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 - What are you aiming to do?
Sanctification is the process of spiritual growth, but to what purpose? Are you a strong, healthy, majestic branch connected to the tree, or are you a tightly pruned branch producing much fruit? The point of sanctification, or our aim, is to realize and apply what we know to every area of life, not just to look good but to do good.
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 a smaller, bite-sized piece from the larger lesson. We hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 2:And I want to talk about the doctrine that's associated with those pages of Scripture and that is, it focuses on the aim of sanctification. The aim, which is the idea of saying what is the goal or what is the target. You know, If you shoot rifles and handguns and all that stuff, you have sights and you have the target. That's what you're either putting your sights on or lining up your sights for your front sight, all that stuff. And you have to know how your sights work and you have to know what you're aiming at. If you think you're ever going to hit it, you have to know what you're aiming at, right. So what are we aiming for in sanctification? What was the nation Israel aiming for? Well, of course, we've already discussed it the aim was to learn loyalty to God through his word. For him, that meant meditating upon the Mosaic law day and night, so that they would be able to keep it and therefore find success. And that's what you find in the time of Solomon, right, Tremendous success, because you're talking about not just one generation, but you're in like the fourth or fifth generation, okay, From Boaz to Obed to David, and now you've got Solomon. You've got at least four, maybe even more generations back behind that that have been building loyalty to God and passing it on. So this becomes the idea that we want to work with in the time of David and that's the aim of sanctification and what it looks like when we move into what I call advanced sanctification.
Speaker 2:Advanced sanctification is basically the idea of your now seeing that the Bible applies to every area of life and there's no area of life that you can go into. That is a separate compartment that God doesn't have anything to say about. God has spoken to every area of life. Now, the Bible is not a mathematics textbook, but it contains the presuppositions underlying mathematics, In other words, why mathematics works and who established and governs the universe so that math works right. The Bible is not a biology textbook, but it definitely contains the presuppositions underneath our biology and the principles that are involved, that these things are the way they are because God designed things in a certain pattern. So we can't say, well, I'm going to just be a biologist and go through the secular blah, blah, blah and accept all the humanist philosophy and garbage to put it French, garbage that's underlying their underlying presuppositions. No, we have to start with. The God of the Bible is the ultimate presupposition for biology, and what we're discovering in the design features that he has built into organisms the DNA, the endoplasmic reticulum, the ribosomes, all that transfer RNA, messenger RNA, all this very, very complicated stuff that people look at and say, wow, this is so neat. And I'm like, yeah, but you won't take the next step, Because the next step is how did all this get there? Like, where is all this information coming from? Information doesn't come out of nothing. Information comes out of a mind, a mind that puts information there. So in advanced, I'm just trying to give you the idea that in advanced sanctification, you're beginning to see that every area of life is rooted back to and related to God in some way. So let's talk about what this results in. This results in what we call a high biblical culture. So here are the big ideas for the aim of sanctification.
Speaker 2:When you're talking about advanced sanctification that you see in the time of Solomon, when there was so much blessing, it says in the text of those pages that you know everything. In the time of Solomon, when there was so much blessing, it says in the text of those pages that everything in the temple that was engraved in cedar and all this was then covered in gold. Everything was covered in gold and it says silver was not used in that day. It wasn't considered valuable. So everything was just gold. He was bringing in 666 talents of gold a year gold. He was bringing in 666 talents of gold a year, which is 666 times. Let's just say somewhere around 70 to 80 pounds of gold they were bringing in every year. He built a naval fleet down in the Red Sea. I mean like he was going all over the world sending ships out, you know, discovering things, and bringing back all sorts of different trees it talks about almond trees and all sorts of very interesting things that were coming to Israel, because Israel was just like the center of everything. So that was a biblical culture and we want to talk a little bit about that with the connection to the golden era.
Speaker 2:So the first point is biblical culture is a byproduct of advanced sanctification. What does this mean? Okay, this means, number one, you're educated in the Scriptures. But it means a little more than just being educated in the Scriptures. It means being educated in the Scriptures to the point you're able to explain the Scriptures to other people. Can you explain to someone else what you know or think you know. The best test to know if you really know something is if you can explain it to someone else, and so advanced sanctification is being educated in the Scriptures to the point you can explain it, articulate it to someone else. And also this another thing that is related to it is you yourself are applying the scriptures to your own life. You yourself are applying the scriptures to your own life.
Speaker 2:It's not just all you know up here and like, oh, I know so much theology. This is what every seminary student thinks. They get out and they're like, oh, I know all this stuff, I sat under the best professors. This is what you thought, too, whenever you went through whatever discipline you went through to study, and you, oh, I went to the best schools and I know all this stuff. Yeah, but you haven't got out there and applied it. That's just theoretical. You actually need time in life to have the situations arise where you have to apply what you learn, Because those situations don't come up instantaneously.
Speaker 2:So education is, is in. In one sense, it's a. It's just a way to compact a lot of information and give it to you, and most of the times, the people who are learning that say why will I ever need this. You haven't lived long enough to need it. That when you see that, then you go, oh, okay, but you probably won't see it until you're 45 or 50 years old Okay. And people who are older than me? They're saying, well, no, you really won't see it until you're 65 years old. And that may be Okay Because I still don't have all the experiences I could have that require me to apply the things I've learned.
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.