Naked Bible 226: Colossians 1:1-13

[music] You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, we're going to make it BiblePodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Hyde's Recoach to the Bible, click on New Start Here at NakedBibletpodcast.com. [music] Welcome to the NakedBibletpodcast, episode 226. Colossians 1, verse 1 through 13. I'm Delayman, Tray Strickland, and he's a scholar, Dr. Michael Heiser. Hey, Mike, how are you? I'm pretty good, busy as usual, but kind of enjoying a little bit of the summer, too. Still hot here in Texas, but every day that goes by, Mike, he gets closer and closer to our conference, which you can get the live stream, which will have a replay. So you don't have to catch the live stream, Mike, live. There will be a replay of it. So go sign up for the live stream at NakedBibletpodcast.com. And you can watch it at your own pace, at least for two weeks. And even the people who are attending be able to have access to that live stream video, replay it at will for those two weeks. And then, you know, we'll have other stuff to announce. Till there are good. I hope you'll join us at least for the live stream. Yeah, I mean, that's what can you say? If you want to see it in some sort of near space time continuum, you know, give us a live stream. Especially since we know who knows about later. I mean, especially since it's the inaugural year now. It's the first one. So, yeah, we want everybody to partake in it and be there for it. So, but we thank everybody that's purchased a ticket and signed up for the live stream. We look forward to doing it and I hope everything technically works out. Right across my fingers. I'm going to be a basket case that we get Mike. Right. We might see tray cry. I mean, that might be better for the live stream. We can put that on the live stream. I'm going to reserve that after the conference when it's all over and said done. I'm going to go crawl up, curl in a ball in a corner and just cry. When his tray look like when he cries. Exactly. Oh, all right. That's good. Well, Mike's CTV right there. Yeah, that's going to be a second, a separate live stream for that. But all right, Mike, will this episode starts our new book study and questions? Yep. Finally jumping in. So we're in Colossians one, obviously. And I'm going to, I'm going to go up through the first 13 verses. Next time we'll pick up actually with verse 13 again. And hopefully I'll remember to tell you why I'm doing it that way. We get to the end here. But Colossians one, one through 13. Again, for those who may not have listened other book studies again, my method is pretty simple. I use the SV. But you know, we drill down into it and do some, you know, Greek stuff in this case. And I tend to just go through a passage and camp out on things that I think are interesting. I think the audience might be interested in or they just generate a good question. So let's just jump into verse one here. Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God and Timothy our brother. To the saints and faithful brothers in Christ at Colossian, grace to you and peace from God our Father. I'm going to stop there. I should have included, I stop on things that are just hobby horse things. This is one of them. And I think for anybody who's sort of listened to the podcast, well, you would have suspected that I would stop at the word saints. I have said before I just hate this translation. Now, ESV everybody does it, but to translate, haggily, okay, the holy ones as saints just really irritates me. So this is yet another opportunity for me to vent about this translation. You know, hey, you know, I've kind of vented before about this, but why not drill down a little bit up on it just so that I can hopefully sort of explain to people why I care. You know, why this is such an irritation for me so that again, that might be interesting. So holy ones, haggio to the haggio to the holy ones and faithful, you know, brethren will just make it a plural in Christ at Colossi. If you actually do a search, a gay for holy ones in the Old Testament, Hebrew, lemon would be kadoche. And if you search for that lemma in the plural form, what do you find? Well, it's mostly used where you have a, you know, plural reference that are supernatural beings. Okay, the exception, you know, it's 20 sometimes, the exception is Daniel 824 where you have kadoche used in the plural and it's not holy supernatural beings. It's humans, but most of the time it's supernatural beings. And it's actually, you know, really clear, you know, when, when again, the reference when kadocheem is not used agiactivally to describe something else. Sometimes it's used to describe God in the plural because Elohim is plural and you have grammatical agreement. Other times you have sort of a, you know, an honorific situation going on where you have the holy one mentioned and you have a plural of this. And so it's, you know, it's again, just to magnify God, but other times it's very clearly a set a group of supernatural beings. And that's important again to me anyway because it's a reference point for Paul for really anybody who knows their old testament pretty well. Paul's writing a collage and we said in our introduction that yeah, this is a Gentile location is going to be a lot of Gentiles here, but he has a problem with, with judisers. And again, there are certain streams of Judaism that will become, will be picked up and become what we later know as an ostracism. So there is this mystical Judaism thing going on. There's a lot of Jewish context here. And this again, I think for Paul, again, he's going to have this floating around his head. And he's going to have a lot of, a lot of his readers who again, whether they're converted Jews or maybe, you know, he's given the man be an issue to confront judisers or whether he's trying to, you know, reach the judising element. You know, there's, there's a lot of Jewish mess about this epistle. And so I don't think it's out of step here to, you know, to camp on this holy ones in the old testament in a number of cases supernatural holy beings. And I'm going to just drill down on two here. And if you did this search, could ocean the plural Hebrew Bible, you're going to find Psalm 89 verse five. And Psalm 89 verse seven, that's those are the English numbers in the Hebrew Bible. The numbering would be 89 six and 89 eight. But, you know, we're using English. We're looking at English Bibles here, even though we're talking about Hebrew lemma in Psalm 89 five. We have let the heavens praise your wonders, O Lord, your faithfulness in the assembly of the holy ones. And then two verses later, God is a God greatly to be feared in the council of the holy ones and awesome above all who are around him. Now, if you look at that, if you again drill down in those verses in verse five, Psalm 89 five again, Hebrew numbering is 89 six. The word translated assembly is cahal. And that's the interesting point here. This is where I what I wanted to reach in my drill down here. There are roughly 116 instances of cahal. Okay, in 70 of those in the septuogen. Okay, 116 times cahal occurs when it's translating the septuogen 70 times, it's Ecclesia. That's the same word that's going to be used throughout the New Testament for the church. Now, that's not true of sod if Psalm 89, you know, verse seven, the council of the holy ones, the sod of the holy ones. But it is true of the assembly of the holy ones two verses earlier, just varying vocabulary. Cahal is a very familiar term that septuogen translators render Ecclesia. Another point again is that this is very common terminology for the church. The church is composed of believers, right? Believing human beings, humans that are in the family of God, what this does, if people are familiar again, think about this. Paul is dealing with a lot of, you know, there's a lot of Jewish context going on here, but a lot of these people are reading the septuogen. Even if they are Jewish, it's certainly if they're not, you're going to be reading in Greek. But when they when they see Hagioy, and if they've been reading their Old Testament in the Septuogen, especially, they're going to come across references to holy ones in the Ecclesia of God in the heavens. Psalm 89, the council is in the heavens. This creates a semantic and conceptual link between believers, humans who are brought in to the family of God and whose destiny is glorification in the family of God, in the presence of God forever because of Christ. It creates a conceptual semantic link between them and the existing divine council. Okay, that is why holy ones terminology should just be left to say what it says. It creates this mental link and it's a theological link back to this idea. And this dovetails with the wider picture of biblical theology. You get into theosis here. Again, evangelicals would call that glorification scholars would use terms like theosis or deification. We've talked about these things before I've written about it and unseen realm. If you haven't read Unseen Realm by this point, you really need to because I don't bother to repeat content in that book. I was going through things here in the podcast, but we've written about that, how the destiny of believers, we're already partakers of the divine nature, but our destiny is glorification. It's to be made like God. It's to be made like Jesus. It's to be made divine. We're not going to become Yahweh's individually and then get our own planets and all that stuff. That isn't the point. The point is we are made fit to occupy sacred space with God's supernatural family that's already there. That was the intent in Eden. Where is where God lives? Where God lives, His entourage is, His heavenly host, His bureaucracy, His spiritual beings, bureaucracy, because that's where He's going to run the show. That's where He does business. There, any humans are brought into that environment for a specific purpose to live with God. They are made to be fit for sacred space. They have to nullify themselves. They have to do something to nullify their membership. They do. There's rebellion. This is what God had in mind. God wanted a human family blended with His supernatural family in His presence, co-partners with Him to enjoy His created things, His created world, and to fellowship with Him as intelligent beings as His children. That's why He shares His attributes with us and not with the animal kingdom. These are all big picture theological things. When you come across a term like Haggiyo, holy ones, and you translate it to saints, to a modern audience, that not only cuts them off from the Old Testament context, but it makes them think of modern things like saints in Catholicism or maybe the Eastern branch of Christianity, or whoever uses saint terminology. They're not thinking of their appointed destiny as members of the Divine Council as part of the great cloud of witnesses, book of Hebrews. Earlier in the book of Hebrews, where we are presented in the congregation, in the council, we are presented to God and God has presented to us. This is Hebrews too. This kind of translation just sort of terminates that association. It cuts it off. It makes it unseeable. That's really my objection to a translation like saints. I've hopped on that hobby horse again, but since it's here in Colossians, I feel justified to the holy ones, to the holy ones and faithful brethren, faithful Adelphoy is the term actually in Greek. Now, ESV has, as it's translation, faithful brothers in Christ. I don't want to rabbit trail too much on translation wars here, but ESV was created in part as a response to gender-neutral translation trends in the evangelical world. So it will take Adelphoy here and stick with the masculine in many instances. It doesn't always do this, but here it does. It goes with brothers. Well, I would suggest to you that this verse and a number of other ones are one of the many instances where women should be contextually included in a term like Adelphoy, which again, literally, just if you're just applying a gloss to it means brothers, we're familiar with Philadelphia, you know, city of brotherly, Adelphos brother. That's what you see when you look it up in the lexicon. Well, there are a number of cases where that just really isn't good. It's not adequate. Women should be included. So just a few examples. I mean, this is really easy to demonstrate. Let's go to Romans. Okay, Romans 1, 13. Paul's writing, "I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you." What? He doesn't want the men in the church to be ignorant of this, but it's fine if the women are ignorant of it. The women don't need that he really wanted to visit them. That just doesn't make sense. Okay, likewise, my brothers, Romans 7, 1. Likewise, Adelphoy, you have also died to the law through the body of Christ so that you may belong to another to him who has been raised from the dead, nor that we may bare fruit for God. Well, the women don't need to do that. Just the men. It's only the men who've died to the law through the body of Christ. Okay, that they may bare fruit for God. I mean, it's obvious. Women are included in this. I could just go on and on and on and on. With these kinds of examples, I'm not going to believe or the point, but I think it's worth bringing up. Do not be misled either by English translations or by sort of the rhetoric that goes with us. That it's always, don't let me misled into thinking that it's always inappropriate to have a gender-neutral translation. I mean, if I were doing this, I would say to the holy ones and faithful men and women in Christ at Colossus, because hey, there's faithful women there too. Okay. And elsewhere, Paul uses the very same term to obviously include women in what he's talking about. It's just transparently obvious. So I don't really know why, because ESV doesn't do this kind of thing consistently. I don't know why it just sticks with brothers here. I'm sure somebody could tell me there's some reason, but that doesn't mean it's a good one. I just think this is worth bringing up here. So don't be misled into thinking that a gender-neutral translation of a word like a delfoy is always like evil and sinister and has some agenda attached to it. It just makes sense in context. Sometimes you can say those sorts of things that publishing houses, different scholars want to translate a term, a certain way to demasculate some point of a passage. I mean, that happens too, but let's not assume that that's always the case, because it isn't. We're just talking about context here. So let's continue in verse 3. We always thank God in Paul writes, "The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you." Since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints, there it is again. All the holy ones. Because of the hope laid up for you in heaven, of this you have heard before in the word of truth, the gospel, which has come to you as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing, as it also does among you. Since the day you heard it and understood the grace of God in truth, just as you learned it from Epiphras, our beloved fellow servant, he is a faithful minister of Christ on your behalf and has made known to us your love in the Spirit. And so, verse 9, from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding. So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. I'm going to stop there at the end of verse 10, just to point out, make a few observations here. I mean, not to be silly, but probably ought to say something about verse 9. From the day we heard this, we have not ceased to pray for you. It doesn't mean that's all they were doing, like you pray 24/7 or something like that. It's just, when you see language about prayer in this type, in this mode, they're just talking about something that is regular. It's very regular, not that it consumes the entirety of their time. It's the only activity to do, and they're not just doing anything else. Obviously, they're doing lots of other things. The ministry is just personally, but I think that ought to be very obvious, but just to some, it's not. Some judge themselves unnecessarily in this regard. Pray without ceasing, not cease to pray for you. It means you should always be doing it. In terms of this is going to be part of your day all the time, moment by moment, throughout the day, that sort of thing. It's not something that squeezes everything else out. Now, we have several terms here, knowledge of his will. We have spiritual wisdom and understanding. Then in verse 10, we have a reference to the knowledge of God once again. We said in our introduction, we of necessity had to comment on what is the relationship of some of the things that Paul is going to talk about to gnosticism. Of course, is derivative from the term nosis, which means knowledge. Some, again, drawing on our introduction here. If you haven't listened to that, you need to go back and listen to it. Some scholars and other readers have just assumed that when Paul mentions knowledge, he must be talking about gnosticism because he's using a nosis word. Actually, the word here isn't nosis. It's epi-gnosis, which is obviously related, but it's not quite the same term. If you remember our introduction, we said that full-blown gnosticism is later than Paul's era. Even even gnostic texts, the nogomati texts, they don't even refer to themselves as gnostics. They use other terms. That's something that comes along later because we have sort of systemized, systemized schools of thought within what we would call the gnostic community, but even they don't really use that term for themselves. We have to be careful again about what we're doing here. We do not, based again, on the information we shared last time in the introduction. I do not see, you know, Paul. addressing noctisism in collotions. He will address streams that will flow into what becomes known as noctisism for sure, but full-blown noctisism is not in existence when Paul is writing this later in the collotions. So let's talk about the knowledge terminology here. Some have picked up on epiagnosis and have seen a hint that Paul is picking up the language and by implication, refuting noctis opponents, specific religious groups and whatnot. You know, NT Wright comments on this in his attendel, commentary and collotions. So he says, "Hey, you know, some have done this." You know, and they believe that Paul is picking up the language, trying to refute noctis opponents, religious groups, which drawing on many traditions held out the offer of a salvation, attained through spiritual knowledge, noctis, which would enable one to escape from material world and realize one's true or one's spiritual destiny. There is Wright's, however, no evidence of such teaching in any clearly defined form at this period. And when it does appear, it probably, it is probably itself dependent on Christianity, some Christian context. What Paul is speaking of here is not an esoteric knowledge confined to private religious experience or exclusive sex. It is a knowledge of his, i.e. God's will, which is open to all God's people. Again, that's the end of the NT Wright quote from his tinto, commentary. And again, that's basically what basically what we said in our introduction as far as the historical context here. Again, we need to remember that. And I think, you know, Wright's point is generally well taken, but really all you need to do is look at verse 10. Verse 10, the knowledge is defined. Let's go back on to verse 10. So as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God. It's not an inner knowledge. It's not an inner awakening. It's not self-realization. You know, these are all going to be eventually. These are going to become gnostic themes and threads. It's not, it's the knowledge of God. Spiritual wisdom and understanding could just as well be rendered. This is, you know, interesting as just I'm talking about grammatically now, the phrase spiritual wisdom and understanding. You could just render that opposite like spiritual understanding and wisdom instead of spiritual wisdom and understanding, spiritual understanding and wisdom. The grammar can support either. So I mentioned that because it would be wrong to say that one of these wisdom or understanding that one of the nouns is more spiritual than the other. It's not. The grammar doesn't allow you to say that. Done in his commentary, his new international greek textual commentary, greek testament commentary on this epistle adds this thought. He says, the more immediate background for the thought here again with this, you know, spiritual wisdom and understanding or spiritual understanding and wisdom. However, we're going to render that. He says, the more immediate background is Jewish. Since the combination of these two terms, the two nouns, wisdom and understanding is a repeated feature of Jewish writings. Now, if you have his commentary, he gives you a whole grocery list of passages where these two nouns are combined in text from the Hebrew Bible, you know, Exodus 31, 3, 35, 31, Deuteronomy 4, 6, you know, Job 8, 10, 12, 13, you know, just, he has a whole slew of them, Psalm 49, 3, 111, 10, so on and so forth. And he also includes, you know, second temple literature. So the book of wisdom, the book of Judith, book of, you know, Ben Sarah, the epistle of Baruch, the testament of Zebulon. I mean, this is a very common way for Jewish writers to talk about the knowledge of God, the God of Israel, the God, you know, of Judaism, the God of the Hebrew Bible. Again, this, I'm, I'm, I'm belaboring this a little bit to get away from the notion that this has anything to do with inner knowledge, inner enlightenment. Again, these classic gnostic themes, because again, you don't, you don't really have, you know, the full-blown gnosticism here to deal with. That's just not the point. A done goes on to comment. He says, "Here to the wisdom in particular is understood as given through the law." But it is equally recognized that such wisdom can only come from above. In other words, the source of the wisdom is the true God, you know, the God of the Bible, the God of Israel, because again, this, this is a very common way of expressing knowledge and wisdom that the God of Israel gives to his people. So back to done, he says, it's particularly to be noted, is the recognition that wisdom and understanding come only from the spirit. Exodus 31, 3, 35, 31, Isaiah 11, 2, and then on into Second Temple, you know, wisdom 9, 17 through 19, you know, Philo mentioned this, you know, Ben Siria 39, 6th Philo references, De Gigantibus 2227, 4th Ezra. Again, he's got a whole grocery list of places where this is true. So this is the wider Jewish community. If you were a Jew or a Judaizer, or if you had just pretty good exposure to the scriptures of the Jew through the Septuagint, if you're living at Colossian, Colossian, you hear this, you know what Paul's talking about. He's not talking about some esoteric, mystical, you know, experience, some sort of naval gazing looking within. That's not what he's referring to at all, and everybody would know it. It's only, you know, modern people who want to see Paul as either, you know, promoting some nosticism of his own, or they want to see Paul rejecting nosticism so they can turn around and sit and call Paul evil, you know, like like it's because of Paul, we don't have all these extra books in the Bible like the gospel of Mary and Philip and all these other nostic texts. All that sort of nonsense, okay. You just, you basically have to ignore the Judaizing or Jewish context to all of this terminology. So done is saying, well, that just wouldn't be a good idea because there's a heap big pile of it. Back to done, he says, whether there's an implied rebuke of an alternatively conceived or false wisdom is less clear. Since in that case, we might have expected more emphasis on the point as Paul does in 1 Corinthians 1 and 2. But the illusion in Colossians 2, 23 does indicate that a claim to wisdom was part of the teaching in Colossi that is called, that called forth the response of this letter. Colossians 2, 23 says, Paul is addressing these false teachers. These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh. So Paul is actually pitting the wisdom, spiritual wisdom, spiritual understanding and the knowledge of God over against those guys. Paul is clearly drawing on Old Testament. The Old Testament asks his context. That is his point of orientation for the knowledge of God, not whatever these other fellows are saying. So I think Dunn's commentary there is pretty helpful. Let's move to verse 11. Paul adds, let's go back to verse 9. So, and so from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of his will. In all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. A continuing verse 11, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints. There it is again. Let me do it correctly. Giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the holy ones in light. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son. That's the end of verse 13. That's really where we're going to stop for this episode. But let me just read you that again. And because I'm going to ask you about the vocabulary specifically, look, look at the terms inheritance, holy ones, domain of darkness, kingdom of his beloved son. I mean, if you've read unseen realm, okay? This should just be setting lights off in your head, you know, just from the getgo. So giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the holy ones in light. Inheritance. Greek word is clay Ross there. Now, if you read kind of your standard commentary, they're going to talk about clay Ross is used of land because the land was the inheritance, the promised land, land, land, land, land, land. Yeah, that's only half the story. Who, as in people, you know, were gods inheritance in the Old Testament. Let's try to divorce our mind up just a moment from land. But are there people in the Old Testament that God speaks of as his inheritance? You know, I wish I had the final jeopardy music. I would cue it right here. Does it ring any bells? Again, if you've read unseen realm, you should be screaming Deuteronomy 32-9. Okay? It's the Deuteronomy 32 world view. Deuteronomy 32. 289 when the most high divide the nations, you know, set the divisions, you know, of mankind and all that stuff. He divided them up according to the number of the sons of God, but Israel is real is Yahweh's Nahala his inheritance his portion, okay? Israel is his Nahala his inheritance. It's Deuteronomy 329 now this this that term in the Hebrew Bible Nahala is used 222 times 211 of those Okay, in the Septuagint are rendered with clay Ross This is a very clear path again not just back to turf to dirt And again the Deuteronomy 32 world view obviously includes the concept of holy ground we get that But clay Ross also refers to a people and if you if you're looking at it that way I mean you go back, you know to what Paul actually said here if you're thinking about people Giving thanks to the father who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the holy ones Okay, you believers at Colossi are made fit to share To have a place in God's people not to agenda how that's obviously a big deal to a Jew It's a big deal too because they they weren't really thinking about you know the Gentiles being included here And that's Paul Paul refers to the gospel as the mystery because of that reason that the Gentiles be made full errors Full children of Abraham like you put it in Galatians 3 26 through 29 But again if you if you come across the word inheritance of the holy ones and you're thinking holy ones Hey, you know back in the Old Testament There are a number of places where that was you know God's supernatural family Yeah, yeah, that's true Again, these are what we're doing here is dot connecting And what I'm suggesting to you is that sometimes your English translation Makes it hard for you to connect dots It's unfortunate, but it's just the reality So again, this is what again, just I hate to keep referencing unseen realm here But I'm gonna do it because it's it's the best reference point I have What I was trying to do in unseen realm is connect dots for you just again Show you the way of the land connect the dots and give you the the net work of ideas You know the mosaic here so that you can drill down wherever you like you but but once you see the things once you see the connection You can't unsee them and and that's really what we're shooting for here when Paul is talking about people as an inheritance with the holy ones And we know elsewhere that Paul is very tuned in again to what we call the Deuteronomy 32 worldview Uh It's kind of obvious, you know he how he looks at the collotions the collotions are full-airs They are full members in the family of God and that family of God the human family of God has the inheritance of the holy ones They will one day Judge angels like he says in 1 Corinthians 6 You know they will one day Rule the nations you know with the Lord because the Lord the Messiah is their brother. That's why Jesus can have us Share his throne That's why Jesus can hand us the rod and say you had I know the Messiah supposed to rule the nations with the rod of iron here You can help you're a partner Right, it's because we are grafted into a supernatural family In our glorification our defecation our theosis whatever term you want to use That's your destiny and Paul's language here drawn from the Septuagint which will take you again back into some of these passages It is important. It shouldn't be obscured by translation and this is a really good place To illustrate how this helps now again just if I can sort of condense this and summarize it the point is that at salvation We share in the inheritance of the holy ones On earth that means we we as Gentiles will just speak as Gentiles here on earth. It means that we are Part of the earthly people of God just like Israel was Okay, but the bigger picture is that we you know We're members of this heavenly family as well, which includes these supernatural beings Now the idea of a remnant community of Holy ones on earth here That correspond to heavenly holy ones believe it or not that idea I'll say it again the idea of a remnant community of holy ones on earth That correspond to the holy ones in the heavens in the council that is part of second temple Jewish theology especially at Comron What I'm what I've done again is you know, I don't have time to you know read through all the passages and You know do that kind of thing but if you are a newsletter subscriber here we go again Please subscribe to newsletter if you want content That you can't find on the internet Okay, this is what we're about If you want content that you can't find on the internet please subscribe to the newsletter There's a link at the bottom of every issue And I have put in the folder this article Paul B. Decock article title Holy ones sons of God and the transcendent future of the righteous in first enoc and the New Testament Now if that doesn't make you salivate for content I don't know what's going on Holy ones sons of God and the transcendent future of the righteous in first enoc and the New Testament It's from the the peer-review journal neo-testimentica It's a 1983 article. It's 12 pages Again, it's going to be somewhat technical but but it's good stuff. I mean it There are a number of articles I I could you know site and put in there, but I thought this would be a good one A good starter point to to make the point that again the idea of a remnant community community of believers Faithful believers faithful brethren which includes men and women, okay? The idea of a remnant community of holy ones On earth that correspond to heavenly holy ones is part of second temple Jewish theology It just is you know, especially at Comron this article is going to give you a focus on enoc But it's just good stuff. It just helps you again If you have this in your head and you're aware of of this kind of conceptual connection When you read what Paul's saying here in the first chapter of Colossians like oh, I know where he's going with this But it's obscured by your your lack of access to this kind of material and it's obscured in this case unfortunately by translation saints Ah Okay, I'm gonna try to move on now In fact back to verse 13 God has delivered us from the domain of darkness and Transferred us to the kingdom of his blood son Now let's talk about some verbs here delivered Fruit oh my get translated rescued which is kind of interesting God has rescued us from the domain of darkness I kind of like that. I kind of like the semantic you know feel Me delivered's really the same, but I you know rescue. I think kind of captures the picture a little bit more that we were lost Okay, we're lost we were lost we have to be rescued It's not that you know, we're just in a pickle here and you know and boy if we had enough time we could you know We could get out of this no we have to be rescued Hey, we're rescued Exodus. I mean uses this verb. I mean a Ruchamae is the lemma Several times again to describe the deliverance of Israel from Egypt again, which is ultimately a victory over the gods of Egypt this night I will judge the gods of Egypt this night. I will have victory over the gods of Egypt um, you know tense wise this verb, you know for delivered You know the rescued he has rescued us and transferred us both of those verbs Are going to be in the same tense in Greek they're gonna be both airst And I'll comment on that in just well. I might as well jump into it now. I mean think about what would Paula sang here He has delivered us From the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son So the airst is about in terms of Greek grammar airst conveys the notion of a Of a snapshot of action in other words it views an action as a completed event Okay, it's not an action in process It's an action that is a completed fact. It's a completed event Not in process, but already completed, you know, it's you know, it's it's whole all right action as a whole not in process Or we're in the process becoming something different is what it is and it's complete now if you're looking at that This is a classic Already but not yet kind of thing we've already been rescued from the domain of darkness And we've already been transferred to the kingdom That's just what that's what the verse says if you're thinking that kingdom references in the New Testament are only about a millennial kingdom Get used to disappointment. That's not true Now some of them I would you know say yeah, you can you can have that discussion you can make that point But there are others that are clearly Indicating that the kingdom is already we're back to this already, but not yet As far as the not yet. I mean there are passages you know the same writer Paul writes other things He says in 1 Corinthians 1524 then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father Well if the kingdom's already what is what's this talk about delivering the kingdom? Wow, look at that. That's something yet in the future He delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every role in authority and every power, after destroying them. Right now, the authority of the rulers and powers has been nullified. They have no authority over the Gentile. The Gentile is not only allowed to come back to the true God, the most high who had divorced them, who had forsaken them back at the Babylonian. Not only has the Gentile allowed to come back, but God wants to come back. God insists on it. Okay, so we've got this futuristic aspect of the judgment of Psalm 82, over the gods of the nations that they will die like men. It hasn't happened yet. Again, we've had a whole episode on this about the judgment of the gods, the death of the gods with Dave Bernat. Again, if you're a podcast, let's not be familiar with that. Let's go to 2 Timothy 4, verse 1, Paul writes, "To Timothy, I charge you in the presence of God in Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living of the dead and by his appearing and by his kingdom." Well, there's a connection between kingdom and judging the living of the dead. You know, the book Revelation is going to go on to describe that and set it in again, futuristic terms. I should say at this point, I know we have preterists in the audience, but what we have to realize is that in terms of eschatology, when we see New Testament writers talk about day of the Lord things, we have to realize that day of the Lord things are connected. You can't chop on off and look at the others. What happens at the day of the Lord? The righteous are all vindicated. The wicked are all judged. You have a general resurrection. You have a remaking of heaven and earth. As we talked about a few weeks ago, you have at the return of Jesus, the antichrist is killed off. You have things like this that are associated with the one term you could put on it is finality. Evil is finally dealt with. The resurrection, the full resurrection, you know, becoming as the stars, Daniel, you know, Daniel's talk of the day of the Lord. That happens in its fullness. The righteous are vindicated fully. None of these things are in process anymore when the day of the Lord comes. And that again, in my judgment, is the real weakness of preterists. I think other systems have weaknesses that we've talked about here on the podcast as well. That's why I don't buy into systems. They're all beautiful except where they're not. Okay? This is one of the great weaknesses. When the day of the Lord happens, these things are no longer in process. They're done. And we live in a world today that I think it's a fair fairly easy assessment to make or to say that, "Yeah, this stuff isn't done yet." Again, that seems obvious to me. And I think it would be obvious to any of the New Testament writers. But I mean, I figured that was worth a bit of a rabbit trail. This is day of the Lord language. We have already but not yet here in Colossians 1. It's the already in some of these other verses. It's the not yet. It's the thing that's going to come to produce this sort of, you know, finality where things are no longer in process. What's really interesting is the language here, the verbs, Paul looks at the present state of things, the already, since he does use the airst. The airst again is this snapshot action. But then we have these other statements about the kingdom with the day of the Lord's stuff that the New Testament writers are using Old Testament language and quoting Old Testament passages that haven't happened yet. And if we went through the New Testament, some of them are going to be airst, too, and other tenses, like perfects. Why is it both? Why is it both? How can you have snapshot action of both the already and the not yet? How can you do that? Because in the mind of the writer and in the mind of God, because let's not leave the Holy Spirit out of producing the text here, both of those things are, each of those things is just as real as the other. Okay, even though from our perspective, you know, we're embodied beings, we're going through the course of time, we're living life, we're waiting, we're hoping. Okay, all this, this kind of talk in the New Testament. These things are going to be accomplished. Okay, that there's, there's a finality for them already in the mind of God. They are destined events because of the work of Christ. Okay, if you didn't have that, then you might get some other ways of describing them. But in the wake of Christ, who is at the right hand of God, he's ruling and reigning. I mean, if he's at the right hand of God, he's reigning over something here. Well, again, the kingdom's already, you know, already, you know, here in some sense, we're still doing things like the phonos of the Gentiles. We still have to do evangelism and all this kind of stuff. But the kingdom is a present reality. It was established. There's your snapshot. Okay, it's a beachhead, you know, took to use a World War II analogy. Normandy happened. Okay, there it is. You know, and without it, we're not going to, you know, the war is not one. With it, the war is basically one. I mean, we can say that in hindsight and of course, people who were doing the planning, even even the enemies thought that, you know, if the allies ever do this, were done, were toast. I mean, that's not hard to find. I read lots of books on World War II, so that's why I'm going there. It's an established reality. Now in terms of the participants, okay, there's there's God's established reality. And in terms of the participants, well, there's a lot of work to do here. But the way the planner, again, the chief architect here, the God, you know, who came up with this plan about, you know, with with Jesus, to not only, you know, undo the effects of the fall, sends the spirit to, you know, inhibit the gravity and deal with the gravity and, and then he, you know, allows the nations or solicits the nations, legitimizes the nations to come back into the fold. Okay, the God who's thinking about all those things, they're all centered on Jesus, the event of the cross, the resurrection, and the ascension. Those things have happened now. So they are, in fact, here and in place. They already is just as real as they're not yet, and they're not yet. Here's I think the more important point. They're not yet. We'll be just as real as they're already. That's why you have the writers use the same kind of tenses for both sides of this coin. It telegraphs something. The thing you're hoping for, the thing you're waiting for, is going to be just as real, and it is in the mind of God as real as this, as the present. So again, we kind of miss the flavorings of these sorts of things, but they're important. One more thought here before we, we end for the episode, Domain of Darkness. Let's put our thinking caps back on. What might that be? We're rescued from the domain of darkness. Well, what was the domain of darkness in the Old Testament Cosmic Geography? The hint is it's the opposite of the kingdom of his beloved in Old Testament Cosmic Geography. The domain of darkness is everything outside, everything other than the domain of Yahweh. Now, in the Exodus Concuss, remember Ruhamai? I said the Exodus uses this a few times for the, what happened? The living Israel out of Egypt. If you think about the Exodus context, again, if that is intentional, and it may be because Ruhamai is not, is not that common of a word. But it's interesting because if that's the case, then the more immediate context in Cosmic Geography, the domain of darkness is the kingdom of Azazel. Remember, they have to pass through the desert wilderness on the way, they've left Egypt, they camped at Sinai, they leave Sinai, and now they've got to go to the Promised Land. And this is, you know, part of that is the the the Omnicapur, the day of Atomah, ceremony where you get Azazel mentioned and whatnot. But there's this conscious consciousness, there's this idea that everywhere outside the camp, because now we're not in the Promised Land yet, so we can't attach holy cosmic geographical significance to the Land yet, because the land is still under dominion of our enemies. And specifically, you know, descendants of the Nephilim or their big factor here, and that goes, takes us all the way back to the chaos, but Babylon and all that, all that stuff's going on here. But we're not in the Land yet, so it's not the Land that is sanctified as holy. The Land hasn't become Yahweh's inheritance yet in real time, but we are. We have become Yahweh's inheritance in real time. We are Israel. Yahweh is with us, the Presence is with us, and so we're mobile. We go through the desert. Everywhere outside of the camp is the domain of darkness. And that domain is the domain of Azazel, and in you know, in the litigious and whatnot. Now, Azazel, of course, becomes a Satan figure in the second temple literature, and in the New Testament as well. Now, there's a number of ways to talk about this. I don't want to spoil too much of this, because we're going to get into, we're going to get into this somewhat with our interview with Archie Wright, and he'll be a speaker at the conference as well. I will say this though, that there's what I believe is kind of a poor way of framing the discussion. Where do we get in the Old Testament? Some of these ideas about Satan. Well, all of the data points, this is my view. This is nobody else's view. This is why I shouldn't say nobody else's view. It's the view of other people, but we're talking about me right now. I would characterize it this way. Yes, there's development in the idea of Satan. Yes, there's a development in the idea of Satan, you know, and his domain and his relationship to the fallen sons of God and the sons of God that rule the nations who are in rebellion, all that stuff. That develops over time. But there's nothing in what the new testament says and I would add there's nothing in what the second temple says Second temple a new testament connect a lot of dots here that the old testament doesn't connect but the dots are all found in the old Test, there's nothing foreign now that is is a somewhat controversial view But I think I can defend it pretty well That's that's your when my book on demons the powers of darkness comes out. I don't know when that'll be Sometime in 2019 That's that's what you're gonna read in that book, but just for now the domain of darkness Again, if you're putting it in its old testament context you've got a connection with azzel cosmic geography and all that It makes sense to connect those dots in the new testament. They've already been connected in the second temple period But even though the old testament isn't the place where they're connected. They're all there That's another way of saying second temple Jewish Diminology and second temple Jewish Satanology are consistent with old testament Diminology and Old Testament Statenology Instead of demonology, I should probably say Old Testament theology and the powers of darkness or evil spirits The testaments are consistent and so is second temple thinking here because all that they're doing is they're looking at the old Testament whether you're a second temple Jewish writer or a new testament writer looking you're looking back at your old Testament in the new testament writers case. He's also looking in the second temple literature because that now exists But they're looking back on the Hebrew Bible because that's their point of orientation for sacred scripture and they're seeing dots And they're connecting them they're drawing conclusions About the dots they see that's all they're doing so they're not just making stuff up Well, I wish we had a full-blown doctor of this and why I can't find any of this in the old testament so let's just make it up Yeah, that's the way Overleaz Ellis critics Look at things and they overstate the data It's a problem. So anyway, I didn't want to ravage real too much on that But here in Colossians 1 again to wrap up you've got certain features already that show you uneweriness uh, you know I show you Paul's awareness of cosmic geography and again as we read through the epistle I think it's good to point out that Paul has a grasp of these things that that we you know think are important from the old Testament theology that maybe to if you're reading an English Bible Aren't quite as apparent But again if you can penetrate the translation a little bit you're going to see the consistency of a thought Between the new testament back to the old testament and that's you know sort of your your your Bible lesson kind of stuff When it comes to just you know how how what we get out of Colossians 1 for ourselves I think they already but not yet as a big deal and the fact that we you know we share an inheritance with the holy ones I mean these are all important points. You know, I think they help us think about ourselves In a a theologically not only a theologically a stupeway But I mean that this stuff ought to have an impact on on your sense of identity And ultimately your sense of mission as we keep Colossians in context that Paul is Giving this message in a Gentile place where there's plenty of Gentiles there And there's jute there are Jews listening Some of them get it and some of them don't want to hear it Okay, that's that's just important to grasp and as we look at the epistle Mike is in a way we can get a sneak peek of next week which will be covering it for the rest of chapter 1 Oh, yeah in verse 14. I mean we're going to start in in Colossians 1 13 and go I think down through about verse 20 And there's just so many things here Redemption in whom you know in in Christ we have redemption the forgiveness of sins. I mean Ron Johnson has has done I think six parts of a series now on on the the pod not the podcast but the blog Talking about some of the weaknesses of substitution, you know in penal terminology and asking the question Well, how do we how do we sort of draw the you know the right theological conclusions and use the right vocabulary and not use you know Poor vocabulary. So we're going to get into some of that. I've already posted a few thoughts on on the blog about that I'll probably do a little bit more of that before the episode but we'll hit that You get all this talk from verse 15 on how Christ is the image of the invisible God first born of all creation That's always controversial the first or language if Jesus is uncreated. Why would why did we get this language? All that sort of thing so you know there's just there's just a lot of stuff in here. So I hope we can get up to verse 20 All right sounds good looking forward to it. All right real quick Mike I just want to remind everybody go get your live stream Tickets for the Naked Bible Conference August 18th if you haven't done so we appreciate everybody that has so far And I know everybody else is looking forward to the book of plosh as we move forward Then I just want to take everybody for listening to the Naked Bible podcast come by Thanks for listening to the Naked Bible podcast To support this podcast visit www.nakedbiboblogs.com to learn more about Dr. Heizard's other website and blogs go to www.brmsh.com