Sovereign Grace Community Church

The Noahic Covenant was unique in the Old Testament history in that it was a covenant God made with the earth and all of its creatures, including all of mankind. This covenant is characteristically associated with the Flood event, but all too often the creational and circumstantial context of the covenant is overlooked. This message examines that context and its crucial importance to the meaning and purpose of the Noahic Covenant.

This message examines the question of a creation covenant, but from a scriptural and redemptive-historical vantage point rather than in terms of systematic or philosophical considerations.

This message examines the dynamic of promise and fulfillment as a fundamental structural and functional feature of the scriptural storyline, its message, and its progress culminating with the messianic person and work. As such, the promise/fulfillment dynamic is critical to rightly understanding the biblical covenants and their function and interrelationships.

Covenant is a core theme in the Scriptures, even as God's actions and interactions in the world are most often set within explicit covenant arrangements. Both of the major theological systems (Covenant Theology and Dispensationalism) recognize the importance of covenant (and the individual covenants) in the redemptive history, yet they fall short precisely because they are organized systems, and the Scripture doesn't present a system, but a storyline culminating with the Messiah and messianic work. The scriptural text itself, on its own terms and according to its own concerns, is the only valid lens for examining the concept of covenant and the various expressions of it in the Bible. This is the task of Biblical Theology.

This message briefly considers the concept of covenant in relation to Dispensationalism, which is the second predominant evangelical theological system. Like Covenant Theology, Dispensationalism is structured around the concept of covenant, but the two systems approach this concept and its biblical manifestations from different perspectives leading to different interpretations.

This message introduces a new series addressing the topic of covenant and its significance as a key structural, organizing and interpretive feature of the Scriptures. The first task is to provide basic definitions and consider how the two predominant theological systems interact with and color our understanding of the theme of covenant, the various biblical covenants themselves, their interrelationships, and their role in God's purposes and work in accomplishing them.

Many think of God's final judgment in terms of human destiny in either heaven or hell, but a careful examination of the scriptures shows that this judgment is ultimately concerned with God's intent for His creation to be sacred space - His dwelling place in which He is present and rules through His human image-children, just as He indicated when He ordered and filled the creation in the beginning. Judgment, then, is about vindicating truth by seeing to it that all things are made to fully conform to their created design and purpose. This is why John's final judgment vision in the Revelation is followed by his vision of the "new heavens and new earth," which vision completes the scriptural record even as it depicts the consummation of God's design for His creation - "Behold, I am making all things new."

The concept of final judgment is one that most people, Christians included, aren't eager to give a lot of thought to. In general, people hope that, if there is to be a final reckoning, their good will outweigh their bad and things will work out well for them. For Christians, many puzzle over the idea that they, too, will be judged according to their works since they are saved by their faith in Jesus. But the final judgment associated with Christ's appearing has a much broader scope and purpose whose goal is the consummation of God's new creation such that all things will be "summed up" in the Messiah and God will finally and forever be "all in all."

For many Christians, the idea of a future resurrection has little significance in their thinking, expectation and hope. Instead, the focus is often on the destination of one's soul after death. And where some thought is given to the future resurrection, it usually focuses on a new body free from mortality, disease and dysfunction. But the Scriptures insist that the resurrection at Christ's return, not the soul's destiny at death, is the focal matter in Christian hope. And yet not in the individualistic sense of getting a new body, but as this general resurrection event will initiate the creation's renewal and "summing up" in Christ so that the Creator-God will at last be "all in all."

The Parousia is often understood as referring to Jesus' "second coming," but it actually designates Jesus' one appearing - His presence in the world - that occurred with the incarnation, continues through the present age, and will be consummated when He is openly and bodily revealed at the last day. This reality of Jesus' abiding presence as Lord over all has profound impact on the nature and orientation of Christian hope and how Christ's people perceive and carry out their mission in the world.

The New Testament writings speak to the internal life of the Christian community and its mission in the world, but another crucial aspect of the Christian life and testimony is enduring, manifest hope. Few would deny that hope is an important Christian virtue, but many fail to understand the concept of hope according to its biblical meaning and orientation. This message examines that topic and considers the doctrine of the Parousia as the immediate object of the Christian's hope.

Many Christians associate the king-priest concept with Jesus, as He is enthroned at God's right hand and interceding for His people. This isn't incorrect, but Jesus is the singular King-Priest precisely as God's true Image-Son - as True Man. For the regal-priestly function is the human vocation, as God created man to administer His rule in His creation and mediate the creation's relationship with Him. Thus Jesus' role as King-Priest is the role of all who share in His consummate human life by His Spirit, and so is fundamental to the Church's vocation in the world.

The gospel is the good news of the kingdom of God - the kingdom of God's new creation that He inaugurated through Jesus' triumph in death and resurrection. And so the crucial element in proclaiming the gospel is manifesting the new creation that has its substance in the resurrected Messiah and is present in the world in those who share in His resurrection life through the Spirit. This gospel of new creation in Christ must be the focus of the Church's witness in the world, and the very marrow of this testimony is cruciform sonship - lives that bear living witness to the meaning, purpose, and fruit of Jesus' cross.

The Church's mission is often framed in terms of "soul winning" or "kingdom building." The former focuses on the matter of personal salvation - leading people to faith in Christ, while the latter commonly emphasizes social action and improving the lives of people and communities. But the New Testament understands the gospel as the good news that God, in Christ, has inaugurated His promised kingdom and is now, through the Spirit, enlarging that kingdom. But this is the kingdom of God's rule over His redeemed and renewed creation, so that the proclamation of the "gospel of the kingdom" is the Church's witness to new creation.

Christians have long debated the Church's role and mission in the world, and in the modern era, the tendency has been to stress either the work of "soul-winning" or social action. But as commonly understood and implemented, both approaches to "mission" fall short of the Church's biblical mandate. This message examines some foundational considerations that Christians must come to grips with if they are to faithfully carry out their ordained mission in the world.

Holiness and unity are the primary qualities of Christ's Church, and they are two sides of the same coin, reflecting the truth that Christians are members of one another because they are members of Christ by His indwelling and transforming Spirit. The Spirit is the crucial focal point in any consideration of Christ's Church and its life and function in the world. And the Spirit's "gifts" - His sovereign, wise, and manifold distribution of spiritual endowments - stand at the center of His relationship with the Church and His work within its members. This message examines the matter of spiritual gifts, not in abstraction or as a distinct doctrinal topic, but as the way in which the Spirit accomplishes His work of creational renewal. That renewal presently involves human conformity to the New Adam, but with a view toward the Spirit's ultimate accomplishment of summing up everything in the created order in Jesus the Messiah.

The most obvious unity problem in the early church involved the relationship between Jewish and Gentile believers, but the New Testament writings show that unity in the church was a challenge across the board. Whether their view of their leaders, their use of spiritual gifts, their worship, their understanding of differences, or their daily practices, the early Christians struggled to live into the reality of their unity in the Messiah. This message examines a few of those challenges, even as they continue to the present day.

The problem of Jew-Gentile unity wasn't unique to Galatia and Syria, but emerged everywhere that Gentiles were coming to faith in Israel's Messiah and entering God's covenant household - the household that had always been defined in terms of Abraham and the Hebrew people. For various reasons, the unity problem among the Roman believers was distinctive, if not unique, yet Paul addressed it in the same way as he did with the Galatian churches. The remedy for Jew-Gentile divisions among Christ's people - as indeed all expressions of Christian disunity - is rightly understanding and owning the truth of justification by faith in Him.

This message concludes the examination of Paul's Galatian epistle as it addresses the problem of Jew-Gentile unity in the fledgling community of Jesus' disciples. In particular, this message interacts with Paul's understanding of the role of Israel's Torah (Law) in Israel's history, and what it means to be faithful to the Torah as disciples of Messiah Jesus.

Justification by faith was Paul's answer to the problem of Jew-Gentile unity, and he explained this to the Galatian believers by turning to Israel's scriptures and their story of Abraham as God's chosen instrument for realizing His intent to have a human family drawn from all nations and peoples.