All right, so we are talking about Jesus and his message and how he communicated that message. Any thing stand out in your Devall reading or your scripture reading? I believe this would have been chapter 12. Of all Hays book, scripture readings, insights, observations questions
you say I don't remember.
Oh, yeah, that's a good Yeah. Yeah.
What's the Gospels on? Is that mark? Sounds like a mark. Sorry.
I'm off the cliff. Yeah. Is that Luke? And Paul has a bro off the cliff. I mean, there's some of that in Acts too, right. So. So I heard a story this week. And again, I tried to talk to Brandi last night where she was trying to read about atonement. And, and one of the, one of the escape goats was all would take all the sins of the people, and they would kick them out to the wilderness, they would exile the scapegoat. Well, the, there's another story in some literature that's not in the Bible, where they like rabbinic literature where they would kick the scapegoat, push them off a cliff, you know, so as a way of dealing with the sins of the people, you know, so there could be something there of like, that's a way of getting rid of him, but it's also symbolically like, let's get him out of here for other reasons than just,
yeah. You said that with the pigs. Right, right. When he took all those legions out of the man, and they went into the pigs, and then they were like, Let us make ran off the cliff. Yeah,
let us jump into the water. Yep. Good. Anything, anything else stand out
if you guys have seen this is back to your your statement, Kathy. But I don't know if y'all have seen that episode chosen. They deal with that, where they run, they try to run Jesus off the cliff. And I thought it was really cool, because in the Scripture, they don't talk about like, how he got away or what you know, like, he just didn't die. And I thought they handled it perfectly, because they tied back into the whole idea that it wasn't time yet. And so even though they were bickering from themselves, like they were doing it, and he was there and they were trying to kill him, and he just walked out of the crowd. And like they did nothing, even though they were so angry and trying to push him off a cliff. And you're like, why did they let him go? But you know if you know that story, you know it's not yet time and so it was such a powerful and it was like
it was another one of those goose bump.
Yeah. I don't know that. That's right. We have no way to prove it, but I was like that feels right like that feels like
Jesus. You know, those of you that have watched the new chosen in the theaters don't tell us we haven't
we didn't have three hours to go
through different times. Yeah. All right.
The parables had different points.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Deval loves Blomberg on that one point sermon. Two point 2.1 point parable to point parable, three point parables. But that that helps us because it lets us know that in parables, there's a lot more going on. But we don't need to embellish it where we've got to figure out everything that's going on, you know, so I appreciate the boundaries there. Yeah, we could do 15 weeks on parables. Oh my gosh, so, so good, but we're not tonight. So I've
studied them a lot and I still feel like I knew nothing about
so I cleaned out all the Old Testament from my binder because I couldn't fit any more in mine. And I have a big binder of just stuff done on parables and all that. So it's like a parable. parable minder to All right, so question what is the gospel? The good news, all right. Nope.
What did you say?
What is the gospel? Oh,
death and resurrection, burial death resurrection.
Good News.
whatever Jesus
it's what whatever Jesus says whatever Jesus says
that's the theater right answer what
Jesus says what is the gospel
I guess everybody's got their own interpretation of it
they do. And then some God's word is the gospel. Because Jesus the same spoken
Jesus, Jesus is the Gospel
be consistent like a testimony. Like his his journey, how you'll retain that he did it, and we can do it too. But he did it for us.
Yeah, testimony of Jesus. Yeah. I
like I like that. Like where you're going
we got good news. You can add the up God, or why party said Jesus so.
Okay, repentance, believing? Yeah, we're trying to be biblical.
Eternal message to mankind.
Eternal message to mankind?
Is that an easy question? Yeah. It's a question or hard question. Yeah. So I did not prepare correct answers apart from I'm not hearing any salvation. I'm not hearing any forgiveness of sin. I'm not hearing any verses out of Romans. Blocked by the Roman road, right. That's a good thing by now is the Roman road, right? Yeah. Romans 323.
Is the sacrifice for us
Christ's sacrificial
guardians so that we don't have to pay the price for our sins.
That was Romans 623. But yeah, what I'm quoted 623 For the wages of sin is death. She quoted
all of sin enforcer glory God, she's
never heard her wrong.
I was like, That's the gospel.
Yeah, there's a sacrificial and a redemption.
Yeah, that's, that's what I was taught was Romans 623 is the gospel.
Yeah, if you want to share the gospel, generally, it's 623. If you do the one verse, or it's the Roman road, that you know you 323 and six times
for the wages of sin is it
but it's but it's basically so that the the plan of salvation is what we know of like, what what do you need to walk people through in order for them to quote unquote, get saved, or get into what prayer? Do they need to pray? That's sufficient enough for them to get into heaven? Right? Sinners, yeah. I'm a sinner. You died for me. Forgive me for my sins. I want to be with you forever. At the egg hunt. We had a scavenger hunt. We had a stations that went through the similar of the colored bracelet plan of salvation. Right, you know? Yeah, yeah.
Y'all done a good job, everybody. Yeah, it was
it was great. So they, so I'm not opposed to any of your answers or any of this. So there's your Asterix. Nowhere in the New Testament, no one in the New Testament calls the plan of salvation the gospel
in your that neither one in the New Testament
calls the plan of salvation, the gospel. So at some point, we've equated the Gospel with a plan of salvation. Now, hopefully your plan of salvation includes some components of the gospel. Right. But the challenge is in most churches, and I'll pick on the pastor is going to scream at your churches, because that's what I had growing up. So I'm, I'm still recovering, you know, and, and but they tend to focus on the death of Jesus, the cross as we know it, and Good Friday, you know, we focus on Jesus and the cross and His death. And then we might throw in some, some language of atonement or sacrifice or redemption, or, you know, like, why did why did he do the cross, you know, so we get some language of salvation associated with that. But when we start spending time in the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, we kind of, hopefully, as we continue to spend more time on it, we realized that the gospel is not just the death of Jesus, or the cross of Jesus, but it's all of the stories that you're reading. Alright, so that so page two of your handouts looks different than my page two. But yeah, we we've got the birth of Jesus that we focused on last week, the Christmas story, the angels and the shepherds and, and all and Christmas trees. Okay, maybe stars. And then we have the life of Jesus, where he spent time with people here on Earth, doing ministry, teaching, performing miracles, telling parables telling stories, preaching the Sermon on the Mount, of preaching. Things that we'll talk about next week, as he's moving closer to the cross spending time with disciples, calling disciples walking on water, healing people. And then, and then eventually, he's he's killed, he dies on a cross. There's the death of Jesus. And one of that, the significance of that, and what that provides for us, and then we have resurrection. We celebrated last week, on Easter Sunday of he came back to life. If he didn't, the cross would have meant nothing. There would be no salvation. The cross if you cross if you didn't come back, didn't come back to life life. In the most neglected component is, he ascended to heaven. Probably because that's starting to get in the Holy Spirit stuff. And we don't know what to do with that. We're like, man, we're not going to talk. We're not going to think about transfiguration. We're not going to deal with ascension and floating up in clouds. Now, let's not deal with that. But the ascension was him returning to the throne, to rule, right. The stoning of Stephen, which was done by Paul, heavens open up and he looks up and he sees Jesus standing by the throne. All other times, he's sitting at the throne, many standing at the throne, but he's ruling he's in charge. He's our boss. He's our Lord. He's our master. He's the one that's calling the shots. And so for a robust, biblical, New Testament, a gospel we need, all of those things are included in the boxes. And so somewhat related controversial questions. How do we share the Gospel? When we talk about these things, too?
Not to not to not be crossed and debt centric, but how do we include maybe some of these other components? Or if I'm talking about the birth of Jesus in my gospel thing? am I sharing the gospel? If I were to share with you a parable, the story that Jesus told, you know, am I sharing the gospel? And I think you probably are gonna know where I fall on this. But do we have to include all of this to share the gospel
doesn't know anything about Jesus? Maybe you would want to start? Yeah,
yeah, he was born among stories and perform miracles, died for you on the cross was resurrected, brought back to life ascended to heaven to rule today. He is God, you know. You know, whenever you think whenever you're if you're me, I'll talk about me, now that I've been enlightened. And given this secret knowledge now, now that I've thought about this, now, it's freeing for me. Because I feel like I can't share the Gospel, because there's so much about Jesus, that I absolutely love talking about to people. I'm not great at walking through a full Roman road gospel presentation. I'm not, I do not do well with the one verse evangelism because, you know, draw on the little canyon, and in putting across to get across it, and I'm like, what, what am I doing here, you know, which is great, but it's like, I just feel like, we need a robust New Testament gospel. Then when we get into x, and we start seeing Peter and Paul, sharing the gospel, how did they do it? What what did they say about Jesus when they shared the gospel, and their preaching gospel sermons, you know, so I think that's, let's, let's be willing to do those kinds of things. So I'm completely comfortable with what I call gospel summaries. But I want them to be more biblical, like, how do we get the off of what's going on here? As we're spending time. If we just focus on the death of Jesus, then it's easy for us to say things like, Well, Jesus didn't preach the gospel. He couldn't, he didn't die yet. And I'm not comfortable saying that the gospel writers wrote all this stuff down about Jesus for no reason whatsoever, you know, or just so that we could get the death and the cross, you know, I think all of this is the gospel. And Mark agrees when and Guy agrees, when they see the verse that I included, then your notes. The mark one is coming later, oh, yeah, I'll get to it. When I get to the kingdom of God, when He says, Jesus went in the Galilee and proclaim the gospel of God, Mark 114. And he says, The Thomas fulfilled the kingdom of God is near Repent and believe the gospel. And that's kind of, you know, Mark one, you know, in the beginning, you know, and it just goes right into it. It's like an introduction. This is this is the gospel Mark, when he wrote down, he felt like he was writing down the gospel, and he goes into the stories of Jesus, these teachings of Jesus, and these parables of Jesus. Let's do that. When we share the Gospel, let's talk about Jesus and share stories about Jesus as a way of sharing the gospel, you know, so I think that's kind of the challenge, but also the encouragement. So several scholars that I'll talk about their books here, they get they, instead of Jesus died for your sins. You know, they try to give a little bit better summary of the gospel. So NT Wright says, it's the narrative proclamation of King Jesus. And you'll see the theme that resonates with me Scot McKnight says, If I were to summarize or distill the gospel, I would say it boils down to King Jesus. So he wrote a book King Jesus Gospel, Matthew Bates says, If I were to summarize the gospel, it would be Jesus, the saving king. And he's got, so I got those three guys books here and one other one. So Matthew Bates says, If I were to, if I were to say, okay, analyzing all of the times that in the book of Acts and Paul, as they're summarizing the gospel, what 10 Things do they include, and I'll fly through these, so you want to write them down. But he also number one, preexisted as God the Son, to sit by the father, three took on human flesh and fulfillment of God's promise to David, for died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures. That's how Paul summarize it in first Corinthians. He was buried, so we got burial. He was raised on the third day, according to Scripture. He appeared to many witnesses. He's in thrown at the right hand of God as the ruling Christ. He sent the Holy Spirit to his people to affect his rule. And 10, He will come again, as the final judge to rule. So he, he, in his most recent book, which is called why the gospel, he takes those 10 components, it's like, let me let me distill those down to three things, you have the Incarnation, which we talked about last week, and then also the hem living, you have the death of for sins, and you have raised to reign. So you got birth, death, or birth, life death, and reining ruling. And so So I think it's just we got to figure out how to nuance it to where we can say, Okay, here's a New Testament understanding of what the gospel is, so that we can understand. And then maybe when we hear somebody say, and let me tell you the gospel, and they go into a plan of salvation, you go, whoa, wait a minute. Why don't we do it? Like they did it in the New Testament? Let's be more in line with the gospel writers. And Paul, and even Peters. sermons. So any questions on the gospel? That's my Dave Johnston summary. I can I can send these around. These are, there's books written about what is the gospel? Which is mind boggling. But clearly, I love them. So I'll send them around. So you can if you're interested in this stuff, want to read some more about it. These are books that I highly recommend. So
yeah, well, and there's this is debated,
you know, so I can there's a there's other books that I could bring that I would say, I don't think I agree with it, but they're trying to tell us what the gospel is. And I was like, oh, actually lean this way. So. But if you want to check those out, like I said, these are what I recommend. Others may recommend something else. So
the whole Bible is the gospel. Correct. So why is it like the New Testament separated from the Old Testament? Well, it's a new test, and we call the gospel because he's actually born and raised and when he was performing miracles, is the reason why the new standard as the gospel and not the Old Testament, even though there's the whole bout Mr. Goff because you're talking about Jesus. Yeah. And that's, that's a big question.
I think we definitely have to have Jesus in the Gospel, right? Like Jesus is the one who, as the Messiah, as God's anointed descendant of David, that died for us, you know, so I think we have to have a Jesus. We have God and God's presence and God's messengers. We have four people in the lion's den, you know, but we don't have the Messiah showing up on behalf of the people right in the Old Testament. So, but if you notice, the Bates is summary twice, died for our sins, according to scripture. So it was a fulfillment of what Scripture was leading up to. That's why we have tabernacle in Leviticus and the 10 commandments, and then also raised on the third day, according to scripture. So that's based way of saying, you have to have the Old Testament to get the own of what the New Testaments doing, you know, so and then for our class, it's one story, you know, so I wouldn't say the whole Bible is the gospel. I would say the whole Bible is God's story. That includes the gospel of which provide, which is how we understand our salvation, and how we become God's people anyway. And I always think of the New Testament as the New
Covenant. So all the Old Testament, you have Abrahamic and the Davidic Covenant that were before, and now you're bringing in the new covenant that God's making. And really, that's important, because we can't get to Christ's birth, if we don't know creation, and, you know, the fall of man and all of these covenants, and like, the ways that he tried to, and then you have Christ linage to, like Dave saying, like all these prophecies and his lineage, and then boom, you have the first Gospel according to Matthew, where you have the genealogy that shares it, reach back to those stories,
and all of those stories, we're all really
pointing towards this climax, like Dave said, for the New Testament, and we're living in the New Testament times like we are, we are in the new covenant. So nothing has changed. That's when the big change has and the next thing is when revelation is fulfilled in Christ is returned. And then all of that will be I don't know.
But yeah, it'll be different.
We will have holy bodies and a new city and a new heaven and Yeah, I'm talking about that on Sunday night.
We'll talk about that on our last class. Y'all
are teaching chapter 20, right? Because it's all of Revelation. You're on 13th. Okay.
We're teaching 20 students already read it. You already know where to ball falls on. So, alright, so Bates Turn, turn your page to page three, Bates does something that I think is helpful to kind of make these connections between old and new. Okay. And Jesus. And again, some of this is, you know, it happens when we start with Matthew one with Mark one. Absolutely. But I love that this focuses on the glory of God, because that's important to a lot of people. Oh, I'm just just glory, glory to God, or glorifying God or God's glory. You know, like, That's it, like, that's kind of, you know, but we don't fully try to flesh that and say, What do you mean by that? You know, what are you talking about? When you say the glory of God? You know, are you talking about this stuff? That's totally foreign, it has nothing to do with us. Are you talking about something we kind of look back and, you know, see, but Bates says, He, he's, there's a whole chapter in his Wilder gospel book, which is going around somewhere. We start with God's glory, which again, it's in the shape of a crown, he is King, right? We talked about that. In Genesis one. God is King, he's the creator, He's in charge of it. In early on, when he's when it's we have this language of, of creating the image of God. And then when he gives him his name in Exodus, and now we're bearing the name of God that we talked about with our excellent stuff. Humans are giving glory to rule. We are image bearers of God, you know, we fail at doing that, you know, we do not represent God, well. Dang it, we messed up, we blow it. You got chapters of the Old Testament that just let you know if in case you were wondering, they clearly have failed and blown it, you know? Yes. And over and over and over and over again, when the promise and that's like, God, God, God gives a promise and the people break it and blow it. You know, God's faithful does promise to an unfaithful people, right?
It's generations and generations.
minutes later, like turn they get off the boat, and start at it, you know?
So you have King Jesus, who is the perfect image of God, He is the unbroken icon, the Gospel launches this glories recovery. Let's get back to the glory of God again, because of Jesus. So now, as I thought, follow Jesus as I enter into His kingdom. That image of God the glory of God is restored through Christ. So now you don't see me you see Christ in me, the hope of glory. Paul says in Colossians, right. So a transformative viewing for Glory's recovery. So those of us that follow Jesus, continue to look to Jesus and learn from Jesus and apprentice our life after Jesus, we continue to follow Jesus, we continue to obey Jesus, so that God can restore his glory. Eventually, we will reign gloriously with the king. Revelation tries to flesh that out for us and what that looks like we are on God's side, we're on God's team, were with Jesus. We're caught up with him, however you want to describe it. We are now fully united with Christ, as King Jesus were worshipping Gods on the throne in Revelation four and Revelation five, it's Jesus, who died that's on the throne, we are worshiping Him and looking to Him fully connected again. So that's how God is going to restore his glory. It's through Christ. The controversial statement that did not bring it with me, but I think it's RNA as he wrote in, let's say, third century, because I really am not sure when he wrote but he says, The glory of God is a human fully alive in Christ Jesus. And again, aren't Wait. You don't have to agree with it. But think about it. If Christ did exactly what he said he came to do, and if I believe that Jesus did exactly what he said, he's going to do and I, and I'm following him. Then I am linking up with the glory of God, and I am representing him God's people. You know, that's how people can see the glory of God is right here with us, even when our allergies are driving us nuts. That's right now, but hopefully Christ is perfect in us. Right in our, in our imperfect vessel right now that will be fully perfected. Revelation, you know? So, yeah, the glory cycle or restoring of the glory as Jesus disciples, we continue his ministry and extend his ministry. So alright, kingdom of God go. I was like
that, that's God wanting to restore his relationship with his creation. He wants to have relationship. Yes. Holy God, we're sinful people. He can't have a relationship. Yes. Simple just like when I started out with Adam and Eve, okay, he wanted he wanted to be in the garden. And then and then he got it got worse and then he destroyed the world was amazing. This morning. They really were destroyed. Doing good. Okay, and that was, okay, how we're gonna start over on the Tower of Babel. Yeah, Mr. Hart is where they wandered in the desert. Okay, he was with a man. So now we're in the stage that we're trying to get back or gastrin get back, we're trying to get back have a relationship with God, but it ain't gonna happen. Okay, we're getting to Revelation, which is ultimately where God wants us to be is, and he wants to be for all of us to have relationships. You can't have because he's right.
Except, we got to throw Jesus in the mix of this. Yeah, you know, and realize that when Jesus came in proclaiming the kingdom of God, and ushering in the kingdom of God, repent and believe, for the kingdom is near. And I think the new year is not, hey, 2000 years from now, it still hadn't happened yet. You know, like it had to have started with Jesus and what He did on the cross and the resurrection, and the ascension, you know, so it had to, something had to have happen. For this glory cycle, we got to get that in there. I think we always want to be like, well, we sinned, just like the garden. It's gonna be just as ugly and horrible until the stuff that's happening in the future. While we're doing that, we're bypassing the cross. And we're almost acting as if Yeah, Jesus did something. But it's not really going to fully happen until later, you know, like, and it's easy for us to be like, well, then I don't give a rip about any of this Jesus stuff, you know. And so we've got to, we got to keep and wrestle with what Jesus did. And, and, and it comes to us, I think, through his teachings, too, right. So he, when he's telling these parables about some of the weirdest artists, little things, I don't think he's just trying to confuse us. Now, he might be trying to confuse those that are not His people. But I think there's something for us as His people that we're supposed to go, oh, the kingdom of gods like a mustard seed. I get it. The kingdom of God is like yeast spreads throughout the dough. Oh, you know, like, wheat, like, those of us that are on the inside should be like, Wow, all right, you know, like and get excited, but also be convicted. And also, you know, so I think that's part of where we're supposed to be with with a lot of this, you know, so, alright.
The orange stone? Yeah.
Yes, it was images that they had to understand, but and I wrote it that the my cohort that I went to school with, we wrote chapters of a book called wash church, and my chapter was on wise teaching was on the teachings of Jesus. And my whole chapter was parable, the sower because I feel like that is the parable to understand all the parables in the seeds being casted out the teachings of Jesus His Word. And so yeah, I think, you know, I think that's the that's the key parable to unlocking all the parables. And if you want more, you can read my chapter. It's in my office coming up. Yeah.
I don't know, because then he preached the Sermon on the Mount, which is not just parables, and then he preaches, you know, teachings to the disciples. It's not just parable. So I think the parables were And we'll get there. I'm at it. I'll have a lot of information on parables tonight because I don't want to get bogged down. But the ball covers a lot of really good stuff with that. I think it wasn't. You know, it wasn't just to confuse us. But it might be to confuse the outsiders. I think I think us insiders are supposed to know, and get exactly what he's saying. And hopefully what you're getting is I need to listen to Jesus and DO what He says. You know, that's my parable summary right there. You know, and it was a common looking for the hidden word.
Yes, but not hidden to me.
Hidden hidden to the crowds. So that way, oh, you know, um, so yeah, but if it's hidden was it, if it's hidden, he's not going to use just common everyday stock images, you know, if people farming and weddings and, you know, parties, and of slaves and masters and mustard seeds, and trees and birds, and anyway
yeah.
And he does, you know, four or five times, right? You know, but he's almost at one point, he's even frustrated, like, you should know this. Like, this is Satan. He's trying to snatch this up. This is the Word of God, this, you know, and so well, and I think their confusion came because you have to remember,
they are the other side of the New Covenant. Christ hadn't died yet. So he's teaching them about what's to come. And I think after Christ died, they were all like, that's what he was talking like. So I think the light bulb went on for those parables for them, especially those toward the end of his life
when he's like, I've given you all the hints I can do to let you know what's gonna happen. Why are you surprised that he got crucified and resurrected? You know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. All right. So kingdom of God, again, another super easy topic to cover real quick. But that's all one of the glory cycle, because I think it helps us because more than anything, it puts us into the mix. You know, like God is doing something among us people. It's not just God is doing something. And I'm useless, have no part of it not in the story. You know, like, no, it's like God is anyway. He went into Galle proclaim the gospel of God mark one again, the kingdom of God is near what in the world? Was he talking about? With the kingdom of God? We could do 15 weeks on a kingdom of God study. We're not going to do that. You get 10 minutes, right. So I've got more information than you could possibly want. Yeah, time. Scot McKnight and another book that I did not bring, but it is in my office called Kingdom conspiracy. He has looked at every reference to the kingdom of God, throughout the entire New Testament, all other Jewish literature, Josephus, extrabiblical, Old Testament Septuagint all of this and said, Okay, what is the kingdom of God? He said, It has five components. I included these in a sermon once that I preached here. The first is God, as the kingdom of God has to have a king. God, the Lord of the kingdom, this is the kingdom of God. Now, Missionary Baptist backgrounds Don't hate me but the kingdom of God is the same as the kingdom of heaven. Rhonda can correct me later, after class. But the kingdom that was Matthew's way of of an even the Bible project is translating it kingdom of the skies, you know, but so it's basically I don't know what my why Matthew kind of tried to do that. But Dave Johnston kingdom of God is the same as kingdom of heaven. But it's God's kingdom. He is the king. Rhonda agrees with that. So he's the king. Let's just go with that. God's not King Rhonda. We might have to have some talking later. But yeah, yes. So so number two component. That's Yes. Yeah. There has to be a rule. There is a governing of the kingdom. There's if this is what we understand. That includes redemption, lordship of the kingdom, there's a rule. So there's, well, we'll get to this later, but there's, there's definitely the king is redeeming. He's the redeeming king. He's a saving king. He's a redemption, atonement, the kingdom of God. There was always this. Hope there's something good there's good news in it, right? There's always a people in the kingdom. A church Church people, us, we are there, the kingdom of God, God and Clute you have you can't have a kingdom. You don't have people, you know, open the doors. Here's the people, you know, like, there's no, there's no empty kingdom. You know. And I think that's important. We always think, oh kingdom of God kingdom or the skies King or the heavens, that's all light, you know, it's it's us, we are very much included with this. There's a people involved, I would say this is the church, I don't think and that you can be a part of the kingdom and not a part of a church. Right. And that's a controversial statement. People think Kingdom work is outside of the church, it's not Kingdom work is in the church walls, and outside of the church walls. So I'll be controversial for there is a way of life, there's an ethic. There's a way that we're supposed to live in the kingdom, we get this through instructions through teachings, life in the Spirit, we have to be told how to live in the kingdom, there's a way of living a way of life. Ethics is kind of what this includes, you know, this is like, I know who I am, therefore, I'm I need to know how I'm supposed to be living. So a lot of the teachings are designed to help us to live as God's people, like think the 10 commandments, but for us, right? Number 5/5 component there in the kingdom, there's always territory, a land, land flowing with milk and honey, the promised land a place Jerusalem, Mount Zion like it's it's always got territory. It's a sacred place. There's always something special about what happened here, or what's going to happen here. I've got to have a territory. Now. Controversially, in the New Testament, this is developed by anywhere that God's people take up residence. So that's my controversy. We're trying to think all this stuff's gonna happen over in Israel. And we're like, oh, you know, Israel killed millions of people, that's okay. It's God stuff, like, or God's Kingdom is very much where your house is. And it's where your church is. And it's it, you know, it's, it's where you're at. That's the territory, that's the land, it's where you're walking around with your, you know, your glory cycle, you know, anywhere you take God's presence with you. That's holy, right. So that's the five components that the Kingdom has to have, and also fleshed out to the New Testament. So, so notice, there's a visibility here, there's a now there's a present. There's a God's presence, there's a rule and authority. There's activity, God's working, there's a time and space, there's a perfect will of God. There's a society, a community of people of God, and those of us that are following Jesus have entered into the Kingdom as His people. There's participation in the kingdom among his people. We're doing stuff we are doing Kingdom work. We're linking up with what God's wanting to do as His people. And we're participating with him. We're, like I said, we are continuing the ministry of Christ. If you read Corinthians, We have things to do when we celebrate the Lord's Supper. We're remembering and participating into the story of what God's doing is demonstrated by Jesus. We're looking forward to a kingdom banquet. Later. Every single time we take communion. Now, we're linking ourselves with what happened in Passover. We're linking ourselves what's going to happen later in this kingdom Messianic banquet, we're entering with childlike faith, with obedience. We're under his rule, and under his authority, reading the Gospel and hearing his teaching, gives us a picture of what this kingdom life looks like. So that's why we have all these parables. He's trying to help us understand what the kingdom life looks like. You bust out the beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount and it strikes us like what what these are not who are supposed to be in the kingdom. These are not the important people. These are not the the folks that have the power and the authority these are the nobodies Blessed are the poor in spirit. And I think these are there is a spiritual component to that of a humbleness and a childlike faith but I think it's also the there's the if you walk away from the beatitudes in the sermon and you were important person in society, your face is dropping, like the rich young ruler, right? Because at some point, we have to value the things of the kingdom. So All right, next page. KINGDOM OF GOD page kingdom of God, maybe page jawed, maybe page five. This is the traditional understanding the kingdom of God was kind of getting to this with this when we think of revelation in the future. Well, this is based somewhat on the Jewish understanding of these old age and the new age to come. The first coming of Christ started the new age, this age to come. But the old age has not ended and is not going to end until Jesus comes back. Okay, so you noticed on your picture there, there's an overlap of these ages. Okay. So the first age, and I my fonts kind of small, but this age that's known as sin and rebellion and suffering, and Satan is ruling. There's disease and death and darkness and spiritual battles. There's a flesh controlling us, there's limits, there's power hungry people, and it's all about the money, you know, the kingdom of this world. Babylon is, is in charge to pull in some revelation there. This is what this that old age looked like. And it hasn't completely ended yet, we still have sin. We still have people that are power hungry, we still have oppression, and we still have issues. But the Second Age, the eighth, the kingdom of God that has begun. This is eternal life. It's characterized by humility and freedom and the glory of God, there's comfort and safety, there's no more evil, there's no suffering, we are completely made whole. We are righteous and justified. There's no death, we're completely and fully in the presence of God.
That age has begun. But the old age is not ended. Again, this is kind of traditional understanding of this overlap of ages. I think it is helpful because right in the middle of them, if there's tension, there's conflict. Because we're, we're, there's a holy God that's present, but we're still sinful. We're God's people, but we're still waiting for him to come back. We have a future hope and a future glory, glory, we've been, we've been given a glimpse, even a glimpse of what the kingdom looks like. And I think that's why Jesus was performing these miracles. He's teaching about the kingdom and letting him know what it looks like. And then he showing you what it actually looks like by healing people. By casting out demons, it's almost like he has the power to completely and fully conquer sin. We tend to still focus on one age or the other, even as Christians. Oh, I'm just a sinner. You know, I'm looking forward to God's presence in the future. You know, like all that stuff Jesus did that was cool. But waiting for the Bulang crossed the river, you know, and it's like, well, why isn't God's glory here now? Didn't Jesus usher in this kingdom of God now? And so, and this is kind of the, I guess the training I had is this overlap of ages. And I think it's definitely helpful. I've got a gazillion scriptures all not fly through, but just this, this ending of sin and this conquering of death, and there's no more demons. But the there's a book that just came out a few months ago, but l and Jarvis. She takes this traditional understanding of overlap of ages and says, you know, it's not the kingdom of God is not so much of an overlap of ages. As much as it's two completely different understandings of how time of time operates, operates. And I thought, this was fascinating because it helps us if we think about when someone passes away, and they're instantly in the presence of God. They're in a sense outside of time, right? They're in God's presence. But here we are, we're still limited by time. And we still think of Tom linearly, right? So she says, believers have access to the exalted Christ own temporality. So that's his own understanding of time, his own way of operating of time, by virtue of their life in Christ. So she's saying as we link up with Christ, we become in Christ. Our our, our understanding of time completely changes because we're with him. Paul, Paul frames the believers life as union with Christ. I've time If we're united with Christ, we enter into a lot So it's almost like as a believer, I'm not. From my perspective, I'm not going to die. Right? But when I do those that are still here, right? They feel like I am they're gonna put me in the tomb put me in the ground, you know, I'm still. So it's like, lifetime at that time. Now, maybe these overlap? I'm not sure I can't I tried to read this book. I can't fully understand it. But she's basically like, it's not an overlap of ages. It's more of a, what type of time do you have access to a life or death? You know, and if you're in Christ, if you're united with Him, it's completely different. And I think this is supposed to, hopefully cause us to really even want to link up with Christ more and all that we do, so that we're like, yeah, I want to experience the life and life abundantly, and life to the full. I want this, this human flourishing that you that you that you talked about in your teachings, I want that right now, in my life, I want peace. You know, I want the fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, like, this is what I want right now. Because I'm, I'm united with Christ. And so I've tried to kind of make it almost like a progression of have we enter into the kingdom as we follow Christ. And I think a lot of us stop there. But the next kind of step is, and we're united with Christ, fully united with Christ. And that's going to completely change everything about us. So it's not just, oh, it's a struggle to follow Christ. And I don't know if I can obey him. I don't know if I can do it as if he didn't tell us what to do. You know? But it's like, no, no, if you're united with Christ, it's like your ultimate goal in life is to is to maintain that union with all that you are. And yeah, I'm gonna learn from you, I'm gonna obey him, I'm gonna do what he tells me to do. I'm gonna live life and I'm making decisions based on him. And he's driving me and I'm looking forward to him. I'm, I understand my role to stand my role and role in the glory cycle glory cycle. And as God is bringing heaven to earth. I want to be a part of that. Alright, let me pause questions.
I can understand what she's saying what you can think about, as a believer of what you just said,
you talked about the believers, we know that at some point, our body's gonna give out, we will reach a time where our body dies, we know that we're going to go on into a better life. Yeah, yeah, instantly, you're in heaven. Right? You're insulating the presence of the Lord fully. You know, it's not a believer. They're looking at life. When
I die. That's it. Thanks. So so. And we would say that's hell, we would say that till
like, you're fully in depth time, even though they're going to
war, that's exactly what they want. Like, it's Can't you see God kind of handing them over given them exactly what they want? And then it fails, you know? Or it ends, you know, yeah. So yeah, I like this lifetime bedtime. I haven't fully unpacked it. I think it's probably a great book. The the overlap of ages is linear. And so I don't think it's factoring in the fact that eternity is outside of time, right, God outside of time, you know, so it might help us if we think okay, God is Jesus is on the throne outside of time fully ruling. And he's empowered us to rule and be a part of his new creation until he comes right back down here to completely recreate this, you know? Yep, yep. Good.
Now, right. No, yeah. And I think there's, it's like, we still grieve. But we're acknowledging man, they're
there with Jesus, you know. And so, but but how? I don't know, I guess, to what degree can we be united with Christ now, I think is kind of the question. To what degree has the kingdom of God really started and we can see it? To what degree is the new age and the New Covenant He's not on a cross anymore. You know, he's not gonna do that again, you know? sorry to my Catholic brothers and sisters, but it's like it is finished. You know, now let's figure out what it means for the rest of our lives, you know, as we're united with Him, you know, so, so to me, it's almost like it is taking this, like, I have my faith, and I'm a believer, and then I'm a follower. And there's something about that I think this kind of third category is like, I'm united with Him. What does that mean? How do we flesh that out? And I think that's what a lot of these people are in scholars are trying to get to, you know. So, alright, parables, and I talked, I included a lot about Jesus's teachings in the sermon amount, but we've kind of mentioned a little bit, the parables we kind of talked about a little bit of, and again, Deval does a lot in the chapter on the parables, I think that's super helpful. I think, you know, they are Kingdom teaching, right. And the best way in images he felt like he could use to help us understand what this kingdom was all about, or parables. Several of them start the kingdom of God is like, a man that does this, or two men doing this. So he's trying to describe what the kingdom looks like, in ways that we can understand. And I think they do take discernment, I think the best way to understand the parable is to sit around a room like this and say, Okay, let's do the best we can to put ourselves in the original hearers of this parable. And what would be going in their mind when Jesus is using these images. And let's try to recreate that and recapture that the best I can for us today. So that we can understand more, what the kingdom of God is all about. So we have to have ears to hear the parable, several of them are like anyone who obeys these words of mine and puts them into practice, right. And again, I talked about the miracles too, these are kind of the, the kingdom in action, you know, giving us glimpses of what it's going to look like, when there is no more sin and death is fully defeated. And we don't have to worry about Satan ruling anymore. He's completely conquered. We're fully in the presence of the Lord, you know. So I think that's kind of what the miracles are designed to do. It's, it's actualizing, the kingdom that he's teaching about, it's like, I'm not just gonna talk about it. I'm gonna do it too. And I think that's good news for us, you know, so, all right questions. I tried to fly in cover super easy topics. Kingdom of God, gospel glory, you know, the easy ones. On the miracles, Roger and I had a conversation. exorcism, once it was to Mary Magdalene. I know I saw that too.
Yeah, um, I don't know. I don't know why he left it out, either.
I don't know. What pages that the.
150 is the exorcisms my initial thought is maybe he didn't do it's not an exhaustive list. Kind of presented it like it was because he said, there's 35
Like he said, Jesus did 35
miracles, and then there's 35 listed and Mary Magdalene is not
on there. And I was trying to remember, is there some debate as to whether she actually did have demons? Like, I'm trying
to remember, we'd have to look up that passage. I didn't go look at that. Because that but I thought the same thing. And I was like, No, I mean that. Does anybody know what I didn't bring my Bibles, right? Anybody know where that passages were? He talks about, because we need her a couple of different times and in different ways. Because like Mark talks about her much differently than math, Matthew seems to have a very soft spot for Mary Magdalene. Right? I think he talks about her the most. But I don't know those passages off the top of my head. Yeah, no, that's a good question. I mean, if you were to ask me, Hey, when Jesus tells Mary, was that a miracle? I'd say yep. But I didn't write the table. Let me text of all should tell him, Scott, what's up, man?
We'll have to look into that because I thought the same thing when I was reading, I was like, I noticed that too. It says here that
Bruce Chilton,
a scholar of early Christianity states that the reference to the number
of demons being seven, might mean that Mary had to undergo seven exorcisms
probably over a long period of time through the part due to the first six being partially or wholly unsuccessful, right, because she had a relapse, we think in her faith, but yeah, I think so. That sounds that probably so I'm wondering if that's why they didn't know it because it's debated as to whether he actually did an exorcism on her. I feel like that's true. But I didn't look it up to confirm.
I had to research that. And I felt the same thing. And I didn't have time to look it up. Because I was like, Huh, I wonder why they didn't know that
I was like, Oh, I feel like there's something about some controversy or whether that's what her issue was, because she was a
prostitute.
We know that but then whether how he like, and it could be that instead of it being a demon, it was a darkness you know? And so it would kind of go in line with the this idea of no more darkness that's throughout the Old Testament, you know, but it's not necessarily a
demon healing kind of things, which and Matthew was kind of the outcast in that way too, right? Because he was the tax collector of the group. So he was kind of dirty to them in their culture. And so it could be why they connected
does it say anything about exercising? Exorcism?
Just says, Did you say what Luke eight
See, this is Mary who is called Magdalene from him seven demons
had gone out and then mine has a note there.
How do I get to the note, to click on it without the verse, alright? lets you type in notes. You're gonna click on
just the number, not the verse.
That's not the verse. That's the new verse. Some women
did it happened when he called her they just call her and then the demons went out? Maybe it wasn't exorcism. It was a call.
Yeah, I see that. But it's an I can't I can't get my my the next verse. That's not a note. Oh, that's
not in the NET Bible with all the notes. Oh,
I'll find out. I look at I will send you pages of stuff on it. Well, no, I don't know why the ball didn't include it. But I'll
give you all kinds of stuff. You'll be like, Oh, stop it. Who knows? You could have found an error in their book. Yeah, maybe in the fourth edition. They'll fix it. Third Edition, they'll fix it. But I'm guessing you've all had to thought about that. There has to be a reason why I didn't put it in. I'm sure. All right, now that you love me.
You're gonna hate me a little.
It's an overlap of relationship.
Love hate? I don't know. So
we're trying to.
Yes.
Next time you open your book and start reading. We're trying to figure out the best way to maybe not prolong this class into 2025. And I know that y'all love us. But no, I'm thinking I was. But we're trying to in light of our church calendar and McKinsey and everything else, we're gonna try to see if we can wrap this up a little bit earlier than initial plan. Like right now we're going through May 29. And we wanted to make, maybe we're trying to move up. So with that, we're gonna try our best with grumbling, complaining, to do two chapters of the book. For next week.
Y'all, I saved you, I saved you she
did. I was just like, let's just throw them out there. Don't pick which one you want to do, and you go for it. But instead, I tried to curate your readings a little bit better. It's on your homework page. But it's not
anything like we've done, really. So what I did was,
instead of reading all the Scripture, assign text, just switches 40 chapters, pick one, you know, and actually pick either either read Mark, Luke or John on the first section, and then read Matthew, Luke, or John second second, just choose one of those and read it. And then to kind of make it a little bit
easier. I kind of lumped the writing assignment into
what that reading was the best I could. So if you're like, I love Mark's gospel, I love I'm gonna read eight to 10 I'm gonna be writing assignment 13 Dash three on page 182. So just do that, and you're good. So we're gonna try to do chapters 13 and 14 for next week. And then everything else under that is optional. That's in big all caps letters. So I gave you if you really are like, I want to learn more about the Kingdom of God. I've given you a what I call the kingdom of God primer. It's like an introduction of the kingdom of God that looks at a ton of scriptures. I've walked through it myself three different times now and I absolutely love it just very helpful to wrap my mind around this kingdom of God understanding And so I included that after your homework, so no reflection questions, just read the best you can and do any or any assignment that you best you can. Try not to get bogged down. But we're going to try to cover Jesus's journey to Jerusalem and his death next week. So the lat Jesus was last week, last week on Earth, that's what we're shooting for. All right, any questions? No homework, but we won't talk about resurrection, or, or ascension or
ascension, that will be the next two weeks
after. So it's really it's a lot of reading, but it's gonna be really familiar for you guys. And it's it's stuff that we've talked
that you guys have studied a lot. So it should be it's not like when we had two Old Testament chapters that we put together, that was a lot and probably stuff you weren't as familiar with. So this should be stuff that y'all know really well. Yeah. And we and like I said, it's really not more work on the, on the read 13 and 14, I actually I think I condense it down chapter 13, where you don't have to read the wrapping up in the limit, you know, so you're just just kind of getting the content, and then move on to 14 I think you're doing most of that
read both chapters. It's actually 40 pages of reading. So I thought 13 was short, but he's just doing your best. And we'll, we're gonna try to you'll have a lot of prep work that I don't think the class isn't going to feel rushed
and like we're trying to cover like, we'll be able to talk through it. If you guys have prepped it's just a lot of background for y'all to make sure
you're oriented in the story. So we get one of these
choose one of the first three choose one of the second three One of them's from Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Well, some we'll do that some will, because I put a
checkbox you're gonna do it until you check it I know. I know. I get it well, and this will be a great time. I think most everybody has a smartphone
