Gooding, David: 3 - Contending for the Faith

This afternoon, gentlemen, we began our study of the book of Judges, and faced with the need to find some guidance as to how we could apply that book and its details to ourselves and how we should apply them, we turned aside from the study of Judges itself to consider in general how the New Testament uses and quotes the Old Testament, so that we might find guidance in the usage of the Old Testament for our own benefit nowadays. We thought, therefore, uh, first of all, of the way that the New Testament quotes the Old Testament, simply repeating it. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength, repeated in the New Testament as a commandment of equal authority. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, soul, and strength. Then we noticed how the New Testament will, from time to time, apply the Old Testament by way of comparison. As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the days of the Son of Man. Thirdly, we observed that sometimes the New Testament will make use of some Old Testament institution or event as a simile. So Peter says, we have been redeemed with the blood of Christ as of a lamb, using the Passover institution as a simile. Next, we noted that Peter also, in that same chapter one of his first epistle, uses a metaphor that is likewise drawn from one of the details of the Passover. Gird up the loins of your mind, says he, using, uh, in metaphorical way, the instruction of the Passover that they were to eat it with their loins girded. Now I want to spend the rest of my time this evening and our sessions, however many they be, continuing to examine other ways in which the New Testament uses the old. My general point will be that we must not think, when we study the Old Testament and wish to apply it to ourselves, that we have a simple choice as to whether we will interpret it literally or whether we will interpret it typologically. There is a whole array of methods open to us, according to the New Testament, how we shall use the old. A very famous one is the use of the Old Testament as legal precedent. Legal precedent. Often quoted by preachers, and I need not dwell upon it. In Romans chapter four, Paul quotes the experience of Abraham. For in the previous chapter, Paul has argued that justification cannot be by works of the law, for all of us have come short, and the law can only condemn us. Justification, he says, is by faith through grace, apart from the deeds of the law. In order now to bring home that message, particularly to his Jewish friends, Paul quotes the experience of Abraham, chapter four one: What shall we then say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found? Because you would sense in your bones that what Abraham found, Abraham, the great founder of the Jewish race, what he found in this particular must be of foundational guidance to us. And Paul quotes verse three, in verse three, from Genesis fifteen six, for what saith the scripture, and Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness. Abraham therefore was justified by faith. Genesis says so explicitly. And Paul's point is that Abraham's experience constitutes a legal precedent, part of case law, as we in Britain would call it. If Abraham was justified by faith, and he was, that lays down the principle that must be adhered to for all succeeding generations of all time. If Abraham was justified by faith, so may everybody, and so must everybody be justified on that same principle. This is not typology, gentlemen. Abraham's justification is not a type of ours. Abraham was a literal man who walked around on two feet like we do, literally believed the Lord, and literally was justified there and then. We in our day are simply one more instance of people getting justified, and we have to be justified the way Abram was justified. This is legal precedent. While we are at the matter of the law, let us notice that in one Corinthians, uh, 9, Paul quotes an old Testament law by way of being a legal paradigm, P-A-R-A-D-I-G-M, paradigm, pattern, if you like. He says in one Corinthians nine nine, it is written in the law of Moses, thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn. Paul proceeds to take this Old Testament law and apply it by extension to Christian workers that have every right to live of the work they do. Do they preach the gospel? Then they have a right to live of the gospel. You will say, by what right does Paul quote such an obscure regulation in the Old Testament, thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn, and apply it to the quite different level of Christian workers? The answer is surely, this answer at least I think to be the best of those put forward, that in the ancient world, lawyers regarded the terms of their basic laws as paradigms. At least Cicero, the great Roman lawyer, would thus have regarded the twelve tables, as they were called, the twelve tables of basic laws that were basic to Roman jurisprudence. They didn't suppose that the ancient fathers who laid down the laws on the twelve tables for the Romans attempted to cover every conceivable situation that could arise in life. They contented themselves by laying down certain laws in different departments of life that could be held to be not only valid in themselves, but paradigms and patterns for other situations. And that is how the succeeding lawyers treated them. Cicero himself comments at length upon this feature of Roman law. The rabbis likewise would have used the laws given in the Old Testament in that same way. They didn't suppose that God or Moses were trying to cover every particular situation in the laws that they actually laid down. But they held that the laws that God himself enacted and put through by Moses were meant to cover not only their own situation, but by being patterns, they were meant to cover all similar situations. So Paul takes the original law, thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treads out the corn. In the first place, it wasn't, of course, directed to the oxen, which, uh, notoriously have difficulty in understanding law codes. It was directed to the owners of the oxen, you'll see, to say that if they, uh, used oxen for their work, and the oxen toiled in, uh, reaping and thrashing the harvest, then the oxen had an equal right with the owners who benefit from, benefited from the work of the oxen. The oxen had an equal right with the owners to benefit from the product of their work. And if that was true of oxen and shows God's concern, concern for oxen, and shows his concern to inculcate into his people who used oxen this basic principle that if they benefited from the work of the oxen, the oxen had a right also to benefit from that work. So if that was true in those far off days, Paul argues that the same principle must apply in Christian work. If the Corinthians benefit from Paul's work in the gospel, then the Corinthians have a responsibility to see that Paul benefits from that work in the gospel. You'll see how the one instance is a pattern and a paradigm for the other. This is not typology either, gentlemen. This is using the Old Testament law and applying its lessons as a pattern to all similar circumstances where the underlying principles and situation is similar. Legal precedent then, Romans four. Legal paradigm, 1 Corinthians 9. But now let us turn back to Romans four to see another way in which Paul uses Old Testament. This is the end of Romans four and it says, in verse nineteen: and without being weakened in faith, he considered his own body, this is Abraham, now as good as dead, he being about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah's womb. Yea, looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, giving glory to God, being fully assured that what he had promised he was able also to perform. Wherefore also it was reckoned unto him for righteousness. Now it was not reckoned for his sake alone, that it was reckoned unto him, but for our sake also, unto whom it shall be reckoned, who believe on him that raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up for our trespasses and was raised again for our justification. And now it's not a case of legal precedent. Abraham being justified by faith created for us a legal precedent, so the beginning of Romans four says. But as we come to the end, Paul is no longer quoting Abraham as legal precedent, but he is quoting his experience and applying the lesson of it to ourselves by simple analogy. Simple analogy. And the point is an exceedingly important one. Abraham was justified by faith. If that is going to be a legal precedent for us, telling us that we must be justified by faith, the question immediately arises is, what do you mean by faith? Because, as you know, faith is taken by many people to mean many different things. How many a religious person has said, and some of them may have said it to you, oh yes, I have great faith in this, you know, that if you do the best you can, God will have mercy on you in the end. Oh, I have great faith in that, and I'm saved by faith. But that's not what the Bible means by faith at all. Faith is not doing the best you can. It's the very opposite. Faith in this context means not doing anything. Justification by faith without works. But you say, now wait a moment, you're going to quote Abram as a legal precedent to me, but how can my faith be like his? For the event that scripture is referring to when it says Abram believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness was this. God came to Abraham and said, you're going to have a son, Abraham. And Abraham was already pretty old, though still able to produce a child, as you see, when he produced Ishmael. But Sarah, dear soul, was barren. And when God said, you're going to have a son, Abraham, and then left Abraham years before the promise was fulfilled. Abraham, without being weakened in his faith, considered his own body as good as dead and the deadness of Sarah's womb, and believed. Believed not that he had to do his best to fulfill the promise of God. That was the mistake that Sarah fell into and had to be corrected for it. Believe simply that one day God would do his miracle of intervention, and the old decrepit and dying body of Abraham and the functionless womb of Sarah would spring to life, and life would come out of death. Abraham's faith was a faith in God who could bring life out of death. And if that is so, it is as once easy to see the analogy between Abram's faith and ours, is he, isn't, is it not? We are not asked to believe that God is going to give us a son, yet we are asked to believe in God who has brought life out of death, says Paul. For we believe on him who raised our Lord Jesus from the dead, who was delivered for our justification, uh, who was delivered for our trespasses and was raised again for our justification. Our faith then likewise in a God who raised the dead. And gentlemen, while we're at it, this description of our faith is important, isn't it? And is useful for an illustration, if you want one, when you're preaching to people who are confused about what faith means. You can say to them, if you will, look here now, suppose we had been standing around the grave of our blessed Lord Jesus, when the body of our Lord Jesus lay dead in the grave. And suppose we knew that unless that body came out of the grave, there would be no forgiveness, no salvation, no justification. For it is the fact if Christ is not risen, you're yet in your sins, gentlemen. And suppose we stood around that empty, that open grave, and we said, now, ah, the body of Jesus has got to come out of the grave, or else we're lost. Well, what can we do about that? Says somebody, look, we could start believing, couldn't we? Let's all join hands as we stand around, and we'll believe, believe, believe, believe. Now you, you're not believing hard enough. And you, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. Believe hard. And if we really believe it's going to come out of the grave, then it will come out of the grave. And we shall be saved. You grin because you're a collection of theologians, but uh, uh, uh, I will say. There are many folks who've got it in their heads like that. When I say to some of my friends who know I am saved by God's grace, and I am absolutely sure, ooh, they say, with my your faith. As though I had attained to some great degree of powerful faith. That's an absolute mistake, isn't it? And this analogy that Paul draws is not just him being arbitrary and fanciful, is it? It hits upon a vital element in faith that was true of Abram's faith. Believing in God that does it, not in my effort to fulfill God's promise, is true in our faith. We believe not in our effort to raise Jesus from the dead. We believe in a God who has raised him from the dead and has given us justification and new life. Legal precedent, legal paradigm, and now straight, simple analogy. I press it on you again, gentlemen, that this is not typology. Abraham's faith in a God who raised, who brought life out of dead is not a type of our faith. It's faith simply in both cases, and s- the same faith because its basic principle is the same principle. From an adage, let me move to another very wide car- category of Old Testament application in the New. It is the category of Of fulfillment. fulfillment. Of course, the New Testament has many places and events, while we are told that some prediction in the Old Testament has been fulfilled in the New. Some prophecy, some prediction, prediction straight fulfilled in the new. They constitute for us at this moment no difficulty. But, uh, problem has arisen when people have not noticed that the New Testament uses this category of fulfillment in quite another sense. It uses it of, uh, events and processes that never were intended as predictions and yet are said to be fulfilled in the New Testament. I quote the famous one from He- Hosea chapter eleven verse one because this has been an instance where unfriendly critics have taken the New Testament in general and, uh, the evangelist Matthew have taken them to task in a very hostile manner. At Hosea eleven one, God says that when Israel was a child, I loved him and I called my son out of Egypt. In Matthew chapter two, Matthew records how Joseph and Mary took the child Jesus down to Egypt to escape the wrath of f- of, uh, Herod. And then when they heard that Herod was dead, they brought the child back from Egypt. Matthew two fifteen, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, out of Egypt did I call my son. So here is Matthew saying that Hosea uh eleven verse one was fulfilled when Mary and Joseph brought the child Jesus back out of Egypt. And critics have said, but come, come, come, Matthew, here at least you have blundered. For when you look at Hosea chapter eleven verse one, it was never intended as a prediction. It is simply a statement of historical fact, what was true in the past. When Israel was a child at the beginning of its national history, says God, I called my son out of Egypt. Hosea is merely recalling that long past historic event in the life of the nation. He is not making a prediction. How then can Matthew possibly say that Hosea eleven verse one was fulfilled when the child Jesus was brought out of Egypt. The unfriendly critic has his explanation ready. It is this that Matthew had as a general thesis that the Lord Jesus fulfilled all Old Testament predictions. So Matthew went to a- about the business of recording all the predictions that the Lord fulfilled. He went through the Old Testament, and when he found a likely story or verse, uh, he said, well, see how that was fulfilled in the life of Christ. And, uh, proceeding along that principle, he came to Hosea chapter eleven verse one and didn't read it very exactly, and thought it was a prediction. And then he came to what he knew of the life of Christ and looked around to find out whether our Lord had gone down to Egypt or not, and he didn't find it anywhere. So he made up the story, made it up in good faith, like all silly saints do, but, uh, he made it up in good faith, you see, and said, well, surely he must have fulfilled it because he's the Son of God, so surely by definition he fulfilled all the promises and prophecies, so he must have fulfilled this one. It means that he must have gone to Egypt sometime, even if nobody knows about it. Well, he surely did, and then he was called out of Egypt, and he invented the story. And then they turn around and tell you that, uh, you can believe Matthew, but ha ha, and this bit he got it wrong. It is not Matthew got it wrong, gentlemen. It is the unfriendly critic has got it wrong, because while he thought, he didn't think enough. That is a common mistake. The word fulfill is used in the New Testament in two different ways. It is used of the fulfilling of predictions. It is used of fulfilling of things that were never intended as predictions. The famous example is James chapter two, where James is arguing the case that we are justified not merely by faith, we are justified by works. And he says in chapter two verse twenty one and twenty two and twenty three as follows: Was not Abraham our father justified by works, in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar? Thou seest that faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect, and the scripture was fulfilled, which says, and Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness. Ponder it, please, gentlemen. The scripture that was fulfilled was the scripture in Genesis fifteen verse six. Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness. Now, that original scripture is not a promise, was not a prophecy, nor yet a prediction. It was not saying that because Abram believed God that day, one day he would be justified, but not just yet. It is telling us that the very moment Abraham took God at his word and believed him, he was there and then justified by faith. It was counted to him for righteousness. Well, if it is a statement of fact, then how can James turn round and say that that, uh, statement of fact was fulfilled some years later? What does the man mean? That doesn't mean that a prediction was fulfilled. Let us recall the story in our thinking. The issue at stake between God and Abraham was, at the beginning and all the way through, whether Abraham believed God, whether his face wa- faith was in God and in God only. For a while, it was a little wobbly, wasn't it? After his initial belief in God, it was a bit wobbly, compromised a bit by Sarah's suggestion that he take Hagar and father Ishmael, as though God's promise of a child really wasn't a real genuine promise, but a simply a little exhortation that Abraham and Sarah were to do their best to produce a child. And God had to pour cold water on Abraham and Sarah's notion. He refused to accept Ishmael. Ishmael was not the fulfillment of his promise. Which promise was eventually fulfilled. A genuine promise. Isaac was born by the miraculous intervention of God. When Isaac grew to a lad, God decided the time had come for Abram's faith to be tested. And if I may paraphrase him, he came to Abram and said, Abram, tell me, your hope for the future, your faith, where is it vested now? You'll see, humanly speaking, all Abraham's hopes for the future were in Isaac, weren't they? All God's promises were in Isaac. In, in Isaac shall thy seed be called. Says God to Abram, Abram, do you mind telling me now where your faith for the future is. Would it be still in me? And only in me? Or would it be perhaps in Isaac? And Abraham replied, well, of course, Lord, it's in you. Yes, very good, says the Lord. Well, should we just demonstrate that? Uh, would you care to give me Isaac and offer him up on this altar? And then it will be clear, won't it, where your faith is? And the writer to the Hebrews comments pertinently enough. Here was Abram, who had received all the promises, and Isaac in whom all those promises were vested, and here was Abram going to offer Isaac on the altar, logically arguing it out with himself as he climbed breathless the stony steeps of Mount Moriah. I don't know how God will do it. But if God says that in Isaac my seed is called, and yet today calls me to offer him on an, on an altar. Well, all I can see to it, says Abram to himself, is that God will have to ra- ra- raise him from the dead, that's all. God can't lie. My faith is in God, and in God only. And he took his son and went to offer him on the altar. And, says James, do you see how that original statement, Abram believed God, is now fulfilled? What do you mean fulfilled? Well, Abram's faith is now taken and expressed at the highest level possible for Abram. And thus, by his works, he demonstrated that his original faith was genuine. So he was called upon to express that faith at the highest possible level. That is what James means by fulfillment. And you will find our Lord Jesus using the term fulfill in the same way. According to Luke chapter twenty two, when the hour came and he sat down with his apostles to eat the Passover for the last time in Jerusalem. He said unto them, this is Luke twenty two fifteen— with desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I say unto you, I will not eat it until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God. The it in question that is going to be fulfilled is, of course, the Passover. But what did our Lord mean by saying the Passover was going to be fulfilled, because the original Passover was not a prophecy. It wasn't a prediction that one day God would deliver his people out of Egypt. The Passover was the celebration of an actual historical event. It actually happened. They were delivered. And all the subsequent generations, as they kept the annual s- uh, feast of Passover, were celebrating this original historical event. Was not therefore originally a prediction or a prophecy. What does our Lord mean by saying, therefore, that the Passover is going to be fulfilled? He means... that, uh, when Israel was first redeemed out of Egypt, they had to be redeemed by the blood of a Passover. For the first thing from which Israel had to be saved was not the power of Pharaoh, but the wrath of God. Had no Passover lamb been provided, Israel's firstborn would have perished equally with the Egyptian firstborn when the angel of the Lord went through, uh, Egypt and executed God's wrath. Israel had to be saved from the wrath of God, and they were saved from the wrath of God by the blood of the Lamb, fulfilled at an infinitely higher level. For all men stand under the wrath of God, and all men need to be redeemed. Hence the Savior must die and express salvation from the wrath of God through the blood of a lamb at the highest possible level, as he himself became the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Fulfillment then, not fulfillment of a prediction, but the expression of a basic principle that was expressed in Old Testament days at lowly level, expressed now at a infinitely higher level. And the analogy that I used in the hearing of certain learned gentlemen last week was a simple one. The similarity, the relationship between the first airplane that ever flew and the jumbo jet that goes whizzing halfway up the stratosphere. The first aeroplane that ever flew was a primitive affair indeed, made of wood and string and brown paper and a few elastic bands put together by a good deal of spit. But it flew because, primitive as it was, it embodied certain basic principles of aerodynamics. Of course, it kept breaking down, crashing, but the basic principles were there. Now, nearly a hundred years later, you can see those same basic principles of aerodynamics only expressed at a vastly higher level in the great jumbo jet that goes sailing overhead. The early model of airplane, gentlemen, is not a type of the jumbo jet. And what I would call attention from between the similarities of the jumbo jet and the first plane, I'm not engaging in typology. Please notice it. Some people fail to. It isn't typology. It is a fulfillment in the sense of the taking of those basic principles shown in the primitive airplane, now seeing them fulfilled with greater sophistication at the higher level of the jumbo jet. You say, all right, we take your explanation, that's a fulfillment, but why should we bother our heads? I mean, uh, why would do we need to know about the Jewish sacrifice and Passover? Why can't we just have the New Testament and be told that we're saved through faith in Jesus Christ who shed his blood at Calvary? Why do we need to bother with these Old Testament things? And that being a moderately fair question, let us take a break now and turn to answering the question in our next session.