April 18, 2025 • 58 mins
As Christians we live in exile; we are not yet living in the Kingdom of God. Although we are citizens there in that kingdom, we are not enjoying life under the rule of the one righteous King of Kings. So in this session, Jeremy walks through examples of those who have gone before us demonstrating how to live well in a foreign land or under evil leadership.
More information about Beyond the Walls, including additional resources can be found at www.beyondthewalls-ministry.com
This series included graphics to illustrate what is being taught, if you would like to watch the teachings you can do so on Rumble (https://rumble.com/user/SpokaneBibleChurch) or on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtV_KhFVZ_waBcnuywiRKIyEcDkiujRqP).
Jeremy Thomas is the pastor at Spokane Bible Church in Spokane, Washington and a professor at Chafer Theological Seminary. He has been teaching the Bible for over 20 years, always seeking to present its truths in a clear and understandable manner.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas and
our series on the New TestamentFramework.
Today, the full lesson fromJeremy Thomas.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Here's a hint of what's to come.
And when you are hurting, whenyou are depressed, when your
life has no hope, you needsomething that you can remember.
So God wrote in apocalypticgenre so they could remember it,
and so this literature isalways written when believers
need hope.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
God understands the difficult life we live.
He understands that we do notlive in perfectly godly cultures
, whether that's a city, a state, a nation.
He understands that many timeswe find ourselves facing corrupt
institutions, institutions thatoperate on a very different
(00:51):
worldview, philosophy than whatwe have.
And yet he also knows that byhis Spirit, we are able to live
well in these.
And he knows this because onehe has provided the Holy Spirit,
wisdom and guidance anddiscernment for us to do so.
And we can be confident that wecan do so because he has given
(01:13):
us many examples from the pastof people who have done just
that lived well for God in themidst of an ungodly government
and society.
So, although times may be verydifficult where you are,
remember this God has providedthe strength, the wisdom, the
(01:35):
guidance, the discernment thatyou need to live well for him.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
We're going to go.
We've already been with Davidthe rise and reign of King David
.
We learned specifically aboutthe doctrine of fellowship with
David because David obviouslyhas somewhat of an issue with
the Bathsheba incident and so hebecomes a model out of Psalm 51
(02:02):
for what it looks like to getout of fellowship with the Lord
and then to confess and berestored to fellowship.
So that's a very important partof Scripture.
Then we move to the golden eraand we really discussed what.
I guess.
This era is probably not talkedabout a whole lot, but what it
(02:22):
basically does is show us whathappens when you have
generational loyalty to God,building over the course of like
three, four, maybe fivegenerations.
That the kind of culture thatyou can build is what we call a
high biblical culture, andIsrael at that time is known as
the golden era, because Solomonon the throne of David and
(02:44):
Solomon having requested wisdomfrom God and God having granted
it to him, putting all thattogether with three or four
generations of loyalty to God,produced the greatest biblical
culture the world has ever known.
Everything in the culture, insociety, as you stepped out from
your home and went about yourlife, had biblical reminders,
(03:09):
and so you know the greatLevitical choir, things, that
untold majesty, all donebiblically.
I mean, we have thePhilharmonic, the New York
Philharmonic, we have thesevenues where we can go and hear,
you know the greatest music ofthe world.
But at that time the greatestmusic of the world was centered
in Jerusalem at the temple, withthe Levitical choirs, and it
(03:30):
was all biblically based aroundthe one triune, god, right.
So it was just awesome.
It would have been just sheerawesomeness.
But we also saw that all thatcould be thrown away in a single
generation.
And Solomon, toward the end ofhis life, decided to do what was
ever right in his own eyesright, ecclesiastes.
And he discovered that you know, when you go by the flesh and
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just human wisdom, the end ofthat is vanity.
There's nothing there ofsignificance or meaning or value
.
And so I think thatEcclesiastes is actually a
testimony to the nations thatthis is not the way.
I was a leader of Israel and Ihad everything and I decided to
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throw it all away and try yourway, and your way doesn't work.
There's nothing there.
And so I think it's his lastingtestimony to the surrounding
nations which he had influencedso greatly.
And so I think it's his lastingtestimony to the surrounding
nations which he had influencedso greatly, to look back at his
earlier experience and bereminded of the greatness of his
kingdom when he was with it.
So that brought us then to thetime of his son, rehoboam, and
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Jeroboam.
The kingdom divided that greatevent where they almost have a
civil war.
But Rehoboam was basically ajerk to the northern tribes and
the northern tribe says we haveno place with the house of David
, let us all go to our own tents.
And so you have a dividing ofthe nation and now you have a
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northern kingdom which is knownthroughout the rest of the Old
Testament primarily as Israeland sometime as Ephraim, because
Ephraim was the most populoustribe.
So when you read about Ephraimin the latter prophets, that's a
reference to Israel and thesouthern kingdom which was known
as Judah, because Judah againwas the dominant population
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tribe.
Benjamin was also there, butthey were very small in relation
to Judah.
So you've got Israel in thenorth and you've got Judah in
the south and they're bothsupposed to worship at the one
place God outlined in the Mosaiclaw, which was Jerusalem.
Their males were to come upthree times a year and worship,
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but Jeroboam, the king of thenorth.
He said well, if my people godown to the south and cross the
border, they'll become loyal toRehoboam and the house of Judah.
And so he built two high places, right.
And he said these are alternateworship sites.
One was in Dan, in the farnorth, and that was convenient
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for people who lived up there.
Now you don't have to go so farto Jerusalem, isn't this nice,
it's convenient.
A convenient store, you know,just goes, convenient.
And then in the south, justabove the border, at a place
called Bethel.
And he said again, you don'thave to go all the way down to
Jerusalem, just stop at Betheland you can worship God there.
But then he set up the goldencalf, and so idolatry sets in in
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the northern kingdom, and thatkingdom basically went to
spiritual decay and rot very,very rapidly.
And so we move into what isconsidered to be the kingdoms in
decline period.
And so the kingdoms in declineis obviously when they are
declining spiritually, with thereference point being the golden
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era of Solomon, and so there'sa decay from that period of time
.
So here we go with the kingdomsin decline.
Let's just talk a little bitabout the event.
The event itself is going toteach us the doctrine of
sanctification and all fiveaspects that we learn at the
conquest the phases, the aim,the means, the dimensions and
the enemies are all added to inthis event.
(07:09):
So what is this event all about?
Again, after the kingdomdivided, you have north and
south.
Now both kingdoms remain secure.
Okay, as far as their positionbefore God, they're still
quote-unquote.
Israel and God made an Abrahamiccovenant with the descendants
of Abraham, isaac and Jacob inthe 12 tribes.
(07:30):
So it's made with all 12 tribes, even though they're now
divided into two kingdoms.
So their position is secure.
But their experience with Godis fluctuating because they are
either in obedience to theMosaic covenant or they are in
disobedience.
So you see, a lot is going onwith the covenant.
So you've got the Abrahamiccovenant.
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That gives them their position.
It's secure because God madethe covenant.
He said I will do this.
It's called the one-waycovenant, meaning all the
obligation rests with God tokeep the covenant.
But the Mosaic covenant, whichwas given at Mount Sinai, is a
two-way covenant Obligations onboth sides of the fence,
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obligations by God andobligations for Israel, and so
if Israel doesn't meet theirrequirements, well then God is
going to discipline them.
So their experience isfluctuating and if they're going
into decline then obviouslythey're going to get a lot of
spanking, okay, a lot of divinediscipline during this period.
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Now the problem becomes how youunderstand the relationship
between this Abrahamic covenant,which secures their final
position in the world as thenation who inherits the land
that God promised that waspromised to be, or deliver the
seed to the world, who we knowis the Messiah and how they will
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become a worldwide blessing.
Okay, how do those thingshappen if over here you've got
this other covenant, the Mosaiccovenant, and God says if you
obey you'll be blessed, but ifyou disobey you'll be cursed or
disciplined?
That's the problem, because inthe period of the kingdom's
decline they're under a lot ofdiscipline.
So the question is how are theyever going to reach
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righteousness so that they canenjoy the blessing that God
promised in the Abrahamiccovenant?
The two covenants seem likethey're in contradiction, you
see, one promising all thisblessing, the other one
promising blessing conditionedon righteousness, living
according to the law.
So this period of history setsin motion what for them was a
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paradox, like how is God goingto resolve this motion?
What for them was a paradox,like how is God going to resolve
this?
His answer was that God isgoing to make a new covenant.
So a third covenant has nowcome into the picture the
Abrahamic and then the Mosaic.
And the Mosaic's the problem.
They can't keep that.
They're just constantlybreaking it.
(10:02):
So how is God going to resolvethat?
Well, he's going to make a newcovenant that replaces the
Mosaic covenant.
At that time, you have Jeremiahthe prophet, you have Ezekiel.
These guys are revealing thatthe Mosaic law is growing old
already and it will becomeobsolete.
And then God will make a newcovenant.
(10:22):
But it wasn't happening inJeremiah's day not yet.
It was something that was goingto come, though, so it was
revealed.
So what's the significance ofthe new covenant, then, in this
period in history?
The significance is that thenew covenant promises that God
will give Israel a new heart andhe will place his spirit within
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them and they will obey, andtherefore they can enjoy all the
things God promised in theAbrahamic covenant, like the
land and being a worldwideblessing, and enjoy the seed,
the Messiah.
So this becomes God's solutionto the problem of the Mosaic
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covenant.
He basically revealed that itwas temporary okay, it was
temporary and that the newcovenant which would take its
place would be everlasting.
And, of course, the book thatdiscusses this in the New
Testament it's very clear, isGalatians, chapter 3.
The law of Moses was givenuntil Christ came, meaning until
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is a temporary term right, soit does not continue.
We're now under the newcovenant, but we're not Israel.
And all this, we are justenjoying and partaking of the
blessings of this covenant.
So that's the background ofthis event.
These are the stories of Elijahand Elisha.
They're going to the nation.
They're saying you idiots, whatare you doing?
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You're going way off into thedeep end, into paganism and more
and more idolatry.
And God is obviously going todiscipline you.
You need to repent, you need tocome back to the Lord and that
way the Lord can bless you.
But in the midst of that, theyshould have come to the
recognition that we can neverkeep this law, we can never do
this and we're never going to beblessed.
So that would force them tostart to look for an external
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righteousness.
We need righteousness, but itcan't come from us trying to
keep the law.
It's got to come from someexternal source.
And that was what wassignificant about the new
covenant.
In the new covenant, which iscentered on the Messiah and his
ratification of that covenant byhis own shed blood.
They would.
If they turned him in faith, ifthey believed in him, then they
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would receive the righteousnessand the new heart and so forth
and be able to obey.
So that's what the event is allabout.
The kingdoms are in decline Now.
The doctrine again issanctification.
We've got five aspects of thisand I'm going to go through
these Phases the aim, thedimensions, the means and the
enemies.
We learned that with theconquest, with Joshua, but we
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get more revelation about ithere in this period of history.
So this is 2 Kings 17 to 25,the major prophets, like Isaiah,
jeremiah, ezekiel, and theminor prophets.
First of all, the phases.
We already knew about thepositional.
I've already mentioned it.
Right, this secured theirposition in the plan of God.
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So no nation has ever had Godmake a covenant with it except
the nation Israel.
Period over and out.
God didn't make covenants withAmerica, he didn't make
covenants with Great Britain, hedidn't make covenants with any
other nation on earth.
He made a covenant with thenation Israel and through them
to bless other nations on theearth.
But the covenant is made withIsrael, so that secures their
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position, and they already knewthat from the days of Abraham.
So that secures their position,and they already knew that from
the days of Abraham.
In the days of Moses.
Of course, we have the secondphase, which is experience, and
that was all relative to theMosaic covenant.
If you obey, you'll be blessed,if you disobey, you'll be
cursed.
They knew about those twophases, but again, what they
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learned about was a third phase,during this time period, when
the prophets, like Jeremiah andEzekiel, started revealing
things about a new and bettercovenant that would come along.
And so that is the third phaseof sanctification, what we call
ultimate.
It's when God gives Israel anew heart, a heart that will
obey because he's placed hisspirit within them, and so forth
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and so on.
So that's the great thing aboutthis period is the revelation
of a new covenant.
The aim of sanctification isalways the same.
What are we aiming for?
Learn loyalty to God throughhis word.
What did he tell Joshua?
You know, meditate on my wordday and night.
That way, you will be verycareful to do everything that is
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written within it.
Do not turn to the right or tothe left right, just meditate on
my word, stay in my word and bestrong and courageous, meaning
you live by faith.
Okay, you are strong in yourfaith and you exert it.
Okay, you're courageouslyliving by faith, trusting the
promises of God.
So this has always been thesame.
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It's the same for us too.
Okay, but it became obviousagain during the kingdoms in
decline that they couldn't obey.
Okay, so this aim of learningloyalty was not being met.
But through that, what was oneof the main purposes of the
Mosaic law?
It was to show them that youare a sinner, that you are a
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transgressor, that you need anew heart if you're ever going
to obey.
In fact, this was wrapped up incircumcision, right, I mean,
circumcision is the physicalprocedure on the eighth day with
every Hebrew little boy, right,but it had a spiritual
significance, right.
Romans 2, 28 and 29 show us thesignificance.
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It's one thing to be physicallycircumcised, okay, but it
really pointed to the need for aspiritual circumcision of the
heart, okay.
So these ideas were alreadypresent in the Old Testament.
They just weren't as clear asthey become during this period
of the kingdoms in decline, withthe prophets and the nation in
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disobedience clearly should havebeen recognizing hey, we don't
have a heart that can obey, butwe need one, and Deuteronomy
talks about they need tocircumcise their hearts.
So this is not all new, but alot of it is coming into focus.
The dimensions, fellowship,again, we learn with David.
But after David, I mean thenation just goes.
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They go hog wild into idolatry,so they get way out of
fellowship.
They begin to build up what Icall compound carnality, which
is where you sin, sin, sin, sin,sin.
You don't confess and thiscreates the problem, right?
Because once you are incompound carnality it becomes
very difficult to confess.
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The problems, the sin patternsthat you develop when you just
get out of it for so long arevery, very difficult to overcome
because they become entrenched.
And so the nation in this timeperiod is basically entrenched,
in a situation of being out offellowship with God.
So they didn't walk like David.
I mean David messed up, right.
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I mean nobody is denying thathe messed up.
But what did he do when herealized he messed up?
He got back in fellowship, see,and God instantly restored him
and he kept walking with theLord.
And I think it's that way witha lot of Christians is they'll
step out of fellowship and thenthey'll stay out of fellowship
and then they'll lose hope andbecome depressed and get
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involved in all sorts ofdifficult sin patterns to
resolve and they never come backto God.
So that would be a situationwhere a believer doesn't
persevere, they don't endure,they don't keep on going with
the Lord.
But David's an example of abeliever who says, no, I'm going
to persevere.
Even though I sin, I persevere,I get back up and I keep going
in the Christian life.
And so the goal isn't to stopsinning, okay.
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The goal is, when you sin, toget back in fellowship with God
and keep walking the Christianlife, to persevere until the end
.
And certain rewards in the NewTestament are perseverance-type
rewards that we'll receive.
So, anyway, the nation didn'tdo that, okay.
So as a result the seconddimension here did they grow to
maturity?
I mean, if you just stay out offellowship all the time, do you
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think you're going to go on tomaturity?
No, honestly, it's just like alot of people in this world they
never learn how to live, sothey're basically 65-year-old
children.
Have you ever met any of those?
Yeah, and it's even worsebecause they're not little kids
that you can tell what to do, sothey just have their fits and
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basically just live like babies.
And that's what was happeningwith the nation Israel.
They never matured, they were abunch of brats.
So we have those two dimensionsand the nation was failing on
both counts.
As far as the means ofsanctification, how were they
supposed to grow?
Well, the law, well, they brokethat continually.
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Remember the king that had itripped up.
And then, you know, rip that up, you know, throw it in the fire
.
And God said to Jeremiah okay,write it again, which shows you
you can't destroy the word ofGod, you can't destroy it.
If people try to destroy it,god will just say well, just put
it down again, so you're notgoing to destroy it.
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But they ripped it apart, theyhated it, they didn't want to
keep it.
And they ripped it apart, theyhated it, they didn't want to
keep it.
And then grace.
Grace is the means that youneed to keep the law.
It was available through thepriests and their sacrificial
activity down at the tabernacleand temple, and this was to be a
continual activity.
Remember the priests in the OldTestament.
They never got to sit downright, because it was just
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continual sin.
So it's continual work to dealwith the sin by sacrifices right
, continual sin.
So it's continual work to dealwith the sin by sacrifices,
right, but this all looks againforward to something better, to
a new law that would be given,the law of Christ that would
replace the Mosaic law, and anew priesthood.
So with the doing away of theLevitical priesthood, there'll
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be a new priest comes after theorder of Melchizedek, and this
is the whole book of Hebrews,right In a nutshell.
And all this looks to theMessiah.
So this is the means duringthat time, but it won't be met.
So in the future there will bea new opportunity for grace
through the Messiah and theMessiah's law and his priesthood
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.
And of course, there wereenemies during this time, as
there are for us enemies tosanctification.
I want to stop yoursanctification.
There's the world, the worldaround you, that can corrupt you
.
I mean, all the nations aroundIsrael at that time were
idolatrous.
Isn't that how Israel becameidolatrous?
They looked at all the othernations.
They started to importeverything from those nations,
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just like Solomon did.
You know, solomon importedwives.
But you don't just get wives,you get the belief systems of
the wives too, by the way,that's why it's really important
to marry another believer.
If you're a believer, you don'tmarry an unbeliever, because
you're not just marrying anunbeliever, you're also bringing
in everything from herworldview, her system of
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thoughts, whatever it is.
So the Bible is very important.
You know, if you marry someone,marry someone in the Lord, you
know.
Marry someone who shares thesame set of beliefs, belief
system.
So Israel was justintermarrying with anybody and
taking in all of their idolatry.
And God even used these nationslike Assyria and Babylon to
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finally discipline and judgethem right as he sends them into
exile.
Of course they all had theflesh, which the flesh we also
have it.
It's our sinful nature that westill have that wars against us.
And then, finally, the deviland the devil was the one in the
Old Testament.
Who's behind the foreignnations, stirring them up
against Israel for disciplinarymeasure.
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And by corollary, you might lookat a passage like 1 Corinthians
5.5.
This is one of those strangepassages where, honestly, a lot
of expositors are like I don'tknow what this means or aren't
sure what this means or don'tgive much explanation of what it
means.
But it's the passage where Paulis talking about a believer at
Corinth who is having relationswith his father's wife and in
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that passage he says you guysare worse than the Gentiles.
You're living lives that aremore horrible than people who
aren't even Christian, whichshows you that Christians can
live lives that are worse thannon-Christian.
1 Corinthians 5.
But in that passage Paul says Iturn such and such person over
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to Satan for the destruction ofhis flesh.
And people say what does thismean?
Turn him over to Satan fordestruction of his flesh?
Well, it's turning him out tothe world where Satan rules, to
undergo Satan's wrath anddiscipline upon the believer,
just like Israel.
What did God do?
God turned them over to nationsthat were controlled by Satan.
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Okay, so Paul is using OldTestament imagery, the ideas
that Satan is behind thesenations like Assyria and Babylon
, to go in and influence Israeland also to discipline Israel,
and he takes that over to theNew Testament.
He says a believer who's so farout of it?
Paul just says I just turn himover to Satan.
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It doesn't mean he losesalvation or something like that
, any more than it means thatIsrael is suddenly not Israel
and lost all God's promises orsomething that's silly, but what
it is is it's talking aboutturning them out to the world
for extreme divine disciplineunder satanic influence.
So that's what's going on there.
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So we get a good review here atthe kingdoms in decline, of all
five aspects of sanctificationthe phases, the aim, the means,
the dimensions and the enemies.
But the main thing that we haveto walk away from is realizing
that in this period it becomesvery evident that israel is not
going to keep the mosaic law.
But there's a bright glimmer ofhope because god says but
there's going to be a newcovenant, and that new covenant
will provide a new heart and aspirit who will be placed within
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you, that will obey, and allthat sets up what is necessary
for Israel to enjoy the landeternally that God has promised
them, enjoy the seed and be ablessing to the world.
And so when will the newcovenant be fulfilled to Israel?
When will they have this newheart and this new spirit?
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Well, at the second coming,when they believe in Jesus as
their Messiah and he takes theminto his kingdom that he
establishes on earth.
So all the new covenant looksto that point in time.
Okay, the other event that wewant to look at briefly is the
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exile itself.
Remember, I said it kind of inon a sour note today, because
they're not going to come back,they're going to keep going
negative to the Lord, so they'renot going to listen to the
prophets.
We know that they killed theprophets.
They hated the prophets.
They saw the prophets.
They sawed the prophets in half.
I mean, these aren't exactlylovely images.
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How many of you would want to bea prophet?
Yet today, everybody wants tobe a prophet.
If they realize that you'regoing to have to run around
naked like that one OldTestament prophet, remember Do
you want to do that?
Do you want to run around naked?
How many of you want to besawed in half?
Okay, yeah, but so why would Iwant to ever be a prophet?
I mean, god raises up prophets,but I mean I'm not one.
I'm telling you right now.
So it's not exactly a desirablething.
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I'm just pointing out it was atough position to be.
In Jeremiah, the weeping prophetwho I'm named after, nobody
ever responded to that guy'sministry.
How would you like that to beyour ministry, where you
minister to these people notlike you, but people who reject
me?
Just reject, reject, reject,reject, reject, reject, reject,
reject.
You know to the point.
You're like God.
Why do you want me to?
I mean, what is my point?
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Why am I even here?
Jeremiah was faithful.
He just kept going.
I mean, it's a tough name tolive up to, so poor guy.
Okay, so the exile.
So they're going to go down,down, down.
So the nation continues torebel against God and God
disciplines them again bysending them into exile to
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foreign countries, namelyAssyria.
For the northern empire, thedates there would be like 721 BC
and for the southern kingdom ofJudah they lasted longer.
They stick around until about587 BC.
So this is a very significantperiod in history when the
southern kingdom, the kingdom ofJudah, which was the house of
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David, was in this tribe.
So you've got the Davidiccovenant that we read from today
in Psalm 89, that God's goingto keep his promises, no matter
what, to David, right.
So this house, judah this is avery serious moment in their
history.
Okay, if Babylon comes in andthey do on three occasions with
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Nebuchadnezzar, and on the lastoccasion they send them all in
exile and they just destroyJerusalem and the temple, and
you have to wonder what's goingto happen to the house of David.
Is it going to survive?
So there are three things thathappen at this time that
indicate that the kingdom of God, which has started at Mount
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Sinai when God gave them the lawand God is their king, and now
he was going to take him rightinto the land and that was going
to be the kingdom right in theland, the promised land, where
God is the king, okay, andmediators ruling like Moses and
Joshua, and so forth.
Well, that kingdom, which iswhat we know as the kingdom of
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God, that kingdom, which is whatwe know as the kingdom of God,
vanished from history in 587 BC,when Babylon destroyed the
temple, destroyed Jerusalem anddispersed the Jewish people,
taking many into captivity inBabylon.
So it was in existence forabout 900 years or so.
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The kingdom of God was actuallyon earth.
Now it disappears from earthand there's three evidences that
it disappeared from earth atthat time, all given during the
period of the exile.
For example, in Ezekiel 8through 11, it traces the
departure of the Shekinah gloryfrom the temple, the departure
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of the Shekinah glory from thetemple.
So the Shekinah glory was avisible manifestation of God.
It was in the most holy place.
If you, let's just say, youwere the high priest and you had
to go in every year and youknow, offer atonement on the day
of atonement and you put theblood on the Ark of the Covenant
on the lid, okay, where theangels, the two cherubim, were
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on top of it, right with wingscovering their heads and God
significantly enthroned above.
Okay, if you'd gone into thatroom, it would be like a bright
light, smoky cloud.
I don't know how to explain allthat, but basically that's what
it would be like A super brightlight, that's all cloud and
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inside the room.
Okay, this was a visiblemanifestation of God's presence
with them.
Okay, of God's presence withthe nation Israel.
Well, in Ezekiel 8 through 11,ezekiel sees a vision of the
Shekinah glory departing fromthe temple, which is what
happened in 587 BC, and ittraces it in four moves as the
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Shekinah glory leaves.
And one of the moves isinteresting because the Shekinah
glory pauses and like, looksback, like reticent to leave,
not wanting to leave.
But this is the first evidencethat the kingdom of God that was
on earth at that time wentinvisible.
It left earth.
(30:00):
The second evidence is Jeremiah22.
We can look at that one,jeremiah 22.
This is the near end of theDavidic dynasty, jeremiah 22.
So, like I said, the house ofDavid is in Judah, in the
southern kingdom, and Godpromised in the Davidic covenant
(30:22):
this is an eternal house, notlike a man to sit on the throne
right.
But in Jeremiah 22, you read,read.
It sounds like this, is it?
It's over like god is done withhis davidic covenant.
That's the way it sounds.
So jeremiah 22, 24 I mean, thisis a scary moment.
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Okay, is god?
Is God going back on hispromises, his covenant promises?
Verse 24, as I live, declaresthe Lord, even though Coniah,
the son of Jehoiakim, king ofJudah, wore a signet ring on my
right hand.
In other words, he's therightful heir to David's throne.
This is the guy, coniah.
Okay, he says.
(31:06):
Yet I would pull you off, likeI'm done with you and I will
give you over into the hand ofthose who are seeking your life,
yes, into the hands of thosewhom you dread, even into the
hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king ofBabylon, and into the hand of
the Chaldeans.
I will hurl you and your motherwho bore you, into another
country where you were not born,like the life you're hoping for
(31:30):
.
Um, he says, verse 27.
But as for the land to whichthey desire to return, they will
not return to it.
Verse 28 is this man, coniah,jeconiah, that king, the davidic
line king?
Is he a despised, shattered jar.
Is he an undesirable vessel?
Why have he and his descendantsbeen hurled out of the land?
(31:50):
Why have they been cast into aland they had not known?
Oh, land, land, land.
Hear the word of the Lord.
You know, listen, israel,Listen.
Thus says the Lord.
Write this man down, childless.
And you start to think whatthere's not going to.
If he's childless, there's notgoing to be anybody who could be
the heir of the Davidic throne.
(32:11):
Right, that's the way you thinkas you read this, a man who
will not prosper in his days,for no man of his descendants
will prosper, sitting on thethrone of David or ruling again
in Judah, and you think this isthe end.
I mean, this is the end.
I mean God is done with thehouse of David.
That's what it sounds like at acursory reading A lot of
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Christmases.
I go through this passagebecause I like to tie it into
Matthew 1 and the genealogy ofJoseph and that ultimately leads
to Messiah and how David is.
Because David's in this lineDavid is.
If you read further the storyof Coniah, he did have sons, but
none of them sat on the throne.
And that was the intent of thispassage that none of them would
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sit on the throne.
But the line does continue,kind of like a thread, but it
continues down into the time ofMary and David right in the New
Testament, and David's in thisline.
The problem is is that David'snot qualified.
He can't sit on the thronebecause he's a descendant of
this guy who was cursed Coniah.
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So nobody who's a direct linealdescendant of Coniah can sit on
the throne.
And Joseph is in this line.
Did I say Mary and David?
Mary and Joseph?
Sorry, joseph is in this line.
So Joseph, while he's in thethrone line, he can't exercise
the rights because he's under acurse.
If Jesus was the natural son ofJoseph, he would also be under
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the curse, but the New Testamentresolves this by reminding us
of Isaiah 7.14, that he would beborn of a, of a virgin.
So he didn't have Joseph as hisbiological father and therefore
he avoids this curse.
And when he's adopted by Josephunder adoption laws, he
receives throne rights as wellas the right to exercise them,
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which is what makes Jesus sounique and why the New Testament
opens with this story, thisstory which mentions Coniah.
In Matthew 1, coniah ismentioned and all of our minds
are supposed to be on Jeremiah22 and remembering what God said
to that house at the time ofthe exile here and what he said
was dangerous here.
(34:29):
And what he said was dangerous.
But God, like a brilliant chessplayer, right, he makes this
move of the virgin birth and hebrings in adoption.
I mean, what was Joseph goingto do?
He was going to divorce her,send her away.
Remember?
The angel said no, no, no, no,because it was absolutely
essential that Joseph marry Maryso he could pass on his throne
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rights to the virgin-born one.
That had to happen.
So the angel said no, shehasn't done anything wrong, just
marry her.
It'll all make sense.
And he does.
But that's the second evidencethat the kingdom of God departed
at this time.
What's the third evidence?
The third one is the book ofDaniel.
(35:16):
So we'll just flip over there.
It's right after Ezekiel.
So go to the right afterJeremiah and you'll come across
Ezekiel and then you'll seeDaniel.
So Daniel, this is when, andDaniel 2, for example, is a good
example Nebuchadnezzar's dreamof the four-metal statue right,
(35:41):
the head of gold, the breastsand arms of silver, the waist
and thighs of bronze, the waistand thighs of bronze, and then
the lower legs and feet of iron,and iron mixed with clay, right
?
You remember this statue?
He kept having this recurringdream.
He didn't know what it meant.
Daniel was the only one whocould interpret the dream.
(36:05):
He explains the significance ofthe dream, and this is the third
evidence that the kingdom ofGod went out of history at that
time.
The significance of the dreamwas this God is giving political
supremacy to four Gentilekingdoms.
The head of gold signified thekingdom of Babylon.
The breasts and arms of silversignified the kingdom of
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Medo-Persia, which became laterjust Persia, and then the waist
and thighs of bronze became thekingdom of Greece.
And then the legs of iron, andthen iron mixed with clay, point
to Rome as the fourth Gentilekingdom.
And we learn later it wouldhave two phases an iron-only
(36:48):
phase, only strong, and then aniron mixed with clay form, which
is strong but brittle.
And so the final, or fourth,empire of Gentiles would have
two phases.
So this is what we know, whatJesus called in Matthew 21, 24,
(37:09):
the times of the Gentiles, whenthey would reign supreme.
So this revelation in the statuein the time of Daniel and
Nebuchadnezzar is the thirdevidence that there's no kingdom
of God on earth right now.
Instead, there's going to bethe kingdom of man, and it's
going to be manifested in fourkingdoms, successive kingdoms,
the last of which will have twophases.
(37:30):
So my question always is isthere a kingdom of God on earth
right now?
No, no, we are still in thetimes of the Gentiles, and only
when the times of the Gentilescome to its completion will the
kingdom of God come upon thisearth.
And that's the fifth kingdom.
In the vision, remember, he'dsee the statue, right.
(37:51):
He'd see the head, then he'dsee the breasts and arms appear,
then he'd see the waist andbronze appear, then he'd see the
legs and the feet appear, andthen he'd see a stone this is a
stone cut out without hands,meaning it's supernatural in
origin and then it just flewright at the base and destroyed
the entire statue all at onetime, and then the stone grew to
fill the whole earth.
(38:11):
That's the fifth kingdom.
Is that here now?
I mean, is God's kingdom andhis righteousness ruling all
over the world?
I mean, this is a big joke.
I was talking to somebody justbefore about this.
This idea that the kingdom isnow is basically almost in every
church.
Pretty much almost every singlechurch teaches kingdom now
(38:36):
theology.
Are you joking me?
When the kingdom of God comeson the earth.
Read Amos 5 again, right.
Amos 5 says justice will rolldown like waters, righteousness
like an everlasting stream.
Does anything in this worldeven remotely get close to that
description?
No, there's no kingdom now, notGod's kingdom.
(39:00):
There's the times of theGentiles and these four Gentile
kingdoms that began in the dayof Daniel, when the southern
kingdom of Judah went into exileto Babylon.
So those three evidences, right.
The Shekinah glory would leavethe temple.
So God's presence not amongIsrael.
Second, the Davidic dynasty iscursed through Coniah.
(39:20):
And lastly, this transfer ofsupremacy, political supremacy,
to Gentile nations, whichremains with us to this day.
So you have, in these fourkingdoms, let's just say,
contributions are made.
So I'm going to go throughbriefly some of the
(39:41):
contributions on a very basiclevel.
So Babylon contributed theconcept of fractional reserve
banking.
Fractional reserve bankingmeans, in a nutshell you put
some money in the bank, let'ssay you put $5,000 in the bank.
They take a large percentage ofthat and they loan it out to
other people.
Your money is not sitting there, okay, they loan it out to
(40:04):
other people and make money onthat.
So it inflates the perceivedmoney supply.
It makes the perceived moneysupply greater than it actually
is.
Okay, which has a lot ofrepercussions for business and
economics and all sorts ofthings, but they came up with
this idea.
You know, basically it's asystem ultimately of theft, but
(40:26):
anyway, this is what we live in.
So they contributed to thatidea and it continued.
Even when Babylon went away andMedo-Persia, the second kingdom,
comes, that idea remained.
They inherited it, in otherwords, and it's been inherited
down to our own day.
The second kingdom isMedo-Persia, the Persians.
They were the ones who reallyhad the dream of globalism.
(40:50):
Have you ever heard of thatidea?
This was the Persians who werebehind globalism and their
global aspirations.
Now, when they were defeated bythe Greeks, alexander and so
forth, alexander the Greatglobalism didn't go away.
It was inherited by the Greeks,and the Greeks also inherited
(41:10):
fractional reserve banking, andthis is what's happening.
It's a building of a kingdom ofman.
So it's got an economicdimension, it's got a globalist
dimension, and then you haveGreece, and Greece comes along
and we all know most of usprobably know what Greece
contributed human rationalism,philosophy, human philosophy,
(41:34):
rationalism.
So that was their contribution.
So see, you're getting allthese ideas together, okay
Fractional reserve banking,globalist aspirations, humanist
rationalism, autonomy.
And then here comes Rome, andRome is going to make a
contribution.
They're going to inherit allthat.
Rome is going to make acontribution.
They're going to inherit allthat, and they're going to make
a contribution.
And their contribution is lawand military okay, law and
(41:59):
military, and, and all thesethings are now combined okay,
with rome, and continue to becombined, uh, combined, and
manifest themselves in all sortsof things that we see today in
our world.
They are all manifestations ofthese four basic things.
They're all thrown together.
(42:21):
And so this is the times of theGentiles, and this all started
in Daniel's day, and so,obviously, Israel was going into
a period where, let's just say,of darkness right For them,
darkness, loss of hope, becausenow you are enslaved to a
foreign country and you'reliving under their rules, now,
(42:42):
living in their system.
So this is the time of theexile.
Now, what do we learn then?
There's a couple of doctrinalthings we learn.
First of all, the doctrine ofsanctification and specifically
the idea of separation.
So this is another idea undersanctification, and that is how
(43:02):
do we live separate lives?
Because what's happening?
What's happening is the Jewsare going into exile, so now
they're going to have to live inforeign cultures.
So they're being taken at thistime to Babylon, right, the
Northern kingdom had gone toAssyria, so the question is now
that you're being thrown intoanother culture with a totally
different value system than yourHebrew culture.
(43:23):
How do you live in that?
How do you live in the worldand not become like the world?
This becomes the prevailingproblem in the time of the exile
.
But you have people who areleading the way.
You have people like Daniel,right.
You have people like Esther,these stories.
So, daniel, this guy becomesone of the top government
(43:50):
officials in the kingdom ofBabylon and he's able to work as
a liaison for the Jewish peoplewhile they're in Babylon.
So he shows us wisdom,techniques for how to live in
the world but not to be engulfedby it, isn't he?
He's an amazing example.
(44:12):
A lot of Christians name theirkids Daniel, right, because they
say we love this guy.
This was a guy who showed usthat you don't have to retreat
from the world as a Christian,that you can go right in there
and you can serve right along inthe president's cabinet, okay.
And you don't have to becomecorrupt.
Okay, you can be like Danieland you can stand firm and God
(44:37):
will honor you if you live byfaith, like Daniel did.
Okay, esther's another one whoput herself in a somewhat
precarious situation in thetimes of Haman, who wanted to
destroy every Jew.
Right, and she became a liaisonfor her people in the king's
house and God used her beauty todo that.
God can use anything.
(44:58):
This would be totallyunexpected in the Bible.
I would think that God woulduse a woman because she was
super beautiful, but to be theone who delivers her people,
israel, right.
So she's another person who isinjected in there in this time
period to show how to be in theworld, but not become of the
(45:19):
world.
Okay.
So sanctification andseparation.
How do we do this?
Now I'll give the three answersand then the last thing okay,
as we come to the close to theend of the Old Testament, there
are three basic answers that aregiven for separation.
Okay, and separation just meansthis what is my relationship as
a believer to the surroundingculture around me, in this case
(45:41):
American culture?
What is my relationship to thatFirst attempt thing you can say
is to accommodate?
This is the most popularapproach of Christians and the
reason is because it's easy.
It's easy, you get along witheverybody in the surrounding
culture, because you basicallysay that the value system of the
(46:02):
culture is the value system ofthe Bible and we just
reinterpret the Bible to fitwhatever the culture says.
So examples are gender-neutraltranslations of the Bible.
Has anybody heard of those?
Yeah, why did they do that?
Because they're trying toaccommodate and make the Bible
more culture-friendly.
What we would just say well,that's just compromise, right?
(46:25):
I mean, it's God's Word and nowyou've changed it and you're
not translating the genders ofthe pronouns and the nouns
correctly.
So you have done what you'renot supposed to do, and that is
change the Bible.
You shouldn't do that.
But that's just an example ofaccommodation.
(46:46):
The second strategy is tophysically separate.
These are people who recognize,hey, we can't go along with the
culture, we can't accommodate.
I mean, we're not doing that.
So what they do is theyphysically separate from the
culture by taking themselves outof the world and kind of build
their own society or group, andthese would be, for example, in
Roman Catholicism.
(47:06):
An example would be monasticismand an example from
Protestantism would be the Amish.
We're just going to separateand form our own society over
here.
So that's another approach.
The last approach iscounterattack.
And these are the people whosay no, no, no, we can't go out
of the world, we can'tphysically separate, we're
(47:27):
definitely not going toaccommodate, we can't do that.
The Bible's not going to lineup with our value system out
there.
So I'm going to remain in theculture but I'm going to develop
every area of life in adistinctly Christian manner.
I had a guy call me this weekand he says he's on the road and
he drives all the time.
He used to drive big trucks,now he just drives locally where
(47:49):
he lives.
But he says he wants to get outof this because he has like a
master's degree in social work.
And he's like I want to go backinto this, I lost my license, I
need to get it all back.
But how do I go back into itand not employ all the methods
and philosophies that are partof social work, like which would
(48:10):
just be all your psychologyFreud, skinner, maslow, blah,
blah, blah, jung, all thesepagan people who came up with
these psychology theories?
So how do I do it?
And of course I was like well,there's got to be a niche for
what you are offering.
And of course I was like, well,there's got to be a niche for
what you are offering.
You want to do social work, butyou want to do it on biblical
(48:33):
ethics and morals and basis andprinciples, not on all these
pagan philosophy ideas.
There's people, you know, justlike some people say, well, I'm
not going to do, you know, justtraditional medicine.
I want to go with a holisticdoctor.
In that same way.
See, there's a niche for that.
If you want to find that, and Iwas like there's got to be
people who are looking forpeople who will do social work
and help people but will do itwith biblical ethics, and I bet
(48:54):
they'll come across the countryto go to you.
So put yourself out there andmarket yourself in that way that
you're not going to use thesephilosophies, and that's the
idea of counterattack.
You want to stay in the culture.
You want to stay in the culture.
You want to do biology or thesciences, or math or law or
whatever, but you don't want todo it in a pagan manner.
You want to adopt Christianpresuppositions and develop
(49:16):
these areas in a distinctlyChristian manner.
So here's what J Gresham Machensaid about this.
He lived in the early 1900s.
He said instead of destroyingthe arts and sciences or being
indifferent to them.
Okay, these are twopossibilities.
As Christians, we can say, oh,that's terrible art, and just I
(49:37):
hate art, and just reject art orthe sciences.
Another approach is we couldjust be indifferent to them.
Who cares about the arts?
It's just all about Jesus, orsomething like that.
I get that it's all about Jesus.
But Jesus is concerned aboutart.
He's an artist.
He's painting the horizon atevery moment.
Can we not see this?
He's interested in music, he'sinterested in math, he's the
(50:01):
author of all these things.
Right, so don't be indifferentto these things and don't
destroy these things.
But he says, instead, let uscultivate them with all the
enthusiasm of the varioushumanists, in other words, you
know, I was listening to someonesing on the radio when I came
(50:22):
over here and I was like she hasan amazing voice.
I won't tell you who it wasshe's not a Christian, as far as
I know but like she has pursuedvoice, like to the nth degree.
Right, why can't we asChristians not do the same thing
?
So he says don't be indifferentto these types of things.
(50:43):
Let's cultivate these things,he says.
But at the same time we do this, he says consecrate them to the
service of our God.
That's what we're trying to do,okay.
So he says let us go forthjoyfully, enthusiastically, to
make the world subject to God,in other words, bring something
to the world that the world hasnever seen, because what we're
(51:04):
bringing is on such a great,high level of excellence, but it
does so in a way that glorifiesGod.
That's why I say you can gointo any area of discipline, of
study in life and go and becomean expert in that field and you
can develop it in a distinctlyChristian manner.
You do not have to buy into thevalue system or philosophies of
(51:24):
the world that are underlyingthese manner.
You do not have to buy into thevalue system or philosophies of
the world that are underlyingthese areas.
You can go into business, butyou don't have to accept the
business models built on paganideas.
You don't have to do that.
You can develop it in aChristian.
Will it take work?
Yes, you will have to think itthrough.
You'll have to think it through, but will it work?
I think God will.
(51:44):
I think he will honor it, justlike he did Daniel.
Daniel became a politician.
Who wants to be a politician?
Daniel became a politician.
Okay, but he didn't buy in allthe philosophies of Babylon.
He was trained in all that.
Remember.
They took him for several years.
They trained him all the mathsand sciences and politics of
(52:07):
Babylon.
He learned the language.
He was the top of his class.
He got a 4.0.
If whatever's the top now, isit 4.0 still, anyway, um, are
you getting a 4.0?
See, why are we striving to bethe best?
Well, because we're christians.
That's why, I mean, when I wentto school, I had to learn all
that evolution baloney, not injust biology classes, but it's
(52:31):
in your chemistry classes, it'sin your physics classes, it was
in my neurobiology courses, itwas in all those courses.
It's all just in there, stuckin there, and you had to do what
I had to answer the questionsright on the test so I could get
a 100%.
That's what I went for.
Why?
Because I believe all that.
No, because I want tounderstand it, so I can be
(52:51):
excellent and get out and getthrough.
And then I can go out and thinkit all through and work out my
philosophy on the basis ofChristian theology, which is
exactly what I did.
I said that the first two yearsafter I graduated from the
university, I learned more thanI learned in all of my education
, of my entire life, why?
Because I had time to go andstop and back up and fix all the
(53:13):
little mess-ups along the wayand get it all within a
Christian framework.
So that's what he's saying weneed to do, and that's what
Daniel did, that's what Esther'san example of, and the last
thing we'll show is this, andthat is we return and we find
something really really neat atthe end of the Old Testament
that is paralleled by somethingreally really neat at the end of
the New Testament, and that isa new type of genre, okay, that
(53:36):
God speaks in.
So we already know God speaks.
That's revelation.
He speaks through men.
That's inspiration.
But now we have this new genrethat everybody is afraid to
touch today Apocalyptic genre.
This type of literature ishighly visionary.
It's symbolic, highly symbolic,and it has angelic interpreters
come in and explain to theprophet.
(53:57):
Whatever it means this type ofgenre and the reason God speaks
like this is because believersat that time in history are
living in a very dark world.
Think of you.
If you're an Israelite and youwere taken captive and marched
800 miles to Babylon.
You're in a whole new world.
(54:20):
Your whole world's been turnedupside down.
All your hopes, all your dreams, all your aspirations are
totally smashed.
Anything you ever hoped for inyour life will not happen.
So it's a very, very dark place.
In that context, god speaks.
Apocalyptic Books like Daniel,zechariah, ezekiel there's all
this stuff going on.
You're like what is that thing?
(54:42):
I have no idea what thesesymbols mean and all this kind
of stuff, and of course, youhave to study to understand what
this is all about.
But the reason that God givesthat type of writing in that
type of time period is to givehope, because symbols are easy
to remember, aren't they?
I mean, which of you cannotremember the four metal statue
(55:04):
in Daniel 2?
Which of you cannot rememberthe four metal statue in Daniel
2?
Which of you cannot rememberthe four crazy beasts in Daniel
7?
I mean like.
Or the ram and the goat inDaniel 8?
I mean just off the top of yourhead.
You're like, yeah, yeah, Iremember that because it's a
symbol.
And when you are hurting, whenyou are depressed, when your
life has no hope, you needsomething that you can remember.
So God wrote in apocalypticgenre so they could remember it.
(55:29):
And so this literature isalways written when believers
need hope when they need hope,when they need to see that
there's light at the end of thistunnel.
So for Israel it was Ezekiel,daniel and Zechariah.
Okay, because all those bookspaint this really, really dark
(55:52):
picture of the world.
But at the very end they allsay the kingdom of God will
return.
That is the hope of the wholeBible that the kingdom will come
and all this mess will be dealtwith right.
What book comes at the end ofthe New Testament for the church
(56:15):
?
That is apocalyptic?
In John, the book of Revelation.
And why is that book there?
Because the Bible knows thattoward the end of the church,
which is maybe where we are now,that the world is just going to
become so dark and Christiansare going to lose hope as the
(56:38):
world turns against us and hatesus and all of this.
And so what do we need?
We need to know that there'ssome light at the end of the
tunnel.
And so the book of Revelationpaints that picture and it says
in the end the kingdom of Godwill return.
Both testaments end this way.
(57:01):
Showing you the kingdom of Godis super important.
So, yeah, it's a dark world now, but the light is coming.
He will return, he willestablish his kingdom on earth,
and you and I will be there.
So the exile sets us up forthis new type of literature that
God would speak in, known asapocalyptic.
Speaker 1 (57:23):
Thank you for joining us on Beyond the Walls with
Jeremy Thomas.
If you would like to see thevisuals that went along with
today's sermon, you can findthose on Rumble and on YouTube
under Spokane Bible Church.
That is where Jeremy is thepastor and teacher.
We hope you found today'slesson productive and useful in
(57:43):
growing closer to God andwalking more obediently with Him
.
If you found this podcast to beuseful and helpful, then please
consider rating us in yourfavorite podcast app, and until
next time, we hope you have ablessed and wonderful day.
Welcome to Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas and
our series on the New TestamentFramework.
Today, the full lesson fromJeremy Thomas.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Here's a hint of what's to come.
And when you are hurting, whenyou are depressed, when your
life has no hope, you needsomething that you can remember.
So God wrote in apocalypticgenre so they could remember it,
and so this literature isalways written when believers
need hope.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
God understands the difficult life we live.
He understands that we do notlive in perfectly godly cultures
, whether that's a city, a state, a nation.
He understands that many timeswe find ourselves facing corrupt
institutions, institutions thatoperate on a very different
(00:51):
worldview, philosophy than whatwe have.
And yet he also knows that byhis Spirit, we are able to live
well in these.
And he knows this because onehe has provided the Holy Spirit,
wisdom and guidance anddiscernment for us to do so.
And we can be confident that wecan do so because he has given
(01:13):
us many examples from the pastof people who have done just
that lived well for God in themidst of an ungodly government
and society.
So, although times may be verydifficult where you are,
remember this God has providedthe strength, the wisdom, the
(01:35):
guidance, the discernment thatyou need to live well for him.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
We're going to go.
We've already been with Davidthe rise and reign of King David
.
We learned specifically aboutthe doctrine of fellowship with
David because David obviouslyhas somewhat of an issue with
the Bathsheba incident and so hebecomes a model out of Psalm 51
(02:02):
for what it looks like to getout of fellowship with the Lord
and then to confess and berestored to fellowship.
So that's a very important partof Scripture.
Then we move to the golden eraand we really discussed what.
I guess.
This era is probably not talkedabout a whole lot, but what it
(02:22):
basically does is show us whathappens when you have
generational loyalty to God,building over the course of like
three, four, maybe fivegenerations.
That the kind of culture thatyou can build is what we call a
high biblical culture, andIsrael at that time is known as
the golden era, because Solomonon the throne of David and
(02:44):
Solomon having requested wisdomfrom God and God having granted
it to him, putting all thattogether with three or four
generations of loyalty to God,produced the greatest biblical
culture the world has ever known.
Everything in the culture, insociety, as you stepped out from
your home and went about yourlife, had biblical reminders,
(03:09):
and so you know the greatLevitical choir, things, that
untold majesty, all donebiblically.
I mean, we have thePhilharmonic, the New York
Philharmonic, we have thesevenues where we can go and hear,
you know the greatest music ofthe world.
But at that time the greatestmusic of the world was centered
in Jerusalem at the temple, withthe Levitical choirs, and it
(03:30):
was all biblically based aroundthe one triune, god, right.
So it was just awesome.
It would have been just sheerawesomeness.
But we also saw that all thatcould be thrown away in a single
generation.
And Solomon, toward the end ofhis life, decided to do what was
ever right in his own eyesright, ecclesiastes.
And he discovered that you know, when you go by the flesh and
(03:53):
just human wisdom, the end ofthat is vanity.
There's nothing there ofsignificance or meaning or value
.
And so I think thatEcclesiastes is actually a
testimony to the nations thatthis is not the way.
I was a leader of Israel and Ihad everything and I decided to
(04:13):
throw it all away and try yourway, and your way doesn't work.
There's nothing there.
And so I think it's his lastingtestimony to the surrounding
nations which he had influencedso greatly.
And so I think it's his lastingtestimony to the surrounding
nations which he had influencedso greatly, to look back at his
earlier experience and bereminded of the greatness of his
kingdom when he was with it.
So that brought us then to thetime of his son, rehoboam, and
(04:38):
Jeroboam.
The kingdom divided that greatevent where they almost have a
civil war.
But Rehoboam was basically ajerk to the northern tribes and
the northern tribe says we haveno place with the house of David
, let us all go to our own tents.
And so you have a dividing ofthe nation and now you have a
(04:59):
northern kingdom which is knownthroughout the rest of the Old
Testament primarily as Israeland sometime as Ephraim, because
Ephraim was the most populoustribe.
So when you read about Ephraimin the latter prophets, that's a
reference to Israel and thesouthern kingdom which was known
as Judah, because Judah againwas the dominant population
(05:20):
tribe.
Benjamin was also there, butthey were very small in relation
to Judah.
So you've got Israel in thenorth and you've got Judah in
the south and they're bothsupposed to worship at the one
place God outlined in the Mosaiclaw, which was Jerusalem.
Their males were to come upthree times a year and worship,
(05:41):
but Jeroboam, the king of thenorth.
He said well, if my people godown to the south and cross the
border, they'll become loyal toRehoboam and the house of Judah.
And so he built two high places, right.
And he said these are alternateworship sites.
One was in Dan, in the farnorth, and that was convenient
(06:02):
for people who lived up there.
Now you don't have to go so farto Jerusalem, isn't this nice,
it's convenient.
A convenient store, you know,just goes, convenient.
And then in the south, justabove the border, at a place
called Bethel.
And he said again, you don'thave to go all the way down to
Jerusalem, just stop at Betheland you can worship God there.
But then he set up the goldencalf, and so idolatry sets in in
(06:25):
the northern kingdom, and thatkingdom basically went to
spiritual decay and rot very,very rapidly.
And so we move into what isconsidered to be the kingdoms in
decline period.
And so the kingdoms in declineis obviously when they are
declining spiritually, with thereference point being the golden
(06:46):
era of Solomon, and so there'sa decay from that period of time
.
So here we go with the kingdomsin decline.
Let's just talk a little bitabout the event.
The event itself is going toteach us the doctrine of
sanctification and all fiveaspects that we learn at the
conquest the phases, the aim,the means, the dimensions and
the enemies are all added to inthis event.
(07:09):
So what is this event all about?
Again, after the kingdomdivided, you have north and
south.
Now both kingdoms remain secure.
Okay, as far as their positionbefore God, they're still
quote-unquote.
Israel and God made an Abrahamiccovenant with the descendants
of Abraham, isaac and Jacob inthe 12 tribes.
(07:30):
So it's made with all 12 tribes, even though they're now
divided into two kingdoms.
So their position is secure.
But their experience with Godis fluctuating because they are
either in obedience to theMosaic covenant or they are in
disobedience.
So you see, a lot is going onwith the covenant.
So you've got the Abrahamiccovenant.
(07:51):
That gives them their position.
It's secure because God madethe covenant.
He said I will do this.
It's called the one-waycovenant, meaning all the
obligation rests with God tokeep the covenant.
But the Mosaic covenant, whichwas given at Mount Sinai, is a
two-way covenant Obligations onboth sides of the fence,
(08:14):
obligations by God andobligations for Israel, and so
if Israel doesn't meet theirrequirements, well then God is
going to discipline them.
So their experience isfluctuating and if they're going
into decline then obviouslythey're going to get a lot of
spanking, okay, a lot of divinediscipline during this period.
(08:34):
Now the problem becomes how youunderstand the relationship
between this Abrahamic covenant,which secures their final
position in the world as thenation who inherits the land
that God promised that waspromised to be, or deliver the
seed to the world, who we knowis the Messiah and how they will
(08:57):
become a worldwide blessing.
Okay, how do those thingshappen if over here you've got
this other covenant, the Mosaiccovenant, and God says if you
obey you'll be blessed, but ifyou disobey you'll be cursed or
disciplined?
That's the problem, because inthe period of the kingdom's
decline they're under a lot ofdiscipline.
So the question is how are theyever going to reach
(09:19):
righteousness so that they canenjoy the blessing that God
promised in the Abrahamiccovenant?
The two covenants seem likethey're in contradiction, you
see, one promising all thisblessing, the other one
promising blessing conditionedon righteousness, living
according to the law.
So this period of history setsin motion what for them was a
(09:41):
paradox, like how is God goingto resolve this motion?
What for them was a paradox,like how is God going to resolve
this?
His answer was that God isgoing to make a new covenant.
So a third covenant has nowcome into the picture the
Abrahamic and then the Mosaic.
And the Mosaic's the problem.
They can't keep that.
They're just constantlybreaking it.
(10:02):
So how is God going to resolvethat?
Well, he's going to make a newcovenant that replaces the
Mosaic covenant.
At that time, you have Jeremiahthe prophet, you have Ezekiel.
These guys are revealing thatthe Mosaic law is growing old
already and it will becomeobsolete.
And then God will make a newcovenant.
(10:22):
But it wasn't happening inJeremiah's day not yet.
It was something that was goingto come, though, so it was
revealed.
So what's the significance ofthe new covenant, then, in this
period in history?
The significance is that thenew covenant promises that God
will give Israel a new heart andhe will place his spirit within
(10:45):
them and they will obey, andtherefore they can enjoy all the
things God promised in theAbrahamic covenant, like the
land and being a worldwideblessing, and enjoy the seed,
the Messiah.
So this becomes God's solutionto the problem of the Mosaic
(11:06):
covenant.
He basically revealed that itwas temporary okay, it was
temporary and that the newcovenant which would take its
place would be everlasting.
And, of course, the book thatdiscusses this in the New
Testament it's very clear, isGalatians, chapter 3.
The law of Moses was givenuntil Christ came, meaning until
(11:27):
is a temporary term right, soit does not continue.
We're now under the newcovenant, but we're not Israel.
And all this, we are justenjoying and partaking of the
blessings of this covenant.
So that's the background ofthis event.
These are the stories of Elijahand Elisha.
They're going to the nation.
They're saying you idiots, whatare you doing?
(11:49):
You're going way off into thedeep end, into paganism and more
and more idolatry.
And God is obviously going todiscipline you.
You need to repent, you need tocome back to the Lord and that
way the Lord can bless you.
But in the midst of that, theyshould have come to the
recognition that we can neverkeep this law, we can never do
this and we're never going to beblessed.
So that would force them tostart to look for an external
(12:11):
righteousness.
We need righteousness, but itcan't come from us trying to
keep the law.
It's got to come from someexternal source.
And that was what wassignificant about the new
covenant.
In the new covenant, which iscentered on the Messiah and his
ratification of that covenant byhis own shed blood.
They would.
If they turned him in faith, ifthey believed in him, then they
(12:35):
would receive the righteousnessand the new heart and so forth
and be able to obey.
So that's what the event is allabout.
The kingdoms are in decline Now.
The doctrine again issanctification.
We've got five aspects of thisand I'm going to go through
these Phases the aim, thedimensions, the means and the
enemies.
We learned that with theconquest, with Joshua, but we
(12:57):
get more revelation about ithere in this period of history.
So this is 2 Kings 17 to 25,the major prophets, like Isaiah,
jeremiah, ezekiel, and theminor prophets.
First of all, the phases.
We already knew about thepositional.
I've already mentioned it.
Right, this secured theirposition in the plan of God.
(13:18):
So no nation has ever had Godmake a covenant with it except
the nation Israel.
Period over and out.
God didn't make covenants withAmerica, he didn't make
covenants with Great Britain, hedidn't make covenants with any
other nation on earth.
He made a covenant with thenation Israel and through them
to bless other nations on theearth.
But the covenant is made withIsrael, so that secures their
(13:41):
position, and they already knewthat from the days of Abraham.
So that secures their position,and they already knew that from
the days of Abraham.
In the days of Moses.
Of course, we have the secondphase, which is experience, and
that was all relative to theMosaic covenant.
If you obey, you'll be blessed,if you disobey, you'll be
cursed.
They knew about those twophases, but again, what they
(14:03):
learned about was a third phase,during this time period, when
the prophets, like Jeremiah andEzekiel, started revealing
things about a new and bettercovenant that would come along.
And so that is the third phaseof sanctification, what we call
ultimate.
It's when God gives Israel anew heart, a heart that will
obey because he's placed hisspirit within them, and so forth
(14:25):
and so on.
So that's the great thing aboutthis period is the revelation
of a new covenant.
The aim of sanctification isalways the same.
What are we aiming for?
Learn loyalty to God throughhis word.
What did he tell Joshua?
You know, meditate on my wordday and night.
That way, you will be verycareful to do everything that is
(14:47):
written within it.
Do not turn to the right or tothe left right, just meditate on
my word, stay in my word and bestrong and courageous, meaning
you live by faith.
Okay, you are strong in yourfaith and you exert it.
Okay, you're courageouslyliving by faith, trusting the
promises of God.
So this has always been thesame.
(15:08):
It's the same for us too.
Okay, but it became obviousagain during the kingdoms in
decline that they couldn't obey.
Okay, so this aim of learningloyalty was not being met.
But through that, what was oneof the main purposes of the
Mosaic law?
It was to show them that youare a sinner, that you are a
(15:29):
transgressor, that you need anew heart if you're ever going
to obey.
In fact, this was wrapped up incircumcision, right, I mean,
circumcision is the physicalprocedure on the eighth day with
every Hebrew little boy, right,but it had a spiritual
significance, right.
Romans 2, 28 and 29 show us thesignificance.
(15:51):
It's one thing to be physicallycircumcised, okay, but it
really pointed to the need for aspiritual circumcision of the
heart, okay.
So these ideas were alreadypresent in the Old Testament.
They just weren't as clear asthey become during this period
of the kingdoms in decline, withthe prophets and the nation in
(16:12):
disobedience clearly should havebeen recognizing hey, we don't
have a heart that can obey, butwe need one, and Deuteronomy
talks about they need tocircumcise their hearts.
So this is not all new, but alot of it is coming into focus.
The dimensions, fellowship,again, we learn with David.
But after David, I mean thenation just goes.
(16:33):
They go hog wild into idolatry,so they get way out of
fellowship.
They begin to build up what Icall compound carnality, which
is where you sin, sin, sin, sin,sin.
You don't confess and thiscreates the problem, right?
Because once you are incompound carnality it becomes
very difficult to confess.
(16:54):
The problems, the sin patternsthat you develop when you just
get out of it for so long arevery, very difficult to overcome
because they become entrenched.
And so the nation in this timeperiod is basically entrenched,
in a situation of being out offellowship with God.
So they didn't walk like David.
I mean David messed up, right.
(17:14):
I mean nobody is denying thathe messed up.
But what did he do when herealized he messed up?
He got back in fellowship, see,and God instantly restored him
and he kept walking with theLord.
And I think it's that way witha lot of Christians is they'll
step out of fellowship and thenthey'll stay out of fellowship
and then they'll lose hope andbecome depressed and get
(17:35):
involved in all sorts ofdifficult sin patterns to
resolve and they never come backto God.
So that would be a situationwhere a believer doesn't
persevere, they don't endure,they don't keep on going with
the Lord.
But David's an example of abeliever who says, no, I'm going
to persevere.
Even though I sin, I persevere,I get back up and I keep going
in the Christian life.
And so the goal isn't to stopsinning, okay.
(17:57):
The goal is, when you sin, toget back in fellowship with God
and keep walking the Christianlife, to persevere until the end
.
And certain rewards in the NewTestament are perseverance-type
rewards that we'll receive.
So, anyway, the nation didn'tdo that, okay.
So as a result the seconddimension here did they grow to
maturity?
I mean, if you just stay out offellowship all the time, do you
(18:18):
think you're going to go on tomaturity?
No, honestly, it's just like alot of people in this world they
never learn how to live, sothey're basically 65-year-old
children.
Have you ever met any of those?
Yeah, and it's even worsebecause they're not little kids
that you can tell what to do, sothey just have their fits and
(18:39):
basically just live like babies.
And that's what was happeningwith the nation Israel.
They never matured, they were abunch of brats.
So we have those two dimensionsand the nation was failing on
both counts.
As far as the means ofsanctification, how were they
supposed to grow?
Well, the law, well, they brokethat continually.
(18:59):
Remember the king that had itripped up.
And then, you know, rip that up, you know, throw it in the fire
.
And God said to Jeremiah okay,write it again, which shows you
you can't destroy the word ofGod, you can't destroy it.
If people try to destroy it,god will just say well, just put
it down again, so you're notgoing to destroy it.
(19:19):
But they ripped it apart, theyhated it, they didn't want to
keep it.
And they ripped it apart, theyhated it, they didn't want to
keep it.
And then grace.
Grace is the means that youneed to keep the law.
It was available through thepriests and their sacrificial
activity down at the tabernacleand temple, and this was to be a
continual activity.
Remember the priests in the OldTestament.
They never got to sit downright, because it was just
(19:40):
continual sin.
So it's continual work to dealwith the sin by sacrifices right
, continual sin.
So it's continual work to dealwith the sin by sacrifices,
right, but this all looks againforward to something better, to
a new law that would be given,the law of Christ that would
replace the Mosaic law, and anew priesthood.
So with the doing away of theLevitical priesthood, there'll
(20:01):
be a new priest comes after theorder of Melchizedek, and this
is the whole book of Hebrews,right In a nutshell.
And all this looks to theMessiah.
So this is the means duringthat time, but it won't be met.
So in the future there will bea new opportunity for grace
through the Messiah and theMessiah's law and his priesthood
(20:21):
.
And of course, there wereenemies during this time, as
there are for us enemies tosanctification.
I want to stop yoursanctification.
There's the world, the worldaround you, that can corrupt you
.
I mean, all the nations aroundIsrael at that time were
idolatrous.
Isn't that how Israel becameidolatrous?
They looked at all the othernations.
They started to importeverything from those nations,
(20:43):
just like Solomon did.
You know, solomon importedwives.
But you don't just get wives,you get the belief systems of
the wives too, by the way,that's why it's really important
to marry another believer.
If you're a believer, you don'tmarry an unbeliever, because
you're not just marrying anunbeliever, you're also bringing
in everything from herworldview, her system of
(21:05):
thoughts, whatever it is.
So the Bible is very important.
You know, if you marry someone,marry someone in the Lord, you
know.
Marry someone who shares thesame set of beliefs, belief
system.
So Israel was justintermarrying with anybody and
taking in all of their idolatry.
And God even used these nationslike Assyria and Babylon to
(21:26):
finally discipline and judgethem right as he sends them into
exile.
Of course they all had theflesh, which the flesh we also
have it.
It's our sinful nature that westill have that wars against us.
And then, finally, the deviland the devil was the one in the
Old Testament.
Who's behind the foreignnations, stirring them up
against Israel for disciplinarymeasure.
(21:48):
And by corollary, you might lookat a passage like 1 Corinthians
5.5.
This is one of those strangepassages where, honestly, a lot
of expositors are like I don'tknow what this means or aren't
sure what this means or don'tgive much explanation of what it
means.
But it's the passage where Paulis talking about a believer at
Corinth who is having relationswith his father's wife and in
(22:13):
that passage he says you guysare worse than the Gentiles.
You're living lives that aremore horrible than people who
aren't even Christian, whichshows you that Christians can
live lives that are worse thannon-Christian.
1 Corinthians 5.
But in that passage Paul says Iturn such and such person over
(22:38):
to Satan for the destruction ofhis flesh.
And people say what does thismean?
Turn him over to Satan fordestruction of his flesh?
Well, it's turning him out tothe world where Satan rules, to
undergo Satan's wrath anddiscipline upon the believer,
just like Israel.
What did God do?
God turned them over to nationsthat were controlled by Satan.
(23:03):
Okay, so Paul is using OldTestament imagery, the ideas
that Satan is behind thesenations like Assyria and Babylon
, to go in and influence Israeland also to discipline Israel,
and he takes that over to theNew Testament.
He says a believer who's so farout of it?
Paul just says I just turn himover to Satan.
(23:24):
It doesn't mean he losesalvation or something like that
, any more than it means thatIsrael is suddenly not Israel
and lost all God's promises orsomething that's silly, but what
it is is it's talking aboutturning them out to the world
for extreme divine disciplineunder satanic influence.
So that's what's going on there.
(23:50):
So we get a good review here atthe kingdoms in decline, of all
five aspects of sanctificationthe phases, the aim, the means,
the dimensions and the enemies.
But the main thing that we haveto walk away from is realizing
that in this period it becomesvery evident that israel is not
going to keep the mosaic law.
But there's a bright glimmer ofhope because god says but
there's going to be a newcovenant, and that new covenant
will provide a new heart and aspirit who will be placed within
(24:11):
you, that will obey, and allthat sets up what is necessary
for Israel to enjoy the landeternally that God has promised
them, enjoy the seed and be ablessing to the world.
And so when will the newcovenant be fulfilled to Israel?
When will they have this newheart and this new spirit?
(24:31):
Well, at the second coming,when they believe in Jesus as
their Messiah and he takes theminto his kingdom that he
establishes on earth.
So all the new covenant looksto that point in time.
Okay, the other event that wewant to look at briefly is the
(24:52):
exile itself.
Remember, I said it kind of inon a sour note today, because
they're not going to come back,they're going to keep going
negative to the Lord, so they'renot going to listen to the
prophets.
We know that they killed theprophets.
They hated the prophets.
They saw the prophets.
They sawed the prophets in half.
I mean, these aren't exactlylovely images.
(25:15):
How many of you would want to bea prophet?
Yet today, everybody wants tobe a prophet.
If they realize that you'regoing to have to run around
naked like that one OldTestament prophet, remember Do
you want to do that?
Do you want to run around naked?
How many of you want to besawed in half?
Okay, yeah, but so why would Iwant to ever be a prophet?
I mean, god raises up prophets,but I mean I'm not one.
I'm telling you right now.
So it's not exactly a desirablething.
(25:38):
I'm just pointing out it was atough position to be.
In Jeremiah, the weeping prophetwho I'm named after, nobody
ever responded to that guy'sministry.
How would you like that to beyour ministry, where you
minister to these people notlike you, but people who reject
me?
Just reject, reject, reject,reject, reject, reject, reject,
reject.
You know to the point.
You're like God.
Why do you want me to?
I mean, what is my point?
(25:59):
Why am I even here?
Jeremiah was faithful.
He just kept going.
I mean, it's a tough name tolive up to, so poor guy.
Okay, so the exile.
So they're going to go down,down, down.
So the nation continues torebel against God and God
disciplines them again bysending them into exile to
(26:20):
foreign countries, namelyAssyria.
For the northern empire, thedates there would be like 721 BC
and for the southern kingdom ofJudah they lasted longer.
They stick around until about587 BC.
So this is a very significantperiod in history when the
southern kingdom, the kingdom ofJudah, which was the house of
(26:43):
David, was in this tribe.
So you've got the Davidiccovenant that we read from today
in Psalm 89, that God's goingto keep his promises, no matter
what, to David, right.
So this house, judah this is avery serious moment in their
history.
Okay, if Babylon comes in andthey do on three occasions with
(27:05):
Nebuchadnezzar, and on the lastoccasion they send them all in
exile and they just destroyJerusalem and the temple, and
you have to wonder what's goingto happen to the house of David.
Is it going to survive?
So there are three things thathappen at this time that
indicate that the kingdom of God, which has started at Mount
(27:27):
Sinai when God gave them the lawand God is their king, and now
he was going to take him rightinto the land and that was going
to be the kingdom right in theland, the promised land, where
God is the king, okay, andmediators ruling like Moses and
Joshua, and so forth.
Well, that kingdom, which iswhat we know as the kingdom of
(27:47):
God, that kingdom, which is whatwe know as the kingdom of God,
vanished from history in 587 BC,when Babylon destroyed the
temple, destroyed Jerusalem anddispersed the Jewish people,
taking many into captivity inBabylon.
So it was in existence forabout 900 years or so.
(28:10):
The kingdom of God was actuallyon earth.
Now it disappears from earthand there's three evidences that
it disappeared from earth atthat time, all given during the
period of the exile.
For example, in Ezekiel 8through 11, it traces the
departure of the Shekinah gloryfrom the temple, the departure
(28:32):
of the Shekinah glory from thetemple.
So the Shekinah glory was avisible manifestation of God.
It was in the most holy place.
If you, let's just say, youwere the high priest and you had
to go in every year and youknow, offer atonement on the day
of atonement and you put theblood on the Ark of the Covenant
on the lid, okay, where theangels, the two cherubim, were
(28:54):
on top of it, right with wingscovering their heads and God
significantly enthroned above.
Okay, if you'd gone into thatroom, it would be like a bright
light, smoky cloud.
I don't know how to explain allthat, but basically that's what
it would be like A super brightlight, that's all cloud and
(29:17):
inside the room.
Okay, this was a visiblemanifestation of God's presence
with them.
Okay, of God's presence withthe nation Israel.
Well, in Ezekiel 8 through 11,ezekiel sees a vision of the
Shekinah glory departing fromthe temple, which is what
happened in 587 BC, and ittraces it in four moves as the
(29:39):
Shekinah glory leaves.
And one of the moves isinteresting because the Shekinah
glory pauses and like, looksback, like reticent to leave,
not wanting to leave.
But this is the first evidencethat the kingdom of God that was
on earth at that time wentinvisible.
It left earth.
(30:00):
The second evidence is Jeremiah22.
We can look at that one,jeremiah 22.
This is the near end of theDavidic dynasty, jeremiah 22.
So, like I said, the house ofDavid is in Judah, in the
southern kingdom, and Godpromised in the Davidic covenant
(30:22):
this is an eternal house, notlike a man to sit on the throne
right.
But in Jeremiah 22, you read,read.
It sounds like this, is it?
It's over like god is done withhis davidic covenant.
That's the way it sounds.
So jeremiah 22, 24 I mean, thisis a scary moment.
(30:46):
Okay, is god?
Is God going back on hispromises, his covenant promises?
Verse 24, as I live, declaresthe Lord, even though Coniah,
the son of Jehoiakim, king ofJudah, wore a signet ring on my
right hand.
In other words, he's therightful heir to David's throne.
This is the guy, coniah.
Okay, he says.
(31:06):
Yet I would pull you off, likeI'm done with you and I will
give you over into the hand ofthose who are seeking your life,
yes, into the hands of thosewhom you dread, even into the
hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king ofBabylon, and into the hand of
the Chaldeans.
I will hurl you and your motherwho bore you, into another
country where you were not born,like the life you're hoping for
(31:30):
.
Um, he says, verse 27.
But as for the land to whichthey desire to return, they will
not return to it.
Verse 28 is this man, coniah,jeconiah, that king, the davidic
line king?
Is he a despised, shattered jar.
Is he an undesirable vessel?
Why have he and his descendantsbeen hurled out of the land?
(31:50):
Why have they been cast into aland they had not known?
Oh, land, land, land.
Hear the word of the Lord.
You know, listen, israel,Listen.
Thus says the Lord.
Write this man down, childless.
And you start to think whatthere's not going to.
If he's childless, there's notgoing to be anybody who could be
the heir of the Davidic throne.
(32:11):
Right, that's the way you thinkas you read this, a man who
will not prosper in his days,for no man of his descendants
will prosper, sitting on thethrone of David or ruling again
in Judah, and you think this isthe end.
I mean, this is the end.
I mean God is done with thehouse of David.
That's what it sounds like at acursory reading A lot of
(32:32):
Christmases.
I go through this passagebecause I like to tie it into
Matthew 1 and the genealogy ofJoseph and that ultimately leads
to Messiah and how David is.
Because David's in this lineDavid is.
If you read further the storyof Coniah, he did have sons, but
none of them sat on the throne.
And that was the intent of thispassage that none of them would
(32:53):
sit on the throne.
But the line does continue,kind of like a thread, but it
continues down into the time ofMary and David right in the New
Testament, and David's in thisline.
The problem is is that David'snot qualified.
He can't sit on the thronebecause he's a descendant of
this guy who was cursed Coniah.
(33:19):
So nobody who's a direct linealdescendant of Coniah can sit on
the throne.
And Joseph is in this line.
Did I say Mary and David?
Mary and Joseph?
Sorry, joseph is in this line.
So Joseph, while he's in thethrone line, he can't exercise
the rights because he's under acurse.
If Jesus was the natural son ofJoseph, he would also be under
(33:46):
the curse, but the New Testamentresolves this by reminding us
of Isaiah 7.14, that he would beborn of a, of a virgin.
So he didn't have Joseph as hisbiological father and therefore
he avoids this curse.
And when he's adopted by Josephunder adoption laws, he
receives throne rights as wellas the right to exercise them,
(34:07):
which is what makes Jesus sounique and why the New Testament
opens with this story, thisstory which mentions Coniah.
In Matthew 1, coniah ismentioned and all of our minds
are supposed to be on Jeremiah22 and remembering what God said
to that house at the time ofthe exile here and what he said
was dangerous here.
(34:29):
And what he said was dangerous.
But God, like a brilliant chessplayer, right, he makes this
move of the virgin birth and hebrings in adoption.
I mean, what was Joseph goingto do?
He was going to divorce her,send her away.
Remember?
The angel said no, no, no, no,because it was absolutely
essential that Joseph marry Maryso he could pass on his throne
(34:55):
rights to the virgin-born one.
That had to happen.
So the angel said no, shehasn't done anything wrong, just
marry her.
It'll all make sense.
And he does.
But that's the second evidencethat the kingdom of God departed
at this time.
What's the third evidence?
The third one is the book ofDaniel.
(35:16):
So we'll just flip over there.
It's right after Ezekiel.
So go to the right afterJeremiah and you'll come across
Ezekiel and then you'll seeDaniel.
So Daniel, this is when, andDaniel 2, for example, is a good
example Nebuchadnezzar's dreamof the four-metal statue right,
(35:41):
the head of gold, the breastsand arms of silver, the waist
and thighs of bronze, the waistand thighs of bronze, and then
the lower legs and feet of iron,and iron mixed with clay, right
?
You remember this statue?
He kept having this recurringdream.
He didn't know what it meant.
Daniel was the only one whocould interpret the dream.
(36:05):
He explains the significance ofthe dream, and this is the third
evidence that the kingdom ofGod went out of history at that
time.
The significance of the dreamwas this God is giving political
supremacy to four Gentilekingdoms.
The head of gold signified thekingdom of Babylon.
The breasts and arms of silversignified the kingdom of
(36:27):
Medo-Persia, which became laterjust Persia, and then the waist
and thighs of bronze became thekingdom of Greece.
And then the legs of iron, andthen iron mixed with clay, point
to Rome as the fourth Gentilekingdom.
And we learn later it wouldhave two phases an iron-only
(36:48):
phase, only strong, and then aniron mixed with clay form, which
is strong but brittle.
And so the final, or fourth,empire of Gentiles would have
two phases.
So this is what we know, whatJesus called in Matthew 21, 24,
(37:09):
the times of the Gentiles, whenthey would reign supreme.
So this revelation in the statuein the time of Daniel and
Nebuchadnezzar is the thirdevidence that there's no kingdom
of God on earth right now.
Instead, there's going to bethe kingdom of man, and it's
going to be manifested in fourkingdoms, successive kingdoms,
the last of which will have twophases.
(37:30):
So my question always is isthere a kingdom of God on earth
right now?
No, no, we are still in thetimes of the Gentiles, and only
when the times of the Gentilescome to its completion will the
kingdom of God come upon thisearth.
And that's the fifth kingdom.
In the vision, remember, he'dsee the statue, right.
(37:51):
He'd see the head, then he'dsee the breasts and arms appear,
then he'd see the waist andbronze appear, then he'd see the
legs and the feet appear, andthen he'd see a stone this is a
stone cut out without hands,meaning it's supernatural in
origin and then it just flewright at the base and destroyed
the entire statue all at onetime, and then the stone grew to
fill the whole earth.
(38:11):
That's the fifth kingdom.
Is that here now?
I mean, is God's kingdom andhis righteousness ruling all
over the world?
I mean, this is a big joke.
I was talking to somebody justbefore about this.
This idea that the kingdom isnow is basically almost in every
church.
Pretty much almost every singlechurch teaches kingdom now
(38:36):
theology.
Are you joking me?
When the kingdom of God comeson the earth.
Read Amos 5 again, right.
Amos 5 says justice will rolldown like waters, righteousness
like an everlasting stream.
Does anything in this worldeven remotely get close to that
description?
No, there's no kingdom now, notGod's kingdom.
(39:00):
There's the times of theGentiles and these four Gentile
kingdoms that began in the dayof Daniel, when the southern
kingdom of Judah went into exileto Babylon.
So those three evidences, right.
The Shekinah glory would leavethe temple.
So God's presence not amongIsrael.
Second, the Davidic dynasty iscursed through Coniah.
(39:20):
And lastly, this transfer ofsupremacy, political supremacy,
to Gentile nations, whichremains with us to this day.
So you have, in these fourkingdoms, let's just say,
contributions are made.
So I'm going to go throughbriefly some of the
(39:41):
contributions on a very basiclevel.
So Babylon contributed theconcept of fractional reserve
banking.
Fractional reserve bankingmeans, in a nutshell you put
some money in the bank, let'ssay you put $5,000 in the bank.
They take a large percentage ofthat and they loan it out to
other people.
Your money is not sitting there, okay, they loan it out to
(40:04):
other people and make money onthat.
So it inflates the perceivedmoney supply.
It makes the perceived moneysupply greater than it actually
is.
Okay, which has a lot ofrepercussions for business and
economics and all sorts ofthings, but they came up with
this idea.
You know, basically it's asystem ultimately of theft, but
(40:26):
anyway, this is what we live in.
So they contributed to thatidea and it continued.
Even when Babylon went away andMedo-Persia, the second kingdom,
comes, that idea remained.
They inherited it, in otherwords, and it's been inherited
down to our own day.
The second kingdom isMedo-Persia, the Persians.
They were the ones who reallyhad the dream of globalism.
(40:50):
Have you ever heard of thatidea?
This was the Persians who werebehind globalism and their
global aspirations.
Now, when they were defeated bythe Greeks, alexander and so
forth, alexander the Greatglobalism didn't go away.
It was inherited by the Greeks,and the Greeks also inherited
(41:10):
fractional reserve banking, andthis is what's happening.
It's a building of a kingdom ofman.
So it's got an economicdimension, it's got a globalist
dimension, and then you haveGreece, and Greece comes along
and we all know most of usprobably know what Greece
contributed human rationalism,philosophy, human philosophy,
(41:34):
rationalism.
So that was their contribution.
So see, you're getting allthese ideas together, okay
Fractional reserve banking,globalist aspirations, humanist
rationalism, autonomy.
And then here comes Rome, andRome is going to make a
contribution.
They're going to inherit allthat.
Rome is going to make acontribution.
They're going to inherit allthat, and they're going to make
a contribution.
And their contribution is lawand military okay, law and
(41:59):
military, and, and all thesethings are now combined okay,
with rome, and continue to becombined, uh, combined, and
manifest themselves in all sortsof things that we see today in
our world.
They are all manifestations ofthese four basic things.
They're all thrown together.
(42:21):
And so this is the times of theGentiles, and this all started
in Daniel's day, and so,obviously, Israel was going into
a period where, let's just say,of darkness right For them,
darkness, loss of hope, becausenow you are enslaved to a
foreign country and you'reliving under their rules, now,
(42:42):
living in their system.
So this is the time of theexile.
Now, what do we learn then?
There's a couple of doctrinalthings we learn.
First of all, the doctrine ofsanctification and specifically
the idea of separation.
So this is another idea undersanctification, and that is how
(43:02):
do we live separate lives?
Because what's happening?
What's happening is the Jewsare going into exile, so now
they're going to have to live inforeign cultures.
So they're being taken at thistime to Babylon, right, the
Northern kingdom had gone toAssyria, so the question is now
that you're being thrown intoanother culture with a totally
different value system than yourHebrew culture.
(43:23):
How do you live in that?
How do you live in the worldand not become like the world?
This becomes the prevailingproblem in the time of the exile
.
But you have people who areleading the way.
You have people like Daniel,right.
You have people like Esther,these stories.
So, daniel, this guy becomesone of the top government
(43:50):
officials in the kingdom ofBabylon and he's able to work as
a liaison for the Jewish peoplewhile they're in Babylon.
So he shows us wisdom,techniques for how to live in
the world but not to be engulfedby it, isn't he?
He's an amazing example.
(44:12):
A lot of Christians name theirkids Daniel, right, because they
say we love this guy.
This was a guy who showed usthat you don't have to retreat
from the world as a Christian,that you can go right in there
and you can serve right along inthe president's cabinet, okay.
And you don't have to becomecorrupt.
Okay, you can be like Danieland you can stand firm and God
(44:37):
will honor you if you live byfaith, like Daniel did.
Okay, esther's another one whoput herself in a somewhat
precarious situation in thetimes of Haman, who wanted to
destroy every Jew.
Right, and she became a liaisonfor her people in the king's
house and God used her beauty todo that.
God can use anything.
(44:58):
This would be totallyunexpected in the Bible.
I would think that God woulduse a woman because she was
super beautiful, but to be theone who delivers her people,
israel, right.
So she's another person who isinjected in there in this time
period to show how to be in theworld, but not become of the
(45:19):
world.
Okay.
So sanctification andseparation.
How do we do this?
Now I'll give the three answersand then the last thing okay,
as we come to the close to theend of the Old Testament, there
are three basic answers that aregiven for separation.
Okay, and separation just meansthis what is my relationship as
a believer to the surroundingculture around me, in this case
(45:41):
American culture?
What is my relationship to thatFirst attempt thing you can say
is to accommodate?
This is the most popularapproach of Christians and the
reason is because it's easy.
It's easy, you get along witheverybody in the surrounding
culture, because you basicallysay that the value system of the
(46:02):
culture is the value system ofthe Bible and we just
reinterpret the Bible to fitwhatever the culture says.
So examples are gender-neutraltranslations of the Bible.
Has anybody heard of those?
Yeah, why did they do that?
Because they're trying toaccommodate and make the Bible
more culture-friendly.
What we would just say well,that's just compromise, right?
(46:25):
I mean, it's God's Word and nowyou've changed it and you're
not translating the genders ofthe pronouns and the nouns
correctly.
So you have done what you'renot supposed to do, and that is
change the Bible.
You shouldn't do that.
But that's just an example ofaccommodation.
(46:46):
The second strategy is tophysically separate.
These are people who recognize,hey, we can't go along with the
culture, we can't accommodate.
I mean, we're not doing that.
So what they do is theyphysically separate from the
culture by taking themselves outof the world and kind of build
their own society or group, andthese would be, for example, in
Roman Catholicism.
(47:06):
An example would be monasticismand an example from
Protestantism would be the Amish.
We're just going to separateand form our own society over
here.
So that's another approach.
The last approach iscounterattack.
And these are the people whosay no, no, no, we can't go out
of the world, we can'tphysically separate, we're
(47:27):
definitely not going toaccommodate, we can't do that.
The Bible's not going to lineup with our value system out
there.
So I'm going to remain in theculture but I'm going to develop
every area of life in adistinctly Christian manner.
I had a guy call me this weekand he says he's on the road and
he drives all the time.
He used to drive big trucks,now he just drives locally where
(47:49):
he lives.
But he says he wants to get outof this because he has like a
master's degree in social work.
And he's like I want to go backinto this, I lost my license, I
need to get it all back.
But how do I go back into itand not employ all the methods
and philosophies that are partof social work, like which would
(48:10):
just be all your psychologyFreud, skinner, maslow, blah,
blah, blah, jung, all thesepagan people who came up with
these psychology theories?
So how do I do it?
And of course I was like well,there's got to be a niche for
what you are offering.
And of course I was like, well,there's got to be a niche for
what you are offering.
You want to do social work, butyou want to do it on biblical
(48:33):
ethics and morals and basis andprinciples, not on all these
pagan philosophy ideas.
There's people, you know, justlike some people say, well, I'm
not going to do, you know, justtraditional medicine.
I want to go with a holisticdoctor.
In that same way.
See, there's a niche for that.
If you want to find that, and Iwas like there's got to be
people who are looking forpeople who will do social work
and help people but will do itwith biblical ethics, and I bet
(48:54):
they'll come across the countryto go to you.
So put yourself out there andmarket yourself in that way that
you're not going to use thesephilosophies, and that's the
idea of counterattack.
You want to stay in the culture.
You want to stay in the culture.
You want to do biology or thesciences, or math or law or
whatever, but you don't want todo it in a pagan manner.
You want to adopt Christianpresuppositions and develop
(49:16):
these areas in a distinctlyChristian manner.
So here's what J Gresham Machensaid about this.
He lived in the early 1900s.
He said instead of destroyingthe arts and sciences or being
indifferent to them.
Okay, these are twopossibilities.
As Christians, we can say, oh,that's terrible art, and just I
(49:37):
hate art, and just reject art orthe sciences.
Another approach is we couldjust be indifferent to them.
Who cares about the arts?
It's just all about Jesus, orsomething like that.
I get that it's all about Jesus.
But Jesus is concerned aboutart.
He's an artist.
He's painting the horizon atevery moment.
Can we not see this?
He's interested in music, he'sinterested in math, he's the
(50:01):
author of all these things.
Right, so don't be indifferentto these things and don't
destroy these things.
But he says, instead, let uscultivate them with all the
enthusiasm of the varioushumanists, in other words, you
know, I was listening to someonesing on the radio when I came
(50:22):
over here and I was like she hasan amazing voice.
I won't tell you who it wasshe's not a Christian, as far as
I know but like she has pursuedvoice, like to the nth degree.
Right, why can't we asChristians not do the same thing
?
So he says don't be indifferentto these types of things.
(50:43):
Let's cultivate these things,he says.
But at the same time we do this, he says consecrate them to the
service of our God.
That's what we're trying to do,okay.
So he says let us go forthjoyfully, enthusiastically, to
make the world subject to God,in other words, bring something
to the world that the world hasnever seen, because what we're
(51:04):
bringing is on such a great,high level of excellence, but it
does so in a way that glorifiesGod.
That's why I say you can gointo any area of discipline, of
study in life and go and becomean expert in that field and you
can develop it in a distinctlyChristian manner.
You do not have to buy into thevalue system or philosophies of
(51:24):
the world that are underlyingthese manner.
You do not have to buy into thevalue system or philosophies of
the world that are underlyingthese areas.
You can go into business, butyou don't have to accept the
business models built on paganideas.
You don't have to do that.
You can develop it in aChristian.
Will it take work?
Yes, you will have to think itthrough.
You'll have to think it through, but will it work?
I think God will.
(51:44):
I think he will honor it, justlike he did Daniel.
Daniel became a politician.
Who wants to be a politician?
Daniel became a politician.
Okay, but he didn't buy in allthe philosophies of Babylon.
He was trained in all that.
Remember.
They took him for several years.
They trained him all the mathsand sciences and politics of
(52:07):
Babylon.
He learned the language.
He was the top of his class.
He got a 4.0.
If whatever's the top now, isit 4.0 still, anyway, um, are
you getting a 4.0?
See, why are we striving to bethe best?
Well, because we're christians.
That's why, I mean, when I wentto school, I had to learn all
that evolution baloney, not injust biology classes, but it's
(52:31):
in your chemistry classes, it'sin your physics classes, it was
in my neurobiology courses, itwas in all those courses.
It's all just in there, stuckin there, and you had to do what
I had to answer the questionsright on the test so I could get
a 100%.
That's what I went for.
Why?
Because I believe all that.
No, because I want tounderstand it, so I can be
(52:51):
excellent and get out and getthrough.
And then I can go out and thinkit all through and work out my
philosophy on the basis ofChristian theology, which is
exactly what I did.
I said that the first two yearsafter I graduated from the
university, I learned more thanI learned in all of my education
, of my entire life, why?
Because I had time to go andstop and back up and fix all the
(53:13):
little mess-ups along the wayand get it all within a
Christian framework.
So that's what he's saying weneed to do, and that's what
Daniel did, that's what Esther'san example of, and the last
thing we'll show is this, andthat is we return and we find
something really really neat atthe end of the Old Testament
that is paralleled by somethingreally really neat at the end of
the New Testament, and that isa new type of genre, okay, that
(53:36):
God speaks in.
So we already know God speaks.
That's revelation.
He speaks through men.
That's inspiration.
But now we have this new genrethat everybody is afraid to
touch today Apocalyptic genre.
This type of literature ishighly visionary.
It's symbolic, highly symbolic,and it has angelic interpreters
come in and explain to theprophet.
(53:57):
Whatever it means this type ofgenre and the reason God speaks
like this is because believersat that time in history are
living in a very dark world.
Think of you.
If you're an Israelite and youwere taken captive and marched
800 miles to Babylon.
You're in a whole new world.
(54:20):
Your whole world's been turnedupside down.
All your hopes, all your dreams, all your aspirations are
totally smashed.
Anything you ever hoped for inyour life will not happen.
So it's a very, very dark place.
In that context, god speaks.
Apocalyptic Books like Daniel,zechariah, ezekiel there's all
this stuff going on.
You're like what is that thing?
(54:42):
I have no idea what thesesymbols mean and all this kind
of stuff, and of course, youhave to study to understand what
this is all about.
But the reason that God givesthat type of writing in that
type of time period is to givehope, because symbols are easy
to remember, aren't they?
I mean, which of you cannotremember the four metal statue
(55:04):
in Daniel 2?
Which of you cannot rememberthe four metal statue in Daniel
2?
Which of you cannot rememberthe four crazy beasts in Daniel
7?
I mean like.
Or the ram and the goat inDaniel 8?
I mean just off the top of yourhead.
You're like, yeah, yeah, Iremember that because it's a
symbol.
And when you are hurting, whenyou are depressed, when your
life has no hope, you needsomething that you can remember.
So God wrote in apocalypticgenre so they could remember it.
(55:29):
And so this literature isalways written when believers
need hope when they need hope,when they need to see that
there's light at the end of thistunnel.
So for Israel it was Ezekiel,daniel and Zechariah.
Okay, because all those bookspaint this really, really dark
(55:52):
picture of the world.
But at the very end they allsay the kingdom of God will
return.
That is the hope of the wholeBible that the kingdom will come
and all this mess will be dealtwith right.
What book comes at the end ofthe New Testament for the church
(56:15):
?
That is apocalyptic?
In John, the book of Revelation.
And why is that book there?
Because the Bible knows thattoward the end of the church,
which is maybe where we are now,that the world is just going to
become so dark and Christiansare going to lose hope as the
(56:38):
world turns against us and hatesus and all of this.
And so what do we need?
We need to know that there'ssome light at the end of the
tunnel.
And so the book of Revelationpaints that picture and it says
in the end the kingdom of Godwill return.
Both testaments end this way.
(57:01):
Showing you the kingdom of Godis super important.
So, yeah, it's a dark world now, but the light is coming.
He will return, he willestablish his kingdom on earth,
and you and I will be there.
So the exile sets us up forthis new type of literature that
God would speak in, known asapocalyptic.
Speaker 1 (57:23):
Thank you for joining us on Beyond the Walls with
Jeremy Thomas.
If you would like to see thevisuals that went along with
today's sermon, you can findthose on Rumble and on YouTube
under Spokane Bible Church.
That is where Jeremy is thepastor and teacher.
We hope you found today'slesson productive and useful in
(57:43):
growing closer to God andwalking more obediently with Him
.
If you found this podcast to beuseful and helpful, then please
consider rating us in yourfavorite podcast app, and until
next time, we hope you have ablessed and wonderful day.
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