Welcome to Day 1401 of our Wisdom-Trek, and thank you for joining me.I am Guthrie Chamberlain, Your Guide to WisdomMastering the Bible – Israel Today and the Temple of God – 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, 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 1401 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 – Israel Today and the Temple of GodInsight Sixty-Nine: In the New Testament “Israel” Doesn’t Always Refer to the Nation or Its PeopleEarlier, we saw that use of the term “Israel” varied in the Old Testament. Sometimes “Israel” referred to all twelve tribes, and other times it referred to the northern kingdom of ten tribes following the fracturing of the kingdom. The variation in meaning, then, was due to politics and geography.
The New Testament also uses “Israel” in a variety of ways. Sometimes it refers to the Promised Land, the twelve tribes, or ethnic Jews. But this time, the reason is driven by theology.
The birth of the early church in the book of Acts shows us plainly that God’s people were never intended to be identified with ethnic Israel forever. Gentiles were destined for inclusion in the people of God, as was told to Abraham in Galatians 3:7-9 (
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians+3%3A7-9&version=NLT) . The real children of Abraham, then, are those who put their faith in God. What’s more, the Scriptures looked forward to this time when God would make the Gentiles right in his sight because of their faith. God proclaimed this good news to Abraham long ago when he said, “All nations will be blessed through you.” So all who put their faith in Christ share the same blessing Abraham received because of his faith.
Paul moves from this opening to a discussion of the law. He denies the law’s saving power and instead holds up faith in Christ. Israel’s Messiah, as the way of salvation. Then he closes his argument with language that would startle both the Jewish and gentile unbeliever in Galatians 3:25-29 (
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Galatians+3%3A25-29&version=NLT) :
And now that the way of faith has come, we no longer need the law as our guardian. For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have put on Christ, like putting on new clothes. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And now that you belong to Christ, you are the true children of Abraham. You are his heirs, and God’s promise to Abraham belongs to you.
Paul couldn’t be more explicit: if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. There is one people of God.
Insight Seventy: The People of God Are the Temple of GodPresuming they had access to the Scriptures, the Bible of the earliest Christians was...
