NT Framework - Why The Kingdom Waits While The Church Prepares

The Kingdom was offered, its King was rejected, and a new mystery age, the Church began. The Church did not become or replace Israel, instead it takes up a similar mission while Israel is on the sidelines. 

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. 

Transcript

Setting The Framework And Aim

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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.

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And you're thinking, now wait a minute. So we're going to have two everlasting dynasties? The dynasty of David and then a dynasty of Jeroboam? And it seems strange because does that mean we're going to have two messiahs, one from the house of Jeroboam and one from the house of David? And it seems to be a contingent offer.

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The easy thing to do would be to give up. Stop reading. Stop trying to understand. Apply human logic to the problem before you. Come up with an answer that makes sense to you. And then apply that to your entire life. Unfortunately, that's a shallow and superficial way to deal with scripture. Because who stands behind scripture is an infinite, unknowable, majestic God, a self-existent one. And he has revealed himself, his plan, his purpose in the Bible. And it is our great joy to ferret out the meaning and understand it to the extent that we can. The church has been working on these truths of the New Testament, working with the Old Testament, for over 2,000 years now. And it is an amazing time. And so what are we to do? We are to take time to be thoughtful and work through these hard, hard truths. Today, Jeremy is going to look at a few of them and try and explain them and encourage us to do the hard work of understanding the mind of God.

Kingdom Offered In Matthew 1–11

Rejection And The Unpardonable Sin

Is Unbelief The Unpardonable Sin

Defining The Kingdom Biblically

Parables And Postponement In Matthew 13

Two Comings And Double Reference

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Okay, so last week we didn't get through everything that I wanted to accomplish, but that's okay. But what I'm trying to do is give us a basic outline of the gospels as we trace John the Baptist, Jesus the twelve, and the things that transpired. So I basically divided it. Oh, I forgot to bring up the PowerPoint. But I basically divided it into four uh parts. If you ever want these lessons, just let me know, and you can be put on the email list. I can send these to you. I send out two emails a week, so but that's up to you. And if you don't want them, just tell me and I'll just X you off the list. It won't hurt my feelings. Uh I love you. Okay. So these are the four basic divisions that you can see. And I've I've developed it around Matthew because Matthew is mostly chronological. There are three chapters that are not chronological in Matthew. They're Matthew 8 through 10, and they're thematically organized. But other than that, it's chronological. So the plan of the Gospels is basically Matthew 1 through 11. You see the kingdom being offered. That's John, right? John the Baptist, he comes saying to the nation Israel, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. And then Jesus comes right on his coattails, is baptized by him to identify with John's ministry, right? And John's message. And then Jesus also proclaims the exact same message. Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. This is a call to the nation Israel to repent, which means to have a change of mind, right? Concerning, concerning what? Concerning the type of righteousness that is necessary to enter the kingdom of God. And that righteousness is not the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees, but it's the very righteousness of Jesus Christ, which is acquired through faith alone in him. So even my favorite verse on this to show that this is what was going on is Acts 19, where Paul is outside Ephesus. He meets some Jews who had been baptized by John. And he says, you know, he's basically saying, Were you baptized by the Spirit? And they're saying, No, we didn't experience this baptism. And in verse 3 he said, Well, into what then were you baptized? And they said, Well, we were baptized into John's baptism. And Paul said, Well, John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to what? Believe in him who is coming after him. That is in Jesus. In other words, the baptism of repentance was for the purpose that they were saying the righteousness of the scribes and the Pharisees is not what we need to have. Instead, we need to have righteousness that comes through believing in Jesus. And it's very clear. Now, um, that said, there was a question. Well, let's go on to let's just do the next part. The king is rejected in Matthew 12. So you're watching the king and his kingdom offer in the first eleven chapters, and we went through the rejection last week in Matthew 12, where they commit the unpardonable sin. Jesus does a messianic miracle, remember? A very particular type of miracle. The people are immediately thinking, this can't be the son of David, can it? And they were correct, he was. This is a very distinguishing miracle. And yet the Pharisees quickly come in to divert them from the Messiah, saying that he had done these things by Beelzebub, which is basically another name for Satan, the Lord of the Satanic kingdom. And rather than being done by the Holy Spirit. So I mentioned that they had committed in this chapter what is called the unpardonable sin. We spent some time on this. The unpardonable sin is a generational sin. It could only be committed by a generation that actually saw Jesus doing miracles. And they were rejecting that he had done these miracles by means of the Spirit and claiming that he had done them in the power of Satan. Jesus, of course, says, well, if Satan is casting out Satan, then his kingdom is divided. It shall surely fail. But this is what is known as the unpardonable sin. It's the blasphemy of the Spirit, which is the word blasphemy means to slander. So they were slandering the work of the Spirit through the Messiah that could only be committed by that generation. And he pronounced judgment on that generation, and that judgment ended up coming in AD 70. So there's no such thing today as an unpardonable sin. Now, the question that one of the two questions that came up that I needed to address today is someone said, Well, isn't the sin of unbelief an the unpardonable sin? Well, first of all, to answer this question without spending a lot of time in a lot of detail, the Bible says there's only one sin that's the unpardonable sin. And it says that explicitly in Matthew chapter 12, verses 31 and 32. So there is only one unpardonable sin. I've already described that sin as a generational sin committed by the nation of Israel, the judgment for which has already come in AD 70. So there is no quote-unquote unpardonable sin today. Now, what about what about unbelief? Well, I just treat it differently. I think this is the easiest way to state it. I just treat it differently. And I would just simply say something like John 3.18. To him who uh he who believes is not condemned, but he who has not believed is condemned already. Why? Because he has not believed in the only begotten Son of God. So as long as a person does not believe, they are in a state of condemnation, which is a legal status. They are condemned by God because they do not have, have not believed, and therefore do not have the righteousness of Christ. So this is the easiest way to uh, but I would not call that the unpardonable sin. I would just say, hey, you know, I mean, a person has to believe, right? And so that's all a person has to do to have, to move from a state of condemnation to a state of full acceptance and have peace with God. You know, Romans 5, 1. We uh therefore have peace with God. Because we have a justified status, it's a legal status that is acquired the moment a person believes, whether male or female, slave or free, uh old or young, it matters not, right? Whenever we believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, he imputes his righteousness to us, and we have an eternal standing with him. And that standing is one of perfect righteousness. And so this is our position. And so that's simply how I would discuss that. I wouldn't say that unbelief is the unpardonable sin. I would be very careful to highlight the sin in Matthew twelve as the unpardonable sin. Now another question came up which was not floating through my mind right now, but oh, it's the question of the kingdom. So I wanted to define the kingdom. As we talk about the kingdom and the kingdom being offered, I did not technically define the kingdom. So it's nice to mention what exactly or how I define the kingdom. I would define the kingdom in terms of a few Old Testament passages that would be the key. Genesis 1, 26 to 28 would be the first passage where God created man in his own image to rule. Okay, and this was obviously an earthly rule over the earthly environment and anything which might come into that environment, including Satan, who came in through the serpent, right? Now, of course, they failed in that rule, but God's intention and purpose is to restore this rule, this earthly rule of man. And so the next passage I would turn to would be something like Genesis 17, 6, which would discuss how kings would come forth from Abraham under the Abrahamic covenant. And then we could trace the kingly line through the tribe of Judah, Genesis 49, 10. We could trace this all the way to David in 1 Chronicles 17, 10b through 14, where we find in the house of Judah David, that it would come from the house of David. This would be the kingly line. But even before that, you've got you've got Exodus 19, 4 through 6, where God, well the nation Israel has now come to Mount Sinai. They're awaiting at the base of Mount Sinai, and God says, I will make you a kingdom of priests. So the concept of kingdom again is now going to relate to Israel. We already knew it was going to relate to the earth. It's going to have a king who comes from the line of David. This is how I would define the kingdom. So that when you come into the Gospels and you have the message, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, what we're talking about is the restoration of this kingdom that was to come to rest on the Davidic house. And that's why the New Testament begins with words directly related to this kingdom. These are the generations of the son of Abraham, the son of David. So it's talking about the king himself who comes from this line, and of course the kingdom that had needed to be restored. So when I speak of the kingdom offer, that's what I mean. I mean a kingdom that will be on earth, where man will rule, and chiefly, of course, the Messiah, the one from David, he will be the king. And then now we are right now, as we work through the gospel, setting up to try to understand the church and what your role and my role is in relationship to that kingdom. So that's how I would define the kingdom. So we've done the kingdom offer, we've looked at the king being rejected, which is the unpardonable sin, and then Matthew 13, we spent a little time in the parable of the sower, right, discussing the four responses that Israel had to the king, and particularly the four soils, the one of most interest, because they're the ones that the seed fell on good soil and it sprouted up and it bore a lot of fruit. We also want to look at another parable there in Matthew 13. I would say essentially what's happening in Matthew 13 is what Jesus is saying about the kingdom is that because it's now been rejected by the leadership of Israel, it is being postponed. Now, when I say that, that can create a lot of tension in people, so the postponement idea, which we'll deal with in a minute. But essentially what I mean by that is from the human perspective, nothing caught God by surprise that the nation Israel rejected the offer. God has an eternal plan in his mind, and you know, that didn't get disrupted by Israel's rejection. But from the human standpoint, the kingdom has been postponed. And we'll deal with some repercussions of that here in a few minutes, but minutes. But let's look in Matthew 13 at the parable of the tares and the wheat and the tares. Now the parable is in verse 24, 13, 24, and then later they're going to ask him to explain it in verses 36 and following. Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field. Remember, Jesus had just now begun to speak in parables. Before this, he never spoke in parables, he always spoke clearly. But something happened in chapter 12, which caused Jesus to change his teaching methodology. And we mentioned this last week, right? So now he's speaking in parables, and the whole purpose of that is so that those who were of the fourth soil, who received the message and you know did something with it, moved after him, realized the significance of the Messiah in his presence, they would be the only ones who heard and understand, understood. Everybody else would hear, but they wouldn't understand. So in verse 24, Jesus presented another parable, and he says, The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while his men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat. So we have a field, it was sown, but the problem is at night the enemy came, sowed other seed among the wheat, and now we have wheat and tares, right? When the wheat sprouted and bore grain, then the tares became evident also. See, the problem was is these tares looked just like the wheat until it headed out. And that's the only time you could tell the difference. So you didn't know your enemy had come and sowed this other seed in the field. But this had apparently happened. Verse 27 the slaves of the landowner came and said to him, Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field? How then does it have tares? And he said, Well, an enemy has done this. And the slave said to him, Do you want us then to go and gather them up? You know, uproot the tares? And he says, But no, for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them. Allow both to grow together until the harvest. And in the time of the harvest I will say to the reapers, First, gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up, but gather the wheat into my barn, which, if you're following the book of Matthew, you realize the barn is representative ultimately of the kingdom. So there's going to be a delay of the kingdom's arrival on earth. And during that delay, there's going to be wheat and there's going to be tares, and these are going to grow up side by side. And then at the end, when they head out, it's going to become evident that there were tares sowed among the wheat. And then, you know, he's going to send his reapers, and they're going to gather up the tares and deal with them, and then the wheat will be taken into the kingdom. But the point is that the kingdom itself is being postponed, and there will at the end of the age be a judgment to separate. And that the story. But let's look at Jesus' interpretation to his disciples in verse 36. Then he left the crowds and he went into the house, and his disciples came to him. So this is a private, a private explanation. He left the crowds. His disciples came and said, Explain to us the parable of the tares of the field. And he said, The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man. The field is the world. As for the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom. The tares are the sons of the evil one. And the enemy who sowed them is the devil. And the harvest is the end of the age, and the reapers are angels. So, just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so it shall be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send forth his angels, they will gather out of his kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, and will throw them into the furnace of fire. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their father. He who has ears, let him hear, which I would say the same. If you have ears, hear. His point then is what? That during this inter-advent, what we now call the interadvent or postponement or parenthetical period of history, there are going to be sons of it tells you right there, sons of the kingdom, verse 38, and you've got sons of the evil one. These are going to grow up side by side, and then at the end of the age, when the king comes in his kingdom, he will cast out the tares and he will bring the wheat, the believers, the sons of the kingdom, into the kingdom. So the kingdom has been postponed, but in this interadvent period, you have uh what ultimately turns out to be this idea of the church, which you and I are part of. So if you're a believer, how do you become a son of the kingdom? Well, you believe. That's how you become a son of the kingdom. And uh that means you have rights to the kingdom as son, and therefore the king kingdom has currently been postponed. So, see, what we're trying to do is explain uh what the church is, who we are, right? Are we the kingdom? See, that's one of the big questions uh in theology circles for centuries now, right? And that's the question of well, what happened to the king kingdom? I mean, the king came, you know, the kingdom was offered. And a lot of people want to say that what happened was the mysteries of the kingdom, which you're hearing in Matthew 13, mean that the kingdom will not come on earth in the sense that you know we might think of, but that the church has superseded Israel in God's plans, and the church is the kingdom, and it's a spiritual kingdom only. And we should not expect the nation Israel to be restored, and we should not expect Jesus to come back and sit on an earthly Davidic throne with an earthly temple structure in you know for a thousand years. That we're told we're not supposed to expect that. That all the Old Testament promises that God made to Israel about the land and the Davidic throne on earth and a temple structure and wherein righteousness will cover the earth, that is all reinterpreted by the New Testament into a spiritual kingdom, which is Jesus sitting on the throne of your heart, which is sort of the essence of lordship salvation. It's the idea that Jesus sits on a little throne in your heart, he produces this righteousness through you, or something like that, just automatically without any response of the believer, if you're really a believer. This is the this is the idea, but it's a confusion of the kingdom with the church. I don't think that Jesus is saying that. Uh when he's talking here in in chapter 13, these eight parables, and he tells us, you know, the kingdom of heaven is like, or it's granted to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom. The mystery mysteries of the kingdom, that genitive, mysteries of the kingdom means new truths or things that have been hidden, okay, things that have been hidden, mysteries concerning or about the kingdom. And the things that were now being revealed, some new truths about the kingdom that are being revealed, is that there's going to be an inter-advent period of time. Okay, so this is what's very difficult, okay, very difficult for people to understand about the gospels, is that the kingdom is not changing forms right here. What's happening is it's being postponed as far as its arrival on earth. It's being postponed as far as its arrival on earth. Now that was God knew this from forever. It's nothing new. Okay. But if you're just reading the Old Testament and you're reading it faithfully, you will come to the conclusion that when the king comes, he's going to set up his kingdom. The problem in the Gospels is that Jesus came, offered the kingdom, he was rejected, he was crucified, he was raised, and then he ascended. He left. He left, he's gone. So the question becomes, and Matthew's, this is Matthew's question that he's answering in his gospel. His whole gospel is about this, about one question. Jewish unbelievers who are saying to Jewish believers, well, if Jesus is the king, where is his kingdom? Because why? Because the Old Testament predicts the Messiah will come and set up his kingdom. And what Matthew is describing is what we've described. The king came, the kingdom was offered, but we rejected the king, and therefore the kingdom has been postponed as far as its arrival on earth, but it will still come after a mystery period of time, during which you've got the tares and the wheat growing up side by side, and so forth and so on, right? Okay, so that's what's going on. Now, um, before we go to this portion about the kingdom prep preparation, I want to talk about some of the discussion uh uh I'm sorry, results of this rejection. The first one that we see. Very clearly, let me just move ahead here. Well, is 3a. Some of the results of the rejection and postponement. There will be two comings. Now, obviously, in God's mind, there are always two comings. We get that. But not from the vantage point of the Old Testament prophets. Okay, take a look at 1 Peter 1, 10. 1 Peter 1, 10, and 11. This discusses, discusses the Old Testament from the prophet's viewpoint. And obviously the prophets were the authors of the Old Testament, so how were they looking at Messiah and his coming kingdom and all of this? 1 Peter 1:10. As to this salvation that he just got done talking about, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries. Okay, the prophets in the Old Testament were searching the Old Testament scriptures. They had actually a school of the prophets, starting the time of Samuel. And these prophets would always spend their time in all the other prophets' writings trying to decipher what? Trying to decipher, verse 11, what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating, as he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. In other words, the Old Testament's very messianic, but it talks about the Messiah's sufferings and it talks about the Messiah's glories. And they were making careful search and inquiry of the Old Testament text to try to understand what time or what person would fulfill these things. In other words, they're looking for the Messiah, right? And they're also trying to understand the prophecies concerning the Messiah's sufferings and the Messiah's glories. Because this doesn't, these don't comport, they don't seem to harmonize with one another. By nature, if you're suffering, you're not reigning in glory. I mean, the two are contradict one another, right? So they don't understand how the prophecies in the Old Testament of Messiah suffering can be fulfilled at the same time as a Messiah who's reigning in glory. Some came up with the solution, some, not all, but their solution was to have two messiahs, right? Messiah, son of Joseph, the suffering Messiah, because Joseph is one who suffers, right? So they believed there would be a Messiah who followed the pattern of Joseph, a suffering Messiah. And then Messiah, son of David, who they viewed as a second Messiah, who would reign in glory. David is a picture of one who reigns in glory. So one of the solutions that they had was to have two Messiahs. But, you know, they really didn't know, and we find out only now in the New Testament that it's not that there are two Messiahs, but it's that there's one Messiah with two comings. First, to suffer and to die, to pay the penalty for our sin, and a second time to come to reign in glory. And so we have the answer. But see, 1 Peter 1, 10 and 11 says they did not have the answer. They were making careful search and inquiry, trying to understand the sufferings of Messiah prophecies, as well as the suffering, I mean the glory prophecies. So let's look at one of these, Zechariah 9, 9, and 10. So the next to last book in the Old Testament is Zechariah. I want to show you how you can have what what this is what the type of thing that these Old Testament prophets were looking at and going, now wait a minute, we know this is messianic, but how can this all be fulfilled at one time?

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I'll give you a moment. Zechariah is not one we turn to all the time, right? More like John or something like that.

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So Zechariah is standing up in heaven right now, excited his book's going to be read. Zechariah 9.9. Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Shout in triumph, O daughter of Jerusalem. Behold, your king is coming to you. He is just and endowed with salvation, humble and mounted on a donkey, even on a colt, the foal of a donkey. And everybody here is thinking of the triumphal entry, right? Luke 19. Okay, good, good. This is what you should be thinking, because uh in Luke 19, this is fulfilled at the triumphal entry, right? And verse 10, is it just a continuation? Even on a colt, the full of a donkey, I will cut off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, and the bow of war will be cut off, and he will speak peace to the nations, and his dominion will be from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. Is that the situation today? I think not. We're very confident this is not the situation today. So do you see there in verse 9, this is a depiction of what we would call the first coming of the Messiah? But verse 10 is a picture of what we would call the second coming of the Messiah. And you can see why the prophets were confused, because if we're just reading this from their perspective, does anybody see 2,000 years between verses 9 and 10? Or does it look like it all just happens at the same time? See, so they were confused because verse 9 and verse 10 are describing very different situations. And they didn't know how all this worked together. Now, in theology, what we call this is the law of double reference. In other words, we ask, in hindsight, we can look back at this, right? And we say, hey, there's not just one prophecy here, there's two prophecies and an undisclosed gap of time between these prophecies. And the first prophecy has been fulfilled. Verse 9. The second prophecy has not been fulfilled. The law of double reference, double reference or double, two references are being made. One to the what we know now is first, now the other as second. Okay, so that's one example. Let's look at another one, Isaiah 61. Turn back. And um, if you if you have time, if you're quick enough, also just grab Luke 4.

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So Isaiah 61 and Luke 4. Isaiah 61 and Luke 4. I think it's Luke 4. Yeah.

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Just hold your place in Luke 4. Let's look at Isaiah 61 first. Sixty-one, one. The spirit of the Lord God is upon me. By the way, how many people are mentioned there? The spirit of the Lord God is upon me.

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The Spirit, the Lord God, and me.

Israel’s Future Welcome And Return

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How many? Three. This is one of the precursors or early pictures of Trinity in the Old Testament, because the Spirit is obviously the third member of the Trinity. The Lord God, this is Yahweh Elohim, this is the first person of the Trinity. And who is the Spirit of the Spirit upon? Me. That's the second person of the Trinity, the Messiah. This is a messianic passage. So the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord, the Lord God has anointed me, obviously with the Spirit. And this is why when he's in his ministry and you see him doing miracles by the Spirit, and they say, No, you did them by uh Beelzebub, the Lord of the Lord of the demons, you know, that that's the unpardonable sin. I mean, the Old Testament predicted that the Messiah would be anointed by the Spirit to accomplish such things. To bring good news to the afflicted, he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, to grant those who mourn in Zion, giving them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a spirit of fainting. So they will be called oaks of righteousness, the planning of the Lord that he may be glorified. Then they will rebuild the ancient ruins, they will raise up the former devastations, they will repair the ruined cities, the desolations of many generations, and so forth. Now, um, some of this has already been fulfilled, and yet some of it has not. Okay? Everything in verse 1, the Lord having anointed the Son with the Spirit, bringing good news to the afflicted, this all happened in the Gospels, binding up the heart of the brokenhearted, proclaiming liberty to captives, freeing the prisoners, and proclaiming favorably the year of the Lord. Didn't the Lord Jesus Christ do all those things at his first coming? But how about proclaiming the day of vengeance of our God when he comes to set up his kingdom and restore Israel and rebuild their cities and re-establish them as chief among all the nations? Did that happen? So here's another prophecy where you have double reference. But I mean, as far as the context, if you're an Old Testament prophet and you're reading this, you're thinking, well, this all happens at the same time. But look at Luke 4, because this is where Jesus quotes this passage. He came to his hometown, verse 16, Luke 4, 16, to Nazareth, where he had been brought up. As was his custom, he entered the synagogue on the Sabbath and he stood up to read. And the book of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. And he opened the book and he found the place where it was written. So he had to go through a scroll, not a not a bound book like ours, a scroll had to be rolled out, and he had to go and find the place. I think we might know the Bible actually better if we did this, you know. Because you're spending a lot of time just trying to find what you're looking for, which means you're reading other things. But this all helps you find it. Now here's what he found, which we call Isaiah 61:1. And there he quotes it The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor, he has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set free those who are oppressed, and then to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord. And he closed the book, he gave it back to the attendant, he sat down, and the eyes of all the synagogue were fixed on him, and he began to say to them, Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. So Isaiah 61, 1 through 2A was fulfilled at his first coming. But was 612B and following fulfilled? Or did Jesus stop and close the book at that point? The point where it says, and to proclaim the day of the vengeance of our God, he did not read. And the reason is because it was not fulfilled at this time. Why was it the question becomes, why was it not fulfilled at this time? And the answer is back, well, it's right here. It's one of the results of the rejection. The nation is rejected. And because of that, the kingdom's arrival in history has been postponed until they accept him. Until they accept him. So let's look at point B then and turn to Matthew 23, 39. Actually, let's just do the Psalm 118.26. It's better to see if this from the Old Testament, because you'll see then when you get to the New Testament, this is not a new thing. Psalm 118.26. This is known in Jewish thinking as the messianic greeting.

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The messianic greeting.

Real Offers, Contingencies, And Sovereignty

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And the nation of Israel needs to greet their Messiah. Did they greet him at the first coming? Or did they reject him? They rejected him. But this is what they need to say for him to come and establish his kingdom. Psalm 118, 26, Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Now flip to Matthew 23, 39. Did Jesus know his Bible? We've already seen what prophecies from Isaiah 48. That uh every morning the Messiah would be awoken by his father. He would sit on the edge of his bed, and uh the father would teach him and his humanity. Fascinating. He was studying the Bible and his true humanity. And after pronouncing woe on the Pharisees in Matthew 23, I think eight times, at the end of the chapter, as he pronounces the destruction of Jerusalem, he says in verse 39, to Israel, for I say to you, from now on, you will not see me until you say, Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. And that's Psalm 118, 26, isn't it? That's the messianic greeting. But the nation of Israel must utter the messianic greeting. They must welcome him back if he's going to come back to this world. What is it that's that's keeping the second coming from taking place? It's that mess Israel is not welcoming him back. They're not welcoming Jesus as the Messiah. And the reason is because that generation to whom he came in the first century rejected him and crucified him, right? And every generation since then of Israel has held the same outlook on Jesus that he's not the Messiah. But there's coming a generation in the future that will recognize him as the Messiah, and they will utter the messianic greeting, and guess what? He will return according to his own word and to fulfill the kingdom. So these are some of the results of the rejection. Now, um, during this parenthesis of time, where you've got the wheat and the tares growing up side by side, the church comes into this period of time, so um the church will form, okay, and that's what we are. Now, the problem is sometimes presented to us. In other words, there's a lot of theologians that don't like the idea that I'm projecting. What they're thinking is that what we're saying is that when Jesus came, he made a genuine offer of the kingdom. And that kingdom offer was rejected, and therefore Christ was crucified, and so the cross becomes in their mind, they say, Well, you're saying the cross was a plan B. You know, plan A was come offer the kingdom, and if Israel accepts, then the kingdom will come. And they don't like that because they make that that makes it sound to them like the cross is just an after effect, like something that happened because of a negative choice of Israel. Because, like what they like to say is that if we ask the question to people who are not premillennial, if we said to them, what, why did Jesus come? They would say, to die for our sins. Now, would anybody disagree that he came to die for our sins in this room? Of course we believe he came to die for our sins. But here's the other question. Well, what about the kingdom offer? Was it a legitimate offer? Was it a real offer, is what we mean. In other words, if it's a real offer of the kingdom, repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, meaning it's overhanging, it's about to come if you'll repent, Israel. The question becomes, well, what if Israel did repent? Would the kingdom have come? Well, if language means language, then yes, it would have come. And they think when we say that, that we're saying, well, then the cross wouldn't happen. Now we're not saying that. We're just saying that things would have unfolded differently. Obviously, he still would have been crucified. It's necessary to pay for the sin penalty for the whole world. You have to have that, and there's no salvation apart from the cross of Christ, right? So you have to have that. It just would have unfolded differently. But the Bible does present the kingdom offer as a legitimate offer, a real offer. Now, they don't like that, okay? Just like they don't like the idea that Jesus died for all people, but only what they say would say the elect get saved, what they call limited atonement. They don't like the idea that we would come along and say, no, Jesus died for the sins of all the world, each and every person. They don't like that. Because then they say, well, then you're making everything contingent on a human's response to the gospel. And this is breach of God's sovereignty, they say. And the same thing they're saying here is they don't like the idea that you could have a legitimate kingdom offer, and because of the rejection of humans, Jewish people, it therefore resulted in this cross thing. They don't like that. But here's the thing the Bible has multitude of examples of what we call contingencies. Okay, contingencies, meaning something is conditioned on human response. Uh for example, Adam and Eve in the garden. God created everything very good. He gave them anything they wanted to partake of in the garden, except, right, do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The day you eat it, you will surely die. Now, did God say, you know, I'm going to create these people to fall?

SPEAKER_03 40:47

No. He put a legitimate, you know, decision in front of them.

Church As Preparation For The Kingdom

SPEAKER_02 40:53

Eat, and die, or don't eat of the tree and live. Now, I mean, God knows what's going to happen, but his his knowledge, his omniscience, is not causative. It doesn't cause bad things to happen. I read a doctrinal statement yesterday. It said that uh there's a local church here. No, no, local church in Fredericksburg. People ask me questions all the time. I'm like, where am I? Um in the doctrinal statement of the church, it said that Satan was the cause of man's fall. True or false? Yeah, I mean, Satan didn't cause man to eat. Man had a choice to eat and could have said no, but chose to. So man is the cause of the fall. Not God, not Satan. Okay, man. We are held culpable or responsible for that. Uh, in the same way, you know, we have other contingencies in Scripture. One of the easy ones to see is when Jonah goes to Nineveh, right? In the text it says, yet 40 days and God is going to overturn Nineveh. In other words, he said, That's it. I'm blowing it away in 40 days. In fact, to the extent that by the end of the book, where is Jonah sitting? He's sitting on a hill saying, Let's get it on. I want to see you blow it away. You said you were going to blow it away. But built into that idea of yet 40 days was if the Ninevehes believed, then God wouldn't do it. And God didn't do it. And Jonah was very upset about it. Right? He wanted nothing more than to see the Ninevehes destroyed. That's a contingent prophecy, yet 40 days in Nineveh will be destroyed. See? It's a contingent. It's contingent on what? It's contingent on the Nineveh's response to God. In chapter 3 says they believed in God. So God did not destroy the city. Here's another one. I'll take you to this one. This one is in is it 1 Kings or 2nd Kings?

SPEAKER_03 42:54

Ahijah's told to go out to meet Jeroboam.

SPEAKER_02 43:02

And he's told to get in front of it and take a garment and rip it into twelve pieces and to give Jeroboam ten of these pieces. And he says, The other two pieces I'm going to leave for David. Chapter 11.

SPEAKER_03 43:17

I knew we'd get it there. Here we go. This is definitely it.

SPEAKER_02 43:23

Verse 30, 1130. Ahijah took hold of the new cloak which was on him, he tore it into twelve pieces, and he said to Jeroboam, Take for yourself ten pieces. For thus says the Lord God of Israel, Behold, I will tear the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon and give you ten tribes. But he will have one tribe for the sake of my servant David, and for the sake of Jerusalem, the city which I have chosen from all the tribes of Israel. Because they, that's Solomon's dynasty, they have forsaken me and have worshipped Ashtareth, the goddess of the Sidonians, Kemosh, the god of Moab and Milchab, Milcom, the god of the sons of Ammon, and they have not walked in my way. Remember, Solomon, you know, went apostate, right? Now, the thing is that David's house through Solomon, that dynasty was an eternal dynasty. God had already promised them an eternal kingdom with an eternal king who would sit on an eternal throne and reign forever over the world. Now, look what happens. He's standing in front of Jeroboam. He rips this thing into shreds, twelve shreds. He gives Jeroboam ten of these shreds, and he says in verse 34, Nevertheless, I will not take the whole kingdom out of his hand, that's Solomon's, but I will make him a ruler for all the days of his life, for the sake of my servant David, whom I chose, the one who observed my commandments and my statutes. But I will take the kingdom from his son's hand and give to you ten tribes. But to his son I will give one tribe, that's Solomon, that my servant David may have a lamp always before me in Jerusalem, the city where I've chosen for myself to put my name. And I will take you, Jeroboam, and you shall reign over whatever you desire, and you shall be king over Israel. Ten tribes, right? Then it will be that if you listen, if, if, if, if, if you listen to all that I command you, and you walk in my ways and do what is right in my sight, by observing my statutes and my commandments as my servant David did, then I will be with you, and I will build you an everlasting house, as I built for David, and I will give Israel to you. And you're thinking, now wait a minute. So we're gonna have two everlasting dynasties? The dynasty of David and then a dynasty of Jeroboam? And it seems strange because does that mean we're gonna have two messiahs, one from the house of Jeroboam and one from the house of David? And it seems to be a contingent offer. Like in all truth, if he had kept the statutes, if he'd walked after his ways, there would be an enduring house or an eternal house of Jeroboam. And you say, but that you say, and I say, Well, that can't be. There's only one Messiah. He has to come from the line of David. And yet this is in the Word of God. See, the Word of God presents things in this manner. It's just like Jesus Christ came to die for the sins of every single person, without exception, right? And yet the only ones who will enjoy it are those who believe. So is it a legitimate offer to those who do not believe? Is the salvation a legitimate offer? Well, absolutely. And the same thing is true with the kingdom offer. A legitimate kingdom offer was being made to the extent that we could say that if Israel responded and repented, then the kingdom would have come.

SPEAKER_03 46:33

But they didn't. And so then what?

SPEAKER_02 46:36

So the kingdom doesn't come. And now we have something open up. And this is the idea of the church, which in the New Testament they're just learning about. Okay? So the question becomes, point two here, what is the kingdom? And did the meaning of kingdom change because of Israel's rejection? My answer is no. Okay, then the nature of the kingdom did not change. It's still going to come here on earth. The Messiah is still going to rule over it. The Davidic throne will be on earth. It's not going to be in heaven. He's not reigning in that kingdom now. But the answer of all millennialism and post-millennialism is that the kingdom changed formed and is now. Now, this is why, and this explains a lot politically, okay? Not only in America, but in Europe. All the nationalist churches, like Lutheranism, these churches were nationalist churches. They held the power of the political state behind them. Why? Because the church in their mind was the kingdom on earth. What do you think is going on in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 40s? Do you think the Germans liked Lutheranism?

SPEAKER_03 47:50

Do you think they prized Luther? Yeah, the guy invented the German language.

SPEAKER_02 47:59

So he's highly revered. Lutheranism is a form of replacement theology. Believes the kingdom is now. Israel's been replaced. With replaced with what? The church. Israel was a nation. So what's the church? The church is a nation. It has political power, it wields the sword. What did they think of the Fuhrer? That he was the vicar of Christ come to rule and expand God's kingdom on earth. By getting rid of who? Why? Because God is through with the Jews. Because God is through with the Jewish people.

SPEAKER_03 48:39

Didn't Lut. Yes, yes, yes. Yes. Yes, it's preparation. And I haven't got to that point, so yes. But yes.

Israel And The Church Distinguished

SPEAKER_02 48:52

And I'll explain how we're preparing it's preparing for the kingdom. But so Lutheranism and the I mean I'm just saying, this has wide-scale repercussions. Huge repercussions. Luther worked with the Jewish people in Germany that were there in his day, early 1500s. Early to mid-1500s. But he got so fed up with them rejecting the gospel, he wrote a tract called uh Against the Jews. And he turned somewhat anti-Semitic. And that anti-Semit Semitism bred in Germany for over 400 years. About 400 years. And the culmination of it was what we saw in the Holocaust. Um now who fought it in Germany? What what what ideological denominations fought it? The Plymouth brethren. The Plymouth brethren were the ones who were standing up against it. And they were the ones who were the righteous among the nations for the most part helping uh Jews escape. Why? Because they were premillennial. Because they believed in a future reign of Christ and that God has a future for Israel. Not the omillennialism of Lutheranism.

SPEAKER_03 50:09

Does does theology matter? 15 million lives say it does.

SPEAKER_02 50:18

15 million lives say it matters a lot. A whole lot. And how many died in World War II? I don't know the number, but it's a lot more than 15 million. If you count all the killed in battle, as well as civilian casualties. It's huge. And so are these just side issues? No, no, no. These are not side issues at all. If the church is a nation and we wield the power of the political state, then yeah, we should be trying to take over the world like post-millennialism is today. But if we're premillennial, is our focus on the kingdom now or is our focus on Jesus Christ right now? Christ. Christ. And how to live the Christian life by the Spirit of God and not by works, right? How to go on and be fruit bearers, because this is what you're talking about, Bill. We're talking about this idea that the church is a preparation period for the kingdom. That's the third point. So the church is a mystery, meaning it was something that had never been revealed in the history of the world. It's going to fall in that parenthetical period that we're now in between the first coming and the second coming. And it was revealed gradually during Acts and the Epistles. In other words, what's the church? They're trying to figure that out in the book of Acts and in the epistles. The revelation is coming. We're beginning to understand who we are. It's a period of preparation. The church is a period of preparation for the kingdom, and its members will serve as the spiritual nucleus of the coming kingdom, as we will reign with him in that future kingdom. This is from Alvin McLean, and I this is one of my top five books I've ever read that I love outside the Bible, and that's called The Greatness of the Kingdom. And he said, The present age, viewed from the standpoint of the kingdom, is a time of preparation. During this period, the Son of Man is sowing seed, generating and developing a spiritual nucleus for the future kingdom, a group called sons of the kingdom. That was in Matthew 13, right? The parable of the tarrors and the wheat. At the same time, he is permitting a parallel development of evil in the world under the leadership of Satan. Those are the tares, right? The sons of the evil one. It is the purpose of God to bring both to a harvest when the good and the bad will be separated, and then to establish the kingdom in power and righteousness. We're in a period of preparation. He is forming now the spiritual nucleus of the future kingdom when we will reign with Christ. Now, I don't have anything here, we haven't gone into the nature of the church much except to say this very clearly. Israel was a nation. The church is not a nation, it's composed of people from every nation, right? This is obviously something quite different. Jesus said at his first coming early on in the ministry, he says, Do not go in the way of the Samaritans. Do not go to the Gentiles. Go only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But by the end of the gospel, he's saying, Go ye therefore into all nations and make disciples. These are two very different messages. And that's because Israel, that's one purpose of God over here that God has, and the church. And the church is something different. Israel is a nation, but the church is not a nation. It's to go to all nations. And so a very different thing is happening. Now what we're going to have expounded as we get into the day of Pentecost and move through Acts and the spilling out of the Spirit and all this is get to discuss and learn about who we are. Because we're not Israel. If we fall into the trap of Israel, we're doing the same thing that Lutheranism did, right? And Congregationalism and other denominations that are nationalist, tend toward nationalistic churches. I mean, it's why people came to America. They're trying to get out of that. Church of England is a nationalist church. They're trying to get away from that. They wanted freedom to worship how they felt the Bible said they should worship, right? And here we are, we're still fighting this battle. So the questions about the kingdom and what happened to the kingdom, Israel, and this period of preparation where God is building this thing called a church are very important questions. Very important questions. Now we get to learn what we call the mystery truths, okay? These are new truths that tell us who we are as a church. Things like Jew and Gentile in one body. Was Israel one body in Messiah? Was Messiah dwelling in Israel? No. These are totally foreign concepts for Israel. This is a totally new thing that is happening now. Can God have two things going on at the same time? You know, something for Israel and something for the church? Some people say, oh no, that's too complicated. It's too complicated for you, but it's not too complicated for God. I remember standing there one day at a pre-trip conference, and um we're talking Arnold Fruchenbaum and asking, just asking him questions and things like that. And someone said, Someone said, Why is it that people don't like this dispensational thing where you've got Israel in the church? He said, Because it's too complicated. It's just easier just to say the church has replaced Israel and just everything, the land, that's all fulfilled in Jesus. Jesus was the land and stuff like that. Which is sounds stupid to you, but that's what people believe. The land promise is fulfilled in Jesus in heaven. That's what they think. Like, what? I mean, did he promise them land or not? Does God have integrity? Is he gonna actually keep his promises as the words actually mean? I mean, that's how contracts work, right? I mean, it's the literal language. You don't use figurative language in in contracts. It's legal jargon, right? And so are the covenants. They're all legal. And God's gonna keep them exactly the way he said them. He's not gonna change the meaning. If someone changes the meaning in a contract, you're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you can't do that. That's the first thing you would say. Why? Because your money's involved. That's why. And God doesn't change. The meanings don't change. Meaning is stable. Or else we don't have what about the promises he'd made to us? Well, what if he says, Well, I didn't really mean that. I meant this instead. Well, wait, why didn't you say it then? Why didn't you say it differently if that's not what you meant? God wouldn't have integrity, it would just erase his whole character as we know it. Okay, so we're gonna go into the church and um I'll stop waxing on about this. Uh the important thing is to understand what happened in the Gospels and why we are here and what's going on on the day of Pentecost.

SPEAKER_00 56:46

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 Spoke and 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.