People Don't Need Protection From The Bible - Dr. Michael Heiser | Supernatural // Q&A (Part 1)

we're so glad you're here we really want to welcome welcome everyone at wherever you are at whatever venue or location we are all one family we're in the family of God it's his house and you're welcome and we're really excited what we're gonna unpack today because we have with us none other than Hebrew scholar dr. Michael Heizer and and and and Mike for I think almost five hours yesterday we had the unseen realm seminar the supernatural seminar and if if you were there well you know you were there and it was amazing I want to say that the the the seminar in its entirety and dr. Hauser's notes are going to be up on our website and YouTube as soon as possible they'll probably get that up tonight or or as soon as they can and I also want to encourage everyone we've sold out of all of dr. Heiser's books except the one that we got a ton of copies because because we're going to be doing a series through this book beginning in February it's the supernatural book it's the condensed version of of what Mike was talking about yesterday and it's just so so powerful it will really you'll never read the Bible the same way again and you will connect dots that you just haven't connected before and today my goal is this today my goal is just asking Mike some things about the Word of God that I think will help you understand why doctor Heiser's work is so important for today and why at least right now it's not that common okay we're gonna unpack some of that today my goal is that you get a hunger for the Word of God like never before and that this year um you will not only read the Bible more than ever before but you will understand the Bible and God's Word more than ever before amen we're so thankful dr.house hazards wife Drina is here with us just wave Trina we're so glad you're here so come on everybody come on church I want you to stand to your feet give dr. highs aura a big big welcome you're gonna really love today thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] anticipating okay so so um so let's just just have a moment of Prayer and I'm gonna dive in some questions and I really want you to lean in today today is kind of like and really this weekend with the seminar what this is this is just great foundational or to really get you stirred up and excited about digging into the Word of God in a fresh way and I think that if you get into supernatural dots are gonna connect like never before and it's just gonna want to make you devour God's Word how many of you know that's a good thing and so let's pray father we thank you for from Mike and Drina and we just think it for them being here and pouring into us and we just pray give us not just physical ears to listen but but but hearts to hear let us hear Lord not just listen in Jesus name Amen amen okay okay Mike so so I know the first question I want to talk about is is reading the Bible in context which is really important and I can remember when I first started studying the Bible and and really all that was taught to me about context at that time was okay make sure that maybe some historical background and what's before the scripture and what's after the scripture but but help us understand what reading the Bible in context really means yeah I think it's sort of the the quick road to getting a better view of this is to put an s on the end of the word context because the Bible has lots of contexts that are all important and and I was taught the same way you know initially context is make sure you read the a couple verses before the ones you're looking at and in a couple verses after or now you're reading in context well you know there there's something to that but you know you have to cast a much wider net historical stuff yeah that can help but what I've sort of discovered over the years is that we limit contexts and I'm not I'm not willing to say yet I'm not in that grouchy mood this morning that it's deliberate sometimes I I've run across situations where I think it is deliberate just as a little sidebar when I was teaching in a Bible College I actually had a pastor who was sent to this College sort of as a representative to kind of see you know get the lay of the land because he had students there and he was part of a bigger group on the East Coast and he actually told me that we believe you know this this guy and his group that there are just some things about the Bible that you shouldn't know that you shouldn't teach our students so well you know what did I do like the next hour you know you know just blew that up because that was that was just offensive but it that happens so context can be scary to people again who either they didn't learn enough in their own study whether that's formal school or not or there is something sort of lurking in there that they don't want people to know so they either feel that they can't discuss it or they don't want people to see it because they want to funnel people in a certain direction you know there in other words I'll be blunt they don't want you to think about the Bible and one of my little ditties is I just reached a point where I refuse to protect people from their Bible anymore it's just I'm not gonna do it did y'all hear that yeah people we we do not protect people from the Word of God right okay we don't know polish up God's image the Bible doesn't need to be protected either in general you should read critically you should ask questions about what you're reading you're not gonna hurt it okay the scripts are still gonna be here so when I say put an s on context what's really important are things I think especially our worldview contacts and to a less extent maybe literary the kind of thing you're reading but let's talk about worldview because that's really where the rubber meets the road you know it it frightens people again for those couple of reasons because once you sort of admit to people that a lot of what you'll read in the Bible is foreign they're different than you the writers were not asking the same questions that you might be asking of your Bible because you're you're thousands of years removed all the weird stuff in the Bible is not only there intentionally but it's actually important and for you to understand it you have to and here's the scary part too a lot of people you have to be willing to set aside some of your pet views on certain things you have to be willing to set aside some of your denominational distinctives and preferences you have to be willing to set aside your tradition and when I tell people is you want to talk about context okay the right context for interpreting the Bible is not evangelicalism it's not the Reformation it's not the Puritans it's not the Catholic Church me just fill in the blank you know all of those things are contexts historical eras that post date they come long after the biblical period so lo and behold the right context for interpreting Scripture is the context that produced the thing okay and God intentionally prompted people to write what we call the Bible at a certain time a certain place with a certain worldview when you talk about worldview as a context it's no longer oh they had little they had little lights they had pots you know they drove chariots oh well great I mean that yeah that's historical stuff but when you get into how they thought about the world how they thought about the natural world with both with the the weird differences in their worldview and the limitations of their worldview they're not modern they don't think the way we do so you have to sort of escape your own modernity and that can be frightening its unfamiliar it takes you down certain paths especially as modern people that our product of a rationalistic enlightenment worldview like we are that's not the biblical people it's not the biblical writers and these were God's decisions okay if God wanted to produce a document that was for 21st century technological societies he'd be doing it now okay he wouldn't been doing it 3,000 years ago you know God knows what he's doing the Bible was written for us it's for our benefit and we can apply it when it's rightly understood but it wasn't written to us and that's it that's a key shift yes I'm just I could go on so many all right let me throw one other thing in here you know I often again I I'm the guy like I said yesterday that's used to people looking at me like I got two heads you know because I just say things or take people to passages that they just want to ignore but again everything has a role everything you know there's a there's a place for that weird passage in the in the scope the spectrum of the supernatural epic that we call the Bible of salvation history but I often tell people you know when it comes to the Bible stories again what scholars would call prose narrative when it comes to the Bible stories you would be better off if you read it like it was fiction and people look at you like you know now we know it's not fiction but what do I mean when you read a novel your brain just sort of there's something that clicks off in your brain that you read a novel differently than you would read a textbook for school you know when you're reading a novel that the author is doing something intentionally to you you know that I'm gonna see this word again I'm gonna see this part of dialogue again I'm gonna see this room again I'm gonna see this place again you know that you're being set up okay you know that the writer is trying to steer you and direct you intentionally by imagery by metaphor by dialogue by scenes by vocabulary you know he's going to use it on you again okay because it's it's it's a novel that's the way novels work then the novelist will take the reader you know and just bring them along and mr. act I mean you know something is being done intentionally to you as a reader that's what the biblical writers do everything they do is intelligently done the way things are put in order the vocabulary that's used the scenes things get get repeated they get repurposed in different parts of the Bible biblical writers do that because when you're reading this they want your mind to go over here and pick up that thought and then when you're over here they want you to go this other place and they'll they'll bring you to where they want you to be if you know what you're looking at but we read the Bible like it's a text book you know it's just totally different when you read a novel and your brain just sort of clicks into one or the other gear so I think that's one of the more helpful things that that you can do believe that the biblical text is actually intelligently put together and it's doing something to you the writer has a goal has a purpose has an agenda and that's not a bad word it just means you're writing with a purpose but we just say oh it's like a textbook you know of assignments texts you know read this paragraph there's questions at the end you know no that is not the way scriptures written and that's what we would call I'm thinking the language I've communicated then not reading the Bible fragmented yeah but looking at it holistically you know God's redemptive plan eating to eating the meta-narrative because oh you read this here well here's this image or word over here there's a there's there are threads that run through and it's not just 2 or 3 it's 15 20 25 different threads that run through scripture and they converge it points but the only way you're going to be able to detect those is you know to to read the Bible through the eyes of the ancient person and worldview is really key to that I I you know like an unseen realm in the introduction I say my goal in the is to have the ancient Israelite and the first century Jew living in your head that you can't read the Old Testament through your own eyes anymore that you're reading it through their eyes because there are things they want you to catch because the writers wrote it to their audience they do things in in Scripture that their audience would have just caught immediately you know this weird Leviathan thing you know we look at that and I wonder if that's like a sauropod you know you know know that everybody in in the ancient audience knew what that term was about but we don't so it takes us a little more work again to have their worldview in our head so that we can you know pick up what they're laying down it it's just we're so disconnected tell them to catch it tell them real quick what does Leviathan love my husband is not a dinosaur it it don't laugh a lot of people say Leviathan was a well-known symbol outside of the Bible in the Canaanite larger world and so was the the primeval dragon like in Babylon and then you get this imagery across the ancient Near East and it was a symbol of chaos it was a symbol of hostility of threat and so it would be used to describe empires it would be used to describe places that were uninhabitable it would be used to describe events natural forces because it was a metaphor and a symbol for anything that could basically kill you or make your life horrible that's why it pops up in so many to be connected to the sea right the chaos Leviathan Leviathan lives in the sea and the sea was a chaotic place we don't live in the water do we unless were Aquaman okay but you get the idea this sea was a fearful place because it was untamed it was unpredictable it was threatening and so the scene Leviathan become metaphors again for the things that that threatened in life and in any area anything that's like non eaten okay anything that threatens life opposes life the way God intended it to be the life that God wanted his people wanted all people to have you'll see that that metaphor that symbol pop up because it was it was just this is this is bad we you know this is something that threatens our well-being and so it just becomes a really frequent you know kind of metaphor in the Bible but another thing I'm gonna I'm on a roll here so sorry but if I'm a comic book fan and a science-fiction fan and all this stuff so when I when I talk about metaphor I like to ask this question what would your Bible study you know your group Bible study be like if it was led by Dax the destroyer because he doesn't comprehend what metaphor is everything is literal okay if you've seen guardians of the galaxy it's it's comical it's funny so what if your what if your Bible study was like that again if you don't know the reference go go watch guardians of the galaxy but it's so ridiculous that this there's this character cannot comprehend metaphorical language and we have been trained to not see anything in Scripture other than this rigid wooden literalism and it leads us to goofy views it distracts us from things that are really important to see and we miss apply Scripture but again metaphor and symbol are a big part of the ancient world view it was like I made the example one time if there was a cataclysmic event and you know everything was wiped out and then the humans three thousand years later today we're digging up stuff and they found these papers in Jacksonville and it talked about these Jaguars battling these dolphins and you know and and the people would think wow there were these creatures and they were grouped together and the Dolphins were out of the water or yeah yeah exegesis are Jaguars good swimmer yeah but but yeah it's it's no it's team so any of that so you know it's one example so so Mike I'm going to kind of do these three in a row because I think they're all connected okay the first one is this why is Hebrew or the original language of the Bible so important in understanding context the Dead Sea Scrolls and the explosion of knowledge that has happened since really 1947 around them and and how the explosion of knowledge hidden has made so many of our commentaries out-of-date just because they didn't have whether it was the language or the context or the knowledge and then why won't some theological camps come to grip with this when it actually brings you much deeper into Scripture and gives you a much more coherent sound doctrine in in your relationship and understanding of God's world view so to speak well I'll take the last one first your question answered itself because when the more you you develop skills and the more access you have to tools that help you individually dig into the text what that's going to do is you're going to be learning things and you're going to they're going to be questions you're confronted with and you're going to want to ask these questions and you know it's it's it's unfortunate but there are some contexts within the orbit of believing Christianity that don't want you to ask questions they're uncomfortable you know that you you become sort of the oh not that person again here she comes again but I'm gonna get another question here that's gonna make me uncomfortable and and people again in in leadership again this is unfortunate it's not everywhere it but it it's real it's just part of you know Christian life they they they like they prefer the people who don't ask the questions okay because they can be herded in directions there's just a comfort level with the leadership it's the person who just wants to push the button and and essentially I want an answer to this question this is important you know at least give me a resource well that person can become viewed as either irritating or maybe dangerous you know to this way we want to funnel you know our people in what they're exposed to and in you know pastoral leadership is supposed to do that on one hand but it's also supposed to build loyalty in you for the text not for what might you know what we say on a Sunday not for our doctrinal statement on the website you know it's not like you're going to encourage people to go you know law it's the doctrine statement says this I'm going to go the other way but it that's limited they the leadership in the church is supposed to get you into the text the text is what is primary that's the thing we claim is inspired not our preferences not you know again the little little bits you get on a Sunday morning but some just don't like that and so when you get tools when you get exposed to other thinkers through books through podcasts okay whatever it just creates it it harms the comfort zone you know for a lot of people and dump denominations and movements within the church and this is this is completely understandable so you know realize that when I say that but a lot of places are about perpetuating a subculture of Christianity okay Jesus didn't die to perpetuate a subculture Charlie did so I understand it that pastors want to protect their people from error that's completely appropriate but they need to be honest with their people and say look our preferences here are just that they're our preferences we have historic roots and this or that tradition there are other legitimate believers godly people who would disagree on this or that point and that's okay you know we're we're here to get you living the Christian life you know encouraging your believing loyalty getting you into Scripture and if you wind up disagreeing with us on this or that point and go to another we're not here it's not about ourselves it's not about perpetuating our own little subculture so that it survives and when when you get people into the text people have a certain freedom or a certain you know ability it's sort it's okay to study Scripture now and ask questions now the other questions about Hebrew you know and the Dead Sea Scrolls English you know by and large most English translations that you can pick up and use today are good translations there is no perfect translation there never will be a perfect translation they they do a good job but the one thing that unfortunately they do and that you can overcome by learning a little bit of Greek in Hebrew or and even if it's at the level of Strong's numbers is that English translation often obscures things that the writer is trying to do to you so if you knew what the Hebrew words were in a passage and you were able to make a little list of those and if you had like software I work for a Bible software company you search for those you're gonna find other places where those you know three or four of those same words are also clustered that's not an accident there's a reason why they're clustered here and clustered here and clustered here and clustered here maybe again the intelligent writers and maybe actually even God okay cuz he's behind all this wants you to think of these things in succession wants you to put those passages together they form a thread that is part of a greater tapestry you can't really do that in English because I hope this isn't news but it maybe not every Hebrew or Greek word is translated with the same English word and vice versa not every English word represents the same Greek or Hebrew word so if you can penetrate the English a little bit you can use that to trace threads you can also see patterns now you put it on psalm 51:10 which actually is a nice illustration i didn't know you were gonna do that but it says create in me a clean heart okay what's anybody know what the Hebrew word for create there is in Psalm 51 it's bara it's the same word as in Genesis 1:1 now if you search for Bharat occurs a little over 50 times or you know it's it's not that often and you look them all up and if you remembered sorry to say this this might give some of you chills if you remembered your English class your grammar okay back in high school if you looked at all the occurrences of that you would realize that this that what makes this verb different is that only God is the grammatical subject of this verb ever in other words the biblical writers never use this verb and put someone else as doing that action it's only God who borrows things and so you take that back to Psalm 51 you you know it's a unique verb the writer wants you to know that only God is capable of this you're not capable of it it's not self Reformation only God is capable of this engine how about that not great so I mean it's it's a little it's a little tidbit that when you drill down a little bit and you do some searching you know the Bible study I'll use the four-letter word here is work okay it's work but if you invest a little time into it it has a significant payoff you will notice patterns you will notice things that get repurposed yesterday and you know that seminar we did Psalm 82 and I happen to make the comment at the end of you know Psalm 82 is about God judging the gods of the nation's who you know they're they're put over the nation's back at deuteronomy 32 the babel event you get to the end of the psalm and the psalm psalmist says arise you know god and take take back the nation's inherit the nation's well the Hebrew Old Testament was translated into Greek in in ancient times Jesus and the Apostles most of the time when they referenced the Old Testament they're actually doing it in the ancient greek translation known as the Septuagint spot 70 80 70 75 percent of the time if you look at Psalm 82 in the Greek translation the verb is honest ami which is the significant verb of resurrection there are three or four passages that that will say something like the Lord will arise and take back the nation's the Lord will arise and the Gentiles you know will come and well that's really a hint when you're using the vocabulary of resurrection this is why Paul in Paul's mind it's easy for him to to think about the resurrection in terms of the conquest of the principalities and powers he does this in Ephesians 1 and Colossians 3 and Colossians 2 it's easy for him to put those two things together connect the Resurrection with the reclaiming of the nation's because he's thinking of Old Testament passages in in the Greek translation it makes it clearer and since he's writing to Gentiles it's wonderful because they can read Greek but they can't read Hebrew so I mean you have all this stuff sort of floating around you know underneath that the text that that can be pretty significant you know if you can ferret it out it and I know what already what you're thinking there's no way I can ever do this stuff okay hints okay well Mike's here well I'm gonna I'm gonna undermine the reason I'm here I guess I am a living proof that you can do this stuff usually you have a PhD no kidding no no I came to the Lord when I was 16 alright I was a teenager and I didn't have a Christian home I had no Christian background at all I knew almost nothing about the Bible I had to have a friend who was nine years old who happened to have a crush on my wife when we were teenagers but I won that one but I met this kid when we were both 9 and and his single mom four kids two of them had cystic fibrosis they just struggled mightily but I would go I would get invited to their house you know for family devotions and whatnot and I would marvel at this kid like he knew all these Bible characters he knew and I know I'm not lying I'm not exaggerating I had heard of Adam and Eve I had heard of Jesus and I had heard of Noah and that was it so I'm the result under anyone who's a scholar is actually they won't the dirty little secret they have is they're actually the results the cumulative effect of a little bit of time every day it's not that they have super brain power okay it's about steadfastness and perseverance you learn one new thing a day at the end of the year you got 365 new things you got another year you double that it's it's exponential so I'm the result of five minutes a day you know a little bit of at a time but over a long period of time you actually can do this you live in a day and age where you have access to resources that you can learn to think like an Israelite you can learn to think like a first century Jew this is within your grasp we're not we're not talking about hey we live right after the printing press was invented what's that thing okay you know we live in a day and age when we have instantaneous access to information that the tough part is knowing what things to pick out of the you know out of the flow of information and that's that's really you know what we try to do somebody real quick cuz I want to get to some of these other questions but I think it's important for everybody to know like you were saying yesterday like unseen realm was was a was a work that was 15 I think it was 15 years yeah it was a putter project and and how the or there six thousand references yeah I an unseen realm again if you're like to read books with footnotes that's your book I I like to I don't like people to take my word for things I like to direct people to resources everything in the book is is in peer review somewhere and I collect these things over time now you don't you're not going to get six thousand references in unseen realm but unseen realm has a lot of footnotes a lot of sources it has a companion website that has more but I have collected over the over that span I've collected almost 6,000 peer-reviewed sources for anything in unseen realm so justice out there some some of you all know the difference between a pastor or even were the geeks like the difference between a pastor or theologian or even a theologian riding on a concept of God or whatever like that and an academic scholarship peer-reviewed document they're totally different we are we are one-dimensional okay no I see I revel in the in the nerd dumb I mean I've embraced that so we're good we we appreciate it we really do so so in so Mike okay just like this was huge like when I got ahold of the the text of course the the by brew and Hebrew and all of its original text and I think the Bible in the Dead Sea Scrolls those manuscripts are almost a thousand years earlier than anything that we had today and then also the the commentaries like the commentaries was study and not you know not the last couple of years but even before they were written some of them two hundred years ago yeah where it would take an entire lifetime to get access to something we can find in about four or five hours yeah and then they they had no access to the first century Jew a lot of a great yawn I'm not I'm not saying that you know well Mike thinks he's smarter than John Calvin or Martin Luther Agustin or Aeneas no I'm not smarter than any of those guys but what what scholarship today can take advantage of is against so much of this material that they never they never dreamed even existed I just didn't have them knowledge you know I'll give you other than the Dead Sea Scrolls I mean there are a lot of good commentaries that you know since you know the last twenty thirty years when the scrolls were published and they get they get published in peer-reviewed journals and articles and scholars discuss them and then that material works its way into commentaries so if you're buying a commentary that's you know fifteen twenty years old you know you're gonna it's gonna be fairly up to date you know even if it's fifteen or twenty years old but the problem is is for the layperson who is either isn't going to be aware that commentaries exist or they don't have the money to go by this stuff what's free online on the web is often 100 150 200 years old and it is it is very obsolete in in any number of respects but that's the stuff that's available for free again I view it as my task to bring you know to ferret out some of that information and give it to you in some other form either in my podcast or you know book or something like that but you know back back to the you know who's smart and who's smarter and that's that's just a dumb question that's not the question the question is about what do we have exposure to and access to now that they didn't you can count the number of Church Fathers on one hand and this is no exaggeration one hand who even knew Hebrew they're living centuries after the New Testament period okay that they're not there a moment there are a thousand agustin is over a thousand years removed from the Old Testament biblical period okay and he didn't know Hebrew he even confessed to hating Greek but he knew it he was a Latinist okay but so they were disconnected you know when we talk about worldview we're also talking about how do we get in the head of an Israelite alights you know we're often you know battling against the ideas of the pagans of their day the Egyptians the Babylonians the Assyrians okay the Canaanites and they read their literature we know that because they quote it in the Old Testament and they respond to it they give you no theological pokes in the eye to this deity or that deity well we didn't have access to that stuff it wasn't translated and even discovered until the mid 19th century it's a hundred and fifty years you know it there's so much that all today allows us again to have the Israelite in our head the first century Jew in our head especially in the case of the Dead Sea Scrolls that we are able to think more clearly about a lot of things in the biblical text than the Church Fathers could it's not a question of their intelligence they were they were geniuses you know a number of them I think we're legit geniuses but they were limited in what they could tap into unfortunately and and also then move on to this question and also which when the Reformation began which was awesome you know when when Martin Luther got the Word of God back for the people but so much of his filter was anti Rome anti-catholicism coming out of there it's his concept of law and legal it's it's it's a reaction to that we're in today that's not the case yeah you know there any any person is gonna be situated you know Luther Calvin whatever they have their own battles you know going on they have people that they're trying to respond to in what they write you know somebody's interpretation of something they have questions being asked in their own time period that they're gonna devote a lot of attention to when they do Bible study or when they talk theology so it a lot of their discussion does tend to be sort of insular and and that's just a normal thing because they're trying to help the people of their own day think better about scripture think well about scripture but again we're a few hundred years removed now not only do we have different questions but even the questions Luther was trying to address they're not the questions of the biblical writers necessarily and in many cases they're just they're just totally you know different than what the biblical writer was trying to do in a particular book to a particular audience and again none of that's bad or sinister or you know it just is what it is but we have to sort of wake up and realize that a lot of this stuff is a bit disconnected and in some cases significantly disconnected from the biblical world and if you really want to understand Scripture okay do you want to understand the Bible or what somebody said about the Bible okay if you really want to understand scripture you have to be willing again to have the ancient person in your head and that's just a matter of getting access to tools getting access to resources and then the five minutes a day that's really what it is yeah it's work not gonna lie to you but it's not like I've got to go quit my job you know and I'll be now studying my Bible no it's nothing like that and start with Mike's book supernatural okay this this is very important okay this will be the last thing that that we talk about here um very important Mike there are a growing number of churches and leaders in the body of Christ that are writing books there they're doing conferences and what they are saying is that we need to unhitch we need to unhitch from the Old Testament we need to unhitch them all this just ruin my day it's like as long as you just believe in the resurrection all these scriptures they're they're not important and we need to unhitch from those because they're they're confusing to people if you were that person that I was Paul you'd probably have to duck okay really why does Paul then catch this Paul is writing epistles letters to churches in Asia Minor and other places they're predominantly Gentiles he's the God he's the apostle to the Gentiles he doesn't start churches with Gentiles and then write letters to Jews okay why does Paul then expect Gentiles to understand his arguments and defense of Christianity using the Old Testament I mean he doesn't like in every every chapter every few verses so was Paul misguided maybe Paul didn't have a good understanding of the resurrection maybe he should have just thrown his Old Testament away and thought about the cross you know okay Paul thinks plenty about the cross but he uses his Old Testament to frame the cross and its meaning he uses his Old Testament to show the coherence and the logic of the plan of God that led to the cross K salvation history is just that there's a history behind all this all the things we see happening in the Gospels the things that Jesus said you know what Paul writes what John writes you know it would be I'm honestly at a loss here because I don't know that I could find anything in the epistles that does not have an Old Testament history there's a thread there somewhere and Paul he's the best example because he's not he's not writing to Jews but he's still using frequently the Old Testament so Paul was not of this mindset so I think that's that that's the the most obvious disconnect here but if I was in a nasty mood I would say show me someone who says we can junk the Old Testament and I'll show you someone who has little understanding of Scripture okay just blank little understanding of Scripture yes and I would I would add on that I would just add add on that that from a from a pastors view that is responsible before God to bring the Word of God and the the the Holy Scriptures to his people not my people his people number one I'm a steward I'm not a ruler I have no right to determine what parts of God's scriptures people need and what part they don't remember all of the scriptures when the in the New Testament when you see them say in the scriptures you know all scriptures are God where all the scriptures they didn't have the New Testament put together then that was all of the Old Testament is referred to as the Scriptures the Apostles doctrine was the Old Testament and so I want to be really clear on this if any pastor or any leader teaches God's people to unhitch from the Old Testament and the Scriptures it is one of the most irresponsible both intellectually and spiritually it is one of the most irresponsible and dangerous things that any pastor or leader could do and if you hear any pastor or leader say that kind of stuff to disconnect from Scripture like that I'm asking you in a loving way as your pastor please do not receive or hear or listen resources from that person because they are leading you down a dangerous amen can y'all give it up give it up for okay we have four minutes left we have four minutes left Mike can you just say that one thing about the whole just the imaging thing in God's family just three minutes I'm glad you brought it up because think of what you you wouldn't be able to think well about without your old testament and my mind went right to imaging because where does that language in the New Testament come from we are being conformed to the image of his son you know Jesus who is the Express image of God well it comes from the Old Testament it goes all the way back to Genesis humanity being created in the image of God we spent a lot of time yesterday talking about what that means it really refers to a status not a quality that humans have it refers to a status we are God's imagers we are his representatives we are his proxies his agents his partners to do what he wants done in this world okay we are him as though he were here in a body okay you know whatever again metaphor helps you we are his representation and Jesus was the perfect example of imaging God representing God Jesus said you have seen me if you've seen me you've seen the father and that's what we're supposed to do we're supposed to be disciples of Jesus follow him and we will be conformed to his image and he is the ultimate imager of God being a disciple is imaging God you know Jesus is our example but all that that little subject has a an important long history in the Old Testament we talked about the the command thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain yesterday we think that that refers to verbal abuse and misuse of God's name any and that that's bad but that isn't actually what the command means the word take here we go back to Hebrew the word thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain take there is Nassau which means to lift up to support to carry to bear like in bearing a burden so the idea is is don't bear the name of the Lord in a worthless manner in vain see what does it mean to bear the name if you're an employee of a company you already know what it means you bear the name of that company you're that company's representative if you're you know just a schmuck or something then that you know somebody's gonna meet you and this person treated me bad and so that company is bad I mean they they're gonna transfer the experience to the thing that is named Wow and that's the same thing that these commands are talking about the New Testament equivalent is kind of the verse of Paul gives Timothy in second Timothy where he says let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity you bear the name you represent the thing named and that's really what the command is about so again all of these things are have an Old Testament backdrop even discipleship of Jesus has an Old Testament context in some of its varieties so again here we are back you know this is it's important to be able to trace ideas and I'll just I'll just say this without accusing you know anybody of anything but I have found this is just my experience I have found that people you know pastors and just people in general who don't want you know people to get involved with or use their Old Testament that that that's just laziness okay it's just laziness because it does take work and effort and it allows them to more or less say a lot of things that they just want to say and if there's something in the Old Testament they'll understand well that's just about Jesus you know let's talk about Jesus and then we dismissed that and and that might not lead to something bad or a doctrinal error or some misapplication it might be relatively harmless in that sense but I can give you examples where it's quite harmful yeah and it's very destructive and it sort of makes you vulnerable because now you can't disagree with the person you're talking to because then they're gonna say well don't you like Jesus you know it's manipulative it is it's just it's something that just shouldn't be done and if you can trace ideas yourself as a student of Scripture you're not going to be vulnerable to that kind of thing you just aren't yeah and you know learning to be able to to rightly divide the word of truth and be able to stand on the Word of God and answer questions from people that well you know I you know I don't I don't believe in God because of this and that in the Old Testament well how can you coherently consistently defend that and present that in a way where there's understanding where they can get a clear image come on where image bear a clear image of the God of the Bible and our Lord and Savior deep Jesus Christ amen

Channel: Celebration Church

Views: 166,861

Rating: 4.8207321 out of 5

Keywords: Celebration Church, Celebration Jax, Celebration Church of Jacksonville, Jacksonville, Dr Michael Heiser, Michael Heiser, Supernatural, Seminar, Awakening 2019, AWKNG 2019, Awakening

Id: P__8xQ1ZtUI

Length: 48min 5sec (2885 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 22 2019