Adrian ☧

The game plan: 1) Humble ourselves before God 2) Ask God to help us by his grace 3) Invest in the family, church, public square, and missions 4) Do all we can to support good candidates and causes 5) Never lose hope in Christ 6) Remember our home is not here 7) Pray much

What Hebrews teaches on the old covenant law (from Jason DeRouchie): “The law made nothing perfect” (7:19); but in Christ, we find: --a “better hope” (7:19) --a “better covenant” (7:22; cf. 8:6)' --“better promises” (8:6) --“better sacrifices” (9:23) --“better possession” (10:34) --a “better country” (11:16) --a “better life” (11:35) --and a “better word” (12:24) None of this entails or enfranchises antinomianism, whether individually, ecclesially, or societally. What it does mean is that we are no in way trying to go back to the old covenant law. We Christians are under the new covenant, and so we obey all the New Testament, and look in an even broader sense to the person, work, teaching, and example of Jesus Christ. He is now our standard of holiness, not the old covenant law; he is the incarnate and embodied fulfillment of all the old covenant law. The law (generally meaning what is sometimes called the "moral law," a term that is nowhere found in Scripture) has value in society as a restraint on sin (1 Timothy 1:8-11). Further, the law continues to teach us about the perfections of God and his moral will for our world. However, Hebrews is clear that we are under the reign and rule of Christ. The old covenant, then, was not bad; it was good. But it is abrogated and fulfilled by the person and work of Christ (2 Cor. 1:20). We seek good law for the public square, to be sure. But we do so knowing that our mission is not to restore old covenant law in the nation; our mission is to make disciples of all nations by the power of the gospel (Rom. 1:16; Matthew 28:16-20). Nowhere does the New Testament lay upon the church the burden to reestablish old covenant law in a given society. We have freedom to work to institute good law in our country, absolutely; that's good to do! But that is not how the kingdom advances. You can enforce the Sabbath in every hamlet, town, and city in America--that is not the same as the advancement of the gospel. Nor is that our mission; nor is that our marching orders from the apostles and New Testament authors. To make it so is to lay a new burden on the backs of God's people, and ultimately to transfer precious resources of time and energy away from what our calling as the church actually is: not to "Christianize" America, but to make disciples by the power of the gospel. You cannot change or adapt the mission of the church without real consequences. You must stay on mission as Christ defined it. Any deviation from this, however noble and well-intended, will have effects, and they will not be positive. (If you doubt this, in historical terms, look at how legalistic enforcement of such strictures fared in the age of both English Puritanism and New England Puritanism. Trying to enforce the standards of old covenant law in society failed, quite frankly, in both contexts. Reinstituting Sabbath observance did not transform either context, not even close. It muddled the mission of the church, and even created fearsome backlash against the church.)

A few thoughts on family worship: 1. Family worship is a blessing. 2. We have complete freedom on how we do it. 3. There is no biblical command to do family worship 6-7 days per week. 4. We never want to "exasperate" our children, even with good things (Eph. 6).