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 Podcast: Play in new window | Download (9.0MB) On the surface, Paul’s message about Sarah and Hagar in Gal. 4:22-23 doesn’t make sense. After all, we all know how a man and woman come together to make a child. Sarah symbolizes Heaven, and Hagar symbolizes the Earth. In the last days, God will glorify Jerusalem. [read more]
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (11.5MB) Why did apostle Paul connect Hagar with Sinai and Jerusalem in Galatians 4? Was it to free believers in Yeshua (Jesus) as God’s Messiah from obedience to God’s Law? [read more] Podcast: Play in new window | Download (10.6MB) The Christ-like life is compared to a race, but it’s not a cut-throat competition against our fellow believers. We are to help one another reach the ultimate goal. The “fruit of the Spirit” that are given to us by God to help us and others in this life are not a “grab bag” that we can pick and chose which fruits we want. We should want them all and use them all and we should share them with our fellow believers and the world at large. We are also called to understand that God is the same yesterday, today and forever. He has one plan for the salvation of man, not two, three for four versions. [read more] Podcast: Play in new window | Download (11.3MB) Paul’s discussions of circumcision, mainly in Galatians, Philippians and Romans, have been interpreted as being condemnation against the Torah, because the Law calls for circumcision for newborns and those wanting to participate in key parts of worship of God. However, it must be remembered that circumcision by the first century A.D. had become an “identity marker” separating Jews from non-Jews. Like observance of Shabbat, circumcision was listed among the “works of [the] law” in the Dead Sea Scrolls that defined those separate from the corrupt religious system around the time of the first century. The rite of circumcision could be behind the division between Jewish and “unconverted” non-Jews that Paul dressed down Peter and the Galatian congregations in chapters 2 and 3 of this letter. [read more] Podcast: Play in new window | Download (9.6MB) Galatians 4, with its discussion of freedom from being “under [the] law” and not of the Jerusalem related to the flesh, is often cited by those who argue that observing the Torah is a backward step for believers in Messiah Yeshua. However, considering what Paul already wrote in chapters 1 through 3 and the parallel discussion in Romans 5–7, his point in this chapter is that both Jews and non-Jews are in the same situation without God’s method of salvation, which isn’t God’s Law. Yet God’s goal for humanity long-term is heart-led obedience to His Law. The Torah is the back story of all the New Testament. And if we assume that the Law of Moses was Plan A for the people of God and the gospel was Plan B, we will interpret what Paul wrote about the Torah in Galatians incorrectly. God doesn’t throw curveballs to strike us out but to help teach us how to hit a home run. [read more] Podcast: Play in new window | Download (12.5MB) Galatians in general and chapters 2 and 3 in particular frequently are used to prove that observing the Law isn’t required for believers. However, the discussion of “justification” and “works of [the] law” in this passage reinforces that the real problem was excluding “justified” believers in God and His Messiah from membership in Israel, whose constitution is the Law of God. [read more] Podcast: Play in new window | Download (10.5MB) Who makes us holy? Paul calls his hearers to remember that it is Yeshua who makes us holy. Yeshua makes us holy when He creates in us a new heart. We discover the definition of sin and the remedy for sin in the same text. Paul is not giving the Galatians a new Torah, a new teaching. He is sending them back to the old ways that were there all along yet hidden and ignored. We explore the “new covenant” transformation from “old self” to “new self” in Colossians 2–4 and Romans 5-7. [read more] |
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Weekly Bible readings