Covenant Theology in Hebrews

[Music] welcome to christ the center your weekly conversation of reformed theology my name is camden busey i'm here in gray's lake illinois as usual but i'm delighted to be back today to talk about some important matters looking at the new testament specifically the book of hebrews and to do so welcoming back to the program friend of ours uh dr robert cara who is the hugh and sally reeves professor of new testament at rts charlotte along with several other responsibilities he has in the rts system as a provost and chief academic officer there welcome back to the program bob it's so good to have you with us thank you camden and i'm uh we've already had an enjoyable conversation and then hopefully it'll continue yeah yeah hopefully it stays that way right yes i'm looking forward to it uh we're opening up today a book we've talked about a few weeks ago and i hope to talk about it quite a bit over the next several months and that is covenant theology biblical theological and historical perspectives which is edited by guy apprentice waters j nicholas reed and john r meather it's been published by crossway and as this episode comes out should be available you could head on over to the various places you'd like to go and get a copy of the book it's rather substantial very large book and tremendous it's a wonderful service to the church to have all of these chapters addressing various aspects of covenant theology from different perspectives and today we're going to be looking at dr kara's contribution which is chapter 12 covenant in hebrews certainly a favorite topic of mine a book that i imagine is near and dear to most of our hearts as reformed people in fact probably was instrumental in a lot of people coming to the subject of covenant theology but before we even get uh into the subject of that i'd like to give you the opportunity bob if you like to tell us a little bit about what's going on in the campus at charlotte and how are things going in the ministry well that's nice of you to give me this opportunity and as i always say since i'm provost over all of the campuses and i love all campuses equally but primarily i teach at charlotte although actually i'm teaching in dallas at the moment so uh rts interestingly during this the covid summer and the fall at the stat level we have slightly more total credit hours taken by students in the summer fall this year uh than we did last year which is an interesting factoid um but a big part of our budget is also donors and we'll see how that works out yeah at the summer at rts we had all as we call them zoom courses and then the fall at all the campuses except for new york city we have um face-to-face courses and a few what we call uh zoom courses so uh covid's a little less depending on where you are in the south um and we haven't had any big outbreaks at our campuses so by god's grace things are doing surprisingly well i might say we didn't expect it to do this well both student-wise and minimal people getting coveted for the summer and fall uh thanks for asking yeah praise god that's great to hear i think uh i heard a doctor say one time covenant theology scares coronavirus away i'm pretty sure that's a peer-reviewed journal that said yeah that was an overuse of the nes uh good and necessary concept clause well maybe it's good it's not necessary yeah right yeah it was good but not necessary fair enough fair enough well look i grew up in um the mainline presbyterian church i like to say it was a relatively conservative uh congregation within a liberal denomination so covenant theology nevertheless wasn't unusual to me growing up and then when i got to college i encountered a lot of folks that had other views uh dispensationalism in particular and that was strange to my ears which sent me on a course of searching the scriptures i had to end up becoming kind of a berean in order to look more deeply into the matters and ended up coming to own the tradition that i was raised in although i went kind of the machine route and left the main line and ended up in the opc i'm curious to hear about your your pathway were you first raised in a christian home and if you were were you raised with covenant theology or is this did this come later for you in life um well we have some similarities uh i grew up in a coal mining town in northeastern pennsylvania wilkes-barre scranton and i know you lived in the philly area so you would know of wilkes-barre scranton and it's highly roman catholic area however my dad was a northern prez pastor although he was somewhat famous for being conservative so i grew up in a conservative uh presbyterian church you may say it was like a pca or opc church functionally sure um although in the poor uh wilkes-barre scranton area uh and uh my uh my dad um i might say my dad was implicitly reformed it was as opposed everything was as opposed to roman catholicism yeah but the more specifics of reformed theology versus more general evangelic good in you know general evangelical theology he wasn't making that point uh over to the congregation so they probably just understood protestant theology is implicitly reformed theology without knowing the categories so uh i had a sense of the covenant of works and the covenant of grace i had no sense of the covenant of redemption for instance uh and then i went away to college penn state and it just happened to be i ended up at bible believing dispensational churches uh and then into my early 20s when i was an engineer uh you know i was really into dispensational theology for a short time and then slowly actually it was a minister that said to me look at how uh the new testament makes statements about david and his kingship where i had the idea david is on his throne therefore it's got to be in the millennium that david will be on his throne because i take the bible literally it said david on his throne it's got to be jesus on some physical throne so looking at some new testament documents and seeing that oh the new testament applied that to now um uh interestingly in the book of hebrews also there's several of these kind of statements so therefore uh that that it was a slow ride i was an engineer for seven years and so that took maybe about year five of seven years i uh got rid of my dispensationalism another couple years ago by this time i was against infant baptism but a couple more years and then i was uh i was the the full reform pizza uh at about year seven of being out of college and then i went to seminary sure so there's my little um uh background into uh covenants see i was never a full a real engineer but my job title was engineer because they didn't know what to do with me so i worked in computers and business kind of half and half at caterpillar after i graduated from college and uh so i worked at the proving grounds and they're like so what what do you do we don't we don't have an i.t track here so we're gonna call you figured out what pay grade i was supposed to be at so anyway i could pretend to be an engineer along with you but i couldn't i couldn't talk differential equations or fluid dynamics or you know any of that sort of thing i can pretend but i know a little more about covenant theology and hopefully have a have a more uh um authentic conversation here than on the other things you may or may not have been working on before and one of those things certainly is uh the greek word here diatheique which is translated covenant can be translated a few different ways or some semantic range but as we open the book of hebrews it's it's such a rich book and it's tremendous and and rewarding the more and more we look into it and study it how um i don't know systematic maybe not the right word but it is programmatic and foundational it offers us a tremendous hermeneutic and uh teaches us and leads us in how to understand our old testament specifically in light of christ and his work and his ministry but that word diethake uh is used so frequently in hebrews i wonder if you could speak to us a bit about that word how it's used and why you think it's used so often in this letter yeah and um by the way i'm currently writing a commentary on the book of hebrews so i'm really excited these little micro details get well give us the give us the pitch are you contracted i mean what is it with us an existing series yes in the mentor uh series by christian focus where they're trying to quote up their game and make them more and more technical maybe i'm making it too technical but um yeah i'm at right at the moment i'm at chapter 9 verse 15. wow they're talking yeah it's pretty much my favorite verse i love it well done it caught you at a good time yeah and then 16 and 17 is the possibly odd use of d at the ak yeah but to answer your question sure um dieth ak is uh the words that's primarily translated covenant in the septuagint uh so we have a hebrew word berite and then we have the septuagint a greek translation plus or minus 200 to 250 bc and it happens to use the word diatheique whatever whether that was the most technically correct word to use or not that's the word they used so therefore if you're in the new testaments it's their most of their technical terms are coming out of the septuagint because they're care about the old testament deith aka with rare exception clearly means covenant related to old testament covenant concepts and it happens to be used explicitly i think 17 times in hebrews sometimes it says the first and the second you add those in you get up to 25 times it's used and as you will possibly alluded to there's maybe two times and there may be somewhere else in the new testament that part of the semantic range of death aka covenant and if you're just a greco-roman person walking around and you knew nothing about the old testament you may think of one use would be a a will or a testament a last will and testament uh what we would just call modern english what's your will as you write out when i die my money goes to my kids something for that effect so there are two verses that he may be using the word death ak in the sense of will uh or maybe it's just really a subset of a broad covenant uh use anyway because he uses he talks about will and people dying and blood um which also relates to covenant so uh there's a big big discussion probably bigger than we need on verses chapter 9 16 17 about that technicality of of diatheique or covenant but as a general statement it's uh the covenant connected word death a case covenant related to all kinds of old testament angles certainly and that uh comes into play when we start thinking about how the old and the new relate what we want to call those testaments uh or hear old and new covenant and that's the great question really uh with among evangelicals uh dispensational variety or covenant variety and there's shades of views in between it was told to me one time that uh when i was in in college somebody was describing this to me and they described the whole thing as a great continuum you know and you have different views on different sides of things but really in the in the nature of things uh you can boil it down somewhat down to your covenantal structure and how you view the old relating to the new whether it's uh continuous or discontinuous that's something that you start to address on page 249 at least in my early advanced pdf copy uh the contrast within continuity uh you know in terms of the order we do have the same pages okay we get that straight we're working on our critical texts here we've we've compiled our text um you know i didn't have to use the coherence-based genealogical method on your chapter but hopefully we have the same result so i i mean seriously though is uh is disc you know how do you see here continuity being you know foundational there is discontinuity there are differences between the old and new covenants but still it's continuity that that really structures this these aren't two completely separate and distinct orders where god has put aside one way of doing things and now embarked on a completely new path yeah well said there's a i was a reasonable truth to say all christians agree to some level of continuity from old testament to new testament and some level of discontinuity well okay but we need more information than that um reformed types want to sort of more emphasize yeah there's continuity and discontinuity but the continuity is more fundamental than the discontinuity and so the reform they're going to always want to however we say it that's the point we want to make and i would argue that the book of hebrews does that and i have my little catch phrase for me uh i call it thinking of how hebrews relates to the mosaic covenant that it's contrast within continuity yeah so there is contrast yes but it's within a more foundational continuity that's my way of saying it and the continuity would be it's the same god uh it's interestingly in the book of hebrews almost always couple exceptions when he talks about people he just assumes people old testament new testament same people you can use an example from an old testament person that relates to a new testament person or you could talk about their faith in the old testament they had this type of faith you have the same type of faith so there's a broader continuity to that another one's interestingly is as we'll get to the abrahamic covenant that he describes he talks about the promise and it's the same promise in the new testament he talks about christ and christ his death in 9 15 you brought up your favorite verse does relate to old testament sins in fact look at that um uh there's also he talks about the eternality of the covenant and that's this overarching uh sense of things eternality meaning both uh old and new testament so the continuity i would say is based on another continuity is just the bible they're quoting the bible the old testament and the new testament that relates to god god speaking uh so if god spoke therefore it must be true yeah and and you're probably going to ask me about the sense of uh uh the heavenlies being uh or the new covenant being both new in the sense of timeline but also uh the heavenlies and the temple the tabernacle the heavenly tabernacle existed in some sense in the old testament sure yeah that sounds like a great question i'll add that to my list well even before that though i mean you have one thing that was uh really useful to me again i already had these instincts and again my pastor has very much perhaps had the same affect or at least approach as you're as it appears your father did in ministry where i wasn't explicitly catechized by my parents that not not necessarily their fault i mean nobody was in my church it wasn't a thing um and yet you know i heard certain types of preaching from the pulpit and everything so this stuff came naturally to me it wasn't strange although i didn't have the explicit categories or catechetical structures for hanging my thoughts on on those established hooks but when i first heard uh dr richard gaffin's uh exegesis of hebrews 3 and 4 you can find this in in several places one place is in his chapter in the opc's 50th anniversary volume pressing toward the mark on the sabbath he points out something very significant regarding the relationship between christ and moses and what we have here is moses was faithful as a servant in god's house the christ is is uh superior and faithful as a son and so you know sometimes we see illustrations like that we might miss the big picture the big picture is there's one house there aren't two houses and moses is not serving in a different house with a different group of people even things so basic as that are significant and foundational to hebrews as as the author is working out here this basic plan and purpose for god's people whether old or new covenant and it's all leading towards christ christ is set against the backdrop of the old testament but not as an afterthought and that was a great controversy you know at westminster a decade ago you know the hermeneutic that the new testament authors are just reinventing or just adding christ to something to old testament texts where he wasn't there organically the author of hebrews is certainly rejecting anything of that sort yeah and then several times he says moses spoke of the things in the future yes uh he also talks about um well i can go i don't go all these little technical detail verses but yeah several times it stated that what moses saw is he saw the heavenly tabernacle it says in chapter eight uh and so that implies at some level the heavenly tabernacle as we don't know exactly what he saw but god made him understand that the tabernacle that he was talking about in exodus the physicalness of the tabernacle was representative of a true tabernacle that was already existing yeah while moses wrote so there's a sense that the heavenly tabernacle existed back in moses's day but there's another sense it's more fully shown to us when christ comes uh in the new testament uh and then there's the new heavens and the earth version of it uh so there's another angle to the continuity yeah if if i may let me expand upon my contrast within continuity little speech i'd love to hear it yeah the continuity being the fundamental uh is more fundamental but the contrast and then various scholars have different ways of noting that the contrasts are different types of contrasts and i sort of look at a whole bunch of them get them down to two types of contrast so it's a contrast but in what sense sense number one antithetical meaning x and not x uh so moses or uh the aaronic priesthoods they stood but jesus uh he sat down um they had sins jesus didn't have sin you know so it's just x and not x so these are these type of contrasts but there's a whole bunch of other contrasts that i'll call graded or escalating the priest was like this but jesus was better the priest was like that but jesus uh was better and so you have two types of contrasts um uh you know blood was required for forgiveness of sins well that's a continuity both in the old and new testament oh but old testament it was the blood of animals how much more escalating is the blood of christ who offers up himself so so even those escalating contrasts are at some level showing the continuity uh as it sort of turns out yeah and i think underscoring the significance of of christ's work again said against that backdrop that what god you know i don't this is useful here and there but i often with my congregation or with my family kind of speak of the old covenant in many ways as kind of a version of god's picture book you know if you have a two or three year old you're not reading i don't know moby dick to them maybe you are but you know i have a moby dick like picture book has like one word on every page and it's just pictures but you know you you raise the children up with and then they come to maturity eventually then they can you know in biblical terms receive the inheritance uh from the from the bible's perspective that's ultimately receiving the holy spirit and then uh you know inheriting the earth the new heavens and the new earth but god is bringing his people along in promises types and shadows a version of a communication for a juvenile group where they're not yet ready for for milk uh and solid food in the sense but then they're supposed to come to maturity ultimately into the new covenant and then and then carry on so we see that christ is not uh a completely different type of savior he's the fulfillment and the surpassing transcendent glory of every of the shadowy forms that we had early on for for god's juvenile or immature people and uh that that that that's a you know again something might might not be recognized by people who are just reading hebrews for the first time but it's certainly the basic covenantal structure of the book yeah well said um another angle that you might not think about as you read through covenant the book excuse me the book of hebrews is that he mentions law a whole bunch of times and with only two exceptions uh it always means what we call the ceremonial aspects of the law and this was maybe in my more dispensational days i read you know i'd read hebrews and it'd say you know something law and we've got to change the law my brain goes ten commandments uh see the temple is no longer apply because see we have to change the ten commandments jesus is here uh well a little more sophisticated reading uh law with only two exceptions is always referring to what we now call ceremonial aspects of the law that you know relates to christ's priesthood and his the tabernacle angle so the word law in the book of hebrews is sort of another proof that what's changing is the ceremonial aspects or the teaching aspects or the juvenile aspects as you called it those are they're useful but they're showing us uh pointing toward christ amen and and similarly when he uses the word mosaic covenant and again with maybe two exceptions uh he's referring to the ceremonial aspects of the mosaic covenant uh and once you sort of grasp that then you see oh primarily when he contrasts the first and second covenant it's contrasting what we call the ceremonial aspects uh of the covenant um with jeremiah 31 as a slight exception which i'm sure you're going to ask me about it it comes up in hebrews it's kind of an important chapter yeah no i i appreciate that a great deal and it's it's really uh quite helpful um you know the author of hebrews works through a number of things again comparing and contrasting christ to so much that has gone before perhaps this is because of the particular emphasis or we might even say weaknesses of the of the audience uh either you know tending towards angel worship or exaltation or uh you know prizing moses over and above the rest of humanity etc uh there's there's always this uh emphasis that christ is greater and he's the exact imprint of god's character indeed he's he's divine he's the son of god himself greater than the angels greater than moses greater than the entire levitical order and offers a perfect sacrifice of his own blood and sits down at god's right hand forever he not only serves in the most holy place that the high priest could only enter into once a year but he enters into uh the highest place the most holy place in the highest heavens and he brings his people with him and clothes them in his righteous robes so all of this is is building on old covenant old testament i should say uh everything that we see in the scriptures and and the author starts to walk through four uh different covenantal administrations uh early on speaking of abraham how does how does the author treat abraham and how is this helpful for uh putting all the pieces together from our end yeah and again some people think well they only talks about two covenants in the book the mosaic covenant in the new covenant but he actually talks a lot about the abrahamic covenant the davidic covenant yes the mosaic covenant in the new covenant so the abrahamic covenant if you look that in the old testament what are the main abrahamic things you're going to get the land there's going to be a seed you're going to get promises and once you know it those things are emphasized uh in the book of hebrews now another intriguing thing is the author of hebrews who's explicitly talking about abrahamic and davidic covenant a whole bunch of times he never uses the word covenant or deith aka to refer to them and then there's the general guess at why did he not do that um well because he wanted to highlight the mosaic covenant versus the new covenant so that's that's the guess why well maybe there's some pastoral issue i mean that's another debate too over the the dating of the book but uh certainly it seems as there was a fascination with worshipping according to the book of moses you know offering sacrifices and all that that involves right well well said so uh abraham and uh i'll turn to my little page here let's see uh page 251 on my version yes it's intriguing how abraham is used uh one it talks about the promises to him and then just assumes those are the same promises to us so a covenantal uh angle to it uh it it talks about uh abraham was looking for a better country uh which ultimately it gets to be the new heavens and the we would call it the new heavens uh and the new earth that and he's implying that abraham knew that what physical land he had what pro relative level of gifts and inheritance he had was not the end game yeah that he knew there was a future coming uh and that's the author of hebrews just assumes you assume there's this continuity uh with the old uh testament uh his discussion of land as you pointed out chapter three and chapter four and actually in my commentary i do uh quote dr gaffin's article right out of the 50th edition that's great um uh that i mean that's talking about abraham was promised land moses talked about getting to the land but joshua didn't get him to the land and then psalm 95 which is david david says if you want rest which was get to the land for rest you still need to believe which implied oh but they are in the land during david's time therefore land must be metaphorical or typological of something more than just physical uh land on the earth uh it's being with christ uh and god's presence again ultimately the new heavens and new earth another interesting angle about abraham is uh one time he's brought up a little negatively uh as it's com pairing the aaronic or levitical priesthood with the melchizedek which ends up being the christ priesthood yeah but abraham gave money uh or a tithe to melchizedek um so there interestingly just a little comment there uh he's not the hero there so to speak not that he was negative on surface but he was a little bit part of the levitical priesthood there so abraham's a big covenant it shows primarily continuity but it also shows uh sort of an escalating contrast yes contrast but it's escalating uh toward christ and the new heavens uh and new earth yeah and it's certainly useful to for folks to pick up this entire book because you're going to find all sorts of different chapters on different aspects of covenant theology again from these different perspectives but there's there's a great discussion over how does abraham relate to moses uh that led to it in you know large things along those lines led to a study committee report in my denomination but um i think a a fruitful product at the end of the day and i'm thankful for that but uh certainly even in hebrews chapter 11 what's affectionately called that great hall of faith we we see what abraham's expectation was and what he looked forward to you know a city that has foundations but he ultimately was looking forward not to a piece of earthly real estate but ultimately new heavens and new earthly you know he had he had a vision towards the the great inheritance that god would ultimately provide the author also makes uh off the top of my head i don't have the the reference but he also seems to make reference to the fact that if they knew the land that they were going out to that i mean they could always return if they if it wasn't just an earthly land that they were talking about they would know how to get there but but they had to walk by faith because where they ultimately were going was not somewhere that you know like to perhaps cheaply reference back to the future you know where we're going we don't need roads you know yeah not an earthly place yeah it wasn't a lack of gps problem with chapter 11. you didn't need a map right you needed god's word you need to be led by faith yeah amen so how then does does uh the author speak uh moving along to david you've already mentioned uh the davidic covenant um the davidic covenant's interesting for its own reasons uh in comparing and contrasting it with other covenants in the old testament but uh i guess i should should ask right away how is it similar to the abrahamic covenant in terms of of how hebrews highlights it again it's uh we would say the most explicit discussion of the uh davidic covenant in the old testament is second samuel 7 and then paralleled in first chronicles 17 and he's given all these promises about there will be a temple built there will be a place for the ark uh your seed will be uh on the throne uh and one similarity to the abrahamic covenant in the book of hebrews is that he doesn't explicitly use the word covenant even though he quotes from 2nd samuel 7 and quotes the uh covenant another part of the quote relates to i will be your god and you will be my son and then that relates to my people and so that is a connection to abraham he's going to abraham connection of the as i'll call it the existential uh part of the covenant god is close to abraham god is close uh to david but what's intriguing about the davidic covenant is okay if you asked me before i went to seminary what book in the new testament mostly talks about or talks about jesus as a priest the answer is book of hebrews now in one sense all the books do properly understood but at the surface level it's hebrews and then if you said well what else does it talk about in the book of hebrews and call jesus i go i don't know um okay well what you you may not notice but basically the first six chapters are emphasizing that jesus is the son son and so if you read a i would say more sophisticated but an academic article on christology in the book of hebrews it's always going to have it'll present it usually as two big categories he is the son and he is the priest well how does he connect son and priest he does it through the davidic covenant that and he's on the throne so that's connected to the covenant uh he quotes from second samuel 7 the davidic covenant and then he quotes from uh psalm 2 which talks about you are my son and then the kicker is psalm 110. yes psalm 110 verse 1. you are my son verse 4 you are with an oath the priest forever uh according to the likeness of melchizedek so he takes these davidic passages about son he's the son he's the son and then connects it from psalm 110 to priesthood and then that's how as we would say looking at the whole bible jesus is prophet priest and king well hebrews has a very high view of he's the king and the priest and it's psalm 110 verse 4 that's the big connector of them so even if you think about these statements where jesus is in the heavenly tabernacle he ascends he goes to the heavenly tabernacle and he uh presents the offerings to uh god the father and he sits on the right hand on the throne uh and those throne verses both have a davidic angle to him uh but also a priestly angle that he sat down uh and he uh and if you don't even sort of think about it you're like hey he's using a davidic verse to prove a priestly thing um and so uh that's part of the emphasis in the book he's the son s-o-n uh who sat down at the right hand of god after making a sacrifice this is the first couple verses of the book as you quoted previously uh so that that would be an emphasis of the davidic covenant is very important in the book of hebrews to connect the priestly work of christ right uh uh to his kingly work well how um how does the figure of melchizedek factor in i mean even just looking at etymology looking at his name from the hebrew words melchizedek you know my king is righteous or or the king is righteous uh seems to and then obviously his clear function is he's a priest yeah so it's interesting how does how does melchizedek more specifically come into into play here with the davidic aspects of this of this letter uh well uh melchizedek is mentioned two times in the old testament one is genesis 14 and as you had we were saying he comes he meets abraham there's uh his name is basically a king king of righteousness but he functions as a priest uh and then uh his priestly aspect uh abraham gives him a tie we assume it's a priestly but it could be the kingly priestly yeah he gives him a tithe uh so melchizedek is this odd figure and another fascinating thing that then the author of hebrews takes off if you look at the entire book of genesis and you said who are all the believers mentioned in the book of genesis every single one of them you somehow have their genealogy may not be specific to them but their parents parents the only person that is not given a genealogy in the book of genesis is melchizedek who's a believer right is melchizedek uh and that's so that's another odd thing so two odd things in chapter 14. he just shows up and levitt and abraham who's the superstar so far uh of the book uh gives him a tithe uh and he's a priest he's a priest of the high god the god of the bible okay and then he has no genealogy then you don't hear of him until you get to psalm 110 and he just kind of comes out of the blue it's a davidic psalm god verse 1. i said to my son he makes his son here's my messiah the special davidic messiah and then in verse 4 this verse about you will become a priest that's odd he says according to the order of melchizedek and you're like what it's a different type of order it's not the traditional levitic slash aaronic order okay so the author of hebrews seeing those several facts alludes to melchizedek in chapter five chapter six but then chapter seven the whole chapter is about melchizedek and he makes several connections um to jesus one he's the priest of righteousness there's a little bit of the davidic connection but mostly he's on now the priest angle and he has the famous line in verse three that melchizedek had no father no mother no genealogy no genealogy and then he says that's like the son of god and we would say that's like the divine nature of christ uh so he saw and so he's saying metaphorically this guy melchizedek because it wasn't mentioned in the book of genesis god the ultimate author had that happen right so that we could typologically say see jesus's divine nature had no mother no father uh excuse me no mother for his divine nature uh and no father well for his human nature uh and then in verse 715 he he emphasizes one aspect where jesus was better than other priests is that he had an indestructible life uh which would be true of his divine nature he dies in his human nature but then he's raised again so there's these fascinating things about melchizedek where in one sense he has to solve the problem that he's trying to say jesus is a priest even though he's not genealogically from uh aaron exactly answer to that he's from melchizedek who because melchizedek is discussed in psalm 110 which is redemptive historically later than than the mosaic legislation that must mean that's another one of many many arguments uh that there must be a change of the priesthood sorry i went on too long go ahead cam no not at all uh i think that's tremendous uh to consider um the whole issue with the genealogy of melchizedek is fascinating to me i was getting into it somewhat of a discussion with somebody online as much as you can have one they were arguing that melchizedek was the pre-incarnate christ i i think that personally i think that does some violence to the text in the way that it speaks of the typology there uh nevertheless uh the point really uh obviously melchizedek not described in the genealogies of genesis but it also against the backdrop of the levitical priesthood emphasizes the fact that the priesthood is not based on who your father was earthly speaking melchizedek was a priest not because his father was a priest in this order of levitical priests and likewise christ comes in doesn't need to descend from aaron in order to serve but he serves in a different order and the beautiful thing here is that all the levitical priests they died and the fact that they were they had ancestors who were priests like let's not miss the forest for the trees here that they died and they couldn't minister forever so their intercession and their ministry was only good for as long as they could hang on to it you know with an earthly life and then we see jesus of course who is raised from the dead he serves uh according to the power of an indestructible life so not only does he offer a sacrifice for sins once for all but he intercedes now forever and there needs to be no fear that he's gonna die and we need some other priest he's the only priest we need he's not going to be succeeded he serves according to the eternal covenant yeah and i like your statement don't miss the you know the force for the trees i guess one aspect we're so properly christianized we don't imagine oh well jesus priests could stop somehow right um but the jews would talking to people that possibly are overly influenced by i sort of want to go back to the jewish way of doing things with a with a human that i can see priest uh uh the reality that christ will live forever well his divine nature was forever but now uh he will no longer die even in his human nature right um it's just a a grand thought and that he stands right next to god the father is life-giving spirit yeah first corinthians 15. well changing the metaphor here i don't think paul wrote hebrews i'm not opposed to it but anyway to move out of uh into pauline studies is certainly still canonical tremendous so we have uh all you know speaking of of uh the davidic covenant when and obviously we've been speaking quite a bit about the mosaic as well because of the priesthood um but what are some other aspects here wherein the author of hebrews talking about the mosaic covenant and uh and specifically that word diethake how does the mosaic covenant figure in perhaps even more distinctly more emphatically than the others and again with maybe a jeremiah 31 exception he's used when he gets the mosaic covenant which sometimes he calls the first or the old one getting old to be technical um it and it's contrasted against the second or the new uh or the eternal uh covenant at this point so when he gets to chapter seven through as i call it 10 and a half or 10 18. that's sort of the main priestly argument chapter 7 is the all the melchizedek part of it uh and and that's more about how he could legally be a priest and then eight through ten and a half is the actual offering and sacrifice and uh how the tabernacle stuff foreshadows uh christ so in there with very few exceptions almost every time the mosaic covenant is brought up or the word law is brought up it's about again what we call the ceremonial aspects uh and if he talks about the mosaic covenant it's always the ceremonial aspects of the covenant uh and i think if i had understood that factoid much i would have even though dispensationalism taught me a lot love of the inerrant bible love of jesus's savior triune god um and that was all because my father was teaching that that all dovetailed together even though some things didn't but if i was just told that kind of fact i would have stopped being a dispensationalist a little earlier so most of his discussion about the mosaic covenant has to do with what we call ceremonial things and all the little fascinating angles where it does show continuity with jesus or it's an escalating contrast or it's the opposite and there's all these uh fascinating little angles and i think in the article i it's a hundred i could bring up and i bring up blood as one of the ways that there's continuity uh and discontinuity and as i mentioned before both the mosaic covenant the new covenant you need blood their continuity but discontinuity it's the blood of animals versus the blood of jesus there's the significant discontinuity or another discontinuity is the priest himself because he's a sinner had to offer blood for himself before he did for the whole community but jesus because he's not a sinner just offers once for all uh the the blood his own blood for the community so again there's a way that the mosaic covenant uh in both types of contrast degraded or escalating and the ant antithetical are showing how jesus is uh our savior and and the work of christ amen yeah well let's talk about the jeremiah 31 to speak more uh specifically about the new covenant and and specifically the the covenant administration that is uh instituted with the blood of a savior himself so not just the type of the sacrifice to come but now the fullness of it uh you offer several arguments to justify the author's use of this quote in jeremiah can you walk us through a few of these how is the author using it why is it so critical to his argument yeah first you'll meet a bunch there's a whole bunch of liberal scholars that says see he's talking about what they may not use the word ceremonial but ceremonial aspects of the law what in the world does that have to do with jeremiah 31 see author of hebrews confused because yeah it uses the word law in jeremiah 31 but it's not talking about the uh ceremonial law therefore he's confused and even those in the conservative tradition i i think i included the calvin quote uh but several people in the conservative tradition will say well on the surface it's not obvious and now we got to think about it and so uh i i put in i don't know a bunch of ways that it is legitimate to use it so if your leaders happen to have your bible and they run to uh eight six the jeremiah quote is gonna start in eight eight so i'm reading eight six but as it is christ has obtained a ministry that's more excellent than the old covenant uh he mediates is better since it's enacted on better promises see it's better for if the first covenant had been faultless there would have not been an occasion to look for the second and you're thinking if the first covenant was faultless well in the sense that um you know what sense does he mean that does he just mean at the ceremonial level well then that's the question then he goes to the jeremiah quote which does have if you go to verse 10 uh middle verse 10 i will put my laws and by the way it's plural there into their minds and write it on their hearts and see the liberal says see that's not talking about ceremonial laws the author of hebrews is confused you know okay so the conservative view what is how does jeremiah 31 relate to the argument about christ as a priest and the ceremonial laws although instituted by god weren't the end game christ was the endgame and as you said i have about i don't know maybe i should look it up six or eight i i constantly confuse what i put in the article and what i put in the commentary okay six uh here um you need to buy the commentary to get the two the two bonus reasons right well first of all there's two senses of weaknesses to the ceremonial aspect the first sense is uh they weren't the full version of jesus they were just pointing to jesus so that's a weakness although god it's a god intended weakness the second part of it was is that at some aspect this was a way of being closer to god and many people in the old testament sinned and we're not closer to god uh and big chunks of them had sinned uh in in the wilderness and interestingly in jeremiah so in jeremiah they're right near jude is about to be blown up and they're going to go to babylon in the exile and so jeremiah's foreign forces are coming down on them and his ministry is to warn the people even though at least hopefully some of them will personally repent even though judah has had it at that point now intriguingly in the book of jeremiah he talks about uh the mosaic covenant being i will be i will be your god and you will be my people and there's all these uh continuities and discontent he's even in jeremiah with the new covenant and the old covenant okay so how does he what sort of his main lines of argument okay one is saying if by definition the old covenant was looking forward and jeremiah uses the word new covenant that matches it's a new covenant it's going to be a better covenant now what about the laws well i would say for jeremiah when he said laws that included ceremonial civil and moral laws all types of laws uh were uh given um and so therefore it wasn't wrong for him to use uh laws because it didn't include some aspect of ceremonial loss another angle that the new covenant is better i'm at 8 12 i'll be merciful toward their iniquities remember their sins no more that part of what jeremiah is doing is more of an emphasis on forgiveness of sins and then therefore that does better although the mosaic covenant have an emphasis on forgiveness of sins is sort of a more uh there will be more and then once the author of hebrew thinks oh christ that's the real answer to the forgiveness of sins that then matches up with that verse if you look in verse 10 toward the end i will be their god and they shall be my people now interestingly that's true of all the covenants so that applies it's just in a more sense so the new covenant is more reality and i make an argument of uh for instance he talks about putting uh back to i'll put my laws in their minds and i'll write them on their hearts well he's already used hearts relative to the old testament people that they had a they were supposed to have believing hearts but the author of hebrews is saying it'll be more in jeremiah shows us that'll be more sense of it more of the holy spirit uh in the new testament so my view of looking at the book of jeremiah is it's a more it's more and hence the new covenant is uh more um yeah that contrast within continuity but that's a big debate uh in terms of uh the heart particularly but there there are folks that would say you know we have this great distinction between the outward and the inward and that would like to make the matter of the heart purely something uh eschatological now that might come in obviously does come in with the work of christ but they would like to remove it or at least not consider it in the old testament but clearly jeremiah references it but also we see in was it deuteronomy 30 verse 6 or thereabouts about the lord promising to circumcise the heart and and we certainly do not want to deny that the holy spirit is at work it's not as if old testament believers were not regenerated uh but we do see this this proportion i think as is the word that you use in the chapter is quite useful a typological advancement a proportional advancement um when the holy spirit comes uh when the christ ascends and sends the helper it's not as if uh he he's coming to earth for the first time but he's being sent in a covenantal proportionate typological way to to enact a a greater ministry but one that is not completely different or categorically different from what god was doing in the old yeah and uh well said and then verse 11 which is uh and they shall not teach for each one has his neighbor right uh you won't say know the lord well except later in the book he talks about teachers and rulers so again this would be the argument it can't be an absolute statement it's a more statement now some of my reform buddies and through history and currently uh they may more emphasize why shouldn't they use the word more they will emphasize maybe the solution to this chapter is to say that jeremiah was looking solely to the new heavens and new earth and in this new heavens and new earth there's a sort of a complete fulfillment of that and i'm not i'm arguing well that can be true i'll give you that's part of the jeremiah understanding but the author of hebrews is using it in a more proportional way that's his argument in context is proportional now my friend mr shriner at southern he has a slightly different view than i do uh and this is part of uh maybe you've had some shows of the new covenant theology or progressive covenantalism right which part and there's they're you know figuring out all the angles of their views uh but they do not have the sta their view of the new testament church is that it's not a mixed church it's not they don't have the visible invisible split as traditional christianity has had let alone reformed theology has had and so if you don't have the fact that in the church um there's only true believers they then tend to take this as see this proves it's only uh it only relates directly to believers and therefore this makes sense because in the church as opposed to the old testament where you had non-believers and believers in the covenant community therefore you had to teach your neighbor in the new testament church there is no distinction they're all believers so no one needs to teach each other about the lord and this also relates to infant baptism so it's two parts no infant baptism no visible invisible split and so therefore he says see that relates to the new testament church now they're all believers i politely disagree with my friend dr schreiner uh on that view i i believe the author of hebrews is assuming that he's speaking to a church that has uh in theory some non-believers uh yeah and even in hebrews 10 uh the author talks about blood sanctifying people but yet they might trample underfoot that blood uh there's great discussion and debate over the nature of the apostasy in hebrew six my own personal view is these are folks that desire to they've been brought into the new covenant they perhaps have even partaken of the new covenant ordinances such as the lord's supper and baptism but yet want to go back they don't like it and therefore you know effectively don't like the messiah the old testament gave birth to and want a different one uh because the old testament was pointing forward to christ but there seems to be then based on the what hebrews is teaching this is the debate but there seems to be a category of person that is a a new covenant member for the time prior to the consummation that nevertheless is unregenerate and that's that's just a hard category for some people to swallow yeah especially yes that's yeah well it is you know category in other words what we're saying is people that have professed faith or people that have been brought in by baptism but yet don't believe in jesus they might say they do but ultimately when the lord comes they'll say lord lord and uh there are some people he will say depart from me i never knew you that doesn't mean they weren't members of the covenant community at the time but god has not yet purified his people perfectly as as uh malachi talks about for example malachi 3 and 4. they're still goats among the sheep yes and again most of the christian tradition although some of our bible believing buddies are not at the moment but most of the christian tradition has believed in again what we in shorthand i call the visible invisible right church that visibly i see 100 people there god invisibly knows that you know 90 of them will get to heaven but 10 will not and so my view is that all the new testament writers understood that and so one aspect of their warnings is warnings to non-believers so they're they're true warnings but secondarily these can be used by believers to continue on the path amen um and i suppose the baptist i i know i mean my friends they certainly would acknowledge a visible invisible church distinction they would simply say right but those those people are not members of the new covenant property that's how they get out of it they know physically there are people there but they're still trying to work that out though it's true uh because because they want to say the writer of hebrews wasn't considering that category well precisely precisely that's and that's that's what it is so let's speak uh a bit just uh to to underscore the traditional confessional reformed view one that's represented well in the westminster confession of faith and catechisms and that is that the old and new covenant are two administrations of the one covenant of grace so what we see here is one overarching covenant of grace which succeeded the covenant of works so it's a bi-covenantal structure traditionally in reformed theology but when we zoom in on the covenant of grace we see god administering it differently and according to hebrews we see typically two very basic categories even though we have abraham uh david moses you know we could talk about noah another day that's another that's another issue uh old and new it seemed to be the categories that are that are being used here in the covenant of grace and this you know based on what you've done here in the the text exegeting and commenting on this seems to come to the conclusion that orthodox uh reformed theology is indeed biblical yes uh glory be that's why yes that's right you and i are in the groups that we're in because we believe that's what the bible teaches uh yes uh again in my uh i'll pick on myself my earlier self in my dispensational days you know as soon as you said first and second i was like oh two unrelated uh first completely gone and now the second's here more or less the first doesn't relate to us but again if you grasp his discussion of the mosaic covenant is primarily the ceremonial aspects of it that goes a long way to seeing different administrations that the old testament was still grace it was still pointing to christ you still had to have personal faith in the god of the bible and his messiah whoever that was going to be in the old testament and in the new testament same thing faith in god looking toward a messiah we needed a blood sacrifice so at a fundamental level uh it's the same covenant of grace it's just administered in different ways and there's a clearer way it's not like administered in two equal ways since the new covenant is clearer oh precisely so there are advantages and the new habits of new earth will be even more clearer uh when we get there so um yeah they're certainly not interchangeable there's there's a there's a divine chronology typology teleology whatever ology words you want to fit in there that it's moving in a particular direction and it continues to uh you know we're we're living in an overlap of the ages right but we're ultimately we're citizens of heaven we don't need another intercessor we don't need another covenant but uh we still haven't experienced the fullness and greatness of all that god has in store for us in the new heavens and the new earth but this this has been really tremendous and uh i mean i always love talking hebrews because it it just it's just it's the gospel it's the gospel writ large on all on every page of scripture yeah um it's lake duncan promotes this and he's not the one that made it up but sometimes and maybe this is over i don't want to say something wrong about league duncan uh since he's smiling hold on stop stop he'll say uh he's doing a little bit for a hyperbolic shock value yeah uh the gospel is covenant theology or reformed theology is covenant theology and and once he unpacks it then he's correct but one angle of i mean we use the word redemptive historical all the time uh uh your show talks a lot about vos oh yeah he uses the word biblical theology but i'll i'll call it redemptive historical that the movement of god's actions and scripture through time and they progress uh you know why did why did vas have to make up a new word why didn't he just say full-orbed covenant theology that would get the redemptive historic well the problem was yeah he was in a time and they weren't going to accept that word and uh so just covenant theology uh gives you a hermeneutical grid doesn't answer all the questions but it gives you a hermeneutical grid of there's a fundamental continuity uh and then there's aspects that grow we learn more about christ so there's that sense that reformed theology which always had a high view of the old testament how we see christ in it is related to the covenants and it's also the covenant works covenant grace and that affects our view justification uh there's another little triad that i like to use although it's not in my article uh i'll say okay here's another way to think about what is the bang for the buck with uh covenant theology okay i'd say covenant theology has three things existential aspect i am your god you are my people that our fellowship a personal relationship is just at the existential to use a fancy term uh angle of covenant theology god made covenants so he could fellowship with us um there's an old testament sense of that and even more in the new testament and then most in the new heavens and the words so covenants give you an existential aspect two number two covenants give a legal aspect these are uh there are conditions uh of it think of the covenant of works uh uh various legal things that jesus fulfilled the covenant of works this relates to justification uh if you don't have legal aspects of covenant it doesn't get to justification and then my third sort of big category is there's corporate aspects the covenant isn't just between god and canned busy it's between god related to christ related to all that to whom christ is related which is the church there's a corporate aspect so hence covenant meals or the sacraments aren't just you know have a corporate angle preaching of the word is preaching to a group and i'll usually compare this three thing existential legal corporate to marriage okay the marriage part you have the my wife's name's jill you got the lovey-dovey stuff the existential uh part with jill uh she likes that part but also in marriage there's legal things uh legally you know there's all kinds of american law and the whole history of laws including the old testament you're married to someone i usually have joint property joint this um you know i'm responsible for her deaths and so forth and so on and then there's a corporate angle we have children i have in-laws she has my you know there's all this corporate aspect to marriage so sometimes i make a little analogy of existential legal corporate to the covenants uh and to marriage um just another angle to covenant theology no certainly useful covenant theology is absolutely critical again it's not just some addendum uh to to our teaching and some people would like to say well we're just biblical but then we we tack on if you want covenant or not no it's inherent it's it's significant it's foundational god desires to bring his covenant people his people whom he chooses into uh the highest heavens uh in order to fellowship with them he desires to do that in in glory consummately and he organizes and he mediates that relationship through covenants it's a beautiful thing it's wonderful thanks so much for opening the the pages of hebrews with us dr cara it's a pleasure to talk to you always and i really encourage people to take a look at this thanks so much for writing it okay thank you camden see you next time yeah absolutely i do want to point people of course to the appropriate places you can head on over to rts.edu find information about the entire reformed theological uh seminary uh and and all the different campuses uh throughout the country we've got a lot of interesting things going on of course they have various videos they post and uh i've been listening to uh various podcasts particularly uh the faculty over at rts washington been doing some good work and thankful for them and of course we're online at reformedforum.org there you'll find information about all of our programs as well as courses we have an intro an intro course on covenant theology that's available for free if you'd like to sign up and that's now available in uh oddly enough not only in spanish but also in arabic and it is so interesting there not the subtitles are available and just embedded into the videos if you'd like but we do want to thank everybody for listening we hope you join us again next time on christ the center you

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Published: Thu Nov 26 2020