Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas
Jeremy approaches Bible teaching with a passion for getting the basic doctrines explained so that the individual can understand them and then apply them to circumstances in their life. These basic and important lessons are nestled in a framework of history and progression of revelation from the Bible so the whole of Scripture can be applied to your physical and spiritual life.
Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas
NT Framework - Maturing
In this session, Jeremy reminds us of the importance of our spiritual growth, not sinless perfection, but the process of learning and applying what God wants us to become. It's about growth and maturity, in a word, sanctification.
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.
Welcome to Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas and our series on the New Testament Framework. Today, the full lesson from Jeremy Thomas. Here's a hint of what's to come.
Speaker 2:And that's to show us that God showed us through Joshua, that the Messiah would be a conqueror.
Speaker 1:Why do we review things that we already know? Because God knows that we are prone to forget. Yes, we know it, but by being reminded of it, it freshens the perspective in our mind, helps us to remember why we are doing what we are doing, how we are to do, because our memories are not perfect. We can misremember things, forget aspects, fail to live in a way that we are supposed to, because we're just not aware of what we've forgotten.
Speaker 1:In the New Testament, there are many occasions where the apostle will be writing and they'll say specifically that I am going to remind you. 2 Peter 1.12 says for this reason, I will not be negligent to remind you always of these things. And so we, as humans, need to be reminded, we need to remember, we need to go back and be refreshed on the things that we've already been taught and the second or third or fourth or fifth time through even it will become deeper and more meaningful and more a part of us in the way we live our life. This is why we remind ourselves, this is why we go back and review, and today on Beyond the Walls is no different.
Speaker 2:And again, we're going to get to the New Testament framework. I know we're going to get there, but you know, I mean if you can go through the whole Old Testament in about five or six weeks, that's pretty fast, so I don't feel that bad about it. It's a good reminder for me some of these basic truths and categories of doctrine. So again, the idea is to learn the event and we've got 14 Old Testament events and then you just attach the doctrines to the events and that way you don't think about these doctrines abstractly. And that's too often the case is that doctrines get treated abstractly and that's normally why people have some strange views because they don't line up with the big picture of what's going on. But if you have pegs, something to remember, I always train myself and my children Okay, you go through each event, you memorize these events creation, fall, flood, noah at covenant, call of Abraham, exodus, mount Sinai, conquest, rise and reign of King David, the golden era of Solomon, the kingdom divided, the kingdom declined, exile, restoration you restoration, partial restoration. So it's a quick way. If you can memorize about 19 or 20 words, you can memorize the whole Old Testament flow and then all you have to do after you've learned the events, so you can teach those little kids right, they can learn the events of the Bible. And then you can also add to that the doctrines. So we've done creation, that event has three doctrines who God is, who man is, who nature is God, man and nature. Those are very simple.
Speaker 2:The most basic ideas come out of these distinctions. We used to hunt, you know, when I lived in Texas, and we'd shoot deer, you know, and then we'd clean the deer and eat the deer, you know, and all this stuff. Yet in the world, if you go through the educational system that's so advanced, they'll say that man is just an animal. Man is part of the evolutionary chain and maybe we're at the top of that chain, but man is an animal, right? So then on what basis can you shoot a deer but you can't shoot a man, since they're all just animals? So you know well, it becomes arbitrary. The lines for what can be shot and what cannot be shot are just arbitrary in an evolutionary, educational way of thinking. The Bible makes very clear the reason you can't hunt man, but you can't hunt animals. Man is made in the image of God and animals aren't. And God gave us meat to eat. So we can eat animals, but we can't eat man and shoot man, and these things just seem very basic, but in the world out there they do not have these categories. Man and nature are not distinct. Man is a part of nature, and so these are very practical, very, very practical, real-world issues.
Speaker 2:At the fall, of course, we learn about sin and suffering. Why do we suffer? Why do we hurt? Why do we have pain? Why is there death? Well, very simply, because sin. Sin entered the world and death through sin, and that's Romans 5.12 and so forth and so on. So we have death in the world.
Speaker 2:Well then, is death normal? Is it just what we should just expect, or is it abnormal? From the Christian point of view, death is abnormal because we can envision a time and a place in the garden at the beginning, when there was no death, and that defines what is normal. And now, what follows as a result of sin is abnormal. But think about suffering from an unbelieving point of view. You don't have the Bible. Well, death is just normal, suffering is just normal. It's just the way things are, and I'm a victim of everything, and so it's a very different way of thinking about suffering. So, at each one of these points, at each event and the doctrines associated with that event, there is always the world's way of viewing or dealing with that topic.
Speaker 2:When we come to the flood, of course, here we're talking about the doctrine of judgment and salvation. Whenever God judges, he saves. There's grace before judgment. There's one way of salvation, right. There's perfect discrimination. There's judgment of man and nature. These are the basic truths.
Speaker 2:But this answers the whole issue of like well, where did all these fossils in the earth come from? How did those get there? Is this a picture of the evolutionary tree or something like that? No, this is a picture of the global flood, which created the conditions necessary for fossilization. Right? It must be buried very quickly with water and then mineral replacement, so you can have billions and billions of dead things captured in the rocks, which are evidence that God judged the world, not evidence of evolution. It's that God judged the world, and so the world has to deal with all these things, like fossils and so forth, but we have a very different way of dealing with them, right?
Speaker 2:This is what I mean about the importance of these major events, and we have worked our way through creation, the fall, the flood, the Noahic covenant, which gives us stability. Nobody can be an engineer in this world without the stability of the Noahic covenant Nobody. Nobody can be a mathematician, nobody can do physics, nobody can do biology, nobody can be a mathematician, nobody can do physics, nobody can do biology, nobody can do chemistry. All those processes are dependent upon the Word of God in the Noahic covenant because he provided the stability in our world so that people can function, and it says it in Acts 17,. In Him we live and move and have our being or existence. That means every human being is entirely dependent upon God for every little breath they take, every little move they make.
Speaker 2:Okay, and God put that stability in place in his word in the Noahic covenant and periodically he reminds us and he says this is the rainbow and the world takes the rainbow and they turn it into something totally different. And the world takes the rainbow and they turn it into something totally different. Why? Because this is a picture of Romans 1.18 and 19 and 20, where people are suppressing the truth about God that they know and see clearly. So the form of suppression is to reinterpret everything. To reinterpret everything so it has no remembrance or reminder of who God is and what he's doing in this world.
Speaker 2:That is what men are trying to do. They're trying to do the same thing Adam tried to do, which is hide Hide. Now, it's silly, right? We look in the garden. Here comes God and God says where are you and are you serious? You're hiding from an omnipresent God. It's a silly thing to do, but that is exactly what all humans are continuing to try to do, and, of course, they think they are so brilliant. But you're not that brilliant if you're trying to hide from an omnipresent being. In fact, you're just absolutely so this, but this is the way things are, and so it's very, very valuable to learn the framework we've.
Speaker 2:We've come, through the noah covenant, to the call of abraham, where god set his strategy in motion. Through the abrahamic covenant, god covenanted himself to israel and through them, to bring blessing to the whole world, and that obviously looks ultimately to the seed promise of the Messiah right, the one who would bring salvation, to restore us to God. So then we went to the Exodus. We see how God delivers them out of Egypt. Judgment, salvation again, mount Sinai.
Speaker 2:We learn the doctrines of communication, revelation, inspiration and canonicity. Right Rick, revelation, inspiration, canonicity God speaks. He speaks from outside of time into time in language that human can understand, because God made us in his image and he's the one who divided the languages of Babel anyway. So he has a fully complete grasp of language and he knows how to communicate with man. Yet people come along in the Bible and they twist it every which way they can. It's not a rubber Bible. This is not a piece of rubber that can be twisted and distorted any which way you want. God has a really good grasp on language. He made us in his image so we would read the text and understand what he meant.
Speaker 2:It is intended to be understood. People say, yeah, but you can't understand the book of Revelation. It's so hard. It's got all these images and all these visions and dreams and all this stuff. Yet the very first word of the book is apocalypsis, and that book means to disclose something so that it can be understood. It's to remove a veil or to remove a cover off something so it can be seen clearly. Book of Revelation is meant to be understood. In fact, verse 3 says Blessed is he who reads and understands the birds of this prophecy. And yet people are like I don't know what I mean. No, you're just hiding. You're just hiding from God. You don't want to understand.
Speaker 2:Peter talks about this willful ignorance. Unbelievers are in a state of willful ignorance. They don't want to know, you say, but they act like they're so smart. Yeah, they do, but that's again, that's just a cloak. There's nothing really there. It's fantasy land, so.
Speaker 2:But God has made himself very known through the Mount Sinai event. We know that he can speak to us. He reveals in the Bible, through human authors, his word. Right, there's those three doctrines, and we came last time and started to deal with the conquest, and I want to finish that up today. So let's talk a little bit about the conquest. The conquest teaches us about the doctrine of sanctification, or what we just might say. You know, being set apart. Sanctify is a fancy word. The word holy also comes from this word, and holy means set apart. God is holy, he's set apart, right, but we are to be holy as he is holy. Right, it means set apart, so we're to be set apart.
Speaker 2:Now let's talk a little bit about this event that is described in the books of Joshua and early judges, what we know as the conquest. The way to imagine all this in your mind's eye is the rugged terrain of sanctification, or being set apart, because they're going down from the valley of Jordan. They've got to go up to Jericho and then further up to Ai and all the other cities that were up along that high mountainous ridge, and so it's difficult to go up and to fight up. And this is the picture of sanctification. As I mentioned last week, fortunately we already have the high ground in Christ, ephesians 6. So we're really fighting down now.
Speaker 2:But what you see in the book of Joshua is the struggle of sanctification. So it traces that ground in Joshua and Judges and the nation was to learn loyalty to God through his word. It says that at the beginning of the book, to meditate on his word day and night, right, and only to be strong and courageous, which is to talk about the exercise of faith, trusting his word. So you meditate on his word and then you're strong and courageous, meaning you, you go after it, you trust him that his promises are true in their case, that God's going to give them the land right. God's going to give them the land. We just have to follow his strategy.
Speaker 2:And this was so they could take the land and enjoy the land. So, under the Abrahamic covenant go back to Abraham, right. That's where God promised the land, and he promised it to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob, and it was an unconditional covenant. In other words, god is going to give them the land and it is their land by divine right. In other words, they have the title to the land. Like, you might own a piece of property and have the title to that property, although you may not live on it right, you may not be enjoying it, it just may be something you have title to. So Israel has the land that God promised by legal title.
Speaker 2:But how are they going to get to enjoy it? Well, god made another covenant, the one he made at Mount Sinai, called the Sinaitic or Mosaic covenant. So the nation needs to meditate on that law, that covenant, day and night. So they're very careful to do everything that is written in it right. And if they would meditate upon it, then that would enable them to trust the Lord and obey him as they went into the land. So they would defeat their enemies and then they'd get to enjoy the land, because all their enemies would be removed, right, and they would have cities that they did not build, they would have fields that they did not sow right. They would have all these things that God would bless them with, but if they failed to trust and obey, then they would be defeated by their enemies and eventually exiled from the land, which ends up happening at the exile right. That ends up happening as you get closer to the end of the Old Testament. So when they failed, what did they need to do as a nation? They needed to confess and be restored to fellowship and get back on track, you know, trying to live according to the Mosaic covenant and get back on track. Trying to live according to the Mosaic covenant.
Speaker 2:Joshua's generation did. Okay, I would just say it was partial. It was a partial conquest, and the reason it was partial is because they failed to learn loyalty to God completely. They only had partial loyalty. And so in Judges 2, god pronounces doom on that generation. He says you're not going to drive all your enemies out. They did take military possession of the land, but they never drove out all the remaining inhabitants.
Speaker 2:And so those remaining inhabitants, through the rest of the Old Testament, kind of grow up around Israel and Israel among them, and they teach Israel their ways, the idolatry among them, and they teach Israel their ways, the idolatry, child sacrifice, all those things. And Israel was led astray by all these pagan rituals and ideas and eventually turned against God right, and God booted them out of the land. But God is faithful. God made an Abrahamic covenant long before that. And in the future, what he's going to do, he's going to draw a generation of Israel to himself and they will learn to trust in him and in his conquering Messiah. And the Messiah will come and he will conquer the whole land and he will bring the nation into the land of Israel that he promised them and he will plant them securely in it forever.
Speaker 2:So Joshua in the Old Testament, his name Yahashua or Yeshua in the Hebrew, and his parallel or counterpart is Yeshua Jesus. They basically have the same name. And that's to show us that God showed us through Joshua that the Messiah would be a conqueror. And Joshua is not the Messiah because he only partially conquered. So there's one who's coming of the same name. Actually, hebrews refers to Joshua as Jesus, as the one who will conquer and complete it at his second advent. So all these things look forward to Israel receiving their land one day. So that's the story of the conquest. It was only partial. And then you go into the judges' period. But what can we learn here? So all these things look forward to Israel receiving their land one day. So that's the story of the conquest. It was only partial. And then you go into the judges' period. But what can we learn here?
Speaker 2:Again, the doctrine of sanctification means set apart. There are several points to the doctrine of sanctification. There are two phases. We'll look at the aim of sanctification. What is it you're aiming for? The dimensions of sanctification, which are two. The means, which are two. The means, which are also two, and the enemies, which everybody knows, that the world, the flesh and the devil. So let's look at the phases first. So we're very clear, and I just kind of talked about this.
Speaker 2:Now what we're doing is just delineating it. So there's positional. The first phase of sanctification is positional. The second is experiential. So position is not experience, it's what you have by position or what Israel has by position. Experience is an ongoing, you know, experience.
Speaker 2:So in Israel, their positional sanctification is what God said he would do for Israel in the Abrahamic covenant.
Speaker 2:In other words, it's Israel's place in God's plan. In other words, it's Israel's place in God's plan, right, it's Israel's place, unique among all the nations in God's plan. I mean, no other nation in the history of the world had God make a covenant with them. It just didn't Only Israel had God make a covenant with them. Now that didn't mean that it was only ultimately for them, because you see in the terms there land seed and worldwide blessing that that worldwide, that's much larger than Israel. So the intent of the Abrahamic covenant that God made with Israel and giving that their position in his plan was to bless the whole world. And we are enjoying part of that blessing today, are we not? Since we have salvation in the Jewish Messiah, jesus Christ. Right, so that's their position. And in our sanctification it corresponds to our justification. The moment that you believe in Christ, you are credited with Christ's righteousness. So you are set apart. Right, you are set apart in phase one of your sanctification, or what we just call justification. So at the moment of faith, you are set apart.
Speaker 2:Now, as far as experience is concerned with Israel, this is what God wanted Israel to do. So the position is what God said he would do. Right, experience is what God wanted Israel to do and it's in the Mosaic Covenant. And if they did do the Mosaic Co covenant, then they would enjoy the land. They would recognize the seed or the seed line that would come through Abraham, isaac, jacob, the tribe of Judah, as the covenant comes to David in the next story in the Bible, that the seed would come through David's house, right. And they would also enjoy blessing. You know fruitfulness, the fruit of the vine. You know everybody sit under their own shade tree. Doesn't this sound good, you know? So this is the blessing that they would enjoy if they kept the Mosaic law in their experience.
Speaker 2:Okay, so keeping the Mosaic law, of course, would set them apart from other nations. Other nations had other constitutions, maybe it was the laws of Ashnuna or the code of Hammurabi or whatever. Whatever other nations had their own legal codes. God had a special legal code for Israel and if they kept that, it would set them apart from all the other nations, right? So the more they kept that, the more distinct they looked from the other nations, and this was supposed to be a testimony. So this corresponds to our sanctification. We're not under the Mosaic covenant, but we are under this thing called the new covenant, and there are laws, the law of Christ.
Speaker 2:Galatians 6, 1 Corinthians 9, talk about the law of Christ, and these are the commands that he wants us to follow. He wants us to keep, and so, as we keep him, we enjoy experiential blessing right. If we break them, of course, we don't enjoy blessing right. But for everything, for Israel, there's also a correspondence for the church. I'm just trying to point that out. So these are the phases, and every Jew who was following Joshua's leadership as they went into the land, the first thing they need to know is that position right there. Hey, this land belongs to us. It's our land by divine right. God said it's ours. Right, that gives you some backbone, doesn't it? I mean, you know, then, god is on your side, right, because he promised us this. And it's motivation to experientially obey the mosaic covenant and enjoy taking the land and being blessed in the land. Right, it's motivation. Okay, so that's the way a jew should think in the time of joshua.
Speaker 2:As far as the aim, what were they aiming for? Okay, the aim is always to learn loyalty to god through his word. Learn loyalty to God through his word. Learn loyalty to God through his word. You know, sometimes we talk about love, we use the verse you know, love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. That's the aim. I mean, that's what we're going for, right? I just replaced love with loyalty, because so many people think that love is a mushy term. I mean, it's just come that way in our culture. So to get rid of the mushiness, you know, and to convey what the intent is when it says love the Lord, your God, I've replaced it with loyalty, because that's how we show loyalty to God. We keep his commandments, we do what he has said right. So we want to learn loyalty to God.
Speaker 2:It's a process. It takes time. You're not going to wake up tomorrow and just be easy or something like that. But the goal or aim is to learn loyalty to God through his words, which means you have to be meditating in the word, otherwise you don't know what he wants you to do. Okay, in every situation. So learn loyalty to God by staying in his word. Right, for Joshua and them, it was meditate on the word day and night, right? So you're very careful to do everything that's written in it. That's what the text says, and this is the same thing for us. Okay, we have to listen to his word so we can learn loyalty to him. So there's the process of listening, that's hearing his voice in the scriptures, listening to the word, reading the word, having the word taught, thinking about it, learning to trust, because faith comes by hearing. So trust grows as you listen to the word and it works its way out in obedience. Okay, so there it is Listen, trust, obey. And I think that's on our website. I think that's like the main thing on the front page.
Speaker 2:This is kind of our whole theme and vision for this whole church is an overall focus for years and years to come. That's what we're going for, our aim For Israel. What were they to listen to? Well, not the law of Christ Christ hasn't come yet but they were listening to the law of Moses, right, the laws that are under the covenant that God made with them at Mount Sinai. And they were to listen to that and then learn to trust the Lord and obey him, right? It's really kind of a simple formula, isn't it? It's really kind of a simple formula.
Speaker 2:The problem is, well, we want to listen to all these other voices. We're so busy. We have to listen to this and listen to that. I don't have time for the Bible. That's just saying I don't have time for God. That's what you're saying, but it's a rather simple formula Listen to him. I would do this every day. Learn to trust him and obey him.
Speaker 2:For the church, of course, listen to the law of Christ. This would be in the New Testament. Of course we get principles from the Old Testament. It's all written for us, but it's not all written to us. Right, the whole Bible is for us, but it's not all to us. Some of us to Israel, some of us to the church, some of us to the pre-Israel people who lived in the time of Noah and so forth. But there's still principles from all over that we can get. And as we listen to the law of Christ, we know what he wants of us. Then we trust, we learn to trust him and obey. So the aim for us is the same Learn loyalty to God through his word, his word. You can't substitute anything else. It's not enough to sit there and pray. I would say prayer is talking to God. Reading the Bible is listening to God.
Speaker 2:In Jeremiah, I think it's 11. It's been a long time since I've looked, but I believe it's Jeremiah 11. The Lord says I'm not listening to your prayers anymore because you're not listening to my word anymore. I'm just not going to listen. You know, if you won't listen to me, why should I listen to you? So he wants us to listen to him and then he will be more apt to listen to us.
Speaker 2:What does James 5 say? The prayer of a righteous man availeth much, not the prayer of, you know, just any old Tom, dick and Harry who doesn't care about God and His righteousness, doesn't walk according to His ways. Does the prayer of a righteous man avail as much? And it gives Elijah as an example. So that means that God listens to some believers more than he listens to other believers, because some believers are interested in righteousness and others are like I'm just going to do whatever, I'm going to live a licentious life. James 4 or 6 says there's a greater grace for the believer who's humble. It also implies this over in 1 Peter 5, which we heard a couple weeks ago that while God gives grace, there's availability of grace to all men and all believers. He extends more grace to believers who are humble than he does to believers who are arrogant. So this is all experiential enjoyment, a blessing that God gives if we follow the law of Christ.
Speaker 2:So we got the phases right. There's two. We got the aim learn loyalty to God. And now we go to the dimensions In your Christian life. So this is only looking at experience. Okay, by the way, this is only looking at number two, our experience. Here there's two dimensions. There's the fellowship dimension and that's the any moment dimension. Are you in fellowship or are you out of fellowship?
Speaker 2:Israel was either in fellowship or they were out of fellowship. They were in fellowship when they were walking in obedience to the law, as they followed the servant Joshua or Moses or the king David or whoever. And vice versa, they were out of fellowship when they were not in obedience to the law of Moses. And you can see a trend in Israel as you just trace their history. As you start with Saul, it's kind of bad. And then David comes along and you start getting in the nation a core group of believers who are learning loyalty to God, and you see they are walking in fellowship of the Lord.
Speaker 2:And then it really comes to blossom in the time of Solomon, what we call the golden era of Solomon. Right, why is it called the golden era? It's called the golden era because God had prospered them so greatly. I mean we walk on asphalt or grass, they walked on gold. I mean you want to talk about a booming economy? I mean Israel was the center of the world, the richest place on the planet, far and away. I mean the Queen of Sheba came and she was like are you kidding me? Like it wasn't even half of what was told to me. I mean this is unreal, this is unbelievable. And that was all due to what it was due to the fact that Israel as a nation had a core group of believers who were learning the law and walking in terms of the law and God was blessing them. I didn't mean they're perfectly keeping the law Of course everybody's a sinner but I mean like, when the law demanded a sacrifice, the believers took sacrifice.
Speaker 2:They really knew what it was. How costly sin was? We don't For us. What do you do? You go confess, you say Lord, and you acknowledge whatever it was. How costly sin was? We don't For us. What do you do? You go confess, you say Lord, and you acknowledge whatever it was, and he puts you back in fellowship. Right, for them it was like a goat. Is that a lot of money? Uh-huh, it's very expensive to sin in Old Testament Israel. Very expensive, so you would probably think a little bit more about it, like this is really going to cost me financially, economically, okay, but of course you know, and that's what I'm saying that generation did If they sinned, they actually brought the required sacrifice, but due to that, god blessed them. Okay, so they would have plentiful amounts so they could bring sacrifice, okay, see.
Speaker 2:So it sounds non-intuitive, like I'm gonna take these sacrifices down there, I'm gonna get poor. That's what you're thinking. I'm working, my, I mean, I'm losing everything, I'm throwing all my hard-earned labor in the trash, can that's what you feel like. But if you're doing it because you're trusting the Lord, but if you're doing it because you're trusting the lord and he's going to bless, and that's what he was doing, I mean, did you see the slaughter when they dedicated the temple in first kings eight, there's like 120 000 sheep are offered. Where did they get that wealth? Well, god was blessing them because they were keeping the law of moses.
Speaker 2:And see, the same thing is true for us. See, we feel like, well, this is sacrifice. I don't want to sacrifice this or that little thing in my life because then I won't have that. And God's saying if you just learn to understand what sacrifice is about, sacrifice is giving up something that is valuable. But when you do that, you find wealth beyond what you ever imagined. Okay, on the other side of that, and so, but that's not intuitive for us. We think accumulate is the only way to get more. He says sacrifice is the only way to have more.
Speaker 2:How is it that we have the riches of eternal life? Is eternal life worth very much? What's the value? It that we have the riches of eternal life? Is eternal life worth very much? What's the value? Can you put a price tag on eternal life? Yet that comes right out of sacrifice, doesn't it? Jesus Christ offered himself as a sacrifice and every one of us who's believing in him has eternal life. Infinite blessing Like. The value that comes out of the sacrifice far outweighs the sacrifice itself. See, and that's what we have to learn. Okay, it's not intuitive, it's not intuitive.
Speaker 2:So there's the fellowship dimension. Okay, in or out of fellowship, and this has a day-by-day basis for us. We're either in or out, okay, but we want to stay in as much as we can. The other dimension of sanctification is maturity, and this is the long-term dimension. This is, in other words, spiritual growth over long periods of time Two years, five years, 10 years, 30 years, 50 years, 80 years, however long you remain a Christian.
Speaker 2:Okay, so this is looking at things. There's going to be ups and downs in fellowship right, that's any moment. But this is looking at what's the trend, what's the overall trend in my Christian life. Sometimes we get down, we're going through, let's just say, a lull in our Christian life and we can get depressed. I'm convinced a lot of people in this world who are Christians are depressed. I'm convinced most of the people, a lot of people in this world who are Christians are depressed. How do they? What do you do when you're in a lull and you're down and you're depressed and you don't have much hope? What are you supposed to do right here? Focus on this dimension. Discipline yourself to go back to these notes and say oh yeah, there's the long term growth. If you do that, you'll say this to yourself Well, where was I 20 years ago? Oh, I was a numbskull little baby believer. I didn't know anything.
Speaker 2:I mean, I was just getting started, I was still in my Christian diapers, but now I'm potty trained and I've grown way past that. Okay, and see, it's encouraging because you go, oh well, god's been at work in my life. Even though right now I'm in a lull, he's grown me a long way from back then and that reminds us that, oh, god's at work in us. What they're willing to do is good pleasure. Okay, let's just keep moving. Okay, and it can help you get back on top again. Okay.
Speaker 2:So with the maturity dimension, it takes a long time and I always say you know, when God saved you, he didn't. You know he didn't. He wasn't planting a squash. A squash takes six months, you know, from planting to harvesting. He was planting an oak and you know it takes a long time. We just had to replace a tree. I don't know what would we replace? Some chinese pistachio or something like that? I don't know. We planted it like two or three years ago, yeah, whatever it was, and, uh, and, and I had to replace this tree right and in its place, I think, I put some kind of maple. It's like it's gonna take like 30 years for that to be this big giant tree right, which is frustrating because it takes so long. But that's looking at sanctification for the long term. Remember, god is growing you not in a squash, he's growing you like an oak, it's, it's. It's a lifetime I mean, it's a hundred years to mature, see, and so god's at work and it seems slow. Just be patient and always go back to this dimension, stay with it, stay with the Christian life. The means, the means of sanctification. Well, there's two means Law For Israel that was what God revealed that he wanted them to do in the Law of Moses. Right, here's these laws.
Speaker 2:People say 613 laws. I'll go on a tangent here for a moment. There's not 613 laws. You can count them yourself or research it yourself, you'll find out. There's not 613 laws, there's only about 270.
Speaker 2:Interestingly, the 613 was a tool used in a sermon in the 4th century after Christ by Rabbi Simla, and Simla said as a Jew. He said you're supposed to keep the law 365 days a year. He said with every bone in your body. And he said there was 248 bones in the human body, which there's not, but anyway, it was just a tool. But if you add 248 and 365, guess what? You get 613. Okay, it really just had to do with the number of days in a year and the number of bones in the human body added together. And then later some Jews came along and said well, we can figure out how we can make a match 613. But there's not really 613. There's only about 270.
Speaker 2:By the way, you can only keep today between 50 and 90 of them somewhere in there Can actually be kept. And the reason they can't be kept is because there's no temple over there which is required to keep so many of the laws. But here's the deal. Just as an aside out of that, doesn't that mean that the Messiah has already come? If you can't even keep the Mosaic law code, yes, it does, because he kept it. He kept it and it's been done away as a system and the temple's destroyed. There's no way. So you know, all Jews in the world should believe that Jesus is the Messiah. On that simple fact alone that you cannot keep the 270 or so laws of Moses, they should recognize, first of all, that's not a means of salvation. Never was they need to turn to the righteousness that was already established by Christ.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we have the law. That's for Israel, temporary, until Christ came For us. It's God's revealed will for the church in the law of Christ. So you can go through the New Testament and you can count up commands, but their imperatives are all over. You know. Pray without ceasing youasing stuff like that. Humble yourselves, casting your cares on him, for he cares for you. So there's lots of commands to follow and that's what God wants us to do. So there's law, and by means of keeping the law of Christ we are sanctified. But here's the thing you have to have the second means in order to keep it, and that is grace, because you're not going. The second means in order to keep it, and that is grace, because you're not going to keep it in your own strength. You're not going to do it yourself.
Speaker 2:Grace is God's enablement to keep the law For Israel. God's enablement was through Moses and the priests who interceded for the nation. Without that system, they could not keep the law. That's why I said today they can't keep it. Do they have priests over there in the land of Israel? Oh, they want to build the temple, they want to have all the priests and do that all again, right, but they can't do it now. So there's no way for the nation Israel to be sanctified today? There's just no way. It's impossible.
Speaker 2:Well, for us, it's God's enablement, through Christ, who is our high priest, the book of Hebrews. He is our faithful intercessor. We go to him. He's our advocate. 1 John 2, 1 and 2. He is our attorney. He takes everything before the Father and says I paid for that, I dealt with, that, it's over, it's finished. And so he is instrumental to our sanctification, our spiritual life, our ability to keep the law.
Speaker 2:Without God's grace you can't keep it. Jesus said himself apart from me, you can do absolutely nothing, absolutely nothing, you cannot. That's why it's called walking by the Spirit in Galatians 5. You walk by the Spirit, the Spirit, in Galatians 5. You walk by the Spirit, meaning that he is the one who is tracing the steps for you and living through you, producing Christ's life actually through you. Galatians also talks about Christ being formed in us, and that happens by the Spirit as we walk, you know, in the sense of go along with Him. He produces the Spirit, produces love, which is the chief fruit of the Spirit.
Speaker 2:And why it's called fruit singular is because love is the focus and all the others are expressions of love. Love is the fruit of the Spirit, all the others are expressions of love. Think about it. Joy, isn't that an expression of love? Or, coming out of love? Patience, doesn't that come out of love? I mean, if you're impatient, you're not loving, okay. Peace, isn't that a fruit of love? Doesn't it come out of love? Kindness, doesn't that come out of love? Goodness, doesn't that come out of love? Faithfulness or integrity Doesn't that come out of love? See, they all come, come out of love. That's why it calls fruit of the spirit singular love.
Speaker 2:Very first, one listed, and then it gives expressions of love to clarify further what it looks like to walk by the spirit. But we have to have his grace, see, then to have obedience to the law. Israel needed that too. And then the enemies. You know it's not like. Well, this isn't going to be hard. No, it's going to be very hard, right?
Speaker 2:So you've got the world. That's the cosmic system around us that's opposed to God. Ever since the fall, there's been the quote world system, and it is a system of evil that is opposing God. And then you've got the flesh. This is what's within us, the sin, nature or flesh that we all possess as humans. Right? This isn't good news. This is, you know, the monk or the nun who says I'm going to take myself out of the world. I want to get away from the cosmic system that's opposed to God, so I can live a holier life. The problem is, then they got inside and they still had their flesh. They still had their flesh and we've seen enough of it in the news to see that if you go and become a monk or something like that, it's not going to keep you from sinning. Then they exploit all sorts of avenues, because the flesh is very creative. It's going to find a way to express itself. So that's an enemy. Our enemy it's within us. And then the devil, the spirit being, who's the arch enemy of God and present ruler of the world system Ephesians 2, 1, and 2, and 3. He is over the world system and all those who are part of the world system and he is opposed to God. So he's our enemy, right? He doesn't want us to be sanctified, he doesn't want us to be set apart unto God. He wants to destroy our spiritual life. So these things are all taught.
Speaker 2:You can think about the enemies in the book of Joshua. I mean, it's the Canaanites, it's the Jebusites, it's the Kenites. You know, it's these people, groups that were living in the land right, and in your mind's eye, you go okay, those were flesh and blood. They had to fight against them. They were God's enemies. Right, our enemies are not flesh and blood, right, but they're spiritual forces of darkness. But there's a parallel here. I'm just saying there's a parallel. As you study Joshua, study it for the real enemies and see what God is doing as far as the land, with Israel and all that. But also go, oh, and at the same time, we have our spiritual battle over here. They have the physical battles, we have the spiritual battles, and that's why Joshua and Judges are so rich for the spiritual life, because you can see all these things.
Speaker 2:You're supposed to ask yourself well, what did Israel have? Well, they had the land by divine right. That's their position. But now the only way to enjoy it is keep the Mosaic covenant. How do they do that? Well, that's the aim. They learn loyalty to God right through keeping his word. Then God will bless them. In the land, the dimensions either the nation was walking according to God's word or not. And how did it work out over Israel in their long term? The maturity, the means they had, the law they had to keep that, but how were they going to keep it? God's grace, through Moses and the priests, see. And then the enemies well, they were the Canaanites. For them, for us, you know, it's the world, the flesh and the devil. Of course, the devil's behind the Canaanites, and all that too, but you see how this all works.
Speaker 2:Now let's briefly go over to the rise and reign of King David, and what David does. It's very simple. It just picks up one of the doctrines that we just learned, and it's the fellowship doctrine, which is the any moment Are you in fellowship or are you out of fellowship, and we capitalize on this at the story of David. So let's tell a little bit about the story. Kingship began at creation.
Speaker 2:God created man in his own image to do what? To rule. That's a kingship term. That's what kings do they rule. So God made man to rule. However, at the fall, man lost this rule to Satan, who became the ruler of the present world system. Lost this rule to Satan, who became the ruler of the present world system, right? The first good news, though, is in Genesis 3.15, where God promised the seed of the woman, who would restore the rule to man. Okay, right, the seed of the woman is. Ultimately, we know the Messiah and he's going to restore the rule to man. I mean, are we going to rule with him? Yes, we're going to rule with him. He's the king of kings, but we are kings. He's just the king of kings. In other words, he's the top dog. So kingship was there from the beginning.
Speaker 2:It kind of goes into the background until after the flood, and then God divides the language and you have nations right, the Tower of Babel and the Table of Nations. Then you see kingship, because you've got guys like in Genesis 14, like Melchizedek. Remember this guy? He was a priest, king of Salem. So at that time, priests and king one person could be both a priest and a king.
Speaker 2:Then you have the story of the Exodus. Israel is born out of Egypt. They go to Mount Sinai and God becomes their king. That's what's happening at Mount Sinai. God is saying I'm the king and I give the laws and you are to keep these laws. God then ruled through certain individuals like Moses, joshua and then the judges. But at the end of the judges period, what does it say? It says the people no longer recognize God as their king and everyone did what was right in their own eyes, and they wanted a king like all the other nations, remember.
Speaker 2:So God said okay, fine, I'm going to give you one. And it was Saul, and he was exactly what the people wanted. He was handsome. He was really tall it says he was a head taller than everybody else, so he really looked the part. You're going to vote for a president, vote for the best looking one. I don't know. That's what they wanted, and God even offered Saul an everlasting dynasty, but all he had to do was those three things that are always in the picture Listen, trust, trust and obey. And Saul couldn't do it. Saul didn't want to do it, okay, he didn't want to listen to the word, so he failed. And then God said okay, now I'm going to give you the king that I want. You got one that you wanted. Now I'm going to show you what it looks like when you get one like the one I want. And so we know it's David, god anointed David.
Speaker 2:David was a young shepherd boy. You got to be shocked sometimes by the vocations that some of these guys have that prepare them for leadership Shepherding, caring for sheep walking around in the middle of nowhere, taking sheep to green pastures right and to water right. This is where God saw in this young man a heart for caring for others. Because he cared for sheep, he rescued him from a lion, he rescued him from a bear and the guy was building him into a leader by taking him through being a shepherd. So David listened, he trusted, he obeyed the Lord, and God made an eternal covenant with him and promised that the seed that he'd made, the promise of the seed, the woman's seed, would come through his house and this seed would be an eternal seed who would sit on an eternal throne and rule an eternal kingdom. And so David was. His patience, his trust in the Lord's promise in his early years, his humility, all these foreshadow the ultimate seed of David who would come, who is the king, messiah. And that's how the New Testament opens. This is the genealogy of David seed of David, seed of Abraham. It's tracing this promise. So kingship really gets moving and the messianic picture really gets moving with David Now, even though David started off really well and we all look at his early life and we're like, wow, goliath, we love this guy and he won't kill Saul, right, saul's still on the throne and he will not execute the Lord's anointed, even when he gets the great opportunity at Ein Gedi in the cave.
Speaker 2:Remember that story? Oh my goodness, all of David's mighty men in the cave with him, saul, goodness, all of David's mighty men in the cave with him. Saul goes into the cave to relieve himself. I mean, you got to laugh. It's totally humorous. The guy goes in there to relieve himself and all these mighty men are there.
Speaker 2:And David wrote a psalm about this called Al-Tasheth, which means do not destroy. In the psalm, all of his mighty men are saying David, this is your shot, this is your shot. God set this up. God wants you to destroy him. This is your time, take him, take him, let us go. You don't want to take him, we'll take him. And David says no and he won't let him kill because Saul was the Lord's anointed and he didn't feel it was his place to remove him from the throne. He said I'll let God do that in God's time and God's way. He's a very patient man, humble man. So we all love that David. But then you know, he does get on the throne and he's not perfect. We find out right.
Speaker 2:In a period of spiritual weakness, the guy becomes lazy, he fails to fulfill his duties as a king, to go out and fight and lead his people in the spring. Instead, he stays back home at the palace, you know, in all this luxury. He's surrounded by wine and women and dance, and he's looking off his roof and he sees a naked woman on a housetop, you know, taking a bath. Don't know why she was doing that, probably not the wisest thing to do, but anyway, calls her up to the palace, right, well, she gets pregnant. Uh-oh, well, now I've got to get rid of her husband. He's on the front lines, let's have him pushed to the very front of the battle and he gets killed. Look at what's going on. Look at what's going on. He's committing adultery. He's covering up this adultery by murder. So not good, right.
Speaker 2:God uses finally the prophet Nathan and brings David to conviction of sin. And David responds positively Psalm 51. Against you and you only. Have I sinned right? That's why we draw out this doctrine fellowship from David, because he's the one in the Old Testament who has a whole psalm about confession and about God's grace and mercy and restoring us when we confess. So the Lord is very gracious. He does restore David to fellowship, but because of this rebellion that something happens.
Speaker 2:And we all need to understand this Very, very important. There are ongoing consequences that you can't stop Once you sin in this world. There are ongoing consequences, some of them big, some of them not as big, but the point is there's still consequences for all of our sin that we do. And even if you confess the sin, those consequences don't just automatically go away and you have to live with them. And even if you confess the sin, those consequences don't just automatically go away and you have to live with them. And these are what produce the new challenges that we have to face, because now we're having to deal with the repercussions of this sin or pattern of sin or group of sins.
Speaker 2:And the challenge is this Are we going to handle them by grace? Are we going to get back on the spiritual horse, so to speak, and keep going in the Christian life, or are we going to give up and quit? And a lot of Christians give up and quit and they say this doesn't work, the Christian life doesn't work. This is right where they say it doesn't work. No, you're just not getting back on the spiritual horse, you're quitting. And no, you're just not getting back on the spiritual horse, you're quitting. And no, it's not going to work if you quit. It only works if you keep going, if it had ongoing consequences.
Speaker 2:I mean, some of these are some of the worst things to think about. Four of his sons died. I think about it. As a father, I only got five kids. Imagine if I had four of them that died Because of something that I did. Do you think that'd go well in my marriage or do you think that's going to make it really tough? It's going to make it really, really tough. So guess what? David had marital issues too and of course, he had kingdom issues, because now his effectiveness at rule is compromised. I mean, people knew they're not dumb. So these are all the consequences that didn't go away just because David confessed. They were still there and he had to live with them and he had to learn to trust God's grace to deal with it. And guess what he did? He did, he successfully learned to depend on God's grace and recover and keep going.
Speaker 2:And that's why, in the final analysis, it says God says some of the most striking words about a guy that most people just look at and go he's an adulterer and a murderer. And God says no, no, no, he's a man after my own heart. Nobody, nobody in the Old Testament gets higher words of praise than King David, an adulterer and a murderer. You say how can that be? Because God isn't looking for perfection or lack of sin. What God is looking for is someone who will depend upon His grace and keep going and keep going and keep going, and when they fall they get back up in the Christian life and they keep going and they keep going and they keep going after Him. God's not like he's not thinking gosh, I saved you. Now you're not perfect. What's wrong with you? Why aren't you living a perfect life? That's not the way he thinks. The way he thinks is the way he thinks.
Speaker 2:With David, yeah, you blew it, but guess what? You got back on spiritual track and you walked with me. You responded to grace. You keep going and getting back in fellowship. You keep continuing in the faith. You keep striving after me. So Davis teaches us about the importance of the three elements of fellowship. So let's go through these and we'll be done for the day and we can move on to the golden era next week.
Speaker 2:The first thing that has to happen for us to get back in fellowship is we have to be convicted. If you're not convicted of your sin, then you're not going to confess it. If you're not convicted of your sin, then you're not going to confess it. So this constitutes becoming aware of the sin. Remember, david got in such a bad place with the whole Bathsheba and Uriah incident that it took Nathan having to come to him and tell him a story to get him aware. Nathan comes to him and he tells this story. Remember this story? There was a rich man, there was a poor man. The poor man had a lamb. They had raised this lamb from its birth. They fed it out of their own hand from the kitchen table. A visitor came to town. The rich man wanted to provide a meal for the visitor. So he went and he took the lamb from the poor man and he brought it in his home and he slaughtered it and he fed the visitor. And David becomes furious and he says whoever did this has to now give restitution of four lambs. Why? Why did he say that? Because that was the law. The law demanded that Mosaic law.
Speaker 2:Here's a guy who was living in sin and he was way down the rabbit hole of sin and he still knew the word of God, you don't just like miraculously lose it. This passage shows us that he knows what the word of God says. And Nathan looks at him and says you, you're the guy. It's shocking how far you can be gone. And you know, because I know, I know the Word. Oh really, sometimes you can't see it. Even though you know it, you can't see it. You're as blind as David. I am too.
Speaker 2:Someone has to come along and make us aware what David had done. Who was David? David in the story is the rich man, right? He had everything. He was David. David in the story is the rich man, right? He had everything. He was king, he was all powerful, anything he wanted he could have. Who's the poor man who had the little lamb? The poor man is Uriah, and his only prized possession was Bathsheba. What did David do? He took Uriah's most precious thing. You are the man, says Nathan. You are the one. He was made aware, though, and that's where we get Psalm 51. That is confessional Psalm.
Speaker 2:That came out of that confrontation with Nathan. I mean, the guy owned up. Not easy to do. It's the thing. People don't want to confess, they want to push off responsibility. They want to say somebody else. That's point two. Right, confession see, that's acknowledging your sin is against God. David said against you and you only have I sinned.
Speaker 2:No excuses. No, well, if she hadn't been on the rooftop that day, if she'd had a more developed swimsuit on, I wouldn't have done it. That's just making excuses, that's not confessing, that's just. It's not really my fault In confession. No, you're like you're owning it, you're owning it. It really my fault In confession? No, you're like you're owning it, you're owning it. It's on me. I don't have any excuses here and it's not well so-and-so. You know I'm shifting. We know that story from the beginning. It's the woman you gave me, it was the serpent. Everybody just trying to get out of the way of the headlights right, it wasn't me. It just trying to get out of the way of the headlights right, it wasn't me, it wasn't me. That's the first response of everybody when something's gone wrong. It wasn't me, I didn't. In my house, nobody did it.
Speaker 2:The last step is restoration. Right, when we confess, when we acknowledge against you and you only have our sin, then God experientially forgives us. So you have positional forgiveness. That's once for all. The moment you believe in Christ, you are positionally forgiven for all sin. That's what gives us our position. But restoration to fellowship is talking about the experiential forgiveness for individual sin throughout your Christian life.
Speaker 2:Whenever we confess and again, don't forget the consequences of sin continue. I mean, like you, just whatsoever man sows, this shall he also reap. I mean we would love to be able to confess and undo all the negative consequences of our sin, but it just doesn't work like that. But that's what ends up creating the next series of challenges in our Christian life, because now we've got to deal with all this mess that we brought on ourselves right and the lives of those who live around us and in close connection with us. We've brought all that there now, but the good news is that God gives us grace to deal with those consequences, and David teaches us these things. And so if you want to be a man or woman after God's own heart, you want that evaluation from God.
Speaker 2:What do you need to do? Follow this doctrine. What do you do when you sin in thought, word or deed? What do you do? Do you just keep going in life? Because if you do, when you sin in thought, word or deed, what do you do? Do you just keep going in life. Because if you do, it's kind of like knocking one domino over and then there's a long string after that and it just and they just. You've seen it.
Speaker 2:But what happens if you sin and you confess? One domino falls down but you stop the rest from going over. See, that's just an analogy, but it shows you how bad it can get. And you know, when you knock that one over and you don't confess and you let it go. That's what happened to David, isn't it? And all the dominoes started going down to the point. The guy knows the word of God, but he's committed adultery and murder and he's not even acknowledging it, he's not even aware. I mean, he's living in la-la land, okay, but that's because all those dominoes go down.
Speaker 2:And what sin does is. It blinds us. It blinds us. Remember the Pharisees and the Gospels. What are they? They're classified as blind, the blind leading the blind. Anybody who went after the Pharisees, they said, are being led by blind people. Why they weren't keeping the law, they were sinning over and over and over, and that creates this blindness, just similar to what David experienced right, where you think you can see because you can quote Bible, but you're as blind as, I'd say a bat, but they have good sonar and stuff.
Speaker 2:But you know, this is a very, very, very important doctrine. See, when you knock the domino over, when you sin, what do you need to do? You need to confess so you don't do what Knock other dominoes over, because if you knock a lot more over, what happens to your eyesight? You get like David, you get blind. And so you confess it and God is faithful to restore and hopefully the repercussions are not too great. The consequences but and God is faithful to restore and hopefully the repercussions are not too great, the consequences but they're going to continue anyway. The good news is again, god's grace is there to help you overcome the new challenges that you face. Okay, so that's the conquest doctrine of sanctification. Lots of points there, and then, with David, we just narrow in on one point fellowship. Next week, golden Era of Solomon, we'll talk more about spiritual growth because again, it's talking about sanctification.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us on Beyond the Walls with Jeremy Thomas. If you would like to see the visuals that went along with today's sermon, you can find those on Rumble and on YouTube under Spokane Bible Church. That is where Jeremy is the pastor and teacher. We hope you found today's lesson productive and useful in growing closer to God and walking more obediently with Him. If you found this podcast to be useful and helpful, then please consider rating us in your favorite podcast app, and until next time, we hope you have a blessed and wonderful day.