Hebrews - Part 20 Planned Obsolescence (Hebrews 8:1-5)

Welcome back. We are to Chapter 8. It's almost hard to believe. Because sometimes when you're doing these things, it feels like it takes forever to get through them. You spend a lot of time on one verse or one chapter. But here we are.

So reading from the ESV, we have now the point in what we are saying is this. We have such a high priest, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven, a minister in the holy places, in the true tent that the Lord set up, not man. For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices. thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer I'm going to switch to my computer because it's easier now if he were on earth he would not be a priest at all since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law they serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things for when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God saying, see that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain.

So now, I really like how he starts this out with, now the point in what we are saying is this. I feel like that helps us understand. he says this is the point and what i really noticed here was we have been talking about the high priesthood for several chapters and in most of our in most of our bible studies even in most most of the times when the way we expositionally preach the way that I would go through even the book of Hebrews is you take, you know, these chunks of three to five verses and you kind of look at them and say, this is what this chunk means. And you give it a title.

And if, you know, like I record it and post it, so that gets a title and a summary. And I think that he's been talking about the same thing like the whole time. And it's one of the things I want to remember when I read scripture is, you know, chapter eight, it wasn't like the apostle wrote chapter 7 and then you know took a break and he started a new page and wrote chapter 8 like this is just a continual thought based right off of what he had just written and not necessarily only what he had written in the end of what we call chapter 7 now this is him explaining the point of the whole thing so it's easy for me when i read the scripture to see, now the point is this, and to think, well, oh, well, this must be referring back to, you know, just the last three or four verses.

And I agree that to some extent, you know, those two verses led into this, but he's talking about the whole point of Jesus being a high priest, which was introduced to us way earlier. In chapter four, we were told he was a high priest. in chapter 2 we were told he was a high priest I think that he's making a major point here not just the point in what I just said this is the point of the whole thing it's also interesting that he says now the point in what we are saying is this I don't know why he says the point in what we meaning first person plural and then are saying is he saying that this is something that was spoken and somebody just wrote it down some people have said that when hebrews was you know made as a book it was actually a sermon that someone else transcribed okay so i don't know if that's what he means also when we write we say things like this is what i'm saying you know but he also says the point in what we are saying which is interesting because it makes it seem like more than one person is presenting whatever the truth is. But here we are, and he says, we have such a high priest.

So he's now saying, this is the point of what I'm saying, this is the point of what we are saying, we have such a high priest. And what kind of high priest do we have? He says, one who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven. And he says, a minister in the holy places, same sentence. And then he says, in the true tent that the Lord has set up, not man.

And so he goes to this explanation of the type of high priest we have. And his explanation of the type of high priest we have is simply that he happens to be in the true tent that is on the right side of the throne of the majesty in heaven. So the idea here being that the apostle who has been trying to set up this compare and contrast the entire time between faith and works, between Jesus and literally anything else, but we'll say Jesus and the Levitical priesthood right now, between the new covenant and the old covenant which we haven gotten quite into yet That what he leading toward more right now he is making the point that Jesus is the type of high priest who ministers in a holy place, in a true tent that was set up by God, not men, and that he is seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven.

So we'll recall, if you go back just a few verses to verse 26, we're told, verse 26 of chapter 7, For it is indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest. So again, he's saying this is the type of high priest we have. We have such a high priest. Holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners. but then he says and exalted above the heavens so there's something about this heavenly realm in verse 17 of chapter 2 if you want to turn back there i'll remind you that he says therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect so that he has become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

So again, talking about the type of high priest he is. Chapter 4, verse 14. Again, talking about the type of high priest. Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens. so there isn't a high priest on earth and never was a high priest on earth who has passed through the heavens this has been kind of the point he's been trying to make since i would say the end of chapter four the distinction between the type of high priest jesus is and the type of high priest that they have in levitical priesthood and a lot of what he was doing from chapter five to eight was simply explaining these things.

And part of the comparisons he made, though, were that these Levitical high priests were indeed a type of the priesthood of Jesus, of the priesthood after the order of Melchizedek. They were types and shadows that were to point to Jesus. So they weren't bad. They weren't wrong. They just weren't the anti-type. They weren't the fulfillment of what they were meant to point to.

And so, if we go back to chapter 8 now, and we get to verse 3. For every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices. Thus, it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer. so the author is pointing out that they're the purpose of a priest okay a priest isn't just some guy that exists a priest is a specific role a priest is appointed first of all priests don't you know make themselves priests they have to become priests based on their appointment they have to meet the qualifications jesus was appointed we've already seen that god declared him to be a priest after the order of Melchizedek.

We saw that quoted a few times already. But he said a priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices. And I remember when I read this thinking, this is an interesting thing because there's two different words used here. And sometimes in the Bible, the Bible will use a couple of words in a phrase and it really just means the same thing. each word is either a part of a whole meant to represent the whole or maybe you know like when jesus says the law and the prophets he's he's actually in those cases he's saying the bible but the law and the prophets are indeed distinct things and so there's other times that the bible we use two different words and it's really intentional and so i was looking at these words.

And, you know, a gift is an offering in some translations. I think in the LSB, it's an offering. And so it's this idea of when they would bring their peace offering to the Lord or their free will offering, when they would make the bread and they would offer the incense, there's these things that the priests would do that would be offerings to God. Like, here's something that we have that we're just giving to you.

Okay, so when you brought your tithe of some of the things, you were offering it and saying, this is me offering to God what God has, a portion of what God has given to me. And you would bring it to the priest. And the idea then was, is the priest would offer it to God. And this is an interesting concept to make sure we understand. And it's because this is how God provides for his people.

For example, the Levitical priests. The Lord gives you an increase, and then the idea is that you give that increase to God. But there's really no real earthly way that you can just hand something to God. It's not like you can just go put it in a box in your prayer closet, and then when you come back, it's gone, and you know that God took it. It's just not the way things work.

The way that God sees all these things is he sees you bringing your offering to him And in the Old Testament there you brought it to the priests and the high priest would bring the offering in And then God would use that to distribute it the way he saw fit And so if you remember, in the Old Testament, the people would bring their tithes, and then God would accept their tithes, because that was their religious worship and their religious duty, and God was pleased that people would do those things. And the priests would bring those, but then what did God do with most of them? They would go to the priests.

The men who were actually the ministers that were there to be your mediator between you and God were the ones that then, we'll say, benefited from it. And so the way that you, we'll say, supplied the priests with what was needed so that priests could do their work was through the offerings. and so God has a economy that he's created whereby due to our worship for him, we cheerfully and willingly give up what in our mind what is ours, but what God has bestowed us with, what he's made us a steward of, we recognize that it's all God's and we deserved none of it. So when God says take a portion and give it to the religious ministers of your day, we give that portion to God in worship.

But then God's way of distributing to his religious ministers is through those offerings. And so there's a distinction here that has a difference that I've been trying to understand for a while and make now that I've read what I think is a really good book called The Dorian Principle, is that we don't pay Christians to do Christian things. So let me clarify what that means, but we don't pay a Christian to do a Christian thing.

God gave us freely what we have, so we give it away freely. So how does a man who preaches the word take care of his family without a secular job? How does a man who puts in a lot of time and effort to help with evangelism, with going to Planned Parenthood, with different Christian-type ministries, ministries, how does that man ever profit off of what he's doing enough that he can buy himself a meal even, right?

If I'm saying you don't pay someone to do Christian things. And I will argue that buying someone a meal because they preached for you is the same as paying them. It's just a different form of payment. And the way that the Dorian Principle, which is, again, it's a free book that you can read online, or you can download it, or you can actually order it, and they'll send it to you for free, because they put their money where their mouth is, literally.

The Dorian principle, which Dorian is a Greek word for the giving that happened in the New Testament, is that you never pay someone to preach, and nobody ever preaches for money, just to get one example. you make an offering to God and your worship of God is then mediated by God to the priest. So in the Old Testament you gave the offering to the priest but it was really your worship of God that you were giving him but in God's economy God gave the priest the offering so that he'd have something to eat and his family and things of that sort. In the New Testament concept it's the same idea.

You give your tithe, we'll say, and I know not everybody does the concept of tithing. I just use it because I think people know what I mean by tithe. You give your tithe to your church, and then your church distributes that money appropriately to support people who are doing gospel ministry. Now, when you gave that money, you're giving it as a worship of God.

You're not giving it in exchange for the word of God. So if somebody, so an easy application of it is if you're ever asked to do something in a Christian context, let's say it's you're asked to preach somewhere. You decide on your own strength and power with your resources, can I afford to do this? and if you can afford to do it you do it and you want to do it then you do it and you give away freely what you've been given and then if they should choose to give you a gift to support your work to say we want to co-labor with you then you accept the gift but what you don't do is say well i can come if you give me five hundred dollars and there's a little more nuance to it and and And I think, you know, in fact, next week on June 6th, I'm interviewing the author of the book, and I've got some more detailed application questions for him, actually.

But it's just this idea that, well, the idea is that we're not to be commercialized, but I want you to think about how commercialized Christianity is right now. almost everything that public christian ministries do is selling you something and then they end up using what i'll say are worldly marketing techniques to get the point across and i think that we've made many errors in that way and and it's almost unavoidable it's almost unavoidable if you want a book you have to buy the book from somebody and and obviously books cost money but you should want to offer someone that wrote a great book probably more than let me think about it for a second A guy labors and he writes a fantastic book that blesses your life and changes your Christian thinking. And the best you're willing to do is buy him two bowls of Chipotle. You know what I mean?

I think that the idea in the Bible of how grateful we should be to God for what he's done for us is that we would be cheerful givers and that that giving would be an abundant supply for those who are able so so that people are freed to do the work and this this goes along with the confession and the confession is only speaking uh in particular of officers in a church um and how they ought to be taken care of so that they would be free from secular entanglements and that they would be able to just simply wake up in the morning and do the work that's been appointed to them by God. And so high priests are appointed to offer gifts, but also, that was kind of a side note, but I'm excited. I think the Dorian Principle is right, and I think it aligns with a lot of what I've thought for a long time, and I'm glad somebody did a doctoral thesis describing a concept that I really don't think had been described well.

And if anyone asks, well, why wasn't this a big deal in history? Well, a lot of guys did say things similar to this, but this is the first time in history that Christianity has been as utterly commercialized as it is now. In the truest Protestant sense, I mean, obviously the Catholic sense, there were some things going on, but that was all wrong. But the high priest also offers sacrifices.

So back to chapter 8, verse 3, every high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices. Well, the sacrifice is the bloody dead thing that's offered as an atonement for sin. It's offered because sin is so ugly. And so the distinction that the dictionary makes in these two words is that gifts are the stuff you offer that God gave you. The sacrifice is the bloody sacrifice.

It's the something had to die because sin is that ugly. And you know what? Your sin's so ugly that you can't even just do it. It's not like you can go in your backyard and just slaughter a lamb back in Levitical priesthood days. You couldn't do that and say, OK, God, well, will you forgive me? If you remember, when Adam and Eve sinned, God didn't tell Adam, hey, go kill a sheep now and cover yourself with it.

If you remember what it says, it says God made them clothing. it was it was god who himself you know jesus being the high priest who actually mediated between adam and eve and himself by by offering the sacrifice and it's god who sent jesus christ as a sacrifice but so he says thus it's necessary because high priests appoint gifts and sacrifices Thus it is necessary, verse 3, for this priest, Jesus, also to have something to offer. And here's where it gets neat. What does he mean, thus it is necessary for this priest also to have something to offer?

And I think we go back to the previous chapter, chapter 7, where we are told in verse 27, he has no need like those high priests to offer sacrifices daily for his own sins and then for those of the people, since he did this once for all when he offered up himself. I think we were just told Jesus doesn't have anything more to offer. He's done. He's made his offer.

He's made the sacrifice. And it's necessary for this priest to also have something to offer. Well, he couldn't offer anything according to the Levitical priesthood. He had no way that he could be qualified as a Levitical priest simply because he would not have been able to qualify according to the law. We saw that when it talked about him being from Judah rather than from Levi.

And so it's necessary for this priest to have something to offer, but he can't offer the things that are designed to be offered through the Levitical priesthood. So now we have what would appear to be kind of a problem here. Like, wait a second, I just explained to you how priests work and what priests are supposed to do and what their function is, But now the author's telling us, this guy can't really do it.

And he tells us why. And this is the key to understanding not any problem with Jesus, but it's the key to understanding why it's utterly clear the Levitical priesthood has become completely obsolete. Because he says, now, if he were on earth, this is why it's important that he's seated at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven. it's why it's important that he's exalted above the heavens it's why it's important that he has passed through the heavens if he were on earth jesus who is not on earth he's resurrected he's known to be resurrected he's not dead he's not in the tomb he's raised again and he's ascended into heaven it says he would not be a priest at all and it says since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law.

One commentator said it was interesting that in verse 3 he says, the high priest is appointed to offer gifts and sacrifices. And then in verse 4 it says, if he were on earth, he would not be a priest at all. He says, since there are priests who offer gifts according to the law. One author said, it's interesting that this makes it clear that by this time the bloody sacrifices had stopped.

The Jewish religion had become a bloodless religion. They stopped taking sin seriously. These priests who were still ministering in the tabernacle, now this was just one guy's opinion, I'm not sure that this is what everybody would say, but his point was, is these guys weren't even offering bloody sacrifices. They were more like Rome. They were going through the motions, They were doing what they thought the religious thing told them to do.

And you know what? They got rid of all of what we'll call the grosser parts of the religion. But he's telling us Jesus could not be a priest because priests offer gifts according to the law. Let me tell you what John Gill said about this verse. if his human nature had been earthly had been of men if his human nature had come by ordinary generation he had not been properly or but he would have only typically been a priest at most so i'm just going to spoil the surprise here the whole point is jesus is the true high priest he's the true one that's able to make atonement all the other priests were only typical so gill's trying to make the point that if jesus had qualified as a levitical priest that would have disqualified him as the true anti-type of what the high priest had always pointed to yea he would have been needless nay might not have offered not being of levi's tribe and could not have existed as a priest with the sons of Aaron so because of his descent from descent from Judah he wasn't a priest of Aaron listen but he had his human nature in another way through the power of the Holy Ghost from above and therefore is said to come from above from heaven and to be the Lord from heaven if he was on earth and had not died he had not been a priest if he had died and remained under the power of death, he would have been a priest of no use.

Had he rose again and remained on earth without going to heaven with his blood and sacrificed, he would not have been a perfect priest. He's trying to tell us Jesus had to ascend into heaven. If Christ had remained on earth, the Levitical priesthood had remained, and so he would have been no priest, since two priesthood could not have subsisted together.

The Levitical priesthood was enforced while Christ was on earth. Christ's priesthood was not perfected on earth. The Levitical priesthood remaining while he was on earth proves he was not then a perfect priest not in the sense that he was imperfect but he hadn't completed his work and then gill says had he been so that would not have subsisted so had christ been the perfect priest while still on earth the levitical priesthood wouldn't have kept going he says it was necessary therefore that christ should enter into the holy place to put an end to the Levitical priesthood.

Moreover, if he had remained on earth, he had been needless. So this is what Gil is trying to say, that the Hebrews author is trying to say, is that Christ's ascension and entering into the holy place is what completely makes the Levitical priesthood now obsolete. It is because you can't have two priesthoods doing the same thing. And so understanding that makes this clearer.

In paragraph, in verse 5 now, they serve a copy talking about the earthly priests they serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things and so the idea now is that these priests of the Old Testament appointed by God doing their offerings and sacrifice as under the law only served a copy of the heavenly things and that Jesus himself is the one who has now made them unnecessary. Because if Jesus went into the true tabernacle, if Jesus went into the true tent that the Lord had set up in verse 2, then the other tent that was made which was made to point to that true tent now becomes unnecessary in the same way that a photo of your wife while you're away from her becomes unnecessary when you're with her. In a similar fashion to if we're outside and the sun is shining and I look at your shadow I can say, well, that's your shadow.

And I can make out a couple things about you, and if I understand a little bit of science, I might be able to figure out your height and your body shape, but the shadow's not gonna give me the clarity and the detail that tells me about the true you And the shadow is not the true you The shadow is some picture of you that being made that doesn't tell me enough about you and doesn't give me all of the details about you. So in verse 5, when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain. So that's Exodus 25, 40.

In Exodus 25, 40, Moses is told, this is how you're to make this tent. The Hebrew's author is pointing out that, hey, even in the scripture that you're pretending or saying that you're following by continuing in the Levitical priesthood, it's known that it's just a pattern of something else. It's a pattern of something in the heavens that Jesus has now fully entered into.

And once Jesus went into the Holy of Holies, the real one, and brought the best possible sacrifice for your sin, the one that once and for all covered your sins, once Jesus did this, you have no need of the earthly priesthood that was only meant as a shadow of that, that was only meant to point people to what Jesus would ultimately do. So some of the lessons here. One is that the Levitical priesthood being obsoleted by Jesus' ascension and his offering, his holy sacrifice in the Holy of Holies, the true one, that that obsolescence of the Levitical priesthood doesn't make the Levitical priesthood bad or wrong in its context. at the time that God told Moses, make everything according to this pattern, and then when he told the priest, this is how you ought to do things, and then even killed priests that didn't follow his prescription, that was the correct way to do religious work at the time.

And because it was given by God, it was still good, and it was still right, and it was their religious duty. It simply wasn't the end-all, be-all. For example, when you get baptized, or if we watch someone get baptized, we are not watching that person being buried in Christ. We're not watching them being raised to new life. But we're watching a symbol of those things.

We're not watching the actual spiritual event happening when you take the Lord's Supper. We're using symbols of things. And so we understand these concepts. So we can understand as much as we can oppose a modern day literal use of a Levitical priesthood, and as much as we can look at the first century Hebrews and say, yeah, you shouldn't have done that, we can understand too that, no, this was also very good.

This was the right thing to do. And one of the reasons was God defines how God is worshipped. so one of the reasons why it's so important that we worship god the way he's told us to worship god is that god sometimes gives us these things that create the pictures that we need to understand things better if moses had not made everything according to the pattern that was shown on the mountain, if the Levitical priests had not followed the meticulous details that we're actually going to read about in chapter 9 of how the holy place would look and where the things would be and what type of utensils were in there, if they had not followed these prescriptions, they would not have had an accurate shadow of the true tent. They would not have had a true type.

And so you can't just do religion the way you want. God has a way that he tells us to worship him. We worship him that way. And the way that God has told us in the New Testament in particular is we do that through Jesus Christ. And he's made it clear, I think up to this point now in the book of Hebrews, that the Levitical priesthood is obsolete. It's not bad.

It wasn't evil. It was good at what it was intended to do. But it wasn't there just to restrict the people's sin a little and to give them a little religion. It was there to point to this amazing fulfillment that it would have in Christ. There's a quote from John Calvin. he says, In short, he teaches us that the true worship of God consists not in the ceremonies of the law, and that hence the Levitical priests, while exercising their functions, had nothing but a shadow and a copy, which is inferior to the prototype.

He says, for this is the meaning of the word upudigma exemplar. So that was a Greek word. And he says, and he thus anticipates what might have been raised as an objection, for he shows that the worship of God according to the ancient sacrifices was not superfluous because it referred to what was higher even to heavenly realities And so these modes of worship, which men allow themselves by their own wit to invent, and beyond God's command, he says, For since God gives this direction, that all things are to be done according to his own rule, it is not lawful for us to do anything different from it.

Thus, by enforcing the rule delivered by himself, he prohibits us to depart from it from even in the least thing. For this reason, all the modes of worship taught by men fall to the ground, and also those things called sacraments which have not proceeded from God. And so we are to recognize the principle of the regulative principle of worship that we worship God according to how he has commanded and only how he has commanded.

And anything else, no matter how well-intentioned in our minds, is in fact a device of Satan or our own imagination. And we're to recognize that Jesus Christ could not exist as a priest at the same time as the Levitical priesthood. He couldn't actually be a Levitical priest for the legal reasons. So what he has done is actually transcend what the Levitical priesthood was ever able to do, but not in some contradictory way, but in a fulfilling way.

He has fulfilled what that priesthood was intended to be, and he's done it in the heavenlies where only he could do it, and where now we have no need of all these earthly priestly offerings and sacrifices. So I will stop there, and I will open up the door for comments and questions. And if you were on the phone, I may have muted you, so you have to hit the fancy buttons to unmute. so good I can get started Michael great job I think like, like as you're sitting there just reading the text, I was thinking like, I'm not trying to beat up too much on like dispensationalist or whatever, but like Hebrews eight is like the dagger to that, to that entire, like that idea.

So I grew up in a, like a fundamentalist independent church, Baptist church that like KJV only dispensational, And one of their points of argument or almost like a glory of theirs that they looked forward to was a day where the temple would be rebuilt in Israel. And they would somehow find the lost records of Levitical family lines, and they would finally reinstitute Levitical priesthood and sacrifices. and it's that whole like end times dispensational mindset and just like Romans 9 is like the dagger to any Arminian argument I think does that with someone that thinks that a shadow of something is so much better than the reality you just question like why in the world would you think that like how could you want to go back to a system that it's entire purpose was to point forward in your understanding to the greater reality that is this Lord this King, this the High Priest like Michael put it, he is the high priest, he's the only one so one of my questions was going to be so I don't really know anybody that well maybe I do know a couple people, we just haven't talked about it in a while but I've got a couple family members that are still kind of in that whole I don't know what you call it really anymore but just that whole mentality and thinking that the climax of history is going to end up being finally a temple rebuilt in Jerusalem finally the bringing back of the old way or whatever how would you how would you talk with that person and get them to understand that man you're like committing the same fallacy with these Hebrews back in the first century we're committing? How would you talk to them?

It's a good question. When I was a dispensationalist, I believed there would be a rebuilt temple and there would be sacrifices. But that that was prior to the end. but then in the millennial kingdom is that what you talking about that in like the premillennial view of things that in the thousand earthly reign we would do sacrifices that pointed back to Christ Well, I...

Because the belief that there's going to be a rebuilt temple before the rapture or whatever, that doesn't mean they're looking forward to that in any sense other than to know that the end is coming. so that doesn't bother me personally because i believed i believed that it was going to happen i didn't believe it was a good thing i just believed jews were going to do it because that's what i was told but i also thought that people taught that in the millennial kingdom you would bring animal sacrifices like again is that what you're talking about that part of it so yeah so a couple things i've read i guess there's a little bit of a difference or maybe nuances about the timings of things. The system that I, you know, the church that I grew up in, their system of thought was there must be a rebuilt temple and there must be a reinstitution of sacrifices so that they, you know, they saw like Daniel 7 as like a looking forward to the abomination of desolation where they've got to have a temple and they've got to have a sacrifice system so that the Antichrist can come in and set himself up in that temple to declare himself to be God. So Christ comes, puts an end to that by a second coming, ushers in the millennial kingdom, and then he's sitting now on the throne in the temple while the sacrifices are literally being done in his presence by this Levitical group.

Yeah. And so there's a guy in my family that still, again, we haven't talked about a long time but it's still something like he's looking forward to because as soon as that temple gets built like that's the seven year countdown or whatever it's like okay we'll count you three and a half years he's gonna be he's gonna come and but the whole point is like why yeah why is that your glory like why are you glorying in something that is a shadow like let's lay aside the the whole like getting excited thing for a moment and just look you have the reality now in heaven which is a much better thing for you and so I guess I have a problem with people that have these it's like they're looking out the peripheral of their spiritual eyes and Christ is right there and they're purposely like choosing to look at these like things that are just the whole time a shadow. Yeah, I hear you.

I think that you already have, I mean, as long as you already have the right answer, you just have to keep preaching the irrationality of even looking forward to anything but Christ at this point. Even the people that practiced the actual burnt offerings and the blood offerings in the Old Testament, the true believers who did that were doing it in anticipation of the final one, right? And if Jesus is the final one, then the logic of Hebrews is there's just no need for another one.

This is like one of those things where the author's not trying to make some special revelation, I don't think. I don't think this is like lofty thought. This is if you have the real thing, you don't need the fake thing. That's like humanity 101. All right. You know what I mean?

And so what this comes down to is a form of spiritual blindness, and that can be a couple different reasons it occurs, right? But to me, when you have these talks with dispensational guys, what I've always tried to do since I understood the difference is I try to go to the hermeneutic itself because as long as they're thinking like a dispensationalist applying dispensational hermeneutical rules they're going to see things that way. Just like us.

We apply covenantal rules when we read the scripture. So we read a scripture that says, we were talking about this yesterday, you and me you know, post-millennialism. We read scriptures that say that this is going to happen and this is going to happen, and we say, well, that's just a spiritual reality, you know? And so we have some, there's just such stark differences between those things that I go to the heart of the difference in the hermeneutic. and I try to get people to think about it at that more fundamental level, I guess.

Because if you can get them to understand being covenantal, then that helps solve it, right? One thing I try to do is some of the people that are really hardcore dispensational, I shouldn't say hardcore because the ones that are really hardcore you hardly talk to them about it but people that really buy into it I try to take it to its logical conclusion like I mean if you really really are serious about it you have to have two ways of salvation if you're dispensational there's the Old Testament way and the New Testament way you really have two Bibles. You have the Old Testament and the New Testament.

I mean, it really divides things up in a way that I became uncomfortable with, which is what led me away from dispensationalism. So I attack the hermeneutical. I try to find areas where I know they agree with me and try to show them how that really accords more with covenantalism. Just some thoughts on it. Yeah, that's good. Thank you.

Yeah, you're welcome. That's a good question. You're glad for a guy like MacArthur, who's really solid, even though he's dispensational, But it's like he's not really very dispensational either, except he just applies it to his eschatology. He doesn't apply his dispensationalism to his reading of the Psalms very well. He interprets them to point to Christ at times, and he talks about them as applying to us today in ways that a true dispensationalist could never do.

So you almost wish he'd just say, hey, you know, I'm covenantal now. So, I just wanted to offer a little tidbit that I kind of picked up this morning that sticks with me. You know, in the first verse, it's very clear that Jesus is seated. And I think sometimes just, you know, we don't need to make a case for Jesus. But it just shows you the simplicity and the beauty of Jesus, right?

In culture today what we expect of our leaders to evoke their power or their authority culturally is that they should be standing You don't ever see a president of the United States seated at a podium when he's speaking or he's in a position of authority. He's always standing. But here's our great mediator in heaven, seated, and his work is done. and he's all powerful from a seated position and i don't know i know that's really basic but to me that just hit me hard and i i just think that's awesome that's huge what that's a point that that would have been brought up later but you brought it up that you know when we look at the holy place and the holy of holies and the work of the priests one thing that there was not in the tabernacle was a chair.

Priests, their work was never done. And that's a picture that you just brought out, that Jesus is not only his majesty on high, so he's not just a priest, he's a king. He has power, but not only that, but his work is done. He can sit. There's no more sacrifices to be made. He's done it all.

Fantastic. Well, great. Well we about at time so we can close up Let me pray Father in heaven when we read your scripture the truth of it sometimes just jump out at us And they often hit us in ways that are different than they have ever on a different day. So we thank you that your Holy Spirit is the one who makes your word effectual unto salvation. He's the one that illuminates our mind, that we might even understand these truths that you give us.

And even when I mention that some of this is just basic logic that all humans should understand, we recognize that it's your spirit that doesn't give us a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power and of love and of a sound mind. and that any soundness of logic we even have is an expression of your perfect reasonability, and it's in contradiction to our corruption. And so we thank you for even the ability to think straightly today. We give all glory and honor to you.

We give all praise to you. It is Jesus Christ alone who was able to make atonement for our sins. Only Jesus Christ had the power to take his life and to lay it down, and only he had the power to raise it up again. but he had that power, and we glory in his ascension into heaven, knowing that it was required for our salvation, that it is because that he was able to go into the true tent, made by God, not made by man.

It is because of that that we are able to enter the throne room of God and make our request known to you And so humble us Father with the thought that Jesus Christ who is so exalted would humble himself cause us to be prideless cause us to hate our own flesh and to loathe all that is in contradiction to you, and to be filled with your Spirit. We ask that you would give us the strength in the power today that does come from your spirit to fight sin in this life, to have victory over sin, to fight faithlessness and to be more attuned to believing what you have written. Cause us to be patient with our wives and our children, our co-workers, our clients, employers, whoever it is that we are interacting with, Lord, while we're still on this earth, we have a job to do.

There is still work to do if we're here. So help us to reflect, in a sense, the love of Christ to all that we meet. Help us to exalt his name wherever we go, to never be ashamed of him, even for a moment. In Christ's name I pray. Amen. Amen.

Thank you for listening to Be a Berean with your host, Michael Coughlin. I am a writer at thingsabove.us and I also have a personal website michaelcoghlan.net You can contact me by emailing me michael at thingsabove.us I hope that you have been encouraged to search the scriptures.