Participants: Chris Holland (Host), Karl Tsatalbasidis
Series Code: IIWC
Program Code: IIWC201628A
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00:00 IIW-2016-28 --- THE HOUSE ON THE ROCK #7
00:04 IIW-2016-28 --- THE HOUSE ON THE ROCK #7 00:08 IIW-2016-28 --- THE HOUSE ON THE ROCK #7 00:13 IIW-2016-28 --- THE HOUSE ON THE ROCK #7 00:17 IIW-2016-28 --- THE HOUSE ON THE ROCK #7 00:21 IIW-2016-28 --- THE HOUSE ON THE ROCK #7 00:26 IIW-2016-28 --- THE HOUSE ON THE ROCK #7 00:30 IIW-2016-28 --- THE HOUSE ON THE ROCK #7 00:34 IIW-2016-28 --- THE HOUSE ON THE ROCK #7 00:38 IIW-2016-28 --- THE HOUSE ON THE ROCK #7 00:42 IIW-2016-28 --- THE HOUSE ON THE ROCK #7 01:31 >>Announcer: It has stood the test of time. 01:35 God's book, The Bible 01:38 Still relevant in today's complex world 01:44 It Is Written 01:46 Sharing messages of hope around the world! 01:59 CHRIS: My dear friends, for the past six weeks, we have studied the essential nature of building 02:06 a solid spiritual foundation; that solid foundation is found in the sanctuary which is in 02:14 heaven. For those six weeks, Pastor Karl Tsatalbasidis has been along to help understand 02:22 the sanctuary. You're an expert in the sanctuary. You've been studying in your Ph.D. on these 02:28 things. And so we're going to get right into this. We left off in our last show talking about 02:33 the presence of God. Now, to our viewers, to our listeners, if you missed any of this series on 02:40 solid foundations, I would encourage you to go to our YouTube channel, 02:44 www.youtube.com/iiwcanada. There you'll find archives of the program, and you can understand 02:54 the context of the things we're talking about today. So where we left off, presence of God, 03:00 His divine presence is revealed in His Word. But throughout history, it would seem to me, as 03:08 we look at that history, that there have been great debates in the church about the divine 03:13 presence of God. Let's talk about that. What are some of those debates and how can we 03:19 avoid some of the pitfalls we've seen in that history? PASTOR KARL: We're reminded, in Exodus 03:25 chapter 3, that when Moses saw the burning bush, he didn't automatically begin to worship 03:30 it, that he only recognized the presence of God when God spoke to him from the midst of the 03:34 bush. Just like in the ten commandments, God spoke out of the midst of the fire, and He 03:39 says, in Deuteronomy 4:12-15, "You didn't see any form, so don't construct anything 03:45 material in order to equate that with My presence." So His presence comes through the Word. 03:52 Interestingly enough, after the death of the disciples, you know that Jesus had instituted the 03:58 Lord's Supper. And then He began to initiate that, the Lord's Supper, with His disciples, and 04:06 He said that He would not partake of this until the kingdom would be restored again. 04:11 And in Paul'swritings in First Corinthians 11, it says, you know, "As often as you do this, 04:15 you do proclaim the Lord's death 'til He comes." When the disciples had passed off the 04:21 scene of action, in a very short time, the presence of God began to be kind of equated with the 04:29 emblems themselves, so in other words, with the bread and with the wine. There were actually 04:36 two views as history was progressing: one, that they were becoming more and more 04:41 associated with the bread and the wine, so that there was a real presence in the bread and 04:46 the wine; and others thought that perhaps it was just a memorial. Augustine, 5th century 04:53 theologian, was kind of ambivalent about this, or I should say, you'd look at some 04:58 of his writings, and some of his writings seemed to say memorial, but others are very strongly 05:02 indicating that there's a real presence kind of in the bread Then you get to the 9th and 05:07 10thcenturies, this had been debated for so long, they begin to settle the issue. And it was 05:14 actually ThomasAquinas, the famousCatholic theologian, that really settled the issue by 05:21 stating that the presence of God was actually inside the wafer. And it was based on the ideas of 05:30 Aristotle. Aristotle taught that there was form and that there was matter in everything. That 05:37 form was interpreted on the basis of Greek thinking. Youcouldn't tell what's inside 05:43 the form. Some Christians would say that the form is your eternal soul, just to kind of 05:49 switch the metaphors or analogies. So the form is your soul, and then your body is 05:53 matter. So when you think of the emblems, the form of the bread is the part of the bread that 05:59 you can't see. It's the substance of the bread that is interpreted on the basis of 06:05 Greek philosophy, which we studied a little bit earlier in our presentations. And so, 06:10 Aquinas asserted that when the priest pronounces the words, "This is my body," that the 06:17 substance of the bread and the substance of the wine is allegedly transformed into the 06:23 substance of the Divine Son of God, Divine human Son of God, which is understood in 06:29 Aristotelian terms. And so yes, the substance of God, the essence of God, the being of 06:39 God, was associated with the emblems there, and that carried on for a long time, and it led 06:45 to certain problems whereby, okay, if the presence of God is actually in the materials, well, 06:52 we don't want to hand out the wine to the parishioners, because if we spill some of it, 06:57 we would be spilling part of the presence of God. And so for many years, the wine was withheld 07:03 from the people. And then whenLuther came along, he went and had restored some of those 07:09 things. And so just to summarize, it morphed into a real presence being associated 07:17 with the emblems themselves in the CatholicChurch, in the medievalchurch. And these 07:23 concepts even had penetrated into the Reformation, when we get into Luther and Zwingli. 07:28 CHRIS: And so what you're saying - just so we're very clear - iswe see that Jesus institutes 07:34 the Lord's Supper where the bread and the wine are actually symbolic, a memorial for our 07:42 personal reflection. PASTOR KARL: Correct. CHRIS: And really, if we get to the heart 07:48 of it, as we partake of those emblems, they drive us to the Word, that we might experience 07:53 the presence of God through the Word. PASTOR KARL: Correct. CHRIS: But others developed the 07:56 idea that the actual bread and the wine, for lack of a better word, become the very presence 08:03 of God. PASTOR KARL: Yeah. CHRIS: And so, what we need to then look at, is that really 08:09 what happens? Does it become the presence of God? Or have we already established where God's 08:13 presence is? PASTOR KARL: Mmhmm. CHRIS: So where is God's presence? Is God's presence in 08:18 the bread and wine? Or is it somewhere else? PASTOR KARL: Let's pick this up with 08:22 Luther versus Zwingli. One of the saddest aspects of the Reformation was the Marburg 08:26 Colloquy of 1529 in which Luther debated with Zwingli about the nature of the presence. For 08:33 Luther, he believed that there was actually a real presence in the emblems. Some people called 08:38 it consubstantiation, whether that was a term that Luther had invented or associated with, you 08:45 know, I don't know at this point. But for sure he did believe in a real presence. 08:50 Whether it was in the bread or around the bread or somewhere associated with the bread, he 08:53 believed that based on the words of Jesus, "This is my body." Zwingli would counter and say, 08:59 "Well, in John chapter 6, you know, 'the words that I speak,' verse 63, 'they are spirit and 09:06 they are life.' Besides, Luther, the presence can't be in the bread, because Jesus is in 09:12 heaven. So how can the presence be in the bread if Christ is in heaven?" Therefore Zwingli opted 09:18 for a memorial. Now, Zwingli didn't really develop this whole idea or a theology of the 09:24 presence of God based on the sanctuary, and this is what I'm studying right now, with the 09:29 doctoral dissertation, is I'm looking at the interpretation of the presence of God in greater 09:35 worship. And so, even though Luther rejected the philosophy of the church, he was still 09:43 associating the presence of God with the emblems themselves in some way. So Zwingli was 09:49 correct; he just has not developed his theology of the presence of God from the 09:54 sanctuary, from that picture. Now, if we go to the sanctuary, in Revelation chapter 4 and 5, 10:01 there's One seated on the throne there in Revelation chapter 4. And they actually end up 10:05 worshipping Him. They cast their crowns at a specific location. So they're not casting their 10:11 crowns in every direction, as if God was ubiquitous in such a way. No. There is One seated on 10:18 the throne; He is there in a specific location. The Lamb later comes in, in Revelation 10:23 chapter 5, and there is a magnificent worship service there in praise and honour to 10:28 the One seated on the throne, and to the Lamb. So the presence of God is there in that 10:33 sanctuary. Now, is there a real presence here as well? Yeah, it's called the Holy 10:39 Spirit. And if you remember, in Revelation 5:6, as John sees the Lamb there, in verse 6, 10:59 When the Holy Spirit comes into the earth, how does He manifest Himself? We covered this 11:04 previously in another session, but in the letters to the churches, it was Jesus that 11:07 originated the message, and then at the end of themessage, we need to take heed and listen to 11:11 what the Spirit is saying to the churches. And the book of Hebrews is the same thing; in 11:15 Hebrews 3:7-9, it quotes Psalm 97 and it says: The Holy Spirit says, "Today, if you hear his 11:24 voice, harden not your hearts." PASTOR KARL: So the Holy Spirit, His presence is here. It's an 11:29 invisiblepresence. We cannot detect Him. Where two are more are gathered together, Jesus 11:34 says, "I am here in the midst." So He is among us. So God talks to us in a personal way. And 11:42 this is what the sanctuary brings out. When He created Adam and Eve, He spoke with them face 11:47 to face. When Jesus was here with His disciples, how did He speak with them? He spoke face 11:52 to face in the same way. And when He comes again, and we get to behold Him face to face, will 11:59 He not be speaking with us face to face? And so the reason I mention this is because there 12:05 are all kinds of methods of spirituality today which say that we can kind of recite 12:10 things over and over and over and over and over again as methods of prayer or methods of 12:17 spirituality, and those all assume that the presence of God is within you. And by basically 12:23 going through those rituals and those routines, you are making room for basically the enemy to 12:30 speak to you there, because God doesn't speak to you in that manner. He speaks very clearly 12:34 in His Word in a very personable way. The whole idea of Christ being in us - Paul talks about 12:41 Christ in you, the hope of glory - the issue of the presence of God is central to that, because 12:47 if the presence of God is equated with nature, then you read these passages and you say, 12:53 "Hey, Christ in you. Well, what does that mean? Does that mean that I'm a chip off the old 12:58 block, and that I have parts of the divine nature that only belong to God alone?" No. Along 13:06 with the sanctuary, there's another very important theme that helps us in this area of 13:10 spirituality that is associated with the presence of God, and that is the covenant. And it is 13:14 the covenant that helps to answer the question as to how God relates to us. For instance, 13:18 if we go back to Hebrews chapter 8, you find the new covenant there. And it answers the 13:24 question as to what it really means for me to know God, to have a relationship with Him, 13:31 and to have Him in me. In verse 10, it says: 13:57 PASTOR KARL: How is it that we can know Him? It is when we allow God to place His Words in 14:03 our minds and in our hearts, when we become transformed, and then we become like Him. It is 14:10 in that way that He then becomes. comes to live inside of us. So the issue of the presence 14:16 of God is really broad and deep and has a very large effect on corporate worship, on 14:21 spirituality, and a whole ton of other issues. CHRIS: So God's presence clearly in sanctuary 14:26 revealed in His Word, which is interesting, 'cause Hebrews chapter 4 talks about the Word 14:32 of God being living and active and powerful. It is revealed to us in His Word. How does the 14:42 sanctuary reveal the character of God? And you alluded to something, because we've talked 14:48 about the Father, we've talked about the Son, we've talked about the Holy Spirit. How does 14:52 the sanctuary reveal that character of God, this three in one and one in three? PASTOR 14:57 KARL: I want to focus on Jesus just for a moment, because I don't want to let this point go. 15:02 I remember reading the Bible for the first time, and in John 1:29, John the Baptist looks at 15:09 Jesus and he says, "Behold, the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." And I 15:14 hadn't had any Bible training before, and I'm wondering, "Why is he calling Him a Lamb?" And 15:20 of course, within the backdrop of the sanctuary, it makes sense, because those lambs were 15:25 offered, you know; the burnt offering was going on every day, morning and evening. They 15:30 typified the fact that someone would come. And so, the imagery of the lamb represents the 15:37 humanity of Christ. And of course, He had to become human before He could ultimately die 15:41 on the cross. We were in Revelation 5:6, so He was born into this world; he is the Lamb 15:49 of God. And after His ascension, He became our High Priest. And in Revelation 5:6, John sees a 15:57 Lamb as it had been slain. And He's our Great High Priest there in the heavenly sanctuary. So in 16:04 this dispensation of time - and the imagery of the Lamb is replete in the book of 16:10 Revelation, I think, 27 or 28 times that it's mentioned - and so here you have Jesus in this 16:16 period of earth's history, where He is our Mediator, which means that He's still human at this 16:22 point. Now, the thing that really struck me was, in Revelation 22:3, and maybe we'll 16:32 read the first three verses, because Revelation 22 is after the sin problem has all been 16:37 dealt with. It's all said and done. CHRIS: The earth is made new again, we're dwelling with 16:44 God. PASTOR KARL: Correct. Yeah, actually, let me just read verse 3. It says: 16:59 PASTOR KARL: So after the sin problem has all been taken care of, it still mentions Him as a 17:05 Lamb. But in the Old Testament passages, the lambs were sacrificed, pointing forward to 17:10 the death of Christ on the cross, and also His High Priestly ministry, but now it 17:15 still refers to Him as a Lamb. And what that tells me is that when Jesus chose to become 17:22 incarnated, that this was not something that was just going to happen for time, but that this 17:29 was something that was going to happen for eternity, if you can wrap your brain around that. So 17:34 this is the Great I Am. He is the Great I Am Who has existed from the days of eternity, as 17:40 Micah 5:2 tells us, in fellowship with the Father and with the Holy Spirit. I mean, we 17:45 can't even comprehend what that means, in fellowship with eternity, way before the earth 17:49 was ever created. The complexity of that relationship. And then the introduction of the 17:54 universe, you know, by the Word of God, the heavens were made. And then He creates you and I, 17:59 and then all of a sudden, we fall into sin. And this God decides to become incarnated not 18:05 just for time, but for eternity. That's an amazing thought. You know, there are some people that 18:12 are wondering, "Do I have any value?" Or,"Do I have any worth?" Perhaps, you know, some 18:16 people have been told, you know, "You're no good, you're worthless." Tell me, what kind 18:20 of being would do that? What kind of being would do that? CHRIS: And just so we don't - 18:26 and let's dwell on that for just a few moments longer; let's linger here. To the person who 18:32 has been told that, "You're worthless, you have no value," maybe someone has been told 18:39 they're an accident. Christ says you're no accident, and Christ says you're so worthy, that 18:50 Christ incarnated Himself, became the Lamb for not just a moment of time and then stepped 19:00 back into His role, but actually will be the Lamb for eternity in the future, and in fact, was for 19:10 eternity in the past, because the book of Revelation says he was the Lamb of God, slain from 19:15 the foundation of the world. And so the sanctuary teaches us this interaction. It is 19:21 difficult to understand, but a powerful interaction where you have the Father on the throne. 19:27 You have the Son, the Lamb, on the throne. You have the Spirit Who is interacting personally 19:34 with humanity through the delivery of God's Word through convicting hearts and leading 19:39 them along. And it all leads us to the church. How does the sanctuary teach us about the 19:50 church? That word "church" in the Greek is the word ekklésia, "the called-out ones." God's 19:55 calling us out of this confusion. And in fact, the book of Revelation talks about it 20:02 being Babylon, the wine of Babylon, religious confusion. God is calling people out into 20:08 His church. How does the sanctuary help explain the nature of the church, salvation, 20:15 sin, spirituality? How does that all come together in the sanctuary? PASTOR KARL: Chris, 20:21 there wasa text that we had talked about in the Old Testament in Isaiah 14:13, where 20:27 the enemy said that: 20:31 I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will sit also in the mouth of the 20:34 congregation in the sides of the north. 20:37 PASTOR KARL: Now, in that mount of the congregation - this is Isaiah 1:13 - we discovered that 20:42 that's talking about the sanctuary, through the Hebrewwordshar moad [ph] which 20:45 are associated with the sanctuary in various places. And so, in the sanctuary, you have a 20:52 connection between heaven and earth. So what I'm going to do is, as I think the scriptures do 20:58 to me, is expand our vison of what the church is to include the church in heaven. So the 21:05 church, you mentioned ekklésia being called out. Well, you know, there was war in heaven, 21:08 and so this is where this whole thing began up there, and they had to make a stand, they had to 21:13 be called out, who's on the Lord's side, and they went ahead and took their stand. And so 21:20 here, the enemy is trying to sell his version of the great controversy in the mouth of the 21:25 congregation. Look at Hebrews 12 for a moment, because you have further integration between 21:32 the church in heaven and the church on earth, in Hebrews 12, In verse 22, it says: 21:48 They're part of the church, actually. They're part of the church. That's where you're coming. 21:53 You're coming to the general assembly of the church of the firstborn, in other words, the 21:57 firstborn ones, whose names are not written on the church books necessarily here on earth, but 22:01 the ones that are written in heaven. So the sanctuary is combining earth and heaven, 22:07 which means I think we ought to expand our concept of what the church is to include the church 22:11 in heaven as well. Let me share some other principles here. In the book of Ephesians, chapter 22:18 3. Galatians, Ephesians. chapter 3, verse 14 and 15. 22:38 PASTOR KARL: So the church is not just one family here on earth; it says that there is a 22:44 family in heaven. And so we're part of the family in heaven as well, the angelic host in 22:50 heaven. Something interesting in the book of Revelation - and I've read this text so often, I 22:55 couldn't believe that it got by me - do you remember when John was about to worship the angel 23:01 and sit at his feet? It's mentioned once in Revelation 19, but then also Revelation 22. 23:05 Let's go to that one, Revelation 22. It says. 23:19 PASTOR KARL: He says, "Look, John, you and I are brethren." An amazing thought. So the 23:26 church is not just the church on earth, but the church in heaven as well. And this has an impact 23:31 on our definition of sin, you know. The Bible talks about, that sin is the transgression of 23:37 the law. That's the only definition of sin that will work, you know, because angels 23:42 didn't sin because God had predestined sin; angels didn't sin because there was some 23:48 defect in the programing; they sinned because they deliberately chose to go in the opposite 23:53 direction. CHRIS: Lucifer, those that followed Lucifer, what you're talking about, they made 23:58 an active choice, which is, by the way, a side note, gives us great hope, because God has 24:03 created us with the same free will that the angels had. PASTOR KARL: Correct. CHRIS: And so 24:08 you have the universal church, which includes heaven, which includes the angels of heaven, 24:16 helps us understand that the universal nature of sin is that it is the transgression of God's 24:22 law, which ultimately leads us away from a sanctuary foundation, a sanctuary 24:27 framework. PASTOR KARL: Correct, right. This means that I can't blame Adam. Even 24:31 Adam, I mean, well, he sinned because he deliberately chose to go in the wrong direction. Now, 24:37 you and I have inherited tendencies that lead us in the wrong direction. However, the 24:41 grace of God is sufficient for us, and I'm glad for the fact that God doesn't condemn us 24:45 simply for being born, that He sends information. And Jesus says, "This is the condemnation, 24:51 that light has come into the world, but men love darkness rather than light." And so He 24:56 holds us accountable when we are sufficiently illuminated and we choose, in the face of that 25:01 evidence, to go in the wrong direction. CHRIS: Which is why, of course, Proverbs 4 says, "The 25:05 path of the just is as the shining light that shines brighter and brighter unto a 25:08 perfect day." God expects us to live up to His presence, which has been revealed in His Word, 25:19 which illuminates us to help get us on that path of coming into a personal relationship with Him. 25:26 PASTOR KARL: Yes, absolutely. CHRIS: Now, Karl, we could spend a lot of time talking about 25:31 that. We have just a few minutes left, and I want to head towards something that's very important. 25:36 When we talk about someone's personal worship, whether that be in a corporate setting, in a 25:43 church, or whether that be in a devotional time sitting in their living room, how does the 25:50 sanctuary inform that worship? PASTOR KARL: The sanctuary informs that worship by telling 25:57 us that the main vehicle of God's presence is His Word. Historically, as we covered 26:04 earlier, the presence of God was associated with the wafer. You know, today, with the 26:09 charismatic movement, it's associated with music. And so they even call it "musical 26:14 transubstantiation." So when people hear the music, they automatically equate the 26:19 experience of that with the presence of God. So the sanctuary actually helps us by 26:24 helping us to realize that it's really God's Words that are central. You know, in that 26:29 scene, in Revelation 4 and 5, John was so anxious, and he was so troubled, he was weeping, 26:35 because he wanted to know what was in that book. Yes, there was music up there, yes, it was a 26:39 great scene, yes, there were a lot of things going on, but he wanted to know what was in that 26:45 book. CHRIS: And that brings us right down to our conclusion that cannot be missed: the 26:54 presence of God is in the sanctuary. That presence is revealed in His Word. Our 27:00 personal worship in our home and in our devotional life should be founded on the Word. When we go 27:06 to our church to gather with God's people, that church should be founded on the Word. We 27:15 cannot drum up the presence of God. We can't call down the presence of God. God has 27:20 revealed Himself in His Word, and has given this Word as our gift to us. PASTOR KARL: And 27:26 preaching should have the central place, because that's how God reveals Himself. 27:31 CHRIS: The proclamation of the Word. PASTOR KARL: Amen. CHRIS: Building our spiritual 27:34 house on a solid foundation. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, You've given us the solid 27:41 foundation, the solid foundation of Your Word where Your presence is revealed from the sanctuary. 27:51 May we found everything on it. We pray this in Jesus' name, amen. PASTOR KARL: Amen. 28:02 CHRIS: My dear friend, a journey with Jesus is founded on His Word. The sanctuary is where 28:11 God's presence is, and His presence is revealed through the Word. Today, I want to offer you 28:17 the DVD set of this series, that it might help you to dive deep in God's Word, to draw close to 28:25 Jesus, and be ready for Him when He comes again. Here's the information you need to receive 28:31 today's offer. 29:16 CHRIS: My dear friend, you are of infinite worth in the eyes of God. Jesus, whose presence is in 29:25 the sanctuary for eternity as the Lamb Who was slain from the foundation of the world, slain 29:32 for your sin and for mine. Pastor Karl, thank you very much for being with us and for 29:38 helping us see God's presence in the sanctuary. PASTOR KARL: It's been great, Chris. 29:43 CHRIS: Friend, I hope you've entered into that relationship with Jesus. I ask that you join 29:48 us again next week. Until then, remember, it is written, "Man shall not live by bread alone, 29:54 but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." |
Revised 2017-05-13