Questions and Answers, Part 6

Transcript

GRM 1199
9/30/2018
Questions and Answers, Part 6
Selected Verses
Gil Rugh

Alright, let me just open it up, questions you might have, or you’ve come with. I know last week, once I get talking about theological matters, I forget to ask questions. So, now you get to ask a question and I’ll wait on other things. Maybe I’ll prime the pump a little bit. What do I know about that, that’s just an expression I picked up. I did have a question, it’s been sitting for a while, because I didn’t have a good answer. I still don’t have a good answer, but I’ll address it.

I was asked about polygamy and why doesn’t the bible say more about polygamy? And why does the bible through the Old Testament accept polygamy?

You might be interested, the first polygamist mentioned in the bible is in Genesis 4. So, if that ever comes up on a bible quiz, who’s the first person to be identified as a polygamist, having more than one wife, it’s Lamech in Genesis 4, he is of the line of Cain. In verse 19, “Lamech took to himself two wives,” and then you have something said, he also is involved in killing a young man that he had a conflict with, the context says. But he’s the first one identified as a polygamist.

The mosaic law does not encourage polygamy, it does not forbid polygamy. It does give instructions regarding it, if you want to come over to Deuteronomy 21:15, “If a man has two wives, the one loved and the other unloved, and both the loved and the unloved have borne him sons, if the firstborn son belongs to the unloved, then it shall be in the day he wills what he has to his sons, he cannot make the son of the loved the firstborn before the son of the unloved, who is the firstborn.” And so on. You see there, it doesn’t address the matter of polygamy, there’s just a control or a guideline here. The first-born son, as you are aware receives the double portion and so on. If he had two wives and one was the more favored wife, he couldn’t take the favored wife’s son and elevate him to his first born if the less favored wife had given birth to her son before the other. So, it’s a regulation which shows in the Mosaic Law, it’s not forbidding having more than on wife.

In Deuteronomy 25, we have what they call the levirate marriage where a brother, brother in law, who has a brother who dies, he marries the wife of the deceased. Raises up children for him, so that the line can continue and the inheritance right continues. That’s a provision, a requirement which would require in effect a second marriage in the Mosaic Law. All that to say, through the Old Testament the issue is not addressed in any way that would forbid it or encourage it. It seems that the general practice, and most would agree to this, was a monogamous marriage, but we’re familiar with someone like David, Solomon, multiple wives. And God does not condemn them for that. For Solomon, it created problems, but the problem was being involved in the paganism that the wives brought into the marriage. Not particularly that he had more than one wife. David did and God elevated the son of a later wife, Solomon to become his successor. So, he stepped over the older son. God works.

There are 12 tribes in Israel, one father, four women. Two wives, two concubines. That’s the way God did it. All that to say, I don’t have a good answer, I don’t know that the scripture addresses it. When you come to the New Testament, Jesus is asked about the subject of divorce in Matthew 19. The question is, is it alright to divorce your wife? Now, there are regulations in the mosaic law about divorcing your wife. That’s where the husbands are because wives didn’t divorce their husbands, but husbands divorced their wives. There are guidelines and instructions in the law covering divorce and so on.

The Pharisees question had to do with divorcing for any reason. Jesus’s answer was in Matthew 19:4, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh? So, they are no longer two, but one flesh, What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.” Seems clear that from the creation, God’s plan was one man one woman. It’s true, Matthew was addressing divorce.

What about a man who took a second wife without divorcing the first? Well the bible doesn’t directly address it, but God’s plan was one man, one woman. That becomes the foundation for the practice. Polygamy never was broadly practiced among the common people we might say. The royalty was a different case. Why did God allow it? Well, in that context of Matthew 19, it says the divorce was allowed because of “the hardness of your heart.” If God intervenes with some kind of final punishment for sin, none of us would survive. Because the Old Testament tells us, there’s not a righteous man on the earth who always does right and never sins.

That’s not saying that we’re advocating polygamous marriages. I think the bible is clear that God’s plan, and that’s the plan that we’re working on and carrying out and has pretty much has been the plan of the church down through its history. So, I don’t have a good answer why God allowed it just at that period of time in Israel’s history. It was something acceptable, just as marriage of a close relative. Abraham married his half-sister. When the law is given, that kind of marriage is forbidden. Same with Jacob and his wives, he couldn’t marry two sisters, but he did. But the law, later, will forbid it.

In the unfolding of God’s will, certain things at certain times, for God’s purposes He allows, but later clarity of revelation overrules. No final answer on why He chose to allow that. David is rebuked for some sins, but for having multiple wives, God does not rebuke him, and in some ways, He blesses him, as Solomon is the fruit of a later marriage that David has. Okay, that give you time to think about your questions?

Question: We have a question that came in. How does one honor a parent that is an alcoholic and dangerously abusive? A parent, they are problems, grandparents are not, but parents are. You know, the principle set down in scripture is, we honor our parents because they are our parents, not because we agree with what they do or don’t do, just like we honor the lines of authority that God has established. We have to be careful of that. For example, the New Testament instructs you, submit to rulers. Some of those rulers, like Nero, were despicable in their conduct and behavior. But they are to be treated with respect and honor. Now, how you carry that out, becomes a personal matter there.

Obviously, you’re dealing with unbelievers here. You try to do what you can to help them, encourage them. But that doesn’t mean you have to support their activity or do anything to encourage it. So, there you can’t change somebody else. So, well, I’m not going to have anything to do with them. They’re going to keep drinking, they’re going to keep doing that. They’re my parents, I have to honor them. That means that I will have to show them respect, and there may be times I have to help them. They’ve brought their problems on themselves, but they are my parents. I don’t want to facilitate the conduct that is destructive for them. Now I can’t allow them, if this behavior is intruding into my family and disrupting it. Then I can not allow that to happen because I have a responsibility for the condition of my family. So, there might be lines that have to be drawn there. I can’t allow my children to be left with you when we go somewhere, because I can’t trust you. You have to say that with respect, but it’s true. I can’t allow you to have an influence in my home which will be disruptive or harmful, but I always respect the fact that they are my parents, and where possible, I want to show them that respect and be a help to them, in whatever way I can. These kinds of situations, I think become a pressure for us, and that’s always the case where we’re dealing with those that God has placed in authority.

Now, as we become adults and we establish our own home, the response to parental authority is a little different. My adult children, with their own family, are not responsible now that they don’t live under my authority. But they still show respect, because I’m still the parent. And we’re responsible, if anyone does not care for his own family, his own relatives, he’s worse than an unbeliever. So, I have to be careful there, that I don’t use their conduct, which I find despicable, vile, as an excuse not to fulfill my responsibility. Someone else’s sin never excuses me or is a reason for me to sin. So, I look for ways I can be respectful son.

Sometimes there may be distance necessary because any involvement or contact with certain kind of people can just be so disruptive that I have to limit that. But even there, I want to be respectful and not treat them as though they are not “worthy for respect”, they are worthy of respect because of the position God has given them in relationship to me. This is true, transferring over to something a little less personal. The governing leaders, we respect them. We speak respectfully of them and to them. That doesn’t mean that we find their conduct always respectable. So, I want to make the clarity there that God has put certain people in authority and parents are like that. And then even when they’re no longer directly in authority in my life, they’re still my parents.

It may be these parents bring misery on their own lives. What I can do, without disrupting my own family, to alleviate that? I would want to be available to help in whatever way I could, because I believe it’s a responsibility that the Lord has given me to honor my parents. It doesn’t say honor your parents if they’re honorable. I honor my parents because they’re the parents God has given me. Just like a wife honors her husband because that’s the husband God’s given her and the governing leaders.

So, it becomes a personal matter and you have to work each of these cases out. That’s true where it’s not maybe as severe as this, but there is the balance as you’ve established your own home. That doesn’t mean I still don’t have a responsibility to my parents in their old age. That’s where Paul says, if a church can get involved in helping, but if there are family members, they’re responsibility is to help. Obviously these parents could be an ongoing situation that needs help. Just remember, I respect them, I honor them, I have to be careful with my attitude toward people like this, because I can begin to have a certain distain for them, because their conduct is such that I don’t even want to around them. We sometimes, as Christians, have to be careful in the whole realm of authority. They are given respect and that’s all I can do, is what I should do. Paul demonstrates that and Peter does as well, as they talk about the despicable rulers they have, of which in depravity, go beyond anything we’ve had to experience.

Thankfully in the leaders God provided, for example, for our nation. But they are still worthy of respect because God put them in that position. That’s true in the book of Danial with Nebuchadnezzar. He was not a nice man. He put Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the furnace, wanted to burn them so that there wouldn’t be so much as ashes left. He’s still to be respected.

Question: First off, praise the Lord for the management of the debt reduction over the last several years. Just curious over the giving units at Indian Hills, and also what the annual G&A expenses would be, the general administrative expenses? Okay, is that on my sheet, Carroll? Couldn’t give you the giving units, the number of units, they could be acquired, because people give and they receive income tax statements of their giving at the end of the year, we could add that. I’m not sure what the giving units are.

What was the second part of that question? What are the general administrative expenses for the church on an annual basis? Just an Idea, you know there’s a $500,000, there’s 100 giving units, so each giving unit would, if you used a baseline of $500,000 divided by 100, just give a baseline of how much do I need to carry the load? There have been times, if you remember, I’ve given the basic breakdown, the percentage of people who give nothing, who come regularly. There’s always going to be that, so it doesn’t flesh out evenly, and we don’t make a point of giving 10% or anything, so it does become a personal thing. We have people who come and go, and it’s interesting how the giving has gone up this year even though we may have less people. There may be reasons for that. Some people may have been enabled by the Lord to give more and some of those things happen. Budget wise, you have an idea Carroll, what the budget is for the year? Yes, for anybody that’s interested we have the financial report for 2017 and the budget for 2018 available, so if anybody wants a copy, I can give them a copy, Jeff has a copy. But just to give an example for expenses budgeted for this year, is about 1.5 million and our revenue is budgeted for 1.7 million. Our giving of that 1.7 is about 1.6. So that kind of gives you an idea. Ok, is that a little bit the idea, 1.5 budget? So, we project that we’ll be paying off a couple hundred thousand dollars since the giving and the income will supersede the budget by a couple hundred thousand dollars. Which enables, we’ve already reduced it quite a bit this year. So, it was available, just have to ask, good.

Follow up question: Would a child be dishonoring to an abusive parent, if he turned him in? If the child used the law against an abusive parent, would he still be honoring that parent? Well, I guess it becomes, you know, everything’s abusive today. So, you want to be careful. Is it child abuse if you speak harshly to them? I told you, Marilyn’s reading a book from probably 1830, something like that, that I picked up somewhere, and it’s on parenting, so you get an idea how they viewed it then. What a different day. There was no allowance for any kind of crime or disruptive behavior after, what was it, one year of age? It was just a different world. We want to be careful, what is abusive? Is it physically abusing underaged children in the home? Then that might be something that has to be addressed, if it’s serious, if it’s sexual abuse or something, you are obligated and should require it. That kind of thing is underaged, if it’s between a husband and a wife, that becomes somewhat personal. They have to decide between themselves. It’s hard to get involved in that.

So, turning into authorities, if there’s something there that is a serious, rises to a crime, the kind of abuse that’s physical, but you call to the authorities, there has to be agreement. The authorities come, cause my Dad’s treating my mother improperly, and the authorities come and say, no he’s not, he may be sometimes meaner then he should be, but I don’t have any complaint. So, then you’re left trying to…. So, some of those things, if it’s underage children, and there’s true abuse going on, then you want to probably get people involved who can help deal with the situation. You want to be sure, once you get “the government” in your family, it’s easier to get them in then get them out. But you don’t want to allow for things that are harmful and destructive, truly to go on. So, I don’t know if that answers the question.

Always going to authorities, I say, is the last resort and I’d be sure it’s something that the authorities are going to be doing. Example from way back. A wife and grown daughter came to see me about a situation with the husband and father. They had been recommended by another pastor to come see me. And I said, you want me to talk to him? Yes, you know there will be consequences? He wasn’t beating her, well sure, yes. So, I when I ended up working out when to go see him, and sit there, he’s very gracious, but he had told her, if you do that, I will never darken the door of that church again. They weren’t coming here, so that put it at a different situation. End result, the wife didn’t want to pursue it, so she left the church with him, so you just want to be careful getting involved, whether you’re really going to be a help or they just need somebody to talk to. If it’s real abuse, then I would talk to somebody. Especially if it involved younger children. If you’re dealing with two adults, the one adult is capable of going themselves. I’d be careful about getting involved in that, otherwise you end up in a situation. If you think the authorities should be involved, you’re an adult, go to the authorities. But where there are underaged children, if there is real abuse, I would go speak to somebody.

Question: People like sending questions online. I know, you’re just making these up yourself. I’m not, what is your opinion of Charles Spurgeon?

I have a great appreciation of Spurgeon, probably because of my background. My mother was the first one saved in our family and she got ahold of 10 volumes of Spurgeon’s sermons that are categorized according to subject, and she became a reader of that. And that got me interested in Spurgeon. Spurgeon was not dispensational. He was strongly opposed to that new theology in the 1800’s, connected with Darby and so on. There’s debate, was Spurgeon pre-millennial or not? Seems there is strong evidence he was, but Spurgeon was not an expositor in the way I would approach it. He didn’t go through book studies per se. Primarily he picked out a verse of scripture and then he elaborated on it. But I do enjoy reading Spurgeon. Pastors have indicated to me that they don’t enjoy reading Spurgeon, but I guess that’s a subjective thing. So, I enjoy it.

One reason we talk about Spurgeon so much, is that there’s so much material that has been preserved. His sermons were being published all over. There are 63 volumes of his sermons that have been republished by a Dallas publishing firm and many other writings. He had great perception; he was a voluminous reader. He said his preparation for Sunday was to read 6 theological volumes a week. From reading about people who knew him, they said he had a true photographic mind. He could read, a scientist was talking to him one day, and it said, he’s quoting to me from a new work on science. He said, he’s quoting and quoting and quoting and I went home and pulled off the book, and he said, he could just quote page after page, so that enabled him to have a grasp. He was a great lover of the Puritans.

You graciously gave me one of these volumes on one of my anniversaries. He also published a magazine. You can’t get ahold of what he did regularly, so I have all those volumes of his magazines, which I sit and read, that are published and bound. In that, he might review 30 books and magazines. You know, at the back of that, he always reviews the books and, so yes, I enjoy Spurgeon. But Spurgeon preaches as a theologian, not as expositing through a text, and he’ll take a text and elaborate it theologically. We would say it’s not always exegetically, but the theology is good if you keep in mind, he’s not dispensational.

So, I do enjoy Spurgeon. He had great insight. He was popular, then he was unpopular. He got voted out of the Baptist conference, was like 2,000 against him to 6 for him. That was a few years before he passed away. I do like Spurgeon for myself, most preachers do, but some don’t. I read one preacher who said, one of the rules I have is, no one in this church is allowed to quote Spurgeon. Guess he got sick of hearing about Spurgeon.

Speaking of Spurgeon, if we’ve covered pretty much what you have, let me say something about Covenant Theology, just in brief. I refer to covenant theology a lot when I’m talking at an evening like this. But I just wanted to identify for you what covenant theology is. It’s not what we think when we talk about covenants. My understanding is of covenant, is what the bible calls a covenant. That’s not what covenant theology is. That’s why we never come across them when we’re dealing with scripture. We come across the covenant with Noah after the flood. The Abrahamic covenant and subsequent covenants. Those are not what we’re talking about when we talk about covenant theology. Covenant Theology has developed covenants that are not directly called in scripture, three of them I’m going to mention.

Covenant Theology, the first one, covenant of redemption, I’ll mention this. There’s nowhere in the bible where there’s something like this called a covenant. What the theologians do is, they look through scripture and think, well, I think we find the ingredients, we could have a covenant here. The covenant of redemption was a covenant supposedly made between the Father and the Son in eternity past. The Father promised the Son that He would provide for Him a group of people, with the Son agreeing to come to earth to provide the redemption for those people, if I can summarize it, not the technical definition. So, it was the agreement, the covenant made between the Father and the Son. The Son would come to earth and die on the cross. The Father would provide people redeemed by that act, the covenant of redemption. So, no where in the bible was something like that called a covenant.

Second covenant, the covenant of grace. I’d separate these two, some covenant theologians make it one. The covenant of grace is the over arching covenant. They’ll sometimes include the covenant of redemption as part of the covenant of grace. So, sometimes you’ll read that covenant theologians believe in two covenants, sometimes three. Doesn’t matter, I broke them out, but the covenant of grace is the basic one. This is between God and the elect. It’s based on the covenant of redemption. This is between God and the elect in eternity past. That God established a covenant, that in His grace He would apply the effects of the redemption that Christ would accomplish to a certain group of chosen people. So that’s another covenant.

Again, we can read about the covenant with Noah, that’s the first use of the word covenant in the Old Testament, after the flood with Noah. We have the Abrahamic Covenant, but there’s no covenant called the covenant of grace. It’s a theologically constructed covenant. That’s where I get concerned. They come up with this theology, they create a covenant supposedly that happened in eternity past for redemption for the covenant of grace.

Then you have a third covenant called the covenant of works. This is between God and Adam in the garden before the fall. God established a covenant with Adam. If you obey me, then I promise you blessings for eternity, if I can summarize it. If you disobey Me, the consequences will be death. So, supposedly in these covenants, there’s this kind of agreement established and worked out.

Now, these become the covenants then that govern the rest of scripture. So, like when you read the Abrahamic Covenant, that’s just a manifestation of the covenant of grace. All the other covenants are subsets of that. These determine the covenant and since these are established in eternity past and are binding covenants, particularly the focal one will be the covenant of grace, but it’s tied to the covenant of redemption, whether you include it with the covenant of grace or separate it out. These tie to their being only one people of God. Because what is foundational is, God has made a covenant and the covenant of grace between Himself and the elect. So, the terminology, they use it, is there is one people of God. The elect that God established a covenant with before the creation. They don’t see a distinction between Israel and the Church because there is only one people of God, those that God established the covenant of grace with in eternity past, provided for in the redemption that Christ would provide. That’s where it becomes governing and overarching.

I was reading a covenant theologian, he comes and says, I presuppose these things when I come to scripture that enables me to interpret them. I say no, we ought to start with scripture. And I say let’s just call a covenant what God calls a covenant. You’ve created something God does not say is a covenant, that sometime before the earth was created, God established a covenant between Himself and His Son, and the agreement was, the Son would do this and so God would do this. The Father would do this. Well, you’re reading a lot into eternity past and you weren’t there.

And then the covenant of grace is between God and the elect, and so we only have to deal with the elect, there’s one people of God. The elect that God covenanted with in eternity past. So, that’s why they don’t have to see a distinction between Israel and the church. Because it’s really just one people of God. That’s their favorite expression. When you read the theologians talking about one people of God, you know you’re in a covenant kind of setting. That’s why I say, sometimes I think when I talk about a covenant theology, I’m concerned that if you’ve not been into reading this stuff, you think well, I believe in covenants. Don’t we believe in covenants? The Abrahamic Covenant, the Palestinian Covenant, the New Covenant, I mean these covenants, aren’t they covenants?

But that’s not what Covenant Theology teaches. This developed in the times of reformation, later, really is put together in the 17th Century, the 1600’s. But it’s beginning to be developed in the 1500’s. The covenant of works, the first evidence of it is at the very end of the 16th century, the last 1500’s, that covenant of works between God and Adam. It becomes a key thing. These covenants, like I say the covenant of grace, means you only have one people of God, the elect. Any distinction between Israel and the church is just a time. During this time the elect or Israel now it’s the church, they blend into one another. You don’t see a distinction. This becomes governing, you don’t take the word of God literally in interpreting it. Because you’re going to interpret everything in light of these covenants.

That becomes the principle that guides your interpretation. There’s only one people of God, established in the covenant of grace, so it doesn’t matter what you call them, they’re Israel, they’re the church, it’s just one people of God, so it’s just an unfolding of the covenant of grace through time. The covenant of works between God and Adam. Out of this comes the idea of active and passive work of Christ. Where Christ had to keep the Mosaic Law to fulfill what’s required in the covenant of works. A life of perfect obedience to God so that He would have righteousness to pass on. Adam failed, he sinned, and he passed on sin, the sin nature. So, Christ had to come as a second Adam and perfectly keep the Mosaic Law, in so doing he acquired righteousness.

So, that’s the active obedience of Christ. The passive obedience of Christ is His death on the cross. But they’re strong on this and some dispensational theologians pick it up. If you read McArthur, he believes in active and passive obedience of Christ. But it’s a covenant position. This is where we have to go back to what is the foundation of what is being talked about. Well, if you don’t believe in the covenant of works, where did you get this idea of active and passive obedience? It goes back to the idea that Adam had to obey the commandments. And for them the Mosaic Law commandments continue. So, Christ had to perfectly keep, that’s His active obedience, the requirements of the Law without sinning. I don’t have any question He did that, but He didn’t do that so He could acquire righteousness and then that righteousness could be passed on to us. We get the righteousness of God in Christ. That’s the expression, the righteousness of Christ is never used in the New Testament. If covenant theologians have this, there would be no righteousness to given to us, if Christ did not acquire it by perfectly keeping the Law and fulfilling the covenant of works.

This kind of idea is what governs Covenant Theology. It is the dominant theology. It is pervasive, it goes back, like I said, to the 1500’s, 1600’s. The Westminster Confession of Faith talks about these covenants. Westminster Confession of Faith, down about 1646, somewhere in that time period, where it really pulls it together as a statement. Here’s what the covenant of faith is, and so on. John Calvin did not believe in a covenant of works. He said, anybody that talks about a covenant of works, and means anything other than the Mosaic Law and limited there, is confused. So, he would not have been one who got into. But that’s what we talk about with covenant theology. That’s our difference. If you came out of Roman Catholicism, they had a similar kind of background because this leads to not seeing the distinctions that we have as dispensationalists.

We’re going to talk about the millennium, I don’t have time to go into the different millennial views, we’ll talk about that next time. But this, knowing the differences in our theological foundation and this stuff comes out of moving away from a literal interpretation of scripture. That’s why, for the opening centuries of church history, the church, and there is pretty universal agreement on this, even with non-dispensationalists, the church was pre-millennial. But then Origin came up with his allegorizing, that spread Augustine, solidified it in a non-literal view of the kingdom. So, if we aren’t careful, we just pick up practices out here.

We’ll talk more about some of those practices next time. These theological foundations are crucial, if you take a literal interpretation of scripture, then we’ll call covenants, what the scripture calls covenants. And we will let the scripture define what those covenants are. Israel is Israel, we’ll let the scripture define. If you’ve established some kind of theology that, well no, the back before the world was created, God had a covenant that He established with the elect, and that governs scriptures, well then you predetermined the outcome. So, it comes out, it’s just basic. If you’re going to stay with interpreting the scripture literally, then you come to certain conclusions. All this starts back around 200 years after Christ, or later with Origin, who was from 185 to 250, in that time frame. Who decided we shouldn’t be interpreting scripture literally. We should allegorize it, look for deeper meaning. Amazing how that is spread, the corruption spread and continues down unto today. Well, just a little overview.

Alright, let’s have a word of prayer. Thank You Lord, for Your word. Lord how Your love and as we seek to handle Your word accurately and then apply it correctly into situations in which You place us. The decisions that we have to make, Lord, we want to be careful students of Your word, so we have a foundation so the Spirit can give us wisdom in handling some of the difficult things that come before us, that we are always functioning consistently with Your word, firmly planted on that foundation. We pray for the week before us, and the way You’ll use us in a variety of places and different situations. Some pleasant, some unpleasant, but in everyone of them we have the confidence that You are working Your purposes for us. You place us there. You bring these things into our lives so that we can be used to bring honor to You. Pray that will be true, in Christ’s name. Amen.