Preaching Christ from all Scripture

Grace Family Baptist Church presents the twenty ten Simple Refrimanda Conference. Today's speaker is Vodi Bacham. His message is titled Preaching Christ from all of Scripture. Welcome to Breakout Session number one. In this breakout session, we're going to be talking about the issue of preaching Christ from all of Scripture. And as we speak about this issue of preaching Christ from all of Scripture, I recognize that not everybody in here as a preacher. In fact, the overwhelming majority of the people in here are not preachers. So what I'm going to do is I'm not going to assume anything. We're going to take this from the most basic level. We're going to talk about basic hermeneutics, which is the art and science of interpreting the Bible and how we apply that to the way we teach the scriptures. Let me tell you about how this issue of redemptive historic preaching became significant to me. There was several years ago, several years ago, I received a letter. It was a glowing letter, just a surpy, sappy, sweet, almost love letter from an Orthodox Jewish woman. And this Orthodox Jewish woman had heard a message that I had preached from the Old Testament, and she thought it was the greatest thing in the world. And when I got finished reading this syrupy, sweet, almost love letter from this Orthodox Jewish woman who had heard me preach a message from the Old Testament and loved it, I wept not because the letter was so sweet, but because she was not offended. And the reason she was not a is because I did not preach the Gospel. I preached the Old Testament the way I've been taught to preach the Old Testament. I went to a particular text and I treated it like it was the only thing in the Bible. And I did an exposition of that particular text. And that particular text didn't talk about Christ. So I didn't talk about Christ. And I just did what I had been taught to do, not what I've been called to do. What I've been called to is preached the Gospel. Regardless of where I am in Scripture, I'm called to preach the Gospel. And as we begin, here's what I want you to grasp. There are very few people in our culture today, very few people in our context today that preach Christ from all of Scripture. In fact, there are very few that even preach Christ when they're preaching New Testament texts unless you're in the Gospels, and in some parts of the Gospels, you get people in some parts of the Gospels and they won't preach Christ, they won't preach the God unless it's Jesus in their paragraph. You know, it's just it just doesn't happen, and we're not scandalized by it, because that's the way we're used to hearing the texts proclaim. Also because the predominant perspective from which we approach the scriptures is a dispensational hermaudic. Now there are two major hermeneutics. There is a dispensational hermaudic and there's a traditional covenantal hermaudic. The traditional covenantal Hermautic is a hermautic that views Scripture as basically one main major storyline as God having one people and God redeeming that one people. Dispensational approach, which is the predominant approach, so much so that it's just assumed people who don't even know the word dispensational are dispensationalists. And because of that, we had this idea that there is this hard break between the New Neo Testament this hard break between Israel and the Church, and God has two peoples and two plans. One of the reasons that you have to have, for example, this idea of you know, the dispensational premillennialism and the rapture and then all this sort of stuff is because God started with Plan A. Plan A was Israel. Plan A didn't work. Because Plan A didn't work, God went to Plan B, which was the Church. Now God didn't completely give up on Israel. He's going to go back to Plan A. But before he goes back to Plan A, Plan B has got to be taken out of here so that he can reach the two Plan A with Israel. Okay, that's the left behind series. That's classical dispensationalism. And we don't realize that that's not just a way of looking at your eschatology. It's a way of looking at the Bible as a whole. And when we look at the Bible in that way and we open up to the Old Testament, what we see is God's word to the people of Plan A. And so what do you get when you're in the Old Testament. You get character studies. And that's all just character studies, and so here's the character Noah. Noah did this and it was good. Noah did that and it was bad. Do the good stuff that Noah did. Don't do the bad stuff that Noah did. Now, the problem with that is that when we read the Old Testament that way, what we end up emphasizing is work's righteousness, because we're going to the Old Testament and we're saying that, basically, the Old Testament exists to teach you how to be a better person. That is, flexing your work's righteousness muscle. You need to be a better person. No, you need Christ. Amen. But if that's the way that we view the Old Testament and we just go there and all we're doing is character studies, you don't come away with the idea that what you need is Christ. You come away with the idea that there are people in the Old Testament who were successful, and they were successful because of the things that they did that were obedient or that were good. There were other people that weren't successful, that were unsuccessful because of the things that they did that were disobedient or that were bad. And so when we go to the Old Testament, all we can come away with is do this, don't do that be like this person, not like that person. And that's generally what we get. But from a redemptive historic perspective, we recognize that God has one people, he has one story, he has one plan. And if he has one people and one story and one plan, then there is a continuity there. So the answer to man's problem is not do better? Where is the answer to man's problem being more like Noah, more like Moses, more like Abraham. By the way, if those guys and being like them were sufficient, we would not have needed Christ. Amen, be more like Abraham. Yes, he needed Jesus to die for his sin, and so do you, amen. And so what we're going to do here, it's begin from the very basics and address this issue to help us understand why it is difficult for us to even think about Christ being preached from all the scripture, and then turn the corner to where we understand the necessity of it, and then perhaps understand a little bit about how we do it. And like I said, we're going to go real slow, not taking anything for granted. We realize that the overwhelming majority of the people in the room not preachers, so we're starting at ground zero. Second, tifty, chapter two and verse fifteen. Your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed rightly handling the Word of truth. That is our call. It's a call for all of us. And here's what we're going to do in order to handle the word rightly. Several things that we need to have in place. Five. I'll give you five for the time that we have. One. We must know the Bible's storyline. We must know the Bible's storyline, which again is something that we don't get. For the most part. We haven't looked at the Bible in that way. We haven't looked at the Bible as a story with a storyline. We've looked at the Bible as these sort of segments, and as a result of that, we don't have an overarching picture of the Bible's storyline. There is a storyline in the Bible, and that's the first thing that we need to do if we're going to handle the scriptures rightly. Know the Bible's storyline. Two, know the Bible's divisions. Know the Bible's divisions. We need to know the Bible's divisions. Three, we need to know the different types of literature in the Bible. We need to know the different types of literature in the Bible. It's very important to know that. For example, if you're reading Shakespeare, but you're reading it as though or in the same way that you read Blackstone's Commentary on the Law, just because you know linguistically it kind of you know similar period. Well, you'd have a problem if you tried to read Shakespeare as though it were Blackstone's Commentary on the Law. Why, because it's a different type of literature. And if you're reading poetry as though it's law, you're going to misread the poetry. Guess what. That's also true when it comes to Psalms and Exodus. Amen, somebody, If I'm reading the Psalms the same way I read Exodus, that is the exact same thing as reading Shakespeare as though I'm reading Blackstone's Commentary on the Law. Different types of literature are to be read differently. Okay, that's why you know in the Bible, people are always do you take the Bible literally? Now, that's a trick question. It's a trap, kind of like when Pharisees tried to trap Jesus. You know, I love it Jesus. They tried to trap Jesus, and he always I just it's beautiful. He's our example. What do you do when people try to trap you? Oh, I don't know. What does Jesus do? Jesus, what is the greatest commandment? That's a trap? It was a trap. What's the greatest commandment? Because they either thought, you know, he's Antonomian, he's promoting lawlessness because according to them, they breaking all kind of laws, or they're trying to, you know, trick him into putting one part of the law against the other. It was a trap. Jesus, what's the greatest commandment? The greatest commandment is love the Lord your God with all your heart. Lawyer your soul, lawy your mind. Now here's the deal, Jesus, what's the greatest commandment? He's supposed to go to Deuteronomy chapter five. He quotes Deuteronomy chapter six, messes them all up. Second one is like it, love your neighbor as yourself. Now here's the other thing that's amazing about that. What he says in the first one is actually a summary of the first table of the law are vertical commandments. What he says in the second one is actually a summary of the Second Table of the Law or the horizonal Commandments. So the trick question is Jesus, what's the greatest commandment? His answer, I'm gonna have to say one through four, followed closely by five through ten. So when people ask do you take the Bible literally? My answer where I'm supposed to. They don't like that. It's a trick question. You're supposed to say yes so that they can go and grab something out of scripture that will be completely ridiculous if you take it literally or no. Wherein you're giving up your ground, you're giving up the Bible. You can take the Bible literally where I'm supposed to. And then they go and before they finish, I say, when the Bible says you shall not kill, I think it means I shouldn't murder you, no matter how mad you make me. But when it says God covers me with his wings, I don't think that makes him a big chicken. You have to know what type of literature you're reading. Four you need to know some basic skills, and five you need to have some basic tools. All right, So whether you are a pastor preaching the Bible, or whether you're a homeschool mom, homeschool dad who's teaching the scriptures at home. This is incredibly important. Let me tell you why this is important, especially on that second level, because here's what happens if we are teaching the Bible. And this is, by the way, this is what's wrong with the way the Bible's taught in Sunday school. Okay, this is just has nothing to do with whether or not we agree with the Sunday School on the whole. But I'm just talking about the way the Bible is taught in Sunday school. Children go to Sunday School and what do they get? They get moralisms. Okay, they go to Sunday School and they get here's the story of Jonah. This is the story of David, you know, and the story of David. David was small and he was a small boy, but he believed God. And so because of David's great faith, David goes out and he fights against the giant. And you need to be like David. And when there are giants in your life, you need to go out and slay the giants like David. It's great. That's self righteousness, it's works righteousness. Sounds good. But if that's what you get week after week after week after week, let me ask you a question. What's the Bible about. The Bible's about working hard to be like the good characters and not like the bad characters. You don't need Jesus for that, and they learn christlessness. They learn christ lessiness through the Bible being taught in that way. Okay, So first knowing the Bible storyline. I don't know the Bible storyline. Number one, Okay, this one is this. You need to write this one down. Number one, Read the whole Bible. That's number one. Read the whole Bible, all of it, from Genesis to Maps. Okay. Number two, study the timeline. The Bible's not written chronologically, so in addition to reading the whole Bible, you need to study the Bible's timeline so that you know when things are happening. Okay, study the Bible's timeline. Number three, study biblical theology. Study biblical theology. It's a lost art, a lost science. Biblical theology, systematic theology we know about. What does systematic theology do well. Systematic theology takes all the great doctrines and looks through all of Scripture to see what scriptures have to say about these great doctrines. Now, systematic theology is important. However, if you have systematic theology and not biblical theology, then you don't have the overarching storyline of scripture, but just these doctrines that you find in scripture and you don't put them into a context. Also, if you don't have a good biblical theology, it will mess up your systematic theology because you don't know the overarching story of redemptive history. Therefore you're not looking at things in their proper context. Okay, So read the whole Bible, study the timeline, and study biblical theology so that you know what is happening in the overarching story of the Bible. Just briefly, let me give this to you for example, Okay, when we talk about this overarching story of the Bible and knowing this overarching story of the Bible and thinking about it from a crystal centric redemptive historic approach, here's how it changes things. Listen to this for example, in Luke chapter twenty four. Luke Chapter twenty four, beginning verse twenty two, they were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body. They came back saying that they had seen a vision of angels. Now these are the men on the road to Amaeas telling Jesus, who they do not recognize because he has not allowed them to recognize him. Huh oh, telling Jesus about the events that have transpired, since he seems to be the only man in Jerusalem that is unaware of what has happened, which is quite ironic because he's actually the only man in Jerusalem who really knows what happened, and they're recounting for him what happened. Okay, some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the woman had said. But him, they did not see. And he said to them, oh, foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Notice he didn't say, oh, foolish one and slow of heart, because that was the Old Testament, and there's no way for you to know me from the Old Testament. But now I'm here, so no, it's not what he said. Your problem is you don't believe what was written in the Old Testament. You don't get my death, burial and resurrection because of what you believe about the Old Testament? Did you catch that? Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures, the things concerning himself. Jesus says, the whole Bible's about him. All of the Bible is about him. John one forty five found Nathaniel and said to him, we have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets, wrote Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph. Philip finds his brother Nathaniel. And what does Philip say? Philip doesn't say, Man, that stuff we've been reading about in the Old Testament that's been blown out of the water. No, Philip, after having met Jesus, goes and finds his brother Nathaniel and says, this is the one about whom Moses the Law and the prophets, that this is the one about whom the Old Testament spoke. John five forty six Jesus says, for if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me Moses right Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus numbers Deuteronomy. What are those books about Jesus. I didn't say that. Jesus said that Acts chapter eight, verses thirty four to thirty six. And the eunuch said to Philip. Remember in Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch who runs alongside the chariot. Eunich said to Philip, he's reading what is he reading? Isaiah? About whom? I ask you? Does the prophet say this about himself or about someone else? Then Philip opened his mouth and said, that's the old testament. Brother. Let me give you some new stuff so that you can get saved. And beginning with this scripture, he told him the good news about Jesus. He preached the gospel from the book of Isaiah. Philip did we have to know the Bible storyline in order for this to make sense? Quickly? Short version, God creates the world. God creates man the crowning glory of his creation. That's Genesis chapter one, Genesis chapter two. We get to Genesis chapter three, and all of a sudden, they're in Genesis chapter three. Things go very badly, and Genesis chapter three, the serpent deceives the woman. The woman gives the fruit to her husband. They both do this so that they could be like God, which, by the way, overturned all of the authority structures that God had put into creation. It was God, the man, the woman, then creation, which the serpent was part of. What happens the creation, the serpent deceives the woman gives it to her husband. Why so that they can be like God flipped everything upside down on its head, and it's a wreck from that moment on. But in Genesis chapter three and verse fifteen we have hope for the first time. The Gospel is proclaimed. In Genesis chapter three and verse fifteen, the serpent is cursed, and God says, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. That's Genesis chapter three. Genesis chapter four, we have the first murder. What is the first murder? The first murder is the serpent saying, loud and clear, I believe what God said. Therefore the seed of the serpent came. Why do I know that he's the seed of the serpent, because first John chapter three tells me so. The seed of the serpent came kills the seed of the woman. Able Why because the serpent believed what God said. But that's okay. In Genesis chapter five we get one of those things in scriptures that we hate, a genealogy. We don't like genealogies because we do not understand the gospel. Why is it important we get a genealogy in chapter five, Well, the seed of the serpent killed the seed of the woman able. The promise seed is the one who is going to deliver mankind. As a result of the fall, promise seed is gone, right, no Seth is born, and there are ten generations between Seth and a man by the name of Noah. Noah's important because the world is gone a haywire. And there in Genesis chapter six and seven and eight we realize God judges the world, floods the world, but the seed is preserved as Noah, shim Ham, Jath and their wives get on the art. Later on we're introduced to a man by the name of Abraham. There is a promise made to him, a covenant in Genesis chapter twelve. It involves a promise seed. Abraham's old. He gets worried, his wife gets worried. They decide they're going to have a son. They can't trust God, so they go to Hagar. They go to Hagar and they have Ishmael. Here's where we discover something. It's not just a seed. It's the seed, not Ishmael or Hagar. It's Sarah, your wife. Ishmael is sent off. Sarah can see she has a son by the name of Isaac. Isaac goes and has twins. He has twin by the name of Jacob, n e Sau. Will the promise see be the older? Absolutely not, It will be the younger. The older will serve the younger. Jacob is the promise see. Jacob continues on the promise seed is going to go forth. Jacob goes and decides he's going to get married. We think it's a love story, but it's not a love story. It's a seed story. He finds Rachel, who is the one one one seven years. He gives up for this girl, goes to bed on his wedding night and wakes up next to the other one one one he gets Leon has to promise another seven years to get the one he wants. But that's okay because it's a love story, right. He gets the one he wants. No, the one he wants can't have children. The one he didn't want in the first place proceeds to give birth to Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah. Now the one he wants is very important because she eventually gives birth to a little boy by the name of Joseph. Why is Joseph important, Well, Joseph is important because Joseph is going to go into Egypt. What purpose does Joseph serve in Egypt? Well, Joseph, through his own mouth, tells his brothers when he reveals himself to them, do not be angry with yourselves. God sent me here. Why to preserve your lives. Story of Joseph is not about Joseph. The story of Joseph is about the promised seed. The promise seed, by the way, is Judah. Well, eventually we have a nation like God promised. They get a law. Do they keep the law? Nope? The law doesn't do it for him. After that, they get a conquering general. Does the conquering general defeat all their foes? No, he does it. Eventually, they get judges. Do the judges do it for him? No they don't. Eventually they get a kingdom and they get a king. Do the kings do it for them? No, they don't. But there's one king who's a special king, and that king gets another covenant in Second Samuel chapter seven, and that covenant entails the fact that he will have a son who will reign on his throne for all of eternity. That king is a great king by the name of David. And eventually we go on, the kingdom is divided and they go into captivity. The prophets come as God's covenant lawyers, reminding God's people of God's word and God's faithfulness, and all of a sudden things go dark, that is until we get to the New Testament, which begins with what a list of names? Why? In the Book of Matthew, God screams, I made a promise in Genesis chapter three and verse fifteen that the Promised Seed was going to come and crush the head of the snake. Here is the line of the promised seed, and here is the promised Seed. His name is Yeshuah, just like the Yeshuah of the Old Testament, who is a conquer king. But that conquering king did not defeat all foes. This, however, is going to be a conquering king who defeats all foes. There was a people. Now he is the people. There was a law. You couldn't keep the law. He's going to keep the law. There were judges, they were insufficient. He is going to be the righteous judge who will judge the living and the dead. We had a kingdom, it was divided and conquered. He has a kingdom that will reign forever more. The serpent indeed bruised him on the heel, but he indeed crushed the serpent's head. And that, in a nutshell, is the one single story of the Bible, and everything in scripture has to be interpreted through that grid. So if I PLoP down and I'm looking at the story of Jacob and Esau and it's just about sibling rivalry, I just missed the most important story in the entire world for something minute. Maybe there'd be some important things there about sibling rivalry, yes, but I better not teach them at the expense of the greater truth. The greater truth is Christ himself. Well, this means we avoid moralizing Old Testament texts. This also means we ask the question, what does this text teach us about God's redemptive plan. This does not mean that every verse in the Bible is allegorized as a story about Jesus. Remember the story of the little boy in the statistical class. What small furry has a long furry tale, lives in a tree and collects nuts. Little boy raises his hand Jesus, No, it's a squirrel. Sometimes we do that with the Bible. We get committed to redemptive historic exposition, and we go to every verse in the Bible, trying to force it and contort it so that they didn't know. Sometimes what you're reading is just connected to Christ in that it's connected to the broader story of redemptive history. You don't have to allegorize every verse. This does not mean that there is no value in the moral examples we see in the Old Testament. But here's the difference. When we see Abraham and his righteousness, here's the question, what do the New Testament writers do with that? I don't have to guess. I can just go to Romans, and Romans will tell me what is significant about Abraham and his life. Here's what's ironic. We go to Abraham and we see Abraham do some great thing, and we say, there you go, be like Abraham. What does Paul say Abraham believe God, and it was created to the Hammer's righteousness. We want to be like Abraham. Believe God. Because Abraham was a sinner from the word, go horrible husband, don't be like him. We want to be like Abraham. Believe God. Believe God. Even when we see great feats in the Old Testament, the only way we can interpret those as great feats is by interpreting them in light of the person and work of Jesus Christ, who is perfection, and we're seeing a small window into his character when we see something done the right way. Well, here's some mistakes that we make in the Old Testament. And I know there were five of those those points that I wanted to give you, and I gave you those five points for those of you who are sitting there hoping that we're gonna get off there all those five. No, we're just gonna do number one. I just thought i'd let you know. I want you to know the five, but we just have time for number one. All right, here's the mistakes that we make when we have the Old Testament. Number one, we assume the irrelevance of the Old Testament. We assume the irrelevance of the Old test that's the left side of the book. It's irrelevant, it's not important. We're not under law, we're under grace. True, but you can't understand grace unless you understand the Old Testament. You can't understand grace unless you understand law. Here's the other thing. Don't make this mistake. We're no longer under law, we're under grace, which means that law bad. Grace good. Really, because if that's true, then in the Old Testament it says you should have no other gods before me, but that was the law. Go get you another god. If you can't say amen, you ought to say ouch. Old Testma says don't make any graving images, but that was the law. You go carve you an ox and bow down. Are you smelling what I'm stepping in? We could go through all ten folks. It is absolutely ridiculous to somehow believe that God tried to give a law that was good, couldn't do it. So Christ came so that he No God gave a law that was good, Man could not keep that law. Part of the goodness of Christ is that he did keep that law. That law is perfect. And not only did he keep that law, but it is Him who works in us both to will and to do his good pleasure. And you better believe that his good pleasure is tied to those absolute moral truths that He has given us throughout the scriptures. Well, does that mean that we need to go sacrifice in lambs and goats. Nope, but we're saved because of a lamb that was sacrificed. Amen. That was good. It was all good. It was a shadow, but it was good. Okay, it was good. Two Missing Christ all together, Missing Christ all together. That's another mistake we make in the Old Testament. We just missed Christ all together. Three getting to Christ too fast. Getting to Christ too fast. Sometimes there's some stuff there that we need to wave through in order that we might understand the significance that Christ brings to bear on the text. And fourthly, flattening Christ's redemptive historic significance. Flattening christ redemptive historic significance. In other words, we just make it a moralism, but bring Christ to the center of the moralism. Here's some examples. One example there is the patriarchs. We've talked about the patriarchs before, but we can go and look at the life of the patriarchs. We look at the life of Abraham, for example, and when we look there at the life of Abraham, we end up going through, here's what Abraham did good. Here's that Abraham did bad. Do the things that Abraham did good. Don't do the things that Abraham did bad. No, the life of Abraham is about the covenant and God keeping his covenant with Abraham in spite of Abraham. Amen, It's about God. If you come away from the life of Abraham going on Abraham, you have missed it. You come away from life Abraham going, Oh, God, you are so good. You can redeem me because you redeem that dude. He gave his wife away twice. God is good. God is good. You look at the life of Abraham, you see a picture of redemption and resurrection and the sacrifice of his son. You see that in life of Abraham. The Exodus and the Mosaic Law, the Exodus and the Mosaic Law. Most people will absolutely stay away from the Exodus and the Mosaic Law. We want nothing to do with the Exodus and the Mosaic Law. We don't understand that what you see there in the Exodus is God calling out a people for himself and saying very clearly, my people are going to be distinct because of the covenant that I make with my people and the purity that I bring upon my people. But you also see, my people are not going to be able to achieve that purity in and of themselves. Eventually, there's gonna have to be a snake raised up in the wilderness. The exodus is that they miss it, and they miss it again and again and again and again, kind of like you and me missing it again and again and again. God, would you please feed me? Followed by I don't like quail any more. That's you, that's me, that's us. Speak to the rock. I know you told me to speak to the rock, but I'm angry. That's you. That's me. God redeems his people. David and Goliath. That's another one. It's the classic example, this picture here of David and Goliath, and all of a sudden, here's David and Goliath. And we've come away from David and Goliath. Basically, here's what we do. We come away from the David and Goliath story basically feeling charged up and I can conquer anything. You know. What's interesting about that David is going to be the king of God's people. David comes to this place where there's a man by the name of Goliath, and Goliath is a champion of the Philistines. Now, a champion is one who represents his people in battle. And what the champion does is issue a challenge to the opponent. The champion says, you send your champion to fight me. I will represent my people. He will represent his people. If I defeat him, I win victory on behalf of all of my people, and your people will serve us. If your champion defeats me, then he will win victory on behalf of his people, and our people will serve him. David, God's shepherd king, represents God's people as a substitute, goes and defeats their adversary, and thus, as a substitute champion wins victory for all of his people, even though they and have to fight. And that's about you. No, that's about David's greater son, Jesus. If you miss substitutionary atonement in David and Goliath, you've missed the Bible. You don't come away from David and Goliath going yeah, I can do anything. No, you come away from David and Goliath going, yes, I have been redeemed by a champion who represented me and won victory on my behalf one is workst righteousness and self righteousness. The other one is all praise to God. Do you see this now? Sometimes that's more difficult to do or to see than at others. For example, when we get to the wisdom literature. It's very difficult when we get to the Proverbs unless we understand that Christ is the repository of all wisdom and knowledge. And when we look at the Proverbs, we see that all wisdom and all knowledge are too and through and from Christ himself. And what we are looking at in the Book of Proverbs is what Christ produces in those who walk with him. Changes the entire way we look at the Book of Proverbs. Now, rather than obey this principle so that your business will be better, amen, because that's what a lot of people have done with Proverbs, Let's just pull it out of its redemptive historics, you know, context, put it into a business book and tell people, here are some principles that God has given you to manipulate the universe so that you can be all powerful. Instead of here's a picture of pure wisdom. By the way, Christ is pure wisdom, and this is what he produces in his people. Here's a picture of the wise man. Here's a picture of the fool. Which one of you? You're the fool apart from Christ. Don't be the fool. Call to Christ. That's way different from you need to do this and not that your life is messed up because you did that and you should have done this. Huge difference. Okay, all right, we have ten minutes, and I promised that I was going to let you ask me questions, so I have to stop here. So not only do we not do numbers two, three, four, and five, we don't get to finish number one completely, but ask me your questions and we'll cover a lot of that stuff that we need to cover anyway, all right, we got ten minutes. You can't be bashful. Go yes, what would you recommend for a studying A couple of things for studying biblical theology? The question was what would I recommend for studying biblical theology? Your hardest vass his biblical theology is I It's it's just it's the biblical theology. But also there's a guy named Graham Goldsworthy and Uh Graham. Goldsworthy has a book called According to Plan, which is another wonderful biblical theology, and I I would, I would recommend uh both of those. Goldsworthy also has a book called Christ Centered Hermeneutics, which is is a great companion to his book According to Plan, So I I would, I would recommend those if you wanna study biblical theology. Yes, how do you what's you put your view of the song or how do I handle song? So it depends on the song. There are different types of songs. So the first thing you have to know is what type of psalm are you reading? Some of the songs are Messianic songs. Those become real easy, y you know, because those are about Christ. Now here's the problem there. If we don't, if we're not thinking about preaching Christ's Small Scripture, and we go to the psalms, then all of a sudden God says something about his Christ. And because we're reading the psalms out of context, because again normally we read the Bible like you read a yearbook. How do you read a year book? When you get your yearbook, you go to the index, find out what page you're on. And then you go look at that page. Okay, And we read the Bible the same way. This is all about me, you know. And so God says something about, you know, about his Christ and the power of his Christ and the authority of his Christ, and all of a sudden, because we're reading out of context, we think is a promise to us instead of being something that is gloriously about Christ. So the way you have to read the Psalms is you have to understand what type of Psalm you're reading. You also have to understand the historical significance of the psalm. So if I'm reading Psalm fifty one, for example, I need to understand it that's connected to David's fall with Bestsheba. I need to understand that so that I put the Palm in its proper context. So the other thing is I need to understand poetry. I need to understand Hebrew poetry so that I understand, you know, what's happening there in the particular songs. And finally, I would say, look at the New Testament. The psalms are quoted all over the New Testament. They the New Testament writers teach us how to interpret the songs. You know, so we put those things together with the we're good, we'll excuse me, we will do a pretty good job of interpreting the songs. But yeah, that's that's part of the wisdom literature. Anywhere in the wisdom literature Psalms, Proverbs, ecclesiastic Song of Solomon. Job. You know, when you get through the wisdom literature, it becomes very difficult because because it's wisdom literature. Yes, yes, well, drawing, bringing actions, yes, why you know, yeah, yeah, great question. You know when you get to when you get to the the law, and you know, I would ascribe to you, you know, you have your you have your civil, ceremonial and moral law there in the Old Testament. And if you have your moral law, which is your transcendent universal law basically summed up in the Ten Commandments, then what we have in the the the Exodus and Leviticus in particular, and then in Deuteronomy, you know, getting repeated again, what we have is a sort of exposition of those ten commandments and the way that they are applied in the life of God's people in in ancient Near Eastern context. That's very important. We have to understand ancient Near Eastern context when it comes to their civil laws and when it comes to their ceremonial laws. One of the things we have to understand is that God is calling his people to be distinct, to be distinguished from those around them. So if I take you know, certain markings on the body, or certain markings on your clothes and things like that, and don't put them in an ancient near Eastern context where I don't understand the peoples who surrounded them, who did many of these things for religious reasons that were connected to the gods whom they worshiped, then I really don't get that at all. So I've got to understand why it was important for God's people to be distinguished by that particular application in a case law to his overarching principles in the moral law, so that I understand how to apply that in a broader context. And you're absolutely right, social Gospel people, they will run, you know, to the Old Testament, for you know things about welfare and you know things of that nature, and just you can't get there from here. You know, it just doesn't work, especially when you recognize that they were a theocracy and we're not. You know, you can't get there from here. We usually what I say to the social Gospel people is I will give you welfare if you give me the stony or homosexuals. They usually don't want to make that trade, so yeah, give you. Yeah. I read the Bible naturally. Yeah, yeah, very good. I read the Bible naturally the way it's supposed to be read. You naturally read poetry the way you read poetry. You naturally read law the way you read law. Yeah, yeah, yes. Are they books that can help me study the timeline of scripture? Yeah, they're actually timeline charts. I can't think of names off my hand, And there are a bunch of timeline charts, and a good study Bible is going to give you some timelines and charge and things like that. But you can actually get books that will be timelines and chart there charts, charts of the Old Testament, charts of the New Testament. There's a series there, their paperback kind of larger paperback books, Charts of the Old Testament, Charts of the New Testament, And they're great at giving you the timelines and different charts to sort of put things in those perspectives for you. But yeah, there's a bunch of tools tools out there like that. I can't think of the Yeah, the Adams Adams chart. Yeah, yes, you're talking about I've already started down realize, Yeah, or about what it really means. Here's a question, cause he said, you know, you think about things like vegietails and those kind of cartoons, which is just absolute moralizing the text. It is Sunday School on steroids, you know. I mean, that's that's our view of the Old Testament. That's it's the morals of the story. The question is do we do we abandon those types of things or do we just keep'em but put other sorts of things in there in there in their h place or or or to to s to support or whatever. He here's my thing. I'll answer it this way, and this will be the last one I have time to answer. So let me answer it this way. I was with a guy who was an apologist, and he's a a boxer. He's a he's a former boxer. Now he trains boxers. This guy from back east, you know, so he's got the you know, kind of new joysyac sent you know, he's got the flat nose and all, you know, and he's talking about these great apologists to one of apologies, and he was talking about boxing, and he was talking about this young fighter and how he was, you know, helping him train this young fighter. And he says, you know what's interesting, I'm sitting there and training these young fighters, and one of the things you have to figure out is how to bring a young fighter along, you know, sort of slowly, he says, because as old as I am, I'm not as fast as I used to be. Now as quick as I used to be, he said, But if I get a young fighter at a certain stage, before he's had a lot of experience and he's got some bad habits, I could beat him. He's stronger than me, he's faster than me, he's eventually going to be a better boxer than me. But if I can get him before he fills those sort of holes, I can beat him just because of the stuff that I know. Now, sometimes that window can close in like a week, where in a week he's got enough things to where okay, now he's cleaned up all that stuff that I would have taken advantage of, there's no way in the world I'd ever be able to defeat this fighter. And his point was, when we're equipping people and apologetics. We don't send them out to be defeated. We make them as strong as we can, and then we send them out to fight. So the question just instead of that particular issue, what do you do with vegetails, what do you do with anything? The question is are my children at a point where they are able to interact with this material in a mature way with their eyes open because they understand what is right and be able to sort of pick this thing apart. Or are we at a place well that will cause some compromise and I think we make a mistake. There's a ditch on both sides of the road. On one side of the road, there's the legalistic ditch. We will not have anything in our life, in our home, in our future, in our you know, there will be nothing like that. And you know, because it's unclean, unpure, gonna be real hard to be effective communicators to the gospel if that's our approach. On the other side, it's just sort of all, you know, bets are off any and everything. I want my kids exposed so that they can, through their exposure be strong enough. No, not at all. What we have to do is we have to bring our children to a place of maturity. We have to help them understand the scriptures. We have to help them understand how to think biblically and sort of take things like that apart, and only then will there be a time when they can be exposed to some things very purposefully. Okay. Unfortunately, when it comes to vegietails, they are designed for children in that phase of life when they are not able to discern, and that's what makes them dangerous. So I would show vegietails to my teenagers, but I don't want to show it to my little kids, because my teenagers we can look at veggietails and we can get you know, and we can sit around and we can oh, wow, that was that was really neat. I really, you know, it's kind of you know, moralized the text or whatever, but you know that was really you know, we could we can do that. My little boys they can't do that, you know. So you have to be careful, have to be discerning, but not just vegi tales. Nine out of ten Sunday school curriculums or homeschool curriculums will have the same problem. Nine out of ten they're gonna have the same problem so I'm not just picking on vegetails here. Okay, this is everywhere, it is the norm. Almost nobody is doing this in a redemptive historic way. Okay, yes, it's one thing that you got through. Luckily we didn't know we were getting. But it does exactly that. It's four kids brings them through adymptive history all the way through. Yeah, wonderful, show me that way. Yeah, good deal. All right, our time has passed. Get out. Let me pray for you, Father. Thank you for the time that we've had over the course of this weekend, for the things that you continue to teach us. May we continue to strive to know you, to love you, to serve you well. Pray this in Christ name and for His sake. I. For more information about Grace Family Baptist Church or the topics discussed during the twenty ten Simple Reprimanded Conference, please visit our church website at Grace Family Baptist dot mat