This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of “The History of Salvation” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, February 25, 1990.
About this sermon
The Bible is the history of God’s unfolding plan of redemption, not a collection of moral examples or a textbook of psychology and ethics. God and his glorious purpose stand at its center, so readers come to Scripture to meet God. That history runs from Abraham through Moses to Christ, who relives Israel’s wilderness testing and faithfully fulfills it. Paul calls believers “the Israel of God,” united to those who went before, and Luther and Calvin both point to the union with Christ that this history serves.
Sermon transcript
Now we are beginning a new series and we will be reading from Hebrews chapter 3, beginning with verse 12 and through chapter 4, verse 13. And I’m reading from this passage not because it’s from Genesis 1 through 11, which it is not, but because it gives you an idea of the way in which the Testaments are brought together by one New Testament author, and that will be very important in the series that we are beginning this evening. So we start with a passage from Hebrews, and this is chapter 3, verse 12.
Take care, brethren, lest there should be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart in falling away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still cold today, lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. For we have become partakers of Christ. If we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end, While it is said, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as when they provoked him.
For who provoked him when they had heard, indeed, did not all those who came out of Egypt, led by Moses? And with whom was he angry for forty years, was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness? And to whom did he swear that he should not that they should not enter his rest but to those who were disobedient.
And so we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief. Therefore, let us fear less while a promise remains of entering his rest. Any one of you should seem to have come short of it. For indeed, we have had good news preached to us just as they also. But the word they heard did not profit them, because it was not united by faith in those who heard.
For we who have believed enter that rest, just as he has said, as I swore in my wrath they shall not enter my rest, although his works were finished from the foundation of the world. For he has thus said somewhere concerning the seventh day, and God rested on the seventh day from all his works, and again in this passage, they shall not enter my rest. Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly had good news preached to them failed to enter because of disobedience, he again fixes a certain day. Today, saying through David, after so long a time, just as has been said before today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts. For if Joshua had given them rest, he could not have spoken of another day after that.
There remains therefore a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For the one who has entered his rest has himself also rested from his works as God did from his. Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall through following the same example of disobedience. For the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing as far as the division of the soul and spirit, both joints and mouth, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are open and laid bare to the eyes of him with whom we have to do.
Now tonight we enter upon an ambitious project. This will be ambitious for you and ambitious for me. And it will be ambitious for me because I am setting myself, for myself, a precise and exact schedule. That’s something I don’t usually do. So I’m going to have to stick to this schedule and hopefully you will be able to hang with me through this enterprise in order to profit fully from it. But this is not just an ambitious enterprise. This, I hope, will prove to be a grand adventure.
Some might think of it as a compact Bible history a survey. As was announced in the bulletin this morning, I have designs on going through the Old Testament, but I didn’t tell you the other part. I also have designs about going through the New Testament. So it’s going to be the Old and the New, and it will prove to be, I’m sure, a review for some of you, and maybe for others, more like an introduction, a helpful introduction, I trust. Now, this enterprise is designed to be more than just another Bible survey, more than an approach of interest to those who may have a particular zeal for history and historical study.
After all, the Bible presents us with no ordinary history. As we have come to understand things, the Bible is presenting us with a unique history. the history of God’s redeeming grace. Or as it has been called by some, the history of salvation, the history of redemption. Gerhardus Voss, truly my mentor above all others, has called the history that appears in scripture from beginning to end the history of revelation. He speaks of it as the history of God’s self-revelation, God’s self-disclosure. That being what Scripture is all about at its center.
Now, we all know about the basic and obvious division in the Bible. And our messages will follow along the line of that division, hopefully in simple fashion, honoring the division between the Old and the New Testaments. Now, my present design is this. Tonight, we have an introductory message. And at the end of our series, we’ll have a concluding message. you will get the fifteen messages on the Old Testament. And twenty three lessons on the new. That adds up to yes Patrick’s doing it over there on the side forty. Will be the big four oh.
Now if we’re going to cover the entirety of. Biblical revelation. in 40 messages, you can see that this is going to have to be a rather compact treatment. How am I going to cover, for instance, the 66 books of the Bible in 40 lessons? Yes, it’s going to have to be a compact treatment, but hopefully it will also be a pithy, compelling treatment. as we restrict ourselves and focus our attention sharply with respect to the things that we are surveying. So we will be paying attention to broad outline. We will be paying attention to chief features and chief figures as we run through them.
Now, I know that most of you have a good grip on things. In the Bible, you know where the various books of the Bible are. We would have a sword drill tonight. I know some of you had sword drills in the past. There would be a lot of ties as people jump to their feet with a particular passage already in hand. So I know that there are Those who have these matters, the biblical books down, they know where those books are, and you have a good feel for where particular figures fit in.
But I’ve always amused people who have taken my class for joining the church, the inquirer’s class, when I’ve relayed to them an experience that happened to me early in my ministry. I had a young lady who was going through the course in my former congregation in southern New Jersey. She seemed to be doing quite well. She was very responsible, it seemed. She was doing all of the assignments and coming in, it seemed, well-prepared. So we came to the last lesson, and I asked her a question about a biblical figure.
It wasn’t an obscure one. It was Abraham. She couldn’t tell me whether Abraham was in the Old Testament or the New Testament. I realized, well, I’ve been teaching this poor girl doctrine all this time, but I really haven’t been relating to her any of the biblical details.
And from that time on, I was determined to give everybody a timeline. I don’t know whether you have the timeline from the course that I teach and the inquirers, but there it is on a single page. the important events and dates and figures from the Old Testament and New Testament, but from the entire history of the world to the present time in the establishment of Grace Church here in Splitley.
So there it is on one page, the entire history of the world, including the history of redemption as we have it in Scripture. Well, it’s good for us to review. It’s good for us to have a handle on the events and the figures and to know where things fit. The better we know these things, the better we’re going to be able to make relationships. We’ll be able to relate what we find in one portion of Scripture to what we find in another part of Scripture. We know what the Westminster Confession of Faith tells us.
The very best method of interpreting the Bible is to use the Bible to interpret the Bible. To use the passages that speak more plainly to interpret the passages that are a little bit more obscure. So you compare scripture with scripture. That’s the tried and true Protestant and Calvinist approach to interpretation.
And having said this, now I think that it’s obvious to you that the major concern will not be simply a rehearsal of general facts and features from the Bible. I hope that Maybe, as we’re going through this, that you’re stirring yourself up. If you haven’t started on a Bible reading program, I hope you will. That’s something that is very, very important, and that’s why I went to the trouble to have drawn up for you a table of daily Bible readings, and there’s a number of these on the table in the Martex. And I hope that if you’re not using something like this, you’re at least using something, maybe something that you found and is very helpful to you. But be reading through the Bible, be familiarizing yourself with events and figures yourself. Take that responsibility to yourself. We’re all in a position now where we can own our own Bibles, we all do, and let’s take advantage of that.
But as I said now, it’s not merely a matter of us simply rehearsing general facts and features. Not at all. Because we are coming at this whole matter from a particular point of view. We are Reformed. We are Presbyterian. We are Calvinist in our orientation. We don’t apologize for that. That’s our orientation, that’s our heritage, and hopefully we’re coming to love that. But with that conviction, we then view scripture along the lines that our heritage has taught us, and taught us well, and we think the Holy Spirit has been operative in that.
The basic relationship between the Testaments is this, very simple, promise, fulfillment. It’s very simple. Promise, fulfillment. The Old Testament, the New. Promise, fulfillment. So beautifully do these dovetail that you can see the patterns of fulfillment in promise.
And that’s why we’re compelled to read the Old Testament the way we do. We’re able to see Christ there. And if we don’t see Christ there, we’ve missed something. In fact, we’ve missed what’s most important. Jesus was chiding the leaders of Israel of his day, because they read Moses and didn’t see Christ. Well, you might think that the Pharisees had an excuse for not seeing Christ when they read their Old Testaments, but we certainly have no excuse when we read our Old Testaments and fail to see Christ.
So the basic structure is very simple. God’s promise and then fulfillment. These things brought together in such a remarkable way that we can even see the patterns of fulfillment in the promise. We can discern Christ even in the Old Testament. Now in our approach, and I have said this to you before, in our approach we are at one with that revered Dutchman of the earlier part of the century, S. G. de Graaf, who has written a four-volume series entitled Promise and Deliverance. He tells us about the Bible and presents to us a good, a fine approach to Bible reading, Bible study, Bible teaching.
He tells us, for instance, that the Bible is not given to us so that we might be able to understand our own psychology a little better. I think that’s increasingly plain to us, and you’ve definitely heard that message from me on more than one occasion.
The Bible is not given to us so that we might be able to figure ourselves out psychologically. The Bible may be a help in that, but that’s not a chief The Bible is not given to us in order for us to figure out the social lay of the land. So that we might be able to chart our path through the political maze of our time.
So we said psychology is not the chief interest. We’ve also said sociology isn’t the chief interest. And finally, and maybe most importantly, and this is what usually startles people, the Bible is not given to us in order to give us morals or ethics to live by. That’s not its chief focus. That’s not its chief concern.
Now, every one of these things are touched upon in Scripture. You can, in fact, be helped psychologically by reading the Bible. You can be helped sociologically by reading the Bible. Politically, even. You can be helped in your moral life by reading the Bible. But these are not the chief interests of Scripture. Well, if they aren’t, what is?
The graph tells us that the Bible has been given to us in order to relate to us the truth about God and His glorious intent. To communicate to us the truth about God Himself and His glorious intent. God is at the center. Now, you understand what we are saying if we grasp hold of any one of those previous considerations? psychology, sociology, ethics. We have said, in effect, that man is at the center. His mental state, his social state, his moral state, these are at the center of the Bible. What, in fact, is being communicated there? Not so. Not so, says de Grant. And rightly, he tells us, In line with his Calvinist heritage, God is at the center, and God’s glorious intent, His plan, His purpose, is at the center.
So in reading the Bible, first of all, you are there to meet God, to see God, to know more about God, who He is, and what He has purposed. And as you love God more, you’ll be drawn to his word more. You will be compelled by it. It will be a magnet to you. You will miss it when you’re denied it. You will miss it when you shelve it, ignore it.
Well, he tells us then, first of all, The Bible is about God and His glorious intent, His purpose. And that in line with what Calvin has communicated to us too, the glory of God. What distinguishes Calvin from Luther? That’s a good question. What distinguishes Calvin from Luther in their approach to the Christian faith? Well, Luther asks a very important question, one that concerns us deeply. He asks, how can a man be right with God? But Calvin posits an even greater question. How is God to be glorified? At the center of Luther’s approach is the need of man to be made righteous. At the center of Calvin is the glory of God and our relationship to this God who is us, Jesus.
Well, that’s what we want to see when we run through scripture, when we work our way through texts, God and His intentions. But there’s more in the glass advice to us. Yes, we see God. his glorious intent, but as that is spelled out for us in Scripture, it becomes plain to us that a consideration of that focus places squarely before us God’s Son, or the Mediator, that God has given between Himself and man. that mediator, His Son, Jesus Christ, and the incomparable grace found in Him. So, thus far, we have these two features. God, His glorious intention, Christ, and the incomparable grace found in Him. There’s a third, and this then relates God and His Son with humanity directly It is the issue of the covenant.
The covenant. We hear a lot of talk about it. Again, all we are doing is being faithful to the basic structure of biblical revelation. We know there’s an old covenant. We are also told about the new. There is old and new covenant. And that covenant and covenant structure for biblical revelation is a chief overarching feature that we must do justice to in our Bible study, our Bible reading. That covenant teaches us that God has bound himself to his people through Jesus Christ. There is a relationship, there is a bond. God, his glorious intent, Christ, the incomparable grace found in him, and the covenant by which God has bound himself to his people through his Son.
That is specifically this last feature that is of great interest to us and is of great importance for us. Not that it eclipses the other two, not at all. But in the covenant specifically, you see, we are brought into view. We are introduced as that covenant is defined for us and reflected upon. The covenant is very important because in the covenant we learn that the Bible’s objective is to confront us, us, with God. not just to introduce us to important facts about him or important facts about his son, but to introduce us, to confront us with God. This is a living, vital relationship, a dynamic thing, almost as if it breathes. It is animated of itself. Of course, it’s not hard to see that the Spirit of God is introduced to us here as the covenant is applied to us and we are made participants in it.
Because of the covenant then, the relationships that are established through this covenant as it is reviewed for us, surveyed for us in scripture, we learn the truth about Paul’s statement he makes in 1 Corinthians when he refers to the Old Testament and says, now these things were written for us as an example. And more startling than that, we learn in the covenant, through the covenant, by way of the covenant, how vitally and inseparably our lives are bound up with God and with His Son. And how inseparably our lives are bound up with the lives of those who have preceded us, the lives of those who are described for us in the history of redemption.
All these individuals are made immediate to us through the covenant. It’s almost like they’re sitting here with us. Such is the bond that exists in the covenant between us and them. We overcome great distances in time. We are brought right up against Abram, for instance, Moses, David, other Old Testament figures. We are brought right up against Christ, the Apostle. to whom the apostle spoke in the New Testament time. Think of it, the relationship of generations, one to another. We think of Abram. Abram comes into the land of promise, and then he goes down into Egypt Read Genesis 12 through 14.
He comes up out of Egypt. There’s division in his family. Lot goes one way, he goes another. And then the kings from the east come, take Lot away. He goes as if they were already being carried away into Babylon, brings them back and reestablishes them in the land.
That’s the history of Israel. It’s all there. Before the nation lives a day, the father of the nation has lived their life. Their life is in him. They are found covenantally, one to another. Think of Moses. Why is it that Moses is driven out of the wilderness, from Egypt, and dwells in that wilderness for 40 years? Why? Because after him, the people that are bound to him will do the same.
Christ will sum up that history. He goes out of the wilderness for 40 days, tried and tested there as the people were before Him. You have the union that exists between these various figures and those who follow them, It is underscored by what Paul tells the Christians in Galatia. He calls them the Israel of God, thus uniting them to those people that have gone before them. You are Israelites as they are Israelites. You are of your father Abraham if you have the faith of Abraham. This is all covenantal language.
As we have been studying on Wednesday night with regard to Jesus’ remarks in Matthew 24, As he talks there about the destruction of the temple, we hear that Matthew so frames the disciples’ question, he so frames it in such a way that Christians, any time prior to the Second Coming, could ask that question. Thus, we have set before us the nature of the covenant. those people living in the day of Christ inseparably bound to any who call upon Christ, who are known by his name, prior to the second coming. What, you say? It is this covenantal outline that permits us, us, you and me, to view our Bibles as participants, not spectators.
You are in the text. This book is about you as much as it is about Abraham. It’s about you as much as it is about Moses. You are in the book. It’s your story. This is your history. These are your people. So we are encouraged to see ourselves in the record itself.
The Bible is about God and his people and therefore about you, because you are part of God’s people. How beautifully the Westminster Confession of Faith puts it in the neglected dimension of that often quoted first chapter. It pleased the Lord at sundry times, and in divers manners to reveal himself and to declare his will unto his church. Are you part of the church? The scriptures are declaring God’s will and purpose to you, as truly as that was declared to any of the figures that appear in Holy Writ. Not just the Old Testament church, not just the first century church, but the church in all ages, you, specifically addressed by the Bible.
This is a living book. We are talking about things here that are dynamic because they are things of the Spirit. You know, there are other things I could say to you tonight about the whole matter of application. I don’t want to spend a great deal of time on that issue. But I do want to suggest to you that the graph approaching scripture as he does, and I believe rightly, having outlined things as we have here for you, The whole methodology of contemporary Bible study is misguided. That view runs along this line.
The Bible’s over here in another world, far removed from us, and we stand here in the 20th century, infinitely removed from the reality of that world. What is necessary is, for us, we must reach back into that Bible world, take the things of the Bible, and bring them over here, and set them down with our time, and make the Bible applicable and meaningful to us, here, today.
And if you don’t do that, the Bible remains mute. It can’t speak. It can’t speak unless we make the Bible meaningful, unless we apply it to ourselves. It’s wrong-headed. We’re going the wrong way. This is the Word of God we’re talking about. The Word of God is taking into consideration all the exigencies of life and history. God hasn’t left out any consideration. There isn’t an insufficiency in his word.
No, we may live here, the Bible may live here, but the Bible’s pulling us back into it. The Bible is self-applicatory. It applies itself. And only when we are drawn within the circumference of the text, and that Bible begins to work on us, have we read the Bible rightly. You don’t conform the text to your life, your life is conformed to the text.
Well, throughout our approach will be to see how we are included in scripture and addressed in this dynamic fashion by God Himself and by Jesus Christ, His Son. This is our expedition, our enterprise. And as we move along through it, all along the way, let’s remember, All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto every good work. And let us remember, the Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and the intents.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.