THE FRIDAY SPECIAL - Are Today's Jews ＂Opposing All Mankind＂？ (1 Thessalonians 2_13-16) w Andrew Isker - S04E03
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Summary
In this episode, we discuss the role of the Jewish people in the New Covenant and how they were called to serve as mediators between the nations of the world and God in the Old Covenant. They were called as priests to all the other nations, serving as a mediator between the Old and New Covenant. God called them to do this role in order to bring the promised seed, the seed of the woman from Genesis 3, that would crush the serpent's head. God continued that promise to Abraham, telling him, in your seed, all the families of the earth will be blessed. The promised seed would come through his line, through Isaac, then through Jacob, and in Jacob s sons, through which the new generation would arrive.
Transcript
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Leave us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform.
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You and I both know that this ministry is willing to talk about things that most ministries aren't.
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We need this content for the glory of God to reach more people's ears.
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To get a clear understanding of the Jew-Gentile issue in the New Testament,
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you have to understand Christ's earthly ministry within the context of the Old Covenant.
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There is a reason the eternal second person of the Trinity
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entered human history and took on flesh in Israel.
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There is a reason that he was not born in Rome or China in the first century.
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The purpose of the Old Covenant was to bring the promised seed,
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God promised that it would continue through Isaac,
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This is why God, despite Israel's constant rebellion and unbelief, painstakingly preserved
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them. They were called as a nation to be priests to all the other nations, serving as mediators
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between the nations of the world and God. This was a ministry that they consistently failed to
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achieve, but nevertheless, God was gracious, and the fulfillment of ministering to the nations of
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world was the seed coming through them. All of Old Testament history led to this culmination
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What is the purpose of Israel in the Bible, right?
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Certainly we can say that it's true to his eternal nature, his character.
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He is a God who is slow to anger, long-suffering, kind, merciful,
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upholding faithfulness to the thousandth generation of those who fear him.
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But the problem is that an argument can be made that throughout the history of Israel,
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under the old covenant, few feared the Lord, that many died out in unbelief.
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On that note, it's worth mentioning, we were talking offline, and I thought it was
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helpful, the old pejorative replacement theology. You had a really good point. You said,
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well, if we want to talk about replacement theology, then I guess God was a proponent
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of replacement theology during the 40 years of Israel's wandering in the desert.
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Yeah. Yeah. Or, I mean, other instances throughout Israel's history during the exile,
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They come in, that Israel is kicked out of the land, and many of them, perhaps even the majority of them, are killed or sent into exile, sent away from the land, sent into a kind of quasi-slavery.
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You look at that, when God is destroying the wicked in Israel, is that replacement?
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Because in the New Covenant, the same thing happens.
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You have the wicked that are destroyed that reject Christ and reject the Holy Spirit, reject his church, and God comes in judgment.
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Christ comes in judgment in 70 A.D. and destroys Jerusalem and Judea.
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But the faithful Jews that clung to Christ, the remnant of Israel, they're preserved.
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And the question of who is all Israel that is being saved, right, did those who fell in the wilderness, right, that sinful and wicked generation, right, were they all Israel?
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Or the ones that are destroyed in the judgment from Babylon, right, are they part of all Israel?
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The faithful remnant is the all Israel, right?
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Not all, Paul says this in Romans, not all Israel is of Israel.
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The ones of faith, the children of faith are all Israel that are saved.
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Yeah, to quote Romans 11, like all Israel will be saved
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and then say that that has to indicate a future spiritual revival among Israel
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It has to be each and every individual person in the modern nation state of Israel
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Paul doesn't even think that in Romans 9, two chapters earlier.
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I want more of Israel to be of Israel, the true Israel.
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But he's saying that there are wicked apostate people that have rejected their God.
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They're cut out of the covenant completely and the branches are burned.
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That's what happened in the wilderness in Exodus.
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That's what happened periodically throughout Israel's history is the apostate branches are cut off.
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And if they're not grafted back in in faith, they're burned.
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And so one of the great purposes of God preserving this people for as long as he did
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was to bring about the messianic promises, to bring about the seed,
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And it makes perfect sense in biblical sense that shortly after within one generation
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of Christ being born and finishing his earthly work in his life, death, burial,
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resurrection and ascension that Israel would be done. Yeah, as a particular nation, as a particular
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people, and as within the particular covenantal framework that God had set up, right? If you
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think, if you ask this question, what is the purpose of Israel throughout the old covenant?
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Well, God tells Abraham, right, in you shall the seed come, right?
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In you, this is where this chosen seed in Genesis 3, right?
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The seed that would crush the head of the serpent, right?
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There's all these different lines and family trees already by the time of Abraham.
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And then through Isaac, shall your seed be named and all the way down to Jacob.
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The tribes of Israel, and even from the get-go, Jacob's sons, many of them are very wicked.
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I mean, so wicked that you have the proto-seed, right, Joseph, they drive him out, right?
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They try to murder him, and only his one brother saves his life, but they drive him out and sell him to slavery in Egypt, right?
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And that's, of course, right, this typological picture of Christ, right?
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He is the true Joseph that his brothers have rejected.
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and and so it's these people right these this particular nation that is preserved throughout
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this time by god sovereignly to bring about ultimately uh the messiah the son uh jesus
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christ who would be born of a woman and take away sin and so through all throughout that time they
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they had to be preserved even right you look at in the book of judges um one of the tribes right
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One of the tribes almost was completely wiped out, the tribe of Benjamin.
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And you look at it and you think at the very end, there's only a handful that remain, like 700 that remain.
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It's like, well, we can't have this heritage wiped out.
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We need to get them wives and repopulate the tribe of Benjamin.
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And that's a major theme at the very end of the book of Judges.
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And the reason for that is, right, you need to preserve these tribes so that this promise could be fulfilled of the Messiah.
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That's why they had to continue to exist all throughout this time.
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And so the whole history of Israel is a history of rebellion against God, of rejecting their God from even from Genesis, but also in Exodus, right?
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They're constantly rebellion and turning away from him and clinging to idols instead of him.
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Then he's also very gracious and he restores them.
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This continual process of them sinning against him, him bringing judgment, forcing them to repent, and then him restoring them.
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That process played out over and over and over and over again in their history.
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I mean, why is like the majority of this Bible, like, I mean, you almost have it here.
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you're in Matthew, but this much of the Bible, what's the point of all of that? It's this history
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to bring us to Jesus. And so, if that's their purpose as a people, if that's why they're set
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apart, that's why they're chosen, is to be the people from whom Jesus comes, once Jesus has come,
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then what? Right. Talk to us a little bit about the Gospel of Matthew, a little bit about just,
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well, the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit versus the blasphemy of the Son of Man,
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the unforgivable sin. And then also the idea of narrow is the way, few ever find it. Narrow is
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the gate, hard, difficult is the way. So it's a difficult path. It's a narrow gate, few ever find
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it. And yet Jesus says something completely contrary to that in the same breath. Yeah.
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Yeah. Well, first, the unforgivable sin, right? So, this is one, right? Sometimes you'll hear
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many people like to preach on this and you'll have sweet, wonderful Christian people who will
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be racked with conscience, right? They will say, well, pastor, I just read this in Matthew that
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there's a sin that I could commit that God would not forgive me for that. But you preach that all
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our sins are forgiven in Christ. If we confess our sin, he's faithful and just to forgive us
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our sins. So is there, like, what is it? We're not told what the one is. What is this one sin
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that I could do? What is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit? Have I blasphemed the Holy Spirit? Is
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God not going to forgive me for this sin? And, you know, sometimes you'll get these complex
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theological answers where people will try to concoct some sort of theory to explain how
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there's this really special sin that you can commit, but don't worry, you haven't done it.
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But if you read it in the first century context, in the context of Jesus's ministry, and in the
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context of all the things we've been talking about in the series, right? Well, what happens
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in the history of Israel? If this is Jesus preaching to Israel and not just to your sweet
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evangelical grandmother who's worried she might have blasphemed the Holy Spirit,
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If he's preaching to Israel, look what he says, right?
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If you blaspheme the son of man, that will be forgiven you, right?
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They call him a glutton and a drunkard, and they have him executed without cause.
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And he says, right, even if you do that, I will forgive you.
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he sends the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. 3,000 in Israel that very first day are saved. Many thousands
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after that come into the church. And these are all, almost all of them Jews, right? Israel is
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being forgiven of the sin of blaspheming the Son of Man. But what happens? Pentecost comes. The
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Holy Spirit comes to the church. He comes and he begins through the church doing the same things
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that Jesus did. You see this in the book of Acts, right? All the same signs that Jesus did, right?
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What are the point of all the signs, the miracles and wonders that Jesus did? It wasn't just to be
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like, oh, that's really cool. Jesus is great. It was, here are these signs. Here's this power I
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have been given from God. You need to listen to what I say, right? You need to listen to what I
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say because of these signs, right? It's a gracious act of God for him to do that, to accompany his
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words with signs that we would listen to him. Well, the Holy Spirit does the same thing via
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the apostles and via other Christians when the Spirit comes upon them, that they heal the sick,
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they give sight to the blind, they heal the dead, they speak in other tongues, right? All of these
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things begin happening. And the point of it isn't just, oh, look at these cool superpowers that the
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apostles have. It's that these men have the same authority that Jesus had. These men have Christ's
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authority to speak on his behalf. You need to listen to them. And so they begin preaching in
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Israel. The spirit is preaching in Israel. And what do they do? They blaspheme them. They drive
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them out of the synagogues. They beat them. They torture them. They martyr them like Stephen.
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And what does Jesus say? If you do that, you won't be forgiven. In Israel, in the law of Moses,
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for a capital punishment to be carried out, what do you need? You needed two or three witnesses.
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So, if you have the witness of the Son and then the witness of the Holy Spirit, now you have two
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witnesses and capital punishment can be carried out. And that is what happened in 70 AD. There's
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40 years they're given to repent, the same stretch of time as that generation in Exodus.
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right for 40 years i mean this is psalm 95 for 40 years i've put up with this wicked generation
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and the same thing this generation i mean that phrase this generation this generation this
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generation jesus in the gospel of matthew uses it over and over and over again and
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and i mean it's that same language with psalm 95 right well 40 years later from when jesus is
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saying this stuff, right? Judgment does come. The capital punishment is carried out, right? The
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blasphemy against the Son is forgiven, but not the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. And the
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capital punishment that is deserved for blasphemy is carried out corporately for all of Israel.
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Right. And then going even deeper, so that's blasphemy of the Holy Spirit,
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speaking within the context of Israel within the first century that they rejected the Son,
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And then they rejected the ministry of the resurrected Christ by virtue of the Holy Spirit
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filling the apostles. And so they blasphemed both. And that generation, those who blasphemed
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the Spirit, that there was not another chance at redemption, that they were rejected by God.
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And yet at the same time, those who were true Israel, according to the promise,
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among Israel, according to the flesh, they did repent leading up to 80-70 and were grafted in
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as the natural branches, joining the wild olive shoot, those branches, which had already been
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added into the true tree and the root being, of course, Christ. Well, what about the idea of
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that narrow is the way, narrow is the gate, difficult is the way, few ever find it.
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A lot of evangelicals today, they would pair that up, cross-reference that with Matthew 7.
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many will say on that day, Lord, Lord, we did this in your name, that in your name,
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depart from me. He'll respond, depart from me for I never knew you. A lot of people
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hold it just intuitively as a portion of their theology that hell will far outpopulate heaven
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in the final analysis. Now, Charles Spurgeon, a Baptist, did not actually believe that. He
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believed that heaven would far outpopulate hell, that he said, I cannot see that God would allow
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his adversary, the devil, to get the final laugh. And so, you know, but what does that mean within
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the context? Again, understanding the teachings of Jesus within the context of that first
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generation of Israel. What did he mean by that? Yeah, so you look, I mean, you look at the Sermon
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them out, the first question you should ask is, who is he preaching this to? There is a particular
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audience that he is preaching this to. Even the broader picture, and maybe we'll get to this a
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little bit later, but the broader picture of the book of the gospel of Matthew is that Christ is
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living out through the story of Matthew the experience, typologically, the history of
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Israel. So like the first example, Matthew 4, Jesus goes where? He's baptized in the Jordan
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River. He crosses the Jordan River, but Israel crosses the Jordan, of course, but also crosses
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the Red Sea. And immediately after they cross the Red Sea, where do they go? They go into the
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wilderness. Well, what does Jesus do? He's baptized in the Jordan and he goes out into the wilderness
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to be tempted by Satan for 40 days instead of 40 years. And immediately after that, what does he do?
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He goes to a high mountain and begins preaching on the law. Well, what is that? That is Moses on
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Mount Sinai, right? And the whole Sermon on the Mount is this discourse on the law. And so who
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is he preaching to? He's preaching to Israel in particular. So, he says to them, right,
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enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction,
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and those who enter it by it are many. But the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads
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to life and those who find it are few. Right? So, he says that, he uses that word many, right? Many,
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right, to the people he's talking to directly, right? Many go to the wide gates and few go to
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the narrow gate, right? That is what he says. But then, right, just a few paragraphs later in
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chapter eight, right, after Jesus heals a centurion servant, right? So, a Gentile, Roman.
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So, the audience is a little bit different here, right? He's not talking to Jews in Israel. He's
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talking to a Roman centurion. And what does he say? Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel
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have I found such faith, right? Matthew in chapter 8, verse 10 says, Jesus heard that he marveled
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at this guy. He's marveled like, whoa, I have not seen faith like this in all of Israel, right? I
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tell you, many, right, literally the exact same Greek word, many will come from east and west
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and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven, while the sons
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of the kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness. In that place, there will be weeping
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and gnashing of teeth, right? The sons of the kingdom being the sons of the kingdom according
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So this whole idea that, you know, well, heaven will...
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One, it's like, it sounds like supersessionism to me.
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So the idea that, you know, that heaven is going to be, you know, the frozen chosen,
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Yeah, you and a few other guys who had perfect doctrine.
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And everybody else is going to go to hell, that hell is going to, you know, completely
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dwarf the population of heaven. It's going to be far exceeding it. That's not what Jesus is saying.
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He's saying to Israel, and particularly that generation, the generation that would crucify him,
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he's saying, few of you, few of you Israelites according to the flesh, few of you are Israelites
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according to the spirit, according to the promise. And so only a few of you will make it through the
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narrow gate who is himself. It's me. He's the narrow gate. He's the way, the truth, and the
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life, the door. The rest of you, you're going through the wide gate. But the rest of you are
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going through the wide gate. You will reject me and reject the Spirit, blaspheme the Son,
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but also then blaspheme the Spirit as he ministers through the apostles,
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teaching all the very same things that I said. You'll have two chances. You'll deny them both,
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and you'll be not denied by my Father. But then when he shifts audiences and begins speaking to
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the Gentiles and the Romans, this Roman centurion in specific, he says, many, but not many sons of
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the kingdom in the physical sense, aka Jews, but many from east and west. So many outside of Israel,
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many Gentiles will actually come and they will line the table, fill in the seats at the table
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with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. So, this idea that few people throughout all of church history,
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few people will be saved is not what Jesus is saying. Many actually will be saved,
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but predominantly among the Gentiles. And so, there's no reason to think that in the final
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analysis that more people might actually believe in Jesus. That's not to say that right now,
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if we stopped right now. Yeah, if history ends today. My bet is that hell would far outpopulate
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heaven. But if you give it some time and the mustard seed continues to grow into a larger
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and larger tree and the leaven continues to work through more and more of the whole batch of dough
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and you take that with being not only the Great Commission but the cultural mandate to be fruitful
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multiply. So just the idea that as time goes on you also have just a greater overall population
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of human beings. So if 75% of the population is regenerate and saved a thousand years from now,
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and the total population is 10 times or a hundred times what it currently is just in terms of
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humanity, then the redeemed would far outnumber the reprobate. So at this time, we would say,
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yeah, there probably are more people in hell, but God's plan's not done yet. It's really in many
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ways. We could say that we're still just getting started. But with Israel, the big picture was
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Jesus was not prophesying a fatalistic statement for all peoples and all times. He was not saying
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throughout the entire course of human history, few people will believe the gospel.
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Yeah. I mean, you see that. He was saying in this time, among these people, the Jews,
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few of you will receive me as your Messiah.
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We briefly interrupt this programming to humbly offer to you a simple life hack.
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ad-free with myself and Dr. Stephen Wolfe on Christian nationalism. Both of those series
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Again, that's rightresponseconference.com. Yeah, he's preaching to Israel specifically there.
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And yeah, because he's not contradicting himself by saying what he said to the Gentile.
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The Gentile is the counter example to this, that there will be many.
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And it's not a coincidence that he's saying this to a Gentile that who, what does he say about him?
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He doesn't just say, wow, you have great faith, but he uses it to knock Israel.
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That's amazing you have such great faith because you're a Gentile and you don't know that much about, you know, God's word.
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He marvels that here's the Gentiles far from the kingdom in a geographic sense is much closer to it than the sons of the kingdom, right?
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You see elsewhere in Matthew's gospel and the other gospels when Jesus encounters Gentiles and in the book of Acts when Gentile God-fearers are encountered.
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They way outclass in terms of faith the Jews consistently.
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And it's like, until you notice that, until you see that and you're looking for it, you just pass right over that.
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That they intentionally point out, the gospel writers intentionally are pointing out the spirit of God and inspiring.
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He's intentionally pointing out that it's the Gentiles who have this amazing, strong faith, and Israel does not at all.
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So right here, this point is, I think, a major one in showing this distinction that Jesus has come to Israel, and Israel does not want him.
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Every time he bumps into a Gentile in the Gospels or every time the apostles bump into Gentiles, they're like, wow, yeah, tell me about this.
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I know you can just say the word and it's going to happen.
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Whatever he says, I will, whatever you say, I'll do it.
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And, or he comes to Israel and he's performing all these signs and wonders and miracles.
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And they're like, like in the gospel of John, yeah, that was pretty cool, but we're going to need to see some more evidence.
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There are other times where they say by Beelzebub.
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Oh, you could do that? Well, it must be by the power of demons.
00:28:05.560
And the same principle that we're espousing is also expressed by Christ in the parable of the wedding banquet.
00:28:14.540
And the servants of the king are sent out to invite all these people.
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And there are, you know, the first wave, the people who were initially invited, you know, the rightful citizens of the kingdom in every human respect.
00:28:33.600
And they're invited, but they all make excuses.
00:28:40.000
And so then the servants return and they report to the king and say, you know, we went out and gave the invitation to all the people that you named.
00:28:49.280
refused. And then, you know, he sends them out and says, well, then forget them, but go beyond
00:28:55.140
them to all these people who were not initially invited, that were not initially citizens of my
00:29:00.820
kingdom. But now the invitation extends to them and they're the ones who come. And so the final
00:29:07.160
picture is not a wedding banquet with five people, you know, and that the vast majority are outside
00:29:14.220
where there's weeping and gnashing and teeth. No, the vast majority of Israel, according to the
00:29:18.740
flesh is outside where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. But the wedding banquet is
00:29:23.040
actually full. And it's full because the initial individuals who were invited by the king to the
00:29:31.360
wedding banquet reject the king's offer and thereby are rejected by the king. And the invitation then
00:29:37.980
passes them over and extends to those who were not the natural citizens, aka the Gentiles. And
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they receive the invitation with gladness and a great many of them come in. And so my point is,
00:29:51.980
you know, as we're talking about this, the theme that you begin to see throughout Israel again and
00:29:56.800
again and again, I think James B. Jordan actually talks about this also. He says that Israel,
00:30:02.480
the whole purpose of Israel was to bring about the seed, the Messiah, the Messianic prophecies
00:30:08.000
fulfilled, which was always to bless all the nations through you, through your seed, Abraham's
00:30:13.300
all the families of the earth would be blessed. And so that was the primary point was to bring
00:30:19.720
about Christ who would save not just Israel, but all the nations. But then secondarily,
00:30:25.560
as an example, James B. Jordan talks about, he says that another purpose of Israel is that it
00:30:34.120
would stand as a profound example to showcase the mercy and kindness of God. So think of Pharaoh.
00:30:42.100
So in Romans chapter 9, the Apostle Paul says, speaking on God's behalf,
00:30:48.260
for this reason I raised you up that I might display my power.
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I mean, if you're infinite, then you don't have any legitimate enemy.
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You can never really showcase your true fighting power and strength
00:31:11.740
Because, you know, with just the tip of your finger, your opponent is immediately rendered unconscious, you know, or struck dead.
00:31:21.040
Right, so how does, you know, like, I mean, still to this day, we take great encouragement and hope in thinking that we serve the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who sent ten plagues to Egypt.
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Well, it's wonderful that we're able to speak of the ten plagues of Egypt rather than the one.
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And the reality is that verse in Romans 9 where he says, for this reason, I raised you up.
00:31:50.940
Imagine that God with one hand is holding Pharaoh up so that with the other, he can actually show off his right hook, but actually show off 10 punches instead of just one.
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And the only way that he can get to 10 punches is with his other hand, he has to hold Pharaoh up.
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because Pharaoh doesn't have the fortitude to withstand even one blow of God, much less 10.
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And so God is, in his sovereign power, he is bringing down his power on Egypt and Pharaoh
00:32:22.700
and simultaneously propping up his opponent so that he can show more of his power and his faithfulness to his people.
00:32:30.720
Well, likewise, in the same way that God supernaturally hardened Pharaoh's heart,
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Pharaoh consciously chose in human agency to harden his own heart, and yet God also sovereign,
00:32:43.180
both are true, God hardens Pharaoh's heart supernaturally in order to prop him up so that
00:32:48.780
he might display his power. Well, in the same way, I would say we're in a similar way, God also
00:32:54.520
wanted to display not only his power and his judgments, which are terrible and awesome, but
00:32:59.320
he also wanted to display his mercy, his slowness to anger, his kindness and grace. So what did he
00:33:05.640
do with that? Well, in the case of displaying his judgment and power, he selected Egypt and Pharaoh
00:33:12.340
in terms of showing off how much mercy he has in the tank. He chose Israel, and he sustained
00:33:20.300
Israel with one hand for 1,500 years, give or take, and with the other, he lavished on them.
00:33:29.400
Century after century after century, generation after generation after generation, loving kindness,
00:33:34.980
is Israel, the point is, Israel does not stand in the Bible as an example of what it is to follow
00:33:42.420
God faithfully. They serve, apart from being the avenue, the agency by which God would bring the
00:33:50.700
Messiah into the world, the seed, beyond that, outside of that, one of Israel's only primary
00:33:57.180
purposes throughout the Old Testament is to serve as a powerful, profound demonstration of just
00:34:03.060
how merciful God is. Israel does not show the faithfulness of Israel. It shows how patient
00:34:10.680
God could be with arguably one of the most stiff-necked people on the planet. I mean,
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Jonah goes to Nineveh. They have Christian nationalism in like 15 minutes. The whole
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nation is wearing sackcloth and fasting and repenting. And then Jesus, and for anyone who
00:34:29.980
would say it's pretense. Jesus later says that the men of Nineveh will rise up and judge this
00:34:36.160
wicked generation of Israelites, meaning that these guys, many of them were actually regenerate.
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The preaching of Jonah, they repented and they will rise up at the end and judge who this generation.
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That's right. So you see outbreaks of just incredible repentance and salvation among all
00:34:53.440
these other nations, among the Samaritans, among the Ninevites, but like again and again and again
00:35:00.960
The Queen of Sheba comes up to Solomon to learn.
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The Babylonian king, he's brought low and humbled and converts.
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And Israel receives more revelation, more grace, more kindness, more prophets,
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more signs, more wonders, more evidence than anyone else.
00:35:24.060
In the same way that God had to supernaturally harden the heart of Pharaoh
00:35:27.600
so that he could show his right hook, 10 plagues instead of just one. God also supernaturally,
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I believe, hardened Israel's heart so that he could show just how gracious he is. Israel was
00:35:41.000
a supernaturally stupid people, a supernaturally stiff-necked, rebellious, hard-hearted,
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unbelieving people. Egypt wouldn't have done what Israel did. Assyria wouldn't have done,
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I mean, that's why he invokes Pharaoh in Romans 9.
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He's making this argument because the question of that book is, right, well, the argument that Paul's making is, right, I am sending my grace to the Gentiles.
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I'm hardening my people's hearts, right, so much so that they're going to kill Jesus to bring about the salvation of the world, right?
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So the question then is, was God being unjust by hardening their hearts?
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Does the clay have the right to say to the maker, why have you made me this way?
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That Paul is defending the justice of God with the example of Israel here.
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And why Israel was so bad and so bad, why that particular generation was so bad that they killed Jesus and they rejected the Spirit, right?
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And the hope at the end is that it's a partial hardening, right?
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That that hardening will come off and that many of the remnant will be grafted back in.
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One verse, maybe you can help me on the reference.
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and he says, you know, that they killed the prophets
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And then finally he says, and they oppose all mankind.
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So these people, the Jews, are the enemies, Paul essentially says, the enemies of the world,
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of every people on the planet. They are that hostile. And yet, here's the deal,
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you and I, and this is where we have to be consistent, right? Because some of,
00:38:10.700
if you're not careful, and this is why the Bible matters, the Bible matters for every reason under
00:38:15.400
the sun, but this is one more reason why the Bible matters. Because what we hear sometimes
00:38:30.460
And neither are we, but for maybe different reasons.
00:38:47.500
Right, people would say that you and I are anti-Semitic
00:38:53.600
But for guys who are accused as being anti-Semitic,
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some of them might actually be, some of them might not,
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but this is one conflation, a misunderstanding that I've noticed.
00:39:06.000
and they're talking about today, modern Jews today,
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For you brothers became imitators of the churches of God
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For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen
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who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets
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It says always to fill up the measure of their sins,
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saying that the Jews have opposed all mankind.
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They're the enemies of the world, the entire world.
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And it answers the question, like who killed Jesus?
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I mean, yes, Rome, yes, me, but ultimately it's Israel.
00:40:15.760
Well, and with that, you know, sidebar with that, I, you know, I preached to my church recently.
00:40:21.100
I said, look, all these statements are biblically true. Who killed Jesus? You. Your sin is what
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made it necessary that he should die. Who killed Jesus? The father. He was pleased to crush him
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before the foundations of the world. Who killed Jesus? Well, Jesus said, no one takes my life,
00:40:37.600
but I lay it down freely. So Jesus killed Jesus. The father killed Jesus. You and your sin killed
00:40:41.940
Jesus. Who killed Jesus? Pilate, ultimately. He tried to wash his hands in innocence, but he made
00:40:47.240
the decision. He was up for re-election, wanted to please the Jews. So, Pilate killed Jesus. Who
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killed Jesus? The Romans, who literally drove the nails through his hands and pierced his side.
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The Romans killed Jesus. And then lastly, who killed Jesus? The Jews, who were crying out
00:41:00.660
and crucified. And so, my point is, I told my congregation, all of those statements are
00:41:04.960
biblically true. But only one of those statements is being threatened to become illegal. So, that's
00:41:10.900
the one I'll keep saying. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But on this point, yeah. My point on this is just
00:41:17.200
to say that some of guys who are anti-Israel, they would say, well, I don't like the Jews
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because they killed Jesus. But what they're saying is, I don't like the Jews today, the modern state
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of Israel. I don't like Ben Shapiro because- Ben Shapiro killed Jesus. Right, exactly. It's like,
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No. And this is where we have to be consistent. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
00:41:40.440
So what we would say is that that generation of Israel, they did kill Jesus and they were judged
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severely for it. And in the final, in the bottom of the ninth, many did actually repent and the
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natural branches were grafted back in. And then the covenant, the old covenant is completely done
00:41:57.840
away with. And we don't have any real substantial genetic proof. I mean, you have a passing of a
00:42:03.860
couple hundred years before the Talmud even comes into play and all these different things.
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I mean, Titus destroyed the temple, which also had all the birth records and documents and all
00:42:12.960
these kinds. God sovereignly saw fit to not only wrap up the covenant, but in his providence,
00:42:17.640
to wrap up any evidence of a genetic continuation of a covenantal continuation at any level. And so,
00:42:27.120
God is saying with finality, it's done. The only third temple there will ever be will be the church
00:42:32.200
of Jesus Christ that is built with living stones around the whole world, with Christ as the
00:42:37.040
cornerstone, the prophets and the apostles as the foundation, and you and I, New Testament
00:42:44.720
saints, living stones being joined together, and Christ is there in our midst. And so that's
00:42:50.220
what we believe. And so all that being said, my point is this idea of the Jews opposing all
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mankind. I don't think that it's consistent to say, well, the Bible says so. So modern Jews
00:43:01.340
today. Or that. You can't say that. What you can say, you have to pick a lane and the lane that
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we have picked for biblical reasons. So this, what I want the listener to understand is this
00:43:11.740
isn't just me and Isker noticing that we went down the rabbi hole, you know, on 4chan, you know,
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and just got, you know, blackpilled on the Jews, you know, and, you know, and that's not what this
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is. This is from biblical convictions. From biblical convictions, we have determined
00:43:31.020
from the scripture that this was always God's plan, that he has done with Israel according
00:43:36.080
to the flesh and has been for 19 and a half centuries. And so, all that being said, who
00:43:41.660
killed Jesus? Well, a group of people who no longer exist. Who opposed all mankind, enemies
00:43:48.180
of all mankind? A group of people that no longer exist. And yet, the final thing I'll
00:43:52.160
say is, and yet anyone today, whether they're descendants of Abraham or not, and we would lean
00:43:59.220
towards the not factor, but whether they're descendants of Abraham or not, anyone today who
00:44:04.740
is an unbeliever who rejects Christ, whether they be Islamic or whether they be Jews or Hindus or
00:44:11.500
Buddhists or atheists or agnostics or whatever it may be, anyone who rejects Christ today
00:44:16.220
and has a particular hostility towards the Christian faith and the work and person of Jesus
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Christ does have the potential. It's not written in the stars that it always must be, but they do
00:44:29.800
have the potential in real human history in various times and to various degrees to be enemies
00:44:36.240
of all mankind, to be enemies of humanity, enemies of everything that's good in this world,
00:44:42.960
everything that's Christ-centered. And so, I would say that not all, but some modern Jews today,
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insofar as they've been shaped by the worldview of Talmudic Judaism, which is uniquely hostile
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towards Christ and embraced secularism, embraced perversion and certain things that are against
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Christ and His way, then yes, I think there are some Jews today that have been particularly
00:45:09.000
hostile and at enmity with all mankind, but not because of the same people in 1 Thessalonians.
00:45:15.240
Yeah, I don't think they have a, I don't, yeah, and that's the thing. Like if you, if I'm saying,
00:45:20.080
we said this in the previous episode, that if those categories, those old covenant categories
00:45:26.180
of Jew and Gentile no longer exist, those are no longer operative thing, it's not a thing anymore,
00:45:53.720
and there are still promises held out in their future.
00:45:58.200
And so therefore, if we're Christians and we love God
00:46:01.700
and we want to see his promises fulfilled,
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we should do something in a tangible way to preserve their lineage so that they're not
00:46:10.500
wiped off the face of the map, whether that's giving billions of dollars or whatever, funding
00:46:14.240
the Iron Dome or this or that or the other. And also, they are particularly pernicious towards
00:46:20.740
the Christian worldview and they're enemies of all mankind. You either have to pick that lane
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or you can say, no, we don't have to give billions of dollars. This is not the descendants of Abraham.
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both genetically and covenantally this has been rolled up as a garment and done away with
00:46:37.720
the church is true israel so this is just a group of people they are a nation yeah a modern nation
00:46:43.880
but they are a nation just like brazil or china anyone else and so then how should we regard them
00:46:48.780
well if it makes sense politically because they have american interest and help us as an ally to
00:46:53.660
support them in in a mitigated responsible way then fine um if they're working towards our
00:46:59.160
detriment and we're helping them at the cost of our own citizens, then that's not fine.
00:47:05.340
And so, my point is you don't have to be, you don't have to take it to level 11 to still have
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a coherent worldview, biblically grounded, and say, yeah, I don't think Israel is our greatest ally.
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I think if you do take the futurist view of Romans 11, though, and you're saying that there still is this covenant, and you're saying this, right?
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There still is this distinct, you know, ethno-religious group, and that's the same people that are in the old covenant.
00:47:41.300
Then you read 1 Thessalonians and what it says here.
00:47:43.980
You're saying that that applies just as much to every Jewish person today.
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So, we're saying, all right, we need to be consistent.
00:47:53.660
Well, those who disagree and take a different stance, so do they.
00:47:56.260
Yeah, then they need to be able to say with a straight face, 100% boldness,
00:48:00.600
that if the Jews in Romans 11, he's talking the same people as today.
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Are the same Jews currently living in Israel and also dispersed, many living in America.
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Then you have to say they're enemies of all mankind.
00:48:23.140
I believe, the least anti-Semitic view. We actually have the more charitable view because
00:48:30.140
we're saying, hey, look, some of them have been particularly hostile towards Western civilization
00:48:34.940
in the Christian worldview. And it's an opposing religion that is going to naturally be hostile
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to us, even if it's friendly at certain times. Like we have noticed. We have noticed. But it's
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00:48:47.020
actually those who would disagree with us, they can't just say some. They have to say all of them.
00:48:51.300
All of them, by virtue of being the Jews, they are currently still underneath this partial hardening, and they are still, just the way the apostle described them in his day, that is still, at heart, who they are today.
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We should preserve them, send them billions of dollars, and also, they're the worst people on the planet.
00:49:14.120
But if you're consistent or if that's your futurist view, whether it's reformed futurism regarding Romans 11 or whether it's dispensational futurism, like you have to, you got to say that.
00:49:27.620
You need to say one day they'll be saved and it'll be life from the dead.
00:49:30.880
Meanwhile, currently today, they are the worst people of all humanity.