JY: Welcome to Gear Talk, a podcast on Biblical Theology. Today Jason DeRouchie and Tom Kelby talk about just that, Biblical Theology. Based on the podcast today, it’s clear this is something every Christian needs to know about. What is it and why does it matter?

TK: Welcome to Gear Talk. I’m Tom Kelby, president of Hands to the Plow. And I am sitting across the table from Jason DeRouchie.

JD: Hi friends.

TK: Jason works with us as a content developer and global trainer, and beyond that a super good friend. So I’m excited about this, Jason, your title fits with what we are talking about as our topic today. So tell everybody what you do at the school you work at.

JD: Sure, I am research professor, which means I get to write, but I also get to teach and mentor. I’m a research professor of Old Testament and Biblical theology.

TK: All right, if you noticed, it says Gear Talk, Biblical Theology, our emphasis on these podcasts is Biblical Theology. It sounds kind of like a scientific thing. Some of us might not like science sort of things. So tell us. Why we would care? What does Biblical Theology even mean?

JD: Sure, it actually is a specific discipline within the whole frame of biblical studies. But Biblical Theology—it’s not a rocket scientist element, this is for everyone out there. Normal people who want to study—it’s a way of studying and understanding how the whole Bible progresses, integrates, and climaxes in Jesus. Those three words—how does the whole Bible progress? The movement—this is the storyline of Scripture—so how does it progress. How does it integrate? How do biblical authors use their own Scripture? How do they connect all the dots for us? How does the various persons and events and institutions in the Bible like a Moses or the exodus or the temple—how does that integrate and relate to Jesus? How does it all connect? And the last element—climax. Everything in scripture climaxes in the person and work of Christ. So Biblical Theology is really the discipline of studying and understanding how does all of Scripture hang together in a way that elevates the beauty and the greatness of Jesus.

TK: And and I think what you’re saying here, then, is things that for a lot of us—if we’ve read the Bible for a long period and we read things and we say that’s a strange story. That that’s a random thing Moses put in, for instance, about say Lot and his daughters, where we can think of all sorts of things. I think what you’re saying is no, that’s part of the story on purpose, and you need to figure out what Moses is doing there. That’s part of this.

JD: That’s right, every detail—we have to believe that God as the divine author is including it in his word because it matters. And what’s amazing is that God as the author already knows the end. And when he starts at the beginning, he knows where he’s heading. He knows where Jesus fits, and so he raises up these voices who are going to be proclaiming a unified message, even though they’re spread out geographically and they’re spread out even over 1500 years. It’s just awesome, the unity of scripture.

And so our goal in Gear Talk is to help all of our listeners better understand what exactly the Bible is doing. When we read that Miriam the prophetess, Moses’s sister, proclaimed a song, and then Moses led all of Israel in singing that song at the Sea in Exodus 15 and we see that the first half of the song speaks of God’s defeat of Egypt, but the second-half of the song speaks of all the neighbors of—those that would become neighbors of Israel: the Philistines, the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Canaanites, they are freaking out over what God just did in Egypt. It says that it’s already happening and yet Israel has only just crossed the sea. They’re singing this on the shoreline. What that means is that Moses understood the defeat of Pharaoh at the sea as proving, giving some level of proof that God would repeat this destruction in the future. His defeat of Egypt secured all the future destructions that all the future enemies would come down.

Even before a word would have gotten out, Moses is already understanding what we would call typology. He was already using, viewing the exodus, the first exodus as a picture of coming victories. And that’s exactly how the prophets read Moses. And that’s why they can talk about the coming of Jesus as an even greater exodus, where a greater enemy is defeated and a greater victory is secured, because Moses already set a pattern for us of reading the exodus this way. And then Jesus in a text like Luke chapter 9 actually when he meets Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration, it says that they gathered together and spoke about the exodus—departure is what it says in my ESV—it’s the exodus that he would undergo in Jerusalem (Luke 9:31). This is how Jesus was thinking. He was seeing an integrated Bible that was ultimately pointing to him.

TK: And we see it just thinking about that even that song is Exodus 15. That song is replayed throughout the Bible. Then in with—it’s almost like a melody line in a movie and it starts showing up in the book of Psalms, for instance it and it ultimately ends up the song of Moses and the Song of Jesus in Revelation. So this same storyline—like a melody line in a movie you say, hey, I’ve heard that music before playing, it plays throughout.

JD: That’s right. That’s right. And I’m sure it’s some future Gear Talk will actually unpack a theology of the exodus. It’s beautiful, but this is just an example. God has written his scripture. So that the whole is integrated, it moves along a progressing story, the high points of that story being covenants. There are five key covenants in Scripture that God makes with humans. I call—the first four of the covenants are named after the head, the mediator of the covenant. And then the last one has its own distinct name, which is very familiar to most of our listeners, so you have the—and these are the story, the progressing story moves along these plot points, the Adamic-Noahic Covenant, meaning the covenant that God made via Adam and then reaffirmed it with Noah. Then you have the Abrahamic covenant, then the Mosaic Covenant, the Davidic Covenant and the Mosaic Covenant is what really dominates the entire Old Testament.

In fact, that’s why the early church fathers called it the Old Testament. Testament in Latin means covenant. So they saw that the initial part of our Christian scripture was dominated by this Old Covenant established through Moses at Mount Sinai. And that contrasts with the final of the covenants, the New Covenant. So the New Covenant stands in contrast to the Old Covenant, but not in contrast to the Davidic Covenant. The New Covenant doesn’t stand in contrast to the Abrahamic Covenant. It’s specifically—we read in Jeremiah 31 that it contrasts the Old Covenant that God had made with Israel, whom he brought out of the land—who he brought out of Egypt in particular. So it’s that that Sinai covenant that stands against the covenant that God establishes through Jesus, that we call the new covenant. So those five covenants set the plot points on the progression, the progressing story of Scripture.

TK: Would be fair to compare them to say I’m taking a journey in a car—five towns I’m going to meet on the way. Like, hey, you’re going to come to this, you’re going to come to this and there’s lots of territory between them, but they allow you to kind of in your mind say, OK, I got a general idea of where we’re going.

JD: It’s not only five towns, it would almost be like five towns as you’re climbing a mountain like there’s escalation through the progression. And at each town there are new vistas. You can see more than you could have seen in the past because you’re you’re able to not only see where you’ve been. But now you’re seeing so much more, you’re able to see what you saw at the first stop, but now you can see even more at the next stop. And then it’s going to culminate in Christ. So it’s not just five key towns and a journey, it’s a journey that’s heading somewhere that’s climbing a mountain. And at every stop it’s building on the previous. And you can see more than you could have seen before.

TK: I think a huge help for me—and hoping it will be for all of us—is seeing even your definition that this is what we’re seeing as the Scriptures progress, integrate, climax in Christ—is that these are not five different mountains we’re talking about, we’re talking about one story that’s being told.

JD: And it’s the kingdom of God, and intriguingly in a book like Daniel, the small stone that was cut without human hands that destroys the image that Nebuchadnezzar saw in chapter 2 grows into a great mountain that fills the entire earth. That’s the mountain that we’re talking about. This story of the kingdom of God’s growth—the growth of the kingdom of God. And God reigns—he reigned in the garden. But something happened at the fall where the peace that he had with his world was warped. And so from that point on, God—and ultimately his Messiah—began working again to reestablish right order in his world, to reestablish kingdom peace. And so it’s a grand story of covenants—covenantal progression, all climaxing in the rise of the kingdom of God, which is like a mountain that fills the entire earth.

TK: It reminds me of a lot of scriptures. Before we move further, can you just say—some of us have seen, maybe in somebody’s office or something, a book called a Systematic Theology. You are talking about Biblical Theology. What is a Systematic Theology? What’s the difference between these two things?

JD: So both are grounded in the Bible. Scripture is the guide for both Systematic Theology, which is a study of doctrine, and Biblical Theology, which is maybe one step below it—a more foundational discipline that’s designed to understand the flow of Scripture, the story itself, how key themes develop from Genesis to Revelation, and how biblical authors use their own scriptures. Systematic Theology is less historical in the way that it’s presented. It’s usually a group of topics. So we’re saying what does the Bible have to say about X? So what does the Bible have to say about God or scripture or angels or church government or missions? And so we have these various categories of doctrine. And so we create statements of faith in our various churches.

TK: So if every Christian, not just pastors, needs an understanding of Biblical Theology. We also need a Systematic Theology. We need to systematize our faith.

JD: That’s right. And even the reality is that our own doctrine, our system of faith, actually influences how we even begin with Biblical Theology, because we need a doctrine of scripture—that Scripture itself testifies it is the very word of God. And that’s what gives us the unity that allows us to find connections, progression, and climax throughout Scripture focused on the person of Jesus because there is one author of the Bible and we believe that from our doctrine that grows out of Scripture itself. That provides a framework for us to even do the the practice of Biblical Theology. So with every text that we might look at, we can say how does it fit within the Bible story? How do other authors use this passage? Those are biblical-theological questions. But we can also say, okay, what do we learn about God from this passage? What do we learn—how does this passage anticipate the work of Christ at the cross and what he will do to work salvation for the many?

What we do on Gear Talk, there’s going to be a lot of doctrine that is being shaped as we do it and even our doctrinal statements—how we think about Christian obedience. And we might have a statement that those who are saved are called upon to bear fruit and to see what we would call progressive sanctification, progressive growth in holiness. Well, how does the Old Testament inform our growth in holiness today? If we’re trusting in promises, can we trust in the Old Testament promises or only in New Testament promises? Should we look at the Ten Commandments as our guide. Or do we say we’re New Covenant Christians, therefore, that Old Covenant law doesn’t matter to us at all? Those questions, directly related to our doctrine, will only be answered rightly when we wrestle with Biblical Theology. So Gear Talk is highly practical because Biblical Theology is all about helping us understand, as Christians, how texts like the Old Testament are Christian scripture, and how we read all the initial 3/4 of the Bible through Jesus in order to rightly apply it and understand it today.

TK: I like it. So we talked about five towns on a mountain going up.

JD: Right climbing the mountain.

TK: And so if I picture that in my mind—you have something that’s been super helpful for me—a lot of people in, in our show notes will have a link, so you can find out where this is—but use an acronym to help us get the story in our mind better, and you use the word Kingdom. And you’ve taught that quite a bit. It’s been, I think, for me really helpful. It’s actually something—as I think about think OK, that’s part of the story. We’re at the part or we’re at the end part being able to name things. So can you walk us through what KINGDOM is?

JD: Sure. As I was thinking about how to serve my children and how to serve my students to understand simply how does the Bible progress—what is the storyline of Scripture? The covenants were there—people could fit them into the story, but it still doesn’t do a great job. If all we do is focus on the high points of the plot, we don’t know, still, how does the whole flow together? And so I wrote down what I believe to be just the major movements in the storyline from Genesis to Revelation, from creation to consummation. And then I said how can I remember them well? And I thought Jesus came proclaiming one thing, proclaiming the kingdom, that this whole story climaxing in Jesus is indeed—like it all falls within the framework of the kingdom of God. And so I said, is there any way I can take these major movements and use those letters—K-I-N-G-D-O-M—to help people remember them, and I think the Lord helped me.

And so that’s what we can go through. This is a central part of biblical theology, is tracing the storyline of Scripture. So that’s what I’m going to give you. And each of the letters represent a key movement in the story. K—think about where the story begins and where many great sporting events begin at kickoff—Kickoff and Rebellion. What are we talking about? Creation, fall, flood. So in creation, fall flood, we get the the Adamic-Noahic covenant. And yet everything starts here. It’s global vision and a global fall. And so there’s the need for a solution. Already God hints at it in Genesis 3:15, that he would raise up an offspring of the woman who would overcome the serpent and therefore reverse the curse and bring new creation into the world. All this is set up. But God then institutes after the flood creation fall, flood kick off in rebellion. What we’re looking for is an I.

TK: I can jump in—Instrument of Blessing.

JD: Instrument of blessing and what stage is this in the story?

TK: So this would be the next covenant. So the Abrahamic covenant is God is saying I have to start with a person to bring blessing to the world and so.

JD: So by instrument we mean…

TK: A person.

JD: The agent. Yeah, the agent through whom God’s going to reverse the curse and bring blessing. And he chooses to do that through Abraham and ultimately his offspring, which is not just a people but a person. The Messiah, Jesus.

TK: And that fits with our definition of ultimately, biblical theology relates to how the story climaxes in Christ, seen all the way from the very beginning So. “K” and “I”—Kickoff and Rebellion, Instrument of Blessing. You’ve got us up to well instrument instrument of blessing is just first seen in Genesis 12. We are not moving very fast in this thing.

JD: That’s right, that’s right. Genesis includes two of the letters and the Pentateuch itself, includes the first three. So we know that Abraham had Isaac then Jacob, and they end up in Egypt. So now what we have is a nation has grown from seventy people entering into Egypt. We get an entire nation and they are under bondage. So the nation—that’s “N,” K-I-N—Nation redeemed and commissioned. So this nation is Israel, and God raises up Israel for the sake of the world—through Israel the Messiah is going to come. And God redeems them and brings them to Mount Sinai, where he commissions them to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. And they’ll do this in the context of the world. And from Israel, God will raise up his Messiah. As we know, Israel messes up, they doubt his bigness. And so they have forty years of time in the wilderness. God renews his covenant in the book of Deuteronomy with a new generation. And now this nation, who is redeemed and commissioned with a new generation recommissioned, has the opportunity to enter into the land. But already we read in Deuteronomy that things are not going to go well for Israel, because their hearts are stubborn and God hasn’t changed their hearts, ultimately because this Israel the people is not the world’s solution. We’re meeting the Messiah, the person who will represent both Israel and the world.

TK: And Moses knows this.

JD: Moses knows it. He lays it out so explicitly in Deuteronomy, that Israel’s hardness will result in them getting into the land, rebelling from God and experiencing curse and exile. Moses already in Deuteronomy anticipates this. But he also anticipates that on the other side of exile Israel will return and they will follow a prophet like Moses. Like Moses, who is a covenant mediator, the prophet we’re anticipating will be a new covenant mediator who will have the law in his own mouth. And then we find out in Deuteronomy 30 that the very people who will be a part of this great renewal, whose hearts will be circumcised, who will love the Lord with all, they too will get the law within their own mouths. And Paul cites that text in Romans 10 and identifies that Jesus is the one who’s making it happen.

TK: So what, even as we talk about the story progressing, we need to know—Moses already knew the end of the story.

JD: Moses knew the end of the story. He knew that Israel would both rebel, experience exile, but then he also knew that there would be one greater than him who would come and who would bring a new covenant. And we know him as Jesus.

TK: So he doesn’t think I’m plan A, and then when it fails, oh now God decides, well, we better go to plan B. He already knows where this story is going.

JD: That’s right. And we we get a sense of that not only from Jesus’s words in John 5 that say Moses wrote about me, but we also see it in texts like the transfiguration text, where Moses is now on the mountain and in the presence of Peter, James and John. He’s there testifying the greatness of who Jesus is, he has now seen the one that his heart longed to see.

TK: I think one of the striking things about that transfiguration passage is that here you have Moses and Elijah on the mountain with Jesus and a voice comes from heaven and the voice does not refer to Moses or Elijah at all.

JD: “This is my son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matt 17:5). And then the text actually cites Deuteronomy 18. The prophet like Moses text. And it says, “Listen to him.” Listen to him. That’s Deuteronomy 18:15. The one Moses was talking about. But it’s not listen to Moses, it’s listen to Jesus.

TK: The one Moses was talking about. That’s good.

JD: So after N, we get G—Government in the Land. Kick Off and Rebellion, Instrument of Blessing, Nation Redeemed and Commissioned. Government in the Land is conquest and kingdoms. So the conquest in Joshua and Judges—twelve tribal confederacy enters in and they become a kingdom. First it’s a united kingdom under Saul and David and Solomon. Then everything divides and we get a northern and the southern kingdom, both of which ultimately end in exile. But this unit, G, is Government in the Land. And that’s the promised land and it moves us then to the end of the book of Kings. And then the story halts after the fall of Jerusalem. And it picks up again with Daniel in exile.

And that’s where we get the final Old Testament stage—K-I-N-G-D: Dispersion and Return. This is the exile.

TK: So dispersion would be a—that’s a Moses word.

JD: That’s a—Moses said that Israel would be scattered, that they would be dispersed throughout the land because of their idolatry. And then he says they would commit even more idolatry after they were exiled. So they’re kicked out of the land. But they returned because the Messiah has to be born in Bethlehem. And Israel gets to come back and Daniel chapter 9. He’s looking for the end of the seventy years which were promised when Israel would get to return to the land. And so in books like Ezra, Nehemiah, we read about that return, but it’s a return that doesn’t bring the Messiah yet. And it doesn’t bring the return of the Spirit. It doesn’t bring the new temple, it doesn’t bring obedience. Their hearts are not changed. And the Old Testament story ends with Israel in rebellion still demanding, like the story ends, demanding a sequel. It hasn’t been rest—there hasn’t been resolve to the story.

And that’s where the Old Testament ends. And then we turn the page and we read about Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. We read about a group of wise men looking for the king of the Jews. And we arrive then at O: Overlap of the Ages. This is Christ’s coming and the church age. That’s what we’re looking at, and I call it overlap—O: Overlap of the Ages—because you and I have already experienced new creation. When Jesus rose on the third day, new creation dawned, light pierced the darkness. Satan was defeated at the cross. And yet we are still here, waiting for the final result. So it started, but it’s not yet complete. And so there’s still brokenness, a global pandemic, cancer, car accidents, battling with sin. This is still the world we live in, the world of Adam and the world of Satan being the king of this world, is still present, but Jesus has conquered.

TK: That’s why we have, for instance, we can talk about the fruit of the Spirit is the fruit from the new age is already growing up.

JD: That’s right. Heaven has been brought to earth. But not completely yet, but already that future has dawned. It’s intruded, and so we have an overlap of the ages where the old creation and the old covenant and the old age are overlapping with the new creation and the new covenant and the new age. But we are now citizens of the different world. Citizens of the future age in the present. And we have new birth certificates that say Jerusalem on them, says Psalm 87, and, therefore, we’re not living in our home and our identity is elsewhere. And we’re longing for the day when the Jerusalem that is our home will come to earth.

And that day is coming. And that’s where we get the very last of our letter. M’s Mission Accomplished. This is Christ’s return and kingdom consummation.

TK: This story is going somewhere.

JD: This is where the story culminates, not simply in Jesus overcoming, suffering and dying and rising in his first coming, but now he will come not as the object of God’s wrath, standing on our behalf, he’ll come as the agent of God’s wrath. He’ll wipe away all the enemies. He’ll wipe away every tear from our eyes. And we will be free free at last—perfect rest in the presence of God forever. Not in a simply spiritual state. We will have new physical bodies that will never know pain. Our senses will be awakened to the full, so that we will see everything for the glory of God. We will taste everything for the glory of God. We will hear all the beautiful sounds for the glory of God. He will receive worship and our joy will be full. So Kick Off and Rebellion, Instrument of Blessing, Nation Redeemed and Commissioned, Government in the Land, Dispersion and Return, Overlap of the Ages, Mission Accomplished. That’s simply the storyline of Scripture and at the heart of it is Jesus and we get to be a part of it.

TK: And like we said in our first podcast, our prayer, my prayer, Jason’s prayer is that we would study God’s word, that this story would be something I’d say, I want to know that story. I want to know better than I know it today. I really do. And I also want to obey. I don’t want to just hear it and become some sort of weird expert on something that I don’t practice actually. But beyond that, I want to proclaim it. So if you’re a pastor to proclaim it to your people clearly, parents to your children, you with your friends—that this is something we need to know. How would you say, as we close, I am a person reading my Bible. How can I grow in my understanding of this story when I bump maybe into so many things, I say that’s weird. I don’t know what to do with that story or that thing. What would be a quick hint you could give to grow in my understanding of Biblical Theology.

JD: I would take KINGDOM and try to think, where does what I’m reading fit within that basic framework? And see if it can, is this before or after the exile? How is this text hoping in Jesus? And then I would try to secure some clear, manageable overviews that can just remind me of the whole story. Another key part is as I’m reading the New Testament and I see a quotation, go back and read where it came from and ask why are they using this passage at this time and how does it relate to the story of Jesus?

TK: I think something for me, doing that has been very helpful—an example would be for instance, Peter was writing to some churches suffering in the letter 1 Peter, but he quotes Psalm 34 several times. So say OK, Peter has something in his mind as he writes this letter and this Psalm is almost like a song playing in his mind. So to start thinking about, OK, Peter, what were you doing here? And you quote other places—what are you thinking? Why did you do that in this spot? We have a lot of stuff on our website, materials you can download for free. I would encourage you to go check them out, our whole curriculum, the developing leaders curriculum, goes through each of the sections of the Bible. But that is the goal, that we would develop a robust, healthy Biblical Theology. Jason, thanks for sharing today.

JD: My joy.

TK: And I look forward to talking to you next time.

JY: Thanks for joining us at Gear Talk. If you have questions about Biblical Theology you’d like us to address in future episodes, e-mail us at [email protected]. Also check out handstotheplow.org for resources designed to help you understand the Bible and its teachings.