Episode 941: Going Deeper - 5/10/2026

So welcome to Going Deeper and thank you to the PTO class for hosting this podcast of Lake Side Baptist Church, which typically follows up on the sermon. But today Brad and I talked and we've invited Nicholas, who is our discipleship pastor, to talk a little bit about a theme that you encounter all the time. Every time you hear a sermon, you're hearing a pastor mark, for instance, do this, but we're going to talk a little bit about some of the mechanics, and that is biblical theology. So biblical theology is typically defined as what pastor, Nicholas, how would you, just a short definition of biblical theology? I think the way that I've come to see biblical theology is how do we learn theology through the lens of the Bible? What is the Bible you're saying that ties Genesis to Revelation together for us to understand who God is? Right. And there are other types of theology, for instance, natural theology, which takes the witness to God in nature, in conscience, but that's a very limited. Whereas biblical theology takes this rich revelation, which is centered in our salvation. Yeah. And so, yeah. And so, now, before we move into an example, and we're going to have an example of a biblical theology that actually comes out of Pastor Nicholas or Dr. Dawson's dissertation, and that was on divine presence. But let's talk a little bit about maybe go a little bit about some of the difficulties in biblical theology, because not everyone in the academy agrees as to how to do biblical theology. Or are they? So, there's a famous book that talks about a spectrum of views. Talk to us a little bit about that spectrum, and what's on each side of that spectrum. Yeah. So, there's a book called Understanding Biblical Theology by Klingken Lockett, and it talks about five different views that you might see. On the left, it talks more of a very historical. What did they think? What did they believe? Thinking more cultural contextual understandings. And they're not, what are they not concerned about on that strong historical side? And sometimes they're just wanting to focus more on what did they believe, not necessarily what how it would relate to today in the sense of a modern interpretation, but more of this is how it's been historically known. So, they're interested in what it meant to the people in the biblical time, but not what it means to us today, which is an interesting move. What's on the other extreme? So, on the other side, you have more of a theological construction, and it's more of how do we as the church think rightly about it? It's not, it wouldn't just, you know, throw out the historical piece, but the idea is how do we do it contextually today? How do we wrestle with and how does it apply for us today? And there's often two different audiences that are at work here, aren't there? Yeah, the Academy. Yeah, so the historians are all interested about the Academy and the University, whereas the theologians are interested, what does this mean for us today? How does the church wrestle with this and really benefit as a church to see this modeled in all the years? So, I'm a bit of an egghead, as you know, and you are too. David is too, in case anybody wondered. And we're very interested in the Academy, aren't we? But, but that's really not the place ultimately for biblical theology. It's really the people of God gathered around the Word of God, hearing God, as by his spirit today, he makes himself present to us, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, let's get into an example, or maybe you can give a couple of examples, just quickly, what might be some types of or themes of biblical theology? I think, you know, if you mean if you open up to Genesis, the very first theme is God and creation, then when you get to Revelation, it's God and recreation. Yeah. So, you see that a lot. Genesis 315, talked about the promise seed. We see the the theme of the seed from Genesis all the way up to Christ, and how he fulfills it, and then the work and the benefit of Christ all the way to Revelation. Sometimes you see promise in the or yeah, promise in the Old Testament, and then fulfillment in the New Testament. And so, some of those themes can and law in law and the gospel. Sometimes you even see God's dwelling place, Eden, Tabernacle, Timber. Yeah, the temple and so on. Yeah. A lot of those themes that you see repeat, if it repeats more than once, typically the authors will use that as a theme that continuously expands to Revelation. And you can get kind of specific at points, for instance, the Hissop branch that is used in, you'll remember, and this is just an example. So, you remember when the Israelites needed to leave Egypt, right? And they had to paint the lentils and the doorposts with the blood of the lamb, and they did it if you remember with a Hissop branch, which think of a natural paintbrush. And whenever Jesus is on the cross and they are trying to give him vinegar, what did they put it on? A Hissop branch, which automatically brings the mind to the sacrifice of the firstborn for the nation. And that type of sacrificial imagery, even in something as simple as a Hissop, basically a natural paintbrush, is pretty just awesome, isn't it? I mean, I don't know. I went to art school. So, for me, when you can see how detailed God is in the artistry, there's a lot there that I think we take for granted because we don't think of it in the same way. And there's a lot there across the whole canon. So, how many millennia was the Bible written over, at least two millennia? And so, 40 some authors and different continent. Yeah, and different languages. Major languages Hebrew and Arabic and Greek. So, I mean, there's a lot that God, you can see, putting together this theology throughout the whole stretch of the biblical narrative. So, let's talk about the theme of God's presence a little bit. And maybe you can open your Bibles with us. And let's trace an important concept. And that is God being near us or present to us through the biblical text. So, take us to the first text. If you would turn to Genesis 1, we're going to look at verses 26 through 28. Really, there's a lot in Genesis 1 through 3, but we can start at least with that one, that's the simplest. So, Genesis 1 verses 26 through 28. Then God said, "Let us make man in our image after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth." So, God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him, male and female. He created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth." So, here we have humanity, the man and the woman, created in the image of God. And part of, I mean, there's lots of debate among theologians that's to exactly what the image of God means, but part of it is that at least the human beings are to rule creation on behalf of God, right? And to be able to relate to God in a way it's very distinct from others. Yeah, because we carry his image. So, he relates to us by the fact that he created us in his image. And in turn, we reveal his dominion over creation by being faithful. And in Genesis chapter 2, we actually see examples. Yeah, more of that with him naming and just the beauty of them working in the garden and learning what all of this is for. I can see the Lord taking Adam and showing him the animals and saying, "What do you think this one is?" So, there is a development. I think actually, in some ways, we could see this as the development of human knowledge about the world. In other words, science begins to develop in Genesis chapter 2. Yeah, very much so. But Genesis chapter 3 comes along and things kind of go south with the presence of God. Tell us a little bit about what went wrong there. So, if you look at chapter 3, verse 8 specifically, what's really interesting, this is what I think is cool, verse 8 says, "And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden." For those that aren't familiar with this, if we just jump right in, they're like, "Well, why are they hiding from God?" Well, if you look a few verses earlier, you see that they actually disobeyed God. They rebelled against God. Now we see that man brought sin into the world. by disobeying and not even adhering to what God said was good. And so the interesting piece for me that kind of blew my mind when I was learning about this theme was that even before they sinned, God made himself available to them in the garden. They couldn't go like God showed up intentionally for them to enjoy his presence. So in the cool of the day, the Lord would walk with Adam and with the. Yeah, and some take that to mean that when his presence, the cool of David, is you sometimes to describe a whirlwind and other passages of Scripture. And so more because he was the present, they were terrified to hear him. And so it just shows that in the very beginning, God created a space for us to enjoy him, to live with him in his presence. And I think just because of the fall, it's so heartbreaking, but the beauty is, even when they're expelled from the garden, God shows up. He pursues them relentlessly. So he's present to us, but we've run from his presence because of the sin that we have. Yeah, sadly, it distorts even being able to be joyful naturally. We're more terrified because of our rebellion. You know, I know with my children when they were little, I could typically tell somebody had done something wrong because they ran, right? I'm very familiar with that. You have your own children, you know this. Yeah. If they run up to me, I know they were good. If I run and then they hide, I'm like, oh, I'm going to ask you something happened. We keep going back to the garden, don't we? Yeah, that's it. The echo of Eden, it just keeps it. Well, talk to us about the next point you see. And I know there are many, many more. But a next major point in the biblical text that has to do with the presence of God. So if you would jump to Exodus 40, or just go, you know, Leviticus 1 and go back to chapter, what we see really is the beauty that for some 80 chapters, God's creation has not been able to enjoy being in the presence of God in the same way that they had need. And so God gives to Moses a pattern, a layout for the tabernacle so that God can have a place to dwell among them. So he can, in the tabernacle, he can be present to them. And the beauty of this is, if you look at verses chapter 40, verses 30 through 38, it says, then the cloud covered the ten of meeting and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the ten of meeting because the cloud settled on it and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And then this is the beautiful piece. After we see the establishment and the filling of it, we see what God does through the tabernacle. Verse 36 through 38 says, throughout all their journey, so while they're going through the wilderness, whenever the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle to people of Israel would set out. So it was a marker for them to know when it would, God would let them know it's time to move. Then it's 37, but if the cloud was not taken up, so if it stayed, they wouldn't go anywhere, they would wait. And it says in 38, the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day and fire was in it by night, which is again the theme you see of them going through the wilderness, the pillar of cloud, the pillar of fire. But now it resides in the tabernacle. And it says it's in the sight of all the house of them throughout all of their journeys. And so they would see the pillar of cloud by day and a fire by night. And they would know that the Lord was present. But did they actually see God or was it a bit of a veiled presence? Oh, very much veiled. I mean, you know, when Moses says, can I see you? He says, if you look upon my face, you wouldn't be able to survive. And so when we see his glory revealed to them, they're just seeing a veiled display of his presence because it would, our sinfulness, we couldn't be in the presence because of our sin. And God makes a way through the tabernacle for us to be able to, well, for Israel to be able to encounter God in a way they never had before. So as a recap, that God was present to those he created in his image. Then they fell into sin and we hid from him. God actually takes and moves us out of the garden of Eden so that we want the of the tree of life. Right. That doesn't mean it's always barred to us. Not to come about later. Yeah, yeah. But it does mean there's, there's a lack of access to the presence of God. But Israel is called to be the people of God. And at the tabernacle, and remember, a tabernacle basically means a big, complex tent. And so they can, they can take it down and carry it and they do. Yeah, yeah. A huge tabernacle. A lot of it. And all these thousands and thousands of people in the various tribes have responsibility for transporting the tent or the tabernacle. But they know God is there at the tabernacle. But that changes, doesn't it? Yeah. So, you know, when you think about the tabernacle, we know that as they're wandering in the wilderness, they're trying to get to the Promised Land. But for right now, there's not a permanent place for God to dwell. Because it's a portable tent for the tabernacle, they, you know, they up and they move and this regularity. But when they get to the monarchy and the time of David, he's thinking, God, you know, you give me all this, I want to make a house for you. I have, you know, this is not, it's not, this isn't right. And God says, yeah, but you have too much blood on your hands. So he told David he couldn't build the temple. Yeah. And he wanted to make a place for him. Instead, he said, but it'll be your son again, another type in foreshadowing. But it will be your son who will construct the temple. And the temple would be in Jerusalem. It would be the place of, it would really be God's city, right? We talk about Zion and the beauty is that God is intentionally providing the means for them to be able to do this because it's a nomadic tribe. They wouldn't have had a lot of resources. Right. So the promised land is also actually a way for God to give himself a presence not only in Israel, but on earth. To the nations. To the nations. Yes, they would, if Israel would be faithful and do everything God had called them to do. They would be a priesthood to the nation. But we know what happened when Moses came down Sinai. So we did not really go as Israel never did it right today. The cycle of sin repeats over and over. So the text to the temple, where should we go next? Let's look at first Kings. So if you'll turn to first Kings chapter 8, and we're going to look at the story of Solomon, and we're going to look at verses 6 through 10. And then the priest brought the ark of the covenant of the Lord to its place in the inner sanctuary of the house, and the most holy place underneath the wings of the chair of them. For the chair of them spread out their wings over the place of the ark so that the chair of them shadowed the ark and its poles. And so he keeps describing, he says, the poles were so long that the ends of the poles were seen from the holy place before the inner sanctuary, but they could not be seen from outside and they are there to this day. In verse 9, there was nothing in the ark except the two tablets of stone that Moses put there at the orb where the Lord made a covenant and the people of Israel, or with the people of Israel when they came out in land of Egypt. So again, everything we just mentioned. And then verse 10, and when the priest came out of the holy place, notice this, a cloud filled the house of the Lord. Sound familiar? And it says, so that the priest could not stand to minister because of the cloud, just like Moses before, could not have interseed because, as it says in 11, for the glory of the Lord, filled the house of the Lord. And this had in verse 12, the Lord said that he would dwell in total darkness. And so he's built a temple and you know the Lord is present, but you can't see him because that veil is still there. And the multiple curtains leading into it. And the multiple curtains. Yeah, where the ark is. And by the way, where's the ark today? I think Stephen Spielberg took it. Stephen Stillfield with the Indiana Jones films. Oh right. Indiana Jones, last time I think that. I thought that was fiction. Well, you know, it's up for a debate. But yeah, no, but that's the question, where is the ark? Right. The ark representing the presence of God to Israel. Yeah, specifically with his throne room. Yeah. It was very symbolic of what we're going to get to in Revelation. Yeah. And yet we see it's adorned with the cherubim representing a worship always. And just the holiness and the magnitude of coming into the presence of a king. Like, it's very courtly as we read this. And for centuries, the Lord kept his temple there, but then it was destroyed. Yeah. Well, even Ezekiel, you see, mentioned because of Israel's rebellion, how wicked the priests had become, but the spirit of the Lord actually left the temple. So the presence of God left the temple out of divine judgment. Yes. Yeah. When you think about presence, you know, God, when we come into his presence, we experience blessing. But when we lose access to presence, it's more judgment. And so the fact of their rebellion. And we can actually experience this in our feelings at times when we're in worship. And we have that sense that the Lord is here all as well. I know I have a future. I know all as well as in his hands. And there's hope. And that's because we're in a place dedicated to dedicated the Lord, but also Jesus promised. I'm going to add a test. Sure. Sure. Please do. Yeah. Jesus promised that we're two or more gathered together in my name, they're in their midst. And so wherever the covenant to church is gathered, Christ, who is God in the flesh, is present with us. And so we actually can access the presence of God again now. But it's through Christ. So take us to the next hex. We spend a lot of time in the Old Testament. We got to get to the New Testament, not way. Jump to John 1. And this is I think, you know, there's a lot to John 1, that I wish we had more time just sitting the rich and it's such a great, the prologue of John as gorgeous. But if you look at verses 14 through 18 of John 1, it says, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. You really could just stop right there. But it says this is John saying, we have seen his glory. Again, that sounds very familiar to us based off of the text we read. His glory is of the only son from the Father, full of grace and truth. Now John bore witness about him and cried out, this was he of whom I said, he who comes after me ranks before me because he was before me. For from his fullness, we have all received grace upon grace. And then 17 shows that for the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ, known as ever seen God. The only God who is at the Father's side in reference to Jesus, he has made him known. I get that beautiful. It is. And we see that Jesus in his incarnation, his humanity, when he walked among us, when we look at Jesus, we see the Father. And it's just a perfect display of who he is. We don't have to go to a tabernacle anymore. You don't have to go to a special sacred site and worry about offerings. Jesus came so that we could experience him in the flesh, in the person of Christ. And we can see the presence of God. And it's magnified through his glory. So God is actually present to us now in a human being and a human being is Jesus Christ. Oh yeah. And now we see that God has been brought to us through a man and now man has brought back to God and that connection is restored in what we lost. So this. So if I'm hearing you right, what you're saying is that God created us to be present to us to bless us. Yes. Yes. Sin separates us from God's presence and they're from from his blessing. And that's why we die. Yes. But God's not done. No. And so he shows that he's going to be present to Israel in the tabernacle. He shows he's going to be present to Israel in the temple. But Israel is continually unworthy. Yeah. And so God says humanity obviously can't do it. So I'm going to do it for humanity by becoming a human being. Yeah. Who actually can bring us the presence of God forever. Yeah. And that is Jesus Christ. He became flesh and dwelt among us. So God's presence is with us. Yeah. In the man. Yeah. Jesus Christ. Because the man Jesus Christ is the Lord God, the second person of the Holy Trinity. Am I right? Yeah. It is wonderful. It's beautiful. It is. And think about this. The word dwelt is actually the word he tabernacled. It's the same word that was used in the Old Testament in the Greek language. And so he's telling us a very again the symbol. Right. He put on essentially adorned himself and he became the Lamb of God. The Lamb skin would have been over the tabernacles. So there's so many layers to this. But the fact that he came to dwell among us just shows the whole purpose of why he made us to enjoy that fellowship and to be near him because he wants to bless us by his grace. You know, you're not there yet, but many of us are. We have grandchildren. And we want to be present to our grandchildren. And I remember visiting David and Melissa's house and they've got like a really nice place that they have crafted more Melissa than David, but but crafted for their grandchildren to be there to be with them. And Karen and I started doing that with one of our bedrooms. You know, it's a children's playroom and a bedroom because we want to be with the ones we love. That's the way God is treating us. Yeah. What a gift. It is. So what's the next text? Because we're not all the way through. We're only in the gospels. Yeah. If you look at Acts 2, so just flip over to chapter 2 of the book of Acts. And we'll see that Luke is actually helping us see something beautiful happening in verses one through four of chapter 2. It says, "When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together in one place." And listen to this. Suddenly, they came from heaven, a sound like a mighty rushing wind. And it filled the entire house where they were sitting. And divided tongues as a fire appeared to them and rested on each one of them. And they were all filled with a Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance. Do you hear the echoes of some of the things we heard about? Right? The fire, the wind, dwelling. This is the same. It just keeps going. It just keeps getting better. And they were filled. So in Christ, here is a human being who is the presence of God. But the Holy Spirit is actually in and with us in our very person. Yeah. It's a radical concept. I mean, the fact that I conceived through the Spirit, God the Son came. He did what we could never do so that we could enjoy the Spirit and being filled with God's presence again. So now wherever we go, we're never alone. So in other words, you're saying that the presence of God that was lost to Adam has been restored in Christ and personally to us by the Holy Spirit. So a Christian is never without the presence of God now. We can never lose it. That's the beauty of it. I think, you know, as a kid trying to understand, well, how do I, I'll sing this song and I feel really good. And as soon as I leave, I feel like did I lose something and I strode with especially in seminary where, as you know, reading all these books, sometimes it's not as worshipful, even though it's about the one we worship. And yet the concept of the Christ. But mine were. Well, yours were always good, right? Not everybody wrote, right? Not that I'm digging for a compliment, just him. What do I mean? But I think you see this, like in your works on God and the Word, right? Like you see how intentional God wants us to be with him. And he wants to bless us. And everything he does is for our good. Yeah. But when we rebel, it would go against this character just to let us sit and or sit in. Like, and that's and that's why we're actually Paul commands us to be filled with the spirit. So we actually, you know, my evangelism professor Roy Fish said, you know, we, we, a Christian will never blaster in the spirit, but a Christian can grieve the spirit. Yeah. And you must ask again for the spirit to fill you. Yeah. Not that he ever departs. Sure. Yeah. I think it's a mindset too. Yeah. Yeah. It's not that you somehow fallen from grace and you've lost access and I joke with our life group. It's like it's not like God's a bully and he takes the gift back because you made a man the one time, right? Which I think his children, a lot of us, we're like, well, that's mine now. We're not friends anymore. Yeah. Right? But that's not how God is in his perfect love. He knows. He knows we're going to struggle. He knows we're going to, you know, we're, we haven't Christ hasn't returned yet. So we're still developing the spirit is the down payment. Yeah. It's a seal of the inheritance. That, that the inherited and the inheritance ultimately, you know, I think sometimes we think about heaven, Nicholas, as if it's things. Yeah. Then we learn the older we get that heaven really, the joy of heaven is people. Yeah. And often the people that have preceded us and, and if we proceed others, we're looking forward to our children, our grandchildren, and our other loved ones to be with us. Yeah. But talk to us about when the struggle is going to stop. When, you know, are we ever going to reach the point where we know God is there, the spirit is in us, Christ is there. Yeah. What does that look like? Well, actually the answer is in Revelation. Right. Look, look at Revelation 21. There's a couple of passage you can look at. But chapter 21, John closes these last two chapters, helping us see what we're, what we're longing for, right? The theme of the promise land being fully restored. It says in chapter 21 verses 1 through 4, "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, and I heard loud voice from the throne, saying, "Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more. Neither shall there be morning, nor crime, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away." I remember when I was a young pastor, I sat with a blessed man. He was in his 90s, and he had just been a blessing to everybody in the church. Everybody just loved him because he had such a Christ-like spirit, but he was in great pain. And he was dying, and he was in pain. And here I am a brand new pastor, and I go visit this man, and I'm like, I don't even know how to comfort him. - How old would you do? - And so I got up, and I started, I thought, I just, so I started reading about heaven. (laughing) And I read this text, and when I got to that text, he will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more, grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things had passed away. All of a sudden, his tears stopped, and he had a sense of peace. And he said, thank you. And everybody that had been around the family, the friends that had been around them, we were all just taking it back by how the word of God and that promise gave him strength. And he died later that night. I'll never forget this, but he died with peace, because he knew that one day, the pain will end. One day, the struggle will stop. One day, all things will be made right. - Amen. - When we're outside of God's presence, when the spirit, where it's grieving the spirit, when we are not walking with Christ, as he called us to walk with him, in other words, when we're trying to run from God, is when we're in our worst state, from a spiritual perspective. But when we turn to him, we have the promise that he will be with us. And that all of the problems that we have in this life, they will be taken away. - Yeah. - You know, our friend Gary is grieving. And we have other among us. I know we need to be praying for Nick, and Dede in particular, is grieving and yet hopeful. We have a promise. We have a promise that God will be present with us. - Yeah. - He is present to us by the incarnation, and by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. He is present in us and with us by his Holy Spirit. But one day, we shall see him face to face. And of course, he is always with us then. - Yeah. Well, and I think, you know, when you put all this together, there's one other place that God is present to us, and it's through his word. What a gift, right? Like when we think about biblical theology and all the different themes, the two that stick out to me the most is his promises and his presence, because we're waiting for the fulfillment of that promise still. But we see it is true, and it is what gets us through those dark times. - The promise and the presence of God sounds like a book. - It might be. (laughing) - You want to have, you have any concluding words you want to give us? - Yeah, I think, you know, one thing to think about is, when we, you do these different studies, and you think about theology, and just how do we know God? Just look to Christ. I mean, the more and more I think about the presence of God, my challenge to you is just look at Christ and think about how He's become present to us in ways that completely reorient our thoughts, and our hopes, and our dreams, and our desires. Because I think the main thing that I want to say about this is that Scripture is so clear to show how God is present. Almost every single page you see, and then God did this, or in the presence of God, or by God, or God sent, or God did. And when we reach Scripture to see how God is active, then it transforms the way we understand Scripture. Instead of thinking, when I read this, it's about me, right, which I'm guilty of that when I started out, I never knew how to reach Scripture, but when you anchor it in the activity of God, there's so much peace and hope. - Peace and hope, and it's from Genesis, all the way to Revelation. - All the way to Revelation. The whole book written over two millennia, over 40 different authors, multiple languages, multiple cultures. - Yeah, yeah. - The one word of God inspired by the one Holy Spirit, with a message that God wants to be present to us, and to bless us. - Perfectly revealed through the Son. So thank you for sharing that with us. Why don't we close in a word of prayer? Father, I thank you for your word. I thank you that you promise to be present to us, and that even when we hid ourselves from you, you didn't stop seeking us. Thank you for sending your Son, Jesus Christ, to dwell with us. And thank you for sending your Holy Spirit to dwell within us. And we look forward to the day, Lord. When you shall wipe away every tear, and every pain shall be done, and we shall be whole in your presence again. We pray these things in Christ's name, amen.