NXR Podcast - BONUS - Those Who Say “This World Is Not Our Home” To Justify Avoiding Cultural/Political Issues
Aired: 2022-11-03
Duration: 58:21


=== Misinterpreting Scripture Objections (05:28) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey guys, real quick before we get started, I have a small request.
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[00:00:17]  Thanks.
[00:00:18]  All right, welcome back to another live Monday QA with myself, Pastor Joel Webbin, with Right Response Ministries.
[00:00:24]  We do this every Monday at noon, 12 p.m. Central Time, every Monday at 12 p.m. Central Time.
[00:00:30]  I'm going to go ahead and just jump right into it.
[00:00:32]  I've got a few announcements that I'll make along the way, but Today's topic, what I want to address is one of the most common objections that you'll hear people use, which I believe is a misinterpretation, a twisting of the scripture.
[00:00:47]  But they'll use this in order to assuage their guilty consciences and justify their uninvolvement, their outright avoidance of being engaged biblically with certain cultural and political issues in the world today.
[00:01:05]  What people will say.
[00:01:07]  Is they'll say, well, this world is not our home.
[00:01:10]  And they'll use verses in the New Testament that speak of Christians as strangers in this world, aliens in this world, sojourners.
[00:01:20]  Those are the words that the New Testament does, in fact, use to describe New Testament Christians and their present placement in this world.
[00:01:30]  The Bible does use those terms, but those terms are misused by those who are basically just against post millennialism.
[00:01:39]  They're basically individuals who want to say there is no culture war.
[00:01:43]  At this point, that rhetoric has kind of fallen to the wayside.
[00:01:47]  You don't hear a lot of Christians using that any longer.
[00:01:50]  It's pretty much impossible to ignore at this point when you have our culture and politics trying to trans kids, putting CRT curriculum in our schools.
[00:02:02]  You've got Drag Queen, not just Drag Queen Story Hour, but Drag Queen bars with.
[00:02:09]  Children attending, you know, stripping and these kinds of things.
[00:02:13]  You, of course, still have abortion by God's grace.
[00:02:16]  Roe was overturned, but even with the overturning of Roe, not only does abortion still happen, and certain blue states are trying to become sanctuary states where someone from a more conservative state that bans abortion can fly over there on taxpayer dollars, their travel, their lodging, and the procedure, aka the murder of their baby in the womb, all funded by these.
[00:02:40]  Blue states.
[00:02:41]  So you have all these things happening, but in abortion, it's not just that it's still happening and you have sanctuary states now, but you also have a ton of Christians and a ton of pastors that were just deafening.
[00:02:57]  They modeled a deafening silence when Roe was overturned.
[00:03:00]  They didn't say a single word.
[00:03:03]  And some people, sadly, even came out and said, you know, now is not the time for Christians to be beating their chest, you know, or using, you know, rewording a little bit, tweaking it so it's not.
[00:03:15]  Quite so obvious, but essentially, you know, misusing Romans chapter 12 and saying, well, we're called to mourn with those who mourn.
[00:03:22]  You know, Christians are called to weep alongside those murderous pagans who are weeping over the loss of their legal right to murder their own children, right?
[00:03:32]  That's in the Bible.
[00:03:33]  So you've got all these things going on.
[00:03:35]  Because of that, it's almost impossible to deny that there is a serious culture war, a war for the culture going on in our nation.
[00:03:47]  It's hard for any Christian that even barely resembles a conservative biblical view to deny that there are serious political problems, that we have political extremism on the left, not the right.
[00:04:02]  That's a joke.
[00:04:03]  That's gaslighting.
[00:04:04]  But that leftists and progressives are extreme and have ramped up their policies and ramped up their rhetoric and all these different things.
[00:04:14]  So that's getting very difficult for people to deny these days.
[00:04:17]  So most people are willing to say, yeah, there is a culture war.
[00:04:21]  And there are some very concerning, disheartening things happening in our political system with our government, the state continuing to turn further and further away from God's standard and God's truth.
[00:04:35]  Yes, these things are happening, but this ultimately isn't what the Christian faith is about.
[00:04:41]  This should not be our focus.
[00:04:44]  This is not what Christians need to be spending their resources and time and energy and giftings towards.
[00:04:51]  And that's because this world is not our home.
[00:04:55]  That's the line, right?
[00:04:56]  That's the line that you'll hear again and again.
[00:04:58]  This world is not our home.
[00:05:01]  You can even find the bumper stickers or on the back of a car window, the N O T W, right?
[00:05:08]  Not of this world.
[00:05:10]  And that's been a popular sentiment for decades in our nation with the rise of the premillennial eschatology, especially not so much a historic premillennialism, but the rise of dispensational premillennialism.
[00:05:25]  The boomer generation, you know, that would say, not of this world.

=== The Creation Longing for Healing (03:52) ===

[00:05:28]  And then they'd also have a bumper sticker that says, I'm spending my children's inheritance, right?
[00:05:34]  Which is biblically a very wicked thing, much less, or even more so, I should say, to be prideful about that.
[00:05:42]  To do that is sinful, but to boast of that, to not have any shame about publicly sharing that information is extremely wicked.
[00:05:51]  And so, with the rise of dispensationalism and the premillennial.
[00:05:56]  Eschatology, the Left Behind series, all these different things arise of radical two kingdom theology where the break, the divide between the two kingdoms is not the kingdom of light and darkness, as the scripture says, but rather it's a line, a distinction between a kingdom that is sacred and common.
[00:06:18]  And the sacred things are the church, the people of God, the saints, and the church's ministry of word and sacrament.
[00:06:27]  This is sacred.
[00:06:28]  And then Everything outside of that, including politics and governments and arts and culture and science and medicine and vocation and economics and markets and all these things, is just common, right?
[00:06:41]  It's all common.
[00:06:42]  And this idea that the world is literally going to dissolve like snow.
[00:06:46]  Peter talks about this in one of his epistles, but taking a very literal physical interpretation of that, that God is not restoring the physical cosmos, but he's going to render to his physical creation.
[00:07:00]  That he loves in love, he's going to render to it a mercy killing.
[00:07:06]  Instead of restoring it, redeeming it, redeeming the world, the physical world, God is just going to take the world out behind the woodshed and put it down, right?
[00:07:14]  He's going to annihilate and dissolve, disintegrate this world.
[00:07:19]  And so the new heavens and the new earth is not an earth made new and the heavens come to this earth and this earth restored, but rather a whole new earth because this one will be completely, literally, physically disintegrated and annihilated.
[00:07:35]  Because Christ is not restoring the creation that cries out with eager groans of eager expectations for the sons of God to be revealed.
[00:07:44]  Radical two kingdom theology, Van Druden, these kinds of guys would say that creation is crying out, not because the sons of God, in their revealing and their exaltation, the creation itself will be exalted also and relieved from the curse of sin and restored as Christ restores all things, but rather the creation is groaning with eager expectations for the sons of God to be revealed because in the revelation of the sons of God and the end of this church age, the creation will give way to the sons of God.
[00:08:14]  It'll be put out of its misery by the Lord.
[00:08:16]  Again, a mercy killing, annihilated.
[00:08:19]  Completely disintegrated, done away with.
[00:08:22]  So the creation is not longing for its healing.
[00:08:25]  The creation is longing for its death.
[00:08:28]  It's longing for its destruction, that it could be put out of its misery.
[00:08:32]  Right now it's in pain.
[00:08:33]  It's groaning in pain, and Christ is not going to heal it.
[00:08:37]  But Christ, like an animal on the side of the road that got hit by a car that's not dead, but beyond repair, you know, the most merciful thing that you could do is just.
[00:08:50]  Is just get back in your car, put it in reverse, and run it over again.
[00:08:54]  That's the radical two kingdom view.
[00:08:57]  You couple that with things like dispensationalism, which most radical two kingdom guys are covenantal for the record, to be fair to their position.
[00:09:05]  So I'm not saying that everybody's holding all three of these positions of pre mill, dispensational, and radical two kingdom, but a mix of these different things, depending which side of the aisle you're on in regards primarily to your covenant theology and how reformed you are and those kinds of things.

=== First Table of Law Standards (15:37) ===

[00:09:20]  And so the point is, but because of those three doctrines, And just the way that our culture has been heading for a very long time, the fact that we have surrendered all of our major institutions, which is sad enough, but the church has not just surrendered institutions,
[00:09:36]  the church has, for at least a couple generations now, I'd say two generations, we've surrendered our own families, not just institutions, but we've surrendered our own children by giving them to the state and by sending them to public school so that we can rely on our wives for a second income.
[00:09:59]  All these kinds of things by handing our kids over to the state, the way that we assuage our conscience with these things, and the way that we excuse and justify our actions of handing over institutions, of not having a 500 year plan to think multi generational, restoring the new Christendom, these kinds of things, but rather just simply retreating from culture, retreating from politics, retreating from institutions.
[00:10:28]  The way that we justify it is we say, we are sojourners.
[00:10:32]  We're strangers in a foreign land.
[00:10:34]  We are aliens in a place that is ultimately not our home.
[00:10:39]  This is not our home.
[00:10:40]  We are not of this world.
[00:10:41]  Our citizenship is in heaven.
[00:10:45]  And I would argue that obviously there is a grain of truth in these things.
[00:10:50]  This is biblical language, but again, it's been twisted.
[00:10:53]  And to give the benefit of the doubt, to be as charitable as possible, I think many Christians, without malice, intentionally trying to twist these texts, I think that many Christians simply.
[00:11:04]  If not malice, have simply ignorance and just misunderstand these texts.
[00:11:08]  And so, what I want to address is this.
[00:11:10]  I think the way we can get to the bottom of it, right?
[00:11:12]  If you are somebody who wants to restore Christendom, knowing that Christendom has historic failures in the past, but at the end of the day, it's not whether, but which.
[00:11:21]  There will be a theos, there will be a God.
[00:11:24]  At the end of the day, the state, if there's no God above the state, it's not because the state and the public square is now a neutral place that's non religious.
[00:11:34]  No, if there's no God above the state, it's because the state is.
[00:11:37]  God, demos becomes the God rather than theos, God being the God.
[00:11:41]  So if you understand that principle that it's not whether but which, that there's neutrality is a myth, that all laws and legislation and all these kinds of things are by necessity moral, it's always moral.
[00:11:53]  There is no moral neutrality.
[00:11:56]  If you understand these things and therefore you're saying, yeah, Christendom has its failures, but Christendom on its worst day, even with the Spanish Crusades, Christendom with its largest failures and its Its worst day can't even come close to putting up the death toll numbers to be able to compete with the death toll of secular humanism.
[00:12:18]  Over 60 million, 63 million, and counting dead children in the last 49 years in our nation, just our nation alone, because of abortion.
[00:12:27]  Right?
[00:12:28]  So you just do the math.
[00:12:29]  And what we're saying is we're saying neutrality is a myth.
[00:12:34]  And the idea of a libertarian view of politics is.
[00:12:38]  A myth because neutrality is a myth.
[00:12:40]  That's not going to work.
[00:12:43]  We have to teach, we have to exercise power.
[00:12:46]  The state has been given power by God.
[00:12:47]  It's a divine institution, it's been divinely instituted by God.
[00:12:51]  So the question is, by what standard?
[00:12:54]  By what standard?
[00:12:55]  And every state is going to be religious.
[00:12:57]  You could say, well, the standard is the second table of the law, right?
[00:13:01]  In the Ten Commandments, commandment number five through ten, right?
[00:13:04]  That deal with how we should love our neighbor.
[00:13:07]  That this should be the standard for the state.
[00:13:10]  And I would agree and say that's a really good start.
[00:13:13]  That's certainly what the state should do.
[00:13:14]  Eventually, though, we will have to talk about the first table of the law.
[00:13:18]  We will have to talk about idolatry.
[00:13:20]  We will have to talk about these things.
[00:13:21]  And we resist idolatry in the sphere of the church, first and foremost, by biblical faithful preaching and fulfilling the Great Commission.
[00:13:29]  But we also resist idolatry in the sphere of our homes by godly fathers and husbands washing their wives in the word and catechizing, training up their children in the fear and admonition of the Lord.
[00:13:39]  But the state also, I believe, has a responsibility to resist, to suppress.
[00:13:44]  Heresies, which is what the Westminster Confession of Faith says, to suppress all heresies, and that it's going to help serve as a guard against idolatry and these kinds of things, because at the end of the day, it's not whether but which, right?
[00:14:00]  It's either the Christian God, I believe that the triune God, the Christian God, should be the public God of the nation of America and every other nation for that matter.
[00:14:10]  I do believe that the nation should be Christian.
[00:14:12]  That doesn't mean each individual person.
[00:14:14]  In the nation will be regenerate, will truly be born again and be a Christian.
[00:14:19]  And it doesn't mean that we should live in a way that is oppressive towards those who are non Christians.
[00:14:23]  It's not through coercion, it needs to be through persuasion, trying to cut hearts with the spiritual sword that cuts men to the hearts.
[00:14:31]  And by God's grace, they're given new hearts by the Spirit and the gifts of faith and repentance.
[00:14:36]  And for those who are not saved, we're not saying that they should be rounded up and placed in internment camps, but we are saying that this nation, whether you're a Christian or not, This is a Christian nation, and that this should be the goal.
[00:14:48]  And we adhere to the second table of the law in regards to how we treat our fellow man, how we should love our neighbor, but also the first table of the law because the alternative is simply to be a Buddhist nation or a Muslim nation or some other religious nation.
[00:15:03]  Or people think, again, it goes back to the myth of neutrality.
[00:15:06]  They think, well, we just shouldn't have any laws dealing with man's relationship with God, his relationship with his fellow man.
[00:15:14]  The state should regulate and legislate and enforce.
[00:15:18]  Horizontal laws, love for neighbor, but not love for God, because then the state would have to choose a God.
[00:15:24]  And my point is if the state chooses no God, so people say, well, it shouldn't be the triune God in the first table of law.
[00:15:30]  We shouldn't have blasphemy laws, you know, we shouldn't have Sabbath laws, we shouldn't have these kinds of things.
[00:15:35]  It should be perfectly legal for there to be a mosque, you know, in a Christian nation, or a nation shouldn't be Christian, and so there should be mosques and there should be Buddhist temples and there should be all these different things.
[00:15:45]  And I would say, no, no, that should not be the case.
[00:15:50]  A nation is either going to pick the Christian God or a false God, or it's going to claim on paper, it's going to say that it chooses no God, which again puts us right back to where we've been for a very long time, which is secular humanism.
[00:16:03]  But secular humanism is a religion, and it does have certain gods, and it does have certain Sacraments and it does have certain priests and it does have certain orthodoxy, and anything outside of that orthodoxy is considered blasphemy.
[00:16:15]  If you think blasphemy laws are going to get us in trouble and cause more harm than good, just realize that for the last two and a half years, we have had very strict blasphemy laws in our nation, right?
[00:16:27]  You could quickly, at a moment's notice, be canceled because you said something that was wrong, right?
[00:16:33]  You said something that actually turned out to be true.
[00:16:36]  It's not even that you said something that was harmful or damaging or Or false, or deceptive, or duplicitous.
[00:16:43]  You actually said something that is categorically true and now universally recognized as true, or at least by the majority of people, but you just said it too soon, right?
[00:16:53]  Like the difference between a conspiracy and the truth is about three to six months, right?
[00:16:57]  That's been the running joke for the last two and a half years.
[00:16:59]  Well, there are a ton of people who they were canceled, they lost their livelihoods, they lost their jobs, they lost friendships and relationships, they lost their reputation and institutional credibility.
[00:17:09]  That is a blasphemy law.
[00:17:10]  So, again, it's not whether, but which.
[00:17:12]  And classical liberalism is not going to work long term.
[00:17:16]  It's a step up from libertarianism, but it's not going to work long term.
[00:17:20]  What I'm ultimately suggesting and advocating for is that first, the state abide by God's standard in regards to the second table of the law, commandments number five through ten, how we relate to our fellow neighbor, to our fellow man.
[00:17:36]  But eventually, when I say eventually, I don't mean within two years.
[00:17:39]  I like what Doug Wilson says.
[00:17:40]  He says, probably about a couple hundred years.
[00:17:42]  What should the state do in regards to the first table of the law?
[00:17:45]  Have no other gods before me, right?
[00:17:47]  That's the first four commandments.
[00:17:48]  Have no other gods before me.
[00:17:50]  Do not make any graven images.
[00:17:52]  Do not take the Lord's name in vain.
[00:17:54]  So that would be blasphemy laws.
[00:17:55]  And then remember the Sabbath and keep it holy.
[00:17:57]  What should the state do in regards to the first table of the law, the first four, the Ten Commandments?
[00:18:02]  Well, what the state should do is for the first couple hundred years, like 200 years, is what Wilson has said with his idea of mere Christendom.
[00:18:10]  He said, I think the state shouldn't legislate or enforce the first table of the law, but simply it should seek to obey it, right?
[00:18:17]  Because who's most likely to commit blasphemy on a major national level?
[00:18:24]  Is it the individual who lives in Timbuktu, you know, in a town that's, you know, with a population of 247 people, that he's going to say that Jesus isn't Lord and that that's going to cause an uproar and upset whole households and all?
[00:18:39]  Or is it the state and their blasphemy, their idolatry?
[00:18:42]  Right, so maybe the state before enforcing the first table of the law should simply obey the first table of the law, model obedience to that, and we have time.
[00:18:51]  That's the beauty of the post millennial eschatology is that we can do these things slowly, right?
[00:18:56]  Make haste slowly.
[00:18:57]  So, my point is with all these things, this is what Christians are starting to advocate for.
[00:19:02]  And some Christians are using the label Christian nationalists, which again, I've said that I wouldn't pick that term out of a hat, but it's a term that I'm willing to work with.
[00:19:11]  I do think that it's a pejorative given to us by the opponents of Christ and opponents of Christianity.
[00:19:17]  But we've had tons of pejoratives over the last 2,000 years.
[00:19:21]  The word Christian itself was a pejorative to make fun of followers of Christ, calling them little Christ.
[00:19:28]  Here's another one Puritan.
[00:19:29]  Puritan was a pejorative, right?
[00:19:32]  It wasn't something that the Puritans coined themselves, but those who were opponents to their lifestyle and their immense dedication and discipline to live a holy and obedient life in all aspects of life according to the standard of God's unchanging word.
[00:19:47]  It was their opponents who were saying that they were puritanical.
[00:19:50]  They were Puritans.
[00:19:52]  It was like calling them a prude, right?
[00:19:54]  And yet they owned the label and said, yeah, we are Puritans.
[00:19:58]  And there were problems with Puritans, there are problems with Christians, right?
[00:20:02]  Christians aren't perfect people.
[00:20:03]  So Christians aren't perfect, Puritans aren't perfect, Christian nationalists aren't perfect.
[00:20:07]  But I do believe that although it's not the term that we necessarily chose for ourselves, I think it could be a helpful term.
[00:20:14]  And I'd rather own that term that I can actually biblically get behind than wait for another term that's far worse and far more demeaning to be hurled at us as a replacement.
[00:20:27]  So my point is whether you're a Christian nationalist or whether you're a theonomist or whether you're this or that and the other, What I'm finding, and there are lots of differences, right?
[00:20:36]  About half of the evangelical church, at first it was just a sliver, but now I'd say it's about half of the evangelical church over time has been awakened to the problems of wokeness, CRT, intersectionality, neo Marxism, Black Lives Matter, you know, the summer of love and the riots, you know, burning down half of the country in 2020.
[00:20:57]  And then you've got, in addition to that, the silence on abortion, you've got civil tyranny with COVID, the looming threat of Globalism, right?
[00:21:08]  Guys like George Soros and these kinds of things.
[00:21:11]  About half of the evangelical church at this point, it didn't start that way, but over the years, because of faithful men doing courageous, faithful work, I'd say about half of evangelicals are on board saying that's a problem.
[00:21:24]  And so we agree in terms of the problem.
[00:21:26]  But there, we are realizing very quickly that there are dozens of disagreements in terms of what the solution is, right?
[00:21:34]  Some people think it just needs to be a return, a resurgence, and a dusting off, kind of a rejuvenation of classical liberalism.
[00:21:42]  And then some say, no, it really needs to be a Christian nation, Christian nationalism.
[00:21:46]  And then within that camp, some people are more extreme than I am.
[00:21:49]  There are theonomists, and there's a sliding scale of theonomy, right?
[00:21:52]  There's general equity theonomists, which is where I would be.
[00:21:55]  There are guys who are more hardcore.
[00:21:57]  There are all these different expressions and all these different ideas of the solution of what we can do.
[00:22:03]  But the point is this I think that your basic evangelical Christian today, within the 50% that have woken up to see, you know, Yeah, we don't want to be progressive Christians.
[00:22:14]  Out of conservative Christians, which I think is about half of evangelicalism right now, maybe more, but out of those, the common denominator is not theonomy, it's not Christian nationalism, although I think that that tent will get wider over time.
[00:22:29]  But the common denominator is basically people who don't just believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, but its sufficiency.
[00:22:36]  That Scripture is not just authoritative, it's not just infallible and true, but it's actually sufficient for.
[00:22:44]  And here's the question sufficient for what?
[00:22:46]  For life and godliness.
[00:22:47]  Not just for the way to salvation.
[00:22:50]  Scripture certainly is abundantly sufficient for that.
[00:22:54]  But Scripture is sufficient for all of life, every realm of human society.
[00:22:59]  Scripture is sufficient for economics and markets.
[00:23:02]  Scripture is sufficient for art.
[00:23:04]  Scripture is sufficient for home life, family life, marriage, parenting.
[00:23:08]  And Scripture is sufficient for politics and government and legislation and these kinds of things.
[00:23:14]  Now, we're not saying that Scripture, right, I would adhere to.
[00:23:17]  Conservative biblical Christians, we all adhere to the perspicuity of Scripture.
[00:23:21]  That's the clarity of Scripture.
[00:23:23]  I always joke and say perspicuity is just a very unclear word that means clarity.
[00:23:28]  We believe in the clarity of Scripture.
[00:23:30]  However, we do not believe that every text in Scripture is equally clear.
[00:23:34]  So we believe that the Bible is abundantly clear, perhaps most clear, in regards to its teaching on the way to salvation.
[00:23:43]  But that doesn't mean that the Bible is unclear, entirely unclear, in regards to politics.
[00:23:48]  We believe that the Bible does speak to this and it speaks with a measure of clarity, perhaps less clarity, but sufficient clarity.
[00:23:56]  Okay, and so everybody who's in that camp, uh, really the way you could define that is all of Christ for all of life, right?
[00:24:03]  The whole counsel of God to the whole of human life, to every realm of life, not just the church and the home, but to the state as well, and to culture, and to the arts, and to the sciences.
[00:24:15]  We want to have a Christian worldview, not just a truncated, narrow Christian view that shows us how to get to heaven and what life will be like after this, but no, how to live.
[00:24:28]  Life and life abundantly here and now, and everything that the Lord has called us.
[00:24:33]  And so, in that sense, you have evangelicals who are united in this big banner, but divided in terms of specifics when we start to get to the details.
[00:24:44]  When we start to get to the details.
[00:24:46]  But those who are opponents of that, who are like, no, the scripture is not sufficient for all of life, it's only sufficient for salvation and maybe sanctification and maybe parenting and marriage.

=== Third Wave of Fault Lines (02:52) ===

[00:24:58]  We're starting to see a divide, right?
[00:25:00]  We're starting to have some hostility.
[00:25:02]  You can see this online, Twitter.
[00:25:04]  You can see this with different content that people are producing.
[00:25:07]  We're starting to see that, okay, there are some further divides, right?
[00:25:12]  There are some fault lines.
[00:25:13]  You call them like third wave fault lines.
[00:25:16]  Okay, let me explain that real quick.
[00:25:18]  First wave, the old fault lines within the church, evangelicalism, that was the divide over are you pedo Baptist or credo Baptist?
[00:25:27]  Are you a bigger one than that would be?
[00:25:30]  Are you a Calvinist?
[00:25:31]  Are you Reformed?
[00:25:32]  Or are you Arminian?
[00:25:35]  Or are you a continuationist or a cessationist?
[00:25:38]  Are you egalitarian?
[00:25:40]  Do you have female elders?
[00:25:41]  Or are you complementarian?
[00:25:43]  Which now I think more conservative guys like myself would adhere to biblical patriarchy.
[00:25:48]  But these were kind of the old fault lines.
[00:25:50]  And then the new fault lines, like Vodi Bakum wrote his book called Fault Lines.
[00:25:55]  The new fault lines were critical race theory and.
[00:26:00]  Intersectionality and social justice, you know, and these kinds of things.
[00:26:06]  And then in that kind of coming out of 2020 and COVID, you got civil tyranny.
[00:26:10]  That's kind of your second wave fault lines that a lot of people didn't see and just really just started noticing over the last couple of years.
[00:26:17]  But now, what I'm projecting is kind of a third wave of fault lines, which is you've got the old doctrinal fault lines on major doctrines.
[00:26:27]  Then you've got the new problem fault lines.
[00:26:29]  What is the problem?
[00:26:30]  What should the church be resisting?
[00:26:32]  And then you've got the solution, third wave solution fault lines, where I think we're going to see further splintering.
[00:26:38]  And I'm not excited about this, I wish it wasn't the case, but further splintering of even among the conservative guys who all were united just a couple years ago on social justice is bad.
[00:26:51]  Social justice is bad.
[00:26:53]  Amen.
[00:26:53]  Social justice is bad because it's antithetical to biblical justice.
[00:26:57]  But now we're seeing divisions even among us in terms of okay, but what's the solution?
[00:27:02]  What's the solution?
[00:27:03]  And that's where you get into questions of eschatology, post mill versus all mill and pre mill.
[00:27:08]  That's when you get into theonomy or not theonomy.
[00:27:11]  You get into Christian nationalism versus classical liberalism.
[00:27:14]  You get into all these kinds of questions.
[00:27:17]  But for everyone who agreed on that second wave fault lines, the problem, wokeness and civil tyranny, those kinds of things, people were like, we want to obey Jesus.
[00:27:28]  We want to be biblically conservative.
[00:27:30]  That's where you started getting, you know, with a church split about right down the middle.
[00:27:36]  Progressive Christians, those who are deconstructing their faith, you know, and completely woke, guys like Phil Vischer, you know, the creator of VeggieTales, you know, trying to carve out a biblical argument for abortion.

=== Jesus King of Kings Today (03:56) ===

[00:27:51]  At least in some cases, which is just absolute insanity.
[00:27:55]  And so these are the things that you have going on.
[00:27:57]  This is the world that we're currently living in.
[00:27:59]  This is the state of evangelicalism.
[00:28:01]  It's further splintering.
[00:28:03]  And we should be praying that God would unite us as much as possible, that we'd have a big tent, that we'd be as ecumenical as we can be without compromise.
[00:28:13]  And so those are the things that we're dealing with right now.
[00:28:15]  But my point is back to this issue of not of this world.
[00:28:21]  People who are saying, well, yeah, I agree there's a problem with wokeness or there's a problem with this, but Christians don't need to be involved in politics and Christian nationalism is a scam.
[00:28:30]  That just sounds like Adolf Hitler.
[00:28:32]  You know, that Jesus didn't care about politics.
[00:28:35]  Jesus didn't come to make the nation Christian, these kinds of things.
[00:28:38]  People will push back, is what I'm saying.
[00:28:41]  And often what they'll use is that rhetoric of, you know, Jesus, my kingdom is not of this world, right?
[00:28:47]  The real easy counter to that is say, well, Jesus never said my kingdom is not in this world.
[00:28:52]  He simply said it's not.
[00:28:53]  Of this world, which means just like he told the disciples, right?
[00:28:57]  He says, Do not be like the Gentile lords, the Gentile rulers who love to lord their authority over you.
[00:29:06]  Jesus is Lord of lords.
[00:29:09]  Jesus is Lord of lords, and he's King of kings.
[00:29:11]  Have you ever stopped to ask the question when the Bible says that Jesus is King of kings, which kings?
[00:29:17]  Who are those kings that Jesus is king of?
[00:29:19]  Who are those lords that Jesus is Lord of?
[00:29:22]  Right?
[00:29:23]  Is it kings in heaven that Jesus is the king of those heavenly kings?
[00:29:27]  Is it Lords in heaven that Jesus is Lord of those heavenly lords?
[00:29:31]  Or does the mere phrase King of kings and Lord of lords automatically imply and assume that Jesus' ultimate kingship is over earthly lords and kings and therefore over kingdoms on earth?
[00:29:47]  Jesus is ruling and reigning now.
[00:29:48]  His kingdom is not of this world.
[00:29:50]  That means his methods, his strategies.
[00:29:53]  He doesn't rule in his kingdom in the way that earthly kings do.
[00:30:00]  He is a king, the king of kings, who is cut from an entirely other cloth.
[00:30:06]  His methods are otherworldly.
[00:30:10]  But Jesus doesn't say that his kingdom is not in this world.
[00:30:13]  His kingdom is most certainly in this world, like a little leaven working through the whole batch of dough, like a mustard seed growing into a mustard tree, not in heaven, but on earth, a stone cut by no human hands that crushes and grinds into dust the kingdoms of this world.
[00:30:30]  But then begins to grow into its own kingdom, a mountain that fills the whole earth.
[00:30:35]  So, Jesus' kingdom is not of this world, but it most certainly is in this world.
[00:30:40]  When Jesus says it's not of this world, it doesn't mean that Jesus doesn't care about this world and that he doesn't care about the kingdoms of this world or he doesn't care about kingdoms just in general in terms of governments and politics and legislation.
[00:30:54]  No, it just means that Jesus is different.
[00:30:57]  He's different, but it doesn't mean that he's absent.
[00:31:01]  Jesus saying, My kingdom is not of this world means that he is a different kind of king, but his kingdom is in this world.
[00:31:07]  Jesus is ruling right now, not only in heaven, but he is ruling, and his rule and reign is over earth as well.
[00:31:16]  That's the last thing he told us right before giving us the Great Commission.
[00:31:20]  He says, All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.
[00:31:25]  Therefore, because I have authority on earth, because my kingdom includes this earth, not just heaven, not just ethereal and spiritual, but my kingdom includes this tangible physical place.
[00:31:36]  Therefore, you have been endowed by Christ as king, as his representatives, his ambassadors, with authority to go and disciple nations.

=== Discipling Nations with Authority (13:47) ===

[00:31:47]  And that's going to, of course, involve predominantly involve.
[00:31:51]  Discipling individual people and baptizing individual people.
[00:31:55]  But as individual people are converted by the grace of God and the sovereign work of the Spirit, some of those individual people are going to be an institution.
[00:32:04]  Some of them are going to be governors and mayors and council members and police officers and presidents.
[00:32:11]  And some of them will be in medicine as doctors and nurses.
[00:32:14]  And some of them will be artists.
[00:32:15]  And some will be in this sphere and that sphere.
[00:32:18]  And then the question is upon conversion, what is the Call of God, what is the implications of the Christian life for that individual?
[00:32:27]  Is it to quit their vocation?
[00:32:28]  Is it to exit civil affairs?
[00:32:32]  Or is it to do these things in a Christian manner?
[00:32:35]  And then that begs the question the question we have to answer is if God saves a politician and it's not God's will that the politician leave politics but rather be a Christian in politics, what does it mean to be a Christian in politics?
[00:32:49]  Eventually, we're going to have to answer that question.
[00:32:51]  The reason why we haven't had to answer that question for the last few decades.
[00:32:55]  Is because we've just been content to lose.
[00:32:58]  But now, by God's grace, I think the left has overplayed its hand, and there's a lot of Christians who are righteously, they have righteous indignation and they want to fight.
[00:33:06]  And because Christians actually want to fight, and there's a rise in post millennial eschatology, so Christians willing to fight and actually hopeful that we could win the fight, now all of a sudden the question is being asked okay, then what's our battle plans?
[00:33:18]  What does the Bible say about these things?
[00:33:22]  We need a Protestant Christian civil theology.
[00:33:28]  A theology of politics, a theology of government.
[00:33:32]  And the beauty is that there's a lot of work still to be done, but we have a Protestant theology of politics.
[00:33:40]  And it's really just returning to some of these older guys, guys like Calvin, guys like John Knox, who carved out a lot of this work for us, returning to them and seeing what they said and beginning to believe in God's promises, believe in the potency of His word and applying those things here.
[00:33:58]  And now, so if somebody says, Jesus said his kingdom is not of this world, you say, Yeah, but it's in this world.
[00:34:04]  And if somebody says, Well, we're not of this world, we're just a sojourner.
[00:34:08]  Here's the last thing I'll leave you with How do you answer that question?
[00:34:12]  The way that you answer that question, when somebody says, Well, doesn't the Bible say that we're just sojourners, right?
[00:34:19]  This world is not our home, our citizenship is in heaven, we're just sojourners, we're strangers, we're aliens in this world.
[00:34:25]  What you should do is respond to that question Aren't we sojourners in this world?
[00:34:29]  Respond to that question with another question and say, What kind of sojourner?
[00:34:34]  Because in the Bible, that's true, that's biblical language in the New Testament to describe New Testament Christians, sojourners in this world.
[00:34:41]  But the question is, sojourners in what sense?
[00:34:44]  What kind?
[00:34:45]  Because what I'm saying is this there are at least, and we could probably make this more complicated than we need to, so let's try to keep it simple.
[00:34:53]  But there are at least two major, two predominant kinds or types of sojourners in the Bible.
[00:35:01]  I'll give you an example.
[00:35:02]  One would be Israel in captivity in exile for 70 years in Babylon.
[00:35:07]  They were sojourners.
[00:35:08]  They were strangers.
[00:35:10]  And one of the reasons why I believe it's Jeremiah 27, where God speaks and he has to command Israel through the prophet Jeremiah and say, Listen, guys, you need to plant vineyards and build houses and give your sons and daughters in marriage and seek the welfare of the city, for if the city prospers, you too will prosper.
[00:35:29]  The reason why that was a prophetic word worth giving, if I could say it like that, the reason why God found it necessary to command his people Israel to do that through the prophet Jeremiah.
[00:35:40]  Is because the nation of Israel, God's chosen people, they knew that Babylon was not their home.
[00:35:47]  Their home was the promised land, it was Canaan.
[00:35:50]  They had another geographical nation, a place, a home, a region.
[00:35:56]  And they knew that it was God's ultimate will to get them back.
[00:35:59]  So, in other words, they knew that the plan, God's plan, was not for them to build a home in Babylon, but to get them out of Babylon.
[00:36:10]  And they just didn't know the timeline.
[00:36:12]  And because they didn't know the timeline, which Isaiah had prophesied previously, but they were stiff necked and stubborn and these kinds of things.
[00:36:20]  And so, because they didn't know the timeline by way of ignorance or by their own refusal to believe what God had previously said, they were kind of living in Babylon as sojourners, but living with their bags packed.
[00:36:35]  And see, that's my point.
[00:36:36]  That's how New Testament Christians, I think a lot of pre mill dispensational New Testament Christians have been living.
[00:36:43]  In a different theological sense, for different reasons, different motivations, the radical two kingdom covenantal guys on this side have also been living.
[00:36:50]  They both have different theological reasons, but the dispensational premillennial guy on one side, and then the covenantal R2K guy, and covenant theology is good, by the way, but I'm just the R2K stuff is not.
[00:37:01]  The radical two kingdom guy for different theological reasons, but they're both the same in the sense of their actions.
[00:37:07]  The dispensationalism and premillennialism versus radical two kingdom theology, what it looks like in practice is living in this world as a New Testament.
[00:37:15]  Christian with your bags packed.
[00:37:17]  And what God said to Israel through Jeremiah in Jeremiah 27, when they were in captivity in Babylon, is He said, Take off your coat and stay a while.
[00:37:25]  That's essentially what He was saying.
[00:37:26]  He was saying, You guys are right to expect that I'm going to deliver you, but right now you are underneath my fatherly displeasure because of your sin, because of your unbelief, because of your rebellion against my commands.
[00:37:38]  And so, as a father, I'm disciplining you guys, and it's going to be a while.
[00:37:42]  Your sin is great, and your discipline is going to have to be significant.
[00:37:47]  And so, you're going to be in exile here, not for a couple of weeks.
[00:37:51]  Right, right, not for a couple of months, but for 70 years.
[00:37:55]  And God was having to say, number one, take off your coat and stay a while, build a house, have your daughters and your sons given a marriage, plant a vineyard, these kinds of things.
[00:38:06]  So God was having to say, number one, you're going to be here a while, so settle in.
[00:38:10]  But number two, I think God was also having to say, because instinctively Israel did not want to do something that would benefit their captors, their oppressors.
[00:38:19]  Babylon was, these aren't.
[00:38:21]  These aren't the people of God.
[00:38:23]  These are the people who are oppressing the people of God, who are persecuting the people of God.
[00:38:28]  We don't want to lend towards their prosperity, towards their benefit, towards their improvement, especially at our own detriment.
[00:38:36]  And what God says is look, you do these things, number one, because you're going to be here a while.
[00:38:41]  So don't just live on mission, but actually build a home, even where you least expect to be home, even though you know your true home is somewhere else, the land of promise, Canaan.
[00:38:52]  This is going to be your home for a while.
[00:38:53]  So treat it like home and not just a short term mission trip.
[00:38:56]  Okay, that'll preach.
[00:38:58]  And then beyond that, yes, it will benefit those who have taken you captive, but it'll benefit you too.
[00:39:05]  If this city prospers, you, the people of God who live within the city, you will prosper alongside it.
[00:39:11]  So that's one way to be a sojourner is when you look at the scripture and you're asking, well, what kind of sojourner are New Testament Christians in this church age, in this world?
[00:39:22]  One is sojourners who are in captivity, who are in exile, and it's temporary.
[00:39:28]  We've been taken to a foreign land as strangers in that land, but God's promise is.
[00:39:35]  Is to bring us out of the land, to liberate us from this place and take us to another place that is our true inheritance, where we're supposed to be.
[00:39:46]  That's one sense of being a sojourner.
[00:39:48]  However, there are other senses in the scripture of being a sojourner.
[00:39:54]  One would be, just as an example, Abraham.
[00:39:56]  Let's think about this for a second.
[00:39:58]  This is Hebrews 11, verse 8 through 12.
[00:40:02]  I'll at least read the first couple of verses.
[00:40:04]  Starting in verse 8, it says, By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place.
[00:40:09]  That he was to receive as an inheritance.
[00:40:12]  And he went out not knowing where he was going.
[00:40:15]  Verse 9 By faith, he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents, right?
[00:40:24]  Not a home, it's not stable, it's not established, but in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise.
[00:40:33]  Okay, now let's go on, and I want to look at Genesis chapter 12, verse 1.
[00:40:38]  This is the narrative of Abraham that we find.
[00:40:41]  In Genesis, it says, Now the Lord said to Abram, Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you.
[00:40:48]  Going to another place.
[00:40:49]  I've got some notes written here.
[00:40:51]  I've written the following Abraham obeyed by faith.
[00:40:54]  It was not a combination of his faith and obedience that garnished the Lord's pleasure, but faith alone, which evidenced itself in his obedience to go to the land that God would show him.
[00:41:04]  And this obedience was brought about in the midst of uncertainty.
[00:41:07]  The command of God, let me say this, the command of God was not uncertain.
[00:41:10]  God said, Go.
[00:41:12]  This direction, Abraham went.
[00:41:14]  God's commands are not unclear.
[00:41:16]  It was very simple.
[00:41:17]  What was uncertain was not God's command, but what would be the result of obeying God's command.
[00:41:23]  Abraham prepared to obey God's call, though he knew not what land he was going to go into.
[00:41:28]  Reading further, the land of Canaan.
[00:41:31]  Now, this is what I want you to catch.
[00:41:32]  The land of Canaan is typical or typological of heaven.
[00:41:37]  Here, Abraham sojourned for a while, though it was not his native place, but another's.
[00:41:42]  It was an idolatrous land, much like ours here in America.
[00:41:46]  And other nations around the world.
[00:41:47]  Yet here Abraham sojourned by faith, believing that as it was promised, the land would be given to him and his descendants.
[00:41:57]  So too, all God's people are sojourners in this world.
[00:42:01]  And that's a paraphrase from John Gill.
[00:42:05]  He's a late great Reformed Baptist preacher who preached in the same church that Charles Spurgeon preached in, but a hundred years prior.
[00:42:12]  So, all that being said, here's my point.
[00:42:15]  Two different Predominant categories of sojourner, two types of sojourner.
[00:42:20]  You can be exile, captive sojourner, that's Israel and Babylon, when they knew that God's ultimate plan was eventually to take them out of that foreign land where they were sojourners and to bring them back to another land that was their inheritance.
[00:42:36]  But there's also Abraham sojourner, meaning Abraham is also in a foreign land, but he's not there as a captor who eventually will be taken out and placed somewhere else.
[00:42:48]  He's there.
[00:42:50]  To actually take the land captive because God's plan for Abraham was not to bring him out of this strange land, to take him out of the land, but to give him the land.
[00:43:03]  Another example would be Joshua.
[00:43:05]  Joshua and the Israelites, right?
[00:43:06]  Joshua, Moses' successor, after Moses died, they crossed the Jordan River and they went into the land of Canaan and they went in as sojourners.
[00:43:14]  They were living in tents for quite a long time and going from this place to that place, and it was not their native land.
[00:43:20]  It was not their place of origin.
[00:43:23]  It was a place that was strange to them that God brought them in, and they were the strangers in that land, right?
[00:43:29]  The native people, the native inhabitants of the land of Canaan, whether it be the people of Jericho or this person or that person, this nation, that nation, They looked at the Israelites, and the Israelites were the sojourners.
[00:43:40]  The Israelites were the strangers and the aliens.
[00:43:43]  But God brought them into that land not as captives for a season, temporarily, 70 years of exile, with his ultimate plan to deliver them and bring them out of the land.
[00:43:55]  No, he brought them in there not to bring them out of the land, but so that they could take the land, that they would conquer the land.
[00:44:03]  They were sojourning in a land that God was not going to remove them from, they were sojourning in a land that God was going to give.
[00:44:11]  To them and to drive it all, bring it, land the plane here, bring it home.
[00:44:16]  My point is this as New Testament Christians living in this gospel age with Christ as King, who has authority both on earth and in heaven, who has told us explicitly to go out and to disciple the nations, baptizing them into the name of the triune God, and not just preaching the gospel and functioning in the realm of evangelism and conversion, but discipling them, which includes Jesus says to teach them to obey all of my commands.
[00:44:43]  Implicitly, we can say all of his commands for that have an application, tangible, practical application in all of life teach them to obey all of my commands, applying my law, my commands to every realm of life.
[00:44:58]  This is our marching orders.
[00:45:00]  This is the great commission given to us.
[00:45:02]  And the question is are we like Israel in Babylon in exile?
[00:45:08]  Or is the New Testament church more like Abraham or Joshua, Israel under Joshua's leadership, going into a promised land that?
[00:45:16]  That we're not in exile, and eventually our reward is that we'll be liberated and removed from this land, but we are sojourning in a strange land for a time as we slowly but surely, by God's grace, as the mustard seed grows, we're going to take the land.

=== Redeeming Bodies and the Earth (12:20) ===

[00:45:34]  I think of even just the Beatitudes Matthew chapter 5, Jesus says, The meek shall inherit heaven, right?
[00:45:40]  No, the meek shall inherit the earth.
[00:45:43]  I don't believe that God is going to utterly, literally, physically disintegrate this world.
[00:45:50]  That God is going to annihilate the creation.
[00:45:53]  That the creation itself, that groans with eager expectations for the sons of God to be revealed, that their groaning is actually crying out and pleading with the Lord, asking the Lord to put the creation to death, to render a mercy killing.
[00:46:07]  No, the creation is with eager expectations groaning for the sons of God to be revealed because in the redemption of God's people, the cosmos and the creation, the earth itself, will also be redeemed.
[00:46:20]  The earth itself will also be redeemed, meaning that the new heavens will come to this earth.
[00:46:26]  This earth made new, but still this earth.
[00:46:29]  What I'm saying is that this planet that you're sitting on right now, this dirt, these trees, these plants, these mountain ranges, it'll be a glorified mountain range, but the same way that your body will be physically resurrected, we can't deny that doctrine without being a full blown heretic, right?
[00:46:46]  That's the one thing that even Van Druden has to affirm in his radical two kingdom theology.
[00:46:51]  He still has to affirm, well, yeah, but.
[00:46:53]  I guess that, you know, one thing that'll carry over to the eternal, to the life to come, is your physical body glorified.
[00:46:59]  What I'm arguing is that I think the Bible teaches that that's the case for everything.
[00:47:04]  In the same way that our physical bodies, we believe in justification, sanctification, glorification, the doctrine of glorification, our physical bodies, which will die like a seed, right?
[00:47:13]  What is perishable, planted so that what is imperishable might grow, might rise.
[00:47:18]  That our body, we're not going to be given a new body.
[00:47:21]  We're going to have this body resurrected and made new.
[00:47:25]  Not given a new body, but the old body made new.
[00:47:28]  And there is a dynamic difference.
[00:47:30]  And theologically, we need to grasp the significance of that difference.
[00:47:34]  I believe that the Bible teaches the very same principle, not just for the physical bodies of God's elect in terms of the doctrine of glorification, but that this glorious doctrine of glorification is all encompassing beyond just the physical body of the elect, but also the physical creation and cosmos itself.
[00:47:53]  That God said it's good and that God hasn't given up on it, that the creation is under the curse of sin just as we are under the curse of sin.
[00:48:01]  Right?
[00:48:01]  That when Adam sinned, he wasn't just a federal representative, federal head of the human race, himself and Eve and all of their offspring, but he was a federal head representative of the whole earthly cosmos.
[00:48:14]  So that when Adam sinned, God doesn't just say that your wife is cursed and your children are going to be under this curse and you are cursed, but cursed is the ground because of you, Adam.
[00:48:25]  That the earth was cursed in the same way that the new man, the second Adam, by one man, through one man's sin, everything died.
[00:48:34]  So, by the obedience of one man, there comes life, and not just life for mankind, but in the same way that one man's disobedience didn't just cause the human race to die, but the creation to die.
[00:48:46]  So, too, by Christ's obedience, the new Adam, not only has he caused the human race to live, but the creation to be restored alongside his people and to also live.
[00:48:58]  And so, this earth, it's not going to be a new earth, meaning another earth replacing it, but it'll be this earth made new, the new heavens.
[00:49:06]  On earth.
[00:49:07]  That's the eschaton that we're looking for.
[00:49:09]  And we're going to have, we're not just going to float around on clouds as embodied or disembodied spirits, but we're going to have a bodily, eternal, bodily existence and not with another body, but this body glorified, this body resurrected.
[00:49:27]  And I believe the creation will be the same.
[00:49:28]  We will have still certain aspects of this world that will be the same.
[00:49:32]  We will have certain mountain ranges, getting real specific, the Himalayas, but the Himalayas glorified.
[00:49:38]  The Nile River, but the Nile River glorified.
[00:49:42]  We're going to see the Grand Canyon glorified, and we're going to see animals and different species, but glorified.
[00:49:49]  We're going to see creation not put out of its misery, but creation healed and restored.
[00:49:56]  The very same thing that God is doing with us, which means what does it mean?
[00:50:02]  It means that this world is our home.
[00:50:05]  It is our home.
[00:50:07]  Ultimately.
[00:50:08]  To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.
[00:50:11]  If you were to die today, you would go and you would be with Jesus.
[00:50:14]  But eventually, when Jesus comes back, what does the Bible teach?
[00:50:18]  When he returns, when he comes back, the dead will rise first and be caught up into the air.
[00:50:23]  I believe it's 1 Thessalonians 4 or 2 Thessalonians 4.
[00:50:27]  First the dead in Christ, then those of us who are alive.
[00:50:31]  We will meet Jesus in the air, but not meeting Jesus in the air to be taken somewhere else.
[00:50:38]  Well, it's just like the ten virgins.
[00:50:41]  Five of them were foolish, and five of them were wise.
[00:50:44]  The five that were wise had enough oil in their lampstands that they were ready.
[00:50:49]  They had light available when the bridegroom appeared in the middle of the night.
[00:50:54]  And what they did was they ran out to meet the bridegroom to be taken by him somewhere else, right?
[00:51:00]  No.
[00:51:01]  If you know the parable, if you know your Bible, the five wise virgins with oil still in their lamps that had light when the bridegroom appeared, what they did was they ran out to meet him and then they accompanied him back into the same town where they lived and went into the wedding feast.
[00:51:20]  And then the door was shut.
[00:51:23]  I believe that that's.
[00:51:24]  What 1 Thessalonians or 2nd verse 4 says, the dead in Christ first will be caught up in the air, then we who are alive in Christ caught up with him.
[00:51:33]  But caught up for what purpose?
[00:51:35]  I think it's to, as his people, as his subjects, those who were faithful, to be caught up with the king as he's descending to earth.
[00:51:44]  Not as he comes halfway to earth and stops in the middle of the sky and then beams us up and then takes us back up to some other place called heaven.
[00:51:52]  No, Christ is now returning to his world.
[00:51:55]  To the physical earth that he's going to make completely new.
[00:51:58]  He's returning, but before his feet even touch the ground, when he's only halfway there, his faithful ones, just like the faithful, wise virgins, will come and meet him halfway, and we then become his accompanying party to usher the king with a parade, with great pomp and circumstance and honor and glory that he deserves to accompany him the rest of the way down to his kingdom here on earth.
[00:52:25]  And so, my point is this is not my home.
[00:52:28]  Yeah, it is.
[00:52:29]  Yeah, it is.
[00:52:30]  And it won't be like this.
[00:52:31]  Praise God.
[00:52:32]  It'll be a lot better.
[00:52:34]  And to be absent in the body, if we die before the return of Christ, then yes, we're going to exist with him elsewhere where he is at the right hand of the Father in heaven.
[00:52:42]  To be absent of the body is to be present with the Lord.
[00:52:46]  So there may be this intermediate stage for those of us who die before Christ returns.
[00:52:51]  But the ultimate eschaton, this ultimate eschatology that the Christian faith looks towards in hope, is a physical.
[00:53:00]  Existence, not with another body, but this body made new, glorified, and the new heavens not being somewhere else, but the new heavens on earth, and not another earth, but this same earth made new, which means for eons and where will you be?
[00:53:17]  Where will your home be?
[00:53:20]  Right here.
[00:53:21]  Right here.
[00:53:22]  So, this world is your home.
[00:53:24]  Yes, you're citizens of heaven, but what that'll look like is the new heavens on this earth.
[00:53:30]  This earth made new.
[00:53:32]  And it's going to be a while, very likely, but that's eventually what it's going to look like.
[00:53:36]  So, in what way, right?
[00:53:38]  So, when someone says, Well, the Bible says that New Testament Christians are sojourners in this land and our citizenship is in heaven, Jesus' kingdom is not of this world and we're not of this world also.
[00:53:46]  This world is not my home.
[00:53:48]  Not of this world.
[00:53:49]  How do you respond?
[00:53:49]  You say, Yes and amen to all of that.
[00:53:52]  All of that is biblical.
[00:53:53]  But Jesus' kingdom not of this world doesn't mean his kingdom's not in this world.
[00:53:57]  It just means he rules differently.
[00:53:59]  He doesn't rule like the rulers of this world, but his kingdom is in this world.
[00:54:02]  In this world, and this world is not our home in one sense, yes, but it is our home if we're talking about the new heavens in the new earth and Jesus restoring all things, not only our physical bodies, but also this physical planet, which he loves and has not subjected to ultimate destruction.
[00:54:20]  And this world not being our home and us being sojourners, yes and amen.
[00:54:25]  But the Bible talks about at least two primary types of sojourners.
[00:54:30]  Are we sojourners in exile?
[00:54:32]  Is the world Babylon?
[00:54:34]  And we're here for a while.
[00:54:36]  Our 70, 80, 85 years of life, just like Israel was there for 70 years, we'll be here for 70 years of our own physical life and then we die and we get taken out of Babylon?
[00:54:45]  Or are we sojourners in a foreign land, a strange land, but a land that's actually our inheritance?
[00:54:52]  See, Israel, when they were sojourning in Babylon, they had been taken out of their inheritance because they were being disciplined by God.
[00:54:58]  They were under his discipline.
[00:55:00]  And they knew that the ultimate solution was that God would one day liberate them from Babylon and bring them back to the land.
[00:55:06]  But Abraham was a sojourner in Israel, or I'm sorry, in Canaan.
[00:55:12]  So it's not just sojourning in Babylon in exile, in captivity.
[00:55:16]  There's also such a thing, biblically, as sojourning in.
[00:55:19]  In Canaan, the land of promise, where you still are an outsider, you're still a stranger, you're still a foreigner, and you may still be the minority depending on what point in church history we're in, but you're not sojourning in a land where you've been taken captive.
[00:55:34]  And the major eschaton within your eschatology is that God will bring you out of that land.
[00:55:41]  No, you're sojourning in a land that God is not going to take you out of, but that God is going to actually give to you.
[00:55:47]  It's your inheritance.
[00:55:49]  It's your inheritance.
[00:55:50]  The meek will inherit the earth.
[00:55:53]  So, yes, we are sojourners, but we are sojourning in a foreign land not to be removed from it one day, but to take it.
[00:56:01]  To take it.
[00:56:02]  We are sojourning in this land, this world, this physical earth, in nations with governments and politics and culture.
[00:56:10]  We are sojourners.
[00:56:11]  We are strangers.
[00:56:13]  But we are sojourners and strangers like Joshua and the Israelites, coming into a land where they were outnumbered and where they were the odd men out.
[00:56:21]  But a land that ultimately they were there not to be liberated from, but a land that they were there to conquer.
[00:56:30]  We're going to conquer.
[00:56:32]  This is our home.
[00:56:34]  So you might as well go ahead and act like it.
[00:56:39]  Don't give in to worldliness, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, the boastful pride of life.
[00:56:45]  In that sense, we're called to resist the passions of this world, which are fading away.
[00:56:49]  The Bible says that.
[00:56:51]  But we love this world insofar as it represents the creation itself.
[00:56:56]  The cosmos.
[00:56:57]  Part of the complication with all this is just that the Bible uses that same word world in multiple different ways, especially the author John.
[00:57:07]  The author John uses the word world in at least four different ways, and it gets a little bit confusing.
[00:57:13]  But I do believe that what I've presented in this episode is a biblically faithful way to understand it.
[00:57:20]  Oh, hi, I didn't see you there.
[00:57:21]  Thanks for sticking around.
[00:57:22]  I've got an important announcement to make that's the Theonomy and Postmillennialism Conference 2023, May 5th.
[00:57:30]  6th and 7th, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, Theonomy and Post Millennialism.
[00:57:35]  We've got the speakers that we've already had lined up.
[00:57:37]  That's Dr. James White, Dr. Joseph Boot, Dr. Gary DeMar, non doctor Pastor Joel Webbin.
[00:57:43]  But we also have a bonus speaker, and that is Dale Partridge from Real Christianity.
[00:57:48]  Perhaps you've heard of him.
[00:57:49]  If not, you should start listening to his podcast.
[00:57:51]  It's fantastic.
[00:57:52]  Dale Partridge is going to be joining our team.

=== Theonomy Conference Announcement (00:25) ===

[00:57:55]  We're going to have live panels on Friday night and Saturday night where you'll be able to write in questions and get them answered.
[00:58:01]  We're also going to have a catered barbecue.
[00:58:04]  Texas style barbecue meal on Friday that's a part of your registration fee.
[00:58:08]  All that is covered.
[00:58:09]  So you need to get that.
[00:58:11]  This is how you do it.
[00:58:12]  Go and register right now at rightresponseconference.com.
[00:58:16]  Again, that's rightresponseconference.com.
[00:58:20]  God bless.