Polemics, Lutheran, Reformed & Presbyterian Churches
Romans 8:1-4 · Randy Peterman · Aug 20, 2006
Polemics, No. 21
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262359376915

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

All right, well this morning we're going to be talking about a little bit of church history that has actually made its way into church present. So we're going to talk about Lutheranism, Reformed Theology, and Presbyterian churches, which is really a lot of material for 45 minutes.

So we're going to try to go through it. Everybody who here in this class has actually taken the church history class before? That's a lot of hands. That's a good chunk of people. All right. How many of you have taken not church history classes that are still history classes? Oh, that's a disparaging number of hands. Or discouraging, not disparaging. That's different.

How about a history class in school? That's what I'm asking for. That's all the hands. I feel better about that. Some of you have lived through history more than I have. That's probably good. That is not an insult. Oh my gosh. This is the wrong classroom.

You have more history than I do. But see the thing is I actually was a history major in school. I love history. So when I say living through history, I mean that's exciting stuff for me. For those of you listening on the recording, that's a lie. No, just kidding. I actually did major in history in school. I'm not lying up here. I shouldn't say that.

What was one of the major technological advances that changed the dissemination of information before the internet? The printing press. About 50 years after the printing press, amazing things happened in the theological world. Martin Luther had access to a lot of documents that prior to the printing press would have been very difficult to get not just the whole Bible, but also the Greek and Hebrew texts and other theological resources.

So when we talk about Lutheranism or Calvinism or Reformed Theology and the Presbyterian Church, we're talking about things that happened historically because of a major technological advance. Well, that and people were taking advantage of the technological advance. Yes? Was that the birth of the Gutenberg Bible?

The Gutenberg Bible obviously came about from the printing press, but Luther had a lot of material made available to him, as well as many theologians and believers alike. Because about 50 years before he put the 95 Theses up on the door in Wittenberg, you had the printing press there, and so information was made available. That was a major impact on theology, because instead of you going and having to listen to somebody else tell you what the Bible said, you could have access to a Bible a lot more easily. Now, I'm going to clarify also that Bibles were still incredibly expensive, even though they could print them, because it was a lot of work to make all the pages and get everything put together. But you start having information spread across more readily to people and so when Luther presents the 95 Thesis... Does anybody remember from your history classes, I'm sure that in your secular history classes they still even mention this briefly, what was the purpose of posting the 95 Thesis?

The indulgences, wasn't he horrified at what the Catholic Church was doing. There were specific issues with indulgences. I guess maybe I'll rephrase the question because that's the correct answer to the way I asked it. What was Martin Luther trying to cause to happen in theological circles? Change within the Roman Catholic Church. And he wanted to start discussion. Was he looking to get cast out from the Roman Catholic Church and to go have to hide in a castle? He was reforming, attempting to reform the Catholic Church. Yeah, he wanted to just cause everybody to take a look at the Bible and stop and go back and look. and get their theology on track with what the Bible said.

That would be really valuable for lots of reasons, especially accuracy in theology, but also as people come in contact with the Bible because they can get one more readily, or can go visit one at the library or church somewhere, they're going to read it for themselves. How many of you have Bibles everybody in the room, I hope, I think, this morning has Bibles. How many of you have multiple Bibles? I have lots. I don't know how many I have.

I've actually got one Bible that has four translations side-by-side, and it's a massive Bible, but I mean it's good for beating off Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses. No, I didn't say that either, but the thing is it's really big, and I got four translations, King James, Amplified, the New American Standard, and NIV, all right next to one another, and I can check them out. I can see and compare various translations and work on it, and I can study it for myself.

So what Luther is concerned with when he posts the Ninety-Five Theses is reforming the theology within the church because he knows people are going to have access to this content and be able to start thinking about it themselves. That's not a bad thing, is it? To say, hey, people are going to be thinking about this, we better be ahead of the curve, so to speak. So Luther posts those things.

Then in 1509, 1483 to 1546 is Luther's lifespan. John Calvin in 1509 to 1564. So you can see there's an overlap in their lives. John Calvin is propagating his Calvinist views in Geneva, Switzerland. as much talk as there is about Switzerland always being neutral and always having peace. Calvin's followers really were not big fans of other theologians and were known to off people who were getting in the way, but that's another story. They were considered heretics so they justified the killing of them because they were heretics. So Calvin comes around in 1509 to 1564, but he starts teaching in 1525 and disseminating Calvinistic views.

How many of you have been introduced to the term Calvinism? Everybody's familiar with that? I'll ask a really loaded question. Why not? How many of you consider yourself to be a Calvinist? You don't have to answer that, but just a raise of hand if you consider yourself a Calvinist. All right. How many points? Are you fine? Actually, I'm glad to see that nobody raised their hands. But the truth of the matter is that The five points of Calvinism are a really drastic reduction of some of the things that Calvin was teaching.

How was what Calvin was teaching similar to what Luther was teaching? In the sense of dealing with the Roman Catholic culture that to that date had been around. He was contrasting the Roman Catholic culture, but what was he using as a source to say that we need to change the way that we're doing things in Christianity? Well, he was opposed to the Catholic Church certainly more. Whereas Luther was reforming the Roman Catholic Church, Calvin was distinctively opposed to it, was he not? Yeah, Calvin was opposed to the Roman Catholic Church.

What I was kind of looking for is the concept that, again, the Bible is the source. So what does the Bible say? So you get this shift from the Bible says what the church says the Bible says, in whatever church tradition is, to this concept, how many of you have heard the phrase sola scriptura? which I believe is Latin for scripture alone. I don't speak Latin or know Latin, so I'm going to take the translation as what I've been told it means.

Anyways, then we come into, after Calvin, we come into John Knox, who was very militant. He's from Scotland. He started fostering a civil war and established the Presbyterian Church in Scotland. So we're talking about the Lutherans, the Reformed group of Calvin, and the Presbyterians this morning. That's a very brief and short, is an understatement, history of kind of the people that were behind these movements. But we want to take a look at some of the tenets and ideas behind these These different groups, they all have different geographical regions, don't they? Of where they're at. We have Luther in South Africa. Luther was in Germany. So Calvin's in Switzerland and John Knox is in Scotland.

So we have three different geographical areas where there are these ideas that are being promoted, but there's some differences in culture as well. And so that's going to affect the way some of these ideas spread. Yeah, Marilyn. When I was over in Austria and Germany, I thought they were mostly Protestant, but they're mostly Socapian. Yeah, they're very Catholic still. We're going to take a look at why that is, actually, in the next section here. So I think you'll find that relevant. Let's take a look at this bullet point list here at the bottom of page one.

It says, whatever aspects of the Roman Catholic belief system that were not rejected were substantially retained or adapted by these movements. So Luther, because he didn't want to leave the Catholic Church didn't reject all of Catholic theology. What was Luther focused on? He was worried about salvation. How do you get saved? What does the Bible say about salvation? Because he obviously, with indulgences and other things, saw that there were some issues within the Catholic Church.

Does that cover eschatology or end-time studies? Does that cover sanctification? Does that cover... there's a whole long list of things that that doesn't cover. Salvation is one focus, and even though our theology is intermingled, so to speak, it really is focused on one specific issue, and that's salvation.

So that means that they're not dealing with some of the other issues that are part of the Roman Catholic Church, so they embrace it. Over time, other theologians are going to step in and go, hey, no way. I don't like that. there's this concept that they're focusing on salvation first. But once people get salvation worked out historically, then other theological issues come up that they try to address. So if we were looking at things in a church history class, if you haven't taken it, I recommend that as a good introduction to the history of various theological ideas.

Salvation was the first point. Calvin was talking about salvation. Luther was talking about salvation. and Knox as well. So the first thing there is that whatever they didn't reject from Roman Catholicism, they embraced or adapted. Try to fit it into their theological work. But their area of focus was salvation.

Now this is an important next point here. Alliance with or establishment of a sympathetic political and military system. Did the Roman Catholic Church have military ties? I think we can say yes then and even still now there's some opinions of that. The Crusades are definitely an example of that. Is the Vatican its own sovereign nation state? It still is. So military things tied in. What's the problem with military and politics and religion all being tied into one organization, culturally. Yeah, the king can use the church as is necessary to get things accomplished. The church can use the king to get certain things accomplished.

How many of you have read, actually, like the Three Musketeers? Or the Count of Monte Cristo? Those are historical fiction. But the thing is that I've read both those books and it's amazing how much politics and religion are interwingled and mixed together in those books. And historically that was the case. I'm sorry, what? Interwingled, yeah. I'll explain it. Interwingled is a term that's actually used on the internet to describe information being related.

Anyways, so the next point on this list here is the church replaces Israel taking the benefits promised to Israel. Now is that something that the reformers came up with or did they get that from Rome? Does anybody know? They got it from Rome. The reformers just embrace this idea. The Roman Catholic Church believes that the church took over where Israel left off. I'm going to come over here to the whiteboard to draw it. This is a good illustration. If I had PowerPoint slides, I'd probably use that.

Instead, I want to pretend I'm Bob Ross. You don't know who Bob Ross is? Oh, man. He was on PBS. This is going to be Abraham right here. That's the zero. That's the starting point or I'm sorry, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And then Israel comes about and then here's the cross of Christ. Okay. And then moving down the line here, we have the church. Well, this was their model of the dispensations.

Now, how many of you remember on Sunday mornings when you get to see the arrows that get thrown up that my dad uses when he's teaching? Wow, that's a great arrow. That's a fantastic triangle. I am not Bob Ross. He's the guy that teaches painting, for those of you who don't know.

So we have the Gentiles, we have the Jews, and we have the church. This is a very simplified dispensational model. This is the way Holly Hills teaches it. If you've heard of Dallas Theological Seminary, if you've heard of... well, there's other seminaries that go along this line.

The Roman Catholic and Reform model basically just says it's all one line and it all is based off the same... doesn't matter about genetics or ethnicity or anything else. the church actually existed prior to Christ. It was just known as Israel, and before Israel it was known as the saints that go back to Adam and Eve. Does everybody understand the contrast there? So you've got a pretty significant difference theologically now since the Brethren, well before that, but distinctively the Brethren emphasized that with Darby.

But yeah, it's replacement theology. Who said that? Oh, right. There we go. I was like, wait a minute. Somebody whispered it. I heard somebody call my name in the parking lot, too, earlier. And I was like, what the heck? So you kind of get this idea that the church replaces Israel was carried on from Roman Catholic teaching.

It's not the same model that you see taught here at Holly Hills, but we're not reformed. The next point down here is retention of allegorical interpretation regarding end times or eschatological passages. This is probably one of the key areas of contention today that I get harassed for all the time by my Reformed friends. They make fun of me in the rapture and I make fun of them for thinking that Adam and Eve knew the gospel. So, we go back and forth about that. We don't make fun of them, that's not the right term.

So, allegorical interpretation, if it's prophetic, they don't interpret it literally, period. Except, there's exceptions. For example, like Isaiah 53, the prophecy of the Messiah. Do they take that literally or do they take that figuratively? The Reformed theologians, sorry. They, them. those people. I take it as, in context, it is a literal prophecy of the Messiah doing certain things that he did fulfill literally.

Some of the language is metaphorical, isn't it? Some of the language in prophecy speaks about things metaphorically, but that doesn't negate the literal intention of the message. So when they look at things allegorically, they say it's prophetic, and it's allegorical. Now, there are some Reformed people in modern times, and even still, like origin back in the third century, I believe it was, who would say that there's multiple allegorical interpretations. So then you get into trouble. Like, for example, when John John, when Paul was shipwrecked, they'll take that as an allegorical interpretation of God splitting the church and sending it out all across the globe. Does the text say that literally? Can you prove that from the text consistently using a hermeneutical principle? No. It's an extrapolation. That's a problem, basically.

Like we've talked about with the Mormons and the Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh-day Adventists and all these other groups, Church of Christ, scientists, all of them use allegorical interpretation to get what they want. Can you argue against an allegorical interpretation? The answer is no, because it's your allegorical interpretation against my allegorical interpretation. And since it's subjective, It's like belly buttons, everybody's got an opinion. But how do you argue it? It's not, it's just opinion. So anyways, allegorical interpretation becomes problematic.

Amillennialism and later postmillennialism. Anybody familiar with those terms if I say amillennialism? That means no literal millennium or thousand years. Postmillennialism is actually interesting. That's the idea that the church is going to usher in the kingdom. We're just going to evangelize the whole world, everyone's going to become a Christian, and then Jesus is going to come back. So it's really polar opposite from a pre-millennial position, which is the world's going to get really bad, and then Jesus is going to come back. We're going to make it better, and then Jesus will come back. So all post-millennialism, the church ushers in the kingdom, and all-millennialism, we're in the kingdom.

Is that the way it is? All-millennialism is there is no kingdom, really. There's variations on it. The kingdom of God is in your heart, or something like that. Yeah, the kingdom of God is in your heart. They'll use that. The all-millennialism, there's actually a couple of variations on all-millennialism.

Preterism being probably the most popular one. Have you heard of R.C. Sproul? He's a preterist. There's variations on kinds of preterism. As you can tell, eschatological issues, they breed division like nothing else. There's so many variations on end times views.

But if you allegorize everything, then you don't really have to take it on with great intensity, because you've not made it a literal, easy to understand concept. So then you can just say, well, that's hard to understand, and then you move on. You do something else. You go some other direction. Because the eschatology stuff, it just breeds division and contention, and we don't want to do that.

Interestingly enough, when I was working at the Christian Bookstore in Nevada, I had a Reformed guy that came in all the time. his name was John, and he gave me a commentary, or myself and Jessica, a commentary set from John MacArthur for our wedding, because he agreed with John MacArthur's salvation, Calvinistic perspective, but John MacArthur was more dispensational, and he knew I was dispensational, so it was like a compromise wedding gift.

But John asked me one day, he said, don't you want the whole Bible to apply to you? And that's an important question you need to ask yourself. Do you want the whole Bible to apply to you? I'm going to tell you, I do not want the whole Bible to apply to me.

You know what I'd really like? If I was going to just pick a part that I could have just apply to me, it'd totally be Genesis 1 and 2. Because that's before the fall. But I can't do that. So he asked, do you want the whole Bible to apply to you? And how could you do that in a dispensational model? You can't.

If you look at, coming back to my lovely drawings, if it's all one long line, then of course it all applies to you, because it's all part of the church. From Adam and Eve, Genesis verse 26, when God says, let's make them into our image, moving forward, all mankind fits into the same basic area. Once the fall happens, then they have to believe that Jesus would die for them on the cross, And they just believed that it was going to happen, which is a little hard to prove from Genesis 3. But the Reformed teaching is that salvation was always by the same gospel message. The problem is you don't find the gospel message in the Old Testament. You see a prophecy of a Messiah. But anyways, I'm off track there. I'm sorry. Next point.

Sanctification by rule of law such that the law is your life. A message initially conveyed alongside political and military enforcement of the law. Now, having the law as your life is really convenient if you're a military leader or a political leader because you can pull out people's spiritual life out in public and mess with them. You're going to obey because your salvation.

Pardon me, I'm going to close this just a little bit because it's a little loud. I know, okay, let's have some more reform jokes. But the law being part of your life, we've talked about in various Sunday School classes, I know already, and we're going to talk about it again just because that's part of the topic. Is the law your life as a Christian? Christ is your life. Is the law in your life some? Do you get some law? Do you get like 10% law? No takers on 10%? Okay. The thing is that the law is not our lives. Did we die to the law? Did Romans 6 say that we're identified with Christ on the cross so that we're dead to the law? Okay.

Excuse me. The next point here, persecution of Anabaptists, those who hold to baptism of only believers. The Reformed Church carried on the Roman Catholic idea of infant baptism. And so there was this idea that, hey, the Anabaptists who taught that only believers should be baptized, which meant that you didn't baptize them as infants, because at infancy they weren't believing anything other than that they wanted milk and sleep, and their diapers changed, they said, let's wait till they get older and then we'll deal with this concept. Well, they carried on this concept of infant baptism as well. But doesn't the Catholic Church think that infant baptism makes them holy? Yeah, part of that, and infant baptism is part of your salvation. If they were to die prior to, or I'm sorry, after being infants and being baptized, then that makes them, you know, they're part of the Roman Catholic Church, which is their inn.

You know, they've got the foot in the door, so to speak. Which is convenient. Unless, of course, you believe in grace, in which case you say, okay, the Lord knows that that little child did not have the mental, you know, cognitive capabilities to deal with the situation. And you look at David with the baby that died after he bathed Sheba, and he says, I'll see the baby in heaven. And you go, OK. All right, that's good enough for me.

I don't think there needs to be infant baptism. You take a look at, there's this concept that the baby isn't old enough to make a choice. The Lord is gracious, and you move on. The Lutherans also teach that you have to be baptized to be saved. OK. I didn't run into that, but I'm not going to disagree with it either. The Lutheran Church does have what's called catechism. Anybody familiar with that? Just like the Roman Catholic Church? Yeah, there's a lot of ritual from Catholicism that has been just carried right over.

We need to take a brief look at where things are currently. We said some things where they were historically when these movements started and take a look at them now. I think some of the major Major key points are here. Political and military connections have now been dropped altogether.

You're not going to find, other than, obviously we said the Roman Catholic Church still is on city-state in the Vatican, but you're not going to find significant military and political alliance with a religion. The Anglican Church is still respected as being tied to the royalty in England. but there's not a lot of military power behind the Anglican Church where they're able to, you know, come in and rough anybody up and say, you know, bring on your tithe. Most of these movements have redirected their efforts toward earthly impact in the direction of social action, okay? So we're going to get everybody to be Christians so that we can usher in the end times, or everybody needs to be a Christian so that they can fulfill the law in their lives and be good and the society will be nice anyways. It's social, and it ends up having a lot of... And that's a bit of an oversimplification, or generalization, because there are reformed people. For example, Alistair Begg. Are you familiar with him? You may have heard him on the radio. He's got an accent, so I always get wooed in by his attractive voice. I listen to him on the radio, and I'm like, man, I could listen to him for hours.

He's definitely not one out there to just make everybody a Christian so that we'll all be socially better people. So I'm not going to use a broad generalization, but as an example, he definitely is an exception to that. But there has been within these movements a general trend in Reformed theology towards a lot of just social adjustment. Make everything better socially. Let's see here.

The second half of this second paragraph in this section, some elements of these denominations have softened on the law is your life as a foundational teaching. But many in these denominational movements still look upon the ministry of the Holy Spirit as empowering the believer to live out the moral law. Is the Holy Spirit involved in making us better and do and fulfill the law? or what does the Holy Spirit do in our lives? He empowers us to have relationship, maybe, would you say? We get relationship, but He doesn't make us just fulfill the law. What was the purpose of the Old Testament law culturally? I'm sorry, what? To show us our sin? Okay, Paul writes that the law is there to show us how sinful we are. But what was the cultural impact of the law? Did the law change the way that they lived? It had to do with their diet? Had to do with their haircuts and their clothes? It set them apart, didn't it?

Yeah, that's what I was really looking for. It set them apart culturally. When God sent them in to wipe out the Canaanites, it was because the Canaanites' culture was super wicked. One of my favorite things is people who hate Christianity and hate the Bible say, look, this God wants to kill everybody. No, that's not the case. Look at the context. Do you like infant sacrifice? They were saying, no, we don't like infant sacrifice. God says that's wrong. Go take care of the infant sacrificing people.

But it set them apart. Once they took over the land, there were still surrounding countries, weren't there? Those countries would still try to influence them. But if they had a law that was a culture, not just a bunch of rules, but also a culture, That's going to keep them separate. Is the Holy Spirit a culture? That's maybe a little crass to say it that way. Does the Holy Spirit cause culture? Can you say that?

It's going to cause fellowship. He, what he does in our lives, is going to cause fellowship. He's going to cause unity. He's going to cause growth and relationships with people. and he's going to cause us to love. And that is sort of cultural. It's going to cause there to be maybe a loving culture.

But it doesn't affect our clothes, does it? What the Holy Spirit does in our lives doesn't affect our clothes. This is not sanctified clothing. I can promise you that it was expensive. I had it for an interview, but it was not for my sanctification. These clothes don't make me more or less in fellowship with the Lord, do they? Nor does my haircut. Let me tell you, the hairs that I have left get cut and that does not change my relationship with the Lord.

But that would impact, in the law, the way that people would be relating to one another, wouldn't it? It would affect their culture. How about foods? Does the Holy Spirit cause us to only eat fish on Fridays? He doesn't? Well, that's a bummer. Just kidding. If my mom doesn't like fish, she's not in here. But she'd be like thanking the Lord publicly for that. Now that's on the recording. Sorry, mom. The truth of the matter is that the Holy Spirit does not cause culture, but the law did.

The law was cultural. That's why even today there's a Jewish reggae artist by the name of Amaris Yahu and he sings about the law and he dresses like a conservative Jew would trying to fulfill the law and he's up on the stage doing Jewish rap, reggae stuff. It's really entertaining music but I listen to the lyrics and I'm just like, oh my gosh, because he just wants you to fulfill the law, fulfill the law, and I'm like, oh wow. People are paying money to be told to listen to the law and then rejecting it. But that's American entertainment for you.

We'll buy anything. So we can say what the law is and we can see that. We talked already about replacement theology. That's part of what goes on there. That's why they want to embrace the law in the believer's life. The law is good for the Jews. It's good for the church. We're just the continuation of Israel.

So that's a problem when it comes down to our own lives. If we say there is no law for the believer, but we should abide in the Holy Spirit, what does that lead to? In contrast, when you're dealing with somebody who is saying the law is still involved, the Holy Spirit is going to enable you to fulfill the law. Well, that's going to affect my hair and my diet and my clothes. And when do we have our church services? What day is this? It's not the Sabbath. And we don't start at Friday night and get over on Saturday night.

That's the way the Jews would do it. In fact, I have some Messianic Jewish friends in Texas, and due to tradition, not legalism, but due to tradition, that's when they have their celebration. Because it doesn't really matter when you celebrate your study of God's Word together as a body. The idea is to have the fellowship, and to get together and study God's Word together. They happen to have that as a tradition.

Some churches have their services on Saturday and Sunday, is for the convenience of the Saturday goer so that they can go play golf or whatever they want to do on Saturday. So it isn't from a Jewish point of view, it's for a convenience point of view.

Yeah, I actually used to be part of a worship team on Saturday nights in Reno, Nevada with that purpose. It was like a Saturday night service. They were full up on their three services Sunday morning. I was part of the Saturday night team that helped do Saturday night.

It was convenient. It was actually really convenient for me, but I was different. I didn't like to golf Sunday morning. I'm not a golfer. But I agree. The day of the week doesn't matter so much, but that's one area of the Ten Commandments. Everybody likes the Ten Commandments. Let's pick the Ten Commandments and make them part of the Church. and what we're supposed to do, but the Sabbath is definitely not set aside.

Now let's take a look at Romans 8, 1-4 because this is often used as a justification for the law being in the life of the believer. It's actually printed out for you at the bottom of the page here. It says what Romans 8, 1-4 does say is, and there's Romans 8, 1-4, Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. And as an offering for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.

So the question is, is that passage saying that we will fulfill the laws, believers, while we're walking in the Spirit? Does it say that the Holy Spirit is going to enable you to fulfill all 613 laws? Does it say the Holy Spirit is going to enable you to fulfill the Ten Commandments? Does it say that the law is going to be fulfilled in our lives because of the Holy Spirit at all?

No. So then what does it say? And that's what's the next set of sentences here. This verse is not saying that we are fulfilling the law with the Holy Spirit's help and empowerment, but rather that what was accomplished in our identification with Christ's death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seating is to place us in Christ so as to have and live out His very life and righteousness, which the law could never bring about or address.

Roman 6 is real key in the equation of dealing with the law. In fact, I recommend going to the website and downloading this morning's Romans class because my dad is in that class this morning teaching specifically on the passage talking about us being dead to the law. So that ties in with this morning. So download it or get a tape if you have a tape player. So that's definitely something to keep in mind.

We're actually spiritually separated from the law. That's what Romans 6 says. We died with Christ and were identified with him. And because of that death, we are separated from the law. Separated from it. So why would we fulfill that which we're separated from?

And the last sentence on that second paragraph on page three says, so saying that the law is an essential part of the believers living out the life of Christ is very much like saying that the sin nature is an essential part of the believers living out the life of Christ. We died to the law and we died to the flesh. So saying that we have to have the law is equivalent to saying that the sin nature is an important part of our living out the life of Christ, which I think would be considered heresy.

So let's not say that. Now we need to take a look at the allegorical interpretation. Before we get there, being in Christ doesn't give we as christians the liberty to break the law i mean we shouldn't what law uh... and commander as a christian being in christ i have i should have no desire or liberty to murder someone i may but uh... it doesn't give me i'm not off scott free we had it's certain i'm not saying that it certainly gives us liberty to go out and do wicked acts.

However, the believer is subject to the relationship with the Holy Spirit for righteousness. Right? Your righteousness is not measured by the law. Your righteousness is measured by obedience to the Holy Spirit. But I think that, or the scripture says, where is it?

Romans 6.1. Yeah.

So that we're not at liberty We're not at liberty to break the law. Well, okay, but the problem is that you can't just make it the Ten Commandments. The idea is that we're still going to do, if we're abiding, we're going to be doing righteous things. That's going to include not murdering people. But it also means that we don't measure our righteousness by the law, because what you have is the opportunity to exceed far beyond anything that the 613 laws could have ever put in place. If God were to write down his righteousness, and we've talked about this the last couple times, the Bible would be so immense. It would fill the world. We couldn't store it on this planet.

It's kind of like a coin. A coin has two sides. I'm sorry. A coin has two sides. The front of a book has the cover and the back. Yeah, I guess I'm not fully understanding what you're referring to. The law is not... We're not subject... You can't just have the Ten Commandments as when you say the law. You have to have all 613. And that's the problem, like I said, with our hair or working.

There were major issues theologically for the Jews At the time, because when we look at the life of Christ even, when He and His disciples were grabbing the grain to eat, didn't some of the Pharisees say they were working on the Sabbath? Were they working? No. How about David? The Jews loved David, except for David went in and ate the holy bread. Because that was the only food that they had when he went to the location that he was at. They had the holy bread, that was it. So he and his men ate it.

Now, would that be against the law? You betcha. Do the Jews hate David for being a lawbreaker? No. The truth of the matter is that they were inconsistent in their application of things and not recognizing that the law is for the thinking individual. The law can be brought to contradict itself. if you find yourself in the right situation. Yeah?

Didn't Paul say, I live by the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus? Yeah, the law of the spirit of life. And the law, or the rules of the spirit of life, are not the 613 laws of the Old Testament. Instead, his rules, the rules that he abided, were the ones of the Holy Spirit's direction. And he's using language that's familiar to the Jewish listener to make a point. He's not trying to confuse us with the law, being the Old Testament law, just being fulfilled by the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit motivates us to go beyond anything the law requires.

You know, if we hate somebody, the Lord said, you know, you kill them, in so many words, and that's beyond this We could be a mass murderer out there on the freeway, you know. Yeah. Hating people that are... Driving crazy. Not walking in the spirit of God. It's not Christ's life.

Yeah. We don't live by a do list of commandments. We live being led by the spirit of God. Yeah. It motivates us to a much higher plane of living than the commandments. Sure. And I think that's a key part of our lives as Christians is we understand that the law is not tied in. It frees us to focus on Him. If Colossians 1 says, set your mind on things above, is the law the things above? No. Who is the things above? Christ. Set your mind on things above where Christ is seated in the heavenlies.

That is our focus in our life. Now I want to say that I've had lots of conversations with Reformed folks and they will swear up and down and agree with you agree with you that salvation is by faith alone. Salvation is by the grace of God. So even though they may want us to fulfill the law in various regards, they're going to agree with you that salvation is not by works, it's by faith. They just think that the works are gonna be a result of the Holy Spirit in their lives that are gonna tie in with the law.

We just divorce the law from ourselves altogether at Holly Hills and in a dispensational context. What two commandments did Christ give? Look in me for yourself. Okay. Is the Holy Spirit going to cause you to do that? If the Holy Spirit is going to cause you to do that, then that's the Holy Spirit doing it. It's not the law. it's still the Holy Spirit. And that's the point of the Christian life.

There are things that will be paralleled. They're going to be similar in certain regards. You're probably still not going to murder people, probably shouldn't be coveting, shouldn't be taking the Lord's name in vain, because you're going to be looking at the Lord. You're seated in the heavenlies with Him. But those are not things that are because of the law, they're because of the righteousness. of the Holy Spirit working through our lives.

The allegorical interpretation is very important. I'm going to recommend that everybody read this now about the allegorical interpretation section at home for homework. Other than, we'll take a brief look at some of these bullet points, because you're going to see how the allegorical interpretation affects things. Top of page four, where their bullet points are, it says, we Christians are supposed to take over the government and enforce God's law upon all. Because the law is tied in, we need to enforce law on people. That's a problem. Obviously, during the Crusades, that caused some issues.

That's not missionary work. Well, that's different. We won't go in there. But the idea is that that's not the work of the Holy Spirit, is it? Coming in and whacking the law on somebody is not the Holy Spirit's work. That's bondage. That's not freedom of the Holy Spirit, that's not liberty, that's bondage.

There are lots of other issues. Now, how many of you have heard that the Jews are responsible for Christ's death on the cross and so therefore the Jews are probably not great people? You won't hear that from me. For the record on the recording, legally, I do not hold that view. The problem is that some people look at the Jews as being responsible for Christ's death and that's a problem. Darn those crazy Jews for doing that. Instead of understanding God's plan for Christ on the cross. To me, that's the amazing thing. God worked this out.

This last Tuesday on the Tuesday night study that we've been going over the foundations class, we went through Genesis 3. right as soon as Adam and Eve fall, they make their little fig loincloths or whatever they are, God shows up, and when he's going through the consequences of the serpent, what's the thing he says to the serpent about the woman's seed? Does anybody remember? It's the first prophecy. Okay, so the prophecy of the Messiah comes immediately after the fall.

Were there Jews involved in that prophecy? It didn't matter that there were Jews. God was like, this is between the woman seed and Satan and I've already planned it to take care of it. It's not Jewish. It doesn't matter that the Jews happened to be involved as agents of God's plan. So it's very awkward for me to get angry about They get upset that there's some kind of racism to embrace Israel specially or anything else. No. Then the question is, how do we as non-reformed folk interact with reformed people in a godly fashion?

Go back to the word. If you haven't taken the hermeneutics class, there's recordings of the hermeneutics class. They may do it again as an elective. Please, please, please, please take that or ask for the tapes or ask them to get it up on the website. I'm not in charge of getting the MP3s up on the website.

Whatever it takes. learn that material because when you come to the reformed person you're going to come up to the allegorical interpretation issue and you need to have your foundation set in place so that you can understand the issues involved with that. Again and again that's what comes up when I talk with people who are reformed, it comes down to the interpretation stuff. But when we come in contact with all people, we got down here on the bottom of page 4, James 3, 13 through 18, Who among you is wise in understanding?

Let him show by his good behavior his deeds in the gentleness of wisdom. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, do not be arrogant and so lie against the truth. This wisdom is not that which comes down from above, but is earthly, natural, demonic. For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there is disorder and every evil thing.

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering without hypocrisy, and the seed whose fruit is righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace." Now, before it gets taken out of context, I want to state that we're not saying that Reformed people are earthly natural and demonic, okay? The point is the second half of this passage, that as believers, we should be pure, peaceable, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, unwavering without hypocrisy. So when you come in contact with anybody you disagree with, whether they're Mormon, Jehovah's Witness, Reformed, any theological perspective, your attitude towards them should be loving, shouldn't it? you will be loving God first and then your neighbor.

But that's the Holy Spirit working in our lives. When I chide my friends who are Reformed about various things, or they chide me about eschatological things, the truth of the matter is that I still love them and I still care about them. I still pray for them. And we may disagree on things, that come out on external details, but the truth of the matter is that I know that they know Jesus Christ, and if we were to get time to sit down and go over things, we might be able to discuss these things. I don't think that in one day I could swap somebody over to be a dispensationalist. But over time, studying God's Word together is still going to bear fruit. So, any other thoughts, questions on that? I know I raced through. That's all millennialism in general, but the Preterists do hold that.

And when do they think he's coming, or what do they think the end of everything is going to be? You're going to get varying views on that one. They may think he's just going to come back and push the stop button and it's all just going to freeze and be done. Some people hold to the view that we're just going to destroy ourselves. World War 75 is going to come around and we're all going to just hit the wrong button and it's going to blow the whole thing into smithereens and it'll be gone and it'll just end on its own. Some people think, you know, You're going to get variations on answers to that, but because they're being allegorical, it's not scriptural. It's kind of hard to just say, this is why that is.

I have not spent enough time on eschatological study to really be able to clearly represent their view. So I want to state that ahead of time. I'm not going to try to misrepresent anybody. That would be really detrimental for this whole class. Yeah. There's full and partial preterists. When I was in seminary, we went to a debate between preterists, post-millennial, mid-tribulationalists, and pre-tribulationalists. Yeah, each one of them had their own things that they were trying to root for.

Unfortunately, one of the views, and I can't remember which one it was now, I want to say it was... I can't remember now. But they were so unprepared, they couldn't answer the questions at all that people in the audience were asking, so that was unfortunate. I know that if I were to go try to defend pre-tribulationalism, that would be me misrepresenting things, or not having all the answers, because I haven't studied eschatology as much as I have. salvation and sanctification in the Old Testament.

So now you know a little bit more about me. Any other questions before we close in prayer? I don't know if the bell's rung or not. Did it ring? It's past time. I'm long-winded. Let's close and go before the Lord. Heavenly Father, thank you for this time. Thank you for your word. Lord, thank you for your grace and love in our lives because I know that in each one of our lives there are still areas that we're going to grow theologically. We just pray for opportunities to be lights in the world and to continue to abide and walk out our relationship with you. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen.