Paul’s Message for the Gentiles: New Teachings

SPEAKER 01 : 0:01

Greetings to the brightest audience in the country and welcome to Bob and Yart Live. As we close out our second to last week on KLTT Radio, I find myself reflecting more and more on the incredible journey God has given through this ministry. from my father, Pastor Bob Enyart, starting this program decades ago, and to touching all the lives that were touched through these airwaves, through all the projects that we have done, through putting the sign on the mountain, through burning O.J. Simpson’s memorabilia, to protesting Bill Clinton, right? And now, to me, speaking with you in these final days, it has all been such a blessing. And yet, though this chapter is closing, the work of god through this ministry is not closing right the youtube channel the anyart theology youtube channel the real science radio youtube channel kgov.com and the hundreds of thousands of downloads and the millions and millions of views god is using these platforms to reach so many to edify believers to share the gospel with the lost who may never have listened to Christian radio before. And so I pray that you guys join us in this next chapter at kgov.com, at the Enyart Theology YouTube channel, at the Real Science Radio YouTube channel, that you get our Bible studies at www.enyart.shop. right and that uh we can really do a good job honoring and glorifying christ and that we can produce high quality content to reach millions and millions more this high quality content it is costly to produce so if you’re able please subscribe please donate one time or monthly at anyart.shop or most of all please pray for us My email is enyarttheology at gmail.com if you want to reach out. And as a parting gift to our beloved KLTT audience, we have been sharing the plot Bible overview. It is the life’s work of my father, Pastor Bob Enyart. And today we bring you segment number six. This is the sixth segment to air here on KLTT Radio. You do not want to miss this. This is not anywhere else, only on KLTT Radio, not available online, not on a podcast. It is online, but it’s behind a paywall. This is the only place that it’s free. You do not want to miss this. This is segment number six. Let’s jump right into it. The plot, Bible overview.

SPEAKER 02 : 2:32

He promised us a kingdom. But don’t be so sure you’re going to get it because if we’re evil, God will cut us off and he will not give us the kingdom he promised us. And what was their response? That is hopeless. We will walk according to our own plans and we will, everyone, obey the dictates of his own heart. We’re not going to listen to you, Jeremiah. And look at verse 18. They didn’t like Jeremiah for saying this. And they devised a plan against him. And they said, we’re Israel. We have the priesthood. We have the prophets. We have the law. We can’t be cut off. We’re the chosen people. We’re not going to buy this threat. This is not true. Here’s what they said. Jeremiah 18, 18. Then they said, come and let us devise plans against Jeremiah. For the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet. Come and let us attack him with the tongue and let us not give heed to any of his words. They viewed this as an idle threat. Does God make idle threats? He doesn’t. If he says to Israel, if you are evil, I will cut you off. I will not give you the kingdom that I promised to you. We should take God at his word and believe that God is willing to cut off Israel if they reject him. Now, God was focusing. He was heading toward a point in history where when the Messiah would come. God knew that that was essential to establish a kingdom because men were evil and it was Christ’s death and resurrection that enabled God to truly forgive men of their sins and to empower them to live a righteous life. So God wanted to establish a kingdom, but not before Christ died and rose from the dead, after. And that’s the timeline that’s revealed in the Old Testament prophecies about what God would do when the Messiah would come and when he would establish his kingdom. It was after the Messiah came, not before.

SPEAKER 01 : 4:56

Quick pause. You might not know this, but my dad, Bob Enyart, recorded more than 2,000 hours of Bible teachings, both studies like this one and verse-by-verse and topical studies. It’s all at enyart.shop in the Bob Enyart Bible Study subscription audio. A crazy good deal. Okay, back to the study.

SPEAKER 02 : 5:17

And that’s the timeline that’s revealed in the Old Testament prophecies about what God would do when the Messiah would come and when he would establish his kingdom. It was after the Messiah came, not before. In fact, it was 1,000 years, almost exactly 1,000 years before Christ’s birth that King David established the throne in Jerusalem. 1,000 years before. And God was looking forward to a time where there would be a 1,000 year reign of Christ from Jerusalem afterward in righteousness. But the first 1,000 years of Israel’s kingdom out of Jerusalem on David’s throne would be a disaster. And it was. but there would be a parallelism. And on the other side of Christ’s incarnation, there’d be another thousand years of righteousness prevailing. So that was God’s overall plan for Israel. But the warning continued through the prophets. If you’re evil, I will not give you that kingdom if you’re evil. So repent. Now, If the church cannot get judging right, what are the chances they’re going to figure any of this out? What a tragedy. And it all goes back to misunderstanding God. God can’t change. He’s the almighty stagnant God. So if God can’t change, if he says I’m going to destroy Nineveh, then he has to destroy it. Yeah, but he doesn’t. Well, that’s a theological problem that we could resolve. You see, it was a figure of speech. He never really planned to destroy it. He only said he would to mislead someone. Who is he trying to mislead? We have to believe that God is a living God who can change, who is alive and free. And if we’re willing to believe that, then there’s a chance that we can understand the Bible and the plot of the Bible. There’s a chance. I’d like to show you where Jesus makes the same threat in the New Testament. In Luke chapter 13. We just spent some time to establish that God could have a plan. He could reveal the plan, think the plan, and then not follow through with it. Not because he’s weak, not because he’s evil, but because he’s God and he’s righteous. And establishing that principle in the Old Testament led us to culminate in Jeremiah 18, where God says it explicitly regarding Israel. That if Israel’s evil, he will cut them off. He will not bless them. If he doesn’t get the fruit that he’s looking for from Israel, if they don’t put their faith in God, if there’s no fruit from this relationship, then he’s going to end it. He’s going to cut them off. Now let’s look at it in Luke 13, verse 6. Jesus spoke this parable. A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, “‘Look, for three years I’ve come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none.'” That’s a nice story, parable. What does it mean? Is it difficult to interpret Christ’s parables? Most of them are pretty straightforward. He uses symbolism that’s usually as clear as day. And here, this is the parable of the fig tree. So what does the fig tree symbolize in the Bible? Israel. Thank you, Jim. He said it the same time I said it. Israel. And I’ll give you some examples. In the plot manuscript, we give many examples. But Joel 1.7, God says, “…a nation has ruined my fig tree.” Referring to Israel’s destruction. Hosea 9.10, “…I found Israel like the fig tree.” Jeremiah 24, 5, these good figs are Judah and the bad figs are Jerusalem. Jeremiah 29, 17, the Lord will make Israel like rotten figs. Also, the vine is used as a symbol of Israel. The vine. Because the vine and the fig tree, they both sprout from the ground beneath Israel, from the soil of the land of the Jews. And God expected Israel, the people of the promised land, to bear fruit to him. He expected them to bear fruit just as the vine and the fig tree bear fruit in the land. Working with these symbols, God would sometimes bless or curse the fruit of the vine in order to communicate his regard for Israel and whether he’s going to bless or curse them. And God uses good fruit and bad fruit in prophecy to represent Israel’s spirituality and his resultant intention toward them. If Israel is obeying, God said, you are the good fruit of the land and there’ll be an overabundant harvest. But if Israel’s wicked, there is bad fruit and I will curse the fruit. So the fig tree parable regards Israel. We’ll see later in the seminar that Jesus Christ came to Israel. In fact, we’ll read that he was not sent except to Israel. We’ll see that in Matthew 15, that Jesus Christ said, I was not sent except to Israel. And that’s why his message, sometimes we read the things he wrote and we scratch our heads. That doesn’t sound exactly, you know, the way we say it. And there’s all kinds of difficulties. You could find books called like the difficult sayings of Jesus. where he taught things to Israel that somewhat confuse us. Well, Jesus came teaching and preaching to Israel. And in this parable, a certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard. The vineyard is the world, as we read in other parables, like Matthew 13, 38. The vineyard is the world. The fig tree is Israel. He planted it and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. Now, who is the man that planted the fig tree? Jesus Christ. And did Jesus Christ ever come to Israel? He sure did. And was he looking for faith in Israel? He sure was. He was looking for fruit. And did he find it? He didn’t. How long had he been there looking for fruit in Israel? How long was his earthly ministry before he was cut down? Three years. Three years. The Gospels tell us that he was 30 years old when he began his public ministry. And by tracing his events and the Feast of Israel, we could see that three years later he was crucified. So for three years, verse 7, then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, which is if we want to use the symbolism, the Holy Spirit. Then he said to the keeper of his vineyard, look, for three years I’ve come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down. Why does it use up the ground? But he answered and said to him, sir, let it alone this year also until I dig around it and fertilize it. And if it bears fruit, well, but if not, after that, you can cut it down. The prophecies throughout the latter half of the Old Testament are about God establishing a kingdom for Israel. And if Israel was evil, if they bore no fruit, then God would cut them down. And we’ll see later in the seminar that in Romans 11, Paul explains. He’s explicit. Israel was cut off for unbelief and the Gentiles were grafted in. He’s explicit that that happened at some point. Had that happened at this point, when Jesus is speaking at the end of his three-year ministry on earth, and he tells the parable of the fig tree, look, for three years I’ve come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none, cut it down. Sir, let it alone this year also, that I might fertilize around it, And if it does well, great. But after one year, if there’s still no fruit, then cut it down. So after Christ’s three year ministry, what happened to fertilize Israel that should have produced fruit? What happened after three years? Well, the Holy Spirit was given. The Holy Spirit was given to everyone who would believe so that the fruit of the Spirit might convert the whole land. That’s what God was looking for. But after the Holy Spirit was given and the apostles and their converts in Jerusalem started preaching the gospel, the response of the nation was utter rejection. There were a handful who repented, but the leaders, The king, the chief priest, the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees rejected as a whole. And the community as a whole rejected Jesus Christ. And the rejection, the persecution increased and increased to such a fevered pitch that by the time we get to Acts chapter 7, we meet a man named Stephen. And that Stephen, a Christian, was murdered. He was martyred by the Jews for his faith in Jesus Christ. That was a turning point at which God said, enough. I promise to plant a kingdom, to build, to establish a kingdom for you. I sent my son, you killed him. I fertilized the message in the land with the Holy Spirit. And instead of fruit, when I expected to receive good fruit, all I get is this hatred and rebellion. I’m cutting you off. And at that point, he cut off Israel and grafted in the Gentiles. And it was because there was such a dramatic change that happened in history that we see that the 12 ended up having doctrinal tensions with Paul because Paul would go out among the Gentiles and he would preach his gospel. And he said, you don’t have to get circumcised. You don’t have to keep the law. And he had tremendous success. Whereas the 12 in Jerusalem, they had some success the first year, but after that, it was pretty much downhill. And they were teaching the law. Now, did Israel have the law in their covenant from God or no? Certainly, Israel had the law. God gave the law to Israel and through Israel. Moses came down from Mount Sinai with a covenant of, was it law or grace? I seem to forget at the moment. Law. Law. Moses came down with two tablets of law. Israel was under the law. When Jesus Christ preached to Israel for three years, did he preach law or grace or both? Before we answer that, the covenant of law that God established with Israel, it was undergirded by grace because no one could get to heaven apart from the grace of God available through the blood of Christ. No one, because we’re all sinners and we cannot keep the law. But the covenant of law truly was a covenant of law. And even though there was grace for where Israel failed, it was still a covenant of law by which they had to do good works and keep the law. That was the repeated command for centuries. Keep the law, do the law, the major commands of the law and the lesser commands of the law. All the way from circumcision, one of the chief laws, down to tithing, one of the least. And of course you can sum it all up in the 10 commandments, or you could sum them up and love God and love your neighbor, but it’s all part of the law. That’s what Jesus preached. In three years of ministry, publicly proclaiming the gospel and privately sharing with his 12, do the four gospels ever once record him mentioning the word grace? Can you find it anywhere in the four gospels that Jesus uttered the word grace? Not once. Not once. How about the word law or commandment or ordinance or regulation or Moses? We find those over 100 times in the four gospels, frequently from the mouth of Christ himself. Jesus came teaching the law. If he came teaching grace, it was an oversight. He forgot to mention that. But Christ had no such oversights. He said, and I referred to the verses earlier, but you have to keep the law and teach the law, the greater matters of the law, the lesser matters of the law. He who teaches the law and the prophets will be greatest. He who does not will be least. And that’s a repeated and consistent theme. In the manuscript, we list all the verses that show it, many of them. Wow. So if Jesus came teaching the law, which was Israel’s covenant, they were the people of the law, the people of circumcision. Jesus Christ was circumcised. He was on the eighth day, according to the law. Perhaps we’ll look at that verse later. He came teaching the law to Israel. The 12 received the teachings of the law. The rich young ruler said to Jesus, what must I do to be saved? He said, keep the commandments. That’s new. That’s different. Christians don’t say that these days, do they? Somebody is there for a service and they say, well, how do I become a Christian? Keep the commandments. That’s never said. Praise the Lord that it’s never said. But it’s never said today. But you ask a Christian, why don’t you say that? Because Jesus said it and they start stammering. Because there’s a difference between law and grace. It just so happens there’s a difference. What was the dispute between Paul and the 12 regarding all their converts? What was it? The 12 in Jerusalem were preaching law. Keep the law. The dietary law, the Sabbath, the circumcision, keep the law. And Paul was teaching all those Gentiles, do not keep the law. That’s what he was teaching them. Now, did the 12 disagree with Paul? Did the 12 say, Paul, you shouldn’t teach them that? No. In fact, they wrote a letter because they wanted to clarify it. And they said, you Gentiles do not have to keep the law or be circumcised. But we here in Jerusalem, we have the 12 and our converts, every one of us were all zealous for the law. Paul was teaching grace and grace alone. Only grace, apart from law. He went so far as to say, you are saved if you have no works. You know how James said that if you, he who, James 2, 14, it’s a passage that Christians have battled about for centuries. And it’s a verse that not one Baptist church has ever put this verse on a plaque. Anywhere in the world. And I love the Baptists. And I’m closer to Baptists than any other denomination. But let’s see. Well, I said 14, but why don’t we do… Let’s see. I’d rather do verse 24. Verse 24. Has this verse ever appeared on any plaque in any Baptist church? James 2.24. You see then that a man is justified by works and not by faith only. Hmm. It’s never made it to a plaque. Never. Paul says in Romans 4.5 that the man who is justified is he who has no works and See, a lot of Christians say James means if you are a Christian, you will have works. Some Christians say you need the works to get saved. Others say if you are saved, you will have the works. They have to be there. They’re the evidence that you were saved. But Paul says that he who is justified has no works. Romans 4.5. Let’s look at it real quickly. Romans 4.5. What I’m trying to show you is that the tension in the verses in the Bible between doctrinal proof text and problem text, that there are hundreds and hundreds, even thousands of verses, if you add them all up, that seem to contradict, that that tension is all worse than we imagined. It’s really severe, and it’s everywhere. Romans 4, verse 5 says, Paul writes, to him who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness. Notice, to him who does not work. If you do not have good works, you can be justified, Paul writes. That’s the ultimate antithesis of what James puts in 224, that a man is justified if he has good works and not by faith alone. Now, those are problem passages. The ones are proof text for somebody and a problem text for someone else. And you could swap them depending on what side of whatever issue you come down on. What if you can openly and heartily endorse them both on the surface and you say they’re both right as they appear to say what they say? And you don’t have to discover a deep or obscure meaning, but they’re simply right, both of them. Because God had a plan for Israel, and that plan was based on the law. And he was not going to abolish the law when Christ came. Rather, Christ said, I have not come to abolish, but to fulfill. And he taught the law. And after he rose from the dead, he said, go and teach all men everywhere to obey everything that I’ve commanded you. And part of what he commanded is keep the law, the greater matters and the lesser matters. Back in Isaiah, God is speaking of the time of the kingdom on earth where the Messiah would reign. And he says, I will exalt the law and make it honorable. God was not doing away with the law for Israel. It’s part of his overall and eternal plan for Israel. But Israel rejected their king. So God cut them off. And then God turned to the Gentiles. And that’s what created this whole hullabaloo, this difficulty, these debates. What is it? Is it law or is it grace? Paul’s out there doing grace. We’re here doing law. Every time they get together, there’s conflict. Paul goes to Jerusalem. Paul, there’s trouble. Our followers are going to hear that you’ve come. There’s going to be uproar. We need you to keep the law. Not your converts. Let them do their thing. That’s fine. But you’re here in Jerusalem. Keep the law. Peter comes to Antioch. Now he’s in Paul’s territory.

SPEAKER 01 : 27:19

Stop the tape. Stop the tape. That was segment number six of the plot Bible overview. My father and predecessor, Bob Enyart, he poured his life out into this study, into helping people in general understand the big picture of scripture and sharing that with you as we say goodbye as a parting gift. to the KLTT audience. And KLTT, it means the world to me. Even as we leave this station, this ministry is reaching further than ever with the YouTube channels that we’ve mentioned, Any Art Theology and Real Science Radio and the daily podcast at kgov.com. with hundreds of thousands of downloads we pray that you can join us for that on all of those uh platforms by visiting www.nyart.shop to get the full plot study right and uh kgov.com uh and that you can support us as we continue to reach millions of people both believers and unbelievers alike that you could subscribe to the channels that you could donate especially monthly donations those give us some security or best of all pray for us your prayer and support it it means so much to us and allows us to continue more than any donation ever could my email is nyarttheology gmail.com if you have any questions about this transition or if you just want to share some fun memories from our time here on KLTT. Hey, my name is Dominic Enyart reminding you to do right and risk the consequences.