The NXR Podcast - November 03, 2022


BONUS - Those Who Say ā€œThis World Is Not Our Homeā€ To Justify Avoiding Culturalā§øPolitical Issues


Episode Stats


Length

58 minutes

Words per minute

176.66

Word count

10,308

Sentence count

510

Harmful content

Misogyny

3

sentences flagged

Toxicity

5

sentences flagged

Hate speech

57

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Pastor Joel Webin addresses a common objection Christians use in order to avoid engaging in cultural and political issues in the world today. He explains why this objection is a misinterpretation of the Bible and a twisting of the word "home."

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hey guys, real quick, before we get started, I have a small request.
00:00:03.420 If you've been blessed by our content and you like this show,
00:00:06.420 would you take just a brief moment and leave us a five-star review?
00:00:09.760 This is quite possibly the most effective thing that you can do
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00:00:18.180 All right, welcome back to another live Monday Q&A with myself, Pastor Joel Webin,
00:00:22.920 with Right Response Ministries. We do this every Monday at noon, 12 p.m. Central Time,
00:00:28.220 every Monday at 12 p.m. Central Time. I'm going to go ahead and just jump right into
00:00:32.300 it. I've got a few announcements that I'll make along the way, but today's topic, what
00:00:35.920 I want to address is one of the most common objections that you'll hear people use, which
00:00:43.200 I believe is a misinterpretation, a twisting of the scripture, but they'll use this in
00:00:48.080 order to assuage their guilty consciences and justify their uninvolvement, their outright
00:00:56.420 avoidance of being engaged biblically with certain cultural and political issues in the
00:01:04.500 world today. What people will say is they'll say, well, this world is not our home. And they'll use
00:01:11.260 verses in the New Testament that speak of Christians as strangers in this world, aliens in
00:01:18.180 this world, sojourners. Those are the words that the New Testament does in fact use to describe
00:01:24.060 New Testament Christians and their present placement in this world, the Bible does use
00:01:31.720 those terms, but those terms are misused by those who are basically just against post-millennialism.
00:01:39.020 They're basically individuals who want to say there is no culture war. At this point,
00:01:44.620 that rhetoric has kind of fallen to the wayside. You don't hear a lot of Christians
00:01:48.340 using that any longer. It's pretty much impossible to ignore at this point when you have 1.00
00:01:54.540 our culture and politics, trying to trans kids, putting CRT curriculum in our schools.
00:02:02.400 You've got drag queen, not just drag queen story hour, but drag queen bars with children 0.94
00:02:09.680 attending, stripping and these kinds of things. You've of course still have abortion by God's 1.00
00:02:16.040 grace, Roe was overturned. But even with the overturning of Roe, not only does abortion still
00:02:21.240 happen and certain blue states are trying to become sanctuary states where someone from a
00:02:27.000 more conservative state that bans abortion can fly over there on taxpayer dollars, their travel,
00:02:34.220 their lodging, and the procedure, aka the murder of their baby in the womb, all funded by these 0.71
00:02:40.720 blue states. So you have all these things happening, but in abortion, it's not just that
00:02:44.960 it's still happening and that you have sanctuary states now, but you also have a ton of Christians
00:02:51.800 and a ton of pastors that were just deafening. They modeled a deafening silence when Roe was
00:03:00.220 overturned. They didn't say a single word. And some people sadly even came out and said,
00:03:05.860 you know, now is not the time for Christians to be beating their chest, you know, and, or
00:03:11.260 using, you know, rewording a little bit, tweaking it. So it's not quite so obvious, but, but
00:03:16.620 essentially, you know, misusing Romans chapter 12 and saying, well, we're called to mourn with
00:03:21.220 those who mourn. You know, Christians are called to weep alongside those murderous pagans who are 0.50
00:03:26.860 weeping over the loss of their, their legal right to murder their own children, right? That's in 1.00
00:03:32.340 the Bible. So you've got all these things going on. And because of that, it's almost impossible
00:03:38.020 to deny that there is a serious culture war, a war for the culture going on in our nation. 0.73
00:03:46.960 It's hard for any Christian that even barely resembles a conservative biblical view to deny
00:03:55.720 that there are serious political problems, that we have political extremism on the left,
00:04:01.680 not the right, that's a joke, that's gaslighting, but that leftists and progressives are extreme
00:04:08.100 and have ramped up their policies and ramped up their rhetoric and all these different things.
00:04:14.160 So that's getting very difficult for people to deny these days. So most people are willing to
00:04:18.960 say, yeah, there is a culture war. And there are some very concerning, disheartening things
00:04:26.540 happening in our political system, with our government, the state continuing to turn further
00:04:31.780 and further away from God's standard and God's truth. Yes, these things are happening. But this
00:04:38.020 ultimately isn't what the Christian faith is about. This should not be our focus. This is 0.97
00:04:44.640 not what Christians need to be spending their resources and time and energy and giftings 0.97
00:04:50.960 towards, and that's because this world is not our home. That's the line, right? That's the line
00:04:57.380 that you'll hear again and again. This world is not our home. You can even find the bumper stickers
00:05:03.020 or on the back of a car window, the N-O-T-W, right? Not of this world. And that's been a popular
00:05:11.680 sentiment for decades in our nation with the rise of the premillennial eschatology, especially not
00:05:19.540 so much a historic premillennialism, but the rise of dispensational premillennialism, 0.54
00:05:25.260 the boomer generation, you know, that would say, not of this world.
00:05:28.360 And then they'd also have a bumper sticker that says, I'm spending my children's inheritance, 0.81
00:05:34.180 right, which is biblically a very wicked thing, much less, or even more so, I should say,
00:05:40.100 to be prideful about that, to do that is sinful, but to boast of that, to not have any shame
00:05:47.760 about publicly sharing that information is extremely wicked. And so with the rise of
00:05:54.220 dispensationalism and the pre-millennial eschatology, the left behind series, all these
00:06:00.220 different things, a rise of radical two kingdom theology where the break, the divide between the
00:06:08.180 two kingdoms is not the kingdom of light and darkness, as the scripture says, but rather it's
00:06:14.060 a line, a distinction between a kingdom that is sacred and common. And the sacred things are
00:06:20.380 the church, the people of God, the saints, and the church's ministry of word and sacrament.
00:06:27.740 This is sacred. And then everything outside of that, including politics and governments and
00:06:33.280 arts and culture and science and medicine and vocation and economics and markets and all these
00:06:39.700 things is just common, right? It's all common. And this idea that the world is literally going
00:06:44.420 to dissolve like snow. Peter talks about this in one of his epistles, but taking a very
00:06:49.760 literal physical interpretation of that, that God is not restoring the physical cosmos,
00:06:56.680 but he's going to render to his physical creation that he loves. In love, he's going to render to
00:07:04.200 it a mercy killing. Instead of restoring it, redeeming it, redeeming the world, the physical
00:07:09.620 world, God is just going to take the world out behind the woodshed and put it down, right? He's
00:07:15.060 going to annihilate and dissolve, disintegrate this world. And so the new heavens and the new earth is
00:07:21.260 not an earth made new and the heavens come to this earth and this earth restored, but rather
00:07:26.940 a whole new earth because this one will be completely, literally, physically disintegrated
00:07:33.560 and annihilated because Christ is not restoring the creation that cries out with eager groans
00:07:40.760 of eager expectations for the sons of God to be revealed.
00:07:44.500 Radical two kingdom theology, Van Druden and these kinds of guys would say that creation
00:07:49.020 is crying out, not because the sons of God in their revealing and their exaltation, the
00:07:54.260 creation itself will be exalted also and relieved from the curse of sin and restored as Christ
00:07:59.720 restores all things, but rather the creation is groaning with eager expectations for the sons of
00:08:05.220 God to be revealed because in the revelation of the sons of God, the end of this church age,
00:08:10.660 the creation will be give way to the sons of God. It'll be put out of its misery by the Lord. Again,
00:08:17.200 a mercy killing, annihilated, completely disintegrated, done away with. So the creation
00:08:22.760 is not longing for its healing. The creation is longing for its death. It's longing for its
00:08:29.120 destruction, uh, that it could be put out of its misery right now. It's in pain. It's groaning in
00:08:34.340 pain and, uh, and Christ is not going to heal it. Uh, but Christ, uh, like a, like an animal on the
00:08:40.380 side of the road that got hit by a car that's not dead, uh, but beyond, um, repair, uh, you know,
00:08:47.100 the most merciful thing that you could do is just, is just get back in your car, put it in reverse
00:08:52.500 and run it over again. That's the radical two kingdom view. You couple that with things like
00:08:59.360 dispensationalism, which most radical two kingdom guys are covenantal for the record to be fair to
00:09:04.400 their position. But so I'm not saying that it's everybody's holding all three of these positions
00:09:09.020 of pre-mill dispensational and radical two kingdom, but a mix of these different things,
00:09:13.340 depending which aisle side of the aisle you're on in regards primarily to your covenant theology
00:09:18.060 and how reformed you are and those kinds of things.
00:09:20.900 And so the point is, but because of those three doctrines
00:09:23.620 and just the way that our culture has been heading
00:09:25.700 for a very long time,
00:09:26.960 the fact that we have surrendered
00:09:28.020 all of our major institutions, which is sad enough,
00:09:32.440 but the church has not just surrendered institutions,
00:09:36.500 but the church has for at least a couple generations now,
00:09:41.500 let's say two generations,
00:09:42.900 we've surrendered our own families, not just institutions,
00:09:45.820 but we've surrendered our own children by giving them to the state and by sending them to public
00:09:53.840 school so that we can rely on our wives for a second income. All these kinds of things by
00:10:01.340 handing our kids over to the state. The way that we assuage our conscience with these things and
00:10:06.540 the way that we excuse and justify our actions of handing over institutions, of not having a 500
00:10:14.860 year plan, to think multi-generational, restoring the new Christendom, these kinds of things,
00:10:21.260 but rather just simply retreating from culture, retreating from politics, retreating from
00:10:26.660 institutions. The way that we justify it is we say, we are sojourners. We're strangers in a
00:10:33.940 foreign land. We are aliens in a place that is ultimately not our home. This is not our home.
00:10:40.240 We are not of this world. Our citizenship is in heaven. And I would argue that obviously there is
00:10:48.320 a grain of truth in these things. This is biblical language, but again, it's been twisted. And to give
00:10:53.980 the benefit of the doubt, to be as charitable as possible, I think many Christians without malice
00:10:59.520 intentionally trying to twist these texts, I think that many Christians simply, if not malice, 0.53
00:11:05.340 have simply ignorance and just misunderstand these texts. And so what I want to address is this, 0.72
00:11:10.660 I think the way we can get to the bottom of it, right? If you are somebody who wants to restore
00:11:15.000 Christendom, knowing that Christendom has historic failures in the past, but at the end of the day,
00:11:20.280 it's not whether but which, there will be a theos, there will be a God. At the end of the day,
00:11:25.600 the state, if there's no God above the state, it's not because the state in the public square
00:11:31.440 is now a neutral place that's non-religious. No, if there's no God above the state, it's because
00:11:36.080 the state is God. Demas becomes the God rather than Theos, God being the God. And so if you
00:11:41.840 understand that principle, that it's not whether but which, that neutrality is a myth, that all
00:11:48.240 laws and legislation and all these kinds of things are by necessity moral. It's always moral. There
00:11:54.080 is no moral neutrality. If you understand these things and therefore you're saying, yeah, Christodom
00:11:59.000 has its failures, but Christendom on its worst day, even with the Spanish Crusades, Christendom
00:12:04.860 with its largest failures and its worst day, can't even come close to putting up the death
00:12:11.760 toll numbers to be able to compete with the death toll of secular humanism. 60, over 60 million,
00:12:19.040 63 million and counting dead children in the last 49 years in our nation, just our nation alone 0.94
00:12:25.560 because of abortion, right? So you just do the math. And what we're saying is we're saying 0.93
00:12:30.480 neutrality is a myth. And the idea of a libertarian view of politics is a myth because
00:12:39.080 neutrality is a myth. That's not going to work. We have to teach. We have to exercise power. The
00:12:46.160 state has been given power by God. It's a divine institution. It's been divinely instituted by God.
00:12:51.300 So the question is, by what standard? By what standard? And every state is going to be religious.
00:12:57.900 You could say, well, the standard is the second table of the law, right? In the 10 commandments,
00:13:01.960 commandment number five through 10, right? That deal with how we should love our neighbor,
00:13:07.440 that this should be the standard for the state. And I would agree and say, that's a really good
00:13:12.500 start. That's certainly what the state should do. Eventually though, we will have to talk about
00:13:16.800 the first table of the law. We will have to talk about idolatry. We will have to talk about these
00:13:21.580 things. We resist idolatry in the sphere of the church, first and foremost, by biblical, faithful
00:13:26.360 preaching and fulfilling the Great Commission. But we also resist idolatry in the sphere of our homes
00:13:32.200 by godly fathers and husbands washing their wives in the word and catechizing, training up their
00:13:37.800 children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. But the state also, I believe, has a responsibility
00:13:42.200 to resist, to suppress heresies, which is what the Westminster Confession of Faith says,
00:13:47.440 to suppress all heresies, and that it's going to help serve as a guard against idolatry and
00:13:55.420 these kinds of things, because at the end of the day, it's not whether but which, right? 0.91
00:13:59.740 It's either the Christian God, I believe that the triune God, the Christian God, should be the
00:14:05.200 public God of the nation of America and every other nation for that matter. I do believe that 0.75
00:14:11.100 the nation should be Christian. That doesn't mean each individual person in the nation will be
00:14:15.860 regenerate, will truly be born again and be a Christian. And it doesn't mean that we should 0.97
00:14:20.140 live in a way that is oppressive towards those who are non-Christians. It's not through coercion.
00:14:25.060 It needs to be through persuasion, trying to cut hearts with the spiritual sword that cuts men to
00:14:31.080 the hearts. And by God's grace, they're given new hearts by the spirit and the gifts of faith and
00:14:35.900 repentance. And for those who are not saved, we're not saying that they should be rounded up
00:14:40.940 and placed in internment camps. But we are saying that this nation, whether you're a Christian or
00:14:45.240 not, this is a Christian nation and that this should be the goal. And we adhere to the second 0.52
00:14:50.040 table of the law in regards to how we treat our fellow man, how we should love our neighbor, 0.97
00:14:54.200 but also the first table of the law, because the alternative is simply to be a Buddhist nation or
00:15:00.560 a Muslim nation or some other religious nation, or people think, again, it goes back to the myth
00:15:05.900 of neutrality. They think, well, we just shouldn't have any laws dealing with man's relationship with
00:15:12.240 God, his relationship with his fellow man. The state should regulate and legislate and enforce
00:15:17.740 horizontal laws, love for neighbor, but not love for God, because then the state would have to
00:15:22.460 choose a God. And my point is if the state chooses no God, so people say, well, it shouldn't be the
00:15:28.420 triune God in the first table of the law. We shouldn't have blasphemy laws. You know, we
00:15:32.100 shouldn't have Sabbath laws. We shouldn't have these kinds of things. It should be perfectly
00:15:36.040 legal for there to be a mosque in a Christian nation or a nation shouldn't be Christian. And 1.00
00:15:41.880 so there should be mosques and there should be Buddhist temples and there should be all these
00:15:44.880 different things. And I would say, no, no, that should not be the case. A nation is either going
00:15:51.020 to pick the Christian God or a false God, or it's going to claim on paper, it's going to say that it 0.51
00:15:56.660 chooses no God, which again puts us right back to where we've been for a very long time, which is
00:16:01.560 secular humanism. But secular humanism is a religion and it does have certain gods and it
00:16:07.440 does have certain sacraments and it does have certain priests and it does have certain orthodoxy
00:16:12.560 and anything outside of that orthodoxy is considered blasphemy. If you think blasphemy
00:16:16.940 laws are going to get us in trouble and cause more harm than good, just realize that for the 0.67
00:16:21.220 last two and a half years, we have had very strict blasphemy laws in our nation, right? 0.59
00:16:26.880 You could quickly, at a moment's notice, be canceled because you said something that was
00:16:31.720 wrong think, right?
00:16:33.200 You said something that actually turned out to be true.
00:16:36.060 It's not even that you said something that was harmful or damaging or false or deceptive
00:16:41.960 or duplicitous.
00:16:42.960 You actually said something that is categorically true and now universally recognized as true,
00:16:48.700 or at least by the majority of people, but you just said it too soon, right?
00:16:52.920 Like the difference between a conspiracy and the truth is about three to six months, right?
00:16:57.020 That's been the running joke for the last two and a half years.
00:16:59.660 Well, there are a ton of people who they were canceled.
00:17:01.480 They lost their livelihoods.
00:17:02.660 They lost their jobs.
00:17:03.880 They lost friendships and relationships.
00:17:05.780 They lost their reputation and institutional credibility. 1.00
00:17:09.360 That is a blasphemy law. 0.97
00:17:10.760 So again, it's not whether but which in classical liberalism is not going to work long term. 0.74
00:17:16.360 It's a step up from libertarianism, but it's not going to work long term.
00:17:19.860 What I'm ultimately, what I'm suggesting and advocating for is that first the state
00:17:25.980 abide by God's standard in regards to the second table of the law, commandments number five through
00:17:31.200 10, how we relate to our fellow neighbor, to our fellow man. But eventually, when I say eventually,
00:17:37.540 I don't mean within two years. I like what Doug Wilson says. He says probably about a couple
00:17:41.980 hundred years. What should the state do in regards to the first table of the law? Have no other gods
00:17:46.460 before me, right? That's the first four commandments. Have no other gods before me.
00:17:50.340 Do not make any graven images. Do not take the Lord's name in vain. So that would be blasphemy
00:17:54.920 laws. And then remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. What should the state do in regards to the
00:17:59.220 first table of the law, the first four, the 10 commandments? Well, what the state should do is
00:18:03.600 for the first couple hundred years, like 200 years is what Wilson has said with his idea of
00:18:09.140 mere Christendom. He said, I think the state shouldn't legislate or enforce the first table
00:18:13.480 of the law, but simply it should seek to obey it, right? Because who's most likely, who's most
00:18:18.620 likely to commit blasphemy on a major national level? Is it the individual who lives in Timbuktu,
00:18:27.680 you know, in a town that's, you know, with a population of 247 people, that he's going to say
00:18:33.400 that Jesus isn't Lord and that that's going to cause an uproar and upset whole households and
00:18:38.940 or is it the state and their blasphemy, their idolatry, right? So maybe the state before
00:18:44.260 enforcing the first table of the law should simply obey the first table of the law, model
00:18:49.340 obedience to that. And we have time. That's the beauty of the post-millennial eschatology is that
00:18:53.600 we can do these things slowly, right? Make haste slowly. So my point is with all these things,
00:19:00.240 this is what Christians are starting to advocate for. And some Christians are using the label
00:19:04.040 Christian nationalists, which again, I've said that I wouldn't pick that term out of a hat, 0.98
00:19:09.440 but it's a term that I'm willing to work with. I do think that it's a pejorative given to us by
00:19:14.280 the opponents of Christ and opponents of Christianity, but we've had tons of pejoratives
00:19:20.040 over the last 2,000 years. The word Christian itself was a pejorative, to make fun of followers
00:19:25.600 of Christ, calling them little Christ. Here's another one, Puritan. Puritan was a pejorative, 0.82
00:19:31.180 right? It wasn't something that the Puritans coined themselves, but those who were opponents
00:19:35.440 to their lifestyle and their immense dedication and discipline to live a holy and obedient life 0.78
00:19:42.300 in all aspects of life, according to the standard of God's unchanging word, it was their opponents
00:19:48.420 who were saying that they were Puritanical. They were Puritans. It was like calling them
00:19:53.000 a prude, right? And yet they owned the label and said, yeah, we are Puritans. And there were
00:19:58.180 there were problems with Puritans. There are problems with Christians, right? Christians 1.00
00:20:02.260 aren't perfect people. So Christians are imperfect. Puritans are imperfect. Christian 1.00
00:20:06.180 nationalists are imperfect. But I do believe that although it's not the term that we necessarily
00:20:10.800 chose for ourself, I think it could be a helpful term. And I'd rather own that term that I can
00:20:16.240 actually biblically get behind than wait for another term that's far worse and far more
00:20:22.880 demeaning to be hurled at us as a replacement. So my point is whether you're a Christian nationalist 0.52
00:20:29.600 or whether you're a theonomist or whether you're this or that and the other, what I'm finding,
00:20:35.340 and there are lots of differences, right? About half of the evangelical church, at first it was
00:20:40.040 just a sliver, but now I'd say it's about half of the evangelical church over time has been awakened
00:20:44.800 to the problems of wokeness, CRT, intersectionality, neo-Marxism, Black Lives Matter, the summer of
00:20:52.860 love and the riots, you know, burning down half of the country in 2020. And then you've got,
00:20:58.180 in addition to that, the silence on abortion. You've got civil tyranny with COVID, the looming
00:21:06.220 threat of globalism, right? Guys like George Soros and these kinds of things. About half of
00:21:12.660 the evangelical church at this point, it didn't start that way, but over the years, because of
00:21:17.000 faithful men doing courageous, faithful work, I'd say about half of evangelicals are on board saying
00:21:22.380 that's a problem. And so we agree in terms of the problem. But there we are realizing very quickly
00:21:28.820 that there are dozens of disagreements in terms of what the solution is, right? Some people think
00:21:34.600 it just needs to be a return, a resurgence and a dusting off, kind of a rejuvenation of classical
00:21:40.620 liberalism. And then some say, no, it really needs to be a Christian nation, Christian nationalism.
00:21:46.680 And then within that camp, some people are more extreme than I am. They're a theonomist and
00:21:50.460 there's a sliding scale of theonomy, right? There's general equity theonomist, which is where I would
00:21:55.000 be. There are guys who are more hardcore. There are all these different expressions and all these
00:21:59.320 different ideas of the solution of what we can do. But the point is this, I think that your basic
00:22:06.940 evangelical Christian today, within the 50% that have woken up to see, you know, yeah, we don't
00:22:12.980 want to be progressive Christians. Out of conservative Christians, which I think is about
00:22:16.800 half of evangelicalism right now, maybe more. But out of those, the common denominator is not
00:22:23.500 theonomy. It's not Christian nationalism, although I think that that tent will get wider over time.
00:22:29.500 But the common denominator is basically people who don't just believe in the inerrancy of
00:22:34.240 scripture, but it's sufficiency. That scripture is not just authoritative, it's not just infallible
00:22:39.200 and true, but it's actually sufficient for, and here's the question, sufficient for what? For life
00:22:46.660 and godliness, not just for the way to salvation. Scripture certainly is abundantly sufficient for
00:22:53.580 that, but Scripture is sufficient for all of life, every realm of human society. Scripture is
00:22:59.640 sufficient for economics and markets. Scripture is sufficient for art. Scripture is sufficient for 0.80
00:23:05.940 home life, family life, marriage, parenting, and Scripture is sufficient for politics and government
00:23:11.660 and legislation and these kinds of things. Now we're not saying that scripture, right, I would
00:23:16.820 adhere, conservative biblical Christians, we all adhere to the perspicuity of scripture. That's the
00:23:21.680 clarity of scripture. I always, you know, joke and say perspicuity is just a very unclear word
00:23:27.540 that means clarity. We believe in the clarity of scripture. However, we do not believe that every
00:23:32.260 text in scripture is equally clear. So we believe that the Bible is abundantly clear, perhaps most
00:23:38.180 clear in regards to its teaching on the way to salvation. But that doesn't mean that the Bible
00:23:44.380 is unclear, entirely unclear in regards to politics. We believe the Bible does speak to
00:23:50.540 this and it speaks with a measure of clarity, perhaps less clarity, but sufficient clarity.
00:23:56.560 Okay. And so everybody who's in that camp, really the way you could define that is all of Christ for
00:24:02.500 all of life, right? The whole counsel of God to the whole of human life, to every realm of life,
00:24:09.000 not just the church and the home, but to the state as well, and to culture and to the arts
00:24:14.380 and to the sciences. We want to have a Christian worldview, not just a truncated, narrow Christian
00:24:21.500 view that shows us how to get to heaven and what life will be like after this, but no, how to live
00:24:27.920 life and life abundantly here and now and everything that the Lord has called us.
00:24:32.580 And so in that sense, you have evangelicals who are united in this big banner, but divided
00:24:38.900 in terms of specifics.
00:24:40.620 When we start to get to the details, when we start to get to the details, but those who
00:24:47.500 are our opponents of that, who are like, no, the scripture is not sufficient for all of
00:24:51.960 life.
00:24:52.160 It's only sufficient for salvation and maybe sanctification and maybe parenting and marriage.
00:24:57.920 we're starting to see a divide, right? We're starting to have some hostility. You can see
00:25:02.860 this online and Twitter. You can see this with different content that people are producing.
00:25:07.320 We're starting to see that, okay, there are some further divides, right? There are some fault
00:25:13.000 lines. You call them like third wave fault lines. Okay, let me explain that real quick. First wave,
00:25:18.900 the old fault lines within the church, evangelicalism, that was the divide over,
00:25:24.520 are you Paedo-Baptist or Credo-Baptist? A bigger one than that would be, are you a Calvinist? Are
00:25:31.420 you Reformed? Or are you Arminian? Or are you a continuationist or a cessationist?
00:25:38.380 Are you egalitarian? Do you have female elders? Or are you complementarian? Which now I think more
00:25:44.520 conservative guys like myself would adhere to biblical patriarchy. But these were kind of the
00:25:49.620 old fault lines. And then the new fault lines, like Voddie Bauckham wrote his book called
00:25:54.360 fault lines. The new fault lines were critical race theory and intersectionality and social
00:26:03.100 justice, you know, and these kinds of things. And then in that kind of coming out of 2020 and COVID,
00:26:08.800 you got civil tyranny. That's kind of your second wave fault lines that a lot of people didn't see
00:26:13.720 and just really just started noticing over the last couple of years. But now what I'm projecting
00:26:19.140 is kind of a third wave of fault lines, which is you've got the old doctrinal fault lines
00:26:25.200 on major doctrines. Then you've got the new problem fault lines. What is the problem? What
00:26:30.540 should the church be resisting? And then you've got the solution, third wave solution fault lines,
00:26:35.800 where I think we're going to see further splintering. And I'm not excited about this.
00:26:39.540 I wish it wasn't the case, but further splintering of even among the conservative guys who all
00:26:45.200 were united just a couple of years ago on social justice is bad. Social justice is bad. Amen.
00:26:53.860 Social justice is bad because it's antithetical to biblical justice. But now we're seeing
00:26:58.400 divisions even among us in terms of, okay, but what's the solution? What's the solution? And
00:27:03.640 that's where you get into questions of eschatology, post-mill versus all-mill and pre-mill. That's
00:27:09.120 when you get into theonomy or not theonomy. You get into Christian nationalism versus classical
00:27:14.220 liberalism, you get into all these kinds of questions. But for everyone who agreed on these,
00:27:20.100 that second wave fault lines, the problem, wokeness and civil tyranny, those kinds of things,
00:27:25.920 people were like, we want to obey Jesus. We want to be biblically conservative. That's where you
00:27:31.700 started getting, you know, where the church split about right down the middle. Progressive Christians,
00:27:38.300 those who are deconstructing their faith, you know, and completely woke guys like Phil Vischer, 0.87
00:27:43.620 you know, the creator of VeggieTales, you know, trying to carve out a biblical argument for
00:27:49.980 abortion, at least in some cases, which is just absolute insanity. And so these are the things
00:27:56.740 that you have going on. This is the world that we're currently living in. This is the state of
00:28:00.320 evangelicalism. It's further splintering. And we should be praying that God would unite us
00:28:05.520 as much as possible, that we'd have a big tent, that we'd be as ecumenical as we can be without
00:28:11.360 compromise. And so those are the things that we're dealing with right now. But my point is back to
00:28:17.160 this issue of not of this world. People who are saying, well, yeah, I agree there's a problem with
00:28:23.880 wokeness or there's a problem with this, but Christians don't need to be involved in politics. 0.98
00:28:27.480 And Christian nationalism is a scam. That just sounds like Adolf Hitler. You know, that Jesus 0.98
00:28:33.540 didn't care about politics. Jesus didn't come to make the nation Christian, these kinds of things.
00:28:38.540 people will push back is what I'm saying. And often what they'll use is that rhetoric of,
00:28:44.140 you know, Jesus, my kingdom is not of this world, right? The real easy counter to that is say,
00:28:49.460 well, Jesus never said my kingdom is not in this world. He simply said, it's not of this world,
00:28:54.800 which means just like he told the disciples, right? He says, do not be like the Gentile lords, 1.00
00:29:02.420 the Gentile rulers who love to lord their authority over you. Jesus is Lord of lords.
00:29:08.960 Jesus is Lord of lords, and he's king of kings. Have you ever stopped to ask the question,
00:29:13.600 when the Bible says that Jesus is king of kings, which kings? Who are those kings that Jesus is
00:29:18.780 king of? Who are those lords that Jesus is lord of? Is it kings in heaven that Jesus is the king
00:29:25.260 of those heavenly kings? Is it lords in heaven that Jesus is lord of those heavenly lords?
00:29:30.500 Or does the mere phrase king of kings and lord of lords, does that automatically imply and assume
00:29:37.600 that Jesus' ultimate kingship is over earthly lords and kings and therefore over kingdoms on
00:29:46.080 earth? Jesus is ruling and reigning now. His kingdom is not of this world. That means his
00:29:51.420 methods, his strategies. He doesn't rule in his kingdom in the way that earthly kings do.
00:29:59.820 He is a king, the king of kings, who is cut from an entirely other cloth, right?
00:30:06.320 His methods are otherworldly.
00:30:10.040 But Jesus doesn't say that his kingdom is not in this world.
00:30:13.620 His kingdom is most certainly in this world, like a little leaven working through the whole
00:30:17.600 batch of dough, like a mustard seed growing into a mustard tree, not in heaven, but on
00:30:22.900 earth, a stone cut by no human hands that crushes and grinds into dust.
00:30:28.780 the kingdoms of this world, but then begins to grow into its own kingdom, a mountain that fills
00:30:33.900 the whole earth. So Jesus' kingdom is not of this world, but it most certainly is in this world.
00:30:40.180 When Jesus says it's not of this world, it doesn't mean that Jesus doesn't care about this world
00:30:44.680 and that he doesn't care about the kingdoms of this world, or he doesn't care about kingdoms just
00:30:49.420 in general, in terms of governments and politics and legislation. No, it just means that Jesus is
00:30:56.000 different. He's different, but it doesn't mean that he's absent. Jesus saying my kingdom is not
00:31:02.420 of this world means that he is a different kind of king, but his kingdom is in this world. Jesus is
00:31:08.560 ruling right now, not only in heaven, but he is ruling and his rule and reign is over earth as
00:31:15.960 well. That's the last thing he told us right before giving us the great commission. He says,
00:31:20.520 all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, because I have authority
00:31:26.560 on earth, because my kingdom includes this earth, not just heaven, not just ethereal and spiritual,
00:31:33.700 but my kingdom includes this tangible physical place. Therefore, you have been endowed by Christ
00:31:40.040 as king, as his representatives, his ambassadors with authority to go and disciple nations.
00:31:46.820 And that's going to, of course, involve, predominantly involve, discipling individual people and baptizing individual people.
00:31:55.180 But as individual people are converted by the grace of God, the sovereign work of the Spirit, some of those individual people are going to be in institutions.
00:32:04.500 Some of them are going to be governors and mayors and council members and police officers and presidents.
00:32:11.620 And some of them will be in medicine as doctors and nurses.
00:32:14.180 and some of them will be artists, and some will be in this sphere and that sphere. And then the
00:32:18.620 question is, upon conversion, what is the call of God? What is the implications of the Christian
00:32:25.600 life for that individual? Is it to quit their vocation? Is it to exit civil affairs? Or is it
00:32:32.980 to do these things in a Christian manner? And then that begs the question, the question we have to
00:32:38.140 answer is, if God saves a politician, and it's not God's will that the politician leave politics,
00:32:44.180 but rather be a Christian in politics, what does it mean to be a Christian in politics?
00:32:49.840 Eventually, we're going to have to answer that question. The reason why we haven't had to answer
00:32:53.220 that question for the last few decades is because we've just been content to lose. But now, by God's
00:32:59.060 grace, I think the left has overplayed its hand, and there's a lot of Christians who are righteously,
00:33:03.320 they have righteous indignation, and they want to fight. And because Christians actually want to
00:33:07.360 fight, and there's a rise in post-millennial eschatology, so Christians willing to fight
00:33:11.520 and actually hopeful that we could win the fight. Now, all of a sudden, the question is being asked,
00:33:16.800 okay, then what's our battle plans? What does the Bible say about these things? We need a Protestant
00:33:24.020 Christian civil theology, a theology of politics, a theology of government. And the beauty is that
00:33:34.140 there's a lot of work still to be done, but we have. We have a Protestant theology of politics,
00:33:40.200 And it's really just returning to some of these older guys, guys like Calvin, guys like John Knox, who carved out a lot of this workforce, returning to them and seeing what they said and beginning to believe in God's promises, believe in the potency of his word and applying those things here and now.
00:33:59.120 So if somebody says, Jesus said his kingdom is not of this world, you say, yeah, but it's
00:34:03.360 in this world.
00:34:04.260 And if somebody says, well, we're not of this world, we're just a sojourner, here's the
00:34:08.820 last thing I'll leave you with.
00:34:09.940 How do you answer that question?
00:34:12.100 The way that you answer that question, when somebody says, well, doesn't the Bible say
00:34:16.580 that we're just sojourners, right?
00:34:19.340 This world is not our home.
00:34:20.440 Our citizenship is in heaven.
00:34:21.940 We're just sojourners.
00:34:22.900 We're strangers.
00:34:23.700 We're aliens in this world.
00:34:24.980 What you should do is respond to that question.
00:34:27.500 aren't we sojourners in this world? Respond to that question with another question and say,
00:34:32.060 what kind of sojourner? Because in the Bible, that's true. That's biblical language in the 0.94
00:34:37.140 New Testament to describe New Testament Christians, sojourners in this world.
00:34:41.380 But the question is sojourners in what sense? Because what I'm saying is this, there are at
00:34:47.900 least, and we could probably make this more complicated than we need to, so let's try to
00:34:52.000 keep it simple. But there are at least two major, two predominant kinds or types of sojourners in
00:34:58.400 the Bible. I'll give you an example. One would be Israel in captivity in exile for 70 years in
00:35:06.000 Babylon. They were sojourners. They were strangers. And one of the reasons why I believe it's Jeremiah 0.97
00:35:12.340 27, where God speaks and he has to command, he has to command Israel through the prophet Jeremiah
00:35:18.680 and say, listen, guys, you need to plant vineyards and build houses and give your sons and daughters
00:35:24.820 and marriage and seek the welfare of the city for if the city prospers, you too will prosper.
00:35:29.260 The reason why that was a prophetic word worth giving, if I could say it like that, the reason
00:35:33.900 why God found it necessary to command his people, Israel, to do that through the prophet Jeremiah
00:35:40.260 is because the nation of Israel, God's chosen people, they knew that Babylon was not their home.
00:35:46.660 their home was the promised land. It was Canaan. They had another geographical nation, a place,
00:35:54.420 a home, a region. And they knew that it was God's ultimate will to get them back. So in other words,
00:36:00.740 they knew that the plan, God's plan, was not for them to build a home in Babylon, but to get them 0.92
00:36:07.980 out of Babylon. And they just didn't know the timeline. And because they didn't know the 0.75
00:36:13.320 timeline, which Isaiah had prophesied previously, but they were stiff-necked and stubborn and these
00:36:18.020 kinds of things, you know, and so because they didn't know the timeline by way of ignorance or
00:36:24.360 by their own refusal to believe what God had previously said, they were kind of living in
00:36:31.380 Babylon as sojourners, but living with their bags packed. And see, that's my point. That's how New
00:36:37.220 Testament Christians, I think a lot of pre-mill dispensational New Testament Christians have been 1.00
00:36:41.940 living. And in a different theological sense, for different reasons, different motivations,
00:36:46.800 the radical two kingdom covenantal guys on this side have also been living. They both have
00:36:51.380 different theological reasons, but the dispensational premillennial guy on one side,
00:36:55.860 and then the covenantal R2K guy, and covenant theology is good, by the way, but I'm just,
00:37:00.560 the R2K stuff is not. The radical two kingdom guy for different theological reasons, but they're
00:37:05.100 both the same in the sense of their actions. The dispensationalism and premillennialism versus
00:37:10.340 radical two kingdom theology, what it looks like in practice is living in this world as a New
00:37:15.200 Testament Christian with your bags packed. And what God said to Israel through Jeremiah in Jeremiah
00:37:20.540 27, when they were in captivity in Babylon, is he said, take off your coat and stay a while.
00:37:25.660 That's essentially what he was saying. He was saying, you guys are right to expect that I'm
00:37:29.760 going to deliver you. But right now you are underneath my fatherly displeasure because of
00:37:34.200 your sin, because of your unbelief, because of your rebellion against my commands. And so as a
00:37:39.480 Father, I'm disciplining you guys, and it's going to be a while. Your sin is great, and your
00:37:44.200 discipline is going to have to be significant. And so you're going to be in exile here, not for
00:37:49.520 a couple of weeks, right? Not for a couple of months, but for 70 years. And God was having to
00:37:56.760 say, number one, take off your coat and stay a while. Build a house, have your daughters and
00:38:01.900 your sons given a marriage, plant a vineyard, these kinds of things. So God was having to say,
00:38:06.840 number one, you're going to be here a while, so settle in. But number two, I think God was also
00:38:11.900 having to say, because instinctively Israel did not want to do something that would benefit
00:38:16.140 their captors, their oppressors. Babylon was, these aren't the people of God. These are the 0.83
00:38:23.780 people who are oppressing the people of God, who are persecuting the people of God. We don't want
00:38:28.840 to lend towards their prosperity, towards their benefit, towards their improvement,
00:38:33.740 especially at our own detriment. And what God says is, look, you do these things, number one,
00:38:39.180 because you're going to be here a while. So don't just live on mission, but actually build a home,
00:38:44.860 even where you least expect to be home, even though you know your true home is somewhere else,
00:38:49.880 the land of promise, Canaan. This is going to be your home for a while. So treat it like home and
00:38:54.620 not just a short-term mission trip. Okay. That'll preach. And then beyond that, yes, it will benefit
00:39:01.020 those who have taken you captive, but it'll benefit you too. If this city prospers, you,
00:39:07.220 the people of God who live within the city, you will prosper alongside it. So that's one way to
00:39:11.960 be a sojourner is when you look at the scripture and you're asking, well, what kind of sojourner
00:39:17.840 are New Testament Christians in this church age, in this world? One is sojourners who are in 0.68
00:39:24.540 captivity, who are in exile. And it's temporary. We've been taken to a foreign land as strangers
00:39:31.260 in that land. But God's promise is to bring us out of the land, to liberate us from this place
00:39:38.920 and to take us to another place that is our true inheritance, where we're supposed to be.
00:39:46.680 That's one sense of being a sojourner. However, there are other senses in the scripture of being
00:39:53.000 a sojourner. One would be, just as an example, Abraham. Let's think about this for a second.
00:39:58.060 This is Hebrews 11, verse 8 through 12. I'll at least read the first couple of verses. Starting
00:40:04.580 in verse 8, it says, By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to
00:40:10.300 receive as an inheritance. And he went out not knowing where he was going. Verse 9, By faith he
00:40:16.960 went to live in the land of promise as in a foreign land, living in tents, right? Not a home. 0.97
00:40:25.140 It's not stable. It's not established, but intense with Isaac and Jacob heirs with him of the same
00:40:31.920 promise. Okay. Now let's, let's go on. And I want to look at Genesis chapter 12, verse one. This is
00:40:38.460 the narrative of Abraham that we find in Genesis. It says, now the Lord said to Abram, go from your 0.51
00:40:43.740 country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. Going to another 0.99
00:40:49.060 place. I've got some notes written here. I've written the following. Abraham obeyed by faith.
00:40:54.420 It was not a combination of his faith and obedience that garnished the Lord's pleasure,
00:40:58.320 but faith alone, which evidenced itself in his obedience to go to the land that God would show
00:41:03.760 him. And this obedience was brought about in the midst of uncertainty. The command of God,
00:41:08.100 Let me say this. The command of God was not uncertain. God said, go this direction. Abraham
00:41:13.720 went. God's commands are not unclear. It was very simple. What was uncertain was not God's command,
00:41:19.920 but what would be the result of obeying God's command. Abraham prepared to obey God's call,
00:41:25.500 though he knew not what land he was going to go into. Reading further, the land of Canaan. Now,
00:41:31.300 this is what I want you to catch. The land of Canaan is typical or typological of heaven. Here,
00:41:37.600 Abraham sojourned for a while, though it was not his native place, but another's. It was an
00:41:43.220 idolatrous land, much like ours here in America and other nations around the world. Yet here,
00:41:48.400 Abraham sojourned by faith, believing that as it was promised, that the land would be given to him
00:41:56.080 and his descendants. So too, all God's people are sojourners in this world. And that's a
00:42:02.160 paraphrase from John Gill. He's a late great reformed Baptist preacher who preached in the
00:42:09.440 same church that Charles Spurgeon preached in, but a hundred years prior. So all that being said,
00:42:13.740 here's my point. Two different predominant categories of sojourner, two types of sojourner.
00:42:20.420 You can be exile, captive sojourner. That's Israel and Babylon. When they knew that God's 0.95
00:42:28.440 ultimate plan was eventually to take them out of that foreign land where they were sojourners and
00:42:33.200 to bring them back to another land that was their inheritance. But there's also Abraham sojourner,
00:42:39.340 meaning Abraham is also in a foreign land, but he's not there as a captor who eventually will
00:42:45.960 be taken out and placed somewhere else. He's there to actually take the land captive because
00:42:53.500 God's plan for Abraham was not to bring him out of this strange land, to take him out of the land,
00:43:00.320 but to give him the land. Another example would be Joshua. Joshua and the Israelites, right? Joshua,
00:43:06.960 Moses' successor. After Moses died, they crossed the Jordan River, and they went into the land of
00:43:11.160 Canaan, and they went in as sojourners. They were living in tents for quite a long time and going
00:43:17.120 from this place to that place, and it was not their native land. It was not their place of
00:43:23.100 origin. It was a place that was strange to them, that God brought them in, and they were the
00:43:27.240 strangers in that land, right? The native people, the native inhabitants of the land of Canaan,
00:43:32.160 whether it be the people of Jericho, or this person, or that person, this nation, that nation,
00:43:35.900 they looked at the Israelites, and the Israelites were the sojourners. The Israelites were the
00:43:41.020 strangers and the aliens, but God brought them into that land, not as captives for a season,
00:43:47.480 temporarily 70 years of exile with his ultimate plan to deliver them and bring them out of the
00:43:54.260 land. No, he brought them in there to not, not to bring them out of the land, but so that they could
00:43:59.620 take the land, that they would conquer the land. They were sojourning in a land that God was not 0.97
00:44:06.240 going to remove them from, they were sojourning in a land that God was going to give to them.
00:44:12.620 And to drive it all, land the plane here, bring it home. My point is this, as New Testament
00:44:18.320 Christians living in this gospel age, with Christ as King, who has authority both on earth and in
00:44:24.960 heaven, who has told us explicitly to go out and to disciple the nations, baptizing them into the 0.63
00:44:31.260 name of the triune God, and not just preaching the gospel and functioning in the realm of
00:44:35.860 evangelism conversion, but discipling them, which includes, Jesus says, to teach them to obey all of
00:44:41.960 my commands. Implicitly, we can say all of his commands that have an application, tangible,
00:44:49.420 practical application in all of life. Teach them to obey all of my commands, applying my law,
00:44:55.320 my commands to every realm of life. This is our marching orders. This is the great commission
00:45:01.020 given to us. And the question is, are we like Israel and Babylon in exile? Or is the New
00:45:09.380 Testament church more like Abraham or Joshua, Israel under Joshua's leadership, going into a
00:45:15.100 promised land that we're not in exile and eventually our reward is that we'll be liberated
00:45:20.920 and removed from this land. But we are sojourning in a strange land for a time as we slowly but
00:45:27.380 surely by God's grace, as the mustard seed grows, we're going to take the land. I think of even just
00:45:35.500 the Beatitudes, Matthew chapter 5, Jesus says, the meek shall inherit heaven, right? No, the meek 1.00
00:45:41.340 shall inherit the earth. I don't believe that God is going to utterly, literally, physically
00:45:47.700 disintegrate this world, that God is going to annihilate the creation, that the creation itself
00:45:54.740 that groans with eager expectations for the sons of God to be revealed, that their groaning is
00:45:58.900 actually crying out and pleading with the Lord, asking the Lord to put the creation to death,
00:46:05.620 to render a mercy killing. No, the creation is with eager expectations groaning for the sons
00:46:12.580 of God to be revealed because in the redemption of God's people, the cosmos and the creation,
00:46:17.600 the earth itself will also be redeemed. The earth itself will also be redeemed,
00:46:22.040 Meaning that the new heavens will come to this earth, this earth made new, but still
00:46:27.840 this earth.
00:46:29.460 What I'm saying is that this planet that you're sitting on right now, this dirt, these trees,
00:46:35.800 these plants, these mountain ranges, it'll be a glorified mountain range, but the same
00:46:39.860 way that your body will be physically resurrected. 0.85
00:46:42.900 We can't deny that doctrine without being a full blown heretic, right?
00:46:46.340 That's the one thing that even Van Druden has to affirm as his radical two kingdom theology.
00:46:51.620 he still asked a friend, well, yeah, but I guess that, you know, one thing that'll carry over to
00:46:55.440 the eternal, to the, you know, to the life to come is your physical body glorified. What I'm
00:47:00.080 arguing is that I think the Bible teaches that that's the case for everything. In the same way
00:47:05.220 that our physical, we believe in justification, sanctification, glorification, the doctrine of
00:47:09.240 glorification, our physical bodies, which will die like a seed, right? What is perishable planted
00:47:14.300 so that what is imperishable might grow, might rise, that our body, we're not going to be given
00:47:19.940 a new body. We're going to have this body resurrected and made new, not given a new body,
00:47:26.400 but the old body made new. And there is a dynamic difference. And theologically, we need to grasp
00:47:32.100 the significance of that difference. I believe that the Bible teaches the very same principle,
00:47:36.820 not just for the physical bodies of God's elect in terms of the doctrine of glorification,
00:47:42.740 but this glorious doctrine of glorification is all encompassing beyond just the physical body
00:47:48.920 of the elect, but also the physical creation and cosmos itself, that God said it's good
00:47:54.240 and that God hasn't given up on it, that the creation is under the curse of sin, just as
00:47:59.140 we are under the curse of sin, right?
00:48:01.740 That when Adam sinned, he wasn't just federal representative, federal head of the human
00:48:06.740 race himself and Eve and all of their offspring, but he was a federal head representative of
00:48:13.220 the whole earthly cosmos.
00:48:14.520 so that when Adam sinned, God doesn't just say that your wife is cursed and your children are
00:48:19.440 going to be under this curse and you are cursed, but cursed is the ground because of you, Adam,
00:48:25.540 that the earth was cursed in the same way that the new man, the second Adam, by one man through
00:48:31.420 one man's sin, everything died. So by the obedience of one man, there comes life and not just life for
00:48:38.880 mankind, but in the same way that one man's disobedience didn't just cause the human race
00:48:43.720 to die, but the creation to die, so too by Christ's obedience, the new Adam, not only has he caused
00:48:50.400 the human race to live, but the creation to be restored alongside his people and to also live. 0.65
00:48:58.180 And so this earth, it's not going to be a new earth, meaning another earth replacing it,
00:49:02.900 but it'll be this earth made new, the new heavens on earth. That's the eschaton that we're looking
00:49:08.840 for. And we're going to have, we're not just going to float around on clouds as embodied
00:49:13.660 or disembodied spirits, but we're going to have a bodily, eternal bodily existence and not with
00:49:22.180 another body, but this body glorified, this body resurrected. And I believe the creation will be
00:49:28.480 the same. We will have still certain aspects of this world that will be the same. We will have
00:49:33.260 certain mountain ranges, getting real specific, the Himalayas, but the Himalayas glorified. 0.78
00:49:38.540 The Nile River, but the Nile River glorified. We're going to see the Grand Canyon glorified,
00:49:45.620 and we're going to see animals and different species, but glorified. We're going to see
00:49:50.600 creation not put out of its misery, but creation healed and restored, the very same thing that God
00:49:57.460 is doing with us, which means, what does it mean? It means that this world is our home.
00:50:05.540 It is our home, ultimately. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. If you were
00:50:11.580 to die today, you would go and you would be with Jesus. But eventually, when Jesus comes back,
00:50:17.520 what does the Bible teach? When he returns, when he comes back, the dead will rise first and be
00:50:22.180 caught up into the air. I believe it's 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 or 2 Thessalonians 4.
00:50:26.700 first the dead in Christ, then those of us who are alive, we will meet Jesus in the air,
00:50:33.180 but not meeting Jesus in the air to be taken somewhere else. It's just like, well, it's just
00:50:39.420 like the 10 virgins. Five of them were foolish and five of them were wise. The five that were 0.98
00:50:45.100 wise, they had enough oil in their lampstands that they were ready. They had light available
00:50:50.560 when the bridegroom appeared in the middle of the night. And what they did was they ran out to meet
00:50:55.780 the bridegroom to be taken by him somewhere else, right? No. If you know the parable, if you know
00:51:02.480 your Bible, the five wise virgins with oil still in their lamps that had light when the bridegroom
00:51:09.860 appeared, what they did was they ran out to meet him and then they accompanied him back into the
00:51:16.080 same town where they lived and went into the wedding feast and then the door was shut.
00:51:21.980 But I believe that that's what 1 Thessalonians or 2 verse 4 that says, the dead in Christ
00:51:29.300 first will be caught up in the air.
00:51:30.560 Then we who are alive in Christ caught up with him, but caught up for what purpose?
00:51:35.580 I think it's to, as his people, as his subjects, those who were faithful, to be caught up with
00:51:41.160 the king as he's descending to earth.
00:51:44.240 Not as he comes halfway to earth and stops in the middle of the sky and then beams us
00:51:49.220 up and then takes us back up to some other place called heaven.
00:51:51.980 Christ is now returning to his world, to the physical earth that he's going to make completely
00:51:57.440 new. He's returning, but before his feet even touch the ground, when he's only halfway there,
00:52:03.440 his faithful ones, just like the faithful, wise virgins, will come and meet him halfway,
00:52:10.080 and we then become his accompanying party to usher the king with a parade, with great pomp
00:52:16.740 and circumstance and honor and glory that he deserves to accompany him the rest of the way
00:52:22.180 down to his kingdom here on earth. And so my point is, this is not my home. Yeah, it is. Yeah,
00:52:29.980 it is. And it won't be like this. Praise God. It'll be a lot better. And to be absent in the
00:52:34.820 body, if we die before the return of Christ, then yes, we're going to exist with him elsewhere where
00:52:39.040 he is at the right hand of the father in heaven to be absent of the body is to be present with
00:52:45.320 the Lord. So there may be this intermediate stage for those of us who die before Christ returns,
00:52:51.400 but the ultimate eschaton, this ultimate eschatology that the Christian faith looks
00:52:56.840 towards in hope is a physical existence, not with another body, but this body made new, glorified,
00:53:04.340 and the new heavens not being somewhere else, but the new heavens on earth and not another earth,
00:53:09.140 but this same earth made new, which means for eons and eons and eons and eons and eons and
00:53:15.060 eons and eons, where will you be? Where will your home be? Right here. Right here. So this world is
00:53:23.180 your home. Yes, you're citizens of heaven. But what that'll look like is the new heavens on this
00:53:29.900 earth. This earth made new. And it's going to be a while, very likely, but that's eventually what's
00:53:35.820 going to look like. So in what way, right? So when someone says, well, the Bible says that New
00:53:39.900 Testament Christians are sojourners in this land and our citizenship is in heaven. Jesus' kingdom
00:53:44.360 is not of this world and we're not of this world also. This world is not my home, not of this
00:53:48.640 world. How do you respond? You say, yes and amen to all of that. All of that is biblical, but Jesus'
00:53:54.440 kingdom not of this world doesn't mean his kingdom is not in this world. It just means he rules
00:53:58.300 differently. He doesn't rule like the rulers of this world, but his kingdom is in this world.
00:54:03.640 And this world is not our home in one sense, yes, but it is our home if we're talking about the new
00:54:08.720 heavens in the new earth and Jesus restoring all things, not only our physical bodies, but also
00:54:14.000 this physical planet, which he loves and has not subjected to ultimate destruction. And this world
00:54:22.180 not being our home and us being sojourners, yes and amen. But the Bible talks about at least two
00:54:27.740 primary types of sojourners. Are we sojourners in exile? Is the world Babylon? And we're here
00:54:35.260 for a while, our 70, 80, 85 years of life, just like Israel was there for 70 years. We'll be here 0.74
00:54:41.040 for 70 years of our own physical life, and then we die and we get taken out of Babylon? Or are we
00:54:45.440 sojourners in a foreign land, a strange land, but a land that's actually our inheritance?
00:54:52.000 See, Israel, when they were sojourning in Babylon, they had been taken out of their inheritance
00:54:56.160 because they were being disciplined by God. They were under his discipline. And they knew that the
00:55:01.180 ultimate solution was that God would one day liberate them from Babylon and bring them back 0.79
00:55:05.800 to the land. But Abraham was a sojourner in Israel or in, I'm sorry, in Canaan. So, so it's 0.74
00:55:12.600 not just sojourning in Babylon in exile, in captivity. There's also such a thing biblically
00:55:17.620 as sojourning in Canaan, the land of promise, where you still are an outsider. You're still
00:55:22.940 a stranger. You're still a foreigner and you may still be the minority depending what point in
00:55:27.080 church history we're in. Um, but you're not sojourning in a land where you've been taken
00:55:31.220 captive. And the major eschaton within your eschatology is that God will bring you out
00:55:39.920 of that land. No, you're sojourning in a land that God is not going to take you out of,
00:55:44.820 but that God is going to actually give to you. It's your inheritance. It's your inheritance.
00:55:50.600 The meek will inherit the earth. So yes, we are sojourners, but we are sojourning in a foreign 1.00
00:55:56.620 land, not to be removed from it one day, but to take it, to take it. We are sojourning in this
00:56:04.420 land, this world, this physical earth and nations with governments and politics and culture. We are
00:56:10.420 sojourners. We are strangers, but we are sojourners and strangers like Joshua and the Israelites
00:56:16.580 coming into a land where they were outnumbered and where they were the odd men out, but a land
00:56:22.280 that ultimately they were there, not to be liberated from, but a land that they were there
00:56:28.420 to conquer. We're going to conquer. This is our home. So you might as well go ahead and act like
00:56:38.660 it. Don't give into worldliness, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the boastful pride of
00:56:44.680 life. In that sense, we're called to resist the passions of this world, which are fading away.
00:56:49.360 The Bible says that, but we love this world insofar as it represents the creation itself,
00:56:56.620 the cosmos.
00:56:57.540 Part of the complication with all of this is just that the Bible uses that same word
00:57:02.800 world in multiple different ways, especially the author, John.
00:57:07.360 The author, John, uses the word world in at least four different ways, and it gets a little
00:57:11.620 bit confusing.
00:57:12.740 But I do believe that what I've presented in this episode is a biblically faithful way
00:57:17.880 to understand it.
00:57:19.360 Oh, hi. I didn't see you there. Thanks for sticking around. I've got an important announcement
00:57:23.900 to make. That's the Theonomy and Post-Millennialism Conference. 2023, May 5th, 6th, and 7th,
00:57:31.260 Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, Theonomy and Post-Millennialism. We've got the speakers
00:57:36.300 that we've already had lined up. That's Dr. James White, Dr. Joseph Boot, Dr. Gary DeMar,
00:57:41.240 non-doctor, Pastor Joel Webin. But we also have a bonus speaker, and that is Dale Partridge
00:57:46.480 from Real Christianity.
00:57:48.240 Perhaps you've heard of him.
00:57:49.160 If not, you should start listening to his podcast.
00:57:51.500 It's fantastic.
00:57:53.000 Dale Partridge is going to be joining our team.
00:57:55.640 We're going to have live panels
00:57:56.800 on Friday night and Saturday night
00:57:59.160 where you'll be able to write in questions
00:58:00.760 and get them answered.
00:58:01.860 We're also going to have a catered barbecue,
00:58:04.060 Texas-style barbecue meal on Friday
00:58:06.580 that's a part of your registration fee.
00:58:08.740 All that is covered.
00:58:09.920 So you need to get there.
00:58:11.080 This is how you do it.
00:58:11.940 Go and register right now
00:58:13.760 at rightresponseconference.com.
00:58:16.800 Again, that's rightresponseconference.com.
00:58:20.460 God bless.