SPEAKER_00 0:20

What does that mean? I think it means for us to live out the will of God on this physical earth like we would in heaven. That means living radically different lives here on earth with unabandoned faith and devotion to how God wants us to live. Be the link in the chain to bring others to Christ. Yeah, that's a strong kind of uh just a call to our Christian lives.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

I've heard that. That's what we should be doing.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

And then people should be like, there's something different about you.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

You know, in a good way.

SPEAKER_00 0:52

It's not even so much about how we're supposed to, it's what we've been born into. You know, like that's that's what our adoption was for. The whole purpose was to be part of God's family, and God's family's different. You know, we're a spiritual family.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Like you become a Christian, all of a sudden you can you know blend in with the rest of the world. Yeah. We should be like there's something different than that.

SPEAKER_00 1:13

Yeah, we want to kind of stand out, the salt of the earth, so to speak. Yeah, be in the light, exactly. That can be challenging. The world has a strong influence. Well, that and sometimes we may not even realize that we're falling into worldly influence, too. We could just become ignorant to it. We kind of are who we hang out with. Remember in Nouveau Reefs, they said, uh, you know, you're eagles, don't hang out with the turkeys. Now they were talking about people that aren't motivated to be something with their lives, and not motivated maybe to you know be businessy and make money. And so they were saying, you know, don't hang out with people that aren't motivated, otherwise you will not be motivated. And there's some truth to that. It's more spiritual with Christians, but if we're hanging out with people that only see the worldly, we kind of close our eyes to the spiritual realms because it's really easy to see what's in front of you and ignore what you don't see. But what you don't see is in the heart, and so it's always tugging at you.

SPEAKER_01 2:10

But to set our spirit telling you, yeah. Hey, you know, think about what you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Yes, convicts the world of sin because of unbelief, but as Jack said in our last meeting, he convicts the believers of righteousness. So he's telling us, What are you doing? You know, this isn't righteous. He's looking at us from an opposite angle. So that kingdom comes. The passage comes from Matthew chapter 6, verse 5. Jesus is addressing the hypocrisy found in the scribes and Pharisees. And um, he's saying this to the disciples, but the the people other people were present. And when you read later in the context, there was teachers of law, they were always following them around. So they would have been present. So this is him speaking in context to their time frame. It's important to realize. In Matthew 6, starting at verse 5, it says, And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret. Your father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think they will be heard for their many words. And so you can see he's pointed out hypocrisy, right? Then he seems to say something in context of the times they were in after that. He says, Do not be like them, for your Father in heaven knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also forgive our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Again directed toward the hypocrites, Jesus says, For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you, but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. Yikes, that's a high standard. But again, who is he talking to? He was talking to temple and synagogue leaders who had fallen into a works-based righteousness. They they were no longer following by faith. They were following strictly by the works of the law, and even those, as Jesus said, were not faithful. They were following a hypocritical set of rules that they made up. Things like you can't spit on the Sabbath, because that's work. They just started making up things. And they put like walls and fences around the law, you had the law, and then they put up their fences around that and said, if you want to be good like us, you'll not do this, you'll not do that. And they completely just lost sight of faith to the point where obviously they didn't even accept their own messiah. The faith had just gone out the door. Um, so in that context, you could see why he'd say that. Because they thought they were so good. So he's like, Well, you're gonna be forgiven like you forgive. How does that sound? And that had to have struck some of them in the heart. They were humble. If they were prideful, they probably would have wanted to kill him. But let's focus on the part in verse 8 through 13. He says, Do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Simply speaking, was there something Jesus came to do that had not yet been done at the time of his speaking related to forgiveness? Yeah, the cross and resurrection, right? He hadn't done that yet. Yeah, so you hear him saying these harsh things about forgiveness. It's not so scary when you realize what he did. He's not telling you, the Christian, that you're going to be forgiven on the basis that you forgive others. That would be taken away out of context. Yes. So that wasn't like a rule. The resurrection had not taken place, the cross hadn't taken place. So would you say that the passage is sort of prophetic in the way that it speaks of the will to be done?

SPEAKER_01 6:26

Like, this is gonna happen to us. Right.

SPEAKER_00 6:30

Yeah, so I mean he's literally telling them, like, pray for this. Right. Because it's about to happen.

unknown 6:35

Right.

SPEAKER_00 6:36

Yeah. But it's kind of funny because we've kind of made that a prayer, the Our Father prayer, our Father who are, and it's like, do we pray like that anymore? Is Jesus telling us to pray this way, or is he telling his first century followers to pray that way for a specific reason? I don't think he was telling them, use these words and repeat this. You know what I mean? He didn't say to recite this, he was speaking in context. Pray for God's will to be done. He could have just said that and it probably would have made it a lot simpler for people, but that's not the way God decided to do scripture, did he? You know, we have to look at it in context. If we don't see it in context, we come up with all kinds of wild ideas. So going into the verse we're studying today, I believe we see a prophetic statement made. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So are we in the kingdom now?

unknown 7:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 7:29

Okay, so we all agree on that. So then what is left to be fulfilled? What happens after you die? Yeah, so the only thing left to be fulfilled is that we're gonna die and be the Father someday, basically. I I agree. So at that, um that's a whole nother topic. Is a kingdom that's being established the same as one that's been built and fully established? Is it the same thing? If we're in a kingdom that is being built, we could still say we're in a kingdom, right? You guys are all partaking, we're building this kingdom and you're part of it. So at the time of these writings, there was a kingdom that was being established, being built, and that would be consummated at the return of Christ. That's when Christ would come to rule on earth in this new kingdom. Being part of the kingdom of that time was being part of this exciting thing that was going to be established, but you're part of it now through the Holy Spirit, right? So there was a timeline going on in Scripture where He was Christ was proclaiming something that was beginning, the kingdom was upon those who walked with Christ. Jesus came to do the will of God in regards to restoring the kingdom. But the restoration process was not finished at the cross and resurrection of Christ, but would be fulfilled at the last day. Remember, we were looking at those passages in the last study, the last day I will raise them, when the resurrection would take place for the believers. Christ defeated death at the cross and his resurrection, but came to bring life at the end of the age. We find timing in Matthew 24, and then Luke records the beginning events that would result in the end of the age. In Luke 21 we read, But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then know that his desolation has come near. Then let those who are in Judea flee in the mountains, and let those who are inside the city depart. Let not those who are in the country enter it, for these are days of vengeance to fulfill all that is written. What would be the beginning of the kingdom, the end of the age, when was that going to begin? It says, when Jerusalem is surrounded by armies, is when it begins, right? And when we look at history, there was a time that Jerusalem was surrounded by armies, and it would have been before AD 70. It would have been beginning around 67, I think it was AD, 66, 67. It was about a three-year thing. The war began and it ended in the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. So we have this historical event that Luke is recording Christ saying that this will fulfill all that is written. So something began on that day when the army surrounded Jerusalem. It was the beginning of the end. In Matthew 24, we record Jesus saying, Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory, and he'll send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from four winds from one end of heaven to the other, from the fig tree learn its lesson. As soon as its branch becomes tender and puts out its leaves, you know the summer is near. So also when you see all these things, you know that he is near at the very gates. Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. Again, you know we have this great tribulation that happened after the army surrounded Jerusalem, and this was gonna fulfill everything. He's saying that heaven and earth are passing away, right? What we're seeing here is the end of the old covenant age. Okay, so the new covenant age would be the new heavens and earth. And it's a lot to take in at first if we're not looking at all the pieces, but we'll get there. Try looking up generation in all the gospels. And what you're gonna find when that word generation was used, it never meant anything thousands of years later. It was always a generation, about 40 years, about a lifetime. That was what that word meant everywhere in Scripture. And the only place in Scripture that we see it mean something differently in most Christian theology is right here in Matthew. They say, well, no, it couldn't have been that generation because the world didn't end. Heaven and earth didn't pass away. But I'm going to challenge you guys' thinking on this. What if heaven and earth meant something different to them than it does to us today? What if the sun, moon, and stars being darkened meant something different in Hebrew theology? The return of Christ is included in all these things that he says, right? All these things are going to happen in this generation. It was included. It's hard to get around that. Right? So we see the return of Christ happening in that generation. That's not something that we see out there taught. I gotta believe what's written. When did the armi surround Jerusalem? 87, 67, went into 70. Did Jesus destroy the temple in Jerusalem? This is a zinger. Who destroyed the temple in Jerusalem? We always hear it written that the Romans did. But who did?

SPEAKER_02 12:49

The Lord used the Roman army.

SPEAKER_00 12:53

But spiritually it was the Lord. I a hundred percent agree. But commonly you don't hear people hold to that. That to me is good discernment. Stephen literally told this flat out. We don't even have to assume it. And this is what they said about him. The Pharisees, uh, teachers of the law, the scribes, they were just irate because Stephen's proclaiming the gospel, and he must have been real good at it, apparently, because you can see he was good at it because it's recorded what he said, and you're just like, go Stephen.

unknown 13:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:22

Oh man, it makes you like so excited, and then you're like bawling the next minute. But he saw Jesus standing at the right hand. It's so cool. It just brings tears to your eyes. But he just, this is what happened. They set up false witnesses who said, This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law. For we've heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us. He was calling them to what we were talking about earlier, believe. The conviction of the Spirit is convicting the world of sin because of unbelief. The covenant was changing. And so what we see here in these passages is not this world-ending, it's a covenant change. When the Pharisees brought Jesus in the same place Stephen was before the council to question him, Jesus said about the same thing. They asked him, Are you the Christ? He says, You have said so. But I tell you, from now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven. He wasn't saying that about this fluffy cumulus cloud coming, you know, that they're just saying, Oh, you're gonna see this puffy cloud, and I'm gonna be sprinkling glitter on you, loving you. It wasn't like that. And they knew what that meant because the Pharisees were familiar with prophetic language, and they knew that Yahweh was the cloud rider in Scripture. When he came in the clouds, he was coming in power and glory, and there was usually somebody getting destroyed for doing something wrong. They tore their robes when he said that, because they knew what he was saying to them. And you're under judgment, and they didn't even care. I mean, the pride, it's just like, what? So we have Jesus, we have Stephen, and then Peter and the apostles were proclaiming this to Israel the whole time. Because what good would it do Jerusalem if they weren't telling them what was about to happen? They were prophets. They were saying, God is coming to judge you guys for unbelief. You killed the Christ, you have this chance to believe, don't let it go. But they just kept doing it. The next question, though, is um, I guess it's kind of interjecting here, but I know one of the first things that comes to mind in what I'm telling you guys, if I'm telling you that, you know, we're in the new age, you'd have to, you'd one of the first questions you might say is probably like, well, what are you trying to say? This is the new Jerusalem?

unknown 15:40

Right?

SPEAKER_00 15:40

You read in Revelation, there's gonna be this new Jerusalem coming out of the sky. So the theory is that since we don't look up and see that, then we're not there yet. So the new earth that we're gonna be living in is gonna have this Jerusalem coming out of the sky, and it's gonna have these perfect measurements, and you know, we could double-check the measurements if we question it and be like, nope, this is definitely the true Jerusalem. These days it'd be like a giant drone. You gotta wonder, is that real or was it a spiritual thing? Can we apply the new Jerusalem to the new covenant age? And I'd say, we can't, and I'll tell you why. Because in Galatians 4, in Galatians 4, verse 21, listen to this. You've probably never thought of this. It really struck me when I made this connection. Galatians 4 21, Paul writes, Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. Now this may be interpreted allegorically. These women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing the children of slavery. She is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia. She corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children, but the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. For it is written, Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear, break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor, for the children of the desolate one will be more than the one who has a husband. Now you brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. But what does the Scripture say? Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman. So brothers, we are not children of the slave, but of the free woman. Did you catch the part where Paul calls the new covenant the Jerusalem above? He's making a covenant theology here out of Sarah and Hagar, and he's saying, We're of the new Jerusalem. And so the new covenant age being established is the new Jerusalem being established. This is a spiritual thing. And that affirms what we read in Revelation. Revelation 21, we see a same connection, but we normally take this to be physical and literal. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more, and I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away. And he who was seated on the throne said, Behold, I am making all things new. All he said, Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true. And he said to me, It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. For the thirsty I will give of the spring of water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God, and he will be my son. So when we look at all those details, if we looked at them from a way that maybe they're not literal, maybe they're spiritual, can you see how every tear would be wiped out of our eye in this great grace that we've been given? When you look back at how they had to mourn for the death of their loved ones because they were going to Sheol, they're going to go to the pit. They're going to be away from God until the resurrection. Can you see why the resurrection, life being given to us directly, knowing we're going to go to heaven spiritually, is like wiping tears of our eyes? Knowing that we're fully forgiven is wiping so much pain from our lives. The death part is like a no-brainer. We don't have death anymore. Death is no more for the believer. Why? It's not a physical thing because we know these bodies are going to die, but as soon as soon as we die, we get a new body. Just like Christ, it was written about Christ, he wasn't abandoned to Sheol. And that was to take it for us. The return of Christ took all that away. There is no more death for the saints, but it's spiritual. We're spiritually alive for good now. And the presence of the Lord being with us, he's going to walk among them, he's going to dwell with them. What does that tell you about the kingdom we're living in? It means like it's all around us. There's a heavenly realm still above, but we're in the kingdom now. He is reigning here. This kingdom is fully established. It's not a future thing. As far as the future is only more and more saints and more and more of God's work being done in his kingdom. That's the future. That's what we have to look forward to. I see all these passages in Revelation as symbolic of things that have taken place. For example, we look at like the sun, moon, and the stars. Gary DeMar somehow got in touch with Kurt Cameron. Kirk Cameron said, Okay, you guys have a good argument, but you're not gonna convince me that the moon, sun, and stars already happened. Those didn't go out, you're not gonna convince me. And Gary Damar talked with him and showed him some passages from the Old Testament and some theology that was based on the scripture from ancient Hebrew thought, and he changed his mind. So he completely changed his theology, and his theology used to be get prepared, the end is coming, kind of thing. And he was part of that movie, Taken, Left Behind, the Taken, the Left Behind, and he changed his theology. I think he might even say, I wish I never did that, but what are you gonna do? But his worldviews changed his faith because he stopped believing that the world has no hope. Because if you believe that Jerusalem or Israel, today's Israel, has to be destroyed still, for one, you're not gonna want your Jewish friends to be there right now. You should tell them to leave there. But it's a future impending. Terror and horror. Like that has to happen. All these Christians gotta be murdered. That's not a hopeful thing. It was a reality that they faced in those days. But the good news was that relief was coming. This judgment was gonna start things over. It was gonna start things new, and they had that to look forward to. Spiritual and literal relief. So the first mention of the stars in the Bible occurs on the fourth day of creation when God placed them in the heavens, along with the moon to govern the night. Stars were given authority to separate day from night. They serve as signs and for seasons, and to give light to the earth. We read that in Genesis 1.16. Similarly, righteous leaders illuminate truth and provide guidance. In Judges 5, the tribes of Israel are described as stars fighting their course against Sisera under Deborah's leadership. In Judges 5 20 it says, From having the stars fought, from their courses they fought against Sisera. Stars fought? Constellations? See what I mean? Stars didn't always mean constellations. This was describing an actual fight that fought between righteous people following God and then others. So the leaders were seen as stars. And then Daniel affirms the metaphor in Daniel twelve. He says, And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky above, and those who turn many to righteousness like the stars for ever and ever. And then we have another one in Joseph's dream. When we're reading this, we'll see that the sun, moon, and the stars represent his father, his mother, and his brothers. Sun, moon, and stars. In Genesis 39, it says, Then he dreamed another dream, and told it to his brothers, and said, Behold, I have dreamed another dream. Behold, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me. For us, I'm like, well, really, that's like a delusion of grandeur. Really? You're gonna bow constellations bowing to you? But when he told this to his father and his brothers, his father rebuked him and said to him, What is this dream you have dreamed? Shall I and your mother and your brothers indeed come to bow ourselves to the ground before you? So they didn't see it the way we see it. We have a perfect example here of how we see the sun, the moon, and the stars language differently. They saw it in a different way.

SPEAKER_02 24:17

Well, I think we can understand that too, if we think for a minute, like the things we say today, people of other cultures might not understand. People of that time wouldn't understand. Like if you say, you know, I ran into an old friend, boy, that guy's out to lunch. And somebody said, I see he's getting in this car right now. You know, he's not out to lunch. Why is he saying that? What is that? That means he's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:43

We know that.

SPEAKER_00 24:43

Or you could take that to the bank.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

You can take that.

SPEAKER_00 24:46

Why is he not going to the bank? Yeah. Does he have a deposit to them? Yeah, good example.

SPEAKER_02 24:50

Or you could say, you know, we say things like, Oh, you know, the neighbor, he bought the farm. He finally bought the farm. Bought the he didn't fight, he died. We say things and it doesn't mean what we think. So it's it's not hard to understand that they had their ways.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

It's fascinating to me that so many um like Bible colleges, Gary Damar was talking about this, actually, just said, when I went and presented to them this fact to a popular Bible college, he said nobody in the auditorium had ever heard that view before. I think it was him or somebody he knew. I think it was somebody he knew. And even was talking about an atheist. He said, There's this popular atheist who was like highly intelligent, evidently Gary Damar's like, this guy would outsmart any of us. He was just super smart. But he was an atheist, so you know he wasn't spiritual. But when somebody came to him with this theology, he said, Well, what do you make of this to this Christian? He said, Well, all that happened at the destruction of Jerusalem. This atheist was just like stunned. He never said anything about it the rest of the debate because they were having a debate. But later when they went out to dinner, he's like, Tell me more about it. I've never heard that before. Why are people missing this Hebrew context? It's to me, it's it's writing our scripture. You don't even have to go outside.