Man, Psalm 48 is a really interesting psalm.
It's a very deep psalm, and it's another one of the psalms that deals with Zion.
This is a theme that comes up over and over again in the book of Psalms, singing the praises
of Zion, glorifying Zion, and talking about the actual city of Jerusalem.
But what's interesting about this psalm is that it contains within it a paradox.
Let me show you what I mean by that.
Look at verse number 8.
It says, as we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the Lord of hosts, in the city
of our God.
And look at this last phrase, God will establish it forever, Selah.
So he talks all about Zion, Jerusalem, the city, the beautiful city, all these different
things.
And he says God will establish it forever.
But if you go down just a few verses, look what the Bible says in verse number 11.
It says, let Mount Zion rejoice.
Let the daughters of Judah be glad because of thy judgments.
Walk about Zion and go round about her.
Tell the towers thereof.
Tell means to count.
Tell the towers thereof.
Mark ye well her bulwarks.
Consider her palaces, watch this, that you may tell it to the generation following.
Now stop and think about this for a second.
If it's going to be there forever, then why do I need to walk around it, count the towers,
look at the bulwarks so that I can be able to tell the next generation what it looked
like?
Wouldn't they be able to just look at it themselves?
Is that number going to be forgotten?
Are we going to wonder?
I wonder how many towers there were.
I wonder what the bulwarks were like.
You know, grandpa, tell us about Zion.
Well son, let me tell you, you know.
And if it's still there, you wouldn't have to do that, would you?
You could just look at it.
Why does the Bible say this?
Because what the Bible is doing is giving us a hint here that we're talking about the
heavenly Jerusalem, the heavenly Zion.
And again, I already showed this a few weeks ago when we were in Psalms.
The spiritual application here, how the earthly Zion is just a picture, Jerusalem is just
a picture of the real Jerusalem, the heavenly Jerusalem, Mount Zion in heaven.
So what he's saying here is that Jerusalem is going to be established forever, but he's
giving a little hint here.
I'm not talking about the physical city, because guess what?
That physical city is going to pass away, but it's the heavenly Jerusalem that will
be forever.
Now start at the beginning and let me show you some other clues about this.
And this is something that's very easy to prove from the New Testament, where it talks
about how our capital city is the heavenly Jerusalem, and that Jerusalem that now is
is in bondage, and that it represents bondage and Hagar and law, whereas the new covenant
and Isaac and the promise is pictured by the new Jerusalem.
But look at verse 1, it says, great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city
of our God, in the mountain of his holiness, beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole
earth is Mount Zion on the sides of the north, the city of the great King.
Now when the Bible says beautiful for situation, it's basically talking about the fact that
it is situated beautifully, right?
When we say something is situated, we're basically explaining where it lies or what its situation
is or how it's laid out or where it is physically, and it's saying how it's just a beautiful
city and it says that it's the joy of the whole earth is Mount Zion on the sides of
the north, the city of the great King.
Now is the physical city of Jerusalem the joy of the whole earth?
Has it ever really been the joy of the whole earth?
No, but what did God tell Abraham?
He said in thee shall all nations of the earth be blessed.
So is the heavenly Jerusalem a blessing unto all nations of the earth?
Yeah, because there are people who are saved in every single country in this world.
I don't care what country it is.
I don't care if it's China, Iran, North Korea, every single country in the world has people
in it that are saved, people in it who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so all nations, all families, all kindreds of the earth have been blessed through the
seed of Abraham because they've been blessed through Jesus and they've been blessed by
the heavenly Jerusalem.
That's the joy of the whole earth.
And let me prove it to you further.
Keep your finger here and go to Isaiah chapter 14.
Let's compare scripture with scripture because in Psalm 48 he talked about Mount Zion being
located in the sides of the north.
What does that mean?
Isn't that kind of a interesting way to describe its location?
Mount Zion in the sides of the north?
Well, it turns out that that phrase comes up elsewhere in Isaiah chapter 14.
Look what the Bible says in Isaiah chapter 14 verse 12.
How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning?
How art thou cut down to the ground which didst weaken the nations?
Of course, this is referring to the devil.
For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven.
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God.
I will sit upon the mount of the congregation in the sides of the north.
I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.
I will be like the most high.
Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell to the sides of the pit.
So notice here that when it talks about the devil wanting to ascend up above the stars,
up above the clouds, up into heaven, up to the throne of God, that's called the sides
of the north.
So when the Bible talks about Mount Zion that dwells in the sides of the north being
the joy of the whole earth, and how it will be established forever, we're not talking
about the physical Jerusalem.
Now I guarantee you that back when that Psalm first came out, you know, 3,000 years ago,
and they're singing Psalm 48, they're singing about Jerusalem.
That's what's going through their mind, but you know what?
They saw it through a glass darkly, and a lot of Old Testament scriptures went over
their head as far as their true, deeper meaning.
It's when you get to the New Testament and you start reading books like Galatians and
the Book of Revelation, those shed light on the Old Testament, and now you say, oh, you
know what?
There's a surface meaning of them just being excited about Jerusalem.
Hey, Jerusalem's a cool city, but you know what?
There's a deeper meaning when he says it's going to be established forever.
But Jerusalem was destroyed repeatedly, right?
Jerusalem was destroyed first by the Babylonians, right?
But then later, it got destroyed again by the Romans, and it was burned, destroyed,
and what did Jesus say about the temple?
Not one stone will be left upon another that shall not be thrown down.
It's all gone, right?
Wiped out.
The city was destroyed.
And if you think of the city, you know, the city is the people in a sense, right?
You know, what is a city but the people?
Just like when God so loved the world, you know, he's talking about the people.
So typically when we think of a state or a city or a country, usually we're talking about
the people that are there.
And so if you want to think of Jerusalem as the buildings, well, they got burned down
and knocked down.
But if you want to think of Jerusalem as the people, guess what?
By 135 AD, there were no Jews left in Jerusalem, not even one, because the Romans made it illegal
for a Jew to even set foot within the city limits of Jerusalem except once a year on
the 9th of Av.
They were allowed to go there and cry about it once a year, but they weren't allowed to
live there, and they weren't allowed to be there the rest of the year.
So you want to talk about a city being destroyed, it was destroyed.
It was wiped out.
No matter how you think about what it means to be destroyed, whatever definition you put
on destroying a city, that happened.
All the definitions, okay.
So and look, isn't there a foreshadowing of that when he says, hey, be sure and count
the towers, look at the bulwarks so that you can be able to tell the future generation
what this was like.
And let me tell you something.
Everything on this earth will pass away, everything, because what does the Bible say?
The things that are seen are temporal, and the things that are not seen are eternal.
That's what the Bible tells us.
If you can see it, it's temporary.
This body, temporary.
Your body, temporary.
This building, it's all temporary.
That which is not seen is eternal.
So how can you read Psalm 48 and then walk away saying, well, see this Jerusalem that
we see here, it's eternal.
Don't you dare spiritualize it, you replacement guy.
How dare you spiritualize.
Folks, you better spiritualize it because the things that are seen are temporal, and
only the things that are not seen are eternal.
So yeah, God's going to establish it forever.
We're talking about the physical city?
Nope, got wiped out once, got wiped out twice, and you're not going to believe this, it's
going to get wiped out a third time.
Because in the end times, it's called the abomination of desolation, and at that time,
the Bible says that Jerusalem shall be trodden underfoot of the Gentiles.
It's going to be given over to the Gentiles, trodden underfoot.
When you see the armies surrounding Jerusalem, know that the desolation thereof is nigh.
Now look, that happened back in 70 AD.
That was fulfilled back then, but there's a dual fulfillment.
It's coming again in the end times, revelation's clear.
It's going to be destroyed a third time.
But the Bible talks about a new Jerusalem.
More evidence?
How about this scripture?
Here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.
Hebrews chapter 12.
We have no continuing city on this earth.
I don't care if it's Phoenix, or LA, or Jerusalem, we have no continuing city.
Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away.
Are you there in Psalm 48?
Go back to Psalm 48.
But we saw that parallel passage in Isaiah 14 where he talked about going up to heaven
is going up to the sides of the north.
Now why is that?
Because everybody knows that north is up, right?
North means up.
Now you might think that that's silly, and in a sense it is a little bit silly if you
want to think that north really literally is up.
That's like something that a little kid would think that north is always up, like well that's
north, you know?
Point north.
Well, you know?
But here's the thing though, even though we make a joke about that and that's a little
bit silly, and we understand that you could flip the map anyway, here's the fact though.
The fact is that most, the vast majority of great civilizations have all been in the northern
hemisphere.
You know, look at a map, and I'm not saying that there haven't been any, you know, okay
civilizations in the southern hemisphere, but I'm just saying in general, look at a
map, you look at the great civilizations of China, India, Mesopotamia, Europe, I mean
look, it's just a fact if you look at it, the big empires, the major civilizations have
been in the northern hemisphere, and here's the thing, most of mankind right now, the
vast majority of the population, guess where they live?
In the northern hemisphere.
The vast majority of the human population, I don't know the exact numbers off the top
of my head, but guess what?
They are living in the northern hemisphere, and it's much fewer people that live in the
southern hemisphere.
So throughout history, and obviously the Bible's being written in the northern hemisphere,
so the Bible's written from the perspective of the northern hemisphere, so in our minds
in the northern hemisphere, you know, pretty much the way that we've looked at the world,
the way maps have always been, you know, guess what?
They put the northern hemisphere on the top.
If you have a globe, you don't put it upside down.
I don't know if Australians might do that, or if, you know, I don't even think they'd
do it, because otherwise they wouldn't call it the land down under, right?
Because then it wouldn't be down under for them.
You know, they sing about, down there in South Africa, they sing about having a summer Christmas.
Instead of a white Christmas, they're dreaming of a summertime Christmas, all right?
They're dreaming of a Christmas like today where it's 109 outside, okay?
109 degrees, and it's not even June yet, all right?
I love Arizona.
Coronavirus is toast.
It's over, dude.
It's all been nuked.
But the point is that, you know, the northern hemisphere is the reference point for most
of mankind throughout history.
Maps typically put north at the top.
They typically are facing that way.
They're oriented that way.
Globes are oriented that way.
It's not like, whoa, we just arbitrarily have...
Folks, that's the way it's been done, okay?
That's how maps are.
Don't you hate it when somebody gives you a map where north isn't at the top?
Isn't it a little irritating?
It's like, how do we orient this thing?
So therefore, because of the fact that north is traditionally at the top of any map or
globe, sometimes it's used just as a metaphor or figuratively for being upward or being
where God lives in the sides of the north.
It's not saying he's at the North Pole or something.
It's just basically saying that he's up.
It's just a figure of speech, as it were, right?
You don't want to take that too literally.
And here's another place that the Bible uses that.
It talks about how promotion, the Bible says, promotion does not come from the east or the
west or from the south.
So where does promotion come from?
It comes from the north.
God lifts up one and puts down another.
So coming from the north in that verse is a way of saying it's coming from God.
So the point is here, Jerusalem dwelling in the sides of the north that's going to be
established forever is talking about the heavenly Jerusalem.
Now let's keep going in the passage of Psalm 48, great is the Lord and greatly to be praised
in the city of our God, in the mountain of his holiness, beautiful for situation.
The joy of the whole earth is Mount Zion on the sides of the north, the city of the great
King.
God is known in her palaces for a refuge.
For lo, the kings were assembled, they passed by together.
They saw it and so they marveled.
They were troubled and hasted away, fear took hold upon them there and pain as of a woman
in travail.
What's the Bible talking about here?
It talks about God being known in the palaces of Jerusalem as a refuge.
And the reason that he's known as a refuge, for means because in verse four, the reason
why he's known as a refuge is because the kings came to Jerusalem and when the kings
show up at Jerusalem in this context, they're not coming by to pay a social visit and just
say hi.
You know, they're coming to invade, they're coming to take over, they're coming to charge
taxes and, you know, assimilate them into the empire.
And it talks about the kings coming and being troubled, hasting away because God did what?
Look at verse seven, thou breakest the ships of Tarshish with an east wind.
So Tarshish is the extreme western Europe, okay?
So basically, you know, invaders from the western part of the Mediterranean Sea, they
come to invade and God broke up their ships.
He protects Jerusalem is what the Bible is saying.
And look, one thing that comes across loud and clear when you're studying the Old Testament
is that God can protect his people.
God can be a refuge to his people.
It doesn't matter what kings or armies are assembled against them.
God can protect them.
And when they're right with God and they trust in the Lord, God protects them.
He takes care of them.
It doesn't matter if the most powerful nations in the world are coming against them.
They're protected.
Now, here's the thing.
Israel in its heyday was glorious.
When was the peak of Israel's glory?
King David, King Solomon, right?
I mean, that was the zenith.
That was the pinnacle.
But even at that pinnacle, they were not a world power.
They weren't ruling over some giant empire.
They're not ruling over Europe or have an empire that stretches to India or something
like that.
They never were a world power.
They never had a big empire.
You know, they basically, they put the Edomites under tribute.
They basically, you know, are ruling over the people right around them.
They've got Philistia in check, the Moabites.
But those are just, that's just local stuff.
They didn't rule over Egypt or rule over Assyria.
They're not ruling in Babylon.
You know what I mean?
They're not taking over the whole region.
They were never a world power.
But yet, when they were right with God, when world powers came against them that should
have been able to destroy them and should have been able to defeat them, God was always
able to protect them.
Something would always go wrong.
So you know, the Assyrians come with hundreds of thousands of troops and you know what?
God destroyed the Assyrian army.
He either gets them to fight with each other or he creates unrest at home where they have
to go back and deal with the unrest back home.
So they have to, you know, go.
He always finds some way to send them home or he can even send natural disasters.
You know, I think that what the Bible is saying here when it says in verse 7, thou breakest
the ships of Tarshish with an east wind.
You know, you could point to times in recent history where things like that have happened
where basically just the wind came and just wiped out a navy.
You know, you think of the British and the Spanish fighting and then a storm that just
comes and wipes out the Spanish Armada and turned the war in favor of Britain, you know,
so they could defeat Spain.
Or you think about when the Mongolians tried to invade Japan and you know, they go there
and they had a huge army.
They're ready to invade and then you know what?
The kamikaze, right?
The divine wind is what the Japanese called it, was where they get their word kamikaze.
Basically that wind came and broke up the ships because it just wasn't God's will for
whatever reason that that invasion happened.
You know, God can just put an end to these plans.
Like if he wants people to get invaded, it's going to work.
And if he doesn't want it to succeed, he just, he sends the east wind, breaks their ships.
So God can protect Israel.
God can protect me.
God can protect you.
God protects his people when they're right with him.
Or when they're wicked and they need punishment, he can just remove that hedge of protection.
And then it's easy for Egypt to come in.
It's easy for the Assyrians to come in, the Babylonians.
Once their shield is departed, you know, then they're just a sitting duck.
They never, even in their heyday, they did not have the power to defeat world class enemies
in their own strength.
How did God keep them so prosperous and safe during the reign of Solomon?
It said that he put the fear of them in the nations around them.
And he basically just worked in the nation's heart, basically, because God, the Bible says,
has the king's heart in his hand and as the rivers of water, he turned it to whips however
he will.
So God could easily just whisper into the ear of the king of Babylon or Assyria or Egypt,
just, you don't want to invade Jerusalem.
There's no point.
And he's just like, yeah, there is no point.
Let's go somewhere else.
You know, look, the biggest army that the Bible records, to my knowledge, as far as
invading Jerusalem or trying to invade Jerusalem in the Old Testament, he said the Ethiopians
came.
And there were one million Ethiopians came to invade Jerusalem.
This is a mega force here.
I mean, one million troops come.
And you know what?
They relied on God.
They trusted the Lord.
And God protected them.
And the Ethiopians were not able to take over.
Sorry, black Hebrew Israelites, but you know, they were never ruled by the Ethiopians.
All right.
It could have happened.
But guess what?
God protected them.
And God protected them from the Assyrians.
But then there were other times when they were wicked, where God removed the protection
and then they did get defeated, you know, by the Romans or by all these different enemies
throughout their history.
So the Bible's talking about God being able to protect them.
He's their refuge.
He's their shield.
And again, we need to apply this to us.
It's not, well, that was for them.
In the New Testament, we're the Israel of God.
We're God's chosen people.
We're the spiritual seed of Abraham.
And you know what?
God can protect us the same way.
And we need to rely on his protection to keep us safe.
The Bible says safety's of the Lord.
So he says, you broke the ships of Tarshish with an east wind.
Which makes sense because they're, you know, they're coming from the west, Israel's over
here and then it's like blowing back where they came from, right?
So it says in verse number eight, as we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the
Lord of hosts, in the city of our God.
They're saying, you know, we've heard all the great stories about God's power and we've
actually seen some of it happen in our lifetime.
We've seen some of his works ourselves.
In the city of our God, in the city of the Lord of hosts.
So see the emphasis on the city.
God will establish it forever, Silah, which again, Silah is a word nobody knows for sure
what it means.
That's why the King James translators just love it untranslated.
But it probably means a pause.
That's typically something that you find a lot in ancient poetry, in ancient poetry,
like a command to just pause there, like a musical interlude or a pause.
But nobody knows for sure what that means.
We have thought of thy loving kindness, O God.
We have thought of thy loving kindness, O God, in the midst of thy temple.
According to thy name, O God, so is thy praise unto the ends of the earth.
Thy right hand is full of righteousness.
Let Mount Zion rejoice.
Let the daughters of Judah be glad because of thy judgment.
Now why should Mount Zion rejoice?
Why should they be glad?
Because of God's judgments.
Now look, what God emphasizes throughout the Bible in regard to his majesty, his greatness,
is his word.
His word is the main thing.
And when we think about the name of God being sacred, being hallowed, and in this passage
in verse 10 it says, according to thy name, O God, so is thy praise unto the ends of the
earth.
So there's a lot of emphasis throughout the Bible about praising the name of God and hallowed
be his name.
But here's what the Bible says in Psalm 138, verse 2.
You don't have to turn there, but it says, I will worship toward thy holy temple and
praise thy name for thy loving kindness and for thy truth, watch this, for thou has magnified
thy word above all thy name.
Can somebody tell that to the Jehovah's Witnesses?
You know, they're obsessed with that name even as they ignore the word of God.
They don't believe what the Bible says.
They don't even have a Bible.
They have some weirdo translation that's not even a translation.
Explain this to me.
If the New World Translation is actually a translation of the Bible, why does no one
use it if they're not a Jehovah's Witness?
Literally no one.
Zero.
There is not any academic scholar or preacher or historian or language expert.
There's no one who would say this is a good translation unless they're just a brainwashed
Jehovah's Witness cult member.
That's the only people that would even give that book the time of day.
It would be laughed out of anyone else's office or anyone else's church or no one else takes
the thing seriously.
It's a joke because it's not a translation.
It's just their ideological rewriting the Bible to match what they believe.
We're going to rewrite the Bible to match what we believe.
It has no basis in reality.
That's why they've inserted the word Jehovah into the New Testament hundreds of times when
it never occurs one time in the Greek New Testament.
Greek New Testament doesn't have it.
The Greek New Testament just has the Greek word for Lord.
And the English Bible translates the Greek word for Lord into English as Lord.
They insert Jehovah into the New Testament where it does not exist in the original.
And here's what they say.
Well, it might have existed in the original a long time ago.
You know, I thought the Bible was preserved by God.
Jesus said it's easier for one jot or one tittle to pass from or it's easier for heaven
and earth to pass than for one jot or one tittle to pass from God.
And Jesus said heaven and earth shall pass away, but my word shall not pass away.
God's word is not going to pass away.
We have today the same New Testament that the apostles wrote.
We have it in our modern English language, but we have the same thing that they wrote
and it's not like, oh, somebody just went in and just erased the name of God hundreds
of times from the original Greek New Testament.
That's crazy.
You want to talk about a wild conspiracy theory.
Every single Greek New Testament on the planet and all the Latin and all of it has all been
expunged of this Hebrew word that used to be there.
Folks, it wasn't there.
Okay.
The Jehovah's Witnesses have not translated the Bible.
You know, the King James Bible, on the other hand, is King James Bible only used by Baptists?
There are people in every single denomination that use the King James Bible.
In fact, the King James Bible is the number one Bible as far as how many people are preaching
it from the pulpit.
So this Sunday, more preachers will get up and preach out of a King James than any other
Bible version.
Look it up.
Do the math.
Look, the King James is the most read Bible.
If you look at the Pew Research polls of people who read the Bible at least once a month or
once a week or whatever it was, if they read it on a semi-regular basis, overwhelmingly
they read the King James.
Now, the NIV is the best seller to use as a doorstop or a coaster or to carry around
with you, carry it to your liberal fun center church and you can jam and jive for Jesus
with it.
But, you know, people actually read the thing.
Look it up.
They read a King James.
And that's not some fundamental Baptist think tank.
Pew Research is just saying, hey, we polled, we did the data, and guess what?
The King James is the most read Bible.
The King James is the most preached Bible.
And by the way, there are all kinds of academic settings where you have unsaved, unbelieving,
maybe even atheistic college professors teaching the Bible to a classroom full of atheists.
Imagine that.
But it's going on in every university in America.
Literally.
I don't care if you're talking Harvard or Yale, Stanford, Cornell.
It doesn't matter which one you're talking about.
They have a whole department for theology where somebody who doesn't believe the Bible
is teaching a class of people who virtually none of them believe the Bible and they're
all just talking about the Bible.
And guess what?
They don't know what they're talking about because the Bible is spiritually discerned.
But guess what?
In many of those classrooms, they're going to use the ESV or something.
But guess what?
In many of those classrooms, they're using the King James.
Many of them will say, hey, King James is an acceptable translation in this classroom.
But I guarantee you there's not one, not even one in the world that would say, oh, you can
use the New World Translation in this course.
Because it's a joke.
It's not.
Folks, God has magnified his word above his name.
And so while they're worried about the name and obsessing over the name and you've knocked
their door out so many, it's all they want to talk about.
All they want to talk about is the name.
You talk about something totally different and they just want to keep bringing it back
to the name.
Hey, God magnified his word above his name.
And if you don't have the word, you're doomed, right?
The word is what it's about.
They've got a wrong emphasis, overemphasizing the name, underemphasizing the word.
The Hebrew roots crowd, same thing, right?
They're obsessing over a name and they're not seeing the forest for the trees, folks.
What did the Bible say is the main thing?
He said, yeah, praise the name of God, hallowed be his name.
But he magnified his word above his name.
The word is above the name.
What about when Jesus is on this earth performing amazing miracles?
And I mean, Jesus walked on water.
He fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fishes.
Jesus healed the sick.
He raised the dead.
He turned water into wine.
He made the blind to see, the lame to walk, the deaf to hear.
And when the disciples were blown away by the miracles and they marveled at the miracles,
Jesus answered and said to them, let these words sink down into your ears.
They're talking about, we saw this, we saw this, we saw this.
He said, whoa, whoa, whoa, let these words, his response to them as they marveled at miracles
was let the words that I'm saying to you sink down into your ears.
It's God's word that is supreme.
God's word is more important than the miracles that they saw.
God's listening to the preaching was more important.
The 5,000 saw an amazing miracle, you know, seeing that food multiplied.
But you know what?
They heard a more amazing sermon.
The sermon that they heard was more important than seeing the miracle.
God's name is powerful, but you know what's more important?
He's magnified his word above his name.
Oh, Jerusalem, it's such a cool city.
But what is the emphasis in Psalm 48?
Look down at your Bible.
Let Mount Zion rejoice.
Let the daughters of Judah be glad because of thy judgments, because of thy judgments, right?
That's what we need to get excited about.
And what does it say after he tells you in verse 13, mark well her bulwarks,
consider her palaces that you may tell it to the generation following,
which is the hint that probably went over most people's head back then, but it's the hint.
This place isn't going to be here forever.
That's why you got to, you know, take a picture.
It'll last longer.
And then it says in verse 14, after he tells them, hey, mark it well, verse 14, what's going to last forever?
For this God is our God forever and ever.
He will be our guide even unto death.
Okay, death happens.
The city being destroyed happens.
Things on this earth come to an end.
The things that are seen are all temporal.
So even when the city is destroyed, even when we die physically, God is our guide forever and ever.
All the way until death, he is our guide.
And then we go back to him.
That's where we go.
And that's where we end.
So the bottom line is that the Bible is emphasizing in this passage, not on the surface,
but when you go deeper, you know, the Bible is emphasizing how what's eternal is the word of God.
The word of our God abideth forever.
The Bible says that the grass fades, the flower fades, but the word of God abides forever.
It's God's word that abides forever.
It's the Jerusalem, the heavenly Jerusalem, the city that comes down from heaven in the new heaven and the new earth in the sides of the north.
That is the true, eternal city that will be here forever.
It's God's word that will be here forever.
It's his judgments.
It's God that's our guide forever.
But the city itself isn't going to be here forever.
Don't get too attached to the things of this world because they're all temporary.
Everything about this world is temporary.
You know, we get so attached to things and we want to collect everything and we've got our house and we got our toys and we got, you know,
the RV or the boat or the car, but you know what?
Everything is going to burn up someday and your portfolio is going to just be smoked.
Someday your money, all of your possessions are going to be gone one day.
Eventually you will lose everything, but he that do with the will of God abideth forever.
So I think one of the bad things about this doctrine that glorifies the physical city of Jerusalem,
glorifies the physical nation of Israel and glorifies the Jews, quote unquote, as God's chosen people is what it's doing is giving people a carnal mentality where they're kind of grabbing hold of the things of this world.
And they, you know, they want to have something tangible.
They want to have something physical that they can see and that they can look at.
And that's why they got to take the tour of the Holy Land because they got to go see it.
You know, they want to go see the place.
But you know what?
The kingdom of God's within you is what the Bible says.
So you don't have to go see that place.
You know, you can just watch Beyond Jordan.
And if you watch Beyond Jordan, you'll see the real Promised Land, Palestine.
Amen.
So the point is that, you know, the replacement theology is a superior doctrine.
Now, first of all, number one, it's superior because it's right.
That's just enough right there.
You know, it's funny, I was I was out soul wading today and I gave this young lady the gospel.
And whenever I'm talking to a Catholic, what I like to say at the end of giving the gospel,
because, you know, you just want to make sure sometimes Catholics might just kind of agree with
everything and then they'll just pray with you because they're just used to like repeating
prayers or just sometimes people are just really agreeable.
So, you know, I like to check and make sure people are actually listening.
They're actually getting it.
So, you know, I don't interrogate them.
But, you know, what I do is when I get to the end, after I get through the whole plan,
the salvation, they say they believe it.
I just gently and kindly, here's what I say to them.
I say, now, you know, you mentioned you're Catholic.
And, you know, actually the Catholic Church teaches that you have to do more to be saved.
They don't teach the believings enough.
You know, I say it in a friendly way, but I just say, look, they're teaching that you have
to go to confession.
You got to go to church.
You got to keep the commandments.
You got to be a good person.
That's what they teach.
But, you know, what I've shown you is that it's faith alone.
You know, it's just it's not of works.
It's just by faith.
And then I just say, so which one do you believe?
You know, do you believe what they teach or do you believe, you know, what we've seen here now?
Just to kind of make sure that they understand these are two different things.
And you know what?
Every once in a while, you'll have somebody at that point that'll say, well, I'm going to stick
with what my church believes.
And you know what that tells you?
What you've been preaching to them has gone over their head.
They didn't get it.
But this young lady that I was speaking to today, she said, yeah, I believe it's by faith alone.
And she said, you know what?
In fact, she said, I like this a lot better what you're showing me.
She said, I like this better than what I've been taught.
And I told her, I said, well, I'm glad you like it.
But I said, the important thing isn't whether or not we like it is that it's actually true.
I mean, I like I said I like it better, too, but that's not the point.
The point is that it's real because it's what the Bible says.
You know, the point is that it's the truth.
We believe it because it's the truth, whether we like it or not.
And of course, she agreed with that.
And she ended up getting saved.
And so praise the Lord for that.
But the point is that, you know, whether we like it or not, you know, and it is likable.
But at the end of the day, it's what's true.
Whereas if we study our Bibles, if we study Galatians three and Galatians four and Romans two and Romans nine through 11.
And I could list a lot more.
We see that it's true that, you know, that the physical nation is no longer God's chosen people.
They've been replaced by the spiritual nation made up of all believers.
Another way of looking at it is you could say that they were broken off and we were graphed in.
You know, and sometimes people argue about which one is it.
Is it replacement theology or is it covenant theology?
I like both.
Anything that did, you know, discards the physical Jews and plugs in Christians as God's chosen people.
I'm for it.
You know, I'm and I feel like I've sat down with people who are really into theology and I've listened to the theology geeks kind of tell me the difference.
Between replacement theology and covenant theology.
And I walked away saying I like both and I couldn't really find I felt like they're both right.
They're both just kind of saying the same thing a different way.
And I feel like the Bible says it both ways because in some places the Bible says like the kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits of that sounds like a replacement.
You know, new covenant supersedes old covenant replaces.
Amen.
So you can call it supersessionism, you know, it superseded it.
I like all of it.
Anything except dispensationalism, you have me at hello, you know.
So the point is, you know, whether you want to think of it as, you know, the New Testament Christians have replaced Old Testament Israel or you could look at it as, you know what, there's the olive tree of God's people and they were broken off and we were graphed on.
You come to the same result at the end of the day, no matter which route you take to get there, you come to the same point.
Amen.
That's what I think about that.
So the point is replacement theology or covenant theology or whatever you want to call it, teaching that we're God's chosen people in the New Testament, number one is true because it's supported by a lot of scripture.
Galatians 3 and 4, Philippians 3.
I mean, we could go on and on.
That's a whole other sermon that I've preached many times.
But not only is it true, I just like it so much better anyway.
It's so much more rewarding.
It's such a superior doctrine because what is the fruit of this doctrine?
Let's look at the fruit of, what's the fruit of the dispensational doctrine?
What's that fruit?
A bunch of tours to Israel, lining the pockets of a bunch of tour guides, and a bunch of,
you know, souvenir shops over in Israel, lining the pockets of televangelists who want you
to donate to Israel or something.
Okay, getting people to team up with and yoke up with unbelievers because they're Jews.
Having a rabbi come in and teach Sunday school in a Baptist church.
Folks, people who reject the Lord Jesus Christ, folks, they're not of God.
That seems like it should be obvious.
What happened to be not equally yoked together with unbelievers?
So what's the fruit of this dispensational doctrine?
It makes people just carnal, taking all these Old Testament scriptures, taking a carnal
viewpoint, getting obsessed with physical things on this earth, donating money to build
a temple in Jerusalem so the Antichrist can be there.
But what's the fruit of the replacement doctrine?
The fruit of the replacement doctrine is us actually having meaningful promises from
the Old Testament that we can hold onto as Christians and that we can be blessed by and
profit from and we can take a spiritual view and have a spiritual mentality and loosen
our grip on the things of this world.
And instead of reaching for the newspaper every morning to figure out, you know, what's
going on between Israel and those darned Palestinians, what's Ariel Sharon up to now
or what?
I don't know.
I don't even know if he's even still around or what's Netanyahu up to now.
And you know, all of our heroes that reject and hate the Lord Jesus Christ, but somehow
they're our friends.
But instead of that, we reach for our Bible.
And when we read in Genesis, we're reading about Jesus, we read Exodus, read about Jesus,
we read Psalms, we're reading Jesus, Jesus, Jesus on every page.
And it's gonna be like, oh, Israel and the headlines, oh man, the Middle East, peace
crisis.
It's always a peace crisis.
It's a crisis today.
It'll be a crisis tomorrow.
There's no peace agreement, all right?
I don't know.
Maybe Trump's gonna be the one, right?
Every president wants to broker peace between Israel and Palestine.
Who cares?
I don't care.
You know what?
I'm gonna broker a peace agreement between unsaved people and God with Jesus as the mediator.
That's the peace agreement that I'm interested in brokering.
So the fruit of this doctrine is a good fruit.
Gets us emphasized on winning souls and reading our Bibles and thinking about ourselves as
being the people of God.
And you know, I've heard these dispensational preachers get up and say, you know, you guys
are just so selfish.
You just want every promise in the Bible.
You want to steal it all from Israel.
You better know I want all of it.
I want all of it.
I want to be the chosen people.
Excuse me for wanting to be the elect.
I want to be the elect.
Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?
It's God that justifies.
It's God before us.
Who could be against us?
Yeah, I want that.
Give that to some Israeli soldier.
No, it's like the old bubble tape commercial.
It's for you, not them.
All right.
Silly Jew.
Promises are for Christians.
Silly rabbit.
Tricks are for kids.
Bubble tape is for you, not them.
Okay.
And guess what?
The biblical promises are for you, not them.
Hey, I thought that in Christ we just, we, we got, I thought if we have
Christ, we got everything.
We get the whole package, right?
The whole kit and caboodle.
I mean, if you've got Jesus, you've got the executive platinum package.
You're not just some redheaded stepchild that takes a backseat to old
cohen or whatever.
Folks, I, in the words of the lady who got saved today, I like it better.
But more important than that, it's what the Bible actually teaches.
And even a casual reading of Galatians will tell you that once you get the preconceived
ideas out of your head.
Now I'll, I'll admit I have a confession to make.
I read the Bible cover to cover over 24 times and I still thought the Jews were God's chosen
people today.
That's dense.
But you know what?
It's because I'd just been so brainwashed with that like all of us have.
So I, you know, I'm not mad at people who believe that because I get it.
I can see how you could be blind to it when you just hear, it's just like you take it
for granted.
Well, yeah.
But when I was, you know, 24 years old, I'd been pastoring this church for six months.
You know, it dawned on me, I was preaching one night and I started to say something along
those lines and I'm like, am I just repeating something that I've heard my whole life?
Is that what I'm doing right now?
That was the exact thought.
As I was preaching, you know, it was like, it was like one of those things where my mouth
kept going, but then I was like, another part of my brain kind of just put my mouth on autopilot
and I was just like, I started to have like this meta moment where I'm just like, I had
an out of body experience and I'm just basically like, you know, just mentally, I'm just thinking,
I'm thinking to myself, why am I saying this right now?
Is this because it's biblical or is it just something that I've heard hundreds of times
in every church I've been in?
And I remember I went home that night and I just couldn't stop thinking about and just
verses started just flooding my mind.
I'm like, whoa, what about that verse?
But I'd never heard of anyone believing that.
All these verses are flooding into my mind, but I'm like, whoa, this is a wild doctrine.
Little did I know, it's like the majority of Christianity believes it.
Little did I know that it's been historically the main belief that 99% of, you know, Christians
throughout history have had.
Little did I know that, you know, there are millions and millions of people out there
believing the same thing, but I'd never been around any of them.
So I thought, so I was afraid to preach it at first cause I was like, this is a wild
doctrine.
I don't want to just come out with this unless I'm sure.
I read the Bible cover to cover twice just looking for this on every page.
Are the Jews God's chosen people or have they been replaced by New Testament Christians?
And after reading it twice, it was obvious to me.
About six months later, I ended up preaching a sermon for the first time.
I was a little nervous about preaching it cause I was like, I don't know how people
are going to react to this.
This is wild stuff.
And I remember there's this one visitor in particular that was an older guy and he was
an old IFB type guy and I was wondering like, I wonder how he's going to react to this cause
you know, it's not as hard to get older people to accept new ideas.
And so this was an older guy.
He's a great guy.
And I was thinking like, man, I wonder how he's going to react to this sermon.
And he came up to me after the sermon and he said, you know what?
He said, I've never heard that in my life before.
I've never heard it.
But he said, you're, you're totally right.
And he actually embraced it cause it was in the Bible, you know, I used a lot of Bible
and he saw and he said, wow, those promises that were made to Abraham, they're for us.
That's amazing.
You know, I'll bless him that blesseth you and curse him that curse with you.
That's us.
Think about it.
That's a great promise.
You want to give that one away?
He doesn't even believe in Jesus.
Crazy.
And you know what?
That's why the dispensational crowd is so afraid of this doctrine because they know
that if people hear about it and they see the evidence, a lot of people are going to
buy into it because the dispensational doctrine is not based on scripture.
It's based on just a lot of just televangelists and preachers have just hammered it and hammered
it.
And, and you know, the Christian Zionist movement, it's pretty powerful.
It's a powerful lobby in politics.