Dispensationalism and the Gospel

 One of the major teachings of the New Testament is that Christ’s death on the cross was a complete and fully sufficient sacrifice to save men from their sins. What the Old Testament sacrifices could not do, Jesus did in His suffering and death. The New Testament then tells us that if a person now tries to turn back to the Jewish sacrificial system, in doing so they reject the work of Christ, the Gospel, and God Himself. For Dispensationalism then to teach that the Jewish sacrificial system will be reestablished with God’s blessing during the Tribulation is for it to contradict the Gospel. Scripture goes to great lengths in saying the exact opposite of what Dispensationalism teaches.

Alcohol

The Bible encourages drinking alcohol. See Deut. 14:22-26 and the wedding at Cana. It also condemns overdoing it. The distinction is clear in Scripture. And so on that basis, you cannot forbid drinking. Scripture stands against temperance.

Another angle on this is the fact that Scripture condemns the use of things that are in and of themselves evil. Adultery and other sexual sins, theft, murder, etc. It also makes very clear that alcohol is not one of those things. The abuse of a thing does not make the proper use of a thing evil. The fault there lies in the user, not in the thing used.

And what is the proper use of alcohol? To drink it with gratitude before the Lord for this gift that He has given you to enjoy. There’s no support in Scripture for needing to find some merely practical use for a thing in order to justify it. Pragmatism isn’t Biblical either; God gives us lots of things just to make us happy.

The Natural Order

 It was from Adam that God took the substance that He meant to fashion into woman, indicating that as man was formed first and as woman sprang from man, so man is to be her head. He from the dust, she from him. He directly from the Former’s hand, she indirectly and through him. “Adam,” says the apostle, “was first formed, then Eve” (1Ti 2:13). Therefore, says he, she is “not to teach nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.” Thus, again, he states the gradation: (1) the head of the woman is the man, (2) the head of the man is Christ, (3) the head of Christ is God (1Co 11:3). Further, he adds that “the woman is the glory (or ornament) of the man”; for, says he, “the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man” (1Co 11:8-9). Such is God’s order of things; such His assignment of place and rank to the creatures that He has made. We may be sure that there is a reason for this gradation, not merely a typical [typological], but a natural one, whether we fully understand it or not. We cannot alter this law and be blameless. We cannot reverse it and not suffer loss. The construction of our world’s fabric is far too delicate and complex for man to attempt the slightest change without dislocating the whole. One star displaced, one planet thrown off its orbit, will confound the harmonies of space and strew the firmament with the wrecks of the universe. [Likewise,] one law lost sight of or set at naught will mar the happy order of God’s living world below.

In one age or nation, man treads down woman as a slave; in another, he idolizes her and sings of her as of a goddess. Both cases inflict a social wrong upon the race, in the latter case as truly as in the former. And who can say how deep an injury—both spiritual and social—has been wrought and how fatal an influence has been sent forth, by that fond sentimentalism that, impregnating our poetry and coursing like fever through the veins of youth, not only “costs the fresh blood dear,” but saps the whole social system, nay, propagates a principle of subtle ungodliness and creature-worship in its praise of woman’s beauty and idolatry of woman’s love.

- Horatius Bonar

The Good Samaritan

 Luke 10. Jesus’s parables often have multiple applications. While it’s clear that the parable of the good Samaritan has in focus what it is to love one’s neighbor, it was of particular application to the Jewish leaders of that time. While the priest and the Levite refused to help the troubled man, keeping the law to love one’s neighbor as one’s self, the Samaritan did keep it. A non-Jewish man keeping the law of Israel’s God, the God with whom they alone were in covenant, would have been shocking and offensive to them.

Jesus’ point in the parable was to highlight Israel’s failure to keep covenant with God through obeying His law, to show the possibility of a Gentile keeping it, and to illustrate God’s turning away from Israel to the Gentiles.

“(F)or when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them) in the day when God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel” (Rom. 2:14-16).

The point of Romans is God’s salvation of the whole world, not just the Jews, and that their shame in the Gentiles being saved instead of them might draw the Jews back to God.

But the Jews consciously rejected Jesus, as they had His Father repeatedly throughout the Old Covenant. Likewise, they rejected His apostles, who came to them as a last-ditch effort to save them from the coming wrath that they deserved. In the end the apostles turned from the Jews to the Gentiles, fulfilling the prophecy that all the nations would come to worship Israel’s God.

“So when the Jews went out of the synagogue, the Gentiles begged that these words might be preached to them the next Sabbath. Now when the congregation had broken up, many of the Jews and devout proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas, who, speaking to them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God.

On the next Sabbath almost the whole city came together to hear the word of God. But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy; and contradicting and blaspheming, they opposed the things spoken by Paul. Then Paul and Barnabas grew bold and said, ‘It was necessary that the word of God should be spoken to you first; but since you reject it, and judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, behold, we turn to the Gentiles.  For so the Lord has commanded us:

“I have set you as a light to the Gentiles,

That you should be for salvation to the ends of the earth.”’

Now when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed” (Acts 13:42-48).

Jesus Himself had turned away from walking among the Jews openly when they had determined in their hearts to kill Him (John 11:54). In doing so, He imitated Yahweh’s repeated turning away from Israel throughout the Old Covenant, whenever they turned back from following Him, choosing their fallen state in Adam, their state before Abram left Ur, their state before Yahweh delivered them from Egypt, and the state of the pagan nations surrounding them. They repeatedly chose to live in wickedness, worshiping the false gods like the nations, as if they were not in covenant with Yahweh. As a result, Yahweh repeatedly turned His back on them, leaving them to the consequences of their sinful desires and actions, and bringing judgment upon them for it. And yet every time they repented and turned back to Him, He returned to them and gave them another chance.

Jesus came as Yahweh’s final prophet to His beloved people Israel. Israel would reject Him and crucify Him, as their ancestors had rejected His Father. And yet the plan all along was that the whole world through Israel might come to Yahweh, and the Jewish people themselves turn to God in Christ. Today God’s people, the Church, are comprised of Jews and Gentiles who have put their faith alone in Jesus Christ for salvation. All are joined together in the one Olive tree (Romans 11), for there is no other means by which any man might be saved than the work of Christ.