Published: September 28, 2023 | Speaker: Chuck Hartman | Series: Pauline Studies 4 - The Church in the World - Part 10 | Scripture: 1 Corinthians 3:9-17
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just an administrative note planning a class next week and then off a week it'll be Milton's fall break and I'm going white waterer
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rafting that's for some reason it's hard for some people to believe it's okay it it saves money I don't use a paddle I just use my
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cane father we do thank you for the opportunity to be together to uh to be in your word to be with one another and share our faith to be encouraged by your
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word and by your spirit we do pray that that would be the case that as we study what Paul especially has written about the church we would know it to be the
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truth and that we would align our thinking with the truth we pray father that you would help clear away misconceptions or Traditions that
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we have developed that are not of the truth and that you would guide us as you have promised into all Truth by your Holy Spirit for we ask in Jesus name
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amen tonight is uh actually a a very as this course goes is it's perhaps one of the most the most significant um topics that we're going to discuss and it it doesn't actually seem
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that way because of the influences of dispensationalism over the past 150 years now most people when they think of dispensationalism they think of
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tribulation Rapture tribulation Rapture eschatology Left Behind movies and novels and stuff like that in fact I was having a conversation with um someone in my family with whom I
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rarely have a theological conversation because he is very much Armenian uh and I am very much not but it was very pleasant conversation and he he for some reason
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he said he said I I I know you don't believe in the Rapture I said what makes you say that I said of course I believe in the Rapture now if what you mean is that we
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shall not all sleep okay or or at the the sound of the trumpet we shall all be changed caught up with with him in the air that's the Rapture isn't
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it that that's right there in the Bible if you mean a bumper sticker on my car that says in case of the Rapture this car will be driverless then no I'm not a I'm not I don't believe in the Rapture I
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mean I'm I'm not into that that that kind of stuff but the point that I'm making is that one assumes that if you're not
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you're not dispensational you don't believe in the Rapture because for the most part dispensationalism is associated with eschatology well frankly that's the
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least of its offenses it's not even original in terms of premillennial eschatology that Christ is returning before a millennial Reign
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that dates back to to at least the second century Justin Martyr was a premillennialist now I don't know that he had anything to say about a seven-year Rapture or Gog and MOG and
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Russia and all of that but it dispensationalism didn't come up with premillennial eschatology the problem with dispensationalism is it's
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hermeneutic and what it has done in terms of separating God's word and God's plan between Israel and the
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church the basic dispensational hermeneutic is that Israel is Israel the church is the church and never the twain shall meet and anything anything that says anything about Israel must be
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fulfilled literally in the national state of state of Israel and cannot apply any more than metaphorically to the
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church I don't know how they read Paul I I really don't know how they get around Paul I don't know how they get around for example Romans 11 with the
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engrafting of the Gentile wild branches into the one olive tree which was of course Israel they
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Israel they div and div and thats are written the millennial some are written some some of Paul's letters are written for the millennial Reign that's what they say
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The Sermon on the Mount is written for the millennial Reign doesn't make much sense to write these letters and preserve them for a church that isn't going to be here when they actually apply see the logic behind it is just
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not there so these things are written for our instruction but not really because we're not Jews and we're not in the Millennium but of course in the Millennium they won't need it because Jesus will be here so it's really very
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convoluted when you when you listen carefully to what they're saying you realize this doesn't work but the hermeneutic is what concerns me because what they have done is they have
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completely emasculated the Pauline Theology and nowhere more so than in the identification by Paul as
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well as by Jesus John and Peter of the church with the
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temple it is throughout the New Testament Jesus of course in John Chapter 2 saying tear down this Temple and in three days I will rebuild it and John then explaining to us that he meant the Temple of his
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body Paul or Peter uh says that we are living stones living stones being fitted together into a holy or spiritual habitation which is
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essentially a temple when Paul says and we'll look at this in more detail uh as we go this evening but when Paul says that he is he and Apollos are builders
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in God's in God's Building he's talking about the temple that's God's that's God's Building and then he goes on in the same chapter 1 Corinthians chapter 3 to say
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you are the Temple of the Living God in Ephesians he he uses more um roundabout way of saying it more like
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Peter does but he refers to us as being built into a spiritual household or spiritual building so it's it's very clear to Paul that one of the
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key terms or the terminology that he uses regarding the church is the temple in fact one author and I want to see if I can find it um he points out that even
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the terminology that Paul uses is incredibly significant because he uses a Greek word there are two Greek words N and
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hon and I'm not going to find the quote right away we'll get to a little bit later these two words are somewhat interchangeable except that the inner
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Sanctuary is never called the hon it's called The N which means Sanctuary the other word means the temple precincts so if someone were
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talking about Solomon's Temple they would use the word hon it actually comes from the same word I believe as the as the priesthood um and so that's a very
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general term but whenever Paul speaks of the church as a temple or as Believers as a temple he always uses the N the inner Sanctuary the holy of holies
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in other words the place where God dwells okay and and that's that's important and that's why this Sensational hermeneutic is so
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damaging is because by separating Israel from the church and creating this church age we lose all sense of the identity of
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the church as the Bible gives it to us especially Paul and so we're forced and this is where the church has been not just because of dispensationalism but the church
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throughout its throughout its Generations whenever it departs from the Pauline ecclesiology it has to come up with its
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own and it never gets it right okay and so that's kind of the purpose of this entire series is that by God's grace and for his
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purpose he gave Paul The Lion Share of Revelation for Christian Theology and so if we don't align our
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thoughts with Paul and the Holy Spirit then we're not doing what Paul says in Romans 12 we're not being transformed by the renewing of our mind and as I
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mentioned a week or so ago or maybe it was Sunday school but if we're not transformed by the renewing of our minds we will be conformed to the world
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does anybody disagree with that entropy you're familiar with that the tendency of all things toward greater disorder the only way to reverse
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entropy is to put in energy okay the only way to protect your lunch meat from going bad is to put it in the refrigerator you you have to apply energy okay the same is true
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analogously with Romans 12 when he says do not be conformed to the world that's not actually an active uh command as if we can simply
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say I will not be conformed to the world there are a lot of people who are non-conformists but they actually conform to the world in their non-conformity there's a pattern of
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non-conformity throughout human history it's rebellious it's isolationist uh it's cantankerous it you know it has its characteristics Paul sayso not be
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conformed to this world and then he immediately gives us how but be transformed by the renewing of your of your mind that you may know what is the good and perfect will of God that you may
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approve it um so dispensationalism has had a very very per pervasive effect
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on American on American evangelicalism and you may think that since we're in a Reformed Church it doesn't apply but it does apply because along with
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arminianism dispensationalism and that hermeneutic is the by far the dominant theology in American
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evangelicalism I don't call it American Christianity because I'm not sure it is the it's definitely American you don't really encounter this in Europe dispensationalism never really even
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though it's started with the Plymouth bre brethren in Great Britain it never really took hold in Europe as it did here in the United States
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so the concept of Temple is more than a metaphor that's what I'm proposing in
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the notes and in the class t it's more than a than a metaphor it's more than an analogy it's a
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reality and as a reality that forces upon us the necessity of trying to understand what a temple is and particularly what is the
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Temple of the Living God the idea of a temple in the ancient world was was rather consistent among the Pagan religions as well as
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well as Judaism the temple was where the god lived and it is where man came in contact with the God so
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God so essentially and I I'll probably spell this wrong um because it's usually it's usually in the Latin in the
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the idea being the temple is the connection between Heaven and Earth the the the most illustrative example of this although it wasn't a temple rather afterward it became an
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altar Jacob's altar Jacob's Ladder the vision of Jacob and the lad and the angels ascending and descending Jesus uses that to say you will see the
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Angels ascending and descending upon the son of man and and to the Jew who heard that he was saying I am Jacob's Latter okay or I am Jacob I am Israel
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and I am as Jacob was I am the connection between Heaven and Earth now that may sound rather wild and crazy for 21st century years to think
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that there is a connection between Heaven and Earth but it really should not even seem crazy crazy or even less crazy to our ears as we are discovering more and more
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in the universe and theories of connections between alternate Dimensions or galaxies
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or universes are becoming more and more prevalent wormholes black holes in other words there's something about this universe that we have not figured out
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and the more we study in some respects the less we know the more we answer the more questions we develop and they and so it if you're
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challenged by oh that's just old Superstition and actually that's modern physics the idea of time bending light bending gravity bending
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you know the the from Einstein on we've got some really weird ideas now that are actually proving to be more descriptive
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of the of the data than some of us would like to think you know time is time itself is is not
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linear um so we at least can can stand up in our own day and say no we're not ancient Pagan
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ancient Pagan Mystics we're we're talking about something that's scriptural something that the Ancients did understand but something that also seems to be somewhat
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be somewhat natural I was actually excited I had two chances to sit on their dispensational as preachers preaching Hebrews and that can hurt some of them are pretty heavy I was
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sitting there likeed bre really one of them was P actually was preaching through Hebrews 12 so one of the most amazing passages I was actually waiting for him to say to toeach but you have
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come to Mount Zion to the city of the Living God the heavenly Jerusalem that you have come and now was just waiting for him and he skipped that whole passage and he was going verse by verse
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and then skipped that whole passage yeah well um yeah that's a shame although the standard dispensational argument would be that that's to the Hebrews that's not to the
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Gentiles you know well that's good but again it you know you read something and um you know and they say well that's to the Jews that's not to us uh and I think
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that should if you ever hear that you know someone say to you that this part of scripture is not for us you need to be very cautious about what they're saying okay it it very well may be that
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it's not for us because we're in Christ and therefore there is no condemnation I mean there are there are definite uh threats that are in Scripture that no longer apply to us by the grace of God
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but generally to say that doesn't apply to you because you're a gentile and not a a Jew that takes out a tremendous amount in fact I'm not sure there's much left I think there's more left of the
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Jefferson Bible than of the non-d dispensational Bible just to that point I grew up on
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dispens IDE that they argue a lot about who Israel is you know the whole replacement theology IDE these ideas and and to me the clarity is not whether Jews were Israel or Gentiles
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were Israel it's the Christ was Israel that's right yeah but that is such a critical point Christ is Israel he became Israel that's why Paul says in him in Christ okay look at the beginning
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of Matthew's literally showing how Jesus accomplished all the things right and so and that and actually dispensationalism in regards to its soteriology and its ecclesi it is
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changing there's Progressive dispensationalism now U which are basically what you would call they call themselves four point Calvinists you or three and a half Point um you know but
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it is changing and and there are there are very few uh there are very few evolutionists who would call themselves darwinian and there are very few dispensationalists who who still follow
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scoffield for example um nonetheless there's still that hermeneutic a hermeneutic that that is looking for the Fulfillment of the promise
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to Israel still in the future including a rebuilding of the temple now if you're looking for the rebuilding of a temple you will not understand Paul's
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terminology Temple terminology and therefore you will not understand the church nor its purpose in the world because the temple was supremely in the
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world for a reason and it wasn't just so people had a place to go and worship it was the place where God and man met
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where Heaven and Earth met now I would submit that the definition of Temple has never changed and when Paul describes the
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church as the temple he has in mind at least Solomon's Temple and the Tabernacle but I think he has even more
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mind Scholars have have over the last generation or so begun to uh and I'm talking about Evangelical Western Gentile biblical
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Gentile biblical Scholars are beginning to understand what Judaism always understood and that is the nature of
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Creation in the beginning as a temple okay and the notes go into much greater
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detail but the idea of creation as a temple Tim did a a Sunday school just this past Sunday school session on the relationship as of creation as a temple
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there are so many parallels between the Tabernacle and Solomon's Temple and the creation account of Genesis 1 and 2 including such things as the fact that
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it it tells us it took seven years for Solomon to build his Temple and seven days okay and at the end of the building of the Tabernacle and the end of the
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building of the temple Solomon's Temple the presence of the Lord visibly came to dwell there the image of God was placed
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in the in the garden is garden is man and so you have a temple and you have the image of the deity in the temple the the imagery for example have
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you ever wondered why the the psalmist and and some of the prophets talk about uh growing up like an olive tree in the courts of God's
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house the the language of a garden and of the temple are actually interchangeable in interchangeable in scripture so for example when Paul
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says in 1 Corinthians 3 again with Gentile ears this can be hard to catch which is why I think it's so important to spend time in the Old
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Testament so that you can hear the Echoes but he says um verse 9 1 Corinthians 3:9 for we are
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God's fellow workers you are God's field you are God's Building now so many commentators
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take Paul to task for mixing his metaphor there he's not mixing his metaphors because he's bringing in as we've talked about before he has two
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lines of thought Adam and Abraham creation and Covenant the garden and the temple okay they're they're both
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parallel lines of God's Redemptive history and and so when he says you are God's field it's it's if he's saying you are God's Garden you are God's
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Building you you are Eden you are the Tabernacle you are the temple they both work okay and and so you know the the righteous is like a tree planted by
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streams of Living Water bears his fruit throughout well that's the image of the New Jerusalem which doesn't have a temple because the presence of the god of God is the temple so this all this
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language again it it's not metaphorical I think it's absolutely real even though it is completely
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unseen and we we've talked before many times in different classes about the uh the shikina okay the the the presence the
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visible presence of the spirit of God the presence of God in the Tabernacle so the Tabernacle is dedicated and the glory of the Lord descends and even
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Moses can't go in so that's that's the first one you you all probably seen this before so you have the shikina in the
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wilderness Solomon's Temple is built it's dedicated he prays the prayer of dedication which is very very significant um and then the visible presence of the Lord descends and the priests are not even able to go in to
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minister so the shakina descend ends on Solomon's
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Temple that Temple is destroyed after the Exile the Jews return they build the second temple in Jesus in Paul's day Herod had taken over actually before Jesus he had
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taken over the building program and he was turning it into a wonder of the world it was finished in ad 63 seven years later it was destroyed by the Romans and
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there's a significance about that seven because that rounded out Daniel's 70 years that was the last seven 63 to uh to 70 okay so it's destroyed but the
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Jews of Jesus's day the Jews of Hagi and Zechariah and Malachi they all knew one thing for certain the shakina never came
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to the second temple it never came the rabbis write about this you can read it in the apocryphal um the you know the the the
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inner testamental writings that were not included in the in the Jewish Canon you can read it in Hai and Zechariah you get the promise in Malachi that the messenger of the
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Covenant that whom you seek that's the key whom you seek will suddenly appear and come into His Temple because he hadn't come the Lord says through Hagi
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you look at this house you who remember the previous house how does it compare in your sight but he says the glory of this house will be greater than of the
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former but that glory of the former the shikina never descended on that second temple does that make
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sense now to the Jew what does that mean God is not living here he has not taken up his Abode we
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are still in Exile and that is exactly how many of them wrote so so Simeon the old Simeon is looking for the consolation of
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consolation of Israel what was that consolation it was the return of Yahweh the the spirit of Yahweh that Ezekiel Saw departing from the temple had never
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back mentioned g once before you think it's significant that um so when the first temple was destroyed in Ezekiel describes the spirit of the Lord the glory of the Lord leaving to the east
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going to mountain when Christ came he went to the temple and taught and then said the stone not one stone and then left and went to the east went to the east the same Mountain I think there's
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significance to it I think I think it's like many things um you can see a connection parallel well in this the idea of Yahweh returning to the temple
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he is the messenger of the Covenant yeah he is the messenger of the Covenant of Malachi 3 okay and he is the spirit of Yahweh and and this is this is getting
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at the heart of Paul's understanding of what God has done in Jesus Christ which means it's the heart of our understanding of what the church is in the world and what it means for the
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church to be the temple okay so the the point though I think is that that we have to accept and this is where Modern Scholars uh starting in the 1970s with a
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fellow by the name of EP Sanders they began to realize they started first of all they started remembering you know that Jesus and Paul were Jews that was the stunning
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Revelation at the latter half of the 20th century that we realized all these guys were Jews ho ve who have thought they're Jewish so how about we
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start studying what we now know about second temporal Israel and we have a tremendous amount of resource material from the rabbis from Josephus from the
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Romans even and so let's let's start studying and let's start studying the Old Testament and see what did the Hebrews believe and what were they looking for and we find out they never
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considered the second temple to have been habitated by habitated by Yahweh and so in Jesus's own day and
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Paul's day there was an entire Community the kumran community of isin who would not go in the temple but considered themselves to be the true Temple okay so
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the Christians are not the first to think of the temple as a community the the Asin in kumran did and it's all in there remember the Dead Sea Scrolls see we've had those now for the
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past 70 years 80 years and they they gave a tremendous amount of information about second Temple Israel
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and what the Jews what the consolation of Israel meant to the Jews of Jesus's day not to all of them not to the Sadducees or the herodians not to many of the
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Pharisees but to those who were looking for the promise there was first of all the real realization that it had not yet come and that even though they had
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returned to Palestine they were still in Exile because the spirit of Yahweh had not come upon his Temple today even
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today many SE of the Jews does not believe Israel Israel exist today right so even even they they lament country of Israel today because
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they realize something is not right it's not right yeah they th those who still read their scripture and they're the ones that prove the doctrine of blindness of of judicial blindness
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because how they cannot see you know that that if it didn't happen before happen before ad70 it couldn't happen according to
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scripture okay so if you're talking with a Jew that's that's a general approach is to but they don't they don't most of them don't believe the Old Testament
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scripture anymore and so the the promises of a messiah became the country of Israel would be the Messiah of the world and many of them still think that
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and that's why they don't believe that Israel today is the answer although there are probably more dispensationalists that see Israel today as the Fulfillment of Prophecy than
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there are Jews who think that okay something's wrong there but so are we still waiting are we still waiting because in Ezekiel not only does the spirit leave
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later on he comes back he comes back in various forms first of all to the the rebuilt Temple that that Ezekiel describes but also into the dead bones of Ezekiel
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of Ezekiel 37 in other words he comes back not to a building but to the people and he enlivens God's Own people so he comes back and so there never was up until
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Paul and and even after the SEC this Temple was destroyed there never was a conclusion until the modern era that God's not coming back there was an
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expectation that he's coming back but he never came back to that building and that building has been gone for 2,000 years now the dispensationalist wants to
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rebuild that building thinking that God's going to come back and live there which means the dispensationalism has no
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what was Pentecost it was the spirit of God descending upon his Temple coming to dwell in it and the difference was that in the
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Tabernacle Moses was not able to enter and minister in Solomon's Temple the priests were not able to enter and minister at Pentecost they were empowered to empowered to minister yeah it's beautiful
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but we've lost that now because Pentecostals speak in tongues that's what Pentecost dispensationalism Rapture Pentecostal speaking in tongues we can categorize people and and then we don't even think
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about Pentecost because that might you know people might think we're Pentecostal heaven forbid okay um and we lose the meaning of what God has done and then what do we do if we've lost the
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meaning of what God has done we have to come up with our own and what I've been trying to say is that's all we've done for the most part for the last 2,000 years not not entirely and it doesn't
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mean that the last 2,000 year has been devoid of any Christianity I'm simply saying that the the purpose of this study is what is the role of the church in the world well the fundamental role
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of the church in the world is it's the Temple of the Living God unfortunately the dispensationalists and the Pentecostals are the the most
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able bodies around the world so Eastern Europe all those places are either dispensational or Pentecostal they are the the dispensational and the Pentecostal are the most
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Evangelistic they they are the most active in in uh spreading their message dis uh Pentecostalism is the fastest growing Christian denomination in many
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continents um Asia South America Africa although anglicanism is actually doing pretty well in Africa surprisingly uh primarily because it's very it's very conservative there as opposed to in
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England um anyhow uh yeah that's that's a good point they they have cornered the market uh almost literally in the literature and and there's also the
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thing about the the the stereotypical Pentecostalism is that it appeals to people who see the impotence of
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institutionalized Christianity that you just come you sit in a Pew you listen then you get up and you leave there's no nothing for me there's no there's no experience and next week we're going to be talking
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about the the the difference between a prophetic religion and a mystical religion Christianity has largely become a mystical a mystical religion but it was never intended to be
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that but what I want to focus on tonight is the the the centrality of the temple idea to the role Ro of the church in the
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world Okay so we' we've talked back and forth about the different paradigms that nebor outlines one of which being isolationists another being uh assimilation you know get into the
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culture and and become part of the culture uh another one is dominance um take control of the culture or change the culture and my conclusion that all five
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of them is are wrong Isaiah wrong Isaiah 2 again if you're a dispensationalist I'm not you know I shouldn't be reading from Isaiah because
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it has nothing to do with the church and unfortunately passages like Isaiah lend
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Isaiah lend themselves to a literal Millennial interpretation now there's a certain convenience to dispensational
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eschatology I won't be there to be proven wrong proven wrong okay I can say that all of this is going to happen in the millennial Reign but I'm not going to be there so what if I'm
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wrong well I'm not there and you're not there either to know that I was wrong so that's that's why this is so pervasive we can make we can make movies and
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novels about it we can we can create these um images graphic images of how all these things will be but then we read Isaiah to and I wonder why we do read the Old Testament if you're a
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dispensationalist the word which Isaiah the son of Amos saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem now it will come about in the last days the mountain of the house of
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the Lord will be established as the chief of the mountains and raised up above the hills and all the nations will stream to stream to it now I have actually read
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interpretations that employ plate tectonics for the Fulfillment of this so that Mount Zion will actually be larger
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than Mount than Mount Everest now I think Mount Everest would basically cover the country of Israel right mountains don't just go up like
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this they go up like this the taller they are the wider they are okay so you're going to stick Mount Everest right there on top of of Israel and that's the that's the Fulfillment okay and so that's the
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literal fulfillment and it has to be Israel but the the and many people will come and say come let us go to the mountain of the Lord to the house of the god of
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Jacob that he may teach us concerning his ways and that we may walk in his paths for the law will go forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem now this is the same as Jesus
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saying to the Samaritan woman he says salvation comes from the Jews but he also said
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says that neither here nor in Jerusalem will you Worship the Lord so in a away Jesus both confirms and denies Isaiah
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2 salvation comes from Zion from Zion but when it says the Nations will flow to Zion and and remember when he's
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saying the mountain he's saying Zion and when he's saying Zion he's talking about the temple okay that's that's the idea it's
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all prophetic language but it's he's talk he says there to the house of the god of Jacob that's where the Nations will come
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Jud she asked him about a dispute between people right between the Samaritans and the Jews and second I had was neither shall they learn War anymore what he told that people that God is
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seeking Worship in spirit and Truth the Warfare of the House of Israel formed AE part of identity God conquest of the land was part of their Min the Earth to
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his name so that the fact that that would pass away the wor do very differently from that is also in that passage it is it's it's very much in
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that passage in in John uh 4 it's very much here um it's also in Corinthians when he says the weapons of our Warfare are not carnal but they are divinely
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powerful that there is a complete Paradigm Shift here that maybe we might not have seen if we were Jews in Isaiah's day but as time went on and
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especially with the Fulfillment in Jesus Christ the notion of Zion becoming the greatest mountain in the world and Israel becoming the most powerful
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nation was providentially proven to be more and more ludicrous now of course God can do anything but what he says he did was he didn't choose Israel because they were
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the greatest they were the least they were on yeah right so he he did not uh he and I'm not saying saying that he has no he's done with Israel I don't believe he is but I go to Romans
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910 and 11 and we'll have to wait till we get there um but he's not bringing the Nations
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into the physical Environ of a temple in Jerusalem he is bringing the Nations to
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Zion to the house of the god of Jacob that's the church
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so Sal here we see how salvation can go out from Zion Jesus being the Fulfillment of what Israel was intended to be and from there Jesus says go into all
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the Earth okay going out from Zion is the Gospel of Jesus Christ but the temple imagery is now the Temple of the new new
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creation and that's where this ties together now did you do you somebody have a hand up I was going to
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sayas woman yeah that's a good point interpr it literally she said give me this water so I don't have to come back here anymore just get what was being commun right and and so many people would would hear what I'm saying
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and say you're spiritualized in Scripture that that would be the response is you're spiritualizing scripture hopefully I'm not spiritualizing scripture any more than Paul did that that's kind of the point
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if if it weren't for Paul and Peter and Jesus and what they said about the temple and about Jesus being the temple and about us now being the Temple of the Living God then yeah this would be just
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spiritualizing and it would have no validity it would have no weight it would just simply be imagination but what we have we have and but what we've done with it is why I
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said we've been so perhaps subconsciously or unconsciously impacted by dispensationalism we don't really think about what a temple
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is we don't think about a temple being the Connecting Point Between Heaven and Earth a Connecting Point between God and man and I think if we begin to think and
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that's kind of what I want to do from this evening on to the rest of this this session is to begin thinking about the church as a Connecting Point Between Heaven and
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Earth so in a sense the temple never moved but people came to the temple and in the temple as Isaiah says they will be taught the ways of the
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Lord later days this well Paul said that the the that we are those upon whom the end of the ages have come he says in these last days so um it is it is hard
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to say to say definitively that the latter days means the same thing in every place you read it but I think if you read Isaiah 2 and then on through Isaiah especially into
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Isaiah 65 with the new Heaven and the new earth Isaiah 53 with the the the sacrifice of the Lamb you begin to realize that there
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there were several later days there was the Deliverance of Hezekiah and and Judah from Samaria I'm sorry and from Syria there was that Deliverance that
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was a later day but that came within their generation but then there's a further later day and if you read on there are other passage in this passage in this
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chapter um there's kind of a refrain in verses uh 11 and 17 the proud look of man will be abased and the loftiness of man will be humbled
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and the Lord alone will be exalted in that Day verse 17 and the pride of man will be humbled and the loftiness of men will be abased and the Lord alone will be exalted in that day see it's a it's a
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sayens to yes oh yeah the the last day the end the Millennium is what they'll say yeah the later days and and without Paul I might not be able to argue
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that but you can't be without Paul that is my point the dispensationalist really needs to read more Paul and see that Paul was not looking off into some
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future Millennium he was looking back to the finished work of Jesus Christ so when he calls us the temple this is what he's talking about
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when he says in Ephesians 2 that you are being built upon the foundation Jesus Christ being the Chief Cornerstone you ever wonder Cornerstone of what Cornerstone of the
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temple okay of God's Building he's not simply borrowing a metaphor from Old Testament terminology he's saying this is what the church is in the world as
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well as Reading PA like fin Hebrews Hebrew says we have come to we have come to Mount to Mount Zion also Zion also says that yet will shake heaven and
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earth Isaiah is following that to the latter days right that we are in the latter days and that we have come to but yet he says he has a day
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against all that is proud and right Hebrews is tell us that is to come yes and he says our God is a consuming fire
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um just to reread that you have come to Mount Zion into the city of the Living God to the Heavenly Jerusalem and to myriads of angels and to the general assembly and the Church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven and to God
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the judge of all and to the spirits of righteous men made perfect and to Jesus the mediator of a New Covenant and to the sprinkled blood which speaks better than the blood of Abel in one respect what he's doing there at the end of his
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letter is he summarizing everything he's already talked about he's talked about the faith of Abel you know he's talked about the priesthood and the sacrifice of the blood and he's kind of pulling it all together and saying you have come so
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that part of the latter days has come well I think that if you think of that lat days as being whatever you
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di Jesus oh absolutely oh that that is the greatest sin of dispensationalism is his work is not finished and there's more that needs to be done that that is that is what the one thing that turned
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me away from dispensationalism and that is you are denigrating the glory of Jesus Christ and you are detracting from his work and
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that that's really I to me that that gets me mad at at dispensationalism because of that I don't care what you think about eschatology because frankly I don't
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think any of us have figured out how it's going to be I I don't think any of us on the way up is going to say nailed that one you know I think we're going to say wow I didn't see that coming praise
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God right but when you take all that Christ has Christ has done and say there's still a lot left to
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be done that's done that's blasphemy that that is really that's not just a difference and of opinion that's blasphemy and I shouldn't get going on
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that I was just going to tie those two things together that I heard you said they need to read more Paul and Christ the irony of it is for me is that
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there's actually an over fixation on Paul from a dispensational point of view to the point to the to the exclusion of the Old Testament even the gospel Jesus come what he's saying is to the Jews and
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so we Paul and follow me as I follow Christ PA is ESS almost the Messiah dispens it's true they are marcian in that they pretty much their scriptures
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as as far as it is applicable but what they look at as Paul at Paul is not his theology but his moralism they emphasize Paul's application but they don't read
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the foundation of that application his theology because it's rooted in the Old Testament and in his theology the church has been grafted
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into the Commonwealth of Israel we have been made one new man that new man is the new man of the new creation Jesus Christ there is therefore no Jew no
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Gentile I mean all the things Paul says are anti- dispensational so when the dispensational if they were left without Paul they'd be left without scripture that's true they love the Psalms and the
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writings of Paul but in the writings of Paul it's the one anothers love one another and husbands treat your wives wives submit to your husbands all the Practical stuff
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Practical stuff they don't spend a lot of time looking into what Paul what his ecclesiology was because we have been creating our own ecclesiology for generations and we're
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quite happy with it now you know we don't want to go back to Paul but when we talk about the church in the world if we don't have a Pauline
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ecclesiology a temple ecclesiology then we're left with neor and great man though he was he was no
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Paul you you know you have a choice between Neo's five paradigms how we going to relate to our culture we're going to isolate from it we're going to dive in and get involved we're going to
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stand above it and critique it you know these are all nebor patterns now they he didn't come up with them he was just simply saying this is what the church has done and that's why the church is done when it doesn't have a Pauline
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ecclesiology it has its own and it's all always the weapons of the world's Warfare we we always try to play the world's game with the world's deck of
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cards when we've been dealt a brand new deck and we don't understand that we don't see it because again I think largely dispensationalism has DED our
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senses to what Paul is actually saying and now when when people begin to read Paul as EP Sanders did um back back in the 70s although I mean EP Sanders got a
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bunch of things wrong but nonetheless his analysis of Paul's Jewish
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Heritage overturned 500 years of error concerning Paul from Luther onward Paul was viewed as a frustrated Jew who finally gave up saw that Judaism was
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bankrupt and created a new religion called Christianity called Christianity now this would have been shocking to Paul okay who who who betrayed absolutely none of this angst that
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Luther suffered I mean he was advancing Beyond his countrymen in in pharc Judaism wasn't he and he was pretty proud of it he he he shows no signs of having
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struggled with his conscience it took a blinding light to stop him in his path
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okay so that that whole analysis is finally we finally like oh wait a minute that's not right he was a Jew he was a good Jew as to the righteousness of the law
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he was blameless right he was a zealous Jew like Phineas he was what a Jew wanted to be when they grew up with Saul of Tarsus no firemen no plumbers none of
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that they want to be Saul of Tarsus and yet we've made him into some some weak willed moan in Myrtle who can't find God through Judaism just like Luther couldn't find
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God through Roman Catholicism and we've perverted Paul for 500 years so now that now that Scholars are
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beginning to write and there are more and more of them both sides of the Atlantic Great Britain United States are beginning to realize you know there's a lot in the Old Testament that's fulfilled in Jesus and in the church and
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then you read the book of jubilees and and you see well there's that it's it's all you read kumran the Dead Sea Scrolls and you see yeah they were still looking for this they were they they didn't they
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knew that God had not returned to the second temple and and you begin to realize Paul realized that God had returned to the second temple the Third
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Temple the true Temple Jesus Christ and the church and then when this happens the the rest of Evangelical Christianity starts lobbing
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starts lobbing grenades and grenades and calling well it's called the new perspective on Paul and calling it heresy and and it's just like you you're not even
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not even listening you're the church is not even listening because we're so caught up in our traditions and our
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ecclesiology and our theology whatever our dispensational theology may be I mean our denominational theology may be we're not willing to have that cage
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rattled it was a difficult realization for me to realize that dispensationalist all they do is prach application and not quity or theology but what you can do is if you
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want to have lunch with the pastor and start treating those questions actually tell you and I'm almost thinking that's how it used to be with the priests of
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the Catholic Church they they preached this kind moralism type of thing but you got them for lunch whatever that looked like in the
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15 they could actually tell you whether you agreed with it or not right they could tell you where what ecclesiology or and that that that's what Yuri is saying is true of manych and that is from the pulpit there's a party line if
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you want to know what the pastor really thinks you got to take him out to lunch or go to his house and have and and you you'll read the biographies of preachers
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who actually that's what they did they they would preach one thing from the pulpit and then they would disciple they're actually those who Advocate that now um that that we form new New
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Covenant communities within the church I just read one I I he's mentioned in the notes because it's it's amazing you know a doctor can diagnose
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the disease the disease correctly and then get the Cure wrong right you can recognize what's wrong that doesn't necessarily mean you know
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what to do about it and in this study the the vast majority of contemporary writers that I have read have to some extent or another put
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their finger on the pulse of modern Evangelical post constantinian ISM post martinism post truth era yeah um that's been the problem then they get to their
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Solutions and they deny Eternal predition and preach Universal salvation or they take Paul's comment
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that because there's neither male nor female female the church should not have problems with same-sex unions as long as they're loving okay you you've heard it
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so yeah you you diagnosed the problem doctor but you just killed the patient your cure killed the patient and that's what's happening in much of modern wokeness that's what's happening they
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recognizing the church is losing has lost its influence in the world but their solution is worse than the problem because what the church ends up doing is abandoning all distinction from
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the world but if we go back to Paul we see not only the problem we see the solution that The Church Must Be what the church is and that is the Temple of the Living God now if we had not had
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even passages like 1 Corinthians 3 and 6 and Ephesians 2 and I I I've not written any I I apologize no no outline tonight um I
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mean as I said this to me is the heart of it okay and sometimes it's hard you know when you're trying to build and actually this whole this whole session is why we started with the Pauling
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studies part one 25 years ago or however long it's been you know since we started this and and and it you're like I want to get to it but you can't just get to
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it because the whole Foundation has been ripped up ripped up and you have to relay the foundation of Paul being a Jew I that's where we started in in the first section is you
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know like Lombardi holding up Paul this is a Jew okay this is not a gentile this is a Jew and going from there uh and
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relearning the whole game and finally getting to the point where even though you know we don't have anything in scriptures that where Paul says this is the main point we do have Paul saying do
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you not you not know that you are the Temple of the Living God and the Holy Spirit of God dwells in you for a Jew to hear
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that that was one of the most incendiary things Paul could ever say because to the to the Jew the temple was the very heart of their existence and their identity as the people of Yahweh even in
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the diaspora they were trained to pray toward Jerusalem okay still to this day Jews are to face Jerusalem synagogues
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were made so that the entry would face you know they were their their architecture and their orientation on the land was toward the temple okay and and just all of the scripture and all of
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inter testamental writings and the rabbi writings that the temple without the temple they were lacking God and His presence they were still God's people
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and they knew themselves to be God's people but God wasn't with them Moses