confer it. And of course, he's going to oppose that because it's not that the sacraments in the Old Testament point to grace, but grace comes through hours. We believe the sacraments are a means of grace, we say. But sacraments in the Old Testament were a means of grace, too, according to Kelly. This passage, that is, first Corinthians 10, 1 through 4 proves that the reality of the sacrament was conveyed to the people of the Old Testament just as much as to us. Now, just when you begin to think Calvin doesn't see any difference then, at all, between the Old Testament and the New Testament, he always makes the other point, and he does in the commentary here, as well as in the institutes. He says in the commentary, he's quite ready to agree that the efficacy of the signs is that once richer or more abundant for us since the incarnation of Christ than it was for the fathers under the law. So the difference between us and them is only one of degree, or as the common saying goes, one of more or less, because what they had in small measure, we have more fully.
But it is not the case that they had mere figures while we obtain the reality, same point. Grace, Old Testament, grace, New Testament, that in terms of fullness, clarity, we understand more and we see more than the saints in the Old Testament. Okay, those are the four ways in which Old Testament and New Testament are alike. We can sum that up with the word similarity or even identity. Old Testament believers were covenanted to him by the same law, and by the bond of the same doctrine as obtained among us. It's 2101, go to 2102, he says it this way, the covenant made with all the patriarchs is so much like ours in substance and reality that the two are actually one in the same. Strong statement of unity of the Covenants, one and the same. 21023, Christ the Lord promises to his followers today, no other kingdom than that in which they may sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That's the promise to us. And that puts us right now at the table with these Old Testament patriarchs.
And then from the commentary on Matthew 517, I do not think that I have come to abolish the law of the prophets. Calvin says, God had indeed promised a new covenant at the coming of Christ, but had at the same time showed that it would not be different from the first in that on the contrary its design was to give a perpetual sanction to the covenant which he had made from the beginning with his own people. Okay, I think that's enough to show Calvin's purpose in 210, which is to underscore that the promise of salvation is the same in both, both testaments. That's a very important chapter in the institutes, especially for anybody who's inclined a bit toward dispensationalism. That's where you would go to see Calvin's treatment of the unity of the testaments. But chapter 11 comes in now to show differences between the Old Testament, the New Testament. And I think this is an important chapter for non-dispensationalist covenant theologians that could be tempted to minimize the differences. See, we don't want to smooth out the testaments in such a way that the coming of Christ is kind of a footnote to history. In Calvin doesn't either coming of Christ in history makes a great difference. Calvin saw great progress in Revelation. Someone in writing on this issue as put it this way, the real state of the question is whether there is progress in unity, that's the reform you, progress in unity, there is progress of redemption, history of redemption, salvation history, there's progress, things aren't static, but it's progress in unity, the reform view, or whether there is progress by discontinuity, which would have been more like the Anababdis, were teaching in the 16th century. And some dispensationalists today, although dispensationalism can be quite varied, and some forms of it are much more like covenant theology than it used to be, so can't lump all dispensationalists together. Nor can we lump all 16th century Anababdis together. There is a quote I have in my notes from a writer who says Calvin utterly denies the difference between the Old and New Testaments. Well, that person only read chapter 10 and did not make it on to chapter 11. So we're going to move on to chapter 11 now, and look at the differences in their five. It's the fifth one down here. Okay, chapter 11, differences. First, the Old Testament has a great deal to say about temporal blessings. Read the Old Testament, read Job, read Proverbs, read almost any place in the Old Testament. Promise after promise that if you serve God, you'll be blessed in this life, long life, the other promises of earthly blessings. And Calvin says in New Testament, speaks about spiritual blessings. If you serve God, you'll know the joy of being in fellowship with you. It's a spiritual blessing rather than a temporal earthly blessing. That's a difference, but Calvin doesn't want to make that difference too absolute. He says God conferred earthly blessings and benefits on the Jews. That is the Old Testament believers as a lower mode of training. So I do sometimes confer earthly benefits on your children as a lower mode of training. You give them some sort of reward if they will do their homework or help mommy clean up the house or something. And that is like the Old Testament earthly benefits to encourage, stimulate the guide, that the real goal that you have in all of that is not just to give earthly rewards, but to develop the character of that child. Make that child grow in responsibility and character. And so God at the beginning, working with children, you might say, uses this lower mode of training. Calvin says there are carnal earthly elements in the covenant of all these earthly promises in the covenant, but it's not a carnal earthly covenant or carnal earthly elements in the covenant by the spiritual covenant. Those carnal and earthly elements serve their purpose to lead us by the hand, so to speak, but it's not the goal of the covenant, which is spiritual. God determined to lead them by his own hand to the hope of heavenly things, says that right away in 211. So it's the Lord, not the land, which was the real inheritance, even in the Old Testament, city which had foundations whose maker and builders, God, that was always the goal. Okay, difference number two, images and ceremonies in the Old Testament, Christ in the New Testament. When he talks about these images and ceremonies, he calls these accidental properties of the covenant, accidental properties of the covenant to 114 due to Israel's childhood to 115. So the images are there, ceremonies are there, much like the temporal earthly blessings are there, talked about. There's already illustration that I use was the final graph, my wife was using to teach down in Grand Cayman, images in ceremonies help the children, the children of the faith in the Old Testament. But those ceremonies are not an end in themselves, they're given to point beyond themselves to Christ, otherwise they're meaningless. If those ceremonies were just sacrifices, ceremonies, all of that is an end in itself, yet had no meaning whatsoever. Images and ceremonies, Old Testament, Christ, New Testament, by again, this is not an absolute, Calvin says, an introduction to the better hope that is manifested in the gospels, though these images and ceremonies are an introduction to the better hope that is manifested in the gospel in the fuller sense of the gospel as it comes in the New Testament. And then literal and spiritual, this language in the Bible that seems to point this way,
that how can Calvin explain the difference this way? The Old Testament is literal in the New Testament spiritual and still maintain the continuity of the covenant. Passages that he deals with here, as you would expect, are second Corinthians three, Jeremiah 31, and he simply explains it this way, by way of comparison to commend the grace abounding of the gospel. So it's not strictly a literal difference. It's a comparative difference, Old Testament literal, New Testament spiritual, but the Old Testament spiritual too, but by way of comparison, we could say that compared to the message of the New Testament, which is spiritual, the Old Testament is literal. And the same difference in his next is fourth difference, bondage and freedom. Could not really say that the Old Testament saints are in bondage and we are free, but there is biblical language that points that way, but as Calvin explains it, it simply means in contrast to us with the freedom that we had in the gospel. And you look back to the Old Testament, you would say, well, those people were in bondage. They kept all these laws and they had to do all these things. But there was freedom, a certain freedom even in the bondage of the Old Testament, but there is much greater freedom now.
When Old Testament believers Calvin says this kind of sums out these first four points in chapter 11, the difference between the Old and New Testaments, and Old Testament believers were oppressed by their enslaved condition, that is Old Testament people, temporal blessings, images and ceremonies, literal bondage, so pressive. When they were oppressed by their enslaved condition, they fled for refuge to the gospel. That is 2.119, which means that they don't really have to wait for the temporal coming of Christ. They can't wait that long because they will die first. Generations will die before that. But they can flee from the oppression that they feel to the gospel, which is not only future, but present. Perhaps we ought to do it this way in our chart, put some little arrows here, so that from the temporal blessings Abraham Isaac and Jacob could flee to the spiritual blessings. From the images and ceremonies, they could flee to Christ, from the literal, they could flee to the spiritual, from the bondage of the Old, they could flee to the freedom of the New. So it's not merely promise of something coming. It is also promise of a present reality. 2.1110, the Old Testament saint so lived under the Old Covenant, is not to remain there, but ever to aspire to the new and thus embraced a real share in it. So they're not stuck in the Old Covenant even though they live in the Old Testament. They can aspire to the new and embrace a real share in it. And then there is one additional difference. This is a different type, the fifth difference. And that is in the Old Testament, God is dealing with one nation, the Jews, deals with them specifically, although we would say not exclusively because even the Old Testament, there are indications of God's purpose of blessing all the nations going all the way back to at least the covenant with Abraham back to the Garden of Eden and according to Dr. Alonso Ramirez and his sermons back to the decrease of God. So missions begins there, but the Old Testament primarily is focused on the Jews. Now the New Testament, the calling of the Gentiles. So not only the Jews but all the nations and Calvin sees this as a notable mark of excellence of the New Testament over the Old Testament. Old Testament focused primarily on one nation. So the Jews are the church. The New Testament focused on the world and the calling out of people from every nation to be the church. Okay, let's summarize this now. We use the word similarity or identity to summarize chapter 10 and we'll use the word difference to summarize this chapter 11 or Calvin says the mode of administration. Here's the real difference. The difference equals the mode of administration and by that he means to assert that the differences that he points out in chapter 11 do not destroy the unity which he has established in chapter 10. The differences are reducible to one and that is the relative obscurity of the Old Testament and clarity of the New Testament. You won't just one thought that is it, obscure, clear, relatively obscure.
His commentary on Isaiah 2, 3 says, though the law of the Lord be now the same as it ever was, yet it came out of Zion with a new garment. Same law that comes out of Zion now with a new garment. He uses that illustration in Isaiah 2, 3 but it's the light illustration that is his favorite and he uses it constantly throughout these chapters, darker, lighter, relatively obscure and much clearer. Calvin says this very clearly in his commentary on Galatians 3, 23 and 24. We just read a couple of sentences to you there to make this point. Faith was not yet revealed. Talking about the Old Testament, not that the fathers light light altogether, but that they had less light than we. For where is the ceremony sketched out and absent Christ, to us he is represented as present. Thus what they had in Amura we today have in substance. However much darkness there might be under the law, the fathers were not ignorant of the road they had to take. The dawn may not be as bright as new day, but it is sufficient for making a journey and travelers do not wait until the sun is right up. Their portion of light was like the dawn. It could keep them safe from all era and guide them to everlasting blessedness. So picture there is like a road going to the right destination and some people start at dawn. It's not light to see the road but they can't see as much as people will see later who start at noon day. So Old Testament is from dawn to noon day and New Testament is from noon day. So obscurity, to clarity, to summing it up let me say again, Christ was present in the Old Testament, even though Calvin says in this quotation that the ceremonies sketched out and absent Christ, Christ is absent in the sense that the ceremony is point to his coming, the ceremony of law. Points to the coming of Christ. Christ comes and fulfills that law and does away with the ceremony of law as we saw. But Calvin doesn't mean that Christ is absent in the Old Testament in the sense that he was not the mediator of Old Testament believers. He's already said that earlier in chapter 10.
Christ was truly presented and imparted to the people through the message of the Old Testament. Christ has always been the mediator of all teaching because by him God has always revealed himself to men, commentary on Galatians 319. In the New Testament Christ renewed the covenant and extended it to all nations. This is perhaps the most significant difference
although again it's comparative. It's not that the Old Testament had no message for the nations. But in the New Testament the message of God's grace for the nations is much more clearly and universally expressed. And then Calvin answers this question, why did God choose to work in this way? Why did he start in the Old Testament and work through the ceremonies and the images and then change things as time moves on? Is this not contradictory? No, Calvin says for one thing God has done everything wisely and justly. You would expect that answer from Calvin. Whatever God has done is right and if God chooses to do it this way then it's right. But Calvin has a further explanation there and that is God has accommodated diverse forms to different ages as he knew would be expedient for each so the particular shape of the message or form of the message or presentation of the gospel is made especially for each age. Doesn't that show some inconsistency? And here's where Calvin has some very nice illustrations in 211-13 and 211-14. He says, we do this all the time. The farmer in the early part of the year will pick up the soil and plant the seed and later the farmer does something quite different. We'll water the plants and care for the plants and then later the farmer does something very different again. We'll harvest that which has grown on the land so at different times in the cycle of the year the farmer is doing quite different things. If somebody who doesn't know anything about farming it could seem perhaps rather inconsistent and strange but there's a purpose for everything that's done leading to the harvest and the other illustration, another illustration is the householder
who treats children differently than he or she treats teenagers and young adults, accommodating the training and the teaching to each period in life and then finally the physician who uses different approaches depending on the type of disease and the progress of the patient which reminds me in 15 minutes I need to be at the hospital for chemo today so I'll have to leave right at 9.15 to get over there. Okay, our use of the old testament, reflecting on why do we have the old testament? Why do we use it now as Christians? If the new testament is so much more light and spiritual compared to the more literal nature of the old testament is the old testament not irrelevant and Calvin's answer of course is no as part of God's word and it should not be viewed merely in an auxiliary function enabling us to better understand the new testament although it does that. You won't really understand the new testament very well unless you have the old testament but it's not merely to help us understand the new testament. The Old Testament Calvin would say awakens faith in Christ in us as does the New Testament. We read the Old Testament not just to get ready for the New Testament but we read the Old Testament in order to seek Christ, find Christ, strengthen our faith in Christ. Think of how the book of Psalms functions in this way and how often Christians turn to the Psalms to find Christ, to find help in time of need, to find strength and blessing and provision of God in our trouble. It's just about finished but closed with an illustration that has helped me a little bit with this because you still might wonder how does the relative obscurity of the Old Testament assist those who live in the full light of the New Testament and if you think of the road illustration that Calvin uses it's the same road but it's the road at daybreak and then it's the road in the full light of noon, same road but those pioneers, those fathers and others of the Old Testament walked the road in the early dawn in the shadows and that takes some careful attention to details because if it's not light you've got to really watch to see where you're going. They look so intently and a company, a company in them in their search helps us to appreciate more fully the full revelation of Christ. In other words as we walk along by their sides at dawn looking as they look then that's going to be a benefit to us not only in preparation for the New Testament but also in seeing what they saw in the Old Testament. Years ago I was preaching in a little town actually down in Sparta in southern Illinois for a mission's conference and coming back it was quite late at night between Redbud and Waterloo if you've been down in southern Illinois you'll know those towns. My car broke then.
11 o'clock or so something happened in my car. Good getting started and no telephone those days in my car and so I you know the thing I could do I think to do was walk and try to find some help and I had to walk three miles right in between those two towns and nothing no stores nothing there but I walked three miles finally came to a bar where a couple of guys were sitting in there I'm very happy and interested in helping me out of my problem whatever it was and they were finally able at least I was able to convince them to let me use the telephone and call for help but you know I walked those three miles it was a moonlit night so it wasn't just totally dark but I saw a lot of things along those along that stretch of roadway and I've driven that stretch often later in broad daylight but I look at all the things I noticed in the semi obscurity and driving that same stretch now in the daylight I see so much but what was they are then that I would have missed just sitting along in the daylight because I had walked it in the darkness so maybe that's an illustration that would help to see how the old testament still serves us it is relative darkness it is like dawn not like new day but as we walk with the patriarchs through their journey we see things through their eyes and that is going to focus our attention much more carefully on things that we might miss otherwise well you know when you when you read a book a biography we're coming now to Calvin's treatment of Christ we are already into that we got into it as Christ's law Christ you know gospel law gospel that we have spent some time now and looking at the testaments and old and new testaments and whether Christ is in both testaments or not when you read a biography the introduction and sometimes first chapter or two often deal with the the background of that person or ancestors where they came from and all of that and then you come to the birth of the person so that introduction that background helps us to understand the person and we have in the old testament the background of Christ and now we come to the birth of Christ I put a lecture on his person and then a lecture on his work but of course there's a big difference isn't there when I say all of this in a biography is background and then we come to the birth of the person and that background is illustrative and helpful for us to understand the person certainly isn't the case of Christ we want to know who he was Jewish heritage and all of that but the difference is that Christ says of again in his birth so the Bible is quite different from a biography he was always there his birth is a very very important necessary and strategic event in the eternal life of the second person of the Trinity but it doesn't begin the second person of the Trinity it's present in the old testament okay the questions or comments about this or anything else Jewish it's just a little bit west of Eden I believe instead of east of Eden west of Eden that must have been which is east of Sparta okay there's a town called Eden there so if you're preaching for your bill your version of east of Eden okay I don't I've been down there a lot but I haven't found Eden yet when I was a seminary student year many years ago I was a supply-pastry cultivator at the Grand Code Presbyterian Church that was a united Presbyterian Church in those days it was not a PCA church which it produced today okay I'll see you all thirsty but the next Tuesday class doesn't but it does need to follow in Thursday