Email questions on the subject of the republication of the Covenant of Works on Sinai

[This post is regarding this post on the Mosaic Covenant being a republication of the Covenant of Works.]

>Within this scheme how do we see the curses at the end of Deuteronomy...

The curses and blessings are what happens to regenerated believers. If a regenerated, converted believer is tempted into sin he will be chastised in some way by God. He won't be cast out, but he will be chastised. All regenerate Christians experience this, to greater degree the more we are awake and changed by the Spirit within us, and thus more convicted.

>How do we interpret the northern kingdom essentially being completely dissolved...

As long as that bloodline from Adam to Christ was kept pure, in all the bad history of the Israelites, they weren't being 'cast out.' That bloodline was kept pure up to the incarnation of Jesus Christ.

It's not warranted by Scripture to say the northern kingdom was completely dissolved, in the way you are meaning it. We have to speak of tribes, anyway. Scholars get embarrassed when speaking of the tribes in this context, because they fear man more than God. I fear only God and will say those Israelite tribes did not cease to exist and God did not abandon them. The northern kingdom itself as a political entity is less important, if not important at all, in the context of this subject.

As for Israel following a religion of works, this is where objectors to republication show their really rather inexcusable cluelessness. Most Reformed academics and their followers don't grasp Federal Theology. They didn't even know Federal Theology is Covenant Theology *systematized* until they read it from me. Suddenly one of their great academic historians started to write that after I introduced him to the fact on his blog (R. Scott Clark). But they still don't grasp Federal Theology. They can't see how the covenant of Sinai is a Covenant of Works *for Jesus* while at the same time it is part of the Covenant of Grace for God's elect. That seems to be too much for them to handle. Then also they can't discern that *national Israel* does not correlate, in God's plan, to *fallen man.* National Israel *is a unique player* - just as Adam in the Garden was a *unique player* - in God's plan of redemption. So for Israel to be in a strange position vis-a-vis the law is similar to Adam's position vis-a-vis the Covenant of Works. Adam was going to break that covenant because it was part of God's plan that he break it, yet he is still guilty at the same time. Israel too was presented with the law, they would break it, as part of God's plan, yet they too were in a position of only being saved by faith in the future coming of the Messiah. Their uniqueness in God's plan, among other things, was the fact that they *were the living, historical material* of the written Word of God.

This isn't difficult, and the diffidence and petulance of Reformed academics in refusing to see it has everything to do with their inherent Romanist sympathies (their disdain for a Covenant of Works in the Garden to begin with). Their sacramentalism, and their secret sympathy with quasi works righteousness.

And, again, for the confused: *these types who refuse to recognize republication will bellow in righteousness like they are tied to a stake and being set on fire that they "will not stand for any stench of works righteousness, by God" and that they are "defending justification by faith alone" while in fact they are doing just the exact opposite. By denying Jesus (the Second Adam) accomplishes what Adam in the Garden failed to accomplish - and does it on the elect of God's behalf - *they put the burden of fulfilling the law right back onto the back of fallen man, right where the devil wants it to be.*

At a real level within them they *know* what they are doing.

They need to get out of their villages of morality and get in to the pure and whole - God preserved - received Word of God.