Latest / Ministry Minded / Israel, the Church, and the Hourglass Shape of Scripture with Chad Bird

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Israel, the Church, and the Hourglass Shape of Scripture with Chad Bird · Ministry Minded

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  [music]
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  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of the Ministry Minded Podcast,
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  SPEAKER_01: a show that seeks to marvel at the mercy of God that meets us
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  SPEAKER_01: in our messy ministries.
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  SPEAKER_01: I'm your host, Pastor Brad Gray.
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  SPEAKER_01: I serve as the senior pastor of Stonington Baptist Church in Paxonis, Pennsylvania.
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  SPEAKER_01: And on today's episode,
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  SPEAKER_01: I'm thrilled and delighted to have back on the show my friend and colleague,
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  SPEAKER_01: Chad Bird.
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  SPEAKER_01: Chad's an author,
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  SPEAKER_01: a scholar in residence for 1570 He's written numerous books and articles and spoken
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  SPEAKER_01: at various places, not only around the country, but around the world.
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  SPEAKER_01: And on today's episode,
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  SPEAKER_01: we talk about something that I think is incredibly resonant and timely,
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  SPEAKER_01: namely, how should the church live?
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  SPEAKER_01: Consider Israel.
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  SPEAKER_01: Mention that word and likely people are going to split in a number
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  SPEAKER_01: of different camps,
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  SPEAKER_01: premail,
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  SPEAKER_01: postmail,
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  SPEAKER_01: covenantal,
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  SPEAKER_01: dispensational,
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  SPEAKER_01: all kinds of different buckets and categories that we can filter and process and try
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  SPEAKER_01: to understand.
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  SPEAKER_01: But Chad and I, we don't begin with any of those sorts of things.
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  SPEAKER_01: We try to begin with the story that God has been telling.
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  SPEAKER_01: That story, of course, begins in Genesis chapter 1.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's a story that takes place all throughout the pages of Scripture.
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  SPEAKER_01: And what is the story that God is telling?
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  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's a story that begins narrowly, but also begins to expand exponentially.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's a story that is ultimately found in the fulfillment that Christ brings.
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  SPEAKER_01: I pray that this episode is a blessing to you,
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  SPEAKER_01: one that informs and enriches and maybe even pushes back against some of the things
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  SPEAKER_01: So sit back and relax.
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  SPEAKER_01: Enjoy this episode as Chad and I discuss many of these things related to the people
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  SPEAKER_01: of God,
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  SPEAKER_01: the promises of God, and how we, the church, fit into the story that God is telling.
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  SPEAKER_01: Chad, it's so good to have you back on the podcast.
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  SPEAKER_01: It's been a little bit.
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  SPEAKER_01: I don't remember when the last one was, but you always have things going on.
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  SPEAKER_01: But it's good to talk with you.
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  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for kind of carving out some time for us this afternoon.
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  SPEAKER_01: So how are you doing?
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  SPEAKER_01: How's life?
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  SPEAKER_00: Doing good, good.
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  SPEAKER_00: Thanks again for having me on.
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  SPEAKER_00: I appreciate the opportunity.
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  SPEAKER_00: Anytime I can talk about Old Testament Bible stuff, Israel stuff, then sign me up.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're doing good.
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  SPEAKER_00: We're doing good.
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  SPEAKER_00: As I was mentioning before we hit record,
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  SPEAKER_00: we're just kind of enjoying a little bit of downtime here this summer,
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  SPEAKER_00: which has been great.
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  SPEAKER_00: Still keeping things going with my writing and whatnot,
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  SPEAKER_00: but it's good to spend a little bit of extra time with grandkids and kick back
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  SPEAKER_00: a little bit more than we usually do during the year.
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  SPEAKER_01: Good, amen to that.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you always are doing a lot of writing.
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  SPEAKER_01: How many projects are you working on right now concurrently?
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  SPEAKER_00: My main project right now,
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  SPEAKER_00: as far as writing goes,
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  SPEAKER_00: is I started a—it was kind of unplanned initially, but now we're really into it.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's a four-book project on Genesis.
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  SPEAKER_00: So I wrote Jacob's story, Limping with God, a few years ago.
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  SPEAKER_00: I just finished a book called Dreaming with God,
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  SPEAKER_00: which is about Joseph and Judas, so the last part of Genesis.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I'm writing now a book called Waiting with God, which is going to be on Abraham and Isaac.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then a couple of years from now, I'll start work on Genesis 1 through 11.
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  SPEAKER_00: So we're kind of getting at it backwards.
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  SPEAKER_00: But eventually the four book project on Genesis is going to be called the Genesis Gospel.
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  SPEAKER_00: So that's my big project, probably for the next at least four years, something like that.
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  SPEAKER_00: So working on that,
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  SPEAKER_00: just getting ready for a class I'm teaching on Christ in the Old Testament at SEU
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  SPEAKER_00: in Florida, an online class through the Discovery Institute.
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  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, got a few more things going on, but it's all good.
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  SPEAKER_00: Enjoying it all.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's work, but it doesn't feel like work because I enjoy it so much.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I will just shout out Limping with God was incredible.
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  SPEAKER_01: I did a sermon series on Jacob's life,
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  SPEAKER_01: and I found Limping with God one of the great things,
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  SPEAKER_01: great resources I was always grabbing off the shelf.
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  SPEAKER_01: There's another great title,
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  SPEAKER_01: by the way,
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  SPEAKER_01: that I ended up stealing when I preached through Jacob's Life,
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  SPEAKER_01: which is Dale Ralph Davis.
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  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you've interacted with him,
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  SPEAKER_01: but he has a great book on Jacob's Life called God's Rascal,
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  SPEAKER_01: which I found so endearing.
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  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, I loved how you...
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  SPEAKER_01: You portrayed Jacob's life and even we could even say
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  SPEAKER_01: that Jacob's life is pretty much the Christian life that we are all individuals
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  SPEAKER_01: who live along with God in one way or another.
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  SPEAKER_01: And it's very much this.
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  SPEAKER_01: This sinner saint sort of reality, this paradigm that is overlaid Jacob's life.
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  SPEAKER_01: It was anyways really helpful.
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  SPEAKER_01: So I'm for one as a fan,
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  SPEAKER_01: I would say I'm really looking forward to seeing how Abraham and Joseph
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  SPEAKER_01: and Adam's treatments all kind of shape up.
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  SPEAKER_01: I'm excited for that.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you.
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  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, you are my go-to Old Testament expert.
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  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things that,
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  SPEAKER_01: of course,
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  SPEAKER_01: that maybe you've been,
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  SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
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  SPEAKER_01: maybe if you've been around chatter or if you've been online,
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  SPEAKER_01: if anyone's been online recently,
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  SPEAKER_01: maybe in the last months or You've probably heard lots of discussions
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  SPEAKER_01: and conversations about Israel and the church and all kinds of threads and tangents
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  SPEAKER_01: that people go on.
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  SPEAKER_01: And so one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on today, Chad,
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  SPEAKER_01: is just to kind of talk about how do we as Westerners or evangelicals or theologians
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  SPEAKER_01: of the cross,
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  SPEAKER_01: so to speak,
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  SPEAKER_01: how are we To understand Israel's place in the broader scope
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  SPEAKER_01: of God's unfolding revelation.
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  SPEAKER_01: This gets into conversations about dispensationalism versus covenantal theology and
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  SPEAKER_01: so on and so forth, and not to be too...
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  SPEAKER_01: I
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  SPEAKER_01: think the broader conversation is, how are we supposed to understand all this?
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  SPEAKER_01: How can we have healthy and fruitful and productive conversations?
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  SPEAKER_01: Because sometimes these conversations delve into very unhelpful places.
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  SPEAKER_01: But anyways, that's kind of the gist of it.
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  SPEAKER_01: What are we supposed to do with all this?
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  SPEAKER_01: Because it seems to be,
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  SPEAKER_01: and maybe it's,
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  SPEAKER_01: as you kind of alluded to earlier,
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  SPEAKER_01: maybe it's just my algorithms, change the algorithms.
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  SPEAKER_01: But if it seems to be coming up a lot,
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  SPEAKER_01: how can we as church leaders,
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  SPEAKER_01: ministry leaders,
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  SPEAKER_01: or just people of faith in general,
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  SPEAKER_01: how can we talk about this in a healthy biblical way?
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, those are all great points, all great questions.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think one of the ways,
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  SPEAKER_00: one of the things to keep in mind when you're talking about Israel's place
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  SPEAKER_00: in God's salvation story is to...
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  SPEAKER_00: Take stock of the fact that,
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  SPEAKER_00: first of all,
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  SPEAKER_00: you have to deal with the story itself, which is not just about Revelation.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's not just about the Old Testament.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's about the big salvation story, which begins in Genesis and then culminates in Christ.
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  SPEAKER_00: So to understand Israel's place in that story, you've got to ask kind of the big questions.
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  SPEAKER_00: So what is this salvation story all about?
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  SPEAKER_00: Did it pre-exist Israel's existence?
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  SPEAKER_00: And then how does Israel figure into that?
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  SPEAKER_00: I think that might be a helpful way to start.
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  SPEAKER_00: Instead of looking at individual trees,
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  SPEAKER_00: look at the forest and say,
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  SPEAKER_00: okay, what are the general patterns that we see happening here?
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  SPEAKER_00: I really appreciate a book by Benjamin Glad.
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  SPEAKER_00: I read it a few years ago, and it helped to sharpen and clarify my own thinking on this.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the way that he approaches the subject is kind of with this big picture in mind.
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  SPEAKER_00: I think the book is called From Adam to Christ to the Church, I believe is the title of it.
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  SPEAKER_00: I've recommended it a number of times.
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  SPEAKER_00: So basically what he argues and what I argue as well,
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  SPEAKER_00: I think this is the kind of the picture of what we're looking at in
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  SPEAKER_00: the Old Testament leading into the new,
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  SPEAKER_00: is that you begin with Adam and Adam is God's priest.
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  SPEAKER_00: He's God's king.
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  SPEAKER_00: You could even call him God's prophet and that he's the one who's supposed to speak God's word.
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  SPEAKER_00: He's placed into God's chosen area, which is Eden more broadly and the garden more specific.
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  SPEAKER_00: Which is the first sanctuary.
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  SPEAKER_00: So this is where God's going to dwell among his people.
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  SPEAKER_00: You have Adam who's serving in a royal capacity.
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  SPEAKER_00: He's God's created son.
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  SPEAKER_00: He's the one who is to rule over creation.
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  SPEAKER_00: That language used in Genesis chapter one,
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  SPEAKER_00: he is priest because the two duties given to him are to work or to serve in
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  SPEAKER_00: the garden.
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  SPEAKER_00: So you are to till and keep it as kind of the traditional translation,
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  SPEAKER_00: but you are to work or serve and you're to guard it.
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  SPEAKER_00: Those are priestly categories that we have later in the Torah.
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  SPEAKER_00: So if you start there,
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  SPEAKER_00: understanding that Adam is kind of this prophet,
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  SPEAKER_00: priest, king, this one that is to serve in this holy space.
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  SPEAKER_00: If you begin there,
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  SPEAKER_00: then you see a pattern beginning to emerge where God gives this responsibility
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  SPEAKER_00: to Adam.
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  SPEAKER_00: And what does he do?
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  SPEAKER_00: Well, of course, he just fails terribly.
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  SPEAKER_00: Everything falls apart in Genesis chapter three.
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  SPEAKER_00: So what does God do?
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  SPEAKER_00: Well, God doesn't completely scrap his plans.
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  SPEAKER_00: Instead, he chooses another Adam kind of figure.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that Adam figure is Abraham.
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  SPEAKER_00: And if you go from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob to Israel,
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  SPEAKER_00: who comes from Jacob,
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  SPEAKER_00: you see what God is doing with Abraham and with the family that comes
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  SPEAKER_00: from him is he has raised up a corporate Adam.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because what is Israel supposed to do, this family of Abraham?
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  SPEAKER_00: Well, they're supposed to be those who speak the word of God, a prophetic function.
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  SPEAKER_00: They are certainly priests or call that in Exodus 19, of course, you are a kingdom of priests.
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  SPEAKER_00: And they also have royalty.
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  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they're the ones that God calls to rule.
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  SPEAKER_00: So what do they do?
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  SPEAKER_00: Same thing Adam does.
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  SPEAKER_00: They fail miserably, right?
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  SPEAKER_00: They engage in idolatry rather than turning to the word of God.
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  SPEAKER_00: They turn to lies.
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  SPEAKER_00: Failure after failure.
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  SPEAKER_00: But does God give up?
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  SPEAKER_00: No, he doesn't give up because he's got a plan in place and that plan is going
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  SPEAKER_00: to reach its culmination.
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  SPEAKER_00: In the coming of Christ,
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  SPEAKER_00: who's not just the last Adam,
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  SPEAKER_00: but he's also Israel reduced down to one person who is finally,
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  SPEAKER_00: as prophet, priest,
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  SPEAKER_00: and king, going to actually live up to everything that Adam and Israel did not.
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  SPEAKER_00: And so what you see happening in the Gospels is Jesus is retracing the steps of Israel.
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  SPEAKER_00: He goes into Egypt.
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  SPEAKER_00: He comes out again.
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  SPEAKER_00: He has his own Red Sea crossing in his baptism in the Jordan River.
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  SPEAKER_00: He has his 40 days of testing in the wilderness, just like they did.
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  SPEAKER_00: He's the prophet like Moses.
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  SPEAKER_00: All these kind of language that's drawn from Israel's life.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's who now Christ is.
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  SPEAKER_00: So you kind of come full circle.
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  SPEAKER_00: You start with Israel, who's just one man, Jacob, Jacob slash Israel.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then from him comes a whole nation.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then we get now to once more, Israel is one man, Jesus, who embodies Israel.
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  SPEAKER_00: And therefore,
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  SPEAKER_00: all the promises that God made to Israel are fulfilled in Israel,
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  SPEAKER_00: that is to say, in Jesus.
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  SPEAKER_00: And therefore,
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  SPEAKER_00: all of the promises that That are now fulfilled in Jesus are given to us
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  SPEAKER_00: as we become members of his body.
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  SPEAKER_00: That is to say, members of the true Israel of God, who is Jesus the Messiah.
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  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of the big picture of where I see Israel fitting into the salvation story.
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  SPEAKER_00: It begins way prior to Israel.
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  SPEAKER_00: It begins in Adam himself.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then begins to shape with Abraham,
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  SPEAKER_00: Isaac, and then certainly with Jacob and his sons who come forth from him.
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  SPEAKER_00: So you see the same kind of thing God's doing from the beginning,
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  SPEAKER_00: except it morphs because you're looking at one man,
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  SPEAKER_00: Adam, then you're looking at a corporate Adam.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then finally,
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  SPEAKER_00: you're looking at one man again in Jesus,
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  SPEAKER_00: who is the last Adam, and then Israel as one person.
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  SPEAKER_01: What's fascinating is that when you really delve into the Old Testament scriptures,
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  SPEAKER_01: Genesis,
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  SPEAKER_01: Exodus especially,
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  SPEAKER_01: I think what becomes very apparent is that this culminating Adam,
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  SPEAKER_01: if you will,
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  SPEAKER_01: And that's what I'm going to say,
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  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to say, I'm going to say, I'm going to say,
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  SPEAKER_01: Steve McLaughlin
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  SPEAKER_01: Through this individual nation, through Israel, it was also not just to be just them.
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  SPEAKER_01: It was meant for the whole cosmos.
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  SPEAKER_01: It was meant for all creation.
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  SPEAKER_01: He was reconciling all of humanity to himself through them.
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  SPEAKER_01: As you kind of said,
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  SPEAKER_01: they were meant to be a prophetic nation as much as anything else,
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  SPEAKER_01: which ultimately finds its answer in the yes and amen who is Christ.
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  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you have a lot of this built into Isaiah.
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  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that stands out in the servant songs of Isaiah is that,
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  SPEAKER_00: like Isaiah 49, that's probably the primary text for something like this.
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  SPEAKER_00: The servant is referred to as Israel.
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  SPEAKER_00: So he's an individual servant, but his name is also Israel.
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  SPEAKER_00: And then two or three verses later, Israel is referred to again, but as the nation.
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  SPEAKER_00: So you kind of have this play back and forth.
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  SPEAKER_00: So you have the servant, individual Israel.
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  SPEAKER_00: You have the nation of Israel.
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  SPEAKER_00: But then you also have this cosmopolitan perspective that Isaiah
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  SPEAKER_00: so forcefully portrays before us,
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  SPEAKER_00: where it's too small a thing for you to just bring back the dispersed of Israel
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  SPEAKER_00: and Judah.
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  SPEAKER_00: God's saying, oh, I mean, that's minor league stuff.
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  SPEAKER_00: We got major goals here.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the major goal is for you to be a light to the nations,
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  SPEAKER_00: which, of course, takes us back to Genesis 12.
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  SPEAKER_00: Abraham is to be a blessing to all the families of the earth.
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  SPEAKER_00: So Israel's existence,
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  SPEAKER_00: if we're talking about national Israel,
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  SPEAKER_00: National Israel's existence was never about Israel.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was always about the world.
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  SPEAKER_00: National Israel was supposed to be the garden in which the seeds of
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  SPEAKER_00: the promise continued to grow and to flourish in order that eventually this garden
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  SPEAKER_00: with the coming of the Messiah would go forth and to kind of continue
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  SPEAKER_00: that same image to then to To Edenize the world,
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  SPEAKER_00: to take the garden of God's promises and to expand it outward so
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  SPEAKER_00: that it included not just Jews, but Gentiles as well.
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  SPEAKER_00: And we see lots of,
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  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't even call them hints,
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  SPEAKER_00: but like strong affirmations throughout the Old Testament that God was never
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  SPEAKER_00: as concerned about Israel.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because who are some of the quote unquote heroes and heroines of the Old Testament?
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  SPEAKER_00: Gentiles.
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  SPEAKER_00: Gentiles.
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  SPEAKER_00: You have Ruth from Moab.
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  SPEAKER_00: You have Rahab from Jericho.
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  SPEAKER_00: And you have people that we don't sometimes even think about,
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  SPEAKER_00: like Uriah, not of the tribe of Judah or Benjamin, Uriah the Hittite.
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  SPEAKER_00: You have an Ethiopian eunuch who's the one who pulls Jeremiah out of the pit when
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  SPEAKER_00: the king and the officials of Judah throw him in there.
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  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of times,
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  SPEAKER_00: not just in the Gospels,
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  SPEAKER_00: but in the Old Testament too, the paragons of faith end up being Gentiles.
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  SPEAKER_00: And these are, again, strong affirmations that God's perspective was never so powerful.
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  SPEAKER_00: So focused upon Israel that he ignored what he wanted to do for the entire world.
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  SPEAKER_00: Israel always served the purpose of the broader world.
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  SPEAKER_00: And when Christ comes,
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  SPEAKER_00: then you see that reaching its acme,
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  SPEAKER_00: where he becomes Israel,
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  SPEAKER_00: fulfilling the promises,
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  SPEAKER_00: and then says to his disciples, all right, basically go out and Israelize the world.
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  SPEAKER_00: Go make disciples of all nations by drawing them into who I am, the Israel of God.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've often used the phrase that Israel was a nation of conduits
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  SPEAKER_01: because that's what they were conduits of the promise
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  SPEAKER_01: through those different ministries that you already have identified prophet,
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  SPEAKER_01: priest and king, which,
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  SPEAKER_01: of course,
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  SPEAKER_01: As you said, it's acme in Christ, but this is what they were called to do.
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  SPEAKER_01: In studying especially a book like Exodus,
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: it brings this out so, it's so apparent that it's hard to ignore.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: The ways in which, yes,
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: this nation that God wanted to bring forth has always been in his heart,
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: but they were a nation that was meant to, we could say, refract.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: They were meant to mirror or Edenize the world through the ways in which they functioned.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: And of course,
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: part of the ongoing revelation,
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: the story that perhaps we're all familiar with from our days
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: in Sunday school— It's just the fact that they bumbled this calling in
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: so many different ways.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I think one of the most,
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: you mentioned Isaiah 49,
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think one of the most pertinent texts for me when talking about all of this comes
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: from, Yeah.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: On trial, so to speak, before the same governing body.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: And he starts preaching and he preaches what?
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he preaches Israel's story from the very beginning all the way down
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: to Christ himself when he was betrayed by his
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it's really fascinating what he does is because all throughout
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: the whole thing,
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: he's showing the ways in which God's own people fumbled God's calling,
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: and yet God was still delivering on the promises anyways.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: And he calls the nation of Israel that was called out in the Exodus such a fascinating word.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: He uses the word congregation.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: There was a church congregation.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: In the wilderness that God was keeping his eye on, so to speak.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I find that to be such a fascinating window into understanding what God was,
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: the story that God was telling as he's unfolding who he is,
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: unfolding his heart on those pages of history.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: That there was a church that was always in mind.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it affirms the fact that there's always been,
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: across the Old Testament,
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: New Testament, across the covenants, there's always been one people of God.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: There's never been like, okay, now these are the people of God, now these are the people of God.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's always been one people of God,
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: and those people of God are those who believe the promise.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, prior to the coming of Abraham, who were the people of God?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Those who believed the promise.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: After the coming of Abraham, who were the people of God?
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: Those who believed the promise.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you could have a lot of people who were,
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: we might say, citizens of Israel, legally and by descent.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: But if they didn't believe in the promises of God,
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: if they were unbelievers— Well, then they weren't part of the people of God.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe their father and grandfather and great grandfather,
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: maybe their great, great, great, great grandfather came out of Egypt with Moses.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it doesn't matter because your pedigree doesn't make you part of the people of God.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Faith and the promises of God do that.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah, you got one people of God from Adam onward.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: And who was in that people of God?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, sometimes you had Gentiles, you had Jews.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: They were always all mixed together.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: Back to,
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: I was thinking when you were talking about Stephen's speech too,
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: back to Acts chapter seven,
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_00: you have some of the same themes we've been talking about in that chapter.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: For instance,
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: one of the things that,
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: it's kind of implicit at first, becomes more explicit as Stephen preaches.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's that God was never handcuffed to the real estate of the promised land.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: So you have,
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_00: and then of course you begin to have a critique of the temple as Stephen begins
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: to preach more.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: He was with Moses at the burning bush.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's another incident.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the things that Stephen is pointing to is the non-geographically
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: A restricted nature of God's dealings with his people.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: He can and does and has appeared with people outside of the borders of the promised land.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then,
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: of course,
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: most dominantly in that sermon,
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: you have the various people that God raises up from Joseph to Moses to the prophets.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then,
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: of course,
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: finally to Christ himself,
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: who are consistently stubbornly Sometimes murderously rejected by the people of God.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: The idea in Acts 7 that Stephen is kind of weaving into this whole thing is,
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: listen, God always had the big perspective in mind.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: He was not like one of these Canaanite deities or Hittite deities
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: or Egyptian deities who are like when they get to the border,
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: like, oh, well, I can't cross that because that belongs to some other god.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_00: The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine, the world and all that thou hast made, right?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: It all belongs to him.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: So Stephen is accenting that and critiquing his own people who did have this idea
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: that, oh, the Holy Land is, that's really where God's at.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you got to be there if you really want to be one of his people.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: And Stephen's preaching, no, you don't.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: Have you read your own Bible?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: There's plenty of examples where God was elsewhere.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good point.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think the other point that stands out to me is that Stephen is preaching
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: the sermon to a bunch of guys who knew all this already.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: It would be like preaching to the choir.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: It was the quite literal moment of preaching to the choir or preaching to preachers.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they were a bunch of judges and Sanhedrin council members,
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: but he's preaching stories that they already knew,
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: or at least they thought they knew.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: And he's showing them ways in which they had maybe missed the story.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: One of the points I want to follow up on is,
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_01: so I think Matthew's gospel is the one that we could go to to see the parallels
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: between Israel and Christ.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so on and so forth.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of that's just the one that comes to mind.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: But there's a lot of ways in which that is overlaid on Matthew's gospel,
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_01: among many other places.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: But and then we find that reference,
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: of course,
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: Second Corinthians 120, that all of the promises of God are yes and amen in Christ.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Paul says that.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: So what do we do?
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: If we understand that maybe there's some certain particulars of God's promise
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: to Abraham, per se,
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: like the promise of land or the promise of geography,
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: as we've already alluded to,
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_01: is that fulfilled in Christ or there's So other things that are yet to be fulfilled.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: This kind of gets us into eschatological conversations,
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: but how do we go about navigating maybe some particular nuances of disagreement
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: when it comes to that kind of conversation regarding Israel?
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's good.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: Let's take the land, for instance.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: So God's promise was to Abraham and his descendants that they were going to inherit this land.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: And certainly they did, right?
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: When Abraham dies, all he owns is this one little burial plot where he buries Sarah.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: And for generations, that's all that they had.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: And of course,
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: eventually when they come back from the Exodus and in Joshua,
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: they have the conquest, the land is theirs.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: But the land itself was only part of, it's kind of a down payment.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: There was always a bigger perspective because God wanted,
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: you go back to Genesis chapter one, where did God want his people to go?
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they wanted to expand the borders of Eden.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that didn't stop with Genesis chapter three,
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: because now you have the new Eden, which is the promised land.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, Eden's a little bit bigger now.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: You got the promised land.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: But that never was the big picture.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: The big picture was always to expand that worldwide so that everywhere you went
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: when you had the gospel preached,
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: when you had the promise preached of the kingdom and it was believed,
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: there you had one more sacred acre in the kingdom of God that was claimed.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so what you have in Acts chapter one,
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: when Jesus sends them out from Jerusalem,
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: it says, hey, go from here to Judea, to Samaria, to the uttermost ends of the earth.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Is the expansion of that promised land.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: Or as Jesus tells the woman at the well in John chapter 4,
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: there's coming a time,
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: it's not already here in fact,
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: when it's no longer your mountain or our mountain,
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: but it's wherever the Father's worship in spirit and truth.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: So you have This expansion,
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: it's not now in some sort of ethereal realm,
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: but it's a creational expansion of where God's kingdom is.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's not this mountain or that mountain or this particular borders around
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: the Mediterranean Sea,
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: but it's wherever God's people are,
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: there is the kingdom and there is the promised land.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, eventually this is going to shift
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: When we have Christ come again and you have the new heavens and the new earth,
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_00: you could think of that as a The complete promised land, if you will.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: But all of the land promises from Eden to the promised land itself to the expansion
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: of that kingdom,
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: all of this is preparing us for what's finally going to be revealed
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: when Christ comes again and brings about the new Jerusalem coming down from heaven,
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: the creation of new heavens and the new earth.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then we will see all those promises made visible and enjoyed in the resurrection.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a helpful framework for understanding that because it gets beyond,
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: like, as we've already kind of alluded to, just these geographical borders.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think, I don't know who it was, but we often talk, we often...
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe perhaps we have too small of expectations when it comes to God's promises and
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: the ways in which he's going to fulfill them.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, they're a lot larger than what we could ever think or imagine.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I think this also gets to then what we find in Galatians, where Paul is very...
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think we...
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: When I preached through Galatians,
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was a year or two ago, I remember just trying to sit and get into...
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: Get into that mindset, because when Paul says that we are all sons of Abraham by faith,
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: Even now,
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think we truly understand how much of an incendiary that statement was,
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: especially coming from a Hebrew, coming from one who was a Hebrew of the Hebrews.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: He was a Jew, a Roman citizen.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: He had all these credentials.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: And here he is telling a bunch of Gentiles that by faith.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: You are part of the people of promise just as much as I am.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: And like what an incendiary to heritage or
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: to bloodlines or to pedigree
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: that actually, no, it comes back to what we've said.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's faith in God's word of promise, which ultimately is Christ.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's,
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: I find that to be such a An invigorating statement
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: that helps this conversation continue to go forward.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and if you want to see how incendiary Paul's teaching was,
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: we'll just trace what happens to him through the book of Acts.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he'll go to a place and he preaches in the synagogue once or twice,
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: and then what happens?
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: Almost without exception, there's a group that rises up within the synagogue.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: They chase Paul out of town.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: They stir up a riot.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: They abuse him, whatever it is.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then, most startling to me, if he leaves, sometimes they trail him.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: They will track him down to the next town and do the same thing.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: So what was it that Paul was preaching that was so incendiary?
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it wasn't just that the Messiah had come.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, certainly that was very incendiary to some people if they didn't believe
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: that Jesus met what they perceived to be the requirements of the Messiah,
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: but also that Gentiles were included in these promises.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that was,
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: if you look at the book of Acts,
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: what was the big issue that What led to the first council?
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, how Jewish do these Gentiles have to become, right?
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because before we let these people in,
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: we want to make sure that they,
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: jump over the hurdles that we've set up and through the hoops
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: that we think are there.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: And Paul says, In Galatians and elsewhere, no.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: Circumcision means nothing.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uncircumcision means nothing.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is all about being children of Abraham because we're children.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_00: We're children of faith.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, yeah,
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: and not just in Galatians,
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: but I think of all the times that not just Paul,
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: but Peter, too,
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: takes the promises and the statements that God gave to Israel,
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: to national Israel in the Old Testament.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: And applies them to the community of faith, to the church.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: Peter does this in a very in your face sort of way where he takes the language
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: of Exodus 19 that I alluded to earlier about a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: And he applies that to who?
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: To the church comprised of Jews and Gentiles.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: Paul, when he writes to the Corinthians,
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: weaves together when he tells them to come out,
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: don't touch anything unclean, I will be a father to you.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: He's weaving together,
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: I think,
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_00: maybe three or four different Old Testament passages,
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_00: all of which were addressed to Israel or the Israelites,
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: and he's applying them to the church in Corinth,
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: which, of course, is comprised of Jews and Gentiles alike.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this isn't Paul just kind of poking the bear.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: What God said to Israel,
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: he continues to say to Israel,
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Israel now understood as those who are part of the body of Christ,
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: the true Israelite,
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus the Messiah,
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: who now makes us all part of his body,
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: Jews and Gentiles alike,
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: so that we can be Those who participate and share in the gifts that Christ has
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: for us because he's the one who's the heir of all things,
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: including heir of the promises to Israel.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now,
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: this brings us to a point where we ought to talk about what do we do when How are we
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: to understand the conversation when we talk this way?
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then the conversation leans into, oh, that's just replacement theologies, quote unquote.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's obviously a topic of conversation in certain circles where it's like,
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: oh, you're just saying that the church, has the church replaced Israel?
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: Or how do we navigate those nuances?
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'll be real honest.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so tired of being accused of being a replacement theologian.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is like an ongoing slander that is directed at me, especially online.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I always respond, I try and respond patiently and politely as much as I can.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: But my response is always, no, no.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: There has been no replacement.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: There's been a fulfillment and expansion.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: Of what God was doing in the Old Testament.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not like, okay,
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: you get to the Gospels,
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus does what he does,
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: and God's like,
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: all right,
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: done with Israel,
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: close that book,
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: and now I'm going to open the book of the church,
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: and we're going to start all over now.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: No, what does God do?
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: To switch up the metaphor, it's kind of like this.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: So when Jesus rolls into town, he pulls up in front of the house of Israel.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: And he's driving a pickup.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now he moves into Israel.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: And he is now, Paul literally says he tears down the dividing wall of hostility.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: That wall is gone.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's no like, here's the Gentile room.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the Jewish room.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, the wall's gone.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: We're all part of the same building, the same house.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: But it's much bigger now because it's no longer mainly just the physical descendants of Abraham.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's now Jews and Gentiles alike.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: All of whom are the sons and daughters of Abraham.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: So rather than the church replacing Israel,
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: it is Christ who is the fulfillment and the embodiment of Israel who now says,
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: all right,
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: I want a bigger house because I want everyone,
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: Jews and Gentiles alike, everyone who believes worldwide to become part of Israel.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: This house that I have constructed and the house really that is nothing other than his body.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a really good way to understand it.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: Because again,
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: it goes back to some of the things we've already sort of alluded to,
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: which is number one, we have small expectations of God's promises.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_01: He's always expanding them, blowing our minds with actually how large and how Yeah.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: Then how does that affect how we view, how we read, like, for instance, Romans 11?
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: Or how does that affect how we understand maybe some different portions of the book
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: of Revelation,
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: John's Apocalypse, where,
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: in certain Christian circles,
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: it seems that,
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: as you alluded to,
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: there seems to be this understanding that Old Testament,
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: God has his attention here on Israel and the New Testament is church.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then when Revelation opens, he's going to turn his attention back here again.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: How does this understanding of expansion and fulfillment inform
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: the way we understand those types of moves or turns of the page in Scripture?
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think to begin with Romans,
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: what Paul is describing there is kind of what Jesus already said when he was talking
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: to the woman at the well in Samaria in John 4, salvation is from the Jews, right?
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: Salvation came from the Jews because it was to the Israelites that God gave these promises.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: They are the tree, the olive tree.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens to us?
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you have Christ who comes,
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: he fulfills these promises,
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: and he begins to graft in Gentiles into the tree that already exists.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: So what is this tree that we're grafted into?
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's certainly not national Israel.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's the spiritual Israel.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's Israel that I mentioned earlier that Has always believed.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's always been one community of believers prior to Abraham,
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: from Abraham, all the way to the coming of Christ, and still today.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: So this olive tree, which you can call spiritual Israel, we are grafted into that.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: We become now part of those who believe in God.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, so now we have this tree, which is mainly at this point, Gentile and a horse.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: But really our categories, Maybe we just need to get rid of the terminology.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: There's no more Jews and Gentiles.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like, okay,
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: here we have our Jewish Christian friends and we have our Gentile Christian friends.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: No, you don't.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: You've just got your Christian friends.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's not like two different kinds of citizens in the kingdom of God.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's the Jewish citizens and there's the Gentile citizens.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: No, we're all part,
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: like you don't have a Gentile part of your body and a Jewish part of your body.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: You've got one body.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's Christ's body.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're all just individually members of that.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter whether we can trace our lineage back to Abraham or
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: if we trace our lineage back to some Greeks or Romans somewhere.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't this exactly what Paul says at the end of Galatians 3?
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: There is no Jew or Gentile, slave or free.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: But we're all now part of one body.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of what's going on in Romans.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when you get to Revelation,
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: I think one thing that At least in my experience,
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: people consistently either just don't focus on,
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: don't know about, ignore,
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: just kind of set it aside,
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: is that the recipients of Revelation were churches in Asia Minor
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: who would have been comprised of Jews and Gentiles alike.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: So to the churches in Ephesus and Smyrna and Philadelphia and so on and so forth,
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: write these things.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_00: So Revelation was written to those churches in Asia Minor that were All associated,
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: first of all,
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: of course,
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: with Paul's ministry,
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: but by the time you get to the end of the first century, with John's ministry.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_00: John moved to Ephesus.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: John had been in Ephesus.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: That became kind of the main hub of Christianity in Asia Minor.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: So Revelation, who were the addressees, in other words, of Revelation?
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: Jewish Gentile churches.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: Not national Israel or anything like that.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_00: You got to bear that in mind when you're reading all of Revelation.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: We read it as written for us, but it wasn't written to us.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was written to these churches comprised.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: To use that language, we just said we wouldn't use of Gentiles and Jews.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're all together here.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: That means that when you're listening to John relaying these revelations,
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: these visions that he had,
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: You're hearing these,
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: if you hear these through first century ears,
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_00: you hear them as those who are part of the church in Ephesus,
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_00: a part of the church in Smyrna, a part of the church in Pergamum.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: You're hearing these promises,
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: these admonitions,
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: these warnings,
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: these threats,
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_00: all of this together as those who are worshiping communities gathered around
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: the promises of Jesus the Messiah.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that,
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: knowing kind of who you are as the addressees of Revelation,
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: helps you to understand the import of the entire book.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: So when you hear promises concerning Israel, those promises are to you.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're the ones to whom the book is addressed.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: Or you get to the vision of,
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: the various,
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: the tribes,
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: and then he turns, the 144,000, and then he sees the multitude no one can number.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's just two different ways of describing the same reality of
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_00: the innumerable people of God who enjoy life because of the Lamb of God.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this gets back to what we've already referred to,
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: but I think in a really more,
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: maybe perhaps practical, but pointed way, which is God has always had a church.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe that's kind of where a lot of our...
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: We could use the word church.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a great point because there was a lot of
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of negativity that people associate with church
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: or they think we misunderstand what we're talking about with church.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: So, all right, we'll just drop the term.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_00: Just talk about the community of the faithful.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: Has there always been one consistent community of the faithful?
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: That is those who believe the promises of God.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sure.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Noah was there.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_00: He believed it.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: Abraham believed it.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: Isaac, Jacob.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's always been.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: Have there also always been within the outward shape of that community,
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: those who are seemingly part of it but not really part of it
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: because they're worshiping other gods?
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yeah, of course.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you have that in the parable of the wheat and tares, right?
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: You have that still in the church today.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: But...
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_00: You've always had one community,
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: one covenant community, one faithful community, and that never changes.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: The major change came when those who were believing in the promises to be fulfilled
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: in the coming Messiah now realized who that Messiah was.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: Their faith didn't change.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_00: All that changed was now their faith is like, oh, it's in that guy.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't know what his name was going to be.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now we know Jesus of Nazareth.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: He is the Messiah.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: They always had faith in the Messiah.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: They just didn't know what his first name was going to be.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: All they had was like blank Christ.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: Who's it going to be?
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be Matthew Christ.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be Ezekiel Christ.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's actually Jesus Christ.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, now their faith really didn't shift.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: It just had a concrete human, Jesus, now to associate with the title, title Messiah.
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, that just reinforces the fact that it's always been this one community of God.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: Those who waited for the Messiah to come and now those who await his second coming.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think this really comes...
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: To the surface, too.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: I've been preaching through the book of Exodus.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_01: And as you get into both the institution of Passover and also the establishment of
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: the tabernacle, which when you're reading...
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: All of those little intricacies,
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: all of those particulars,
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: of course, you and I, we share the same love for the book of Hebrews.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_01: You have to have that understanding,
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: kind of undergirding what you're reading when you're reading about
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: the priest going here and there and doing all of this.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: You understand what was happening at the same time.
• 45:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think what, maybe this is just me.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe I've just been,
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: I was misinformed or I was just totally going off the rails when I was young,
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_01: but I had that understanding that people in the Old Testament were saved differently
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: than us in the New Testament were because they were saved by mere ritual and here
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: as we are saved by faith.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_01: But actually, that's actually not true at all.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think when you read the Old Testament, you understand that what were the rituals doing?
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they were preaching to the people.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: People without a canon of scripture to open up in front of them and say,
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: let me read from this verse in this text.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_01: Instead of opening up a word, what were they doing?
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: They were going through a reenactment,
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: or we could say a preenactment,
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that's a word, of what would ultimately happen.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: In Christ,
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: whereas we are having that reenacted through the sacraments or through the opening
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: of Scripture and through the proclamation of that testimony.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas, which is to say, it's the same thing happening.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's just taking different forms.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that's the right word, but I think that's been really important.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: Revelatory,
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: because again,
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: it speaks to one community,
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: one body,
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_01: one people of God that he's always been drawn towards and always been willing
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: to have more people join.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's not been this closed off, isolated group.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's always, as you said, let's expand, let's draw as many people in as possible.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, those are great points.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: Your chapter in Hebrews,
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: Hebrews 11, is the one that retells, of course, the entire Old Testament story.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_00: And how does it do so?
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_00: By faith.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: By faith Abraham, by faith Moses, by faith Rahab, by faith all of this was done.
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: So when it comes to telling the Old Testament story,
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: The author of Hebrews says, yeah, this was all done by faith.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: Or earlier in the book,
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: he says, what happened to those in the wilderness who didn't believe the promises?
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they died, right?
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: So even in Hebrews 3 and 4, he's bringing up the subject of faith or the lack thereof.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what always separated those who were truly part of God's people from those
• 47:48
  SPEAKER_00: who weren't part of God's people.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: It was always the same.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't faith.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: It was never faith plus works or faith plus ritual or anything like that.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: It was always faith in the promise making and promise keeping God.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's such a helpful way to understand the scriptures.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: We're reading one story that's continuously unfolding, and it's getting deeper as we go.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: As you said,
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: there's all these rooms being added to this great mansion of God's promises,
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_01: and you're finding new—maybe this is too,
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: like— Too culturally relevant right now,
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: but it's like you're in the back rooms, just not the scary version.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: And you keep finding different rooms that open up in front of you
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: where this story just keeps expanding and expanding.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: This is going to maybe be a self-interested question,
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_01: but what would be your advice to preachers or pastors who have questions
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: about Israel and promises and dispensationalism,
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: and maybe people don't use those words,
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: what would your advice be to pastors who are trying to navigate this in ways
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: that don't automatically veer into politics or eschatology?
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, the first thing I would say is to go back to how our conversation began.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: Always ask the bigger canonical questions when you're looking at Israel.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: So ask yourself, okay, what was God really up to from Genesis?
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: You could say Genesis 3, but I would say even Genesis 1 onward.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_00: What was the story that was unfolding from And at first,
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: when the story is told,
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_00: you're only given hints and glimpses of what's going to unfold,
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: but it becomes clear over time and patterns begin to emerge.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_00: So whenever you're discussing Israel,
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_00: first of all,
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_00: define Israel because there are a number of different ways that we can use
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: that term, right?
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's another name for Jacob.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's a name for national Israel.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's a name for the Northern Kingdom.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's a name for Israel.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: The Israel of God, the spiritual Israel, it's a name for a geopolitical nation today.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: So you can't just say Israel without defining your terms.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: So define your terms and then see, all right, where in the salvation story does Israel fit in?
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: And what was God doing with them in these particular stages?
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: I think that that's so crucial because when you mentioned Israel today in
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: the church,
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: people almost automatically assume you're referring to this modern nation.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_00: And this is very controversial, I know.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: But from my perspective upon the scriptures is that Israel today,
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_00: and I'm talking about the geopolitical nation of Israel today,
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: has zero theological significance.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_00: Or zero eschatological significance.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I know there's a number of people who would not agree with me on that.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because the promises that God gave to Israel, to say this once more, were fulfilled in Christ.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like you quoted earlier, all His promises are yes and amen in Jesus.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: So we're not waiting for God to finally make good on His promise to national Israel anymore.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: And he's going to make good on that promise to the modern nation of Israel.
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_00: He already made good on those promises in Christ.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we, who are members of the believing community,
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: the body of Christ, benefit still from those promises.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: So that's why I urge believers.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: Pastors and preachers to do to just ask that basic biblical question,
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_00: what's the salvation story going on here?
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: Where's Israel's place in it?
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: How does Israel always relate to Christ?
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you separate Israel from Christ, you're always going to go astray.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_00: But how does Israel connect to the ministry of Jesus?
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_00: What's he doing?
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_00: What's he doing in relation to Israel?
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then how do we understand ourselves as those who are grafted into Israel
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: or baptized into the body of Christ and are therefore recipients of his gifts?
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's really good, Chad.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really helpful because it seems,
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_01: this always seems to be the case in certain instances,
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_01: but it seems like there's somewhat a stepping around the landmines when it comes
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_01: to Yeah.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_01: What's the nub?
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_01: What's the kernel of the story that God is telling?
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_01: And of course,
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: this is not to say that other things aren't important,
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_01: but it's this reconciliatory work that he's done through Christ,
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: that this has always been in the cards, even before...
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: And we don't have a way of imagining or conceiving this per se,
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: but even before the fall,
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_01: this was in the cards as revelation that he was the lamb slain before the foundation
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: of the world.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_01: We understand that the God who was outside of time is so keen.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: On bringing his creatures back into the fold,
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_01: back close and into communion with him,
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: that this has always been the story that God is trying to tell.
• 53:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so even my advice to myself.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: Keep that story at the forefront because that story that finds its resolution in
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: who Christ is and still resonates now is the story that matters.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's the story that actually changes.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's the story that actually brings people out of darkness and into light.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's not going to be these other things.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: We can have those conversations.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_01: We can talk about Post-mill and omel and pre-mill and all those kind of things
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_01: and we can talk about all of these other different Conversations and talking points,
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_01: but ultimately I don't think they're very life-giving.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_01: Ultimately, I don't think they're going, they're not actually going to move the needle.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_01: They're probably only going to continue driving people into different little tribes,
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_01: different little, oh, I have,
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: this is where I am,
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to stake my claim over here versus actually the gospel is,
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: Is what brings all of that,
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_01: it kind of, as we've already alluded to, it breaks down all those little barriers.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_01: Let's bring people back together.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's the story that I think that needs to be focused on a lot more.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it becomes the only prism through which we rightly understand all the scriptures.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't matter whether we're talking about Revelation 20 or all of Revelation or
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_00: whether we're going all the way back to Genesis.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_00: All of those stories,
• 55:05
  SPEAKER_00: all those parts of the scriptures,
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_00: all the eschatology,
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_00: all the protology,
• 55:09
  SPEAKER_00: everything only makes sense and coheres in light of what the gospel proclaims to us.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: That God in the flesh,
• 55:18
  SPEAKER_00: the creator of the world,
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: the one who chose Israel, Also chose to humble himself and to become one of us.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: Born an Israelite, salvation is from the Jews.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_00: We might say salvation is from a Jew, one in particular.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then because of his work,
• 55:39
  SPEAKER_00: That then becomes this spotlight which illumines everything that came before,
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: helping us to rightly understand the Scriptures,
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_00: just like Stephen did in his sermon,
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_00: or just like Peter or Paul did any time they talk about the Old Testament.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_00: It rightly now illumines that story, so each of us has an Emmaus Road experience.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_00: And then that same spotlight points forward to where we rightly understand Revelation.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: Not as a political document,
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_00: but as a document that centered on the lamb who was slain and now reigns.
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_00: So that gospel that you were just talking about is so central.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it becomes not just the centerpiece,
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: but also The illuminating center that helps us to understand all of the scriptures
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_00: and to keep us focused upon what the work is all about,
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_00: which is not politicizing and moralizing or using any scare tactics,
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_00: which is sometimes the way revelation is used,
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: but instead taking people always back to the crucified and resurrected Christ.
• 56:44
  SPEAKER_00: And his story becomes the story that encompasses all the stories of Scripture and
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_00: then elucidates them so that they make sense in light of his fulfillment
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_00: of all promises.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was trying to go this whole podcast without mentioning Luke 24 just
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_01: because I feel like people maybe get tired of me mentioning Luke 24.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_01: We have to.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: You brought up Amaze Road.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_01: That really is the paradigm shift.
• 57:15
  SPEAKER_01: We've talked about this.
• 57:16
  SPEAKER_01: I've talked about this with my assistant pastor and I've talked about it with
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_01: the people of my church.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't think we can over exaggerate just how...
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_01: Paradigm shifting what Jesus does with those two just unassuming disciples
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_01: on this road and walking away from the most life-changing event of their lives,
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_01: and they're trying to process it,
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_01: and now they're just giving whole new things to process.
• 57:43
  SPEAKER_01: I've often wondered just how mind-blowing that Bible study must have been
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_01: as he shows them from all of Scripture the things concerning himself,
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_01: and not just...
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_01: This prophet and that,
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: but Torah, Psalms,
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_01: prophets,
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_01: all of it is leading to this,
• 58:02
  SPEAKER_01: which then it that's it's it's we've the shape of scripture,
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_01: so to speak, it's like an hourglass.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_01: It all funnels down into Christ and then it expands again,
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_01: as we've talked about expansion, fulfillment.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_01: That little window that Jesus gives us,
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_01: it includes the whole canon,
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: which is just to say that Revelation or the eschological books, Daniel,
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_01: whatnot,
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_01: they don't sit outside of what Jesus has already sort of taught us concerning
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_01: that all of this concerns himself.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_01: This, Revelation's included in that.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_01: We can't just like kind of separate it and treat it over here.
• 58:46
  SPEAKER_01: But I think sometimes that's,
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_01: maybe that's just, you know, cynical or anecdotal, but that's kind of how it feels.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_01: That sometimes we kind of segregate that book out.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_01: Let's interpret that this way because a little bit differently
• 58:59
  SPEAKER_01: than how we interpret everything else.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think we talked about this before the show started,
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_00: but Revelation all too often becomes the apocalyptic dog that wags the rest of
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_00: the canonical dog.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_00: And as if Revelation really determines how we should read the rest of
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_00: the scriptures, the rest of the scriptures determine how we should read it.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean,
• 59:23
  SPEAKER_00: a standard hermeneutical principle is you read the more obscure parts of Scripture
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: in light of the clearer parts of Scripture.
• 59:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we could all agree that any kind of apocalyptic does not fall within
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: the tremendously clear part of Scripture.
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's intended to be mysterious.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's full of symbolism, all those sorts of things.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: So how do you understand apocalyptic?
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you understand it through narrative,
• 59:47
  SPEAKER_00: through prophecy, through Psalms, through all those things that came before it.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_00: And you're right.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's almost like,
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_00: all right,
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_00: until we get to Revelation,
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: we're gospel people, all about Christ, all focused upon his saving work.
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then we get to Revelation and...
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody else comes out and starts talking and it's disconnected from the whole rest
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_00: of the biblical narrative.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_00: And to do that, yeah, is to make a fundamental error in interpretation as well as preaching.
• 1:00:20
  SPEAKER_01: And this gets back to,
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like maybe for some I'm just a broken record at this point, but,
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: Adhering to Paul's,
• 1:00:31
  SPEAKER_01: you know, mantra,
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: if you will,
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: his maxim that he's going to preach nothing but Christ crucified is not
• 1:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: the simplistic sort of notion that he's not going to have any other sermon other
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_01: than just this.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's And that's why...
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's why what Paul says is so profound, is I don't have anything other to deliver.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: We have no other word to deliver other than this life-giving word,
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_01: which is found whether you're in Zechariah or whether I don't know
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_01: of any other better message that we ought to be known for.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: Amen to that.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_00: I think that I often wonder when Paul got to Corinth, you know, he had just come from Athens.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's where you have,
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_00: of course,
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_00: his famous Areopagus Marshole speech,
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_00: which is,
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_00: anyone who's read that knows that's very different sounding
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_00: than what Paul usually preaches.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_00: And understandably so.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he was talking to philosophers.
• 1:02:05
  SPEAKER_00: He was talking to the Athenians who were,
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_00: you know, always interested in hearing about new things, as Luke tells us.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_00: But bearing that in mind, and of course, things didn't go well there.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_00: He had a few believers,
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_00: two who were named,
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_00: but he didn't have the same kind of reception in Athens that he had elsewhere.
• 1:02:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then he shows up in Corinth, and he tells us, man, he showed up weak.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_00: He wasn't doing great.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_00: He'd had some terrible experiences before he got to Athens.
• 1:02:32
  SPEAKER_00: He shows up in Corinth, and in that same context, Paul says, I decided...
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_00: Then and there,
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_00: if I can kind of paraphrase him,
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_00: that when I preach, it's all going to be focused upon the crucified Christ.
• 1:02:47
  SPEAKER_00: That I'm not going to do what I did in Athens.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to just talk about the implication that the crucifixion of Jesus,
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_00: theology of the cross, we might say, what that has for everything.
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what he did.
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what Corinthians is all about, the Corinthian correspondence.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's what he continues to do in the rest of his missionary journeys.
• 1:03:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I wonder sometimes how much that experience in Athens,
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_00: when Paul shows up in Corinth, he's like, you know what?
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing,
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_00: which is just talking about Jesus,
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_00: talking about His cross,
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_00: talking about His resurrection,
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_00: in order that everything the church does,
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: believes, teaches is centered upon the theology of the cross.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_01: Amen to that, Chad.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: It reminds me of that hymn,
• 1:03:32
  SPEAKER_01: that old, you know, that good old church hymn that more about Jesus would I know.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_01: More and more about Jesus.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds so simple, but actually that's all we should ever want to talk.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's all I ever want to talk about.
• 1:03:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, Chad,
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_01: what resources would you want to point people to if they want to read more
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_01: about some of these things that we've covered?
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_01: You mentioned Benjamin Glass' book,
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_01: which I'll put in the notes,
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_01: but is there any other places where you want to sort of usher people to go
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_01: and resource themselves on conversations like this?
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, Benjamin Glad was heavily influenced.
• 1:04:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think maybe it was one of his own profs by G.K. Beale.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_00: And G.K. Beale,
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_00: he's best known for his work on Revelation,
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_00: and he's got a longer and shorter commentary on Revelation,
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_00: which I have benefited greatly from.
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_00: I point people to those all the time as resources.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_00: But he also does a, he writes extensively on the Old Testament.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_00: He's got a book, I think it's called The Theology of the New Testament.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_00: But it's almost a misnomer because it's really a theology of the entire Bible.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're looking for something to read that's kind of like this,
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_00: then check out some of G.K. Beal's books.
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_00: He's got one on the temple and the church's mission, which is fantastic.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_00: It kind of reiterates some of the themes that Benjamin Glad's book also brings up.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_00: And then read his theology of the New Testament,
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_00: which is also a phenomenal work for kind of getting the big picture
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_00: and Israel's place in that big picture.
• 1:05:09
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 1:05:10
  SPEAKER_01: Anything you want to plug, Chad?
• 1:05:12
  SPEAKER_01: Where are you going to be in the next couple of months or weeks?
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I don't have a lot of travels coming up until August.
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to be in England.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_00: For those who are familiar with Stephen Meyer's work and the Discovery Institute,
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_00: Stephen Meyer wrote the book.
• 1:05:33
  SPEAKER_00: Return to the God Hypothesis, which is a great book.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's an apologetic for theism from a more scientific perspective, fine tuning in the universe.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I'm speaking at a conference that is in Cambridge.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then I'll be in Wales speaking at a church.
• 1:05:52
  SPEAKER_00: There are some great things going on there,
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_00: but nothing really happening here in the country until September.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be in Albuquerque and then in California in September, speak at a couple of places there.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_00: So for anyone who's interested, head over to 1517.org and our speaker schedule is there.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_00: Love to meet some of you in person.
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, love it.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, thanks, Chad.
• 1:06:14
  SPEAKER_01: Appreciate your time today.
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Brad.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a great conversation.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Ministry Minded Podcast.
• 1:06:21
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks again to Chad for coming on this episode.
• 1:06:25
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to connect with him,
• 1:06:26
  SPEAKER_01: make sure you visit the show notes where you'll find links to his books
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_01: and other projects.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_01: Make sure you connect with him on Facebook and all the other social media.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for doing that.
• 1:06:34
  SPEAKER_01: That means a lot and it goes a long way.
• 1:06:50
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate all your encouragement, all your support.
• 1:06:55
  SPEAKER_01: If you have anything that you would like me to cover or a person you would like me
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_01: to have on the show, make sure you reach out.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to always entertain new guests.
• 1:07:06
  SPEAKER_01: But as always, enjoy your forgiveness.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_01: Live in light of what God has done.
• 1:07:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll see you on the next episode.
• 1:07:11
  SPEAKER_01: Blessings.
• 1:07:32
  Yes.