Participants: Chris Holland
Series Code: IIWC
Program Code: IIWC201622A
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00:00 IIW-2016-22 --- The House on the Rock #1
00:05 IIW-2016-22 --- The House on the Rock #1 00:09 IIW-2016-22 --- The House on the Rock #1 00:14 IIW-2016-22 --- The House on the Rock #1 00:19 IIW-2016-22 --- The House on the Rock #1 00:24 IIW-2016-22 --- The House on the Rock #1 00:28 IIW-2016-22 --- The House on the Rock #1 00:33 IIW-2016-22 --- The House on the Rock #1 00:38 IIW-2016-22 --- The House on the Rock #1 00:42 IIW-2016-22 --- The House on the Rock #1 01:31 >>Announcer: It has stood the test of time. 01:34 God's book, The Bible 01:38 Still relevant in today's complex world 01:43 It Is Written 01:45 Sharing messages of hope around the world! 01:58 CHRIS: You know, friends, foundations are everything. Without a foundation, buildings 02:04 will collapse under their own weight. In fact, Jesus Himself told a parable about two 02:10 builders: one who built his house upon the sand, the other who built his house upon the 02:15 rock. Now, when the floods came, only the house built upon the solid foundation of the rock 02:23 survived. It is in the same way that each of us, as we are building our spiritual house, we 02:31 need to build that house on a solid foundation. What is the foundation that we need to build 02:39 upon? How can we build it? And what happens if we choose not to build it on a solid foundation? 02:47 Now, over the course of the next several weeks, we will talk about building on solid, 02:53 spiritual foundations so our spiritual house is built to last. Now, here to help me along 03:01 in that discussion, I have a friend and colleague, Karl Tsatalbasidis. Karl, welcome to 03:09 It Is Written Canada. PASTOR KARL: Well, thanks, Chris, for having me. It's good to be back 03:13 home for me. CHRIS: Yeah, well, that's what I was going to first ask. Tell us a little bit about 03:17 yourself, Karl. PASTOR KARL: Sure. I was born and raised in Toronto, Canada, Greater Toronto 03:21 Area, and I basically lived here until I was in my early 20s, and then, as fate would have it, I 03:29 went to school and have found myself in the States now for a little over 25 years. CHRIS: 03:33 Okay, wow, so we want to welcome you back home. Now, you went down to the States and you 03:38 actually have experience in pastoral ministry. You pastored for about 18 years. And then you 03:44 had kind of a new calling in life. Where did life lead? And not that you ever stopped 03:51 pastoring. You're kind of always a pastor. But where did life take you after pastoral 03:55 ministry? PASTOR KARL: Yes, when I was finishing up, like, the master's program at Andrews 04:00 University, and I had begun pastoring for a few years, I really wanted to study a little 04:05 bit more indepthly [sic] into the issues of worship, music, the sanctuary, things like that. 04:10 And so as I began to do that, I began to develop seminar materials, and that kind of took 04:16 me to various places. And I thought to myself, "Wow, I'd really like to do this a little 04:21 more. I'd like to be able to share some of the things that I've been learning and go to 04:25 different places." And I thought, you know, I'd want to go back to school, and so I did 04:29 end up going back to school. And then I ended up teaching. As I think about my own conversion 04:34 experience, I was converted while I was in my early 20s at York University, not too far 04:39 from here. And so, I really thought to myself, "You know, young people are really where 04:45 it's at, all the energy, the enthusiasm, the ideas." And I thought, "You know, teaching 04:49 would really be something that I could appreciate and feel like I could make a contribution." So 04:54 after pastoring, it was kind of natural for me, then, to go into five years of teaching, and I've 04:59 been doing that ever since. CHRIS: That is really exciting. And I'll tell you, some probably 05:04 caught your story there, and they said, "Oh, he was converted. What's his conversion 05:09 story?" And so, to the viewer, I'm going to tell the viewer, and I want to hang on. You're 05:12 going to want to hang on, because we're going to come back to KARL's story about the midst 05:17 of this series and how God worked in a mighty way. But you know, KARL, you're a Ph.D. 05:22 candidate, you're actually in the homestretch of finishing up. And so instead of calling you 05:27 Pastor Karl, we're going to have to call you Dr. Karl here very soon. But you know, Karl, I've 05:32 invited you here because some time back, I did a series called "The Jerusalem Factor." Now, in 05:40 that series - and to our viewers, our listeners, if you haven't seen "The Jerusalem 05:43 Factor" or read it, you can go to our YouTube channel, YouTube.com/IIWCanada, and 05:51 there, you can watch the archives. Now, Pastor Karl, as we were going through that, we 05:57 asked this fundamental question: "Is it possible that people are looking in the wrong direction?" 06:05 And here's what I meant by that. You know, much of the Christian world, and actually, a 06:10 significant portion of the secular world, have been looking toward the literal Jerusalem for 06:17 a literal temple to be rebuilt after what would be a massive middle east war, but would 06:25 culminate in this building of a literal temple. And we ended that series by saying, "You 06:31 know, I don't know if a temple in Jerusalem will be rebuilt. I just don't know; we can't 06:35 predict that." However, we simply asked the question, "Is it possible that everybody's 06:41 looking toward Jerusalem and a literal temple, but actually, our attention should be focused 06:47 elsewhere?" And the text that we looked at is that text in the book of Hebrews. And so why 06:52 don't we go to Hebrews? Hebrews chapter 8 and verse 1 and verse 2, that says this: 07:19 CHRIS: And so, the question I want to ask you, as you have been exploring in your Ph.D. 07:24 studies, as you have explored through your teaching, you said one of your areas - and it is an 07:31 area of expertise - and that is, the sanctuary. So I'm going to ask you a really broad question: 07:38 What is the sanctuary? PASTOR KARL: Wow. Well, you know, Chris, this subject is so vast, 07:46 that according to some researchers, that if you were to take all the aspects of the 07:51 Bible and kind of compile them in chapter form under the heading of the sanctuary, you'd 07:56 probably have about 50 chapters that are devoted to this subject. CHRIS: Wow. PASTOR 08:00 KARL: And so this is an incredibly vast topic that we're talking about here, and it's 08:05 very comprehensive, and it involves just about everything. The sanctuary is connected to 08:10 just about everything you can imagine. The presence of God is really the main component, so to 08:16 speak, if you want to refer to God that way, in the sanctuary. But you also have Christ, Who's 08:23 really the main part of the godhead in the sanctuary. You have all these ritual actions 08:27 that are connected with the sanctuary. It's a structure, it's a building, so it's 08:31 connected to the things of the material universe. Again, it's really the most intricately 08:37 connected topic that there possibly is. But the question, you know, "What is the 08:42 sanctuary"? I mean, really plainly speaking, it is a structure. It is a structure. We 08:49 were just in Hebrews chapter 8. We could go over to Hebrews chapter 9. And in Hebrews 08:54 chapter 9, you get kind of a succinct view there that the apostle gives us of the 08:59 sanctuary. And so I'm going to begin here with verse 1. It says: 09:28 Now, in fact, the golden censor was part of the holy place, but the apostle here is bringing out 09:32 the fact that when the priest ministered in the sanctuary and they ministered where the golden 09:36 censor was that offered the incense, they were brought almost into the immediate 09:41 contact of the presence of God. And so it was so closely associated with the presence of 09:46 God and the Most Holy Place, that the apostle here says 10:09 PASTOR KARL: And so then it des cribes the activities of the high priest going in there once 10:12 a year into the Most Holy Place. So here we have the sanctuary really as a structure. It was an 10:21 earthly structure, and I think when most people think of the sanctuary, they think of that 10:25 earthly structure that the Jews had erected. But, I think what we really need to underscore 10:32 here is that the heavenly sanctuary was a reality, way before the Jewish structure ever 10:40 showed up. Now, you took us to Hebrews chapter 8 verses 1 and 2, and that made it very clear 10:46 there in verse 2 that Jesus is the... 10:57 Another very interesting text in Jeremiah chapter 17, Jeremiah chapter 17 and verse 12, the 11:07 ancient prophet brings this out as well. He says: 11:18 CHRIS: Okay. PASTOR KARL: So a glorious high throne from the beginning is the place of our 11:22 sanctuary. CHRIS: Now, we're going to hit the pause button here, because we've covered a 11:27 lot of ground, and there might be somebody sitting there saying, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, this 11:29 is kind of a lot really fast." So let's go back to Hebrews 8:1, and then we're going to come 11:32 right back here. PASTOR KARL: Yes. CHRIS: Hebrews 8:1 begins with these words, written 11:36 by the apostle. Now, the book of Hebrews was written undoubtedly. it was authored by Paul. Whether 11:45 Paul actually wrote it with his hands or dictated it to a scribe, no doubt, Paul is 11:48 writing this. He's writing to a group of believers. And he uses this, and he says, "Now, this is 11:55 the main point." And the reason I want to come back to this, because we're talking about 11:59 foundations. We're talking about establishing our spiritual house. That word there, "main 12:04 point," it's this Greek word that means "the chief capstone, the chief cornerstone." Both of 12:13 them are used to describe this word. And of course, in ancient buildings, the cornerstone was 12:19 that which kept everything together. And then Paul says, and points us to the sanctuary 12:26 in heaven. Then you quoted from Hebrews 9, which talked about a sanctuary in the earth. I asked 12:31 you, "What's a sanctuary?" and you said it's a structure, and you started naming off all these 12:35 things. PASTOR KARL: Mmhmm. CHRIS: And then we went to Jeremiah, where we said the 12:40 sanctuary has existed from the very beginning of time. So we need to unpack all of that a 12:47 little bit. Heavenly sanctuary. How did we get an earthly sanctuary? Help us kind of 12:54 understand, and we're going to come back to this, because what we're going to see and what 12:58 we're going to be spending time on over the next several weeks is, you said something very 13:02 important: the sanctuary is connected to everything. PASTOR KARL: Yes. CHRIS: And because 13:09 it's connected to everything - and I don't want to take us too far along before we get there - 13:14 but because it's connected to everything, that means the sanctuary is actually connected 13:18 to me and my growth as a Christian. PASTOR KARL: Mmhmm. CHRIS: We're going to cover. 13:23 because some people are saying, "I've never heard this before," we're going to actually spend a 13:27 lot of time talking about why we don't hear about this anymore. But let's talk about this. We 13:31 have a heavenly sanctuary, which the book of Jeremiah says existed since the beginning, but 13:37 then somehow, we got an earthly sanctuary. Let's unpack that a little bit, KARL. How are these 13:43 existing and what does that mean for us? PASTOR KARL: Okay. You brought up that word, "this is 13:50 the main point." You know, out of all the apostle talks about in the book of Hebrews - which 13:55 is an amazing book, 13 chapters, and it covers so much - there's contrast between the first 14:03 covenant and then the second covenant, between the Levitical priesthood and then Christ's 14:07 priesthood, between an earthy sanctuary and a heavenly sanctuary. And here, he's 14:12 saying, "Out of all that I'm saying, this is the main point, that there actually exists a 14:15 reality up there that is called the heavenly sanctuary." And I think the context here is 14:24 important, the historical context here. You know, Jesus prophesied in Matthew 24 that 14:30 not one stone would be left upon another that shall not be thrown down. As the disciples were 14:34 looking at the temple and showing Him the buildings of the temple, this is what Jesus said. 14:39 CHRIS: Yes. PASTOR KARL: And so all of their hopes and dreams were connected with the services 14:43 that were involved in that sanctuary, and they couldn't think of life without that. And 14:48 so, here the apostle is kind of preparing them, as the earthly sanctuary was about to be 14:53 destroyed - and we'll get to how the earthly is a copy in just a minute - but he's preparing them 14:58 in saying, "Look, Christ has entered into the heavenly sanctuary, and we're to base our 15:04 hopes and our aspirations and our anchor in Him up there." And so, this is so central, and as 15:12 we're going to continue on, that even in the Old Testament times, as there was an earthly 15:16 sanctuary, it was. everything they did was oriented around the heavenly. So getting back to the 15:22 earthly concept, how did this originate? And I think we need to go back to the book of Exodus 15:26 for a moment there. CHRIS: And one of the things I want to point out, as we're turning to 15:32 the book of Exodus, Pastor Karl, you and I are going to use two words probably interchangeably 15:37 for the next several weeks that we're together. We're going to use the word "temple" and the 15:42 word "sanctuary" and we're going to use those interchangeably. PASTOR KARL: Correct. 15:45 CHRIS: Maybe help us just a little bit as we turn to Exodus, help us a little bit to 15:48 understand why those words are interchangeable words. PASTOR KARL: Yes, very good. In Exodus 15:54 chapter 25:8-9, this is Moses, and it says: 16:15 PASTOR KARL: And so there was an earthly tent, and that sanctuary had existed for several 16:18 centuries. But if you remember, David wanted to build a sanctuary for God as well. He 16:24 wanted to actually build the temple, and God told him that because he was a man of war, 16:29 that he would not be able to build that temple, but his son Solomon would build that temple. 16:34 And then there you have a more permanent structure. In the time of Moses, that earthly tent was 16:40 built in such a way that the Levites could go ahead and disassemble and carry it from 16:45 place to place as they sojourned. But then eventually, as they began to settle in 16:49 Jerusalem, you have a massive temple then that was built. And so the temple kind of more 16:56 reminds us of the temple that Solomon built, and then the tent. You have the earthly 17:00 structure that Moses built. CHRIS: Okay. So let's go and dwell here a moment with Exodus 17:07 25. So Hebrews 8 describes a heavenly reality. We're going to come to this in just a moment, 17:16 because some people will say, "Ah, this is symbolic." But it would appear that it is a 17:21 reality. How did we get the earthly? You just read Exodus 25. PASTOR KARL: Mmhmm. 17:26 CHRIS: That says it was a copy. Well, what was it a copy of? PASTOR KARL: The only thing that 17:32 it could be a copy of was the heavenly. If you go to verse 40 of Exodus chapter 25 as well, it 17:40 says: 17:48 PASTOR KARL: And even Hebrews 8 talks about the fact that the heavenly is the true, and that 17:52 the earthly is a copy of the heavenly. And so, the original pattern, the original structure, 17:58 the original design, is something that came to the Bible writers through the inspiration 18:04 of the Holy Spirit. Actually, I'm thinking about a text here in First Chronicles, just to 18:11 alert us to the fact that the Bible claims that this was inspired by the Holy Spirit. And 18:20 so, this is First Chronicles chapter 28:12. Just a bit of context here, this is David 18:33 assembling all the people of Jerusalem together and giving Solomon a charge in building it. 18:40 And if you look at verse 12, it says: 18:56 PASTOR KARL: And so this pattern here was revealed by the Holy Spirit. And verse 19 also of 19:02 First Chronicles 28, it says: 19:12 PASTOR KARL: And so whether it was the tent structure that God revealed to Moses, or the 19:18 temple, it was something that was revealed by God, because the reality already pre-existed 19:24 that, which is why we went to the Jeremiah text, when Jeremiah reminded us that hey, from the 19:29 very beginning, there has been a glorious sanctuary where God met with His people there. And it's 19:36 interesting in Jeremiah's text, it says, "This is the place of our sanctuary." Now, the earthly 19:42 temple existed in Jeremiah's day, and so I think it's significant that he would say 19:46 that even as they're assembling around the earthly, it's almost like the earthly was a 19:51 projection of the heavenly, and as they were worshipping toward the earthly, it was actually a 19:56 worship toward the heavenly as well, which we'll get into in just a minute. And so the 20:02 patterns are definitely there. As a matter of fact, let's look at some of the dynamic 20:09 interaction that happens. CHRIS: Okay. PASTOR KARL: Even in the Old Testament. Because 20:13 people think, "You know, in the Old Testament, yes, there was the sanctuary, the temple 20:17 provided the place where everything revolved around, and that was it, and there was kind 20:22 of no connection between the heavenly and the earthly. And so let's go to First Kings chapter 20:27 8. And this is referring to the dedication of the temple, and Solomon is about to. and Solomon 20:36 is actually praying here. And I just want to draw our attention to the fact that when he prays, 20:40 he's actually directing his prayer towards God in heaven and actually asking God to hear from 20:45 that perspective. And so we'll pick it up at verse 29. CHRIS: Okay, sure. PASTOR 20:53 KARL: First Kings 8:29. It states: 21:28 PASTOR KARL: And so you'll find this pattern in various places throughout this chapter. For 21:33 instance, you'll go to verse 33: 21:56 PASTOR KARL: Now, I won't read the rest of the text; I'll just mention the references. Verse 36 22:00 says "hear thou in heaven, thy dwelling place." Verse 39, the same thing. Verse 43, the exact 22:05 same thing. So here we have Solomon. They're all gathered around the earthly. He is 22:11 praying, but yet, he's asking God to hear from His dwelling place, from His sanctuary, from 22:17 His temple up in heaven. And so there's actually a dynamic interaction. Now, there's a 22:24 parallel passage to First Kings 8, and that's Second Chronicles chapter 5-7. CHRIS: Okay. PASTOR 22:30 KARL: At the end of Solomon's prayer in Second Chronicles 7:1-3, in order to show God's 22:37 approval of the way that they had built the sanctuary and everything else, well, you know, 22:43 He came down in a miraculous way and smoke filled the temple, the priests couldn't enter in. 22:47 CHRIS: Sure. PASTOR KARL: And so you have this dynamic interaction going on between 22:52 Solomon directing his prayer toward heaven, and then heaven, of course, acknowledging that 22:56 with a mighty outpouring of God's spirit there. So there's this dynamic interaction going 23:01 on. CHRIS: That's really exciting. So let's just cover a little bit of the ground, review 23:06 what we've talked about. The book of Hebrews makes very clear, as well as the book of 23:12 Jeremiah, that there is a literal sanctuary in heaven that has existed since the very 23:17 beginning of time. Then in the past, during the time of Moses, Moses was given instructions. 23:24 Moses built a wilderness sanctuary, a temporary structure that was able to be put up and 23:31 taken down as the children of Israel moved throughout the regions there. Later in the time 23:37 of the kings, with David and Solomon, they build a more permanent structure, which is 23:41 also a copy of the heavenly. This is now why - and we want to come back to this issue of 23:49 foundations - this is why the sanctuary is so vital, because if what you're saying is true 23:53 and what we are reading is true, is this: The interaction between the heavenly and the sanctuary 23:58 demonstrates to us that A) God has a plan; and B) God expects His children, His people, to 24:05 follow that plan, because worship - and we're going to spend a whole session talking 24:11 about worship - but our worship is a dynamic interaction with the heavenly sanctuary, because 24:19 the heavenly is. because sometimes we just disconnect heaven and earth. Heaven's up 24:23 there, earth's down here, and there's no interaction. But in reality, the two of those 24:29 actually are interacting in such a way that our worship on this earth is actually worship that 24:37 is happening in the very heavenly sanctuary itself. PASTOR KARL: Yeah, absolutely. 24:41 CHRIS: And so Karl, let's talk about this as we have just a few minutes left in this. And our 24:47 time has just flown by. But as we talk about this Old Testament dynamic interaction, are there a 24:53 couple of New Testament texts that might talk to us about that interaction between the heavenly 24:57 and the earthly sanctuary? PASTOR KARL: Yes, yes, there are. Actually, let's turn back 25:02 to Hebrews again. Hebrews is just such a pivotal book for our subject matter. Let's go to 25:07 Hebrews chapter 12, and we'll pick it up at verse 18. So we'll be in Hebrews 12:18 and roughly 25:17 to. well, as we make commentary, it actually ends at chapter 29. It says: 25:55 PASTOR KARL: Now, I'm going to stop there for a moment. What the apostle is saying is that 25:59 when we come and gather together, whether it's for a session that you and I are doing 26:04 right now as we're talking about spiritual things, or whether it's in a church, we're actually 26:10 orienting ourselves toward the heavenly. But what he first says is that when you come together, 26:15 you didn't come to that literal mountain back in Exodus chapter 20 on Mount Sinai. CHRIS: That's 26:20 right. PASTOR KARL: So you're not coming there. And so in verse 22, it switches gears. He 26:26 says, "You're not coming to that literal mountain where I spoke the Ten Commandments, and even 26:31 Moses said, 'I'm really afraid.'" It says: 27:02 PASTOR KARL: And I'll stop there for a moment. So you're not coming to Mount Sinai where the 27:06 Ten Commandments were proclaimed; you're coming to the mountain in heaven, the heavenly 27:10 Jerusalem. And this is where the saints of God, as we are worshipping all over the planet 27:17 - when we're worshipping here in Canada or in the U.S. or in South America or in Asia or in 27:23 Africa - whenever God's people are coming together in a corporate sense, although we're 27:28 all geographically scattered all over the place, we're not just orienting ourselves to some 27:33 earthly location. It's saying we're actually orienting ourselves toward that heavenly 27:39 Jerusalem where the presence of God is. It mentions God as the Judge there, it mentions the 27:44 blood of the covenant and Christ being there. It also mentions the angelic host. So the angelic 27:51 host and us are all together in this. There's a dynamic interaction going on. And as the 27:58 Word of God is preached, notice the appeal in verse 25 of Hebrews chapter 12. It says: 28:16 PASTOR KARL: And so as God's Word is spoken from heaven through the living preacher on 28:20 earth, we are all gathered together, there's a dynamic interaction going on. 28:23 CHRIS: Now, Pastor Karl, this is exciting. We are going to come back to this text. But we are 28:27 just out of time. But here's the powerful thing that we end on today: When we worship God, we 28:35 actually come into His very presence, which is in the heavenly sanctuary. PASTOR 28:42 KARL: Amen. CHRIS: Lets pray on that as we end today, but we'll continue next week. Heavenly 28:46 Father, we are so grateful that we are not left alone, but we can be with You in the heavenly 28:53 sanctuary. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. 29:12 CHRIS: Friends, today's program was jam-packed with information. Are you interested in building 29:17 your spiritual foundation on the solid rock, Jesus Christ? If you are, I invite you to call our 29:23 toll-free number. There, you can enrol in our correspondence Bible school. We also have 29:28 people standing by who can pray with you for any of your special prayer requests. Pastor Karl, 29:35 I want to thank you so much for joining us today. PASTOR KARL: It's been a privilege to 29:39 be here. CHRIS: Thank you. And friend, I hope you enjoyed today's program. I invite you to 29:43 join us again next week. Until then, remember, it is written: "Man shall not live by bread 29:50 alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." |
Revised 2017-04-11