NT Framework - An Undeniable Truth, not a mix of made up lessons

Each story, in it's entirety is true. If one aspect of what the Bible calls truth (historical fact) is not in fact true, then God is not God and the Bible is a lie. 

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

Why Scripture Is Not Random

SPEAKER_00 0:00

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_01 0:10

He realized that hey, look, either all of this is true or none of it's true. But you can't play pick and choose. Because he's like, if this is true, and then the one true God who knows all things is not going to write down contradictions and conflicts.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

When did the phrase cobbling it together become a negative thing? It used to be that to be a cobbler was a grand and noble profession. And that to cobble well, that is to make a good pair of shoes, to apply skill and craftsmanship and thought to a functional, long-lasting, well-designed, comfortable shoe was a noble thing. To cobble together a pair of shoes meant that you had skill. You had paid diligent attention to your training, to the materials, and to the needs of your customer. And so when did cobbling it together become negative? You see, God does not cobble together the Bible. He did not cobble together in a negative sense salvation. It was planned out thoughtfully, thoroughly throughout time. It was perfectly planned and executed throughout history. And the Bible perfectly records it. If something seems disjointed, out of context, weird, or hard to comprehend, it's not God. It's us. We are the ones that cobble together in that negative sense or understanding. God perfectly planned it, perfectly described it, perfectly laid it out. It's up to us to listen and understand. So today Jeremy is going to walk through the whole review of where we're at in the New Testament framework so we can see the grand scheme and how each part fits together.

Three Strands That Strengthen Faith

Beads On A Necklace Illustration

Ascension Session And Third Heaven

Creation Categories For God And Man

SPEAKER_01 2:28

Framework, Old Testament, Framework, New Testament. Basically, I've got 22 or 23 events that I'm focusing on in this series. Uh, framework is a method of teaching the Bible, it's not the only way to teach the Bible. So don't take this as an exclusive. What I'm saying is that this is an exclusive way to teach the Bible, or people must teach it this way. I'm not saying that. I'm simply saying this is a manner or method of teaching the Bible that is helpful. It actually developed in the early 1970s by a pastor in Lovick, Texas, Charlie Clough, who had become a believer at MIT in the 60s and then went to Dallas Seminary. And when he came to be in the pastorate in the 70s, he's living in a situation in our country where you've got the whole hippie movement and all that's going on. And people are have basically been told in the in the post-World War II generation that there's no absolute. And so people were really struggling, and they didn't have any firm footing, no stability in life. It was just, you know, free love or whatever all that is. And so these people were searching at that time, searching for stability in life, because it was chaotic, right? And what he did was he basically arranged a methodology of teaching the Bible that uh meets met the challenges of that day, and this manner of teaching has continued on to our own day. What it basically does is it is it has uh three basic elements. And um Ecclesiastes says that you know a cord of three strands is not quickly broken, and and we know that from uh just the real world. It makes something very strong. And so the three aspects of the framework are first of all an emphasis on the apologetics, the apologetic dimension. What's apologetics? It's it's where you are giving an answer for the Christian position. Over and against what? Over and against the pagan position. For a good example of you know, apologetics, uh, you have Socrates' apologia, which is recorded in Aristotle, and it's his defense. You know, he was accused of uh corrupting the youth of Athens, and what Socrates had to do was give a defense. It's called the apologia. So it's like a legal defense. And what we're trying to do is train ourselves to be able to give a defense of the Christian position over and against the pagan or unbelieving position that is prevalent in our culture today. So we do this at each event we teach. If we start with creation, obviously what we're going to be doing here is defending the creation position over and against the evolutionary paradigm, right? So we spent a lot of time uh at that juncture, uh, what, a few years ago now, uh, dealing with the objections to creationism and you know putting the spotlight on the fallacies of evolutionary theory. And so that's one of the aspects is is is to talk about the both sides. They used to do this in the public schools, right? They used to be able to teach teach both sides. Now, of course, you can only teach one side because the establishment clause, and because they're not religiously neutral, they're anti-Christian. But anyway, that's a sermon for another day. Um when we come to the fall, we have a doctrine of sin and suffering. In other words, why is there suffering in this world? It's because of sin. And who's the cause of that? Well, we are, mankind. So we're playing the personal responsibility card. This is the Christian position. We are personally responsible for the sin and suffering in this world. Now, the pagan worldview is that I'm just a victim. It's the victim mentality. It's not my fault. My mommy dropped me on my head when I was a baby, or whatever. Okay, whatever the excuse may be. My employer did this to me, I'm just a victim. And so the pagan card is to always play the victim mentality. The Christian position is personal responsibility. So we show the difference and we discuss why the biblical position of personal responsibility is the correct position, and this other position is fallacious. So that's one aspect. You focus on the apologetic dimension. We have to be able to engage the culture. If we can't engage the culture, we become isolated from the culture and we become irrelevant. So that is an important element. The second element that we emphasize is biblical theology. And so what that means is that we're going through the Bible. You know, at each of these events, whether it's creation, the fall, the flood, the Noah covenant, whatever the event is, we're going to focus on the event itself, and we're going to develop a biblical theology by asking ourselves, what is God teaching through these various events? Okay. And that helps us develop our doctrines. So at creation, what doctrines? God, man, and nature, right? God, man, and nature. Um, at the fall, sin and suffering. At the flood, judgment, salvation. Whenever God's judging, he's saving. How many ways of salvation are there at the flood? One way of salvation. What way is that? Appropriation by faith. You know, the individual has to appropriate God's promise by faith. And there's a perfect discrimination when he judges. All those off the ark were judged, those on the ark were saved. So, doctrine of judgment, salvation. We got all these truths that we connect with each of these events. And the last one is what I've somewhat already covered, and that's to emphasize the historicity of the biblical events, because that's what has been attacked in the last 250 years in the church, is the historicity of the biblical events, especially early Genesis, right? But also anything that's miraculous. So the virgin birth, that's going to be attacked. The resurrection, that's going to be attacked. So we have to emphasize the historicity of these events. In other words, what we're saying here is it really does matter whether or not these things happen in history. I mean, if the resurrection really didn't happen and it's just a story that some old Jewish guys made up, well, Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, where most men be pitied, we might as well just go on our way. This isn't true. You know, none of this is true if that didn't happen. So the historicity is absolutely critical to the truth value of the doctrines that are connected to the events. And so that's the approach of the framework. It tries to equip us to be able to defend our position, its historicity, and the doctrines that are taught by these events. So it's a very powerful methodology. Now, this the second thing I want to say about the framework methodology is sort of what it is and what it is not. If you have, here I'll use an illustration. If you have some beads, a lot of women play with beads, sometimes boys do too, you know, make a bracelet or whatever. You do your crafts. If you have a pile of beads, now Christian doctrines are not like a pile of beads. Um that's just they're just rolling around. They're just a bunch of beads. What I'm trying to show with the framework is that these are like beads that you string on a necklace. And they're put very purposefully in a specific order to produce a pattern on the bracelet or necklace, right? And so all of these beads, if they represent the historical events and doctrines of Christianity, are organized into a specific pattern and connected in a certain way. And this is what we're trying to understand as every human being. This is what we're trying to understand. What is the pattern? What does it look like? And this helps us see relationships between the various beads on the necklace or the various doctrines and events of scripture. And that's where the framework becomes very powerful because it helps you resolve issues and understand what God thinks about them. And that's really all we care about, right? What does God think? Because, you know, it's not my theology versus your theology, it's who's got the theology that matches up with God's theology. That's the only thing that matters. If we're thinking his thoughts after him, right? What does Paul say in Romans 12? Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Well, that transformation would be moving toward Christ's way of thinking. 1 Corinthians 2 16, we have the mind of Christ. That is the believer who is walking with the Lord and is organizing the scriptures appropriately has the exact same thinking pattern of Christ. And that's what we're going for. That's what we're going for. So there's a lot of power in this. So we're going to review, show connections, and try to see the whole picture. Now I've got everything here. I'm not going to I can't show it all at once. If you get the handouts, you get it all at once. It's great to be able to just spread them out. That's what I like about pieces of paper rather than computers. I can lay them on a table and see everything, right? You can't do that on a lot of computer screens or phone screens. So there's some limitations to the PowerPoint. I'm going to take us all the way down to the ascension in the session, which is where we've been. These are just events and doctrines, as you can see, as I just whip through here. I want to show how powerful this is by showing how the doctrines of scripture are like beads on a necklace and they connect. And if you don't understand the earlier beads on the necklace and how they work, well, you won't be able to understand later truths. You get blocked off. It's just like a the Bible is really a pedagogy or like a curriculum. It's like a training system that God has written for us. Just like if you take a education curriculum, uh, you go through, you know, your elementary schooling, your middle school, your high school, your graduate, you know, your college and graduate programs, there's a sequence that you are supposed to take the courses in. And there's a reason for that. I mean, you you can't you can't do Cal III before you do, you know, algebra one and two. And the reason is because Cal III integrates algebra one and two. And so there are stepping stones to understanding later truths. And God has done this in a progressive fashion. He's the Bible's laid out exactly the same way. It's why the Old Testament, when you think of stories in the Bible, I mean, what stories do you think of? Oh, the flood. Oh, David and Goliath. Oh, Daniel in the lion's den. Uh, how many of those came from the New Testament? Zero. And the reason why we think of all the stories of the Bible in the Old Testament is because the Bible is written on a story level in the Old Testament, and then it gets more complicated in the New Testament. And you say, Well, I know there was the Apostle Paul, and he went on some missionary journeys, but I have no idea what books he wrote when he was doing those or where he was or what was happening. I really don't see the story. And the reason is because it's it's not written. There's no book that says this is the story of Paul's lie, like there is King David. It's just not like that. But that's because it's more advanced material. And just like, you know, Cal III is much more complicated than Algebra I. And it's more abstract. And the New Testament is assuming we already know all the Old Testament. That's what you know. I love what John Whitcomb said one time. He said, every verse in the Bible presupposes you know every previous verse. And all of God's people said, I'm humbled by that. I'm humbled by that. We should say that. Uh, because if we don't know all the previous verses, that means we may be looking at this verse and not understanding it correctly. And we have to have a humility when we come to it. So let's start all the way down here in basically Acts chapter 1, the ascension and session, which is what we've been discussing in Acts 1. We saw him ascend, right? What I'm going to show you, I'm going to show you how to connect and how to understand and how to put all these things together. It's just as an example. This is just an illustration Sunday to try to explain what how our minds are supposed to be working. Okay? I know we don't like to think about how we're thinking, but it's very important. Most people don't think how they about how they think. And uh so it's a little difficult, but you'll see it's fun. At the ascension, he takes off in Acts 1, 9, 10, and 11, and he lifts up and then he disappears into a cloud. And at that point, nobody ever saw him in a resurrection appearance like we see in the Gospels. Uh people see him in vision on the Damascus road and things like that, but not like you know, walking around on earth. And so he goes, but we have so we have to know from other passages what happened. And the other passages are called the session, and that is where he sat down at the right hand of the Father in the third heaven. And I'm saying a lot of things right now. I am saying so many things. I just said there's third heaven. I didn't even talk about the first two that he passed through, but that would be our atmospheric heaven, the starry heavens, and then he goes to the third heaven. That's heaven, heaven, right? The highest heavens where God dwells, and there's a throne there, and he sat down. Now, what we have to realize is that he's in a resurrection body, he's in a human resurrection body, he's in the exact same body that he appeared to over a period of 40 days, right? In the gospel accounts, and one occasion more to more than 500. And um, that's the body that's actually at a what we would call a geometric point of reference. It's he's actually there, like there's a location. I mean, if we had GPS for the whole first, second, third heavens, we could say this is the GPS coordinates for where the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ is. That's what we're supposed to think of. Now, that means that a human, who's actually a God human, a god man, is sitting at the helm of the universe. And this is an astonishing idea, right? Now, let's just back away because that we said all that, but let's back away and say, what do we need to know before so that we can really understand what all that means? Well, first thing is if he is the God man, then we have to know who is God, what is a man. And so we would immediately begin to back up when we're thinking about Jesus and his resurrection all the way to creation. Because this is where we learn who God is and who man is. And so we have God and the creator-creature distinction, right? God is the creator, we are part of the creation, and creation includes man and nature. So God is not a part of his creation, he is separate from it, he's the creator of it. So there's the creator-creature distinction. That means that when we get to the person of Christ, since he is the creator and he's also a creature, that that's what is happening at the incarnation. So now we're jumping all the way over here, right? And we're saying, okay, we're going to look at the uh birth of the king. We're looking at the virgin birth. We're talking about Trinity because he's God and He's all but He's also man, so that's hypostatic union. And this is complicated. If you don't have a good category categorical understanding of who God is and who man is, how can you ever understand ultimately really who Jesus Christ is? So it's complicated. So we go all the way back, right? And we remember that the very first truth that God taught is Genesis 1:1. In the beginning God, then he created, right? And there's that creator creature distinction right there. So we want to know who God is, and we have an acronym for that, Sergey Lewis, right? Sovereign, righteous, just, loving, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, immutable, eternal. Okay, there's some attributes of God, nine of them. There's others, but this is a basic level course, right? It's a simple way to remember who's God. Well, he saw saw he's Sergey Lewis, okay? And you can write that down and you can remember it forever, and you can teach it in Sunday school classes across the world, and everybody needs to know who God is. Now, man is made in God's image. He's not God, but he's made in God's image, right? So if God is sovereign, righteous, just loving, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, immutable, eternal, and man is made in the image of God, don't we think that man reflects the nature of God? Sure. So what we do is we start with sovereignty, and we say, well, if God is sovereign and we're able to define this, which we are able to do, then we say, Well, what does man have that is a corollary to that? It's that we have choice. We have choice. Uh when we say God has is uh righteous and just, which means he's a standard for what's right and wrong, and he doesn't play favorites, right? Man has a corollary to that. We have conscience. The conscience says, hey, there's something wrong, this is right, that's right, that's wrong. There's it's judging according to what? This is some standard. Um then you talk about God, you say, well, because the next one is he's loving. Okay, well, whenever we say God is loving, we mean in an infinite sense. His love is not conditioned on anything outside of himself. Okay, it's conditioned on who he is. In other words, he is love. That's the point. It doesn't matter. I mean, how could he love us if it was conditioned on love? And we're just sinners. He can't love sin. So if he loves us, it's got to be based on his own character. And we have love too, right? But it's finite.

unknown 20:19

Okay.

The Fall Explains Sin And Suffering

The Flood As Judgment And Salvation

Exodus Passover And The Lamb

Why You Cannot Pick And Choose

Cross Vocabulary That Clarifies Salvation

SPEAKER_01 20:20

Capital L for God's love, lowercase L for our love, right? It shows the difference in his infinite quality and our finite quality. Right? We have now we have, by the way, on the as we talk about this, remember we have all these things because he is these things. That's why we are the way we are, made in his image. We talk about God being omniscient, meaning he knows all things, actual and possible, even all the what-ifs of history, right? Well, we don't have that, but what do we have? We have knowledge, we do have finite knowledge. Uh, but it's a difference because God never learned anything. And uh everything you know, you learn. Almost everything. So there's a difference in our knowledge, okay? When we say he's omnipresent, we say, well, what do we have that's corollary to God's omnipresence? Omnipresence means God is completely everywhere, both inside of space and anything that's outside of space, because the universe is a space. There's something outside the universe, it's not space, it's not created, it's God. That's what it is. Now, um, what do we have that's a corollary to this omnipresent? Well, we have the concept of geometry in space. You take up a space, I take up a space. We can't take up the same space. So um we have a finite analog. So at each, and we could go through all the attributes, but the point is when you begin to talk about the incarnation, about Jesus Christ, you're talking about the two of these being. You're talking about God and man coming together in the way, okay, in one person, so that he is. Fully God, with all the attributes of God, sovereign, righteous, just loving, and so forth. And then yet, at the same time, as a human, he also has all the characteristics of man. He has choice, he has a conscience, he loves, he has to learn to gain knowledge. Isaiah even prophesied this about the Messiah, that he would sit every morning, the Father would wake him up and teach him. You say, but he's God. Yeah, but he's also 100% man. And it's in his humanity that he had to learn the word of God. And we we marvel at this, right? We should marvel. But that's what we mean by showing that if you don't have a good view of creation and a good understanding of who God is and whose man is, you're you can't have a good understanding of Jesus Christ. Okay, because he's the most complicated person that ever came into the history of the world. And he's the most complicated topic that we can ever think about is his person. So all this is going on, and then then we get down to well, let's while we're here, let's make a comment about nature. Nature is outside of man and outside of God. You know, you're not a part of nature according to the Bible. But if you go to any of your you know, educational settings in our country, you'll be taught that man is just another part of nature. Um but no, we're we're not. We're distinct from that. And the way we're distinct is because we are the only creatures in the world that are made in God's image. And so we're distinct and unique people. Now and it would honestly it would seem obvious, but if you just thought for five seconds, it's obvious. But um but apparently it's not obvious to most people because part of the fallen human heart's idea is that we're gonna rewrite all this. We can't have this, we can't have creation, so we have to come up with an evolutionary story. And of course, I've been trained in the story because I got a degree in biology and a minor in chemistry, and I took all the courses and and so forth and so on. So um I've been there and done that and still interested in that, but basically all the evolutionary ideas are a rewriting of history. They realize that's extremely important. They have to rewrite history because they have to teach different truths or doctrines. Uh and so they want to go against the biblical doctrines and truths. Okay, so see how this works. Okay, we were way over at the ascension and session. He's risen, he's at a specific GPS locale in the third heaven. Again, here's another one. If you want to understand the third heaven, what do you have to do? You have to go back to creation to understand the first and second heavens, because they're actually there in creation week. That's how we learn there's two heavens. And then later we learn there's a third stacked on top. So um the first one is of course the atmospheric heavens in on the fifth day uh when he created the birds and filled the sky, he says they fly on the on the um against the face, okay, of the starry heavens, which is what we call the our atmosphere. And then, of course, where he placed the stars is a different heaven, right? So that's I mean starry heavens. And so that's out there too. So behind all these ideas in the ascension and session of Christ are all these other ideas, see? And you have to link back, and that's how you understand what's going on later. Take another one. Now we also got the idea of a resurrection body. I mean, he's actually in a resurrected body, and so that that complication, all these things uh connect and look back to previous truths. Um let's let's look at the um at some of these events in the Old Testament that are preparatory in God's plan for man to understand who he is. Look at the fall, sin and suffering. Right? Sin and suffering. Now we know that we all sinned in Adam, right? Well, we know that because of Romans 5, 12. But Adam's sin and the whole race was in Adam, even Eve, who was taken out of the side of him. Is that significant that she was taken out of the side of him? Is it significant to have a unified human race in one person? It becomes very significant. Now, we may not understand the significance if we were Adam and why, you know, God made uh pairs of other animals, but he didn't do this, do it the same way when he came to man, but he stopped and said, Okay, I'm gonna make one man and then I'm gonna take the rib out of the man and I'm gonna construct a woman. He did that very differently, didn't he? So is there a significance to that? Well, sure. Okay, the whole human race ends up sinning in Adam so that the whole human race can be saved in the one man, Jesus Christ. It was a set, it's a setup. You know, God set it up, and it's it's brilliant. It's a brilliant strategy. But then we've also got suffering as a result of sin. And I gave you handouts, right? All the stuff about direct suffering patterns, why do we suffer? And indirect suffering patterns, and then coping strategies. How do we deal with our suffering? Now, where everybody is suffering because of one thing, one event in the world. It's called the fall. Charles River says the darkest day in human history was the fall of man. And that's right, because all the suffering that you experience ultimately stems from that day. Now, there's different reasons we suffer, we went through it. You can go through the Bible and find different reasons. The ones that we're really comfortable with are the ones where they're called direct suffering patterns. They're called direct because guess what? We did something wrong, so we're suffering a consequence. And that makes sense to us. It's the indirect suffering patterns that we experience that boggle us. It's the stuff like Job. You know, his friends keep saying, Well, you did something, Job. I mean, you've done some unrighteousness. It's like, I don't, there's nothing I've done, you know. I don't know. There's nothing to do. And it all turned out that that in fact Job was right. He was not being suffering because of anything he'd done. He was suffering because there was a greater angelic conflict going on between God and Satan, right? That was being worked out. And you know, sometimes we're not comfortable with that. Like, well, why do I have to go through that? Well, you know, the universe is bigger than you, and God's plan and purpose is bigger than me. And he's got a lot going on. And he's he's doing things, okay, and we'll perhaps understand a little bit better later when we're with him, but maybe not. Guess what? Well either way, we should be content with it, right? We should be content with it. But here's the thing can we connect anything with the Messiah back to the fall, sin and suffering? So now I'm saying, okay, let's look at the virgin birth, right? I mean, I'm invoking the virgin birth right now when I bring up the incarnation. How in the world can we understand the virgin birth if we don't understand the fall? I mean, why is he being born of a virgin? What does that have to do with anything? Is that connected to the biblical pattern of thinking, these beads that have been laid down before? Sure it is. It's absolutely connected. You have to have a virgin birth, right? To avoid the transmission of sin to the Messiah. Because if he's sinful, he's just like you and me. Now we've got another problem. Who's gonna pay the penalty for our sin? He's just gonna pay his own penalty, see? So all of these are again connected like beads on a necklace. And if you have an inadequate view of the fall and you say, well, man's not really a sinner, he just makes mistakes. You know, things like that. Well, you're gonna have you cannot understand the incarnation in the virgin birth. You just can't. Because these are connected ideas, they are totally interrelated. Um, look at the suffering there. Now, this is an interesting one to think through because we know that the Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospels He suffered. He says, I have to suffer these things, I'll be crucified, and then I'll rise again. He predicts it like nine times in the Gospels, right? But here's the problem. Why is he suffering? I mean, he doesn't have any sin, right? He was tempted in all things as we, yet without sin. So why is he suffering? Okay, that begins to teach us something. It begins to remind us that when Adam and Eve sinned, somebody's this little lamb, God took a lamb and slit its throat and covered and made skins for them, right? Made coverings. That lamb suffered for them, see. See, it begins to set up in our minds a pattern, a way of thinking about how God is gonna resolve the problem. And so, yeah, he's suffering, the Messiah's suffering, but it's not for anything he did any more than what that lamb did. See, and this becomes the concept of substitution, right? A substitutionary atonement is gonna be made. Okay, and I'm just hanging out on creation and the fall, and we could just be here all day long just on these two. But let's look at some others. Let's look at the flood, because this picture is given repeatedly in Scripture. The picture of the flood, the doctrine is a judgment, salvation. I mean, it's it's uh, first of all, there's a big debate, right, on the extent of the flood. Was it global or was it local, just over in Mesopotamia? You know, Mesopotamia was just a bathtub, some people say, and it just kind of flowed, you know, it filled up the bathtub. But everywhere on earth didn't have any kind of repercussions. That's what people like to say. Even the Christians like to say this. A lot of Christians have written books about this. That's in their commentaries, it's all out there. You can go have a field day with how many Christians have said this. Well, that kind of creates some problems theologically, right? Because if uh you have just a local flood, how many different ways of salvation are there? At least. At least two. You could say, get on the ark and stay in the area and survive the local flood, or you could just leave the area and go somewhere else where there's no flood. See, now you got multiple plans of salvation going on. See, all of these are important because they have theological doctrinal ramification. So we're whole to the global flood of Noah, right? And that what God is teaching through that is the global judgment and salvation doctrines. And of course, we learn lots of subsidiary truths here, like grace before judgment. He gave them 120 years, right? It wasn't just like I'm just gonna break the earth open one day and flood it. It was no 120 years. Peter says Noah was a preacher of righteousness. And he went around and he told people, he warned them about the flood that was coming. Grace before judgment. How many ways is salvation? Well, only one. Because why? Well, because the water level would cover all the high mountains under all the heaven, right? So there's only one way to survive. And that, of course, was the ark that God designed and gave the design pattern to Noah and said, build it like this, because I'm sending a flood and I know what it's gonna be like. And so if you'll follow my design patterns, my architecture, then you will be in a vessel that will protect you for those 372 days that I know I'm gonna have the earth covered in water, unfit for habitation. Third, perfect discrimination, meaning when he judges, right? There are those outside the ark and there are those inside the ark. And only those inside the ark are saved, and all of those outside the ark are judged. And nobody in the ark accidentally fell off, you know, and died or something like that. Um, all those in the ark went off the ark the day that the ark rested on the mountains of Ararat. Right? And all those who are off the ark were judged. That's the idea of perfect discrimination. God doesn't make mistakes. You know, we get upset in war, you know, if uh you know some country is sending missiles in another country and they're trying to take out strategic target and it kills people that were not the strategic target. That was a mistake, right? An unintentional God that never happens when God judges. You know, if you're saved, guess what? It's not like you're just gonna accidentally show up at the great white throne. And he's gonna be like, well, sorry, but you're here now. So tough cookies, and you get sent to hell. It's not gonna happen like that. And nobody's gonna go into heaven who somehow just slips by. Uh it doesn't work like that. Perfect discrimination. He knows exactly. And then, of course, appropriation by faith. The way of salvation is always appropriation by faith. You know, I don't know why this is such a hard thing, but apparently this is just a really, really hard issue about what does a person have to do to be saved. For some reason, people cannot figure this out. Um, you'll hear, well, you gotta get baptized, uh, you gotta confess your sins, uh, you gotta repent, you know, of your sins, turn from your ways, you have to commit your life to Jesus or something like that. You'll hear all sorts of things. I I cannot figure out why this continues to be an issue. I have 100, I have a list of 198 verses that just say faith alone. It's just faith. Um now, all these other ideas, fine, they have there's something there, obviously. The Bible talks about repentance, confession, you know, baptism. It talks about all these things. It's just that that's not how you get eternal life. That's not how you are saved from the penalty of sin. Okay, so they have a place that's just not here, okay? What does it say in in Hebrews 11 6? Without faith, it is impossible to please God. And Romans 14, 23, whatsoever is not of faith is sin. I mean, God is really looking for one response from us, and that's faith, which is what is faith? It is confidence in an object that it's reliable. It is confidence in an object that it's reliable. I always use a chair, and or I'll what I'll do with my kids is I'll I would get my kids and I would stand them on a table, right? And I would say, okay, fall back in my arms. I will catch you. And they would fall back. And what they may not be able to explain why they would fall back, but when in my arms, but then I would put their sister there and I'd say, okay, now fall back in your sister's arms. And they ain't gonna fall. They were not gonna move. And the reason is because they did not have confidence that their sister was a reliable object who could hold them and catch them, right? And and that's what faith is. You you have gained confidence in someone, that they are a reliable object to do whatever it is that they say they can do. And so that's what God is asking for. He wants us to have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, that he paid for our sin and he rose again. And when a person gets convinced that Jesus Christ is reliable, at that point they they've believed. I mean, that's it. It has happened. Whether they were driving down the highway, highway 90, uh, whether they were laying in bed that morning and just couldn't sleep any longer, uh, whether you were telling them this information and they just were convinced of it. And, you know, that's all it is, okay? Uh, I never saw anybody in the Old Testament come forward and they were confessing all their sins and got saved. I mean, it's just not in the Bible, and yet people get hung up on this stuff. Uh, what about water baptism? Well, I mean, did you see Noah get water baptized? No, he stayed dry the whole time. I mean, it's the exact opposite of water baptism. It's a dry baptism. So, you know, these types of things are out there, and people hold to these ideas, but the reason that they, it's it's like they can't see is because these basic pictures that God has laid down to control our thinking are not in place. And that's why I'm saying the power of the framework is that it resolves all this for you. It becomes very easy, it's not even a it's not even an issue, you know. You don't worry about those things, but some people they're just going crazy about this. Church of Christ, oh, you got to get a water baptism, you know, all this kind of stuff. Um last one, man and nature judge. That's very important. Um when God salvation and judgment are not just spiritual only, but they relate to the whole cosmos as well. Peter says of the flood in 2 Peter 3 that it affected the whole heavens and earth. Not just earth, the whole heavens and earth, which is the in Hebrew, it's the concept of the universe. Uh because they didn't have a word for universe. Just like Genesis 1.1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And he's talking about the universe there. That's what that means in the Hebrew way of thinking. And so it it it affected not just man, but what else is on the ark? What does God preserve on the ark? God animals. You mean God cares about animals? Well, yeah, he made them, right? He loves animals. Guess what? I love animals too. I mean, I'm just a sucker for little animals. I I really am a sucker for animals. And um I don't like to see animals die, and you know, it it it hurts, it hurts. But I don't like to see humans die either. Of course. Humans are more important than animals. And I have a balance there because God tells us that man is made in God's image. Animals are not. Humans are more important than animals. Okay, accept it, Lord. But man and nature are judged. You know, what's going on on the cross? Isn't this interesting? You you know, he goes to the cross, and then there's these three hours of darkness and there's an earthquake. Well, what does that have to do with anything? It's a pattern, it doesn't it? Because when God flooded the world, it affected more than just the people and animals in that ark. It affected all of nature. And so every time you see God judging and saving, you see nature affected as well. So let's flip over to it. We'll go over it real quick to the Exodus, because the Exodus teaches the same thing judgment, salvation, right? These are all preparing us for the cross. They're all prepping us for the cross, right? This is why you don't start with Jesus. You start with creation and you work your way to Jesus, right? Because this sets up a pattern so that when he's on the cross, we understand what's going on. God is judging and saving. That's why it got dark, and that's why you have an earthquake and so forth. But here's another one, the Exodus, and it gives us more information. You have the exact same truths through the ten plagues. Okay, every time that God was gonna send a plague, Moses goes to the Pharaoh and he says, Hey, let God say, Let my people go. And Pharaoh says, No. He says, Okay, well, here's gonna be a judgment. See, there's grace, there was the opportunity to let the people go, right? But when that grace was spurned, then God judged. This happens ten times. And um, there's of course only one way of salvation. You know, you're looking at the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn. By the way, why was it the death of the firstborn? Here we go again. These are connections in the biblical text. Why was it that why was the ultimate plague, the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn son? Because Israel is God's son. They're referred to as his son. And so what they had done to his son, he was now doing to their son. Why? So they would get the message and believe that he's the one true God. God was actually evangelizing the Egyptian people through the very nature of the tenth plague. That was his whole point. So this stuff is all there. One way of salvation, of course, on the night of the tenth plague, you have to take the blood of one-year-old lamb, male, unblemished, spotless, right? Put it over the door. And then the angel of death would see, be satisfied, and pass over one way. And it wasn't just the firstborn son that was saved through that, was it? What does it also say would be saved if they put the blood over the door? Firstborn of their flock. Nature. Nature enjoys the salvation too. Salvation is bigger than man. It involves all of nature. Perfect discrimination. Again, what's happening in Goshen, for example, when you have the darkness? Was there any darkness in Goshen, or was it just covering the whole land of Egypt? It's like God just held a spotlight. It's like it just took a flashlight and shown it right on Goshen. And everything else was just pitch black around it. Very interesting. Um, because there's a perfect discrimination. Appropriation by faith. I mean, they had to appropriate the promise that, hey, if you put the blood over the door, then you'll be saved, okay? And they did. That's by faith. You had to trust, you had to be convinced that God is a reliable object to save them through this method, okay? And then man and nature judge. We know that through all the plagues. It's the Nile, it's the frogs, it's the gnats, right? It's the boils, it's the hail. You know, Velikovsky, and I don't agree with everything Emmanuel Velikovsky said, but he said he said that Egypt was. A ruin by the end of the tenth plague. And that's what the Bible says. You know, his advisors come to me and he says, What are you doing? Don't you realize that Egypt is a ruin? I mean, let these people get out of here. I mean, your whole kingdom has been destroyed. And Egypt didn't rise to power for many, many centuries because it was so destroyed. But we also had the substitutionary blood atonement. That's the Lamb, right? The picture gets really clear at the Exodus. And isn't this a setup for the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world? I mean, yes, this is a setup. Can we just say, like many scholars, many biblical, I've got Bright's book, he says, well, uh, we don't know if the Exodus really happened and all this kind of stuff. Really? We have no evidence of that. Well, if it didn't happen, excuse me, if the exodus didn't happen, then did Jesus and the cross happen? I mean, these are linked together. It's like Charlie Clough, the guy who kind of developed this method, said he was an MIT grad and he became a believer when he was in MIT. He was raised in the Bronx. He was basically raised by unbelieving parents. They didn't care at all for the Bible, he was just atheists or agnostic. But when he believed the God, he was like, he realized that, hey, look, either all of this is true or none of it's true. But you can't play pick and choose. Because he's like, if this is true, then the one true God who knows all things is not going to write down contradictions and conflicts. There can't be. There has to be a perfect harmony of his mind. And if I'm having a problem with something, it's not a problem with the Bible, it's a problem with my mind. And so, you know, there's no, you know, pick and, you know, this isn't pick and choose what you want to believe and reject things you don't want to believe, right? Because again, these are like bees on a necklace. And there's a specific pattern of God's laying down. And you can't just say, well, I don't think the exodus happened. We don't have any historical evidence of that, so I'm not going to believe it. But I still believe in Jesus. I mean, to me that just sounds ridiculous. Maybe it sounds normal to you, but I've been around this so long, I'm like, that just sounds crazy. Uh if the exodus didn't happen, guess what? I'm not gonna believe in Jesus. I'm just not. I'm not even interested in Jesus. I'm gonna go do something else. Because this is the setup for Jesus. And if the setup didn't happen, then Jesus didn't happen. It's all just a story. This is just a mixture of truths and lies. And how can we ever hope to decide? You know, so they got the Jesus seminar together. Maybe you heard about these guys. The Jesus seminar, they got red bead, they got a green bead, they got a black bead. And then they vote on which passages are historical and which ones aren't. I think it's a yellow bead, you know, which is like whatever, 65% probability. You know, this is the kind of stuff that's going on out there, folks. Okay. I mean, you come in here, you're probably in a pretty safe haven because we're like, hey, this is the authoritative, infallible, inerrant word of God. And if he said it, it's true. And I can trust it. Can I go investigate it? Yes, I can investigate. I want to investigate it. I want to see how these things flesh out and the evidences and all that kind of stuff. But hey, I mean, I know they're there. I know they're there. They're all over. And it just keeps getting shown. Yeah, oh yeah, over and over. Um, so we've got this new truth, substitutionary blood atonement. We'll stop here, but propition these three big words that end up being theological words in the New Testament: propitiation, redemption, and reconciliation. And this is all a setup for what Christ does on the cross, right? Because we see that exact same truth again when we come over to the death of the king. There it is. Substitutionary blood atonement. What's going on on the cross? Why is John saying, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world? What's he doing on the cross? Taking away the sin of the world. Is this really that complicated? No, it's not really, but it is profound. What's happening? It is profound. And there's a propitiation there. Okay, he's fulfilling Passover, right? 1 Corinthians 5. Our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. Right? He's our Passover. He fulfilled that feast. Um, propitiation. This is the idea of satisfaction, right? That God had to be satisfied. His standards of righteousness had to be satisfied. And Christ did that. He's the propitiation for our sins and not ours only, but for the sins of the whole world. That gets into the extent of the atonement down there. Uh, redemption. Okay, the idea that we have short accounts with God. It's an economic term, right? We have short accounts with God. So what happened? Christ paid what we owed. We have a song for it. He paid a debt I could not pay. Um thank God he paid the redemption price, right? He paid in full. It's finished. I mean, there's no more to pay. I don't need to pay for my sins, you don't need to pay for yours. No, but we've got whole sects that beat themselves and lash themselves, usually in Catholic circles, Roman Catholic circles, right? To do what? Pay for their own sins. Or to pay penance to the church for their sins. What is going on? Why do they not understand that Jesus Christ paid all the sins of the world? Because they don't have a framework way of thinking. For them, it's just beads that are just loose on a table. They can't see how they all string together. Reconciliation is the third one. And this is the idea that you are at enmity with someone, but you get reconciled. You become friends again, right? And thank God that the Lord Jesus Christ reconciled the world to God. 2 Corinthians 5 20. He reconciled the world to himself. Now we beseech men, be reconciled to God. See, God's no longer counting their trespasses against them, right? But he's saying, but but they don't want to get right with him. And so they're still at war with him. But he's already provided the reconciliation for us.

unknown 50:04

Okay?

Worship Vocation And Biblical Culture

Jeremiah 11 And A National Warning

SPEAKER_01 50:05

And so, but but all that with the death of the king there, what's going on on the cross, and even the darkness on the cross and the earthquake and all that, you see how that's all tied back to these other beads way back here in the Exodus and way back at the flood? See that? I mean, it's it's like an it's like a beautiful orchestra where they play for hours and they're able to bring the whole thing, like in a movie production, you'll you'll have the orchestra playing the background music. And somehow, while we almost don't even notice it's the music is there, when the movie comes to its climax, everything comes together, right? And that's exactly what the Bible's doing. And that's why it's such, it's so wonderful and so amazing. And we want to keep putting all these things together, okay? I'm trying to just show you examples, see, of how we connect pieces in the Bible that God has strung together, and then we discover what the bead or neck, the necklace looks like. And that's that's when we get that aha moment and we we worship. Okay? This is the end of all this. The end of all this is worship. I'm talking about true worship. I'm not talking about singing a ditty. Um singing diddies is fine, okay, but I'm talking about true worship. And that's where you, that's where I, individually, privately, in our own soul, we are appreciating the God who is. In our soul, we're marveling at him. That's true worship. And um this is what this is what makes us fulfilled as human. This is what actually is significant to us. Without that, what what in the world are we doing here? And who cares if you make a few bucks? You know, all this stuff is gonna go away. You're gonna get old. You're not gonna be able to move, you're not gonna be able to do the things that you used to could do, you know, the things that you consider fun and that you think are fulfilling. You're not gonna have that. You're only gonna have one stationary thing in this world that will satisfy you, and it's the God of the universe. What does Ecclesiastes say? I have said eternity in their hearts. He said in each of you a sense of eternity, that there's something more than just this finite temporal realm. And you will never, ever, ever be able to fill an eternal aspect of your being with something that's not eternal. You just can't. You have to have him. And when you do have him and you explore him and the way that we're doing here, you know, going through event after event, looking at doctrine after doctrine, you begin to find out this is the stuff that really matters. Am I in fellowship or not? And learning that from the story of King David. Learning from the golden era of Psalm the importance of sanctification in every area of life, going into your job, whether you're a janitor, an electrician, a biologist, a lawyer, a politician, and you take the word of God into your discipline, into your area, and you develop it in terms of a biblical way or pattern of thinking. That glorifies God. They used to say this at the Reformation. They don't, it's not, it's usually most people just think Christianity is your private religion, your private thing. Oh, that's true for you, you know, stuff. At the Reformation, they said, you know, a cobbler who makes a good pair of shoes glorifies God. I believe that 100%. When somebody plays the violin with excellence, I think that is glorifying God. They have spent hours laboring to try to figure out how to do something, a skill set for his glory. To make a shoestring, to make toilet paper. I don't care what it is. If you make it to the glory of God and you do your very, very best in whatever area God has called you to in this world, and you do it for him and his glory, guess what? That's good. Colossians 3, 23 and 24 says that God's going to reward that. He's going to reward that. Because you weren't just doing it for men, men's service, right? I please men pleasing, you did it for God's service. As if God was singing. See? It's totally different. And so we learned that with Solomon. And what happened? A tremendous culture called the Golden Era, right? The greatest biblical culture in the history of the world. They had Levitical choirs, probably had 500 people in the choirs. Can you imagine? 500 people singing in a choir most majestically with their instruments and all of that stuff. I mean, it would have, it was, it was mind-blowing. I mean, they were walking on gold. The streets were made out of gold in places. I mean, it was amazing how much wealth was coming into Israel. Why? Because they were building a biblical culture that reflected the essence of God. And God was blessing them because of it. There's no way our country can be blessed if they keep going the way they're going to go. There's just no way. You can say all day long, God bless America, but until America says, I want the word of God, it's not going to happen. It will not happen. You cannot conjure it up. You cannot inflate the money enough to make it work. It will not work. It will collapse. It's as sure as nightfalls day. People have got to tune in to what God says. I'll just finish with Jeremiah 11. Since it's all review, and I didn't really go to any passages. It was specifically reading things. We might as well read this one. Jeremiah 11. And we can pray for our country after this. And we'll all go home and uh give thanks to him. Jeremiah 11. Then the Lord said to me, A conspiracy has been found among the men of Judah. Are there any such things as conspiracies? Well, I guess so. And uh among the inhabitants of Jerusalem, they have turned back to the iniquities of their ancestors who refused to hear my words. So here's a group of people that are not listening to God's word, right? They refuse to hear God's word. And they have gone after other gods to serve them. Yeah, in our country, they worship Moloch, you know, they'll just throw babies in the ash, you know, in the garbage disposal. You know, what is this? This is wickedness. What is this? Wicked. Wicked, wicked, wickedness. It's worship of pagan idols and gods. The house of Israel and the house of Judah have broken my covenant which I made with their fathers. Therefore, this was what the Lord says, it's because they did this. The Lord said, Behold, I am bringing disaster on them, which they will not be able to escape. And though they will cry to me, yet I will not listen to them. That's it. People in this country are naive if they think it works any other way. They're absolutely insane. This is coming. And we have to be ready. But guess what? We are if we're if we are saved. We are 100% ready. We don't have anything to fear, do we? But we are watching a very sad thing happening in this country. And in the world. But but you know what? We're right on track because the Bible prophecy basically says this is exactly what's going to happen. So I mean, are we surprised? No. Not surprised at all. Sad? Yes. Very sad. Very hurt. Because we I think that we're hurt mostly because we love men enough. We don't want to see this happen to them. We love people enough. And we won't we don't want them to die in their sins. We want them to be saved. And they don't see the disaster count.

SPEAKER_00 58:15

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.