"Covenant Theology vs Dispensationalism" Galatians 6:16 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Tonight I want to talk about the distinction or the differences between dispensationalism and covenantalism.

I was a first-year student at the Master Seminary when I had an appointment with the registrar.

This is before class even started.

It was a few days before class started.

I was new on campus and I had to meet with the registrar.

And as I was sitting in the office there at the seminary, I heard the receptionists joking about one of the papers from a summer course that a student had done, and receptionists held it up and pointed to the other secretary and said, Look at this, can you believe that the student misspelled covenantalism on the title page?

And they all laughed.

And the other secretary said, Well, at least he didn't misspell dispensationalism, and they laughed even harder.

And I was sitting there at the on the bench and did not know what either of those two words meant.

And I thought, man, I am I'm out of my elements here in seminary.

I'm I'm going to die.

The secretaries have better theology than I do.

But through, of course, my time in seminary, I developed a um a love for hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics is the uh skill or the art or the science, whatever phrase you want to use, of rightly dividing the Bible and understanding what it teaches.

And as you read through church history and you study hermeneutics and even the history of churches in America, you realize pretty quickly that there are two different schools of thought.

There's two different approaches to how you handle the Bible, how you interpret scripture, how you view the meta-narrative of the Bible, the unfolding story or the drama and the pages of scripture.

And those two schools of thought are covenantalism and dispensationalism.

Now, as I searched over the last uh, I've been scheming tonight's um message for several months, as I've searched for other resources uh that accomplish what I'm trying to accomplish tonight.

I actually was very hard-pressed to find any because most uh explanations of dispensationalism are uh done by dispensationalists, of course, and are very antagonistic towards covenantalism.

And most explanations of covenantalism that I came across were done by dispensationalists that were very uh, I guess, angry at covenantalism for existing.

And so it was hard to find a charitable explanation of covenantalism.

Meanwhile, on the covenantalist side, um there was pretty much a disdain when you heard people, when I found people that from on the covenantalist side that talk about dispensationalism, they had kind of a uh an edge in their discussions.

They were kind of hostile and kind of angry that dispensationalism exists in the world.

So I didn't find a lot of charitable explanations.

And, you know, generally in theology, I'm not a proponent of like a third way or of like, you know, both sides are right, can't we all just get along?

Because I recognize that there is theological truth and error, and you have to have convictions, and those convictions shape how you approach the Bible.

And yeah, I do feel with the differences between covenantalism and dispensationalism, often those distinctions are overblown and are exaggerated.

And you see people talk, I was reading a great book uh recently about the descent of Christ by a Baptist that Jesus is conquering over Sheol.

It was such a good book.

Uh and then he had like a couple of paragraphs in there about how dispensationalism is a heresy and a threat to the stability of the church.

And it was just shocking that uh here's a Baptist who just, you know, lobster grenade in a book about the descent of Christ into the grave, uh, for no reason wanted to call dispensationalism a heresy.

And I see that same attitude reading books on hermeneutics by dispensationalists towards covenantalism.

So I want tonight to be charitable towards both.

You know, my disclaimer here is that I am a dispensationalist.

I believe in the dispensational hermeneutic and its approach to scripture.

And so I'm gonna try to talk about covenantalism tonight in a charitable way.

Uh I'm I know that some of my professors, I attend a Presbyterian school right now.

I know that some of my professors are likely gonna listen to this, and I don't want them to hear anything that they would disagree with.

And if they do hear anything that they disagree with, I want them to know that I'm trying.

I'm trying.

Plus, I was helped by friends, and if there's anything wrong, I blame my friends for those slides.

Uh so let me just give a couple definitions at first.

Uh, dispensationalism is um an evangelical theological system that sees history of the progress of revelation from creation to consummation, with a particular focus on how God works through different eras or economies or ages, or you might even say dispensations.

It stresses a distinction between those eras, particularly between the church and Israel.

If I were to translate that into my own words, dispensationalism is the approach to the Bible that sees the Bible as a cohesive narrative that's going from garden to garden.

That's going from the creation account in Genesis to the consummation of all time at the end of the Bible.

And in dispensationalism, it sees a special purpose for Israel.

It sees that God separated Israel through the Abrahamic covenant, used Israel as a nation to guard the promised seed for the Messiah.

The Messiah was brought into the world through the promises given to Israel.

The Messiah then proclaims that the gospel would leave Israel and go to the nations.

And yet there are promises given to Israel in the Old Testament, given to unbelieving Israel, that will be fulfilled by Israel in the future.

Part of dispensationalism is seeing history is broken up into these different eras or dispensations, and understanding that we're not in the last one now, that there is another dispensation coming.

In the future is the kingdom.

The kingdom will be a literal kingdom on earth where Jesus will descend, he will establish his throne, and he will rule over the nations of the world from Israel in a personal way.

That Israel will be regenerate, then, that in that final battle, towards the end of the book of Revelation, also described in Zechariah, that in that final battle Israel will be saved.

Those that survive and enter the kingdom will be converted, and that Jesus will reign on the world, fulfilling his promises to Israel.

That's dispensationalism.

Dispensationalism sees the church as starting in the New Testament, as the church not being a continuation of Israel, but as a new thing.

Uh namely to guard the hope for the Messiah, the seed of the Messiah, to make sure the Messiah's, the Davidic covenant was passed down through Israel until the Messiah came.

But Israel is not the church.

That Israel was guarding, watching over God's law and God's people and God's promise until the Savior came.

And then the big change in the New Testament is that the Savior now takes the gospel global through the church.

The church is new in that it is transcends nations, transcends boundaries, transcends ethnicities, and the church fulfills the promises given throughout the Old Testament that are, in a sense, spiritual, but the church does not fulfill the promises given to Israel in the Old Testament.

Those remain to be fulfilled at the second coming of Christ.

That's dispensationalism.

Dispensationalism stresses the discontinuities between those covenants.

We see the different covenants of the Bible as progressive and yet as distinct and not simply a continuation.

I'll talk more about dispensationalism later, but just for contrast, here's a definition of covenant theology that largely comes from Lig and Duncan.

Covenant theology is the reform position that sees history through the lens of covenant, specifically the unfolding expansion of God's covenant of grace.

Covenant theology holds that salvation is best understood through continuity, thus, the new covenant is essentially an expansion of the Abrahamic covenant, and the church is an expansion or continuation of Israel.

So, in contrast with dispensationalism, covenantalism sees much more continuity in the narrative of the Bible.

Whereas dispensationalists see the Bible as one progressive story, but going through different ages.

Covenantalism would see the history of the world not as a progression of stages necessarily, but more as a progression of a singular covenant, the covenant of grace.

In covenantalism, there is, as I mentioned, a lot more continuity between the covenants.

The church is seen not entirely as something new, although there's certainly even the covenantalists would grant there is newness in the church.

But in covenantalism, the church is seen as a continuation or in many senses a fulfillment of the promises given to Israel.

Covenantalism, you could say it this way.

Covenantalism, um, sorry, I have my dispensationalism slide up.

Um I'm gonna keep going from dispensational covenant theology.

It's gonna see three covenants, uh, basically three covenants.

Most covenantalists would agree that there are three uh key covenants.

The covenant of redemption, which is between the Father and the Son, uh in eternity past, before creation.

It's an intra-trinitarian covenant made within the Godhead, not made to people, but obviously made to people in view.

This leads to the covenant of works, which in the covenantal scheme is the covenant that begins with Adam.

The covenant of works is this idea that God enters into a relationship with Adam, and through Adam all of mankind, Adam being the federal head of the human race, where Adam can have long life, everlasting life, and be in a right relationship with God if Adam keeps the word of God.

The covenant of works is a covenant with uh requirements and conditions that you cannot enter a right relationship with God apart from your works.

And of course, Adam failed to keep the covenant of works, was banished from the garden.

In exchange of the covenant of works comes the covenant of grace, which is different.

The covenant of grace comes after the fall, and it's how God relates to people after the fall.

This is a key point in covenantalism.

The covenant of grace does not exist before the fall, but comes after the fall.

That fence is important in covenantalism to keep works from entering into salvation.

Works is the human relationship with God before the fall.

Sin mars that and demonstrates that it's impossible to relate to God through works, and so you relate to God through grace.

You have access to God through grace.

This grace is, in a sense, also through works, but not your works, through the works of Christ.

So the covenant of grace has in view or in mind the incarnation of Christ, who will be a second Adam, who will keep God's law perfectly, will fulfill all the commands for relationship with God, and that fulfillment of those promises is yours through faith in Christ.

So you're adopted into the covenant, so to speak.

And the covenant uh covenant theology would teach that every era of human history has that same covenant, that nobody relates to God apart from the covenant of grace.

This is talking from Adam to Noah, Noah to Abraham, Abraham to Egypt, Egypt, wilderness wanderings, all of Israel's history, all the way to the new covenant.

There's only, in that sense, one covenant by which a person can really have a relationship with God.

That's a covenant of grace.

When you see Scripture unfolding that way, you see one people through these three covenants.

You see these covenants fulfilled in the person of Christ.

He consummates the covenant of grace, he fulfills the covenant of works, and you see then the church is a continuation of Israel, of course.

I can demonstrate this this way.

In covenantalism, you see these sequence of covenants, of course.

You see a relationship with Adam.

Adam received the covenant of grace after the fall.

Uh Noah receives the covenant, we call the Noahic covenant.

Uh Abraham receives a covenant that from him will you know become the Savior and the nation Israel.

He'll be a blessing to the nations.

Moses receives the covenant, which is the, of course, the law, the Mosaic law.

David receives the covenant, which is that the king will come through him.

Now, in covenantalism, they stress the continuity of these covenants.

That's why I like the carrot diagram.

This diagram is from O.

Palmer Robertson, kind of a leading covenantal theologian of the last century.

And uh I found this diagram very helpful from him.

Uh, in his presentation of this, you see that each of the covenants is just an expansion of the one before it.

They're all in essence the same covenant, though.

Um that Adam is going to have his sins covered by grace through faith in God's promise.

Uh, that, of course, the covering is symbolized through the death of the animal, which is pointing forward to the death of Christ.

Noah sacrifices animals, pointing forward to the death of Christ, also has a right relationship with God through faith, not through works, as God saves him through the waters.

Abraham just expands that even more in showing that this covenant will become personalized, and the Savior Moses makes an ethical dimension to this covenant uh by bringing law with him, and yet you don't have a right relationship with God in covenantalism through keeping the law, uh, but you keep the law as a result of a right relationship through faith that you have with him.

So it's still an expansion of the same covenant.

David personalizes it even more.

And you can see if you look at this chart, I find this very helpful even as a dispensationalist to think of the progression of the covenants like this.

You can see how Adam stands for all the human race in the Ademic covenant, in that sense, he receives grace through his faith, really stands in as the hope for all of humanity.

And you see Noah, you know, the only family on the world, uh entering into a relationship with God that will shadow over all of mankind.

But then it starts to narrow here with Abraham, where it'll be one nation, and Moses, how that nation will live, and David, the king that that nation will produce, the Davidic covenant.

Um, and then you enter into the new covenant in the church, which is going to be new.

Each one of these covenants has a newness to it, even in covenantalism.

Each of these covenants has new realities or a fresh take on the covenant of grace, is a phrase that Ligan Duncan has used.

Um I think that's a very helpful way to look at it.

So covenantalism sees an unfolding series of covenants.

However, uh, behind all of this is really two covenants.

Um, the covenant of works, which entered the world first to Adam, again, saying that you can have a relationship with God through works, and then the covenant of grace, which enters the world also with Adam, but after the covenant of works, which teaches the only way to have salvation is through faith in Christ.

So all of these covenants in the covenantal scheme are really an expansion of the same covenant, the covenant of grace, whereas the covenant of works is hanging out in the background, just offstage, uh, showing the folly of trying to enter into a relationship with God through your own works.

So the covenant of works didn't go away when Adam sinned.

Uh it hangs out there.

It's still lurking in the backgrounds, like some of those windows on your computer, still hanging out there.

But the covenant of grace is what you're engaged to God through in any uh dispensation, in any era.

You enter into a relationship with God through the covenant of grace, and that covenant gets more particular, more refined, more clear, more vibrant through the progress of revelation.

So that's in essence my explanation of covenantalism.

Covenantalism uh really developed in the 1600s through the Puritans, through the Westminster divines, both the Scottish and the British Puritans, along with, of course, the Dutch Reformed, they developed this as well.

It lived confessionally in the Westminster Confession of Faith.

That's why most Presbyterians, or really all Presbyterians that follow the Westminster standards, would be covenantalists.

Um, the Westminster Confession describes covenantalism and its importance to right relationship with God.

And again, in very helpful terms, I agree with much of the Westminster Confession or even the London Baptist Confession, which is the same kind of statement of faith, but from a Baptistic perspective, it's still covenantal.

And there's a lot that's helpful in there.

For example, a line that I say all the time preaching, you've probably heard me say it, even though I'm not a covenantalist, is that you relate to God through covenant.

You know, God is not like us, he's transcendent, he's above this world.

So for us to have access to him, it requires his revelation, and God reveals himself through the format of covenants from one era to another.

I think that's a very helpful uh way of wording the way you approach God.

That comes from the Puritans, that comes from Covenantalism.

It's kind of the background of uh Presbyterianism.

Um, as I mentioned, Puritans today, seminaries that are Covenantalists, RTS uh here in DC, um, Westminster, um, of course, and then you know famous covenantalists, R.

C.

Sproul, Sinclair Ferguson, Ligan Duncan, as well as as many others.

Basically, any Presbyterian you like is gonna be a covenantalist, and what's not to like with Presbyterians.

Yeah, you guys are keeping up.

Uh so I want to transition from covenantalism to uh dispensationalism.

Dispensationalism, as I mentioned earlier, uh doesn't focus on the unfolding of God's covenants, but dispensationalism rather uh focuses on the economies of God, the different dispensations of God.

And by the way, this would be an appropriate time for me to point out that the word dispensations or dispensationalism was not invented by dispensationalists.

The word dispensation itself comes from the Westminster Confession of Faith.

The Westminster Confession of Faith says that the different covenants represent different dispensations.

So the concept of dispensations, I think it is a biblical word.

It's used in Ephesians 1, economia in Greek, uh, where that refers to God's various stages of revelation or as different dispensations.

So I do think dispensation is a biblical word, and if you don't buy that rendering or that translation of economia, which can also be household, it is from the Westminster Confession.

And so the word or notion of dispensationalism is not foreign to even covenantalism.

It comes from the Westminster Confession itself.

But the essence of dispensationalism is not the continuity that I just described in the covenants, but the essence of dispensationalism is that God has worked out his plan of salvation differently in different periods of time.

Everybody who's saved through all time is saved by grace through faith.

Dispensationalists believe that and teach that, of course.

And yet, dispensationalists do stress the differences between these dispensations.

Um if you think back to the uh the slide that I had up there with the carrot and the expanding, you see how it makes sense in that full, you know, in the screen.

You see how you can see how each covenant replaces itself.

But dispensationalists look at that and find the scheme a little bit contrived.

Um we look at the covenant of grace being a covenant that runs through all of them and think that's that's working a little bit hard to find continuity.

Can't you just say that salvation is by grace through faith in every era and yet see differences in the covenants and who they're given to and how they'll be fulfilled and accomplished?

Or dispensationalists look at the notion of a covenant of works as running in the background of all human interaction to God and are a little bit skeptical.

It's not a covenant that we see taught biblically.

Um, we don't see it there.

We understand how it gets there, and we understand the you know, covenantalists uh didn't invent it out of nothing, but we think it's a little bit of too much work to get to it.

And a better approach to understanding the way the Bible describes itself is a sequence of covenants, one after another.

Of course, we still relate to God covenantally, but one after another throughout time.

Now, in every era, it's important to understand this for dispensationalists, in every era, there are different requirements that are part of each covenant.

And yet you don't have a right relationship with God by keeping those requirements in any dispensation.

You have a right relationship with God through faith, but as a result of your faith, the fruit of your faith will be different depending upon which dispensation you are in.

In other words, those that were saved between Abraham and Moses did not express their salvation with the Mosaic Law.

And those in the church do not express their salvation with the Mosaic Law.

The Mosaic Law was given to Israel for the period of time in which they were bound to God through the old covenant.

So that would just be an example of uh dispensationalism.

The nutshell of dispensationalism is it stresses the discontinuity through the ages.

Um, for dispensationalism, the church begins in Acts 2.

The church does not begin with Adam as it would in covenantalism, but the church begins in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

It's a new thing.

Um, and dispensationalists would see a future for Israel.

We look at the promises given to God, uh, given to Israel throughout the Old Testament.

We see that they're not fulfilled now.

Um Israel's king is not reigning over the nations in a literal sense now, uh, but we know that he will, one day, he will fulfill his promises to Israel in a literal sense.

And so we say then that Israel is not the church, and the church is not Israel.

Israel is an uh ethnically distinct group of people, uh, and that they will have a special place in God's program in the future, just like they have had in the past.

The church is different than Israel, and that the church is not ethnically distinct, but rather is bound together through faith and transcends nations.

So that's the essence of dispensationalism.

As I say that, I hope you see that most of that is compatible with covenantalism.

And as you heard me describe covenantalism, I hope you see that most of covenantalism, I think, is compatible with dispensationalism.

We'll get to some key differences uh later as we go on, but I gave you a nice chart for dispensationalism, so I want to, I mean, for covenantalism, so I want to do the same for uh dispensationalism.

For dispensationalism, this is how we would see the biblical covenants, rather than a carrot unfolding, dispensationalists like timelines.

And we see the Noahic covenant where God makes a promise back in Genesis 8 that is unconditional.

There is nothing that Noah needs to do to make this covenant happen.

God makes a uh promise to Noah that's not contingent upon anything Noah will do.

It's a literal promise.

God's not going to flood the earth again like he did in the days of Noah, and that is a promise that covers in an ironic and literal sense the whole globe.

This is different than the Abrahamic covenant, which comes later.

The Abrahamic covenant is made with Abraham, stressed specifically in Genesis 15 and 17, that Abraham will have offspring that will be more numerous than he can count, and through the, which is, becomes the nation Israel, and through those promises to Abraham, the Savior will come to the world.

This is a national promise because it is seen in producing a nation, a new nation, Israel.

It's a promise with global implications because that savior that comes from Abraham will be the savior of the world and the savior of the nations.

The Abrahamic promise, in some sense, is unconditional.

Remember, Abraham was put to sleep when it was made.

So in that sense, there's nothing Abraham needs to do to keep the covenant.

And in another sense, it is conditional because he had to have a child.

And that's what Abraham got wrapped up on.

If you're familiar with the Genesis story, he was concerned about how he would get the child.

And he tried all kinds of things from his handmaiden to all kinds of fiascos, one after another, which lead to the story of Israel.

That's not the same thing as the Noahic covenant.

We understand that people from Noah to Abraham related to God by faith, of course, but we see these covenants as different and distinct from one another.

And again, that difference is very clear with the Mosaic covenant.

It's made in the book of Exodus, chapters 19 to 24.

Exodus 19 · chapter mention

Also, the entirety of the book of Deuteronomy repeats it.

It's a unified law given to Israel for how Israel relates to God.

I have a note there that's unified because in covenantalism, there's often the tendency to divide the law into three parts a moral law, ceremonial law, civil law.

Whereas dispensationalism, we look at the Mosaic Law as a unit.

It's one thing given to Israel, and it's a national covenant with the people of Israel.

Of course, even under the era of the law, those who were Jews that were saved, that were true Israel, and there were Israelites that were true Israelites that had true faith, they were true children of Abraham, not just of the flesh, but of the faith that Abraham had under the Mosaic Law.

They would express their salvation by keeping the Mosaic Law, but they did not earn salvation by keeping it.

Rather, their obedience to the law was the expression of the faith that they had.

This is a different covenant than the Davidic covenant.

For the dispensationalists, the Davidic covenant is distinct from those other covenants.

It's personal with David.

It will have messianic implications, of course, that David's descendant would be the Messiah.

It's a national covenant.

He's the king of Israel, and he will be the king of the world based upon his position as the rightful ruler of Israel.

We take the Davidic covenant literally, and we see it taught in 2 Samuel 7, where it's not called a covenant, by the way, in 2 Samuel 7, but it is called a covenant in Psalm 89.

I preached on Psalm 89, was that last week already?

Or it's two weeks ago.

And I hope that was helpful in showing how the Davidic covenant is an expression of salvation in the Savior.

I see the covenant of redemption packed all over the Davidic Covenant, especially Psalm 89.

And then all these covenants are distinct from the new covenant.

New covenant taught in Jeremiah 31, Ezekiel 36.

We see the new covenant as the blessings of the Holy Spirit being sent to the world, where uh and those who relate to God by faith as they have through every dispensation in the new covenant, their faith will be uh result in the spirit sealing their heart, dwelling within them.

They will not need one another to teach one another how to obey the law, but they will all obey the law from the least to the greatest.

Um the Mosaic law produced death as people tried to maintain it in order to have a relationship with God.

It produced death, it produced sin, it provoked them to sin.

Whereas the new covenant will not be like that.

It will only bring life.

When the new covenant arrives, it makes the old covenant, the Mosaic covenant, obsolete.

The new covenant does go global, although it will be literally fulfilled with Israel in the future.

It does go global as believers relate to God through the new covenant, even though we didn't come to God through the Mosaic covenant.

You know, if you're not Jewish, your ancestors didn't long for the days of the Messiah through the Mosaic covenant.

Nevertheless, the new covenant goes global as the church is grafted into those promises and blessings.

So that's my breakdown of the biblical covenants in dispensationalism.

You'll notice as I stamp over the top of these that the Noahic covenant will last until the Lord destroys the earth.

That's not an eternal covenant, because the Lord will destroy the earth, but it's gonna last until that happens.

The Abrahamic covenant is everlasting, the children of Abraham who through Israel will have a place in God's kingdom forever.

Even Gentiles, though, in a sense, are children of Abraham, as we have the same faith of Abraham.

It's right to refer to us as children of Abraham because we have the same faith of Abraham, but that's not necessarily what's in view in the Abrahamic covenant, which has particular implications for Israel.

The Mosaic covenant, we would say is fulfilled in Christ, as a dispensationalist.

The Mosaic covenant is fulfilled in Christ.

We don't divide it up into three parts and say two-thirds of it were fulfilled in Christ, and yet believers still keep the moral covenant, we say the or the moral components of the law, we say the entirety of the Mosaic law was fulfilled in Christ and is set aside.

Nevertheless, of course, even in dispensationalism, we see a law of Christ, we see the moral commands in the New Testament.

Don't murder, don't lie, don't worship idols, etc.

A lot of which is from the law of Moses, but we see it coming from God apart from the law of Moses.

So we can say the law of Moses is fulfilled, and yet we're not antinomians.

We we don't teach you, therefore, live however you want to.

We do teach there are moral commands to Christians that as a result of our salvation we seek to uh to keep.

And then the Vedic covenant is everlasting because the king uh that comes from David's line, David's son, yet David's Lord, will reign over the kingdom on earth for a thousand years and will reign in glory, where he will be the God man forever and ever.

And then finally, the new covenant is likewise everlasting.

And so you'll notice here, if you think back to the carrot chart in covenantalism, there's a lot more continuity in dispensationalism.

I'm showing you distinctions between all the covenants.

That's kind of the way dispensationalists tend to approach the Bible.

I mentioned earlier where covenantalism came from, dispensationalism really grew as a hermeneutic in the uh late 1800s, the early 1900s.

If covenantalism is seen in Presbyterian churches for the most part, dispensationalism in the United States, anyway, is seen in fundamentalist churches, evangelical churches, Bible churches, uh tends to be dispensationalists.

That's in the U.S.

When you go out of the U.S., you see a lot more dispensationalism in terms of, you know, like the Mennonites and uh groups like that.

But in the U.S., fundamentalists and evangelicals tend to be dispensational.

Uh the main seminaries, uh, you know, whereas Covenantalism had RTS in Westminster, dispensationalism is uh largely taught at Dallas Seminary, Moody Bible College, and the Master Seminary, uh, dispensationalist um authors and preachers, you may have heard of Chuck Swindahl, John Feinberg, whose family goes to Emmanuel and may even be here tonight.

So I'm being graded on that curve as well, and John MacArthur.

So that's kind of the background of dispensationalism.

And uh, you know, to give one more slide of contrast between the two, I think of the way the two approach the storyline of the Bible.

Dispensationalism sees the storyline of the Bible as the national and uh ethnic Israel has a unique role in God's plan, and there's a future of physical fulfillment coming for the kingdom.

Of course, Jesus is the center of the story.

Uh, he is, even in dispensationalism, we would say that Jesus is the true Israel, but just not in a way that he replaces the promises given in the Old Testament to unbelieving Israel.

Whereas covenant theology sees less of a focus on Israel and more of a focus on Jesus being the true Israel, where Jewish and Gentile believers are united to him.

And covenantalism, the kingdom is a present spiritual reality, whereas dispensationalism, Jesus is the king, and we wait for the next dispensational he'll rule on the earth.

So that's how I would divide up the storyline of these two schools of thought.

So if I have articulated these well, I'm hoping at this point that you would say they sound very similar.

What's the big deal?

That's what I'm going for.

So if you're having that response in your minds, I'm doing a good job.

However, there are some differences.

There are some key points where it does matter which hermeneutic you bring to the Bible or which meta-narrative you see unfolding in the Bible.

Here's six of those ways that I've identified, six kind of practical applications of this, why it matters.

You know, you want to ask yourself who are, uh when you're dealing with identifying God's people in the Bible, are Israel and the church the same thing?

Are they different?

Did one replace the other?

When you're reading the Old Testament and you come across the Psalms and you see Psalms to Israel or about Israel or let Israel now say, do you take that as a one-to-one correspondence to the church?

Do you claim those promises?

When you see Israel interacting with God in the Old Testament, how much continuity do you see with the church and the people of Israel?

Certainly, even a dispensationalist would say you learn lessons from Israel.

That's why those stories are in the Bible, not just, you're not just figments of a historical past, but they're in there to teach you about how you relate to God.

Nevertheless, the church, is the church a continuation of Israel?

Or is the church different?

In dispensationalism, we would say the church is grafted in.

It's a new thing, grafted into the promises of Israel, it's new, but we wouldn't say the church replaces Israel.

That's a no-no, because we see Israel fulfilling promises given to them in the future.

God's plan.

Is God bringing a future kingdom on earth?

In other words, what's going to happen next on the earth?

Is there going to be a kingdom where God reigns on the earth?

Is the church the final fulfillment of the kingdom?

Dispensationalists, we would say no.

We'd say the final fulfillment remains for Jesus to descend.

It's the Mount of Olives, where he will put his foot down, split the mountain, he will then shake the earth, the gold and the silver are mine, the Lord says, as he reigns over the nations from Jerusalem.

Thirdly, God's promises.

Are the Old Testament promises fulfilled in Christ?

Or is there a future fulfillment of Israel?

There is a sense in which there are promises in the Old Testament that remain unfulfilled.

Ezekiel, for example, looks at the mountains of Israel and proclaims to them that when the Savior comes, never again will their enemies tread upon them.

Never again will they give up their the Israelites to death and barrenness.

There's promises like that that are not fulfilled in Joshua, and this is Ezekiel is after Joshua, and they're to be fulfilled in the future.

Covenantalism is more likely to say, although perhaps not in every circumstance, but more likely to see those promises as fulfilled in Christ.

I had a debate with a covenantalist once on a radio show, and he used the analogy to me of that of a bicycle, you know, and he said that the promises of the Old Testament are like a father promising his child a bicycle for Christmas, and then Christmas rolls around, and instead of a bicycle, he gave him a Camaro or a Corvette.

And so it's not exactly the promise in that sense that it was given to the child.

I see some of the kids getting ideas right now.

It's not exactly the promise it was given to the child, but the child gives is given something better, and so he should consider that promise fulfilled because he got the Corvette.

And I mean, my response, which is not unique to me, I stole this from somebody else.

So what I said in that um debate was that it's I don't see that as really how it plays out.

From my understanding, a dispensationalist perspective, it's as if God promised the kid a bicycle and then Christmas morning rolls around and he gave the neighbor kid a corvette.

Your kid, if he was promised a bicycle, is not going to be okay with the fact, you can't tell your kid, I didn't get you a bicycle, but I got this other kid across the street.

He's got a pretty cool car now.

That's the fulfillment of the promise.

You know, as a dispensationalist, I see promises given to Old Testament Israel in the past that in some sense are certainly fulfilled in Christ, but in the very real sense remain to be fulfilled with Israel in the future.

A couple more uh practical distinctions from this, where this matters.

Um, where does the church begin?

Uh a dispensationalist would see so much more newness in the church as far as its structure.

We don't see elders in the church kind of replacing the elders in the Old Testament.

We see elders and deacons in the church as new offices, we see baptism as a new ordinance, um, etc.

We see the church beginning in Acts, not with Adam.

Hermeneutics.

Um we dispensationalists tend to read the Bible forward, uh, believing very strongly in the perspicuity of strip of scripture.

That's a key doctrine in dispensational worlds, that at every era of revelation, there is enough revelation given for the recipients of that revelation to have a right understanding of what God intended to communicate.

That's the doctrine of perspicuity.

In other words, the Jews that received the law and received the Torah, the five books of the Bible, there's enough revelation in the five books for them to relate to God rightly and to rightly understand the Torah at that time, based upon that revelation, and ditto with every subsequent phase of revelation.

The most obvious example of this being that by the time Ezra completes the Psalter and kind of the Old Testament as it currently stands, there's enough revelation in the Old Testament to rightly understand the Old Testament as God required his people to understand it at that time without the revelation of the New Testament.

Of course, the New Testament doesn't undo anything in the Old Testament.

It certainly fills things out and turns some of it to living color.

Some of the Old Testament, even a dispensationalist, would say is shadows, and the prophets long to look into it.

Nevertheless, we would say that there was enough for clarity to every moment of time.

A common covenantalist phrase that is often used is that the Bible is best understood backwards or starting with the New Testament going backwards, that you see Christ and kind of how He He is operated and what He fulfills, and now you can read that fulfillment backwards into the Old Covenant.

That would be a very basic hermeneutical difference.

And finally, the most practical of all these life in the church.

You know, if you see continuity between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, you are more likely going to baptize babies because you're going to see how people entered the covenant promises in the Old Testament through circumcision, and you're going to see them entering the covenant promises in the same way in the New Testament as babies based upon the faith that their parents set forward with a promise of future faith.

It's worded in so many different ways.

Whereas the dispensationalist is going to say, no, that's exactly the difference right there.

That in the Old Covenant, the Old Covenant intentionally included both believers and non-believers.

This is the point where the New Covenant is different.

The new covenant intentionally does not include non-believers, even the little ones that might have future faith.

That's why we're a Baptist.

Now, certainly there's covenantal Baptists as well, covenantalists who are also Baptists, but I see more consistency with the dispensationalist position.

So that's that's why it matters, and I hope that's helpful to you.

I want to give you one Bible passage where the distinction is critical, and that's Galatians 6, verse 16.

Galatians 6:16

And I want to show you different ways of approaching this passage.

We read it, we read all of Galatians 6 earlier for scripture reading.

Galatians 6 I want to begin with verse 15 of Galatians 6.

Neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.

And as for all who walk by this rule, peace and mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God.

That phrase, the Israel of God, becomes really the key phrase in this conversation.

The standard dispensationalist understanding of this passage is to see two groups in this passage.

In verse 16, all who walk by this role, peace and mercy be upon them and upon the Israel of God.

Whereas the standard covenantalist approach to this is going to see in here a declaration that Israel is in fact the church, that those who have faith in God through the new covenant are here identified as the Israel of God.

So you can see why this verse would be a strong argument on the covenantalist side, if that is the right understanding.

If Paul here is identifying new covenant worshipers as all new covenant worshippers as the Israel of God, that would be a very covenantalist way of rendering it, showing continuity between Israel and the Old Testament.

This is not a random, arbitrary verse pulled out of a hat either.

Its existence at the end of Galatians, the book of Galatians is very critical and important in understanding this.

Because Galatians, as I mentioned earlier, is a book about exactly that.

It's about a Jewish heresy entering into the church where there were some Gentiles, but it seems largely Jewish believers with some Gentiles that were being told they must act in a certain way in conformity with the Jewish law in order to demonstrate their Christianity.

This takes place early on in the life of the church.

And you can understand why this would be a critical debate in the church, as you see Gentiles coming to faith, you see Jews coming to faith, and now you get some people that perhaps, I don't know, I'm not saying they were Pharisees, but were Pharisee-ish before their conversion, and now they're in the church, and they're expecting new believers to operate in accordance with the Mosaic law, to not eat certain foods, for example, or to be circumcised, or to circumcise their babies or their children.

And it's causing a point of division in the church.

And the book of Galatians is written precisely on that issue.

And so the book of Galatians, I think, is a key verse, and you can see how if it ends with a declaration that the church is the Israel of God, that would be a strong argument in the covenantalist side.

But I think when you look at the book of Galatians carefully and progressively from front to back, not from back to front, but when you go through the book of Galatians in order, you see that Paul likely has in mind something different in the book of Galatians.

His point here in chapter 6, verse 15, neither circumcision counts for anything or uncircumcision, I would render it this way, that nothing done in the flesh, even something as fundamental and covenantal as circumcision, nothing done in the flesh determines your relationship to Christ.

Nothing done, I go even further, nothing done in the flesh, even if it's a religious or covenantal ceremony, has any bearing on your relationship to Christ.

This is 2 Corinthians chapter 5, where Paul, which came of course after Galatians, but 2 Corinthians 5, where Paul is expressing the same kind of frustration that he sees in himself.

2 Corinthians 5 · chapter mention

Paul says, I vowed then to no longer judge anyone according to the flesh.

Paul, in his previous Pharisee life, used to divide people up between clean and unclean.

And he says he vowed to no longer do that, but to then only see people based upon their relationship to Christ.

It's no longer marks in the flesh, in other words, that determine how someone relates to Christ.

And so in 2 Corinthians 5, Paul says, therefore, if anyone's in Christ, they are a new creation.

The old is gone.

Behold, the new has come.

I think that same attitude is going on through Paul in Galatians 6, verse 15.

Galatians 6:15

Circumcision doesn't count for anything, nor uncircumcision.

But rather, again, he uses the language from 2 Corinthians 5, a new creation.

The old is gone, the new is come.

This is through regeneration, the working of the Holy Spirit.

What a contrast with circumcision in the old covenant, a covenant that was entered through that mark in the flesh.

My mind goes to Nicodemus, who's again a Pharisee who approaches Jesus and wants to know what it takes to enter the kingdom of God.

Of course, he doesn't express that in the form of a question.

It's hidden inside of his heart.

He asks, doesn't really ask Jesus anything.

He says, Hey, Rabbi, you must be a great teacher.

We all say it.

All the Pharisees get together at the water cooler, and we're, we totally think you rock.

Would you sign my Torah?

And Jesus answers him.

I love it when Jesus answers questions that weren't even asked, and says, No one can see the kingdom of God unless they're born again.

Even a circumcised on the eighth day Pharisee of Pharisee rabbi needs to be regenerate, needs to have the Holy Spirit.

And of course, Nicodemus objects strenuously, uh, thinks it's gibberish.

How can I be born again?

How can I climb into a mother's womb?

And Jesus' rebuke of Nicodemus is so on point.

Jesus tells him, You're the teacher of Israel, and you don't know this?

This has always been the case.

You always entered into a relationship with God through faith.

The church brings a newness, though, to this that Paul is stressing here in verse 15.

Anyone who is in Christ is a new creation, the old is come, their circumcision doesn't count for anything, their uncircumcision doesn't count for anything, stop it.

Which is a very odd way of saying it if circumcision entered into baptism took the place of circumcision, if it was con uh contiguous here.

I mean, this would be this would be where he would say that, uh I think, as I read it.

Um verse 16.

As for all who walk by this rule, no, what's the rule he's talking about?

That you relate to God on the basis of faith, not of marks on the flesh.

Peace and mercy be upon them.

You know, this is a standard way Paul ends most of his letters.

Peace is how he ends his uh He has appealed to people that based upon your faith, you have peace with God.

This is Romans 5, verse 1.

Romans 5:1

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God.

And mercy, through having peace with God, you receive mercy.

God puts you in a position of peace with him through faith.

He does not punish you for your sin.

He's poured out your punishment on Christ.

You're now used to be hostile to God.

You were an enemy of God because of your sin, but now through faith in Christ, you're at peace with God.

Because you're at peace with him, he withholds his judgment on you instead showing you mercy.

This is Romans 12, verse 1.

Romans 12:1

I appeal to you, brothers, by the mercy of God, present your bodies as living sacrifices.

So even Paul, as he's talking about sanctification in the Christian life, roots it in mercy back in Romans 12.

So you have peace through your faith in Christ.

You express mercy, you receive mercy on the basis of your faith.

God withholds judgment.

Now, Covenantless and Dispensationalists both agree with all that.

Nothing there is unique to dispensationalism, although I would quickly add that I think were infant baptism a real thing, this would be where you would see it expressed right here.

But other than that, a covenantist would agree with what I just said.

But as you zoom out a little bit and start to think what's going on with the flow of Galatians, here's where you're going to see a difference, I think, between dispensationalists and covenantalists.

As I look at Galatians, I see Galatians teaching the message that no one who is a Jew merely outwardly is a true Jew.

Circumcision is physical in the Old Covenant.

This is Paul teaching this in the book of Romans.

But in the new covenant, your heart is circumcised.

That is independent of the physical mark of circumcision.

It's independent of the Mosaic law.

It is a new thing.

It's done by spirit, not by letter.

In other words, Paul is stressing that the new covenant is not a continuation of the old covenant.

The old covenant which taught circumcision.

Paul stresses that the new covenant is different than that.

It comes by the spirit, not by the letter.

And this gets to the theme in the book of Galatians, of course.

When you look at chapter 1, Paul is rebuking the Galatians.

If you just flip over a few pages in your Bible to look at chapter 1, Paul is rebuking the Galatians because of chapter 1, verse 6, they're deserting the gospel which they were called to go to some other Christ.

And they're seeking approval for sin of man.

And Paul rebukes them for this because he says, I didn't, verse 11, I didn't preach you a man's gospel.

I preach you the gospel of Christ.

And again, please don't misunderstand me as saying Covenillus wouldn't believe this.

Of course, Covenellus would believe exactly, I think, what dispensationalists believe about Galatians 1.

But by stressing that God is glorified through the gospel of faith over the gospel of so-called gospel of circumcision of works.

That's setting the stage for chapter 2, where you're going to start to see some different interpretations of the book of Galatians based upon whether or not your dispensational are covenantal.

In chapter 2, Paul begins to stress that he had Titus with him, and he did not command Titus to be circumcised.

So notice that.

This is chapter 2, verse 3.

Isaiah 2:3

Even Titus, who's with me, was not forced to be circumcised, even though he was Greek.

Because of false brothers secretly brought in who were spying out the freedom we have in Christ to bring us into slavery.

So Paul's making the argument here that circumcision is not for us.

Notice that you would probably think, of course, Titus would be circumcised.

He's not Jewish.

So notice that Paul's setting the framework up here, for there are some that are in the church that are Jewish and saved through faith, of course.

They're in the same body as some who are Gentiles.

They were saved through faith.

They're now one body.

They have union in Christ.

Nevertheless, those that were raised Jewish likely were circumcised, but not Titus.

Look at chapter 2, verse 9.

He says, when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas to me that we should go to the Gentiles.

He doesn't say go to the Gentiles and to the Jews.

He says to go preach the gospel to the Gentiles and to the circumcised.

So he's using this word circumcised throughout the book of Galatians to, in a sense, mark the Jews, describing himself as an apostle to the uncircumcised.

He says that in verse 11, he opposed Cephas to his face because Cephas stood condemned by opposing this gospel of freedom, this gospel of grace.

Look at verse 12.

Before certain men came from James, he was eating with Gentiles.

When they came, he drew back and separated himself, fearing the circumcision party.

There was a fear of those who were in the church but were still holding on to circumcision.

Of course, this was not universal, certainly was not for the Gentiles.

It was creating a division in the church, an ethnic division in the church.

Paul opposed that.

Chapter 3 and chapter 4, dispensationalists and covenantists will likely agree on just about everything in there.

There's a true faith in Israel.

It's kept for the coming of the Messiah in the Old Testament, looking forward to the Christ who fulfills the law in many senses.

You know, dispensationalists might stress the way that by fulfilling the law, the law becomes obsolete in a way that covenantists wouldn't, perhaps, but basically most of what chapter 3 and 4 teaches dispensationalists and covenantals will be aligned on.

But notice chapter 3, verse 27.

For one example, as many of you who are baptized into Christ have put on Christ, there's neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male or female, you're all one in Christ Jesus.

He's speaking of a real unity that all who've been baptized because of their faith have this real organic unity in the church that is distinct from circumcision that was still being practiced by the Jews, so much so they're even identified as a circumcision party.

So you're seeing circumcision and baptism contemporaneous, but circumcision not for the Gentiles.

And the believers in both camps are identified by their baptism, not by their circumcision.

So again, that's just sowing the seeds for what's coming up in chapter five, where Paul goes to war on circumcision.

Look down at chapter 5, where he's talking in verse 1 about the freedom we have in Christ to don't go back to slavery.

Verse 6, it's almost the same thing he says in chapter 6.

In Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything.

Only faith working through love.

So he's rebuking those that are still, look at verse 11, if I, brothers, still preach circumcision, why am I being persecuted?

So who's persecuting Paul?

He already said it's the party of circumcision.

So Paul's, look at the structure of his argument here.

He's saying, if I'm being persecuted by those who preach circumcision, why would they be doing that if I was preaching circumcision?

Which I'm clearly not.

It would be a strange defense if baptism took the place of circumcision.

But it's a defense that makes a lot of sense if you're saying that circumcision was something the Jews practiced under the old covenant and in the new covenant were marked by baptism.

Again, that's how I would understand this.

He goes so far in verse 12.

I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves.

It's again the word for Mark.

I wish they would mark the whole thing.

I wish they take the whole thing off.

He says this is the marking the circumcision does.

I wish they would go all the way.

Now flip back to chapter 6, and you're seeing this new covenant reality, the fulfilling of the law with love and gentleness.

It's like the Paul who wrote chapter 5, verse 12.

He wrote it before he wrote chapter 6 about restoring each other in a spirit of gentleness.

I wish you'd take the whole thing off.

By the way, if one of you is wrong, be gentle in how you correct them.

Chapter 6 is after chapter 5, though.

And then he comes in in verse 13.

Even those who are circumcised do not themselves keep the law.

Even those who relate to God through circumcision are unable to keep the law.

To borrow the covenantless language, they're still operating under the covenant of works.

They're still failing.

Those who are circumcised are still failing to relate to God the right way.

So they want you to be circumcised to boast in your flesh.

But far be it to me to boast accepting the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, which the world has been crucified to me.

Not circumcised, but crucified.

And then back to verse 15.

Circumcision doesn't matter in any way.

Now, with that background, you're to verse 16, and suddenly the statement, peace be upon you, all who have faith, to you and also to the Israel of God, I think makes more sense as speaking of Jews who have come to faith.

They're part of one church, but they are true children of Abraham.

They're not circumcised merely outwardly, but their hearts have been circumcised as well.

They are the true Israel of God.

I don't think it would make sense to identify the Gentiles in the church by that phrase at this point after all he has said about circumcision.

And then it's almost like he spikes the football on that interpretation in verse 17.

Because look what he says in verse 17.

Now let no one cause me trouble, Jew or Gentile, for I bear in my bar body, and here is a common phrase used for circumcision.

I bear in my body the marks, but not of circumcision, the marks of Jesus for persecution for his faith.

So in light of all that, I look at this and see, you know, Paul's not identifying the church, the entirety of the church as Israel.

Although certainly it's fine to say that those who have faith are children of Abraham because we have faith like Abraham did.

We we receive the blessings of Abraham.

Certainly that's true, but we don't take the place of Israel.

We're not the true Israel in the sense that the old Israel is cut off because there remains an Israel of God, Jews who have their faith in the Savior.

They're part of the church, but the day is coming where Jesus will come and establish his kingdom and rule over the world, even through the nation Israel.

So that would be the dispensationalist understanding of this Galatians 6, verse 16, as distinct from the covenantalist one as well.

Galatians 6:16

I hope in anything I said tonight, you don't think I'm saying like covenantalists aren't saved or don't rightly understand the gospel or fall back in legalism or circumcision.

I'm not saying that.

But I do think the dispensationalist understanding of Galatians 6 makes more sense in the flow of the book.

I'm going to spend now the next, I think, four or five weeks teaching on passages in the New Testament that specifically highlight doctrines that are important to dispensationalism.

And so I'm not, I'm going to be done going back and forth between covenantalism and dispensationalism.

In the next five or six weeks, I'm going to be preaching on passages from a dispensationalist perspective that I think will teach you the newness of the church and the novelty of what the Lord is doing in this era and time.

Lord, we're thankful for the gospel.

We're thankful for faith in Christ.

We're thankful for our covenantalist brothers and sisters, especially through church history, as so many of the Scottish covenanters were martyred and shed their blood for the faith and to formulate doctrinal statements that still influence our church today.

We're thankful for their legacy, the legacy of the Puritans, the legacy of those who uh crafted words and concepts we use, even the Westminster divines who formulated the notion of different dispensations through time that we find so important in our own understanding of the Bible.

We're thankful for the common faith we have in Christ, for the union we have through your spirit, which dwells in us both in like manner, and which uh promises a future world in which we will reign together, resurrected.

We long for that day for you to come, and uh we look eagerly forward towards it in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

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I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.