The NXR Podcast - THE FRIDAY SPECIAL - Dismantling Zionism From The Book Of Ephesians

00:00:00.000 Paul's epistle to the church of Ephesus,

00:00:29.520 like Galatians, deals with the central issue of the New Testament, the union of Jew and Gentile

00:00:36.560 into the people of God. Just like Galatians, it is pivotal to our understanding of this

00:00:42.460 controversy today. If Jew and Gentile are united into one man, into one people in the New Covenant,

00:00:50.400 does this distinction between the two still exist today?

00:00:59.520 No. Thanks for tuning in.

00:01:20.260 We'll see you next time.

00:01:21.040 Yeah, we'll see you next time.

00:01:21.980 Yeah. No, it does not.

00:01:23.340 All right. So what's the primary text that we're using here?

00:01:27.860 Ephesians.

00:01:28.800 Ephesians.

00:01:29.460 Yes.

00:01:30.300 Go ahead and see if you can find it.

00:01:31.680 Yeah, this is not just a prop.

00:01:32.960 We use this Bible.

00:01:34.480 It's a good-looking Bible, though.

00:01:35.840 Beautiful. 1.00

00:01:36.680 It's like calfskin.

00:01:37.700 Yeah.

00:01:38.980 So we could just go right through Ephesians 2.

00:01:47.160 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked,

00:01:50.460 following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air,

00:01:56.100 the spirit that now works in the sons of disobedience.

00:01:59.200 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh,

00:02:03.920 carrying out the desires of the body and the mind,

00:02:06.920 and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.

00:02:11.560 But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us,

00:02:16.860 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.

00:02:21.020 By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him

00:02:25.060 and seated us with him in the heavenly places.

00:02:29.200 So that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness

00:02:34.440 toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace, you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own

00:02:39.760 doing. It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his

00:02:45.500 workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we

00:02:52.200 should walk in them. Amen. So we'll pick that back up again later. But that text, right?

00:02:59.200 So normally, right, if you go to a Reformed church and you're going through Ephesians and you go through Ephesians 2, right, what are you going to talk about there when you read Ephesians 2?

00:03:09.400 Right, justification by faith, right, which is good and great and glorious and wonderful, right?

00:03:15.780 It was funny.

00:03:17.500 I was making a joke with some of my PCA friends, right?

00:03:20.300 I haven't gotten to – I had one Sunday off when I was in Florida and haven't been able to go to a PCA church in many years.

00:03:27.340 and I told him, guess what the text was?

00:03:31.120 Guess what the sermon was on this Sunday?

00:03:33.480 One random Sunday, I popped into a large PCH church.

00:03:37.480 Like, what?

00:03:38.800 It was on justification by faith in Ephesians 2,

00:03:41.140 just randomly, right?

00:03:42.680 You go into a Reformed church, this is what we stress,

00:03:45.740 this is what we emphasize a lot.

00:03:47.060 And of course, that's great, that's wonderful.

00:03:48.460 But there's a lot there in that passage

00:03:52.080 that beyond just justification, it's good, it's glorious,

00:03:56.900 It's the foundation of the gospel, not denying that at all.

00:04:01.020 But there are other things going on in that verse, in those verses, aren't there?

00:04:04.640 Yeah, yeah.

00:04:05.700 Well, help us see what some of those things are.

00:04:08.300 Yeah, so, I mean, just picking up on what we talked about when we did episodes in Galatians, right?

00:04:16.340 What was the whole world under?

00:04:19.260 Right.

00:04:19.800 The prince of the power of the air, right?

00:04:21.740 They're under the elementary principles of the world. 1.00

00:04:25.180 They're in the old creation, both Jew and Gentile. 1.00

00:04:27.820 And Paul makes that clear, whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, right? 0.98

00:04:32.260 Jew and Gentile all lived in the flesh and under, right, under these lowercase g gods that dominated everything. 0.96

00:04:43.220 And what does Christ accomplish? 1.00

00:04:45.520 What does he do, right?

00:04:47.480 He, we're dead in this.

00:04:49.540 We're dead, you know, he describes it as slavery in Galatians.

00:04:53.180 It's death in Ephesians.

00:04:55.180 We're dead, and God, right, not ourselves, God in Christ makes us alive, right?

00:05:02.500 Makes us alive.

00:05:03.940 And verse 6, right, verse 6 is pivotal, it's key, right?

00:05:09.380 What does he do when we've been made alive?

00:05:11.560 We've been saved by grace through faith, right?

00:05:14.920 He raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

00:05:23.240 Right.

00:05:23.340 Right. So what does that mean? What does that mean?

00:05:28.140 Yeah. It means that we are co-heirs with Christ and the inheritance that was promised to him

00:05:34.420 belongs to his people, which are not Jews, but rather Christians.

00:05:39.320 Yeah. Not Jews or Gentiles, but Christians.

00:05:42.340 Right. And what is that inheritance? God has promised Christ that he would inherit all the

00:05:48.900 kingdoms of the earth. The nations are His inheritance. The nations are literally His

00:05:54.640 inheritance, and not to be received at the end of the culmination of all of human history and time,

00:06:00.860 but that He has received the nations now. And one by one, in a progressive, gradual sense,

00:06:06.960 throughout this gospel age in human history, these nations are all being footstooled.

00:06:12.580 they're coming, flocking to Mount Zion in worship and paying homage to the king. Psalms 2 is a

00:06:20.860 commandment that it's not just a messianic prophecy that one day will be fulfilled in the

00:06:26.160 final physical return of Christ, but Psalm 2 is actually a moral commandment to civil rulers of

00:06:33.000 the world now, then and now, that they would pay homage to the son, kiss the son, pay homage to

00:06:39.760 Christ, lest he be angry, that there are temporal judgments throughout human history. Nations are

00:06:45.500 brought, they are elevated and raised up and they are brought low based on their obedience to Christ.

00:06:52.100 And so the nations are promised to Christ as his inheritance, that his kingdom would spread

00:06:57.300 throughout all the earth. And that we as joint heirs with Christ, that we are the meek who

00:07:02.900 inherit not just the 17th dimension of heaven, but we inherit the earth. And it's not just

00:07:07.980 something that we will inherit in some future tense, but we are progressively, gradually

00:07:12.940 inheriting the earth even now throughout this gospel age as the little bit of leaven of the

00:07:18.920 gospel works through the whole batch of dough. That's the great promise. And that means all the

00:07:23.840 earth. There is no sidebar. There's no third category, halfway house of unbelievers and

00:07:32.560 then Christians, and then, you know, there's, you know, these Christian adjacent, you know, 0.83

00:07:38.200 Jews who get a piece of the earth with some divine right, land promise. That's not, Ephesians 0.98

00:07:44.420 doesn't leave room for that. Yeah. And even, you know, verse 7, some people might say, well,

00:07:49.580 what here, Joel, it says, right, so that in the coming ages, he might show the measurable riches

00:07:54.660 of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Well, coming ages, that means in the

00:07:58.480 eschaton, right? That means way off into the future, not now, but what are the coming ages,

00:08:04.040 right? We're in them, right? We're in them. It doesn't mean that he's not showing us kindness

00:08:08.040 and grace in Christ now, that's for later. He's doing that and he has been doing that

00:08:12.820 for 2,000 years, right? And so, right, continuing on in chapter two, and this, you know, this gets

00:08:21.680 to the meat of the issue, right? Verse 11, therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles 0.69

00:08:29.320 in the flesh called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision, which is made in the 0.99

00:08:34.820 flesh by hands. Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the 0.96

00:08:40.520 commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without

00:08:46.020 God in the world. But now, in Christ Jesus, you who once were far off have been brought near by

00:08:55.200 the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in

00:09:02.360 his flesh the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing the law of commandments expressed

00:09:07.640 in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace.

00:09:14.820 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility.

00:09:23.080 And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.

00:09:29.680 For through him, we both have access to in one spirit to the father.

00:09:35.020 So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints

00:09:41.820 and members of the household of God

00:09:44.020 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets,

00:09:48.260 Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone

00:09:50.460 in whom the whole structure being joined together

00:09:53.900 grows into a holy temple in the Lord.

00:09:58.100 In him, you also are being built together

00:10:00.620 into a dwelling place for God by the spirit.

00:10:04.560 Right, amen.

00:10:05.980 So, right, he says, right,

00:10:08.840 you who are far off and you who are near

00:10:10.300 are brought together into one, right?

00:10:14.260 Into one.

00:10:15.360 He creates a new man in one body in place of the two, right?

00:10:21.140 A new man in place of the two, right?

00:10:22.820 So, right, you could do the math for me, right?

00:10:26.520 There were two and they're now one.

00:10:29.380 That doesn't mean there's now this separation.

00:10:32.620 It doesn't mean there's two anymore, right?

00:10:34.900 The two are now one in Christ,

00:10:37.380 which doesn't mean that this category is hanging out there of Jews as these covenant people out here.

00:10:44.580 Who are the covenant people?

00:10:45.460 It's Jew and Gentile united together into Christ.

00:10:49.640 Right. 0.69

00:10:50.900 And so there isn't this room for something else, for some other people that here is a handful,

00:10:57.840 you know, a couple of promises, right?

00:10:59.560 All of them are in Christ.

00:11:01.220 All of them are in his one people, the church.

00:11:06.040 Right.

00:11:06.380 Every promise is yes and amen.

00:11:10.100 All of God's promises are yes and amen in Christ.

00:11:14.000 In Christ Jesus.

00:11:14.900 Apart from Christ, though, there is no halfway house.

00:11:18.220 There is no way of receiving covenantal blessings without having union with Christ.

00:11:27.220 There's not this second category of tangential blessings

00:11:33.380 that stream down from God to one people

00:11:37.540 based off of an antichrist, rejecting Christ's covenant

00:11:43.320 or based off of blood or genetics.

00:11:46.060 And then there's this other covenant of blessing

00:11:48.140 that belongs to the spiritual children

00:11:50.320 who have been unified with Christ through faith.

00:11:54.800 There's no theological language to support that

00:11:58.820 throughout the scripture.

00:12:00.280 Yeah, you have to construct it eisegetically

00:12:02.560 right to get there yeah and and i mean this goes back to you know things we've said in other

00:12:07.560 episodes about the the nature the characteristics of the the old covenant world right old covenant

00:12:13.240 world is world land sanctuary right right world land sanctuary so there's those who are near

00:12:22.980 in the language of ephesians right those who are near in the land and those who are far off

00:12:29.540 right that's the two groups of humanity and what does paul say christ has done he's he's torn down

00:12:37.380 this this middle wall this barrier i mean what's what's paul referring to there he's he's talking

00:12:41.840 about the temple right in the temple right there's this barrier there's this wall right there's a

00:12:47.040 court of the gentiles that's where the gentiles go and then there is the space for the jews that's

00:12:53.080 a little bit nearer to the entrance to the temple. 0.74

00:12:56.940 And it's interesting, right?

00:12:58.580 Why was Jesus so angry about the money changers in the temple

00:13:04.180 and the people buying and selling and everything like that?

00:13:07.360 It isn't just that they were practicing commerce inside the temple.

00:13:11.780 In his father's house, which was meant to be a house of prayer,

00:13:14.400 but it was meant to be a house of prayer for all nations.

00:13:17.980 And what they were doing was not just practicing commerce

00:13:21.420 in a place of prayer,

00:13:24.280 but practicing commerce in a place of prayer

00:13:26.320 for the nations.

00:13:27.980 And in that particular form of commerce,

00:13:30.620 they were ripping off the nations. 1.00

00:13:32.520 Yeah, ripping off the Gentiles. 1.00

00:13:33.640 They were extorting Gentiles. 1.00

00:13:35.320 Because the Jews were fine. 0.99

00:13:36.740 Because imagine it like this.

00:13:37.920 It's not just that they had exorbitant prices

00:13:39.660 for dove offerings and for sheep and things like that.

00:13:43.220 It's not just that their prices were high.

00:13:45.520 They were treating the house of God like a Chuck E. Cheese.

00:13:48.060 If you remember back in the day,

00:13:49.420 You know, what you have to do before you can, you know, do any of the games or these things is you have to exchange your currency, right?

00:13:57.740 So, you take, you know, the American dollar and you've got to get Chuck E. Cheese tokens. 0.74

00:14:01.980 Well, that's what they were doing is that, you know, they wouldn't take the money of the Gentiles in order to purchase animals for sacrifice or grain offerings or whatever. 0.88

00:14:10.680 Instead, they first had to actually, they had to transition their money, their currency. 0.82

00:14:16.340 The denarii for shekels.

00:14:19.020 Yeah, exactly. And then what they were doing was the currency exchange rate, they were extorting.

00:14:25.960 It's like when you go to the airport and you got to change your dollars into euros or something.

00:14:29.560 Right. So it's not just-

00:14:30.660 It's going to be a higher premium there. 0.70

00:14:31.660 It's not just that they had high prices for animals to be sacrificed that extorted and oppressed both Jew and Gentile alike. 0.96

00:14:39.740 but instead it was specifically extorting the non-Jews, the Gentiles who had trapped, 0.95

00:14:46.060 they had already paid a much higher expense than the Jews living in Jerusalem just to take off

00:14:52.140 work, to make the journey and all these things. So, these are people who are flocking to Mount 0.96

00:14:56.180 Zion, who are coming to worship the true God. From far away. They're far off. Exactly. That

00:15:02.280 language is in the text. That's part of what Paul is talking about. So, from far off, here they come.

00:15:07.460 they make the journey at great expense to themselves, and then they have this Gentile 0.99

00:15:12.680 currency that must be exchanged with an extortion rate from these religious rulers in order for 0.98

00:15:20.260 them to then, after paying an arm and a leg, to be able to purchase a lamb or a dove and be able 0.69

00:15:26.840 to make an offering to the Lord. So it's not just setting up commerce in the house of God,

00:15:32.100 but it's setting up an extorting form of commerce 0.97

00:15:37.020 in a house of God that is meant for prayer

00:15:39.940 for the other nations.

00:15:41.880 Yeah, I mean, imagine if you had like a really large church

00:15:44.240 and it's in this old covenant setting

00:15:46.020 where you have this division, right?

00:15:48.180 That God has set up, right? 1.00

00:15:50.060 There's division, Jews over here, Gentiles over here. 1.00

00:15:52.720 And then the space for the Gentiles 1.00

00:15:55.660 that they're coming in, 1.00

00:15:57.600 there's not seats and places for them

00:15:59.480 to sing psalms and hymns and worship along with you, right?

00:16:05.260 No, now you've got crates of doves and lambs and pigeons

00:16:09.740 and things like that taking up space.

00:16:11.600 You've got tables set up for guys to exchange money.

00:16:13.520 There's no, the place where they're supposed to worship

00:16:16.060 is being occupied by all of this stuff, right?

00:16:20.280 They said, oh, well, we won't have the money changers over here.

00:16:24.000 We'll cram it over into the space. 1.00

00:16:25.600 We don't care about the Gentiles at all, right? 1.00

00:16:27.720 They don't really matter. 1.00

00:16:28.980 And so we'll set these things up.

00:16:29.920 So that's why Jesus goes in there 0.91

00:16:31.060 and makes a court of whips 0.97

00:16:32.940 and drives these people out, right?

00:16:35.320 Not because that wasn't a necessary function.

00:16:37.540 Like they needed that.

00:16:38.660 They needed, right?

00:16:39.720 You're not gonna carry a lamb with you

00:16:41.780 all the way from Asia Minor, right?

00:16:44.040 You're gonna buy one when you get there.

00:16:46.400 And so that's a necessary function that they have.

00:16:49.300 That should be outside of the space for worship, right?

00:16:52.860 That's the problem.

00:16:53.640 And what Paul says here is what has Christ done?

00:16:56.620 and he hasn't just driven out the money changers

00:16:58.940 and driven out all of that.

00:17:01.080 He has torn down that wall, right? 1.00

00:17:03.460 Now, the Gentiles have access to God, right? 1.00

00:17:08.320 In the same manner that the Jews do. 1.00

00:17:10.000 And this is- 1.00

00:17:10.740 And he offers himself as the spotless and final lamb

00:17:13.740 without price.

00:17:14.080 And he's that lamb, right?

00:17:15.280 That they don't have to pay for.

00:17:16.360 Without price, right.

00:17:16.600 Yeah.

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00:19:21.840 Right Response Ministries.

00:19:23.740 And so, right, you read in the book of Acts, right, Paul, right, what does Paul do?

00:19:32.500 He goes to Jerusalem and the elders in the church of Jerusalem are like, hey, we've been

00:19:39.020 hearing you say, we heard people saying like, you know, you shouldn't be going to the

00:19:44.100 temple and sacrificing and doing things like this anymore. You want to clear that up for us. And

00:19:48.420 well, Paul is taking a Nazarite vow. He has to offer his hair on the altar to fulfill that vow. 0.92

00:19:54.340 So he shaved his head. He's going to offer and he says, yeah, I'll go with these guys into the

00:19:57.660 temple and we'll make these offerings, right? The old covenant is still operating. It's not

00:20:02.600 sinful for him to do this, but he's not, right? He's just, he's obeying God within the construct

00:20:09.040 of the old covenant, he's allowed to still do it.

00:20:12.880 Which still has some effect at that time.

00:20:14.900 Yeah, he still can do it, but it's not,

00:20:17.240 he knows there's no salvific, you know,

00:20:19.420 nothing happening there via that mechanism.

00:20:23.160 And, right, he goes in and what happens to him, right?

00:20:27.440 A crowd mobs him and begins rioting

00:20:31.240 and tries to lynch him in the temple

00:20:33.160 because they say he brought, 0.90

00:20:36.200 because we saw him with a Gentile, with a Greek. 0.89

00:20:39.040 walking around in the city, and he must have brought that Gentile past this wall into the

00:20:45.100 court of the Jews, and he has profaned the temple of God by bringing a Gentile into here, right? 0.97

00:20:52.660 What is the thing that nearly got Paul killed in Jerusalem, right? It's what he's describing here 0.99

00:20:57.800 in Ephesians, right? It's what he's describing here that Gentiles now have access to this,

00:21:03.540 But it's not to that temple that Christ is about to tear down when Paul is writing this, right?

00:21:10.500 Which temple is it, right?

00:21:12.640 It is the true third temple, right?

00:21:16.300 It's the temple that is built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets with Christ as the chief cornerstone.

00:21:23.740 It's continually being built up, right?

00:21:26.020 Through the people of God. 0.97

00:21:27.300 Of living stones that are Jew and Gentile together. 0.97

00:21:30.320 Yeah. 1.00

00:21:30.660 Yeah.

00:21:30.980 Yeah, the third temple is the church, and there will be never any other third temple.

00:21:36.180 And all those attempts have failed.

00:21:38.820 And as we've stated in other episodes, some of those failures were pretty epic.

00:21:43.380 What was the name of the guy who was commissioned to build a third temple?

00:21:46.320 Well, Julian the Apostate, the emperor of Rome, commissioned it.

00:21:49.660 Yeah, and it was a spectacular failure.

00:21:52.840 The world, the ground opened up and swallowed them up.

00:21:55.980 There was lightning.

00:21:56.620 Yeah, and fireballs and everything else.

00:22:00.980 And so you don't want to do that.

00:22:03.460 You don't want to say God's temple, he needs another one, right?

00:22:07.880 He already has his, right?

00:22:09.240 He already has his new covenant temple.

00:22:10.660 It's his people.

00:22:12.340 And so, right, this major point, right?

00:22:17.140 Paul, again, he's making this point all throughout the pages of the New Testament again and again and again and again that there no longer is Jew or Greek.

00:22:28.980 There's one man in Christ Jesus that has access to God because that's within the Old Covenant.

00:22:36.620 God is, we think, oh, in the Old Covenant, God was mean and nasty and there's all this wrath in the Old Testament.

00:22:44.400 God is extremely gracious, right?

00:22:46.860 He kicks man out of the sanctuary, out of his presence, and he doesn't owe us anything.

00:22:52.960 He doesn't owe us his presence.

00:22:55.360 He doesn't owe us anything at all, but he allows, right, man to come right up to the gate of the sanctuary and offer worship, right, right from the very beginning.

00:23:06.980 And even after he destroys that world under Noah, right, what does he do?

00:23:13.440 He allows man to draw near to him in the tabernacle, and he sets up a system in which they're able to draw near to him, draw near to his presence.

00:23:24.280 He establishes another sanctuary.

00:23:24.940 So whether it's the antediluvian world before the flood, you have those three categories of world and land and sanctuary.

00:23:34.500 So the world at large, and then the land would have been Eden, and then the sanctuary would have been the garden.

00:23:40.800 Because of sin, they're kicked out of the sanctuary, the garden, Adam and Eve.

00:23:44.620 And then because of sin in the land, Eden, Cain is kicked out of the land.

00:23:49.840 And then eventually, humanity is kicked out of the world and the flood.

00:23:54.940 And then you see that same paradigm established, reestablished again.

00:23:58.920 And so now, instead of world, Eden, garden, it's the world, land, and sanctuary becomes world, Israel becomes the land, and tabernacle, and then later, temple.

00:24:11.400 That's the sanctuary. 0.82

00:24:13.860 And there you see again, well, and even just in John chapter 2, you see Christ himself kicking the Jews out of the sanctuary, out of the temple. 0.97

00:24:24.940 driving them out, the money changers. And then you see him ultimately in his final judgment and 0.97

00:24:31.320 a spiritual coming and judgment through providence and God's sovereignty with Titus. You see that in

00:24:37.800 AD 70 that he comes and he destroys. And with the Garden of Eden, the garden, man is kicked out of

00:24:45.660 the garden. When it comes to the temple, there's a sense of Christ is driving the money changers

00:24:53.700 out. But in 8070, in the final completion and finality, the end of the old covenant,

00:25:00.160 it's not just that man is kicked out of the temple, but the temple is actually done away

00:25:03.640 with. It's destroyed so that there's no return. So that God makes it apparently clear that there

00:25:11.040 is another temple, namely the Christian church, living stones built on the foundation of the

00:25:15.860 apostles and prophets with Christ as the capstone. That's made clear. But this human temple made with

00:25:22.540 human hands, that it's not just that man has been removed from it, but the temple has actually been

00:25:27.920 removed. It has been removed. It has been removed. So in other words, there's no going back. And any

00:25:33.520 attempt at going back is to defeat the very heart of the gospel and the Christian faith that God has

00:25:42.940 laid out for us so plainly in scripture and so plainly in the finished work of his son. So this

00:25:48.660 idea of, well, there's still a land in a physical sense of, you know, the nation state, the modern

00:25:55.660 state of Israel is still this special land. And there's still even a temple. It's eventually,

00:26:01.400 you know, the Temple Mount, we're going to, you know, the third temple is going to be built and 1.00

00:26:05.280 the red heifers are going to, you know. Sprinkle the ashes. Yeah, that is missing the thread

00:26:11.080 of the New Testament and the Christian faith. If you want to draw near to God, and that's, I mean, 0.61

00:26:16.800 That is what the book of Leviticus is about, is how can man with flesh, right, draw near to God?

00:26:25.660 Well, God is extremely gracious.

00:26:27.240 He doesn't owe it to them to allow them to draw near to him.

00:26:31.040 But in his grace, sets up a system where they can.

00:26:33.860 Because if you have flesh, right, you can't come near to God to be burned up.

00:26:37.300 He dwells in unapproachable light, which no man can approach.

00:26:40.420 And so what does he do?

00:26:41.200 He does what he does for Adam and Eve in the garden, right?

00:26:45.520 He creates coverings.

00:26:46.800 them right that's why right why why are lepers not allowed to come uh into the sanctuary because

00:26:53.380 they're unclean right they're unclean why are they unclean because their flesh is exposed right 0.99

00:26:58.340 their skin it's not just like leprosy like we think of now where they're your body parts are

00:27:03.480 falling off and things like that it's just it's any any disease where your skin is is exposed and 0.78

00:27:09.240 white the flesh of your skin is exposed well you can't you can't draw near to god that way your 0.80

00:27:12.880 flesh is out there for the whole world to see. And all of these things, all uncleanness is like 0.91

00:27:18.580 that, right? That's why the system is set up the way that it is. And in the New Covenant,

00:27:26.020 God has made all men clean by the blood of Jesus Christ, right? So, there's no, there's

00:27:31.900 all those things, they're no longer necessary, right? No longer necessary whatsoever. And all

00:27:38.700 men can draw near to God in the church, right? You want to draw that when we are worshiping,

00:27:44.060 right? This is important, I think, for Christians to understand what worship is when God's people

00:27:47.980 gather together on the Lord's day is you are going into the tabernacle. You are going into

00:27:55.000 the temple, right? Into the holy place and into the holy of holies where Christ dwells among his

00:28:05.360 people and you have direct access to God himself in a way that in the old covenant, the Jews did 0.87

00:28:12.560 not have, right? They could only come up to the entrance of the tabernacle and only the priest 0.99

00:28:18.140 could be inside there. And only once a year. And only the high priest could go into the Holy of

00:28:22.000 Holies one time a year, right? And now, right, we can draw near to God in that way, right? Every

00:28:31.320 lord's day every and every time the church gathers together whenever not just on the lord's day when

00:28:37.100 the church you know it used to be you know throughout christendom you would have services

00:28:41.800 every single day right you would be able to worship every single day if you wanted to and

00:28:45.380 maybe someday we will get back to that um but uh right you have this access to god to draw near to

00:28:53.000 him and you don't have to go through the rites and the rituals these really expensive burdens

00:28:57.940 Like you think about, maybe we don't often think about the economic burden that the old covenant law was to the Jews or to Gentiles who would want to worship, right?

00:29:10.460 Then is now even more expensive than now, although thanks to Joe Biden, animals are expensive, right?

00:29:18.400 But if you're going to sacrifice a bull, I mean, have you ever thought about that?

00:29:21.040 Like when David is bringing the ark into Jerusalem and every six paces he stops and he sacrifices a bull.

00:29:27.340 right right and they're miles away from jerusalem right think about how much that cost right right

00:29:33.080 i mean how much does a bull cost now like thousands of dollars uh and every six bases

00:29:37.880 sacrifice that costs thousands of dollars even a lamb right still hundreds maybe a thousand dollars

00:29:43.240 for a lamb today and and we have a much more efficient system of of breeding and raising

00:29:48.660 animals in the old covenant in the ancient world it was far more onerous to do this right far more

00:29:55.640 expensive, and that's how they would worship. And very inconvenient, too. You would have to wash,

00:30:00.580 you'd have to wait seven days, all these different rites and rituals. If you had a baby that was 0.60

00:30:05.220 a male child, your wife couldn't come into the assembly after so many days, and it was twice as 0.79

00:30:11.440 long for a daughter, right? All of these things seem really, really inconvenient, right? But

00:30:16.800 they're gracious because God doesn't owe anybody that access. In the new covenant, all of that is

00:30:23.580 taken away by the blood of Christ that this expensive, economically odorous and burdensome

00:30:30.940 system is lifted because he pays for all of it. And now we can draw near on the Lord's Day in the

00:30:38.020 same way and have full access to God. And it isn't just Jews. It isn't just priests and Levites.

00:30:47.140 it is all of the people of God, Jew and Gentile, everyone, everyone on earth can draw near to

00:30:55.880 Christ by faith. And that there's no distinction. That's one of the things that we've talked about

00:31:02.000 again in other episodes that we've done, but you know, the Galatians 3.28, one of the most

00:31:07.020 misinterpreted verses in all the scripture. Maybe after Matthew 7.1. Yeah, right. That's

00:31:13.740 right up there. Well, there are still temporal earthly distinctions. Grace does not eradicate

00:31:23.980 or destroy nature, but it elevates nature. So, there is still a difference between male and

00:31:30.860 female. It's not as though, oh, now we just have one gender, one sex. No, we still have the two

00:31:37.360 sexes and they're still distinct. And we still have different ethnicities. Of course we do.

00:31:43.140 And there are still even some that mean something.

00:31:49.000 Nationality and ethnicity and those things, it still means, so it's not just a distinction but without a difference. 0.96

00:31:54.180 No, there's a distinction and there are differences between different nations and cultures and peoples, and they're not all equal. 0.91

00:32:01.220 Not all cultures are equal.

00:32:02.560 Some cultures are better than others, and by what standard, Joel? 0.93

00:32:06.840 Better because you like it because you're white? 0.65

00:32:09.060 No, by God's standard, a nation is superior, culture is superior to other cultures insofar as it conforms to the Christian worldview and the truth of Christ. 0.90

00:32:22.700 So, for instance, like, you know, like remember during the, you know, the whole wokeness of 2020 and 2021, you know, like being on time, right? 0.84

00:32:32.860 Promptness is like white oppression.

00:32:35.500 It's racism.

00:32:35.920 And we would say, no, it's not racism, so it's certainly not a bad thing.

00:32:43.240 But we don't need to stop there.

00:32:45.220 It's not just not a bad thing, it's a good thing.

00:32:48.340 It is a superior thing.

00:32:49.720 I have visited cultures that are notoriously three hours late.

00:32:54.560 I have gone to tribes in Africa on mission trips that I shouldn't have been on,

00:32:59.880 short-term teenage mission trips that are pointless.

00:33:02.660 I did some of those in my teenage days.

00:33:06.720 And it's not as though, you know, the message was lost in translation.

00:33:11.620 We would go with interpreters every day of the week, Monday through Saturday, knocking on doors in the village, letting everyone know that there's going to be a church service.

00:33:21.500 And they wanted to come.

00:33:22.440 It wasn't that we miscommunicated the details of the time or that they didn't want to come.

00:33:28.640 So they know exactly what time it is, where it is, and they have the desire to come and earnestly wanting to be there.

00:33:35.740 they arrived three hours late because that's what you do. Oh, well, that's just different. No,

00:33:40.180 it's not just different. It's worse. It's worse because there's actually a Christian, not a white

00:33:45.940 value, but a Christian value that became a Western value because Western civilization conformed 0.68

00:33:52.060 itself to the Christian worldview. And what is the value? The value is respect. The value is respect.

00:33:57.800 So all that being said, Galatians 3, 28, there's still distinctions between male and female and

00:34:03.240 distinctions between Jew and Greek insofar as that pertains not to religion, but to ethnicity,

00:34:09.940 to nationality, to different peoples. And certainly, there are still distinctions,

00:34:14.840 economic distinctions and roles and offices between master and slave or employer and employee.

00:34:22.380 So, all these distinctions still matter. But what Paul is getting at in Galatians 3.28

00:34:27.260 is saying that in Christ, in the ultimate eternal sense, in terms of our worship being received

00:34:33.960 by God, in terms of union with Christ through faith, that union is not merely reserved for

00:34:41.660 only Hebrew men get the sign of circumcision. No, now both men and women are baptized.

00:34:48.360 You know, not just that Jews get to come into the temple while Gentiles stay out in the Gentile 0.96

00:34:54.940 outer court. No, Jew and Gentile can approach the throne of God on the Lord's day in worship, 0.96

00:35:00.860 Christian worship, and not just this idea of, you know, well, masters and slaves, but you see, 0.63

00:35:07.000 even in America, certainly there were abuses with slavery, but there were also benevolent masters

00:35:12.120 like Jonathan Edwards, like George Whitefield, who would, on the Lord's day, on a Monday afternoon,

00:35:19.760 no, there's a very different, there's a distinction between what Jonathan Edwards

00:35:23.560 is doing on a Tuesday afternoon and what his slaves are doing. But on the Lord's day, Jonathan

00:35:28.200 Edwards and his slaves in the same church at the same table of the Lord. And so my point is that

00:35:35.540 these human, material, temporal, earthly distinctions, Galatians 3.28 is not advocating

00:35:42.620 for transgenderism. No more male and female. It's not getting rid of the earthly temporal 0.73

00:35:47.680 distinctions. Or multiculturalism. But it is getting rid of in the spiritual sense. It is

00:35:52.480 getting rid of the dividing wall of hostility. And what have we done? I mean, think about this

00:35:56.780 for a moment. Think of just the complete and total twisting and perversion. What so many

00:36:04.320 evangelicals have done is they've gotten rid of something like patriarchy, for example. And they

00:36:10.200 would point to Galatians 3.28 and they'd say, no distinction between male and female. No more male

00:36:17.180 headship. Husband's not the head of his home. We don't have to have male pastors. We can have

00:36:20.940 female pastors. No distinction there. But what distinction do they still keep? These same 1.00

00:36:25.600 evangelicals. Dispensationalism, Israel, Jews are still special. So, we'll keep that distinction. 0.64

00:36:32.100 There's Jews and then everybody else. But we won't keep a distinction of male and female.

00:36:38.920 We're egalitarian. We have women pastors. That is the exact opposite way to read the Word of God. 0.97

00:36:45.980 Yeah. Yeah. That what he is saying is not, again, that there are not, you know, distinctions, natural distinctions between men and women and different groups of people and things like that. He is saying that all of humanity has access to draw near to God. All of humanity in faith in Christ are equally heirs of the kingdom of God with Christ.

00:37:12.140 So the husbands are the head of the wife, and yet, in Christ, my wife is a co-heir in grace.

00:37:21.160 Yeah, when my family, when our families go to the Lord's table, it's not like I get an extra portion of bread and wine, and then my wife gets a little bit less, and my kids leave even less than that.

00:37:35.200 We all equally are the same at the table of the Lord and in his kingdom.

00:37:40.600 right but then when we leave church right i'm dad she's mom the kids are the kids um we all have

00:37:48.100 different roles in our society right um some of us are bosses some of us are the workers some of us

00:37:54.060 are really rich some of us um have been blessed but are not super rich and some of us don't have

00:38:00.460 a whole lot at all and all of those people when we draw near like you know if uh you know if elon

00:38:06.640 musk uh decided to drive down to or up to georgetown last sunday right and if he confessed

00:38:13.180 christ and was you know uh showing works of repentance and a faithful christian and comes

00:38:19.040 into the church right he is worth many many many many billions more than all of us in the church

00:38:25.320 combined right um and yet right he would have right the same access to god right and the same

00:38:33.560 part in the kingdom of God. No less, no more. Yeah. That's what it means. That's exactly. And

00:38:40.100 that's what Galatians 3.28 is getting at. And to cross reference over to Ephesians 2 in our

00:38:45.940 primary text for today's episode, that's the same thing. That's the wall of hostility. Jesus is not

00:38:51.700 tearing down hierarchy, human earthly hierarchy in categories. He's not tearing down ethnic

00:38:58.760 distinctions. He's not tearing down the distinctions between the sexes or distinctions

00:39:04.540 economically and different roles in the marketplace. He is tearing down spiritually,

00:39:10.440 he's tearing down that dividing wall of hostility in the spiritual sense that divided Jews and

00:39:17.980 Gentiles to where Gentiles are now welcomed in. And in the spiritual sense, there is no difference

00:39:24.000 between Jew and Gentile. 0.99

00:39:25.600 And so for us to say, 0.98

00:39:27.140 well, there's a big difference 0.98

00:39:28.520 between Jew and Gentile still 2,000 years 0.72

00:39:32.240 after he tore down that dividing wall 0.97

00:39:34.360 and destroyed the temple in 80, 70,

00:39:36.940 all to say, well, no,

00:39:38.060 there's still this really big difference.

00:39:40.560 And we do the exact-

00:39:41.200 There's still the people that are near

00:39:43.160 and we're far off.

00:39:44.160 Right.

00:39:44.620 And the funny thing is that we, 0.66

00:39:47.200 you know, you hear Christians all the time saying,

00:39:48.960 you know, race, you know, conservative Christians,

00:39:51.540 you know, like race is a construct.

00:39:53.140 There's no such thing.

00:39:54.040 Right, there's only one race, the human race. 0.78

00:39:55.940 And I know what they mean.

00:39:56.900 We all bleed red.

00:39:58.080 Right, so I don't counter signal.

00:40:00.200 I know what they mean.

00:40:01.520 And they'll say, well, there's no such thing as different races,

00:40:03.900 but there are different ethnicities.

00:40:05.380 And what does that difference amount to?

00:40:07.380 It's a distinction without a difference.

00:40:08.940 It amounts to nothing.

00:40:09.740 What is it good for?

00:40:11.060 Absolutely. 0.98

00:40:11.920 So they say, no different races, just one.

00:40:14.480 And there are different ethnicities, but there's really no,

00:40:17.920 that amounts to nothing.

00:40:19.160 That difference is moot.

00:40:20.720 When it comes to the kingdom of God.

00:40:22.280 So they'll say the different ethnicities don't matter at all, except there is one arena where all these evangelicals, all of a sudden, they become big fans of kynism.

00:40:33.720 Have you noticed?

00:40:34.280 Yeah, but for one group. 1.00

00:40:36.660 They're kynists for Jews. 0.97

00:40:38.760 When it comes to Jews, they're like, yeah, protect that bloodline.

00:40:42.300 And these people got to be preserved because Jesus is not coming back unless these people exist.

00:40:46.520 Send them another $10 billion, protect that spot of earth. 0.92

00:40:50.880 and turn Palestine into a sea of glass?

00:40:56.200 What did Owen Strand tweet out?

00:40:58.840 He was like, destroy...

00:41:01.120 Destroy Hamas or destroy Gaza. 0.82

00:41:03.040 Like I said, not even talking about physically with bombs.

00:41:06.600 I wasn't talking about that at all.

00:41:07.900 But I said that as Christians, we do.

00:41:10.400 Power is not inherently evil.

00:41:12.200 Some Christians, all Christians in varying capacities

00:41:15.540 and in different spheres are called not to forsake power,

00:41:19.060 but to wield power righteously.

00:41:21.180 So whether it's a father in a home, that is authority,

00:41:23.560 or whether it's a pastor in a church,

00:41:25.160 or even a church member has a certain measure of authority,

00:41:27.620 or whether it's a Christian who's called to hold office

00:41:31.140 in the civil magistrate.

00:41:32.380 In all these different realms, 0.97

00:41:33.520 Christians should not be saying, oh, power is icky.

00:41:37.320 We don't want power.

00:41:38.080 We should embrace power, but simply wield it righteously.

00:41:41.900 And part of wielding it righteously, 0.99

00:41:43.520 especially for Christians in the civil magistrate, 0.66

00:41:45.480 is to reward righteousness and to punish the evildoer per Romans 13. So I said, I want to 0.79

00:41:52.880 see Christians wield power righteously, rewarding their friends, that is fellow Christians and 0.95

00:41:59.460 punishing, crushing, I said crushing enemies. And Owen Strand said, this is not New Testament 0.92

00:42:04.480 Christianity. This is not the gospel. And then, you know, and then just a few weeks prior though,

00:42:09.740 he had this tweet where I wasn't talking about physically crushing, but he was. 1.00

00:42:15.200 He was saying, bomb the crap out of FAMAS and kill them all. 1.00

00:42:20.540 And that's allowed. 1.00

00:42:21.940 So my point is this.

00:42:22.860 And of course, in terms of warfare, he's understanding.

00:42:26.260 You're allowed to be a kinist.

00:42:27.460 Right, friend, enemy distinction there. 0.94

00:42:29.080 If you're a Zionist, you're allowed to be someone who believes in crushing, 0.96

00:42:34.320 literally, physically crushing and killing enemies if you're a Zionist. 0.89

00:42:38.240 yeah you're like there's all the and and so what do what do we need aside from owen strand to 0.86

00:42:44.380 delete his twitter aside from that what what do we need is um we we need if in the spirit of 0.89

00:42:51.000 crushing since we're on the topic we need uh to crush zionism yeah zionism is pernicious yeah 0.98

00:42:57.560 it's it has been terrible for for the world for geopolitics for economies for it has been 1.00

00:43:03.900 And for the record, when I say crush Zionism, I'm speaking of an ideology. 0.91

00:43:08.620 I'm not saying crush a set of people. 0.78

00:43:11.620 Of individuals.

00:43:12.660 In a physical sense.

00:43:14.180 No, I'm saying there is a particular...

00:43:16.160 I mean, it would be good to put John Hagee in prison, but...

00:43:18.440 That would be good. 0.99

00:43:19.480 But what I'm saying is the modern state of Israel could continue.

00:43:23.720 Now, it has no prophetic, you know, significance. 0.91

00:43:27.800 We can let them do their own thing and leave them alone.

00:43:30.400 They can continue and we can wish them well, just like I have the same view of Israel today,

00:43:36.320 the modern state of Israel, as I do Brazil or Portugal. So I hope that they would be at peace

00:43:42.220 and that they would prosper. And especially that in the salvific sense, that the people there

00:43:47.760 would repent of their sins and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, all those things. So I'm not

00:43:52.080 saying crush Israel, but I am saying crush Zionism as an ideology. It is pernicious and it has 0.98

00:43:58.320 infiltrated so much of evangelicalism and the Bible dismantles it. A clear reading of scripture,

00:44:06.680 Galatians, Ephesians, Hebrews, dismantles. Yeah. I mean, reading these verses, reading these

00:44:13.120 passages and how Paul deals with the Jew-Gentile issue, with the end of the old covenant, 0.83

00:44:19.580 the coming of the new, right? You can't read it and not come to the conclusion that all of that 0.94

00:44:26.300 is over, that all there is, is Jew and Gentile united in Christ. And that, again, right, those 0.89

00:44:34.440 two are united in one, right, in Christ. And it doesn't mean, right, again, because, right, that

00:44:40.280 old covenant world, right, you have, right, the people that are far off and the people that are

00:44:45.180 near, well, they're brought together in one, which means, right, there aren't far off and near people

00:44:50.860 now. And for you to say that the biblical category of Jew is still in existence today

00:44:56.480 means that you are saying that there are people who are categorically nearer to God 0.70

00:45:01.400 than you are as a Christian. And that is false. That is not true at all.

00:45:07.300 That Gentile Christians today, 19 and a half centuries after the fall of the temple and the 1.00

00:45:13.760 destruction of Jerusalem in the 80s, and most importantly, the ending of the old covenant, 1.00

00:45:19.600 that 19 and a half centuries later, 0.92

00:45:22.860 you're saying that Gentile Christians 0.73

00:45:24.360 are still technically God's stepchildren.

00:45:27.300 Yeah, we're still far off.

00:45:28.420 They're still second class.

00:45:29.920 We're seated at the far end of the table.

00:45:32.220 We can catch a glimpse of dad,

00:45:33.760 and a smaller portion of the meal gets passed down to us.

00:45:36.720 And dad tolerates our presence there

00:45:38.380 and allows us to sit at the table,

00:45:40.300 but he's really infatuated with his biological children.

00:45:43.840 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:45:45.140 That is terrible theology.

00:45:46.560 It's horrible.

00:45:47.280 Horrible.

00:45:47.840 What does that do? 1.00

00:45:48.740 It's not a blessing to Jews. 1.00

00:45:50.980 It doesn't help them. 0.99

00:45:52.300 And it's certainly not a blessing to Christians.

00:45:54.360 You know, the modern people called Jews, 1.00

00:45:56.240 it keeps them further away from the kingdom

00:45:57.480 if we think of them that way.

00:45:59.280 That's right, because it really tells them

00:46:00.580 you don't need repentance.

00:46:01.280 You don't really need Jesus.

00:46:02.580 That's right, not really.

00:46:03.760 Right, you don't really need him at all.

00:46:05.320 And they do, right?

00:46:07.460 That's what I say.

00:46:07.880 You're the apple of his eye.

00:46:09.880 And so you're already blessed, already favored.

00:46:11.980 And the reality is, no, you are not the apple of his eye.

00:46:14.340 If you've rejected Christ,

00:46:16.140 then you're actually under his just condemnation

00:46:18.680 and wrath. You're not the apple of his eye. The apple of his eye is the seed who is Jesus and all

00:46:26.260 those who have union with him, which are Christians. We've gone over this so many times, but it's good.

00:46:32.560 It keeps coming up because we keep going through more parts of the Bible.

00:46:35.280 Exactly. What we want to do is we want to communicate not just the major theme,

00:46:40.160 but we want to show you how this major theme is not from two or three verses. This major theme

00:46:45.640 appears in scripture again and again and again.

00:46:48.500 So for this episode, any final thoughts to land the plane?

00:46:52.680 Yeah, just that, right?

00:46:54.880 That distinction, right?

00:46:56.960 Those who are near, those who are far off, right?

00:46:59.920 If you are saying that this group of people

00:47:02.380 is the same group of people in the same category

00:47:04.960 as the people in the old covenant, right?

00:47:08.040 You are denying that Christ has made the two one

00:47:11.840 in one man, in him, in Jesus.

00:47:14.220 and that's gotta go. 0.99

00:47:16.220 So saying that modern Jews, 0.85

00:47:18.040 those who call themselves Jews today, 1.00

00:47:19.840 saying that they need Jesus is good. 1.00

00:47:22.120 Yeah.

00:47:22.640 But there are a lot of evangelicals

00:47:24.260 who would acknowledge,

00:47:24.940 yeah, they do need to repent

00:47:26.140 and believe in Jesus,

00:47:27.200 but they still are at least giving credence to,

00:47:30.980 but this is the people of God in some sense.

00:47:34.120 These are the ones that are near.

00:47:36.020 And no, we're saying that even that

00:47:38.400 is actually a detraction,

00:47:41.140 not a full detraction,

00:47:42.180 but it's still a partial perverting

00:47:44.620 and twisting and detraction from the fullness

00:47:46.740 and sufficiency of what Christ has done

00:47:49.540 for both Jew and Gentile in him, in him. 0.97

00:47:53.780 And that's a mistake. 0.97

00:47:55.560 All right, well, thank you guys for tuning in.

00:47:56.960 We hope it's been a blessing to you

00:47:58.240 and we will see you next time.

The NXR Podcast - March 01, 2025

THE FRIDAY SPECIAL - Dismantling Zionism From The Book Of Ephesians

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