Best of BAM: On the Obligation of Blessing “Abraham’s Seed” with Steve Gregg, and Q&A

Welcome to the best of the Bible Answer Man broadcast with Christian Research Institute President Hank Hanegraaff. Our mission at CRI is not only to equip you with Christian doctrine, apologetic accuracy and discernment, but to help you become a faithful apprentice of Jesus Christ because life and truth matter.

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Thank you very much, Randy. When God promised Abraham, I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. Such blessings and cursings pertain not simply to the faithful remnant. of ethnic Israel, but to true Israel, consisting of every person who through faith has been adopted into the family of God. The Bible does not view people from the perspective of race, but rather regards them as the seed of Abraham and heirs according to the promise on the basis of relationship. Abraham was promised a royal seed through whom all peoples on earth would be blessed.

And Steve Gregg writes about this in a practical hermeneutics column in the Christian Research Journal, an article titled, On the Obligation of Blessing Abraham's Seed. It's an important message, a message that cannot be stressed enough, because this message has been misappropriated over and over again. And we need to understand clearly what is in view in this promise made to the seed of Abraham. Steve Gregg, host of the radio show The Narrow Path. He lives in Santa Cruz, California, and he joins me now on the Bible Answer Man broadcast.

As always, Steve, good to have you with us.

Hank, it's great to talk to you again.

One of the issues that you and I have discussed many times is this issue of the obligation of blessing Abraham's seed. It seems that this is a passage that is constantly being misappropriated on the basis of race rather than relationship.

That's right. And frankly, that is, I think, a problem that arose with dispensational theology. Not that I like to bash dispensationalists, since a lot of our brothers and sisters are persuaded of dispensational theology, but I do think that the idea that we are supposed to give special deference to the race of national Israel or the ethnic seed of Abraham, I believe that arises out of dispensational presuppositions, which, as you know, are relatively young theological ideas. They only arose in the last 200 years.

And I think the important thing, as you've mentioned many times, Steve, is that we have to look at this passage through the interpretive lens of the New Testament writers. They look at this passage and make very clear that what is in view here is not ethnic Israel. It's not about race. It's not about ethnicity. Ultimately, it's about true Israel.

Well, that's right. And the true Israel is Jesus himself, is Christ. And of course, the Apostle Paul sees Christ as as a corporate phenomenon, because Jesus is the head of a body, and we are of his flesh and bones. So the seed of Abraham, according to Paul, especially in Galatians 3, 16, is Christ. He said the promises were made to Abraham and to his seed. And then Paul stresses, it does not say seeds, plural, but to your seed, singular, which is Christ. So Paul's teaching is, that certain promises were made to Abraham and his seed, but that seed is Christ. It's not a lot of separate seeds. It's one seed. Now, of course, when we say that Christians are the seed of Abraham, it sounds like we're talking

out of both sides of our mouth because there's many Christians. How could we all be the seed if Paul said there's only one? But you see, Paul goes on to say before the end of that chapter in Galatians 3 that we are all one in Christ. We're one body in Christ. So he said that, in verse 28, he says, if you are Christ's, and by that he means if you belong to Christ, to his body, then you are, he said, Abraham's seed, singular. You're in Christ, and Christ is that seed. So he says you are heirs, according to the promise. So what Paul has said is that Abraham's seed really is comprised of Christ, which includes, of course, all who are in Christ.

And Jesus... left his disciples with instructions to exit Jerusalem, embrace the earth, never again entertain the thought of establishing an earthly Jerusalem. And, of course, the disciples then were no longer permitted to view Israel in exclusivistic parochial categories. Their sites instead had to be elevated on an inclusive Israel, and yet there are people today who constantly bring this up with respect to Jerusalem and the land They say Jerusalem only for the Jews, and if we don't stand lockstep with Israel, regardless of the policy, then we're touching God's anointing and we're violating this very promise made to Abraham.

Well, of course, the reason they say that is because of the way they understand certain Old Testament prophecies. And I think they understand them differently than the apostles understood them. You know, there are prophecies in Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and some of the minor prophets that that talk about God drawing Israel back from the lands where they've been gathered and reestablishing Jerusalem and reestablishing them in their own land. But these prophecies were made while Israel was, well, before God actually brought them back from the Babylonian exile.

God drove them into many lands in 586 B.C. when Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem and deported the Jews from their land. And he also brought them back. At least he brought a remnant of them back. And that was, I believe, in many ways, the fulfillment of those promises which many people are trying to apply to today. As if God was talking about the end times when he made those predictions.

But in my understanding, and I think this was the understanding of the apostles too, when God said he would draw his people back, there was kind of a dual thing that he was talking about. He was talking about physically bringing them back from Babylon, which he did, but also seeing the rescue of Israel from the Babylonian exile as a type and a shadow of salvation in Christ, just as the Exodus was a type and a shadow of salvation in Christ. Both were events in Israel's history where God had left Israel in captivity in a foreign land, in Egypt in the days before Moses, and in Babylon in the days after Jeremiah. And These were times when God, on two occasions, brought his people back to their land

from Egypt the first time, from Babylon the second time, and in the prophets, both of these things, the exodus from Egypt and the return of the exiles from Babylon, become shadows and types of what Christ would do in bringing people out of the bondage of sin and into salvation. So these prophecies in the Old Testament, they predict that God would bring Israel back from the lands where they've been driven. And he did. But they also sometimes look beyond that to the Messianic age. That is what the Messiah would do, which Christ has done and is doing and has been doing for the past 2,000 years.

So one of the things that you point out in the article, and you just reiterated the fact that Paul gives us a perspective on what's going on with respect to Abraham's royal seat. That royal seat is Jesus Christ, the Dublin tundra, as you point out towards the end of Galatians chapter 3, is that If you are in Christ, then you are the seed of Abraham and an heir according to the promise, whether you're Jew or Greek, whether you're male or female, whether you're slave or free. The question at this point then remains, what is the blessing specifically that's being enunciated here in the promise made to Abraham?

I think as we read the entirety of Galatians 3, especially the early part, the promise is that he made to Abraham justification by faith. Essentially, that Abraham was justified in the sight of God, and that that promise of justification by faith would extend to the whole world. All the families of the earth would be blessed with this same blessing that Abraham experienced. Paul talks about that also in Romans 4. He talks about how Abraham was justified by faith, not by works of the law. And he also, in Romans 4, Paul brings up David. And he says, David also spoke of the blessedness of the man who is justified apart from the works of the law. And he quotes Psalm 32, 1 there. And the blessedness of

being justified by faith apart from the law is the blessing. And that blessing is in Christ. So this is actually the blessing that God has for the world, which is brought to the world through Abraham's seed, Jesus, and those of us who are in him. That's why when Jesus said, go and make disciples of all nations, we see this as his commission to go out and fulfill the Abrahamic covenant, which was that the blessing of justification by faith should come to all the families of the earth and they'll be blessed in Christ, who is the seed of Abraham.

We're talking to Steve Gregg. He's the author of The Obligation of Blessing Abraham's Seed in the Christian Research Journal. Appreciate your ministry. Appreciate your contribution to the broadcast today.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

You got it. We'll be right back. in just a few moments with answers to your questions.

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You very much, Randy. And we go right back to our phone callers. Next up is Drew. He's listening in Hong Kong. Hi, Drew.

Hi, Hank. Can you hear me?

Absolutely, yes.

Thank you for taking my call.

My pleasure.

Well, I have a question that's been perplexing me about the gift of tongues.

Yes.

I just want to ask you a question. Do you know people personally? true gift of tongues, and what is the purpose that.

Okay, I think I may have lost Drew, but to answer Drew's question, it's pretty interesting. If you look at tongues in context, you can go to Genesis chapter 11, where you see the whole world had one language and a common tongue, but the Lord saw what they were doing. They were trying to worked towards human potential rather than working towards extending God's principles in his kingdom. And so God went down and confused their tongues so that they would not understand one another. What happens at Pentecost is sort of an undoing of what happened at Babel. Tongues was a barrier at Babel. At Pentecost, you have a breaking down of the barrier between people groups, and therefore the gospel can go out to the far reaches, as

the Bible makes it clear, not only Jerusalem, but Judea, Samaria, indeed to the ends of the world. So tongues, I think, had a purpose in a particular context, and I would not say that tongues are normative today. I can't absolutely preclude the possibility that God can give someone the gift of tongues today, but I can say that tongues are not normative. And if tongues are given as a gift and exercised as that gift within the context of the body of Christ, in other words, within public worship, then tongues need to be interpreted. If the tongues are interpreted, then tongues serve the purpose of prophecy. As we see again in 1 Corinthians chapter 14, they edify, encourage, strengthen, exhort, and equip the believers. So tongues, therefore, have a very

significant purpose. So again, I would say the Scripture makes clear the normative sign of the baptism of the Holy Spirit is not speaking in tongues today, but the confession of Jesus Christ as Lord, repentance from sin, obedience to God, and those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace, as Paul says in Romans chapter 8. And therefore, the fruit of the Spirit is not merely speaking in tongues, but love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and of course, as Paul puts it, self-control. So righteousness, not tongues, is the core of Christianity compressed. in a

single word. Appreciate your call, Drew, from Hong Kong. Hope you could give us another call another day. Back to the phone lines. We'll talk to Jim in Warner, Oklahoma. Hi, Jim.

Hello, Hank. I'm a longtime listener, and you've blessed me in many ways with your program. I have a question. The last couple of Sundays in my son's class, we were discussing Moses after he left his father-in-law, and there's a portion in there where it says that God tried to kill him when he stopped on the way after his wife circumcised her son. And I couldn't get what the meaning or anything was of this. I've searched every commentary that I could, and I have Strong's and everything, but could you explain that to me?

Yeah.

What's going on there, again, you've got to read the context of the passage, but Here we see Moses, who was going to be the great lawgiver to God's people, and instead he is in disobedience to the law of circumcision, the law given to Abraham. And it seems that Moses, in context, is more willing to plead the wishes of his Midianite wife than he was willing to please the Lord who had given him the command to be a lawgiver to his people. And thus, Moses had not circumcised his son. And it obvious from verse 25 that Zipporah was repulsed by the right of circumcision. In other words, if you look at the term itself, bridegroom of blood, you have a term of derision and disgust. So she only complied with circumcision, not because she believed in circumcision,

but rather to save her husband's life. So perhaps Moses had been incapacitated in some way by God and could not perform the circumcision, but certainly what we do know from context is that he was not in compliance with the law of circumcision. And again, all these laws are laws that point forward to something, ultimately to Jesus Christ, in whom all the types and shadows find their substance and their fulfillment. Back to the phone lines. We'll talk next to Steve in Illinois.

Hi, Steve.

How you doing, sir?

I'm doing well.

How are you?

All right, thank you. I got a question. I'm a newly saved Christian, and I've been studying the Bible for about five years and so forth, and, you know, listening to the preacher and all that. I can't seem to get a clear... answer on maybe dinosaurs, where they came from. They weren't, you know, in the garden in Eden or so forth. And I've heard of the gap theory. You know, maybe something that was before void. Can you help explain?

You know, because the kids and I, they're in museums and the bones of dinosaurs. Can you help me with that, sir?

Yeah, well, there are various views on this. There's the young earth theory. perspective on dinosaurs and they believe that dinosaurs walked alongside of humankind and therefore they will point to passages like Job 40 and 41, Behemoth and Leviathan, and say here are examples of dinosaurs in the Bible.

There are others who say no, dinosaurs died off long before the creation of humankind and therefore The days themselves are not days, but they are day ages, and therefore the dinosaurs were created in the sixth day age, but long before the actual creation of humankind. That is an ongoing debate amongst Christians, those who hold to a young earth and those who hold to an old earth. I think what's important in the debate, whatever position you take, is to recognize that Adam's sin accounts for all moral evil.

And therefore, the evil that precedes the sin of Adam is accounted for by Adam's sin, just as that which follows. And, of course, the corollary is Jesus Christ. The blood of Jesus Christ atones for all sin. Thus, it atones for Abraham's sin, just like it atones for your sin, because Christ is a lamb of God. slain before the foundations of the world, and therefore the passage in Genesis has to be read not chronologically, but rather chirologically, because it is communicating God's purposes vis-a-vis humanity. So again, this is a debate with respect to the age issue. I weigh in on this debate in the Creation Answer book, but I think to answer the question, did dinosaurs precede man or live at the same time as man, humanity, we

have to have an apt way of reading the book of nature. The book of nature is not an infallible repository of redemptive revelation, but it is general revelation, and God has revealed himself in general revelation as well. And one thing I would warn against is the kinds of things circulating on the internet today. For example, the human footprints have been discovered alongside dinosaur tracks. And it's argued that these footprints in stone prove a 6,000 year old world in which dinosaurs existed contemporaneously with human beings. The fact of the matter is we don't have to make up stories to support our position. Our reasoning should be grounded in truth. Creationists have questioned these footprints that you

find circulating in in Young Earth Creationist material, and they should be commended for following the facts and the tracks wherever they lead. And I'm particularly proud of the Institute for Creation Research and their acts and facts, acknowledging that scientists must always be willing to reevaluate prior interpretations once new data becomes available. Creationists have accused evolutionists of being closed-minded on key issues we can't afford to to become like them in this respect. Jesus Christ claimed to be the truth. We're followers of Jesus Christ, therefore we must be lovers of truth. My point here is simply to say we don't want to follow bad information, you know, internet lies, travel halfway around the world before truth has

had the chance to put its boots on. So whatever way you come down on this, you want to make sure you do so on the basis of biblical truth and scientific evidence, which is to say we must not as Christians commit scriptural heresy, nor must we ever commit scientific heresy. All truth is God's truth. We're almost out of time for this edition of the Bible Answer Man broadcast.

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Best of BAM: On the Obligation of Blessing “Abraham’s Seed” with Steve Gregg, and Q&A

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