In this enlightening episode of The Narrow Path, Steve Gregg dives into the depths of biblical understanding, starting with his upcoming Midwest itinerary. The conversation unfolds with intriguing insights on Isaiah’s prophecies and Jesus speaking in parables. Mark from Eagan, Minnesota poses thought-provoking questions about intentional spiritual blindness, urging a comparison with Jesus’ teachings in Matthew. Together, they unravel the hidden treasures within parables, used by Jesus to filter the crowds, separating true seekers from mere spectators.
SPEAKER 03 :
Good afternoon and welcome to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg and we’re live for an hour each weekday afternoon taking your calls. If you have questions you’d like to call in about the Bible or about the Christian faith, anything like that, and you’d like to discuss those on the air, we’d be glad to hear from you during this hour. At this moment is not a good time to call because I’m looking at a full switchboard. Our lines are full. If you call when our lines are full, you’ll probably get a message that the line’s not available or a busy signal or something like that. But if you call back, within a few minutes usually, a line will have opened. The number to have ready and to call in is 844-484-5737. That’s 844-484-5737. And apart from the fact that I’m going to be doing an itinerary in the Midwest within a few weeks from now, I don’t have much to announce. It’s immediate. I’m going to be in Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois. Speaking of a variety of places, I’ll be here in about 11 days in August, beginning August 16th through August 26th. I’ll be in Grand Rapids area. I’ll be in Detroit area. I’ll be in Toledo area. I’ll be in Indianapolis. I’ll be in Rochelle, Illinois, and Mount Carroll, Illinois, among other places. So this is where I’m letting you know because we have a lot of listeners in those states. And if you’re interested in joining, finding out where those meetings are, what I’ll be doing, when they are, and so forth, go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, and look under announcements. So it’s at thenarrowpath.com under announcements. You’ll see it. the time and place and subject matter and so forth of all those events next month. All right. Apart from that, I have nothing to announce except that we’re going to talk to Mark in Eagan, Minnesota, first of all today. Hi, Mark. Welcome to The Narrow Path.
SPEAKER 04 :
Hello. When I heard you say Midwest, I got excited. I thought maybe he was going to say Minnesota, but hopefully sometime he’ll come up.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. Yeah, hopefully sometime.
SPEAKER 04 :
Yeah. I had a question on Isaiah 610. where God is making people blind and deaf to the word so that they don’t hear on purpose, and equaling that over to Matthew 13, 10, where Jesus actually brings up that verse in Isaiah, where he talks in parables because he said to his disciples, he does that because… people won’t understand otherwise or something. Can you explain those for me, please?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yes, I think I can. The point of these passages, both in Isaiah and then Jesus’ use of it, which, by the way, Isaiah is talking about his own time, the people in his own time, and Jesus is talking about the people in his own time, but he assumes… There’s not much difference between the people in Isaiah’s day and his own day, and so the passage applies to both. God tells Isaiah to preach so that the people will shut their eyes, or their eyes will be shut and their ears will be shut, and so they’ll hear and not understand and see and not perceive, and therefore they will not be converted. Now, he actually says, lest they be converted, and I should heal them or save them. Now, it sounds like God doesn’t want them to be converted, and yet God wants everyone saved. However, there are seasons in time when people have turned their hearts against God to the point where God knows they are beyond recovery. They’ve been given over to a reprobate mind. And Paul talks about that, for example, in the 11th chapter of Romans. where he’s, of course, he’s also quoting Isaiah, a different Isaiah passage, Isaiah 29, but it says in Romans 11, 8, God has given them a spirit of stupor, eyes that they should not see and ears that they should not hear to this very day. So the idea, and then later on he quotes another verse here, also, let’s see, this one’s from the Psalms, Psalm 69, I believe, it says, let their eyes be darkened that they may not see and bow down their back always. Now these are statements of God’s judgment upon Israel in both cases, although they might apply to other nations in some situations, but in this case he’s talking about Israel. They have had the law. They’ve had the prophets. They have stopped their ears. They don’t want to hear God’s word. And they come to a place where they become so set in that that God says, okay, you don’t want my word? You can’t have it. And he judicially blinds them which means they’re stuck in that position. I sometimes remember when I was a little kid, I remember sitting in the seat of the car when my mom was driving or something, and, you know, I’m making weird faces for some reason. Kids like to experiment with how weird they can make their faces, I guess. And I remember grimacing and making some faces, and my mom would say, what if your face would freeze like that, you know? Now, I knew there was no danger of that. But, of course, the implication was if my face would freeze like that and I looked so horrible the rest of my life, I couldn’t blame anyone but myself. If I hadn’t done that to myself, it couldn’t freeze that way. It’s a choice I was making. Obviously, my face was not going to freeze like that, but what if it would? Am I doing something with my face that I want it to do forever? And we have to ask ourselves that about our attitude toward God. Is the attitude I have toward God right now what I would want it to be If it couldn’t change, what if it froze this way? If I was rebelling against God for a season of my life, well, someday I’ll just change my mind. I’ll get saved just before I die or something like that. But then I found out God was greatly offended about my antagonism toward him. He says, okay, you like that attitude? It’s yours forever. And suddenly you freeze that way. I see that as what happened to Pharaoh when God hardened his heart. The Bible, the word hardened his heart, actually in the Hebrew word, it actually means strengthened his heart. But it’s the same idea. The idea is that Pharaoh was in rebellion and God, as a judgment of Pharaoh, strengthened Pharaoh’s heart in his resolve. The resolve that Pharaoh himself had chosen. But now he couldn’t choose to be without it because his rebellion against God and his unjust heart treatment of his slaves and things like that. He was such an evil man. God said, okay, you deserve to be judged, and your judgment is this. You can’t change now. You’ve made your bed. You’re going to sleep in it. And that’s the attitude that God has sometimes toward Israel in the Old Testament. Okay, you guys have rejected the law. You’ve rejected the prophets. You’ve killed the prophets. You’ve done everything I’ve told you not to do. You’ve wanted nothing to do with me. Okay, boom. Your eyes are blind. Your ears are deaf. Now, you’ve been deafening your own ears and blinding your own eyes because you didn’t want to hear and see. Now, that’s the way you’re going to end up. That’s your judgment. So, that was the case in Isaiah’s day. And it’s the case in Jesus’ day of many of the Jews. Now, you know, what Paul said about the Jews of his day in Romans chapter 11 is that Israel has not found… what they were seeking, but the elect have found it, but the rest were blinded, it says in Romans 11, verse 7. Romans 11, verse 7, it says, What then? Israel has not obtained what he seeks, but the elect have obtained it. Meaning the faithful remnants who were already faithful to God before Jesus even showed up. And then, of course, because they were faithful to God, they followed the Messiah, too. Well, the elect have found it, they’ve obtained it, and the rest were blinded. That is, those who were already rebels against God, they are suddenly made permanent rebels. Now, this is what Jesus was saying about the parables. They came to Jesus and said, why are you speaking to these people in parables? And he said this, I’m going to start back at verse 11 of Matthew 13. When they asked him, he said, Because it has been given to you, meaning to the disciples, the faithful remnant, to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. But to them, meaning the apostate Jews who were not faithful to God, it has not been given to them. Forever has, to him more will be given. That is, those who have pursued God previously and gained understanding of his will and followed it, they’ll be given more understanding. And he’ll have an abundance. But whoever does not have, that is, whoever up to this point has never had any interest in God’s will and didn’t want it, well, even what little he has will be taken from him. He says, therefore, I speak to them in parables, because seeing they do not see and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. Now, he’s not saying, because they’re blind and deaf, I’m speaking in parables to make them more able to see. He wouldn’t have to do that. I mean… He could speak plainly without parables. He’s saying, I’m speaking in parables so that they won’t see. He’s hiding the mysteries. Remember, he says in verse 11, it is given to you, disciples, to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. Well, that’s what the parables were about. The parables often began with the words, the kingdom of heaven is like a sower. The kingdom of God is like a woman hiding a little leaven in three measures of dough. The kingdom of God is like a mustard. The kingdom of God is like this or that. The kingdom of God is like that. The kingdom of heaven. And he was talking about the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven. But he’s doing it in terms that would make no particular sense to the hearers. I’m not saying they couldn’t make sense of a sower sowing seed or leaven being put in a lump of dough. They knew that kind of stuff. But they couldn’t see how that had anything to do with spiritual things. They couldn’t see what’s that got to do with the kingdom of God. And so he actually took his disciples aside and would explain to them because they didn’t know either. There’s a parallel account over in Mark 4. I think it’s in verse 23 over there. But in Mark 4, it says, Without a parable, Jesus never spoke to the crowds. But when they were alone, he explained all things privately to his disciples. So the crowds were not to understand because they were blinded, like Isaiah said. But the disciples, who were not blinded because they had already been pursuers of God previously… he explained the parables. The parables concealed within them mysteries about the kingdom of God, which could not be unwrapped except by Jesus himself. And he did unwrap those secrets to his disciples privately, but not to the crowds. So he quotes Isaiah.
SPEAKER 04 :
What’s the purpose of that, though? Why would he do that? I mean, why is he telling parables if they don’t understand it?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, because this is how he gained disciples. The disciples were people who had been in the crowds originally. The crowds came to hear Jesus because he was famous. They’d heard he healed people. A lot of people had sick friends where they were sick and they wanted to be healed. Or they’d heard that this might be the Messiah or he’s a great teacher. He’s just kind of a phenomenon, just like John the Baptist had been. All the crowds had come to hear John the Baptist. And now Jesus is the phenomenon. And everyone’s coming to hear him. And they wonder, is he the Messiah? What is this? What’s going on here? Everyone’s talking about this man. So the crowds are there. But in the crowds… There’s a mixture of people. There are those who care about the things of God, who are not blinded and deafened, whose hearts are for the Lord. And there are those who are the blind and the deaf, whose hearts are not the Lord. They’re just there out of curiosity. Now, when they hear Jesus preach, he says, a sower went out to sow. And some seed fell on hard ground, some fell on shallow ground, some fell on ground with thorns, some was on good ground and produced fruit, some 30, some 60, some 100-fold. Oh, and here’s another story. You know, a man sowed good seed in his field. And while he slept, an enemy came and put tares in there, and they grew up among the wheat. And here’s another story. You know, a king was making a wedding for his son, and he invited his friends, and they insulted him, so he invited other people. I mean, he’s telling these stories. The stories are easily understandable, but there’s nothing deep about them that’s obvious. They’re just stories about farming. They’re stories about, you know, normal people. old-time living, baking with yeast and things like that. So, in other words, the people who were not interested in the things of God but were just curious, they wouldn’t understand a thing that he said. They’d leave scratching their heads saying, I don’t know what was so profound about this guy. Everyone’s talking about it. He just talked about stuff we all know. But there would be others in the crowd who had a heart for God, and they’d hear he was saying, the kingdom of heaven is like this. The kingdom of heaven is like that. Now, they didn’t understand it. But they heard the part about the kingdom of heaven. And if they were seekers of a relationship with God, if they were desirous to be part of God’s program, part of his kingdom, they would say, hey, I don’t know what this story was about. But I’m going to find out. I’m not satisfied to go home and not understand. So they would come to Jesus and say, could you explain this parable to us? And they would become his disciples. So the teaching of the crowds and parables was a way of culling the crowds, sifting from the crowds, taking the wheat and letting the chaff blow away. He didn’t want everybody. He only wanted those who already had a heart for God. He didn’t want people who didn’t. So the parables were a way of filtering the crowd.
SPEAKER 04 :
Sure. Okay. I’ll let someone else call. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER 03 :
All right, Mark. Thanks for your call. David from Victorville, California. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for coming.
SPEAKER 07 :
Hey, Steve. Thanks for having me. I was listening lately about the bronze serpent in Numbers, and Jesus – says, I will be lifted up as the serpent was in the desert. Then I was thinking, is there any group of people who take that metaphor too far and go to the point where, I think it was Hezekiah who destroyed it because they were worshiping it?
SPEAKER 03 :
Right. It was either Hezekiah or Josiah. I think it was Hezekiah who destroyed it. Yeah. He called it a Nahushtan.
SPEAKER 07 :
Nahushtan means a piece of bronze. I wondered if anybody took that metaphor far enough to say that it is idolatry to worship Jesus since he was you know, akin to the serpent on the pole. And I was actually listening to your lectures on the life of Christ, and I was getting to the point of the deity of Christ in the pedigree section, and I saw a billboard that said, are you practicing idolatry? The Bible says God is one, not three in one. And I thought, wow, just one day after I think this thought, I see this. And I look up this group. I don’t want to mention the group, but they believe Jesus is only human, appointed by God, They do hold to the Sabbath. They hold to not eating the unclean foods of the Old Testament. They are amillennialist. They believe that the true Israel is Christ and his body. So they have certain beliefs that line up with things. And then, you know, food. Do you know what this group is? It’s not Seventh-day Adventists.
SPEAKER 03 :
No, no, no. Did you see that billboard while driving around Interstate 15 by any chance?
SPEAKER 04 :
Yes, sir.
SPEAKER 03 :
I’ve seen one, too, on Interstate 15 from those people. I don’t know who the group is, but they’re obviously one of a billion pop-up groups that have come along with their own, what should we say, collection of unusual doctrines. when you first began to describe them, I was thinking of the Ebionites. The Ebionites were the Jewish church that escaped from Jerusalem before Jerusalem was destroyed. And like later on, the Jewish Christians kind of evolved into a group called the Ebionites who did not believe Jesus was God. And I’m sure they kept the Jewish laws and things like that. They were mostly the Messianic Jewish community. But The fact that you said that they’re all millennial and that they believe the church is Israel, I don’t think the Ebionites believe that necessarily, but I don’t know. You know, what you find today is groups that will pick up this heresy and that heresy and this other heresy and make their own cult. Obviously, the denial that Jesus is God goes all the way back to the Arians in the 4th century and 3rd century. and they are represented in modern times by people like the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Now, the Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t the ones who are saying that, you know, you have to keep the festival days and things like that, I don’t think, or the Sabbath, but they do hold that Jesus isn’t God. Now, Seventh-day Adventists do hold that you should keep the Sabbath and eat kosher and things like that, but they typically believe Jesus is God. Now, I’ve known… I think among Seventh-day Adventists, I have found some who did not, but I think they are not mainstream. I think the Seventh-day Adventist Church does believe in the Trinity and believes Jesus is God. So the group that’s putting up these signs, they’re not either of those groups. Now, I don’t know what group they are, but there are other groups that have similar doctrines. I mean, the Way International group. was kind of, it may even be them, I don’t know, but The Way International, I don’t know what they feel about the Sabbath and the festivals and things like that, but I know that they also denied that Jesus is God. They’re kind of like, The Way International is sort of like charismatic Jehovah’s Witnesses or something. So I don’t really know what group puts those signs up. I saw the billboards by the freeway, and I’ve wondered that too. But if you… If you’re wondering how we would argue that Jesus is God, again, since I’m looking at the clock, we’ve got a break coming up, I would suggest that my lecture on the deity of Christ would be probably helpful to you, and my lecture on the Trinity. These can be found, and as you probably know, all my lectures are free to listen to. If you go to thenarrowpath.com or if you have our mobile app, of course, you find it on the mobile app, too. But at our website, thenarrowpath.com, my lectures are there. And if you click on the tab that says topical lectures, there’s a series called Knowing God. And in the series called Knowing God, there’s a lecture on the Trinity. There’s a. I think there may be two lectures on the deity of Christ, or at least one. I think there may be two. And I go into a rather in-depth scriptural examination of the relevant text about that. I believe in the Trinity, and I believe that Jesus is God. That is, that he’s God in the flesh, that God took on flesh to dwell among us, but also existed elsewhere. You know, the analogy I would make, and this is not a perfect analogy, but if people say, well, how could Jesus be God and yet he prayed to God? If Jesus was God, then when he was dead for three days, who kept the planets going? As if saying God is a way of saying that Jesus is all there is of God. But he himself made it clear, no, he came to do the Father’s will. He is subject to his father. So, well, then how could it be God? Well, I guess one way I would put it is that we have occasions in the Old Testament where Yahweh, God, appeared in a form visible and tangible, usually as a man, sometimes as a pillar of cloud or a pillar of fire or a burning bush, but very often it was in a human-like form, physical. Jacob could wrestle with it all night long, physically. You know, God appeared in a physical form with two angels to Abraham in Genesis 18.1 and had a meal with him. So actually God, who is not physical, took on a physical manifestation, a human-like physical manifestation. Now these, we call those theophanies. Theologians call them theophanies or Christophanies. And that means an appearance of God or an appearance of Christ prior to the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. We know Jesus, before he was born in Bethlehem, it says in Philippians 2, he existed in the form of God. But then when he was incarnate, he emptied himself and took on himself the form of the servant and lived out his life and died and rose again. Now, when Jesus did that, he made it very clear that he was subject to his father. And he spoke of his father as greater than him. And yet he said, if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the father. And the father is in me and I’m in him. I don’t know how to understand all of that because Jesus didn’t explain it all, but I liken it to these theophanies in a way. Now, the theophanies in the Old Testament, when God appeared in a human-like form to somebody like Abraham, he didn’t come as a real man in the sense that he didn’t take a form that came through the human family line from Adam and Eve. He just appeared. He just appeared and manifested himself in a human form. He wasn’t part of the human race. He would appear, and then he’d later disappear. But that didn’t make him a man. It just made him look very much like a man. Now, the difference is Jesus did become a man. Jesus did come through the human race, through the family line. And in that sense, he differs from Old Testament theophilus. But in another sense, I think he’s similar to them in that when Jacob wrestled with a man, God, all night long, that doesn’t mean that God wasn’t everywhere else in the universe keeping things going at the same time. Or that when God had a meal with Abraham in Genesis 18. It doesn’t mean that God wasn’t at the same time everywhere in the universe making sure everything was going as it should go. That is to say, we’ve got to make a distinction between the universal presence of God and the manifest presence of God. In the tabernacle, God manifested in a pillar of cloud over the mercy seat. That was the manifest presence of God, but God was everywhere in the universe at the same time. So God is universally present in a sense, everywhere. And occasionally… He is manifestly present in some form or another. And I believe that Jesus, when God took on human flesh in Christ, that was God manifesting to us. In fact, it uses that very word in 1 Timothy 3, I think it’s verse 15, where it says, great is the mystery of godliness. He was manifest in the flesh. Manifest. That’s the manifest presence of God, in my opinion, in an actual human form. And so when God wrestled with Jacob all night, that was God manifested in a human form. But it was not all there is of God. If he and Jacob had sat down and had a theology discussion, the very God man that wrestled with Jacob probably would speak about God as one bigger than that one little man right there. God can… can reduce himself for the time being, but it doesn’t reduce him existentially. It just means he appears in a reduced state, but it doesn’t prevent him from being everywhere at once in an unreduced state. God is spirit. So, you know, it’s true. The Bible does talk about Jesus being God, and it also talks about him talking about the Father and God as something different than him. But you can’t just say, okay, I can, I think I’ll go with the places where he said God is greater than him. And then I’ll just ignore the places where the Bible says he is God because I can’t, I don’t know how to put those two things together. Well, we’re not allowed to do that, in my opinion. We’re not allowed to say, okay, I see two sets of passages. One says that Jesus is God. One set says God is greater than him. Now, I’m not really sure how to sort them out, so I’ll just throw half of them out. I’ll just throw out all the passages. I’ll just strike them out of my Bible as if they’re not there because I don’t know how to put them together with this other group of passages. When you do theology responsibly, you have to take all the passages into consideration. And we may or may not be able to understand how they fit together. That’s an entirely different thing than believing them. I can believe every word the Bible says without understanding everything the Bible says. And so, same thing with Jesus being God. The Bible certainly says he’s God in many places. But if you want to listen to my lecture called The Deity of Christ, go to thenarrowpath.com under Topical Lectures, and that is in the series called Knowing God. Hey, I appreciate your call. I need to take a break here. We have more calls waiting, obviously. We have another half hour coming up, so don’t go away. You’re listening to The Narrow Path. We are listener-supported. We pay very big radio bills every month, and the only income we have is from people like you. If you’d like to help us out, you can go to our website, thenarrowpath.com, and there’s a tab there about donating if you’d like to donate to the ministry and help us stay on the air. I’ll be back in 30 seconds. Don’t go away.
SPEAKER 01 :
Everyone is welcome to call the narrow path and discuss areas of disagreement with the host, but if you do so, please state your disagreement succinctly at the beginning of your call and be prepared to present your scriptural arguments when asked by the host. Don’t be disappointed if you don’t have the last word or if your call is cut shorter than you prefer. Our desire is to get as many callers on the air during the short program, so please be considerate to others.
SPEAKER 03 :
Welcome back to the Narrow Path radio broadcast. My name is Steve Gregg, and we’re live for another half hour taking your calls. If you have questions about the Bible or the Christian faith, or if you disagree with the host, want to talk about that on the air. You can call me here. I have one line open at this moment if you’d like to try to take it. The number is 844-484-5737. That number again is 844-484-5737. And our next caller is Kerry from Fort Worth, Texas. Hi, Kerry. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for calling.
SPEAKER 05 :
Hi, Steve. I have a question, but I’d like to make a comment first. I love your program, and I love hearing about all the different views of the Bible and different topics and things. But the thing I really love about your program and about you is that your emphasis on following Christ and that some of these things that we delve into are just not important. and really don’t really have a lot to do with how we follow Christ, and I just love your emphasis, and you’re always pointing the callers and people to follow Christ, and I just thank you for that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, that’s what it’s all about, right?
SPEAKER 05 :
That is what it’s all about.
SPEAKER 03 :
Amen. Well, thank you.
SPEAKER 05 :
My question is, and you talk about dispensationalism quite a bit, and, you know, I don’t really care about arguing or if they want to argue about when the rapture happens or what the rapture is and things like that. I feel like there’s probably room to argue and disagree there. But the thing that really sticks in my crawl about dispensationalism, and I feel like if it’s not heresy, it borders on heresy, is their misidentification of who the people of God are. And I just would like your comment on that.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, well, the people of God, according to Hebrews chapter 11, have always been those who have faith. And by faith, the word pistis in the Greek faith, it has a broader meaning than just believing. It encompasses the side of the person believing and the faithfulness of the person believed in. So that there are times, maybe half a dozen times in our English Bible, this very word pistis is translated as faithfulness. I discovered just a few months ago a man who had written a couple of books about this, and he chooses to translate pistis as allegiance. I think he has a book called, I don’t remember his name, his book has a name something like justification by allegiance alone or something like that. And he’s saying that pistis, We should understand it to have the idea of loyalty or allegiance. And I was very happy to find that book. I actually read it, and I wasn’t a little bit, I found boring, but I tended to be in agreement with him. And I already have said those kinds of things in my own books, Empire of the Risen, so I talk about that. But the thing is that having pistis, having faith, means you not only believe, but you also can be trusted. In other words, God can trust you too. Now, not to be perfect, because he knows better than that, but he can trust your allegiance. He knows you’re on his side. And he knows that you’ve got his back and he’s got your back, that you’ve got a covenant with each other. There’s this covenant relationship. And in a covenant, both parties have to be faithful to the promises they make, and they both have to trust the other party. And that’s what pissed us off. refers to in the connection of salvation, I believe. So that we find that it says in Hebrews chapter 11 that by Pistis, Abel offered a better sacrifice than Cain. By Pistis, Enoch walked with God. By Pistis, Noah built an ark. Now notice, none of those talk about believing anything. Those talk about a person’s relationship with God. offering the better sacrifice, which Abel did. That’s an act of obedience because he is loyal to God. It wasn’t a matter of just believing something. Enoch walked with God, which was a whole relationship, a whole life. Noah built an ark. That’s Why? Well, he believed what God said, but he obeyed because he was loyal to God. The whole concept of being one of the people of God is that you are one of the people of pistis, of faith, which also means faithfulness. You’re loyal to him. And that’s why Jesus says to the church of Smyrna, be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life. You’re going to get crowned with life if you’re faithful until death. That’s your pistis, your faithfulness. And there’s numerous places in the Bible that talk similarly about that. So we’ve got, you know, people like Abel. We’ve got people like Enoch, like Noah, eventually Abraham. Abraham believed in the Lord and it was counted him for righteousness. And God made promises to him. But the promises he made to him were to him and his seed. But it becomes clear that Abram’s seed doesn’t just mean anybody who happened to be descended from him. Though the term could be understood that way, or I should say misunderstood that way. Obviously, it’s not the case that whoever is descended from Abraham is the seed to whom these promises apply. It’s those who have the faith of Abraham. Now, for example, Ishmael was a son or seed of Abraham just as much as Isaac was. But Isaac… is spoken of in Hebrews chapter 11 as having faith. Ishmael, we don’t read of any faith on his part, and he wasn’t part of the promised seed. Isaac himself had two sons, Jacob and Esau. Esau is not mentioned as having any faith, but Jacob is mentioned as having faith in Hebrews 11. So the seed of Abraham is traced through not everybody who’s from Abraham, like Ishmael was and Esau was and many others were. The Midianites were from Abraham and several other groups. But the ones that were one smaller branch, one smaller thread of that lineage were the people of God. And they are characterized by their faith. Now, when God brought the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob out of Egypt to Mount Sinai, he said he’s going to make a covenant with them if they obey his voice and keep his covenant, if they’re allegiant to him, if they’re loyal to the covenant he’s making with them. He said, then you’ll be my special people. You’ll be a holy nation. You’ll be the people I will do special things for. You’ll be my people. And so that covenant in Mount Sinai was made to people who met the condition of keeping his covenant and obeying his voice. Now, some of the people of the family in later generations did so, but most did not. The ones who did so we refer to as the faithful remnant. They were the true children of Abraham. They were the true Israel of God. They were faithful. in reality, what the whole nation was supposed to be in theory. And this remnant throughout Old Testament history existed. But the majority of the people who were descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were apostate. They worshipped Baal. They worshipped Moloch. They died in rebellion against God. They weren’t God’s people. They had Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob’s blood in their veins. But remember when John the Baptist came, he said to the Jews, don’t think to say within yourselves we have Abraham as our ancestor. God From these stones could raise up children of Abraham. In other words, it doesn’t count for anything just to be descended from Abraham. God can make better descendants of Abraham from these stones than from you. It may be that you indeed do have a lineage going back to Abraham, but that doesn’t make you one of God’s people. And Jesus made that very clear when he’s talking to the Jews that hated him in John chapter 8. He says in verse 37, I know that you are Abraham’s descendants, which they thought was pretty important. He says, but you seek to kill me because my word has no place in you. Then he said in verse 39, if you were Abraham’s children, that is the real thing, you would do the works of Abraham. But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God. Abraham did not do that. So he’s saying, I know you’re descendants of Abraham, but you’re nothing. You’re not the children of Abraham. If you were the children of Abraham, you would have the same faith and behavior as Abraham. And then he says to the same people, a few verses later, he says, you are of your father, the devil, in verse 44. Now, some people have used that to make anti-Semitic statements. This is not anti-Semitic. Jesus’ disciples were Jewish. Jesus was Jewish. He was not against them. He was against those who were children of the devil. And by the way, he’s saying some of them were. Some of the Jews were. Not all the Jews were, but some of them were. Just like some Gentiles are, and not all of them are. So, the point here is that God’s people have always been the ones who had the faith of Abraham. Even if they had Jewish blood. It didn’t make them special to God. They might be in God’s sight children of the devil rather than children of Abraham. That’s what Jesus said. And so that’s why we see Jesus talking to the church in Smyrna in chapter 2 of Revelation in verse 9. He says, you know, I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews but are not, but are actually a synagogue of Satan. You know, the synagogue in Smyrna, the Jewish synagogue, was persecuting the Christians. He says, yeah, they say they’re Jews. I don’t recognize them as Jews. I see them as the synagogue of Satan. And he said the same thing of the synagogue in Philadelphia in Revelation 3.9. He said, indeed, I will make those of the synagogue of Satan who say they are Jews and are not, but lie. Indeed, I will make them come and worship before your feet. So Jesus said there are people who are called Jews. And they think they’re Jews, but as far as I’m concerned, they’re not. I see them as the synagogue of Satan. Just like Jesus said, you know, you’re not, if you’re children of Abraham, you do the works of Abraham, but you are actually the children of Satan instead. Why? Because their hearts were aligned with Satan. Children of God are those whose hearts are aligned with God. They’re loyal to God. They have faith in God. Paul put it this way in Romans chapter 2, verse 28 and 29. He said, he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, excuse me, Nor is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly. And circumcision is that of the heart and the spirit. So he says, just being outwardly physically Jewish, that doesn’t make you Jewish as far as God’s judging matters. You have to be a Jew inwardly. You have to have circumcision of the heart. And Paul said this to the Philippians, who, by the way, were mostly Gentiles. mostly Gentiles, there weren’t many Jews in the city of Philippi, according to Acts. And in Philippians chapter 3, when he’s writing to these Gentile believers, he said in verse 3, for we are the circumcision. Now, by the way, the term the circumcision was shorthand for the term Jews. Jews were circumcised and they were called Gentiles. The circumcision, Paul refers to the Jews as the circumcision. In Galatians also he says, now we are the circumcision who worship God in the spirit, who rejoice in Christ Jesus, and who have no confidence in the flesh. So those who rejoice in Jesus, those who worship in spirit and in truth like Jesus said, are the true Jewish, the true circumcision. That’s what Paul said. Now, you know, so we can say, well, who are God’s people? Well, they’re who they always were. God’s people have always been those who are loyal to God. This was true before there was a Jewish race, back in the days of Noah, in the days of Abel, the days of Enoch, the days of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. That was before there were Jews. And then the nation of Israel… began when they came out of Egypt and went to Mount Sinai, and God made a covenant that was based conditionally. You’ll be my people. You’ll be my holy nation if you obey my voice and if you keep my covenant. So obviously, within the nation of Israel, there were people who did, and we called them the faithful remnant, and there were people who didn’t, who Jesus calls children of the devil and the synagogue of Satan. So this is, you know, if we ask, well, who are the people of God? Well, they’re who they always were. from the days of Cain and Abel until this day. The people of God are the ones who have the faith of God, the faith in God, and who are loyal to God, who have allegiance to him, who are faithful. And so today, those people, we would call them Christians. But again, just like not all people who are called Jews really qualify, because not all people who are called Jews are circumcised in their hearts, are true Jews as far as the Bible says, but not everyone called a Christian is a real Christian either. You know, it’s not being part of a religion, the Jewish religion or the Christian religion. No one has ever been saved by being part of the Christian religion. Religion doesn’t save anyone. It’s Jesus who saves. You may have been born and raised in a Christian church and identified as a Christian all your life. But if you’re looking to a religion to save you, even the Christian religion, it won’t. God has never saved people through religion. It’s always through faith. It’s always through a relationship. Faith refers to a relationship. And that’s why Jesus said in Matthew chapter 7, verse 21 through 23, Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. but he who does the will of my Father in heaven. That speaks of them being loyal to him and keeping his commands. That was always a condition. And then he says, many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord. Now they’re calling Jesus Lord, so they must be popular Christians. Have we not prophesied in your name, in Jesus’ name, cast out demons in your name, and done many works in your name? And I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness. So here’s people who call themselves Christians. Just like the Bible says there’s people who call themselves Jews, but they’re really, you know, they’re not Jews in any sense that matters to God, that God would acknowledge. They’re children of the devil. Hey, the same thing is true of people who call themselves Christians. If you call yourself a Christian, but you don’t do the will of the Father, it will do you no good to say, Lord, we did everything we did in your name. And Jesus said, yeah, well, that’s a shame because I never knew you. Depart from me. So, again, we can’t say, well, the people who are really God’s people are the Christian religion. No, there’s a lot of Christian religious people who aren’t faithful to God. They haven’t surrendered their lives to Christ yet. They’re not his disciples, continuing his word. So the truth is, Kerry, that no one is really one of God’s people unless they’re obedient to Jesus Christ and devoted to him and allegiant to him.
SPEAKER 05 :
Well, you see what you did? You turned it all about following Christ.
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s all about Jesus. Always has been. Okay, God bless you, Kerry. Thanks for your call, bro. Bye now. Howard in Boise, Idaho. Welcome to The Narrow Path. Thanks for waiting.
SPEAKER 02 :
Hi, Steve. Hey, I love your thorough answers, even though you’ve only had three calls so far this hour.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, it takes a while. It takes a while for some of these. Yes.
SPEAKER 02 :
Okay, a few months ago, you mentioned a new perspective on Paul. Could you elaborate on that a little bit?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, people, when they talk about the new perspective on Paul, they’re usually talking about the works of N.T. Wright and some other theologians that he’s kind of in a N.T. Wright is very famous. He’s become famous in the past several decades. And the new perspective on Paul is only one of the things he’s famous for. Now, I’ve heard N.T. Wright speak numerous times. I’ve got a bunch of his books. I’ve read a few of them. The bigger ones are really too daunting. I haven’t really gotten into those. I’ve even read a book of his about Paul. But I have to say, I don’t know that he’d want me to be the one to represent exactly in detail what the new perspective on Paul is. What I would say is that when I began to hear N.T. Wright talk about Paul, I realized that he was kind of where I was, but I wasn’t sure if he was entirely where I was, and I’m still not sure. As a Baptist growing up, as a Calvary Chapel guy, as an evangelical since childhood, I was converted when I was four years old. I’ve been in the church and teaching the Bible since I was 16 and so forth. I always, as an evangelical, thought Paul’s message was mostly about how to go to heaven. He’s saying, okay, you need to be justified by faith, not by works. And what I thought that meant is if you believe in Jesus, when you die, you go to heaven. If you’re thinking something else is going to save you, when you die, you won’t go to heaven. Now, That may be true. I’m not saying that isn’t true. But that’s what I thought Paul’s basic message was, his justification by faith message. Now, before I ever heard of N.T. Wright or the New Perspective on Paul, I’ve taught through Romans dozens and dozens of times, and I had already come to see Paul’s message as different from my own studies of Romans. before I ever heard anyone talk about a new perspective on Paul. And what I came to see was that, of course, his message was the message of the kingdom, just like Jesus’ message was. And that when Paul was talking about justification, he wasn’t talking necessarily how to get a ticket to heaven. Now, I believe those who are justified will, in fact, be in heaven when they die. But I don’t think Paul had much to say about heaven. I don’t think Jesus had much to say about heaven. At least if you look for it in the teachings of Jesus and Paul, the idea of going to heaven is kind of alluded to in a couple of places in Jesus’ teaching and alluded to a few times in Paul. But the real emphasis was on being reconciled with God into a proper relationship, which is a submission to his lordship. There is no proper relationship with God that does not include submission to him. And this is something that I grew up thinking, well, no, you need to be saved by having a relationship with God. And that means you believe in Jesus. But to me, the idea of a relationship with God was never very much expanded on. And it wasn’t until I was older and studied the Bible myself that the message of the Bible is that Jesus is Lord. Jesus is King. God has appointed Jesus and commands all men everywhere to bow down to him. and to submit to him and to follow him. And that there’s no proper relationship with God, certainly no saving relationship with God, that does not include submission to him. And I mean total submission to him, not giving him a Sunday or a Wednesday night or something once in a while. Christ is our life, Paul said. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then we will appear with him in glory. You know, so… You know, a lot of people think they’re Christians because they’ve tagged Jesus onto whatever life they would live anyway, like a postage stamp. And they figure, or like a hand stamp, like to get back into an amusement park when you’ve left and come back in and show the stamp under a blacklight. And so, you know, it’s kind of a backstage pass into heaven. That’s not really what it is. Jesus is everything or else you’re in rebellion against him. There’s only two ways to be. When you’ve got a king. See, if he wasn’t a king, it would be a different matter. He could be your friend, your buddy. You could see him once in a while and still be on good terms. But no, he’s not that. He’s a king. He’s not less than a king. And that’s the message Paul preached. There’s another king when Jesus was his message. And, you know, if you’ve got a king, there’s two ways to be. Totally loyal and submitted to him. in all of your life are a rebel against the crown. And this is something that I personally believe that Paul taught that. And I don’t know that I’d say that, you know, if N.T. Wright was sitting here with me in the studio, he might say, well, Steve, that’s not entirely what I mean by a new perspective on Paul. And there’s no doubt many listeners who’ve read N.T. Wright more than I have. I have not gained any of my theology from him. I’ve only appreciated when listening to him that he has said some things that sound a lot like things I’ve been saying for years myself. So I can’t really argue that I know the new perspective on Paul that well, but I think that N.T. Wright would agree with me if I would simply say the new perspective on Paul has to do with reconciliation with God. being in a right relationship with God in his kingdom, submitting to him as a king, and not simply doing something that gets your sins expunged from the record so that you can go to heaven when you die. Now, I do believe in the expunging of sin from the record. if you’re in right relationship with God. I do believe you go to heaven when you die, if you’re in the right relationship with God. But that is hardly the focus of anything that Paul wrote or Jesus taught. So, I mean, it’s in there. It’s in there, but it’s not the focus. And I don’t think the new perspective on Paul is denying that. the idea of justification by faith as it has typically been understood, except I think that N.T. Wright, I think, would understand justification to have more of a, in the Jewish context, the idea that the nation is going to be justified in the sense of being returned to their kingdom status under Christ. but not in some eschatological sense, but in the sense that even now, any Jew or Gentile who comes to Christ properly has returned to God and his kingdom. Now, I don’t mean to frustrate any of you who are NT Wright scholars. You might say, Steve, you’re missing the whole point. His real point is X. And I’m not claiming to know what his real point is. Again, I’ve read him a little. I’ve heard him a few times. And like I said, I don’t think he’d want me to be the one to summarize his position. But that’s how I have reached my new perspective on Paul, which I think is not too far removed from how he teaches.
SPEAKER 02 :
Do you think that there would be some maturing, some growing into recognizing his lordship after salvation?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, that does happen to people, yes. I think that we have to understand His Lordship before we’re really, and submit to it, before we really are Christians. But God knows if we’re on that journey. You know, if we don’t understand that fully and we’ve just submitted to Him because someone told us that God wants us to do that, well, the very doing of what we think God wants us to do is the step in the direction of submission. And I believe that once we’re in the door, as it were, I think we learn. We just learn more. And if we’re loyal to God, as we learn more, we obey more, you know. We submit more. We conform more as we get a better understanding of things. So I would say that before I understood this stuff, I think I was really a Christian. I really was. I loved the Lord. And I was intending to please him. I just didn’t understand some of these things so well. And I don’t think I became a Christian when I understood them. because I already was pretty much submitted to Christ without knowing all this stuff. But there are people who aren’t submitted to Christ, and they have been given a somewhat denatured presentation of the gospel, in my opinion, which is sad, always sad. I’m sorry I’ve taken up so much time because I’m looking at a clock that says we’re almost totally out of time. But I appreciate your call, Howard. And, you know, Todd, you’ve been waiting a long time in Sacramento. I don’t know if you’ve got a question you can ask in one minute, but if so, we can deal with it. Go ahead.
SPEAKER 06 :
Yeah, thanks for taking my call. See, I have been a Christian since I was 16. I’m now 61. I’ve pretty much been going to Calvary Chapel all my life. And, by the way, I really appreciate your candidness about being Calvary Chapel for as long as you were. My question to you, I just recently listened to, what was it, one of your lectures about replacement theology and Pastor Higgs. And, man, I was blown away. I really appreciate that. You did it well. My question is… Should I stay with Calvary Chapel? Should I look for a church that teaches an all-millennialist point of view? Well, I’ll tell you what.
SPEAKER 03 :
I have to give you a real brief answer here, unfortunately. Let’s talk longer. I would not say leave Calvary Chapel unless they make you leave. And they may not. They would make me leave because I’m a teacher and I don’t teach what they teach. But they may not make you leave. And I would say if you’ve got relationships with the body of Christ there, I would stay there as long as you’re welcome there. Unless, of course, you become very irked by some emphasis that just makes you leave church every week thinking, oh, I can’t stand it. But, you know, Calvary Chapel teaches a lot of really good things. And unless you get on to a pastor who’s just all about eschatology and got nothing else to talk about, I think Calvary Chapel can be a relatively healthy environment. So I wouldn’t say leave. Now, you may eventually leave if you have reason. But, no, I wouldn’t say if you disagree, you have to leave. I’m sorry I’m out of time. You’ve been listening to The Narrow Path, our website, thenarrowpath.com.
