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 - Maturity & Worship
Strange things become normalized, but not by God. What kinds of strange things? Science that denies any hint of design. Worship that is about the persons feelings and not Gods attributes. Enjoyment and pleasure outside of the Divine Institutions. And it all starts with the failure of the Church.
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:Now what I mean by when I say, at the end of this, this integrated system that God has here and it's all under His interpretive control, is I mean this I mean God interprets everything as it truly is. Do you know a fossil, for example? Until you know the fossil's place in the plan of God, it's interesting to consider how two men can impact our view of doctrine so profoundly.
Speaker 1:How is it that two men who lived centuries ago could demonstrate so many aspects of fellowship, of sanctification, of maturity, of worship, of obedience, of rebellion, of sin, of restoration, confession? How is it that two men could demonstrate so many aspects of God's love toward us, his attributes of righteousness and justice and truth and omniscience and our proper way of responding, demonstrating to us what spiritual maturity is like, what spiritual failure?
Speaker 1:is like, and what restoration. Yes, we're talking about King David and King Solomon, and it is astounding to see how relevant their lives from thousands of years ago are for us today.
Speaker 2:Okay. So we're going through the framework in the Old Testament. Again, it's a review, right, because we already taught this I don't even know how many lessons a year and a half ago or so, whenever we started it. And so now we're preparing for the New Testament framework and to do that, what I'm doing is going back and just highlighting the big points of the Old Testament framework. So in the framework, we take the historical events, we emphasize the historicity of these events. These are real events that happened in space and time, and then what we do on the other side is we link doctrines to them. So those main events for the Old Testament are the creation of the world, where we learn about God, man and nature. The fall, where we learn about sin and suffering. The flood, where we learn about judgment and salvation. The Noahic covenant, where again we learn more about God, man and nature, and stability and nature that God has provided for our present world, the world after the flood. And then we go to the call of Abraham, where we learn about the doctrine of faith and justification, because Abraham's justified by faith. And the Exodus, where we again look at judgment, salvation, as God judges Egypt but he saves Israel. It's very clear. And we add the dimension there of substitutionary blood, atonement, because the blood of the lamb on the door and all of this imagery that teaches us about what the Messiah will come and do as the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And then we move to Mount Sinai, right, and we talk about three doctrines revelation, inspiration, canonicity. God speaks through men in the Bible. That's a summary of those three doctrines. And so we've done Mount Sinai.
Speaker 2:And then the conquest. And this is where the rest, most of the rest of the Old Testament, focuses on the doctrines that we introduce at the conquest. So I want to bring these up. So we are reminded that, with Joshua and that whole generation that went in to take the land, that the whole picture is one of sanctification. And there are phases to sanctification. You know there's your position.
Speaker 2:Israel had a position, by definition, in the Abrahamic covenant. They are God's people through whom he will bless the world, whom he would give a land and bring the seed, the Messiah. But that's not the only phase. They also had their experience. That's defined by the Mosaic covenant. They're supposed to keep that law right, but of course they can't. They failed. But the aim in their sanctification was to learn loyalty to God, and the same thing is true for us. I mean, in the New Testament it says that, both for the Old and New Testament, that we are to love the Lord, our God, with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. Again, I always just describe that as loyalty, because loving the Lord, your God, with all your heart, mind, soul and strength means to learn loyalty to Him, to be loyal to Him, put Him above everything else. So Israel was to learn loyalty to God through his word, especially in the Mosaic covenant.
Speaker 2:And then, of course, there are the dimensions, and there are two dimensions. There's the fellowship dimension. Either the nation was in fellowship or out of fellowship, and either you are in fellowship or you're out of fellowship, right, at any given moment. It's just back and forth. Whenever you're walking by the Spirit, you're in fellowship, right. Whenever you're filled by the Spirit, you're in fellowship. But by the Spirit, you're in fellowship. Right. Whenever you're filled by the Spirit, you're in fellowship. But when you sin, of course, now you are out of fellowship and you're supposed to confess, to get back in fellowship. So that's the any moment dimension, the fellowship dimension. The other dimension is the long-term, or what I call maturity dimension, the maturity dimension. So maturity, of course, is looking at your Christian life over the long haul, how many years you've been a believer and how long you've been in the Word and how long you've been living the Christian life. It all builds up as you become more and more mature. So that's one of the dimensions.
Speaker 2:And then the means. The means are both law and grace, because there is law. Israel had the law of Moses. The church has the law of Christ. So there is law. That's the content that we are to obey. But that's not enough. It's just saying you need to do this, you need to do this, you need to do this. That's just do's and don'ts. That's not going to work. That's going to just end up being some kind of legalistic system or something. So we also have grace as the other means. You have to have grace. Apart from me, you can do nothing. So we have to have this enabling grace in order to keep the law of Christ. And so those are the two means.
Speaker 2:And then enemies. We know what those are, right, the world, the flesh and the devil. The world is the cosmic system around us. The devil, he's the arch enemy, spirit being the arch enemy of God. And then there's our own flesh. Sometimes we refer to it as the sin nature, but it's our natural inclination or disposition to do evil that we inherit from Adam. And so, now that we believed in Christ, the good news is we're no longer under the penalty of sin and we don't have to live under the power of our sin nature. We can be set free from that if we live through faith.
Speaker 2:And so these are the basic ideas of sanctification, all taught in the period of Joshua and the early pages of the book of Judges. And that generation had partial obedience, so they enjoyed partial victory. But Joshua looks to a greater than Joshua, who is the Messiah, who will have total victory and bring in therefore total obedience and therefore total victory. So we still look for that in the future messianic kingdom. So we're going to draw from this, though in the period of Solomon, because we've had David and God made a covenant with the house of David, and David's house is therefore eternal. An eternal dynasty will come from him, an eternal throne and an eternal kingdom, and so that would come through David's line, and with David, again, we emphasize fellowship.
Speaker 2:We went to that dimension in sanctification and we just amplified it because he's the guy right. He's the guy who pictures a believer who is growing and maturing, who is a man after God's own heart. And then he gets out of it. Right, he's not out at battle leading the armies of Israel in the spring when kings went out to do battle Psalm 5. He's hanging out at the palace. He looks down, you know, from his high bird's eye view, down at the city of David, and he saw a woman bathing who was not clothed and he calls her up and we have this whole problem that he created because he was out of it spiritually, got out of fellowship with the lord. Before long he plots to have her husband murdered right, and so he teaches us about fellowship. Because when nathan comes to him, the prophet and and convicts him, and it comes to a realization that he has done all this, he confesses right, so he's. He confesses right, so he's convicted. He confesses and he's restored. Those are your three steps for fellowship.
Speaker 2:So now we come to the next period that grows out of David's generation and Solomon. David's on his deathbed, but Solomon is to be the king, to sit on the everlasting throne of david and, as a young ruler, solomon in first kings three, he asked the lord to give him wisdom. Remember, and the lord says because you didn't ask for riches and because you didn't ask for honor, but you asked for wisdom, I'm going to give you more wisdom than anybody has had in the history of the world or will have after, until the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ says to the nation Israel in the book of Matthew, he says a greater than Solomon is here, and so Solomon is the wisest individual in the history of the world until Jesus Christ. In fact, if you read this story just read 1 Kings 3 through 11 today you'll see that Israel was becoming so great that all the kings of the world, not just the Queen of Sheba, but all the kings of the world, were coming to Israel to hear his wisdom and to see the magnificence of the kingdom of Israel in this period of history, which is why we call it the golden era of Solomon. Right, the golden era of Solomon.
Speaker 2:We wonder and at least I've studied a little bit about this idea why the Greek thinkers like Socrates and Plato and Aristotle began to develop philosophy in the 5th century, 6th century before Christ, and we think that the basic presupposition under these guys' philosophy was that the universe is intelligible, in other words, the universe actually makes sense. Was that the universe is intelligible, in other words, the universe actually makes sense? But this was not a part of people's thinking that we knew of outside of the Jewish world before that time. And so Greek thinking could never really get going. Because if you don't think the universe works together as a coherent harmony, then how far can you go in your thinking? You can't go very far.
Speaker 2:So where did this idea come from that the universe was an intelligible whole, that it could be understood, that it made sense? Well, it comes from Hebrew theology, and specifically through Solomon, because this is the time period when kings are coming to Israel to hear this wisdom and they marvel. Read the story of the queen of Sheba coming in 1 Kings 10. And she says I heard of these things, but what I heard wasn't even half of what it is the glory, the splendor, the wisdom. And then she, so to speak, exported that back to her country, as did the other kings who came, and Hebrew exiles would have taken these ideas of Jewish theology out into the Greek world when they went into captivity and so forth. So Phoenician sailors in the story of the book of Jonah. Right, they are the main ones who sail those waters of the Mediterranean, and so they're coming into people of all different groups and Hebrews like Jonah, and they're learning Hebrew theology, they're getting these ideas and they're exporting them around the world, and so that's why you have this explosion of Greek philosophy, with Socrates, plato and Aristotle, because they inherited a basic presupposition that you have to have, and that is that the universe is an intelligible whole. And that only comes from Hebrew theology, because Hebrew theology is talking about a creator, a God over everything. So it's a fascinating story about how the Solomonic era really became the basis for the exportation of Hebrew theology into the Greek world. They did away with some of the good theology and just kept the presuppositions and built their own systems, but that's where it's coming from. So that's an interesting story.
Speaker 2:Now, what we have in the time of Solomon is really not just one generation. You have to go back in the heritage of Solomon. Solomon comes from the line of Boaz, and that's the story in the book of Ruth, and that guy is a godly guy. That guy is loyal, he is kesed. He's repeatedly referred to as one who is loyalty and grace keen, okay, and so this is a great guy. And then, down the line, you've got Obed, and then you've got David, and then you've got Solomon.
Speaker 2:So this is a spiritual heritage, and what I like to encourage families to do is build upon the spiritual heritage. Go one step further. So you're somewhere in the line. Maybe your parents weren't even believers, so you are the beginning of a heritage. Or maybe you're two or three generations down the line and so you're building on the heritage that was left to you. But this is an important thing to build a spiritual legacy or heritage that goes through several generations. Okay, and that's what we're seeing here. We're seeing a culture in the time of Solomon that developed as a byproduct of several generations being loyal. It doesn't happen in one generation. You take a few steps. If you're the first generation, the next generation takes a few more steps and takes it further, and then the next generation can go further, right and build. Okay, and so that's what we're seeing here. In the time of Solomon, you are seeing the greatest biblical culture the world has ever seen. Period.
Speaker 2:Solomon himself was are you ready for this? A poet, a songwriter, a botanist, a zoologist, an ornithologist, an entomologist, an ichthyologist, an architect, a politician, an economist, a judge, a naval engineer and a military tactician people from everywhere in the world yes, they came to hear what this guy had to say because he was a multi-latitudinal genius. Now, unfortunately, solomon's vast kingdom and his wealth eventually led to his spiritual decay because he failed to trust the Lord to provide security for his vast kingdom and so he tried to take matters into his own hands. He is marrying foreign wives to make treaties with other nations, to have protection from them, and he multiplied horses for himself. And people say what's the problem with horses and multiplying horses? It was basically like multiplying war machines for himself, like tanks today. That was the equivalent in the ancient world. So they were for battle and for protection.
Speaker 2:He went one step further than that and he began to worship the idols of the women that he married from foreign nations and set up temples for them and worshiped idols, and this imported then idolatry into Israel. And what happened toward the end of his reign is a spiritual rot set in, and this caused the Lord's blessing on that culture to begin to decay as they underwent divine discipline. And then the prophet announces at the end of Solomon's life that the kingdom would be divided. So the kingdom had been united under David all 12 tribes and it had survived as all 12 tribes under one king in the time of Solomon. But now, after Solomon passes away and his son comes to the throne, it's going to be split and you're going to have two kingdoms the northern, which is known as Israel, and the southern, which is known as Judah. So that's the story of the time period of Solomon, and I want to talk about the doctrine that's associated with those pages of scripture, and that is it focuses on the aim, certification, um, the aim, which is the, the idea of saying what is the goal or what is the target.
Speaker 2:You know, if you shoot rifles and handguns and all that stuff, you have, you have sights and and you have the target, like 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 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, 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, advanced sanctification. 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.
Speaker 2: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 like 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 temple that was engraved in cedar and all this was then covered in gold. Everything's covered in gold. And it says silver was not used in that day, it wasn't considered valuable. So you know, just everything was just 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 up here and like, oh, I know so much theology, this is what every seminary student thinks. They get out and 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.
Speaker 2: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. So education is, in one sense, 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. 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. So being advanced sanctification means you're educating the scriptures, but it also means three other things that you can explain them to someone else, that you're applying them in your own personal life, to your experiences and, lastly, you're passing them on to the next generation, which means that you have to have a generation to pass them on to. So if you're 20, you can't really do that. When you're 30 or 40, you start to get to that point where there's another generation behind you and you can pass it on to them, and the byproduct of doing all that is what we call biblical culture.
Speaker 2:Again, biblical culture, then, is the ability to see that God's thoughts, let's just say, reverberate into every area of life Music, mathematics, biology, zoology, business, economics, politics. I say politics is not like a separate idea from the bible. I mean, god created the first human government after the flood and he gave human government a purpose, which was essentially to curb evil, to slow evil and to set up a system of justice right where you could slow the grow of evil. So politics a lot of times they steal ideas that really should be dealt with in the church primarily, and then they say well, there's separation of church and state, so you can't talk about that in the church, or something like that, whatever baloney. We know all that stuff. Church and state separation is just baloney, right? I mean Thomas Jefferson's letter and all that stuff. We know all that stuff. Church and state separation is just baloney, right? I mean Thomas Jefferson's letter and all that stuff. We know all that. So no, we have to talk about these areas, because these areas are again all addressed by the Bible. And unless you're in advanced sanctification, yeah, you don't see that. But if you're in advanced sanctification level, you see, oh yeah, every area of life God's word touches, and so I have to think his thoughts after him in these areas, and that's how my way of thinking gets shaped by him. So that's biblical culture and it's a byproduct of advanced sanctification that can take several generations to get going.
Speaker 2:Second point biblical culture has a unified view of life. Here's what happens in advanced sanctification. You realize that God's omniscience, which is his knowledge, that he knows all things actual and possible, that he can know His omniscience, is behind everything in creation, like all these design features we talk about. I mean, isn't a brilliant mind behind that? I mean we can't even come up with these ideas. The truth is we don't even understand these ideas yet After studying them for decades in laboratories. We still don't even understand these ideas yet After studying them for decades in laboratories, we still don't totally understand what all is going on inside these complicated systems that God has designed. So we have to see there's an omniscient mind behind all of this, and so this starts to define for us what true education is, true education, and this is not the way our society sets things up. They set things up exactly the opposite.
Speaker 2:The way our society sets up education is this way you become a specialist. My son was telling me about it yesterday how the industry and bikes and it's true for everything, but in bikes like they, are specialized in one little aspect. Maybe it's gear, I don't know enough about it to know but maybe someone does gears but they don't know about composite alloys and things like that. They're just over here doing gears, okay, but if you want to know something about that, they'll tell you like a whole world of information, right? So that's the way our society is set up education you become a specialist in one area, but you're basically an idiot in every other area. Okay, the Bible. I remember in college there was these two brothers, twins. One of them went to work for Boeing and he told me that he worked for two years on one cubic foot of an airplane wing. That's what he did Interesting, not after about three weeks. So it's very specialized In the scriptures.
Speaker 2:It's not like this. Remember what I said about Solomon, that he was an ornithologist, he was an ichthyologist, he was an entomologist, he was a botanist, he was a zoologist, remember. He was a politician, he was a naval engineer, he was a military tactician. That's not just one area, that's all sorts of areas, and that's what we mean by having a unified view of life. True, by having a unified view of life. True education is not about being a specialist in one area of life, but it's having an understanding of many areas that seamlessly integrate into the whole under God's interpretive control. I just packed a whole lot in one sentence. I'm going to unpack a little bit of it. Okay, true education is not being a specialist in one area, but it's having an understanding in many areas that seamlessly integrate into a whole under God's interpretive control. What do I mean by that last part, that seamlessly integrate under God's interpretive control?
Speaker 2:First of all, I mean everything in the universe is seamlessly integrated. Things are working in a harmonious pattern. What do they call this? The Copernican principle? And when they talk about life on earth, they're like there's only one place you can live in the universe, guys, and we're on it. I don't know why people we were talking about this last week, right I don't know why people want to go to Mars, like that's dumb. I mean you first. I'm staying here. This is way more interesting. And, besides, you can't live there anyway, so go die there. I guess it's going to take you a long time to get there and you're never going to make it back. Go for it. So the whole universe, as though, is working according to a pattern. It organizes things and things are organized in a certain way, and this is where God has set out on this thing called earth, where people are, and the only images in the whole universe are of him. You know, people, even angels, aren't made in God's image. So super interesting things are happening right here Now, but the whole thing's working together.
Speaker 2:Now, what I mean by when I say at the end of this, this integrated system that God has here and it's all under his interpretive control, is I mean this. I mean God interprets everything as it truly is. Do you know a fossil, for example, until you know the fossil's place in the plan of God? No, you don't know a fossil until you know the interpretation that God puts on the fossil, because His interpretations are correct. So you can put a label on a fossil that says you know 4.6 million years ago, okay, or whatever, and you don't know that fossil. I mean you could be a paleontologist and study fossils all your life, but you don't know what they are until you know their place in God's plan, which is obviously the flood. It's a picture of the original organisms that God created and lived during the time of Noah and then were destroyed in the flood, and so there are lessons. They're not just fossils, they are evidences of death and that God destroyed the whole world in a global flood. So only when we know those types of things about a fossil do we actually know what they are, because everything is under God's interpretive control.
Speaker 2:We don't know a star or a galaxy until we know its place in the plan of God, and the Psalms talk about this. Right, job talks about this, talks about Orion, it talks about the star arrangements. It talks about times and seasons that are kept by virtue of the movements of these things. Right, it talks about there for the glory of God in Psalm 19. So you know, because a lot of times I'm honest. I mean I'm looking at stuff out there and I'm like that's 16 gazillion years away and we've got the starlight issue and all that to deal with in Genesis, but like what is the purpose of that out there and one of the aspects of it is just to marvel that in three Hebrew words God created all that. Three Hebrew words, it just says, and the stars also. And your jaw is supposed to drop, your jaw is supposed to drop at the wonders of our God.
Speaker 2:So this is seeing everything as unified under his plan, built on his omniscience. He knows that he knows all things actual and possible. That changes the way you look at everything around you all day long. Know that he knows all things actual and possible. That changes the way you look at everything around you all day long. Because it gets to number four, where we'll see what mature worship is really about. It's not about singing some songs. Singing songs are great, but that's not, you know, like some locale or sphere or isolated box of worship. You'll see, worship is talking about everything in your whole life, how you're thinking and what your appreciation for God is like.
Speaker 2:So the third point then, before we get to that, is biblical culture points to total victory. This is an interesting point, because if you, let's say you have partial obedience to God, then you'll have partial biblical culture. Right, I mean, it can only be that way. But if you have total obedience, you will be having a totally biblical culture. That's the end of that.
Speaker 2:Now Solomon gives us a glimpse in his era of what total obedience will produce. They didn't have it, but they had four generations of built-up loyalty and it was growing okay. And what was the result? A very high biblical culture that God was blessing tremendously, to the extent people from all over the world were coming to see what was going on there and they were to give testimony. Hey, this is the God, the one true God. It's the God we worship. You should worship him too. This was their great opportunity.
Speaker 2:But Solomon and his generation didn't have total obedience, so they didn't have total victory and they didn't have total biblical culture. But Solomon does foreshadow the one who will bring in a totally obedient culture and a total victory, and that's the Lord Jesus Christ. In this way he foreshadows the Messiah. So when his offspring, that's Solomon's offspring, the seed, the Messiah, comes and rules in the future kingdom, we'll see a totally biblical culture, because he's going to take Israel and he's going to put his law upon their heart. He's going to put his spirit within them and no man will teach another, for they shall all know him, from the least to the greatest Right You're going to have in Israel a totally obedient people and a totally biblical culture in the millennial kingdom. So we'll get to see what it looks like there.
Speaker 2:So what's our point? We're the church, so what are we supposed to be doing? Well, in the church, our goal is again to learn loyalty to God as believers and produce partial sub-pockets of biblical culture in our own lives, in our families, in our life, in our family, in our church community, to build as much biblical culture as we can. As we do that, what does it do for us? It prepares us to reign with Him in the millennial kingdom. So we're in training now for reigning then, and so we want to produce as much biblical culture as we're in training now. Right, we're reigning then, and so we want to produce as much biblical culture as we can in the world. By the way, this is we stave off. By doing this we stave off the corrosion in our own culture that's taking place because people see, had a guy call me, he's from the other, but he's here when he can be here.
Speaker 2:He says you know, I came to your house on Christmas and we had him over for a few hours and I had no idea. But this is just last week. He calls me and says I didn't know what you had in your family even existed. I didn't know. Like that it could actually be this where I could have mature conversations with people who are 14 years old, you know, and stuff like that. Like he's like it changed everything. Like I realized, you know my standards are what I hoped for way too low but that there's a possibility.
Speaker 2:And he's talking about biblical culture. He's seeing it. Kids that not, they're not just do what mom and dad say because mom and dad say to do it, but, out of respect, want to do it because they recognize this is biblical model and they want to follow Ephesians 6.1. Children, obey your parents and Lord, for this is right. They know they can't do that without Ephesians 5.18 being filled by the spirit, right. So he was just seeing that right. He was just seeing that right. It's no kudos to me. This is kudos to God and to his grace, because what we're trying to do in my family is build on the generations of loyalty in both of our families, robin's and mine. We're trying to build on that in the next generation so that they can go further than us. My hope is that they go way further than us. That should be every parent's hope, right. And so biblical culture points to a time when Jesus Christ will come back and Israel will be totally obedient and there will be a totally biblical culture. And that's what we're looking forward to in the kingdom. I mean, the Lord Jesus Christ said seek first the kingdom and his righteousness, see and so, and that's the period of history where we will get to see it. See, and that's the period of history where we will get to see it. See. Right now it's just trash out there, folks. It is trash, it's trashy. And this is the greatest country in the world, so just think what it's like in other places.
Speaker 2:Fourth point biblical culture expresses mature worship of God. What is this, this idea of worship? If I could just summarize worship in one word, I would say worship is appreciation for God. It's appreciation for God, but let's flesh this out a little bit. In a biblical culture, god is central to everything and every thought is taken captive to him. I think Colossians says this right Take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, every thought. Remember what I said about sanctification, advanced sanctification. It's not just talking about something like what most Christians say oh, that's a religious thought. What are you talking about? God made everything. Every thought you have should have God central to it Years ago.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know it's one of the toughest subjects for a lot of people is mathematics right, and everybody struggles with it on some level. But this was one where I was like, well, how you know, I didn't, I couldn't see yet, like how does this relate to God? I got this book by James Nickel called Mathematics is God's Silent, and I didn't read the whole book, but I've thumbed through it enough to gather the ideas that he's gaining and presenting. And the idea is like, no, you can't even do math unless God created mathematics and is keeping it stable. I mean, like what would happen if tomorrow, two plus two was five? Wouldn't all of your math education be completely a waste? I mean you wouldn't know of your math education be completely a waste. I mean you wouldn't know anything about math if these categories, you know numeric categories, weren't stable. And then you have to ask the question well, how do they remain stable?
Speaker 2:I mean, is that just there? That's what the world is. It's just there. We just go on, we just act like it's just there. It's not just there. Things aren't just there. That's the stupidest idea ever. Things are just there, organized. No, no, just come live in my house for one day, you'll see that things are not just staying where they are in an organized fashion. It's just not that way. So something is there upholding this all the time.
Speaker 2:Colossians 1.15,. It says that Christ is sustaining all things. I mean that means at every single moment, at every point in space, throughout the entirety of the universe. His hand is keeping it right, in the order that it is, which then changes your whole way of looking at miracles, because now you realize that all that he's doing in a miracle is just suspending the way that he normally operates in an area, for example, walking on water. Typically, you don't walk on water, I mean, you step on the water, you go under. We know this is the way it works. And everybody says that's gravity. No, that's the hand of God, idiot. This is the way it works. And everybody says that's gravity. No, that's the hand of God, idiot. This is not a game and they're like well, we can't have miracles.
Speaker 2:The Bible says miracles supernatural, that can't be, it's impossible. It's impossible on what grounds? You mean, everything is just the way it is, and it just works that way. All the time just stays that way. So you're saying something way crazier than what I'm saying, because what I'm saying is a person is actually controlling this and giving us the stability that we have. And every once in a while, in a little space on top of where his two feet were placed on the Sea of Galilee water surface, he suspended. That. It's his word. I think he can suspend it. That's not too difficult to understand. But your idea that it's all just that way, that's crazy. Not too difficult to understand. But your idea that it's all just that way, that's crazy.
Speaker 2:So this is the idea of worship. You're taking every thought captive to Christ, okay. And when you do this, you start to have an appreciation for his thoughts and you realize they're superior to my thoughts. This is called humility. When you're admitting that God's thoughts are superior to your own thoughts. Nobody wants to admit this. They think they're smart. I came up with this idea. Look at me, put my name in line. No, when you recognize that everything that you have and everything you are is only by the grace of God and he's upholding and sustaining. He gave you your talents, he gave you your spiritual gifts, all this stuff. All of a sudden you start to realize, oh well, then he's superior to me and his thoughts are more important than my thoughts. And this is what results in worship, because worship, again, is this appreciation for who God is and what he's like. Right, and you're thinking about this, you're kind of just marveling about it and realizing your brain is just a peanut and you're just here, just in your peanut brain, trying to discover some things that God has done. And it's a journey. It's an exciting journey, but still and it's a journey, it's an exciting journey, but still I just have a peanut brain. His is immense.
Speaker 2:Biblical culture, lastly, has limits. In the present we still live in the world, we still have the flesh and the devil still roams right, those enemies are still present. So there is more biblical culture that we can develop, but it is limited by the world, the flesh and the devil. But in the future, in the resurrection, what happens to our flesh? Our sin nature? Zap gone right, no sin nature. What happens to Satan in the millennial kingdom? He's bound. And then what can we do in resurrection bodies with no Satan around? We can build a totally biblical culture with the Lord, jesus Christ in his millennial reign.
Speaker 2:So all of that to say, look back at the period of Solomon. You can see the greatness of that culture that was developed through several generations of biblical loyalty. We can do that now in our own lives, here, here now in Spokane, wherever you're from right and show the world. And then this is all preparing us for the time when Christ comes back, and he does it on a large scale. We get to see what it would look like. Amos was looking forward to it. We heard from Amos this morning, chapter 5, let justice roll down like waters, righteousness like an everlasting stream. That's a depiction of the millennial kingdom that we cannot wait to see what it looks like. Much better than this trash. The kingdom divided is the next event.
Speaker 2:Briefly, through this one, this is the period of Rehoboam, but very important. See, solomon's golden era did not last. Why didn't it land? Because they did not continue to keep on learning loyalty to God and they did not keep on applying divine wisdom to every area of life. What happened was toward the end of Solomon's reign is to begin to lose appreciation for God, and people started to become more and more autonomous, and this resulted in spiritual decay. And and people started to become more and more autonomous and this resulted in spiritual decay and the culture started to rot. You know, america started off as a Judeo-Christian-based nation in the world, one of the greatest nations in the West, found on some of the greatest principles in our Constitution, right? But what has happened over the last 200 years? What has happened? 230, 40 years? Gradually decay as we did what? As we rejected those judeo-christian principles. See, that's what happened. That's what's still happening. We're at rapid pace now. So there are three steps to decay. That happened in the time of Rehoboam, who was Solomon's son, who took the rule. So the first was rejection of the Davidic dynasty. This happened with Rehoboam. Rehoboam comes to the throne.
Speaker 2:The elders of the northern kingdom came to Rehoboam and they said hey, your father Solomon, he laid heavy taxes on us. I mean, the burdens are it's too much, too much taxation, because he was trying to, you know, protect and secure this giant kingdom. So taxes were going up, right. So Rehoboam said hmm, about that? He went and talked to his frat buddies and his frat buddies said we think you should, you know, raise the taxes even more. And he also talked to Solomon's elders and Solomon's elders from the previous generation said no, that's a good idea. We think you should, you know, reduce the taxes. These people will serve you and love you forever if you do this. And guess whose advice he took? He took the frat buddy's advice.
Speaker 2:He went back, he told the northern kingdom you know some very nasty things in 1 Kings 11. And said we're going to raise your taxes. He thought it was bad under Solomon. It's going to be like stings of scorpions with me. So get ready, guys. And they said okay, that's it.
Speaker 2:We are no longer with the Davidic house and the nation split, fortunately without a civil war, because the prophet got in there and said no, we're not going to do that. So they split peacefully. Now you've got the northern kingdom of Israel 10 tribes. You've got the southern kingdom of Judah with two tribes, judah and Benjamin. So that's the first step down in decay. It was the rejection of the Davidic dynasty. They rejected David and David's house. The second step down was the rejection of the temple worship in Jerusalem. Because what happened? Rehoboam's the king now of Judah and Jerusalem is in the tribal allotment of Judah and the temple's there in Jerusalem. But now you've got these 10 tribes up north. They need a king Jeroboam becomes the king of the northern kingdom, right? And the Lord said look, jeroboam, I'll give you an everlasting dynasty, just like I gave David, if you'll just learn loyalty to me.
Speaker 2:Okay, in the Mosaic law, and part of the Mosaic law said you got to go to Jerusalem and worship. Well, that's not in the tribal territory that Jeroboam ruled, it's down in the southern kingdom of Judah. And so he says to himself okay, well, part of the law says we're supposed to go up to Jerusalem three times a year, all our males right, and worship the Lord. But if we go down there, they're going to defect from my kingdom. And so he got afraid, right, he got afraid that he was going to lose his people and that he's got to secure it, right. So what does he do? He builds an altar way north in Israel at a place called Dan, the northern border. And he built another temple and altar on the southern border, at a place called Bethel, about 15 miles from Jerusalem. And he said you don't need to go to, you can just go to Dan or Bethel. Look how convenient they are, by the way, you don't even have to walk all that way. If you live up north, just go to Dan If you live further south, you don't have to go all the way to Jerusalem, just stop at Bethel, it's good enough. And he set up the golden calf. It's remarkable, you know, like five, six centuries later the golden calf is still an issue after Moses and all that. And so this is the second step down. They rejected temple worship in Jerusalem.
Speaker 2:The third step down is rejection of the Lord himself. So three rejections rejection of the Davidic dynasty, rejection of the temple worship and third, rejection of the Lord himself. This occurred during the reign of King Ahab, so later in the story, after Rehoboam and so forth, ahab marries the nicest girl in the Old Testament. Her name's Jezebel. Remember her? How many girls you know named Jezebel? People just don't use that name very often. This girl was an unbeliever who was the daughter of a pagan priest of Baal from Phoenicia, and Ahab allows her to come in and basically take the reins in the north and she makes basically the official state religion Baalism in the northern kingdom. So this is a huge step down from where Solomon was.
Speaker 2:Solomon permitted, he married these foreign wives and he had mix. He would worship Yahweh at the temple, but he would also worship their gods too. So it was had mix. He would worship Yahweh at the temple, but he would also worship their gods too. So it was a mix. But this is a wholesale rejection of Yahweh altogether and it's a total endorsement of pagan worship. And so in Ahab's day in the Northern Kingdom, they rejected the Lord altogether.
Speaker 2:And so what's so interesting is you follow the story of the North and the South. In the South south, they had a davidic covenant. You only see one family ever reigning on the throne, and it's david's house, through solomon. But in the north there's turmoil, there's chaos, there's confusion, there's kingdom changes, dynasty changes. Nine, nine dynasty changes, nine different families, uh, take the rule and reign on the throne in the north. So it's very chaotic, but it's. It's very chaotic because of two things basically because they left the lord totally and entirely, which is what's happening in this country, right, just wholesale rejection of the lord altogether, um, but also because they didn't have a covenant. They didn't have an everlasting covenant. So God secured in the southern kingdom a government and a dynasty.
Speaker 2:So what do we learn here? Okay, well, divine discipline. We learn relative mainly in this story to the northern kingdom, and the first idea that is very important is compound carnality is a difficult road to recovery. The first idea that is very important is compound carnality is a difficult road to recovery. So divine discipline plugs into the fellowship dimension, because when you get out of fellowship and then you stay out of fellowship, let's just say, for a long period of time, what develops is compound carnality. So that's what I mean that you've got a whole lot of sin and sin patterns going on in your life because you haven't kept them in check, you've allowed them to get away from you and they're running rampant in your life, and so that's what I'm talking about when I talk about compound carnality. So compound carnality is a result of being out of fellowship for long periods of time and just living like the world.
Speaker 2:This was the situation in the days of Rehoboam and Jeroboam. Particularly we're talking about Jeroboam, the northern king of those people. Their consciences were seared because they sinned and then they didn't confess, and so they sinned more and they didn't confess that and sinned more and over time your conscience becomes seared like calloused and more and they didn't confess that and sin more and over time your conscience becomes seared like calloused and patterns of sin start to develop in your life that are very difficult to defeat. So this is where you don't want to be. But you've probably known believers who got way out of it. Believers who got way out of it and they ran into drugs and alcohol and sex and money, lust and power lust and and they're into all these things and it's a it's hard to get out of that. Once you've gone into that deep, it's hard to get out. So that's what I mean by this first point, and the last two are being like how you stop that. Don't, don't let yourself get into that point.
Speaker 2:But to overcome a deep-seated carnal problem, the believer has to be committed to something. First of all, constantly confessing. Like they've got to get back on track. I think the book of hosea discusses this to a pretty good degree. When you confess, you get restored to fellowship. So they're going to be doing this a lot. It almost seems stupid like how much they're going to be confessing. But the problem is they're trying to get out of this thing. But respond to God, confess, he'll restore you.
Speaker 2:Then you have to stay in the Word. That's another thing, a key. You have to stay in the word. I mean, they're not normally in the word. They're normally smoking pot and doing other stuff? Okay, whatever it is they're doing. Okay, but they're not in the word. Okay, they're running from God. So get in the word, okay.
Speaker 2:And lastly and this one, I think this is probably one of the most important ones of all these you have to get in close with a group of strong believers. You have to have that accountability yeah, you're not just, I mean, nobody's on their own god's with every believer. But there's a reason the bible says don't forsake assembling yourselves in book of hebrews, you know, because you need that close-knit bible family. Okay, you need that. And especially if you're in this situation of compound carnality, I mean you're way out of it. So you need someone in your life who is like a post, who is firmly planted, or a group of people who are firmly planted, that you can cling to and hold on to, who will help you develop a new pattern of living. Because getting out of that old pattern of living that doesn't take overnight. It's going to take months and maybe years. So you've got to get in close with a strong group of Bible-believing Christians and you've got to develop a new pattern of living Constantly confess, stay in the Word Now. So how do you keep from going into compound carnality, like the generation of Rehoboam and following and Jeroboam.
Speaker 2:First thing, here's a couple of ideas. First of all, be very sensitive to your sin. Do you remember David Psalm 139? Is this your attitude toward your own personal sin? If it's not, you've got to straighten this up right now. Search me, o God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there be any hurtful way in me and lead me in the everlasting way. If that's not your attitude toward your own personal sin, you need to. This verse will change your life. It'll change it forever For the better. I should say that for the better, for the way, way, way better. Okay, we need to develop sensitivity to our own personal sin. It is very easy to point out everybody else's sin. That is not what I'm interested in and it's not what you should be interested in. You should be interested in search me, oh God, see if there be any hurtful way in me. It's not about what they're doing, it's about what you are doing. It's about what I am doing. See, if we develop this sensitivity, we will not fall into compound carnality, will we? And you don't want to be down that road.
Speaker 2:The last thing you can do is judge yourself to avoid divine discipline. This is 1 Corinthians 11, so just go ahead and turn there. All this is based on Scripture, y'all know. I just haven't turned to a lot of passages because we're just reviewing these things, but 1 Corinthians 11, in the section on the Lord's Supper and how some were taking it improperly, we find in verse 31, well, verse 30,. For this reason, many among you are weak asthenes like and sick, and a number sleep, which is an idiom for physical death. They committed sin unto death by the manner in which they were taking the lord's supper. He says verse 31. But if we judged ourselves rightly, we would not be judged. But when, when we are judged, we're disciplined by the Lord.
Speaker 2:So how can you avoid divine discipline? By judging yourself rightly. And that's tied into the same thing of search me, o God, and know me. But the point is is that when you realize you sin, what do you do? You judge sin and you confess. You judge yourself and you confess. You don't just hide it. The opposite of confessing is hiding. In the Old Testament Scriptures, in the Proverbs, the opposite of confessing is hiding. If you're hiding sin, you're not confessing. That's by definition right. So what do we need to do? Judge ourselves rightly, and then God won't discipline us. So there's a way to avoid divine discipline. That should be good news. Okay, and it is good news. But I think the main idea to develop, the most important one, is being sensitive to sin, memorizing Psalm 139, verse 23 and 24, search me, o God, and know me. See if there be any hurtful way in me. You could pray that every single morning. It's not that complicated, but if you say that heartfelt, god will make it known to you and then that will pave a way for future victory, and I think that's what we all want.
Speaker 2:Okay, so two events then the golden era, when I mean they were on top of the world culturally because of the developed loyalty to God for three, four generations. But then did you see how they threw it all away in one generation? Did you see how they threw it all away? You know I feel a lot. That's what happened in America. It is decaying through the 1800s, okay, and into the early 1900s.
Speaker 2:By the time you get to the fundamentalist, modernist controversy in the 1910s and 20s and 30s, right in that era, that was the worst part of our country, right in there, because that's when the church basically gave up the Bible. They said, no, it's not inerrant. Jesus didn't really rise from the dead, it was just this idea of spiritual resurrection Makes me want to barf. But didn't believe the Bible was inerrant anymore, didn't believe it was authoritative. I mean, science came in and took over this country Science, which is why I said, hey look, science isn't even there unless God is there. So get over it. Okay, like, just get over it, it's over. All the early scientists were what christian? Why? Because they wanted to discover more about god, so they were excited about that.
Speaker 2:But in the 20s and 30s, all this got taken away, and that's what I mean. Like this can all go away in one generation, and it has gone away very quickly in our country. If people that lived in the 19-teens were here today, they wouldn't recognize this country. They wouldn't recognize it at all. It's also been said that a bartender in 1850 knew more theology than the weekly attendee at a church knows in the 2020s. A bartender in the 1850s knew more theology because it was in the air. It was a part of everybody's life Not anymore. All sorts of other crazy things are a part of our.
Speaker 2:If you walk out these doors, you're getting bombarded by the craziest stuff. You know, we think it's crazy that they have some of these ideas that are going on in our culture right now. But when you realize that something like this, that it can all be thrown away in one generation like all of Solomon's empire was basically thrown away in one generation then it makes sense. It's because our culture is turned away from the Word of God and it's turned away from God himself and it says, no, we're not going to have the Ten Commandments, we don't like those. Those are bad ideas. I think it's a good idea to murder. I always want to post the opposite of the Ten Commandments and say well, can we put these up? Thou shalt covet, thou shalt commit adultery, thou shalt lie. I want to put these up just to say are you serious? We can't post the Ten Commandments, but you know they don't want that. Let's take God out of the public school and put what in its place? A false God. That's all it is. It's just substitution. They didn't get rid of God, they just made a new God. So it goes on and on, but that's why we're in the predicament we're in. So what has to happen? Quickly? I'll just tell you real quickly what has to happen.
Speaker 2:It's not Change America, it's the churches. It is the church's fault. I mean the people out there that are unbelievers. They need salvation, of course, right, but who is the one who is supposed to take salvation to them? The message? The church who is supposed to be teaching the Bible and training and discipling people? The church how do we get mature, advanced sanctification, like we saw in the time of Solomon? Teach the Bible for several generations? What if the church has given up the Bible? What if the church has given up the God of the Bible? What if the church has given up the Christ of the Bible? Well then, the church is the problem, and it is. It's the church that needs to come back to the Lord, and that would result in the changing of our country. It's the only way.
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.