Continuity

I’m finishing up working on my sermon for tomorrow, which is from Acts 13, and I am once again confronted with a simple fact:

Every time thus far that any sermon is recorded in Acts, the preacher connects the coming of Christ to the Old Testament promises.

The dispensationalists say all of those promises of the kingdom of Israel and the seed of David and the promises of Abraham were only to the Jews, and yet Paul and Peter constantly connect them to Christ, and extend them to Jew and Gentile alike, after the nation of Israel had rejected Jesus. How can the dispensationalists put such an impenetrable wall of separation between Old and New, when the Apostles in Acts constantly connect the two?

Just wondering.

3 thoughts on “Continuity

  1. Matt,
    I hear ya, bud. Dispensationalism is another gospel altogether. By promoting such heresy that God has used more than one avenue to the Father, it is promoting an anti-gospel.
    Keep up the good work. I always look forward to hearing the various ways both the old and new covenants are linked together. It gives me shivers to read the first gospel prologue in Genesis 3 and meditate on all the various foreshadows that take place throughout the old covenant of the Messiah that was to come. Continue to provide evidence of Christ in the Old as in the New.

    BTW, I love your blog. I visit every now and then. I appreciate some reformed commentary for once. I just opened my first blog myself and was wondering how I might get on a list of reformed blogs. Any suggestions on how to get my name out to the public???

    http://cnlrowley.blogspot.com

  2. Hi, Colin. Thanks for the kind words!

    I might not be quite prepared to pull out the big guns of “heresy” on our Dispensationalist brothers. But that doctrine is a very dangerous one, indeed. The saddest thing about it to me is the richness they rob themselves of by cutting themselves off from the gracious promises made to Abraham, David, etc.

    You can get your blog on the League of Reformed Bloggers pretty simply- just visit here:

    http://jollyblogger.typepad.com/jollyblogger/2004/09/league_of_refor.html

    Jollyblogger also hosts an Evangelical Aggregator that you can check out.

  3. Anonymous says:

    I come from a dispensational tradition. I don’t think your characterization of dispensational views on the promises relating to the Davidic Kingdom are entirely correct. The temporal blessings of the Davidic Kingdom, in dispensational thought, will be fullfilled literally during Christ’s Millenial reign on Earth, in which the Church will participate. Maybe I’m missing what you’re saying here, but it’s not that none of the Old Testament promises relate to the Church; it’s that the Old Testament promises regarding Israel refer to a literal nation, not merely a “spiritual” Israel (the Church). D. Opderbeck

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