JY: Welcome to GearTalk, a podcast on Biblical theology. Today, Jason and Tom are continuing our look at promises found in the Old Testament. In this podcast, we consider 5 principles that shape how the New Testament authors relate Old Testament promises to Christians. We’ve been going through Jason’s new book, Delighting in the Old Testament through Christ and for Christ. This will be a great help to you as you consider how you can and must use the Old Testament. You’ll find a link to the book in our show notes.

TK: Hey Jason, how you doing?

JD: Welcome back, Tom. Doing well, thank you.

TK: Alright, I am really excited for today’s podcast. We’re talking about promises in the Bible, and more specifically the chapter we talked about in your book, which again, I’ll put a link in the show notes—“Delighting in the Old Testament through Christ and for Christ.” The way you titled chapter seven was “The Importance and the Challenge of Claiming Old Testament Promises.” I think both of those words, importance and challenge, say something. One is, we can’t ignore them—that it is important to know what God promised his people in the Old Testament. But the second part is, there’s a challenge to doing that, isn’t there?

JD: There is a challenge because we see the New Testament authors applying to Christians promises that were given to specific people or peoples under different covenants. And yet, acting as though those promises in some way do relate to us. So it makes it challenging. It makes it challenging knowing that there’s promises that are ours. And yet we also are confident that with Paul, we should expect persecutions and all kinds of forms of suffering, and trying to assess, well, how do the promises of God relate to those realities? There’s a challenge, and yet the answer is not, throw out the promises or act as though they don’t relate to us, because we saw last week it’s very clear New Testament authors are claiming those promises for believers today.

TK: Right. So that thought of there’s an importance to them, and we want to rightly relate to them. And the challenge is that, OK, how do I rightly relate? I am so thankful that we can follow the pattern of the apostles and we can watch what they do. And that’s really what we’re trying to talk about here. Jason, can you give us kind of your definition of what a promise is before we dive into where we’re going today?

JD: Yes, absolutely. To promise is to assure that one will do a particular thing or that a certain thing will happen. So we’re making promises all the time. But because you and I are fallible, our promises are potential. Really what we’re saying is this is what we intend, or this is what I anticipate will happen. But we have a God who is in control of all things, such that when he says something will happen, there is a level of certainty due to the nature of the promise maker that gives us a grounded-ness that no human promise can equate to. And it’s truly because we have a God who promises that we’re given fuel for sanctification and for suffering with hope. And that’s what we looked at last week—just those two aspects of considering how what we hope for tomorrow or even what we dread tomorrow, changes who we are today through his precious and very great promises. He has given us the power to partake of divine nature, having escaped the corruption of the world brought about by evil desire. Sin is making promises that awaken certain types of desires, but if we can grasp the better and more beautiful and more desirable promises of God, it will help us become more holy. So we remember the promise the pure in heart will see God—what is it that motivates us in that moment of temptation to lust?

TK: Mm-hmm.

JD: It’s a promise that says the pure in heart will see God. How much do you want to see God, Tom? And allowing our hearts to revel in that longing, in that true hope, can move us to say no to sin in that moment. It’s one of the means of grace that God’s promises supply. But they also help us amid suffering when the tears are coming, when the pain is real, when we lose our first child through miscarriage. Where do we go? What do we do? We hold on to the promises of God. “I will never leave you. I will never forsake you.” “Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed. I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you. I will uphold you with my mighty hand.” We hold on to such promises. In the valley of the shadow of death, we need not fear, for God is with us, and we hold on to it. So God’s promises are one of the amazing means of grace that he has supplied to help us grow in holiness and to persevere through suffering.

TK: So why would you say, Jason—so I’m reading my Old Testament and I read a promise—why would you say I have to… like, why can’t I just apply that to myself straight up as it is?

JD: Well, God speaks—

TK: What makes me different? Obviously I know Jesus, but as we think about this, what makes me different from them, and why should I have even a category to say, OK, I might need to think carefully about this?

JD: Well, promises of God are all of God’s relationship with man. It comes in a context of covenant. Covenant is indeed the official word in the Old Testament and in the New for a relationship between two parties that is based on promises made one to another. And those promises were made underneath God as a witness. So there’s a relationship that includes various obligations to each party, promises, commitments made to one another with God as the ultimate witness of this relationship. I would say every promise in scripture comes within the context of these covenant relationships. And yet there’s different covenant relationships. And there are because the covenant is a formal, it’s not a biological relationship that is just based on bloodline. Rather a covenant is a chosen relationship. It’s an elected relationship. And you and I are not a part of all the relationships that God has created through space and time.

He created originally a relationship with all creation through the headship of Adam, and then reaffirmed through the headship of Noah. You and I are part of that covenant. Then he created a covenant with Abraham that came out in 2 stages. A covenant where Abraham would be the father of one nation in one land—we call that the Mosaic covenant. You and I are not part of that covenant. The writer of Hebrews even says that because God has made a new covenant that you and I are a part of, the old covenant is passing away. It’s not the covenant we’re involved in. So God made specific promises to Israel or to specific people within Israel in a covenant relationship that we’re not directly a part of. That was the old covenant. We’re part of the new covenant and so that’s what makes part of the challenge. We can’t assume that a promise God made under a certain period in the story of salvation to a specific people at a specific time—we can’t assume that that relationship, that promise that he made has direct bearing on us today because it was given to a specific people in a different time and under a different covenantal structure.

TK: That is the challenge. That’s the challenge there is being able to think, OK, I do not fall in that original structure, but yet I’m watching the apostles and they’re acting in some way like I should be paying attention to this and it applies to me. How can that be?

JD: Yeah, that’s right. So I’ll just give a simple example. In Deuteronomy 28, we find the blessings and curses of the old covenant. And God simply lays out what we could call a harvester’s mentality—what you sow you will reap. He says, “If you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord and be careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, then all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you. If you obey the voice of the Lord, you’ll be blessed in the city and blessed in the field, and blessed will be the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground and the fruit of your cattle.” He goes on to say, “The Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you in seven ways.” And he goes on to talk about these blessings, but they’re contingent on a perfect obedience. That’s what he said—“If you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today.” A failure to obey all will result in the opposite of absolute provision and protection. It will be the removal of that provision and protection. And so he says, “But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God to be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then know this: these curses shall come upon you and overtake you.” And he begins to explain all the lack of provision and lack of protection.

So this isn’t just an expression of “by faith you can enjoy blessing.” This is “by obedience you will enjoy blessing.” And I’ve heard a number of people who want to claim the old covenant blessings of provision and protection, but they don’t account for the fact that those blessings were contingent, dependent on perfect obedience to the old covenant, the old law covenant. And so Israel didn’t obey this law, and so they, rather than enjoying lasting life, they experienced death.

TK: I was just talking to somebody and saying when we read the gospel accounts, it’s not said—the why of so many things. Good literature shows, it doesn’t tell. As you watch Jesus and you see him encountering blind people and deaf people and lame people in this land that you’re talking about here, where the people under the old covenant are living, that one of the signals is they cannot be walking in obedience because there’s so much brokenness here.

JD: Right. And the picture of brokenness in the old covenant curses is merely the portrait of brokenness in the old covenant curses is itself a picture of the overarching curse that’s all over the rest of the world. Adam, too, had that contingent call to “If you disobey, if you eat of the tree of the knowledge pertaining to good and evil, you shall die.” he ate of the tree and the result was curse not only upon him, but on the rest of humanity. So when you find old covenant blessings that are dependent on perfect obedience, we can’t—we don’t want to assume we’re within that same framework because like Adam and like Israel, we too are sinners. And if we’re seeking to claim the promises of God on the basis of our perfect obedience, we’re not going to receive any hope from that. And that’s why I’m saying we can’t just enter into the Old Testament and start claiming promises directly. But I do believe the New Testament authors had a framework wherein the Old Testament promises of blessing and of curse do relate to Christians today, but it’s indirectly rather than directly. It’s through the mediation of Christ. It’s through the lens of Christ that we have to understand how do these promises matter.

TK: So that’s just—the passage we were just at, Deuteronomy 28, on the one hand you would say, “OK Tom, those promises were not spoken to you and in that way they do not apply to you.” On the other hand, you would say these promises are yours. But obviously we have something to unpack to get there.

JD: That’s right. We do have something to unpack and a big part of that here at the front end of this podcast that we want to touch on is what’s called living in the overlap of the ages. That is, something has happened—the end of history has entered into the middle of history with the first coming of Christ. And yet though the future has entered into the present, the present is still experiencing the old age. So the new age has dawned, the new creation has begun to sprout, the new covenant has been realized. But there’s an overlap because the old age in Adam, that age of curse, that age of brokenness, the old covenant, the old creation still has remnants that are overlapping with the new age, new covenant and new creation.

So here we are living in the age of life. And where you and I are already enjoying eternal life, and yet the reality is physical death still comes to everyone. You and I have been set free from sin’s penalty and Jesus has purchased our freedom from sin’s power. And yet, we’re still battling temptation and all of us, until we encounter Jesus face to face, are still battling and still at times coming to sin. So we have real death, we have real sin, and between our sin and our death is an age of sustained suffering. And that’s all part of the old age. We’re not gonna have death, we’re not gonna have sin, and we’re not gonna have suffering when the new age is finalized. But that new age has been inaugurated. And so as we’re wrestling with how to understand through Jesus that every promise is yes, including those promises that were conditioned on perfect obedience, we also have to be accounting for this overlap of the ages, knowing that Christ has secured every promise for us and yet we are not partakers of the full inheritance yet. And that’s what we’re talking about when we’re saying this overlap of the ages. You and I just have a series of texts that we want to touch on that kind of capture this sense of where Christians are living today. So why don’t we walk through those, Tom?

TK: I think it’s good and in a big picture, Jason, would you say there’s certain categories in this overlap age—you’d say believers are going to taste the fruit of the age to come more in these categories than in these categories? So for instance, you mentioned physical death is something that comes to believers in this age.

JD: Right. Yeah, I think just in a general sense that what we’re going to see in the New Testament is that every promise is ours already, but those we tangibly experience now are those that are related to God’s presence, God’s favor, God’s power, God’s pleasure as they come to us by the spirit of Christ, who is called our down payment of our future inheritance. But it’s these promises that address more physical, material provision and protection—they’re already ours, truly, but they’ll be realized fully in space and time only at the consummation of the new heavens and the new earth, when we receive our resurrection bodies. At that point, and only at that point will there be no more tears, death, mourning, crying or pain. So we rest in this confidence: with the Lord there is steadfast love, with him is plentiful redemption. That is his character. And so we are confident day in and day out as we journey this path of challenge that we have a God who is faithful and who ultimately will completely redeem. He will work all things out for good for those who love him. He will indeed restore and strengthen and confirm and establish us, as it says in 1 Peter 5. But we’re living even today in hope.

TK: A verse you have down here is Ephesians 1:3—“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.” The argument here is that we are not lacking something, but there are things that presently we are not seeing or experiencing even though they are ours.

JD: That’s right. If you just jump ahead there, Tom, to verses 13 and 14 in Ephesians 1, you see that the Spirit is our down payment for inheritance yet to be enjoyed.

TK: “Until we acquire possession of it”—there’s a time coming when actually you’d say I actually possess this in my hands right now, even though it’s guaranteed and it’s mine right now.

JD: That’s right. So at present, we live in this overlap between two different ages—the old age in Adam, the new age in Christ. In Christ, our hope is real. We have a living hope to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, unfading. But then it stresses it’s kept in heaven for us. So our physical bodies are still firmly in the old cursed creation. And the New Testament teaches—hear this, this is so important—the New Testament teaches that believers are to expect suffering, tribulation and affliction of all sorts. So we have a text like John 15:20—Jesus says, “If they persecuted me, they will persecute you.” Or later in John 16, “In the world you will have tribulation, but take heart, I have overcome the world.” Discipleship comes at great cost. Just as Jesus had to endure his cross before his own resurrection, and he had to do that in his body, now we as the body of Christ—he’s our head, we are his body—we as the church must carry our own cross before experiencing our own resurrection.

God, we’re told, is one who disciplines those that he loves and God’s discipline nurtures holiness and righteousness in our lives (Hebrews 12). So we endure today knowing that something better is coming tomorrow. We are not living in the better yet. We have something that’s been purchased for us that is real, that is genuine, that is fulfilled, but it’s not finalized yet. So Paul could say on the one hand, “Through many tribulations we must enter the Kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). He says God has granted that we should not only believe in Christ, but also suffer for his sake (Philippians 1:29, 1 Thessalonians 3:3). We are destined for afflictions. And what I think is really important is to recognize that for Paul these afflictions and suffering for Jesus’s sake, it didn’t only come in the form of persecution. It was the cost of discipleship in living in a world that was going in an opposite direction. You were saying, even in the midst of miscarriage, in the midst of loss of job, “I am going to trust in Jesus come what may”—not only in the form of persecution for this bold profession of faith and I’m standing against the crowd, but even in the context of experiencing the daily challenges of the monotony of life, the daily challenges of being pressed from every side yet not discouraged. When we just experienced the pain in our lower back or we experience the death of a relative or we experience a dad’s loss of a job or parents who are struggling in their marriage. The question is in the midst of such suffering, how will we respond? Will we hold true to the Lord? This is what is to be expected. So Paul can say he experienced so many trials beyond persecution—afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger.

TK: I’m looking at one right now in Philippians where he has a co-worker, Epaphroditus, and he’s telling the Philippians: “I had to send him back to you. He was longing for you. He was distressed because you heard he was ill. Indeed he was ill, near to death.” I think of that pressure on someone of watching a friend who is close to dying and Paul is saying “I had to send him back” even though he wished he could have kept him.

JD: And what’s amazing is God used Paul at times to bring healing to people, right? But here’s Epaphroditus and apparently God didn’t use Paul to bring healing to Epaphroditus.

TK: It would be surprising—it would be surprising if someone would say, well, they didn’t pray for him or something. That would be surprising.

JD: That’s right. It would be very surprising. I think of Paul saying to Timothy, “Have a little wine for your stomach troubles.” We have these examples—Jesus, in all of his ministry, we know of him only raising three people from the dead. Think about all the people who were still in their graves, awaiting the future resurrection. It’s this overlap of the ages where Christ has actually secured something definitively. He has already put all the powers of darkness to open shame at the cross. They are definitively overcome. And so we read in a text like Revelation 12 that Satan is furious and doing all that he can because he knows his time is short. Paul says in Philippians 4, “In any and every circumstance I have learned the secret of facing plenty and facing hunger, abundance and need.” He’s not saying “I’m in Jesus, I have no need.”

TK: Well, and it’s interesting—the Deuteronomy 28 passage you’re talking about, the promises there would seem to say hunger will not be a problem for you, at least in their Old Testament context.

JD: That’s right. Had they perfectly obeyed, they would have enjoyed absolute complete provision. But they didn’t. And the exile was the ultimate picture of that, where they were depleted. In total, they lost so many family members. In the midst of the siege, they experienced massive hunger, even to the point of cannibalism. They went to cannibalism. The enemies overcame them. They were separated from their land, separated from their family, separated from the presence of God. It was absolute loss and dejection. And the book of Deuteronomy portrays that exile as death, so that God can say “I am God and there is no other. I kill and I make alive, I wound and I heal.” And because the wounding comes after the healing, it’s clear that God’s making alive comes after the killing, and he’s portraying the history of salvation. He’s portraying the history of Israel, that what he would do to them in their exile was kill them. But then if they’re dead, all that can follow is absolute resurrection. And that’s what’s happening in the church—it’s resurrection power.

And so at one level, you and I are already raised with Christ, seated with him at the right hand of the Father in the heavenlies (Ephesians 2, Colossians 3). That’s where we are. Our citizenship is in heaven, and yet in another real sense, we are here, aliens and strangers, foreigners in a land not our own. And we are here on mission. And the gospel spreads not only through sharing, but through suffering, so that Paul can say in a book like Colossians that we are in our own bodies carrying the afflictions of Christ—that we’re putting on display to a world that never saw the cross. Through our sufferings and retaining our love for God, our commitment to God, our expression of the worth of God even in the midst of suffering, we are displaying to this world the love of God, the value of God, and that he is truly the one they should be hoping in—the one in whom is their only savior.

So I’ll just finish that one verse—“In every circumstance I’ve learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through God who strengthens me.” So that’s our world—we have to have a framework of embracing the promises of God in such a way that we expect suffering. Not that we think that we’re supposed to be out of it. God has the power to heal and at times he does. But sometimes he just chooses to show his power not through healing but through giving people the faith to endure, to show and display his worth to a world through the suffering rather than outside of it. That’s the age that we’re living in—this overlap of the ages where Christ has secured us every spiritual blessing in Christ, things like election, adoption, redemption. And yet, with that securing every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies, we also have an inheritance that is not yet ours. And it’s in that day that there will be no more tears, that all provision and protection will be realized in our new transformed physical bodies. It’s in that day that there will be no enemies. But it’s in this day that enemies of cancer and enemies of the cross still abound. And where we need to hear the word “Fear not, I am with you.” That’s the age we’re living in.

TK: I think if you imagine like a circle on the left—if you drew a circle on the left side of a page and that was the old covenant, and we do not live in the old covenant, and then a circle on the right hand of the page and that’s the age to come, and you’d say, well, we’re not fully there either. If you pull those two circles together and they overlapped, that’s what an overlap of the ages is. And then just shaded that little middle part where they overlap together—what we’re talking about is how did the apostles say that the promises applied to people living in that center category, that overlap of the ages? So we’re not talking about how did it apply to the ancient Israelites—we already talked about that. They had to completely obey.

JD: That’s right.

TK: And we’re not talking about right now what will it perfectly look like in the age to come. We’re talking about this overlap period and saying it’s a very real period. Christ has come. He can say that those who know me will not die. But on the other hand, you’d say, but my physical body actually will die.

JD: That’s right. He can say “Many of you they will kill, but not a hair of your head will perish,” and both statements are true.

TK: Right. Right. So Jason, you have in your book in chapter 8, you have 5 principles that shape how the New Testament authors relate Old Testament promises to Christians. So if we can chunk this down into smaller chunks, 5 little categories, can we walk through those quickly?

JD: Absolutely, Tom. So number one: The New Testament authors would suggest that Christians benefit from Old Testament promises, but only through Christ.

TK: This is similar to what you were saying with the law several podcasts back, but the law applies to believers through Christ. So similar—so you’re saying Christians benefit from Old Testament promises only through Christ. They don’t come in a straight shot to us bypassing Jesus.

JD: That’s right. And I’m thinking about a passage in Galatians 3. On the one hand, Galatians 3 is known for the way it talks about the old covenant. We were under the guardian of the old covenant until Christ came. But now that faith has come, this age of faith—and the old covenant was mostly filled with faithlessness. It was disobedience, and they didn’t in the midst of that disobedience see their need and start trusting in their savior, in God’s provision of a substitute. And so they lived in disobedience and in faithlessness both. And yet now the age of faith has come. And that means we’re not under the old covenant. So the question—we have to be careful then when we’re considering how do the old covenant promises relate to us? Because that’s not the covenant we’re under. But what we see in Galatians 3 is Paul is able to say the promises that God made to Abraham—specifically, the promises that in him all the nations of the earth would be blessed—Paul says in Galatians 3:16 that gospel hope, that promise was made to Abraham and to his offspring. It doesn’t say “and to offsprings,” referring to many, but referring to one—“and to your offspring,” who is Christ.

TK: So right there I can just say I don’t seem to fall into either of those categories by my first birth. I’m not in either one of those.

JD: That’s right. So how is it that blessing will come to the nations? Well, the promises were made to Abraham and to Christ, to Abraham’s offspring. And I think Paul is just reading a text like Genesis 22 where it says “Your offspring will possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth regard themselves blessed.” So this offspring is a male descendant of Abraham. Paul saw it, Abraham saw it, Moses affirmed it. And so how is it that the blessing will come? It’s not a blessing that’s going to come through obedience—the old covenant showed the failure of Israel to bring about blessing. So how is it going to come? It’s going to come through the obedience of a single individual, namely the Christ. And only in him will that blessing reach us. And so Paul can say at the end of Galatians 3 that everyone who is in Christ—if you are Christ’s, then and only then are you Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

So what did God promise Abraham? he had promised that he would have a great offspring, that he would not only have a people in a land, but that Abraham would become the father of a multitude of peoples in numerous lands. And that that shift from being the father of one nation in one land to a father of many nations in many lands—it would come only when the single offspring of promise would rise. And if you are Christ’s, then you become adopted into the family of Abraham and all the promises that were given to Abraham and to his offspring become ours. We become inheritors of that blessing. So God makes a promise to Abraham and to his offspring. Christ is that offspring. It’s faith that now unites us with Christ. Union with Christ makes us offspring with him. We become Abraham’s offspring like Christ was Abraham’s offspring, and therefore we become heirs of all of his promises.

TK: But there’s no—like we just talked about here in this number one—there’s no pathway I have to access these promises that doesn’t come through Christ. There’s not a direct path.

JD: That’s what I’m proposing—that the Old Testament promises, all growing out of the Abrahamic covenant (stage 1 being the Mosaic covenant, stage 2 being the new covenant)—we only get benefit, the benefit of those promises, the blessing of those covenants—they only come to us through Jesus. We have to be in Christ in order to enjoy his blessing, just as we were in Adam and experienced his curse. We have to be in Christ to enjoy all that he has secured. And all of those promises were contingent on obedience. People had to obey in order to enjoy these promises. I think of Genesis 18, where God simply says, “Abraham shall surely become a great nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him.” That was certain. And here’s the reason—“For I have known him that he may command his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice, so that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has promised him.” Genesis 18—on the one hand, the promises were most certainly going to be fulfilled, but on the other hand, it would take a perfectly obedient child to see the promises fulfilled. And it’s only in Jesus that that perfect obedience comes, and the promises are secured. So we have to be in him to enjoy these promises. But all of a sudden, those Old Testament promises become ours in Jesus because Jesus secured all of them for us.

TK: I was going to say you have 2 Corinthians 1:20 written down here at the end of this first of the five principles. And the verse reads, “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory.” So interesting in that verse it says “all the promises of God find their Yes in him.” And we’re arguing that means all the promises in the Old Testament.

JD: That’s right. Why do we say amen at the end of our prayer? “So be it.” It’s directly related to the fact that Jesus has done something. The reason we can have confidence to pray to our God is not because of who we are, but because of who Jesus is and has been for us. Everything is resting on his perfect right standing before God. His righteousness is applied to us. Our sins are put on him. Through him we have hope, and only through him. And so we say our Amen in him, and every promise becomes yes in him. All the promises of God are what we could say blood-bought. They’re purchased for us at the cross. And all those promises reaching back to the Garden of Eden and stretching forward all the way to the consummate new heavens and the new earth—all of them, the yes of those promises was purchased by Jesus. And if we’re in him, those promises become ours.

TK: I like it. And we’ll move on to the next section, but I like this little diagram you put. You have 5 little things showing how it happens. So number one, God makes promises to Abraham and his seed. Number two, Christ is the seed. Number three, faith unites us to Christ. Number four, union with Christ makes us seed with him. Number five, we become heirs of the promises. So number five doesn’t directly—we don’t become heirs simply because the promises were made. We need all this progression that we see here that you just talked about.

JD: Yes, Tom, we need all of it, at the center of which is Jesus. Our union with him only by faith, and that’s a union that has to be realized by both Jew and Gentile. Jews today don’t experience any blessing apart from Jesus. They have to be adopted into his family just like Gentiles have to be adopted into the family of God. We all become offspring of Abraham rather than offspring of the devil. Remember how Jesus could talk to the Pharisees? They said, “We have Abraham as our father.” And Jesus said, “You claim to be offspring of Abraham, but I say you are offspring of your father, the devil.” And any Jew without Jesus is an offspring of the serpent rather than an offspring of Christ. We become offspring of Christ and offspring of Abraham only by faith in Jesus who purchases inheritance rights for every person in him. He’s the ultimate Israelite and we get adopted and get new names that declare “This one, that one was born in the heavenly Jerusalem.” It’s the Jerusalem that is above, Paul says, that is our mother. And it’s in that context that we gain hope.

TK: Alright, number two: All old covenant curses become new covenant curses. What do you mean by that?

JD: Well, the question is—I mean curses are promises, and if every promise is yes—

TK: “I will do this. I will put this on whoever.”

JD: That’s right. “I will judge you in this way. I’ll remove this provision, this protection.” And we might readily want to say, well, every promise of blessing becomes ours in Jesus. But what about those curses? What do we do with them? And the significant verse here for me comes directly after the statement regarding circumcision of the heart—that promised new covenant promise in Deuteronomy 30. This is what we read: “And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul for the sake of your life. And the Lord your God will put all these curses on your foes and enemies who persecute you.”

TK: Talking about people with circumcised hearts right there.

JD: That’s right. So in a book like Deuteronomy that’s loaded with curses—many more curses than blessings—he says, “Once your hearts are circumcised, on the other side of your resurrection, once I have redeemed you out of exile and transformed your inner being and created a new people, a remnant people, then in that day, the curses that are all written in this book will still matter, but they won’t be curses put on you. They’ll be curses put on your enemies.” And so it reminds me of Genesis 12, where God says “Be a blessing so that those who bless you I may bless, but the one who curses you I will curse.” So in the Abrahamic covenant, at the very foundation of stage two of that covenant is the commitment of God to curse those who curse his people. And that’s what we see becoming operative now within the new covenant age—that all those old covenant curses of lack of provision and lack of protection, all those old covenant curses don’t get set aside with the coming of Jesus. No, they become applicable to all those who are in Jesus. Everyone whose hearts have been circumcised live in hope, and we see that hope even played out just two chapters later in Deuteronomy 32. There, the statement is simply made: “Vengeance is mine and recompense, for the time when their foot shall slip; for the day of their calamity is at hand, and their doom comes swiftly. For the Lord will vindicate his people and have compassion on his servants.” Paul quotes that text in Romans 12:19 saying, “Christian, respond to evil with good.” What could give you the power to do that? It’s a promise—“For, vengeance is mine, I will repay.” So many Christians have experienced deep wounding from others. A daughter who didn’t have a dad who loved her well but instead hurt her. A son who never had modeled for him godly manhood, but watched a dad who abused his mom. Deep wounds that many Christians have trouble shaking, and the statement of Paul is “I want your ethics to change. I want you to be a man, a woman of love. Do not respond to evil with evil, but respond to evil with good. For God has declared, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay.’”

The curses of the old covenant matter today. Through Jesus, they become the hope of every believer who is experiencing injustice, that God will bring justice, that God takes sin seriously and he hasn’t forgotten your pain. He knows your pain and part of your fuel for loving in the present is your confidence that God is able to bring greater justice than you could ever bring by retaining your anger and retaining your bitterness. So free yourself of that and trust in the God of promise who has promised he will bring vengeance. But he could do that ultimately at the cross. That is, if that person that has wounded me actually repents, then God will still bring justice by having poured out all of that wrath that was due that person on Jesus.

TK: Mm-hmm.

JD: And that is true justice. It’s our hope, Tom. We have to hope that that is true justice in light of our own offense against God. But if that person doesn’t repent, then we know that the wrath of God is still going to work its way out. God is a good judge and hell exists because God is a good judge and the curses of the old covenant will all become operative. All the curses that are written in this book, God will pour out on the enemies of those whose hearts have been changed and who are following the Savior.

TK: I like—you have a whole list of these, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen actually a list like this in a book. Normally when we think of promises, like you said, we think of something that we’d say, wow, that’s favorable. That’s a good promise. But here, these are promises. But you make this statement—two sentences: “In all these passages, God is the one who bears the responsibility to curse. The believers’ responsibility is only to rest, trusting that God will work justice in the best time and in the best way.” Alright, number number three Jason—number three: In the new covenant, Christians inherit the old covenant’s original and restoration blessings. What does that mean?

JD: Well, within every covenant there’s blessings for obedience, curses for disobedience, and then on the other side of curse there is a vision of a rekindling of relationship. And within the old covenant, there were blessings—first and foremost, blessings of immediate experience of life. Wombs that would be flourishing, no miscarriages, crops that are exploding with produce, and protection from all enemies. Those original blessings that are principally focused on physical provision, but not only that, there’s also an additional spiritual component because in a text like Leviticus 26, God says that if you will perfectly obey, then my presence will be with you. I will walk with you. Specifically, “I will make my dwelling among you and my soul shall not abhor you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be my people.”

God was already with Israel. His presence was already in their midst, so when he says, “If you will obey, then I will make my dwelling among you,” it seems to me he’s promising now something even greater, something more extensive, something more internal, something more personal than what Israel was already experiencing with his presence in their midst. So you have these physical blessings and spiritual blessings that are all associated with the original old covenant associated with perfect obedience. And if there is disobedience, then they could expect the removal of all that—absolute curse. And then there’s restoration blessings. And that’s what we see on the other side of Deuteronomy 28, when we get to Deuteronomy 30 and we see God saying on the other side of exile, once all these blessings and curses come upon you, then I’m going to restore you. I’m going to gather you back to myself. I’m going to work in your heart and do a new work.

And then we see the prophets who are living in the midst of God pouring out curses on Israel recalling the restoration promises. And we have prophets like Ezekiel who can say God’s own words to them: “My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.” That’s not an original old covenant blessing. That’s a restoration blessing, but it sounds so much like the old covenant blessing, where God said, “If you walk in my statutes and observe my commandments, I will make my dwelling among you, and my soul will not abhor you. I’ll walk among you and you will be—I’ll be your God and you will be my people.” It’s like the restoration blessings are reaffirming the original old covenant blessings now.

Now, that stated, the reason I’m saying in principle three that in the new Covenant, Christians inherit the old covenant’s original and restoration blessings is because of something I see Paul do in 2 Corinthians 6. Second Corinthians 1:20—all the promises are yes in Jesus. Second Corinthians 6:16—Paul telling the church “You’re the temple of the Living God.” he quotes Old Testament scripture. These are his words in 2 Corinthians 6:16: “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them. I will be their God. They will be my people.” So Paul’s actually quoting text here to give substantiation for why it is that the church is the Temple of God, why we can be confident the very presence of God is in our midst. And he reaches back first to Ezekiel. And Ezekiel says “My dwelling place shall be with them. I will be their God. They shall be my people.” That statement—“I will make my dwelling among them. I will be their God. They shall be my people”—that’s word-for-word out of Ezekiel 37, which is a restoration blessing post-exile.

But Paul doesn’t just say that. He adds “I will walk among them.” And Ezekiel doesn’t mention anything about God’s walking, but that walking is part of the original covenant blessing in Leviticus 26, where God says, “I will make my dwelling among you and I will walk among you. And I will be your God, and you shall be my people.” And it seems to me Paul is saying, “Church, how do I know that we are the temple of God? Because the original blessing that God would walk among his people is being realized in our presence due to the perfect obedience of Jesus.” Jesus secured every original old covenant blessing for us. And intriguingly, he focuses on the spiritual blessing. But if Jesus secured the spiritual blessing of God’s presence through his perfect obedience—obeying where Israel should have obeyed and secured those original covenant old covenant blessings—then it suggests he’s also secured all the physical blessings, all the provision, all the protection. And yet, in light of Paul’s comments about suffering in this age and the fact that we have not claimed our full inheritance, it suggests that Jesus has indeed secured every original old covenant blessing and every restoration blessing for Christians today. But then we have to interpret the experience of those blessings through the lens of already but not yet, this overlap of the ages.

TK: Right, right. Alright, so number four.

JD: Yeah, that brings us to number four.

TK: Yeah. And this is speaking of overlap: Christians already possess all blessings of their inheritance, but will enjoy them fully only at Christ’s final coming. That makes sense with the last one.

JD: It does, and that’s exactly the point I’m making. We already quoted from Ephesians. We’ll say it one more time: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ”—that’s where it’s come—“with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places.” Every spiritual blessing like he goes on to talk about—election, adoption, redemption, forgiveness, sealing. And then he says “In him”—that is in Christ—“you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.” And what I’m proposing is that Christians already possess all the blessings of our inheritance, but will enjoy them fully only at Christ’s final coming.

TK: And we all know that we have felt—we have felt that, we have tasted of the—we have tasted and we live in the goodness of the age to come. But yet there are all sorts of things we’d say, “Lord, I am praying that this situation, this thing, will change” and there’s certain things that happen that you’d say, “I know the Lord is going to reverse that in the days ahead.” So we all feel this.

JD: We all right now recognize how present sin is and how much it’s tempting us. But then we remind ourselves that God has freed us from every sin. We’re no longer sin’s slave and we’re not under sin’s condemnation. So we’ve—whereas in the past been given over to rebellion, to a debased mind—God has now given us over to a renewed mind and to obedience. There’s still brokenness and still decay. There’s car accidents, and there’s cancer. But we have hope for something better. It’s a living hope that we hold fast to day in and day out. And we know the journey of deterioration and decay is real, but this cursing of creation, as it says in Romans 8, was done in hope. As the creation longs for the day when the Sons of God will be revealed, death is still looming for all. But Christ has already removed its sting. And death becomes the channel toward our greater reward—to live is Christ, to die is gain. And so that’s that overlap of the ages.

TK: I know you have a chapel—you have a chapel you need to get to, don’t you?

JD: Yes, I do.

TK: Alright, so let’s do number five quick and then next week we’re going to talk about four different ways Christ serves as a lens for claiming Old Testament promises as Christians. This is so helpful. What we’ve talked about building towards this in the same way Christ is a lens in the law—to think about Christ as a lens that the promises pass through. But Jason, number five it says: All true Christians will persevere and enjoy their full inheritance.

JD: All true Christians will persevere and enjoy their full inheritance, Tom, because we don’t bring anything to this. We are trusting Jesus. He’s the doer. He’s the great mover. He is the one who’s securing our inheritance. Then if it’s not our obedience that can cause us to gain our inheritance, it’s not our disobedience that causes us to lose it. True Christians will persevere and enjoy their full inheritance because Jesus is the one that we’re in and who has secured it for us. So true Christians—I think of Hebrews chapter 3:14: “We have come to share in Christ if we hold firmly to the end the confidence we had at the beginning.” It’s only those who persevere to the end who truly shared in Christ. But Jesus has purchased for us not only our right standing with God, he purchased for us our sanctification—our justification and our sanctification. So I’ve said it on this podcast before, echoing my former pastor: the only sins that we can conquer are forgiven sins.

TK: Yeah.

JD: We need a God who’s already 100% for us, and that is the God that we have for us in Jesus. His perfect righteousness is counted as our own. He bore all of our iniquities, and we stand in him perfectly upright. And now all authority in heaven and on earth that has been given to the Son of God is working for us. He has said, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” There is a future day of justification coming that will be in accordance with, but not on the basis of our works. The basis of our future justification is Christ’s work alone, but God will judge us according to our works, meaning that we need to have works that accord with life.

TK: Mm-hmm.

JD: Fruit on a tree does not make a tree alive. It simply proves the tree is alive. And at the great judgment day, the great new creational gardener will come out and assess all the trees that were planted from the beginning of time. And there is a holiness without which no one will see God. But everyone who is in Christ, who has been rooted in him—our inheritance is absolutely secure. We’ve been adopted and that adoption can’t be reversed. He’s declared us as his own. And it’s not that we don’t work. No, we work out our salvation with fear and with trembling. Why is it with fear and trembling? For it is God who is working in us both to will and to work for his good pleasure. All of our will and all of our working is dependent on him, and therefore we tremble as we work. God’s grace doesn’t make our working unnecessary. God’s grace makes our working possible.

TK: Hmm.

JD: And so we do with Paul work harder than everyone around us. Yet it was not I, but the grace of God that was within us. And so the claim that I’m making here is that all true Christians will indeed persevere and enjoy our full inheritance, because all of our salvation—past, present and future—is a gift, dependent on our Savior. He purchased our justification. He purchased our sanctification as a fruit of what he accomplished in our justification, and he purchased our glorification, meaning that he who began a good work in us will be faithful to complete it. And he will complete it at the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. So this is our hope. And so I’ll close the podcast this way: May the God of peace himself sanctify all of you listeners completely. May your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus. He who calls you is faithful. He will surely do it. There is a promise to bank our lives on.

TK: Amen. Amen. Alright. Thank you, Jason. Thank you, Lord. It is good. It is good.

JD: Thank you, Tom. Praise the Lord.

TK: Alright. You better run. See ya.

JY: Thank you for joining us for GearTalk. Go to our show notes for a link to Jason DeRouchie’s book “Delighting in the Old Testament.” You’ll find a large number of resources, including lectures, outlines, articles, and sermons at jasonderouchie.com. You’ll find many resources for teaching and preaching in a number of languages at handstotheplow.org.