Welcome to Day 1391 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.I am Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to WisdomMastering the Bible – Gentile Inclusion and All Things in Common – Worldview WednesdayWisdom - the final frontier to true knowledge. Welcome to Wisdom-Trek where our mission is to create a legacy of wisdom, to seek out discernment and insights, and to boldly grow where few have chosen to grow before.


Hello, my friend, I am Guthrie Chamberlain, your captain on our journey to increase wisdom and create a living legacy. Thank you for joining us today as we explore wisdom on our 2nd millennium of podcasts. Today is Day 1391 (https://wisdom-trek.com/captivate-podcast/day-1391/) of our trek, and it is Worldview Wednesday. Creating a Biblical Worldview is essential to have a proper perspective on today’s current events.


To establish a Biblical Worldview, you must have a proper understanding of God and His Word. Our focus for the next several months on Worldview Wednesday is Mastering the Bible, through a series of brief insights. These insights are extracted from a book of the same title from one of today’s most prominent Hebrew Scholars, Dr. Micheal S. Heiser. This book is a collection of insights designed to help you understand the Bible better. When we let the Bible be what it is, we can understand it as the original readers did and as its writers intended. Each week we will explore two insights.


Mastering The Bible – Gentile Inclusion and All Things in CommonInsight Sixty-Five: Gentile Inclusion in the People of God Didn’t Mean Hostility Towards Jews and Jewish Customs


The book of Acts and the ministry of Paul and his companions inform us that the people of God after the cross were not a new theocracy or a revived Israel on Old Testament terms. The family of God included believers, Jew and Gentile. Entrance only required faith in what Jesus accomplished by his death and resurrection.


From antiquity to our own day; however, the non-Jewish nature of the people of God has been misread in negative ways, even to the point of anti-Semitism. It is absurd to think that the New Testament endorses the hatred of the Jewish people. Even after the conference over Gentile inclusion in Acts 15, there is no evidence in Acts that Jews were taunted or prevented from preaching the gospel. The opposite was true.


Paul, a Jew in Philippians 3, addressed this both in word and deed. The gospel, said Paul, was for the Jew first and then the Gentile (Roman 1:16-17). In every place Paul visited on his missionary travels, he went to the synagogue first. If the Jews no longer had a special status, then his pattern seems odd. But Paul longed for the salvation of his countrymen (Romans 9:1-5).


Paul also expressed appreciation and even devotion to Jewish law and customs. He knew that the law was no substitute for salvation. It couldn’t be. Salvation is an unmerited gift (Ephesians 2:8-10; Romans 4:3-25). Nevertheless, he “delighted” in the law in his inner (redeemed) being (Romans 7:22). Paul circumcised Timothy before taking him along on a missionary tour to avoid the young man becoming an obstacle to the Jews that Paul would preach to (Acts 16:3). Upon his return to Jerusalem, Paul visited the temple (Acts 21:26-30), having taken a Nazirite vow of purification (Acts 26:23-36). This would make little sense if Paul believed Israel had been displaced by God, especially when going to the temple was such a dangerous thing for him to do.


Rather than setting Israel aside, the New Testament language should be understood in terms of gentile inclusion. God included the Gentiles into his family; he didn’t exclude Jews. Although modern-day “replacement theology” primarily focuses on the interpretation of eschatology, it has become a trendy excuse for anti-Semitic attitudes and political disdain for modern Israel. Politics is no aid to biblical understanding and should not become a filter for Scripture....