Podcasts about Nicodemus

“When God our Savior revealed his kindness and love, he saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit. He generously poured out the Spirit upon us through Jesus Christ our Savior. Because of his grace he made us right in his sight and gave us confidence that we will inherit eternal life.” (Titus 3:4–7 NLT) Self-righteous people don’t think they need forgiveness. Self-righteous people don’t think they need Jesus. A self-righteous person will say, “You go preach that gospel in the prisons and on the streets and to the criminals. But don’t bother with me. I’m an educated and intelligent person. I’m a moral person. I don’t need it.” The Bible takes a different stance on the matter. The apostle Paul wrote, “When God our Savior revealed his kindness and love, he saved us, not because of the righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He washed away our sins, giving us a new birth and new life through the Holy Spirit. He generously poured out the Spirit upon us through Jesus Christ our Savior. Because of his grace he made us right in his sight and gave us confidence that we will inherit eternal life.” (Titus 3:4–7 NLT) Self-righteous people are different from what I would call garden-variety sinners. Self-righteous people are kind people. They are considerate people. They volunteer and help wherever they’re needed. They do benevolent things. We all know people like this. In fact, I’ve met some non-Christians who are nicer than some Christians I know. It isn’t wrong to say that there are some relatively “good” people from a worldly perspective, because there are. The Bible acknowledges that, in a human sense, some people appear more moral than others. But the Bible does say that no one is good enough to get to Heaven. We don’t get to Heaven based on niceness. Heaven is not a place for near-perfect people; it’s a place for forgiven people. We see classic examples of this in John’s Gospel. In John 3, we’re introduced to Nicodemus, who was an upstanding, respected, religious, moral guy. In John 4, we’re introduced to a Samaritan woman, an immoral person who was living in sin. What do these two have in common? They both encountered Jesus. And they both were confronted with their need for Him. Their encounters remind us that everyone needs Jesus—both the moral and the immoral, both the down-and-outer and the up-and-outer. That message is at the center of our Harvest Crusades. It’s why we do what we do. Look around at the people in your life. Every one of them who hasn’t received Christ as Savior and Lord needs Him, whether they realize it or not. Your mission is to help them recognize that need and then lead them to the One who can fulfill it. Will you accept that mission? Reflection question: How can you convince an unbeliever of their need for Jesus? Harvest Crusade tickets are fully claimed—but it’s not too late to participate and witness what God does on July 11. Invite your loved ones to watch online with you and make sure you join the waitlist in case more tickets become available. — The audio production of the podcast "Greg Laurie: Daily Devotions" utilizes Generative AI technology. This allows us to deliver consistent, high-quality content while preserving Harvest's mission to "know God and make Him known." All devotional content is written and owned by Pastor Greg Laurie. Listen to the Greg Laurie Podcast Become a Harvest PartnerSupport the show: https://harvest.org/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Raised: When Jesus Calls the Dead to Life – John 11:27–57 In Episode 141 of Divine Table Talk, Jamie and Jane explore one of the most powerful miracles in all of Scripture—the raising of Lazarus in John 11:27–57. As grief, doubt, hope, and faith collide, Jesus declares Himself to be “the resurrection and the life” before calling Lazarus from the tomb. Together, they unpack what this miracle reveals about the heart of God, the power of belief, and how Jesus often works in ways that stretch our faith beyond what we can see. This chapter is not only about a man being raised from the dead—it's about a Savior who brings life into every place that feels hopeless, buried, or beyond redemption. If you've ever wondered whether God can still move in what feels impossible, this conversation is a reminder that Jesus specializes in resurrection. What area of my life feels beyond hope—and am I willing to believe that Jesus still brings dead things back to life?____________________________________ Connect with Jamie: Website: www.jamieklusacek.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamieklusacek Connect with Jane: Website: www.janewwilliams.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janewwilliams

Welcome to the message, "The Nicodemus Encounter" in our "Close Encounters" message series! In this message, pastor Clint discusses Nicodemus' encounter with Jesus, how it changed him, and what we can learn from it.Click the link below to watch the message on YouTube!https://youtu.be/WpYcEiR_vmw

In John 3, Jesus has an encounter with an influential, religious elite named Nicodemus. Nicodemus represents many of us today - religious, influential, educated, and yet all of this is still not enough to be right with God and see the kingdom of God. Jesus is clear that one must be born again. What does it mean to be born again? Join us today to learn more.

Core Seminar // Pastor Ed Romero // Selected Scriptures

Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again. (John 3:7) **Sermon Summary:** The sermon centers on the necessity of spiritual rebirth, drawn from Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus in John 3:7, where He declares, 'Ye must be born again.' Rooted in the divine mission of Christ to save the lost, the message emphasizes that true salvation is not achieved through human effort or religious tradition, but through a transformative work of the Holy Spirit, likened to the invisible yet powerful movement of the wind. The preacher underscores Christ's omniscience and mercy, illustrating how He sees into the hearts of individuals, as seen in His encounter with Nicodemus, a respected Pharisee who came in darkness seeking light. Through vivid analogies—such as the brass serpent lifted in the wilderness, the prodigal son's return, and the new creation in Christ—the sermon portrays the gospel as a living, life-giving reality that transforms sinners into children of God. The tone is both pastoral and urgent, calling listeners to personal faith, repentance, and a deep reliance on Christ's finished work, while affirming God's sovereign grace that begins and sustains the believer's journey to eternal life.

3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again[b] he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.[c] 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You[d] must be born again.' 8 The wind[e] blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

What is salvation? In John 3, Jesus responds to the questions of a Jewish teacher named Nicodemus about how and why we can be saved: not on the basis of how good, smart, or capable we are but by looking to Jesus. This message was given by Jeremy DeSpain, pastor of Bible Baptist Church in Port Orchard, WA.

The Delay, The Death, and The Resurrection Life - John 11:1-26 In Episode 141 - When Jesus hears that His close friend Lazarus is sick, He doesn't rush to his side—He waits. In this episode, we unpack the tension of John 11:1-26. Why does God sometimes seem slow to answer our pain? We'll look at the heartbreak of Mary and Martha, the raw humanity of Jesus, and the staggering moment He redefines reality by declaring, "I am the resurrection and the life." If you're sitting in a season of waiting or wondering if God has forgotten you, this episode is a powerful reminder that His delays are never denials. Where in your life right now does it feel like Jesus is arriving 'too late'—and how does knowing He delayed on purpose with Lazarus change how you view that waiting room? ____________________________________ Connect with Jamie: Website: www.jamieklusacek.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamieklusacek Connect with Jane: Website: www.janewwilliams.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janewwilliams

Everyone believes in something.  Many believe that they are part of the highest form of animal life – and that this life is all there is for them and so they live to make the most of it. Our chapter (5) in John's letter today begins, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him.” [v.1]  Here is a word picture of a precious fellowship of believers bound together in love.  Our thoughts go to Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus that John recorded in his gospel; remember what Nicodemus was told? “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter the Kingdom of God.” [ch.3 v.3]  “Born of water” refers to baptism – to put on the name of Christ.  That physical act must be accompanied by a rebirth of the mind, anew way of thinking; Paul spelt it out plainly in writing to the Ephesians, “… be renewed in the spirit of your minds… put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” [4 v.23,24]In his Epistle John goes on to say, “this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments.  And his commandments are not burdensome” [v.3] as had been the laws and rituals in keeping the laws through Moses.  Verse 4 challenges us!  “For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world.  And this is the victory that has overcome the world – our faith.”  True faith flows out from a heart that is full of the “conviction of things not seen” [Heb 11 v.1] John writes, sure that his readers have this conviction of faith and says  he “writes these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.” [v.13] That is a challenging concept of thought!  “Death” becomes in a sense non-existent, as this life is completed we move into God's time, which is time-less, it is like “the twinkling of an eye” death “has “no sting” [1 Cor. 15 v.52,55] May we all be treading with ever surer steps on the narrow way because we have been truly “born of God” and “God protects him and the evil does not touch him” [v.18].  Furthermore, “we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ” [v.20] for we truly have “been born of God.” [v.1]   

DO YOU HAVE QUESTIONS?! TEXT US!Welcome to a new season of The Seek and Find Podcast. This season we are digging deep into God word through our lifestyle and testimonies in the outdoors. Obedience Brings Blessings!Religion | Salvation | BeliefIn this episode, we journey through Gospel of John 3:1–21, where Jesus has a life-changing conversation with Nicodemus about what it truly means to know God. Together, we explore the difference between religion and relationship, the necessity of being born again, and the gift of salvation that comes through faith in Christ.As Jesus reveals God's plan of redemption, we unpack the powerful truth that salvation is not earned through religious efforts but received by believing in Him. Centered around one of the most beloved passages in Scripture, we discuss how God's love, grace, and invitation to eternal life remain available to everyone who chooses to believe.Key Scripture: John 3:1–21 Themes: Religion, Salvation, Belief, New Birth, Grace, Faith, Eternal LifeJoin us as we discover how Jesus moves us beyond religious tradition and into a transforming relationship marked by faith, hope, and the promise of new life.Support the showPRAISE GOD! ✝︎Seek And Find Tv on YouTubeSeek And Find Tv on Carbon TvSponsors:Coffman Outdoors: E BikesBearded Outdoors USA:Beard Care ProductsNEW "In The Cabin" scent out now!OFB Veteran Fundraising BanquetInfo and Tickets to eventFREE Beard Care for veterans

Kierkegaard uses the interaction at night between Jesus and Nicodemus to illustrate how a person of power, wealth, and position, fears man because of following Jesus. Nicodemus makes two more appearances in the Gospel of John. Once at the trial of Jesus where Nicodemus appealed to the Council to follow its own rules and also in asking for the body of Jesus to prepare it for burial. The last two stories show Nicodemus no longer was hiding in the dark.

We explore the profound parallels between the bronze serpent lifted by Moses in the wilderness and Jesus Christ's ultimate sacrifice on the cross. We begin with the story from Numbers 21, where the Israelites are saved from deadly serpents by looking at a bronze serpent. This narrative is then connected to Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus in John 3, where Jesus explains that just as the serpent was lifted up, He too must be lifted up for the salvation of humanity. We delve into the significance of Jesus becoming the emblem of sin, taking on the world's iniquities so that believers might receive eternal life and become the righteousness of God in Him.Support the showRead along with us in the Bible Brief App! Try the Bible Brief book for an offline experience!Get your free Bible Timeline with the 10 Steps: Timeline LinkSupport the show: Tap here to become a monthly supporter!Review the show: Tap here!Want to go deeper?...Download the Bible Brief App!iPhone: App Store LinkAndroid: Play Store LinkWant a physical book? Check out "Bible Brief" by our founder!Amazon: Amazon LinkWebsite: biblebrief.orgInstagram: @realbiblebriefX: @biblebriefFacebook: @realbiblebriefEmail the Show: biblebrief@biblelit.orgWant to learn the Bible languages (Greek & Hebrew)? Check out our partner Biblingo (and use our link/code for a discount!): https://biblin...

Discover the profound transformation of Nicodemus in this enlightening episode of Who's Who in the Bible. Join Fr. Juventius Andrade, C.Ss.R., as he masterfully unpacks the journey of this complex Pharisee—from his initial secret meeting with Jesus under the cover of night, to his courageous defense of Christ before the Sanhedrin, and his ultimate act of devotion at the foot of the cross.This series invites you to look beyond the surface, exploring themes of spiritual growth, the courage to seek truth, and the boundless, life-changing love of God described in John 3:16. Don't miss this opportunity to deepen your faith and reflect on your own spiritual path. Watch the full series and experience these timeless stories today!

In “Now You Know,” Pastor Robert Madu reminds us that God often does His greatest work in the dark. Through Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus, we learn that being born again isn't something we achieve— it's something we receive. We may not see God moving, but we will always see the evidence of His work. Thank you for partnering with Social Dallas! To GIVE Online- head to our website: www.socialdallas.com/give Make sure to LIKE and SUBSCRIBE! Also follow us on all Social Media: Instagram: www.instagram.com/social_dallas

In this episode, Jesus encounters Nicodemus who is a teacher of Israel and who has a hard time believing what it means to be born again.

Modern culture tells us to find what's compatible with our lives, but Jesus calls us to transformation.In “Non-Compatibility,” we explore John 3:1–9 and Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus, discovering that following Christ isn't about making Him fit into our lives—it's about being born again and conformed to His image. Grace doesn't remove divine accountability; it empowers us to live in obedience through the Holy Spirit.This message challenges us to move beyond personal comfort and embrace the life-changing work of Christ, allowing Him to increase as we decrease.Scripture: John 3:1-9Speaker: Pastor Kyle HornerDid you make a decision to follow Christ today? We'd love to support you—email us at info@theconnectchurch.com.Learn more about The Connect Church and stay connected: https://linktr.ee/theconnectchurch

John 3:9-15 Nicodemus (and the Pharisees) don't understand "earthly things."  They don't receive "their" testimony; they don't believe.  What will Jesus do now?  Jesus pulls a telling (and compelling) example of the basis (foundation) of new birth from Numbers 21 for Nicodemus's consideration...

John 3:1-8 "You Must Be Born Again" After seeing the rescue of Israel in the sermon series on Exodus, we look at how this redemption becomes ours. This is revealed in the conversation between Jesus and a Pharisee named Nicodemus. Jesus makes it clear that religion cannot produce life, that we must be born again from above, and that the Holy Spirit brings new life. Website: immanuelde.com Facebook: immanuelchurchwilmington YouTube: Immanuel Church Wilmington DE

Why would Nicodemus come to Jesus like this--at night...in secret?

In this TGC Classic message recorded at our 2019 National Conference, H. B. Charles preaches on Jesus's conversation with the Samaritan woman, the longest recorded dialogue with Jesus. Charles emphasizes this episode's placement after Jesus's discussion with Nicodemus and how it demonstrates Jesus's mission to reach both the religious and the immoral. Like the Samaritan woman whose transformation caused her to bring many others to Jesus, we should join Jesus in his mission to reach the lost. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

My Sheep Know My Voice: The Good Shepherd Continued – John 10:22–42 In Episode 140 of Divine Table Talk, Jamie and Jane continue their journey through John 10 as Jesus boldly reveals His identity during the Feast of Dedication. In John 10:22–42, Jesus declares that His sheep hear His voice, He knows them, and no one can snatch them from His hand. As opposition intensifies, Jesus continues to point people to the evidence of His works and His unity with the Father. This passage is a powerful reminder of the security, assurance, and intimacy believers have in Christ. Together, Jamie and Jane explore what it means to recognize the Shepherd's voice, trust His leadership, and rest in the confidence that we belong to Him. Whether you're struggling with doubt, seeking direction, or longing for deeper intimacy with God, this conversation will encourage you to listen closely to the voice of the One who calls you by name. Am I listening to the voice of the Good Shepherd—or allowing other voices to shape my identity and direction? ____________________________________ Connect with Jamie: Website: www.jamieklusacek.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamieklusacek Connect with Jane: Website: www.janewwilliams.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janewwilliams

On this episode, David Wollen explores Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus and the life-changing truth of what it means to be born again.

Nicodemus, Katja www.deutschlandfunk.de, Kultur heute

Nicodemus had done everything right... and it still wasn't enough. In this message, we explore what Jesus meant when he told the most religious man in the room that he needed to be born again, and why that's actually the best news you've ever heard.Recorded live at Word of Life Church in Le Sueur, Minnesota, on Sunday, June 7, 2026, with Pastor Nick Olson preaching.

The Bread of Life Part #1: Seeking, Seeing, Believing Please turn in your Bibles to John 6. We'll be focusing on verses 22-36 this morning. That is found on page 1059 I'm calling this a part 1 sermon about Jesus as the Bread of Life. But really, last week could be considered part 1. The first section of chapter 6 was about Jesus feeding the 5000. In our verses this morning, Jesus explains that the bread which he multiplied was a sign that he fulfilled as the bread of life. And then next week, he will elaborate on what that means and its implications. So, chapter 6 is one big narrative that focuses on Christ as the bread from heaven. If you remember from last week, the disciples are now in Capernaum on the western shore of the sea of Galilee. They had left on a boat on the eastern short without Jesus. Well, on their journey, a storm arose, but Jesus came to them, walking on the water. He calmed the storm and they arrived in Capernaum. So that is where they were, but the crowd was still on the other side of the sea. Let's now come to God's Word. Prayer Reading of John 6:22-36 I know it's not Thanksgiving, but Black Friday came to mind this week. That is the day after Thanksgiving. It's the day that almost every store has crazy sales and tries to lure shoppers in to buy their stuff. It's the biggest shopping day of the year. People literally camp out the night before so that they can be the first in line and buy big TVs, fancy speakers, laptops and phones, games, and appliances. Of course, the sales are only "while supplies last." So, you'd better be there early. You may have heard about the fist fights that break out or you may have seen the videos of people running through the store when the doors open to get to that TV before the other guy does. It's a picture of how we will go to great lengths to satisfy our so-called needs. We want to be comfortable and well fed and have all the latest things out there. But we are not thinking about our eternal and spiritual needs. The crowd following Jesus was similar. They wanted him to feed them. They saw the signs he did including the miracle of multiplying the bread. And they wanted more. They were even in a kind of frenzy to find him. But they didn't want him for the right reasons. They wanted to satisfy their earthly needs not their spiritual ones. As we work our way through these verses, that is what we will see this morning. We'll see that contrast between searching for bread which will perish and searching for the bread who gives eternal life. There's an outline on page 4 of the bulletin. We'll consider these verses in three points: 1. Seek the eternal provider 2. See the one signified And 3. Believe in him and his eternal provision And let me say that each point is contrasted by the Jewish crowd's selfish motivation, their lack of understand, and their unbelief. That is clear in these verses. 1. Seek the eternal provider Ok, again, number 1, seek the eternal provider. The crowd did not see their spiritual need and how Jesus could fulfill it. No instead, as I mentioned, they were fixated on the temporary provision thinking it could save them. They should have been seeking Jesus for who he is but instead were seeking him because of what they thought he could do for them. That's what we see in the first couple of verses. The problem was that their motivations were suspect. Really, they didn't want Jesus. They just wanted temporary things that they thought Jesus could give them. As we get into the narrative, remember that it was the day after Jesus fed them. And the crowd quickly realized that Jesus was no longer there. But where was he? The evening before, they had witnessed Jesus' disciples enter a boat and leave for the other side of the sea to Capernaum. But Jesus didn't get on the boat. But, where was he? They wanted to find him. At this point in Jesus' ministry, there was a buzz, so to speak. At the end of chapter 4, Jesus had been up in Galilee and if you remember, had healed the official's son. Word had gotten out about that and other signs. Just the day before, they witnessed Jesus miraculously multiply the fish and loaves. They crowd was (in a way) desperate to find him. They wanted to find this man who healed people and performed signs and miraculously fed them. They even believed he was the prophet that Moses promised. We learned that last week. Well, at this point, several boats had arrived from across the sea. Maybe they had sheltered there from the storm the night before or maybe some boat owners heard there was a crowd and therefore an opportunity to make some money by ferrying them somewhere. We don't know why the boats were there. But whatever the case, the crowd quickly got on the boats and directed them to travel to Capernaum. Remember, that's where Jesus' disciples had gone. Maybe he was somehow there? Well, when they got to Capernaum, lo-and-behold, he was there. They had no idea how Jesus had gotten there. They hadn't seen him leave and they hadn't witnessed him walking on the water, but somehow he had arrived. That's why they asked him in verse 25, "Rabbi, when did you come here?" Maybe they were wondering whether he arrived at night. Or whether he had taken a different boat. They wanted to know because they had been very eager to find him. And here's where the narrative pivots. Jesus changed the subject. Remember, he did something similar with Nicodemus in chapter 3 and with the woman at the well in chapter 4. Jesus pivoted the conversation to penetrate to the heart of their problem. Nicodemus needed to be born again and the woman at the well needed living water. Jesus said to the crowd, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves." You see, they cared more about the food. They cared more about their earthly situation than their spiritual need. They wanted to find the man who performed the miracle so that he could do more miracles for them. In other words, their search for Jesus was not about Jesus, it was about what he could do for them. Their motivations were about satisfying their appetite. Let me connect this to last week. Look a few verses earlier at verse 15. The crowd had just pronounced that Jesus was the Prophet that Moses promised. Now, look at what they wanted to do. Verse 15. It says that Jesus perceived that the crowd wanted to take him by force, and make him king. That is when Jesus withdrew from them. They wanted to make him king because they wanted a king who would provide for their earthly needs. It's the same near sighted motivation. The irony in all of this is that Jesus was and is the true King, the eternal King, and he was the one who could truly feed them - you know, spiritually feed them for eternity. But as the crowd came to him, they only cared about their earthly and physical needs. That is why in verse 27, Jesus then said to them, "do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life." Jesus was saying, even though the fish and the loaves fed you and it was a miracle, that bread and fish will not endure to eternal life. To be sure, our earthly needs are important. God has made us as physical beings. We are body and soul. We have daily needs for food and water. It is not wrong to seek our daily bread. We pray for our daily bread in the Lord's prayer. However, when our pursuit for daily provision becomes our main pursuit in life then we have lost sight of our greater need. The crowd did not see their need for the spiritual provision that Christ could give them. They simply wanted to have more of their earthly, physical, near-term needs met… food and an earthly king to provide for them. This sin manifests itself in different ways in our hearts and in our culture. For one, we live in a time and place of great prosperity. And it is so easy to get caught up in the rat race of our culture and the pursuit of comfort and things. Our covetous hearts do not help us! Certainly, many around us are blind to this. They cannot see that the near-term path that they are on is a path that leads to destruction and judgment. But even for believers in Christ, we can be so caught up working for our daily needs or our pursuit of comfort in this life, which can become idols, that we lose sight of our greater spiritual need. We lose sight of Christ. That's one pitfall in our culture and in our hearts. Related to that, Jesus just becomes to us a means to an end. That's what was happening here. We've talked about this in the past. There are so-called preachers out there that say that God wants to bless you with material wealth. Your barns will be full, they say, if you just have more faith. I don't sense that anyone here believes that, but are you seeking Jesus for who he is? As the one who saves and gives eternal provision and life, OR are there subtle ways that he has become for you just an avenue to meet your perceived needs in this life? Just to be sure, I am not disregarding the benefits and blessing that come with knowing Christ like peace with God and community. But Jesus should never be a means to an end. He is the end. He is the telos of all things. We should be seeking him as the one who gives life and not for bread which perishes. So, seek him, the ultimate provider. 2. See the one signified #2. See the one signified. The crowd was so enamored with signs that they missed the significance of them. Look at verse 30. The crowd said to Jesus, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you?" In other words, show us something. Give us a sign. It's quite ironic because Jesus had just given them a sign the day before, but they didn't see that it pointed to him. And then the crowd mentioned the example of manna from heaven. That was to them the great sign that Moses performed as God's chosen instrument. Moses was the one, in their eyes, who opened heaven to give them this bread from heaven. The crowd wanted a sign like the manna. As Coleman pointed out last week, this whole chapter includes allusions to Moses and the Exodus. A first century Jewish reader would have seen the parallels. We see those in reference to the Passover, the miracle of the food, the crossing of the sea, the reference to the Prophet which Moses promised. And a little bit later, the Jews grumbled just like the Israelites grumbled in the wilderness. It's all there. Really at the heart of the parallel is the manna. The manna was the miraculous food that God provided the Israelites from heaven. We read about it earlier in the service. Now, you may be asking, if the crowd just experienced Jesus miraculously giving them food, why would they mention the manna as an example of a sign? Well, think about this. Jesus fed 5,000 people one meal. That's amazing, but it pales in comparison to the provision of manna. There were at least 2 million Israelites in the wilderness, and they received the manna 6 days a week for 40 years. It was tremendous. And so the miracle of the manna was unparalleled from their perspective. And furthermore, it was Moses who had opened heaven on God's behalf for them. Look at Jesus' response in verse 32. Jesus said, "truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven." Jesus was telling them that they missed the point. For centuries they thought that the sign of the manna was the greatest provision of all. It was THE sign. What they didn't realize or acknowledge is that the manna was really pointing to something greater, "true bread from heaven." They missed that. The manna in the wilderness spoiled and only endured for a day. The true manna, on the other hand,  would sustain them forever. What they needed was not more physical manna. No, what they needed was the spiritual manna from heaven. Jesus continued, "for the bread from God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." Look how the crowd responded in verse 34. "Sir, give us this bread always." Did you notice that their response exactly paralleled what the Samaritan woman said at the well? After Jesus said to her that the water he gives will spring up to eternal life, she said, "Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty." In both cases they were still thinking about physical water and physical bread. The crowd here wanted to eat this bread. They thought it was something they would physically consume. "Give us this bread, always." You know, every day, just like the manna from heaven. And here's the climax, verse 35. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst." He is the bread. The sign of manna was merely revealing that they needed true bread from heaven. They needed Christ. Colossians chapter 2 speaks to this. It speaks of various Jewish ceremonies and institutions like food, drink, festivals, new moon, and the Sabbath. And then the apostle Paul says this in Colossians 2:17, "These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ." Jesus is the manna who came down from heaven. He is the one who gives life. He fulfills the sign of manna. The manna was a shadow, but Christ is the substance. In fact, Jesus' very statement that he is the bread of life affirms this. It's the first of 7 "I AM" statements in the book of John. Besides the bread of life, Jesus also said, for example,  "I am the light of the world." "I am the good shepherd." "I am the resurrection and the life." We'll consider all of them as we work our way through John. And each of these "I am" statements is yet another connection back to Moses. A few months ago when we started this series in John, I mentioned the I AM statements. They connect back to the burning bush when God spoke to Moses in the wilderness. Remember that Moses asked God who he was. And God answered and said, "I am who I am." That's the Hebrew name, Yahweh, which means. I am. Yes, Jesus was saying that he was spiritual bread, but he was saying a lot more than that. He was equating himself with God. To the crowd, he was saying that he was greater than Moses. They had been appealing to Moses and to the manna. But Jesus revealed to them that he is greater because he IS God. He is the I AM of God. He is the bread of life, the true manna from heaven. Those who feed on him will never hunger nor thirst. Never. Let me put it this way, Jesus is the spiritual manna that we daily need, who will sustain us all the way to the promised land. See not only the sign, but see the one signified. 3. Believe in him and his eternal provision Ok, here's where we are so far: 1. Seek the eternal provider. Seek Jesus for who he is not what you believe he can do for you. 2. See the one signified. Do not get caught up in the signs themselves that you miss out on what the signs signify. Jesus' miracle of the fish and loaves and the sign of manna in the wilderness reveal who he is. Jesus is the bread of life. And now #3. Believe in him and his eternal provision. Jesus was telling the crowd to look to him as the bread of life, and not to the food that perishes. And he calls them to believe. How do we to receive this bread from heaven? We're to believe in him. Earlier in these verses, the crowd had asked what they needed to do? Did you catch that? They had this mentality that they needed to be working to receive the food that endures to eternal life. In verse 29, Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent." Let me make something very clear. Faith or belief in God is not a work. We do not work in any way to earn favor from God. That is why verse 29 says, 'This is the work of God, that you believe in him'” Do you see the emphasis that it is God's work? Our belief is in response to God's work. In fact, this is very clear throughout all of chapter 6. It is God who draws people to himself. The Father is the one who is at work. We believe by faith in God's work… what he has done and is doing in Christ and through his Spirit. We'll see this very clearly next week. The crowd's problem was that they did not believe in him. And look at the stinging statement that Jesus made to them in verse 36. "But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe." I grew up in the church. It was not a reformed or Presbyterian church, but it was faithful. One of my elementary Sunday school teachers said something that was kind of shocking to me at the time. She said, "there are people in the church who are not Christians." She wasn't talking about visitors who were exploring Christianity and were coming to search for truth. She was referring to people who had been in the church for a while and who thought they were believers in Christ, but hadn't truly believed in him. My little 9-year-old mind had a hard time understanding that at the time, but it stuck with me. When Jesus said to them that they had seen him but do not believe, he was telling them that even though they thought they were God's people, they had yet to believe. Many of them were Jews by birth. After all, they had just demonstrated a knowledge of the Scriptures and Israel's history, yet they were not secure in God. They did not have the eternal life that God promises for those who believe in him. They did not believe in the true manna, the bread of life. Jesus could not have been clearer to them. Let me read verse 35 one more time because it's so important. Jesus said, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst." To receive the food that endures to eternal life, is to believe in the one who is the bread of life. I know many of you and your testimonies of faith in Christ. But some of you I don't know as well or we haven't yet me, and so I want to ask, have you feasted on the bread of life? Do you believe in the one who will satisfy your spiritual thirst and hunger forever? Let me say, he is the only one who can satisfy your soul forever. All other life pursuits when they are your primary life pursuits are working for bread which perishes. But the work of God is that you believe in the one sent from heaven. He is the true manna of God. Conclusion In summary, the crowds were seeking Jesus but for the wrong reasons. They were seeking Jesus as a means to an end. They were seeking the manna that their forefathers experienced and tasted. They wanted that manna instead of realizing that physical manna was meant to direct their attention to the true end - to Jesus himself. Standing before them and standing before us in heaven is the Bread of Life, the true manna from heaven. He is the I AM of God. And he calls us to believe in him. May we repent of working for bread which perishes. May we not trust in the things of this world which cannot save. May we not look to the signs and shadows but to the substance which is Christ. May we, believe in him, the Bread of Life, who will feed us for eternity.

Pastor Mike Stevens shares an encouraging message about the importance of developing a daily walk with Jesus. While much of our faith journey happens outside the church walls and away from the eyes of others, our relationship with God is where true spiritual growth takes place.Through the example of Nicodemus, Pastor Mike reminds us that Christianity is not about following rules but about experiencing a life-changing relationship with Jesus through the Holy Spirit. Learn four practical keys to building vibrant daily devotions and discover how consistent time with God can help you grow, hear His voice, and walk confidently in His purpose for your life.#DailyWalkWithJesus #PastorMikeStevens #GoodHopeChurch #DailyDevotions #SpiritualGrowth #BornAgain #FaithJourney #ChristianLiving #HolySpirit #BibleStudySermon Notes: https://link.goodhope.ag/our-daily-walk-msGiving Information: https://goodhope.ag/givingSTAY CONNECTEDYoutube: https://youtube.com/GoodHopeChurchInstagram: http://instagram.com/goodhopemnFacebook: http://fb.com/goodhopemn

Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.' The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”(English Standard Version)

Encounters with Jesus: Part 1 - Dear Nicodemus - Pastor Andrew DamazioThis week, Pastor Andrew reminded us that we are not saved by our goodness or morality, but by Jesus alone. To enter God's kingdom, we must be born again through the Spirit.WE FOUND A BUILDING! We believe in Portland, and we're here to stay. Be part of the vision as we step forward and raise $17 million together.Learn More: https://rosechurch.org/building/Pledge/Give Today: https://donate.overflow.co/rosechurch/pledge/buildingWant to connect more with Rose Church? Find more information at https://www.rosechurch.org and give at - https://www.rosechurch.org/giveMake sure to subscribe so you don't miss more incredible sermons like this one or previous series like “Life in the Spirit” or “One Another” from Pastor Andrew Damazio, Dr. AJ Swoboda, Pastor Julia Damazio and many other incredible pastors!Thanks for listening!

John 3:1-9 Nicodemus comes to Jesus with what he understands to be true.  Jesus "answers" with information Nicodemus does not understand -- "unless one is born again [from above] he cannot see (or enter) the kingdom of God!"

Welcome back to Gnostic Insights and to the Gnostic Reformation on Substack. This week I was listening to one of the radio preachers I like to listen to and I caught a sermon on the Pentecost, and I realized I had at that point a Gnostic insight that Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit, when it infused the disciples in the upper room—that is the coming of the Third Order of Powers released by the Christ after his resurrection—that the Third Order Powers are the “anointing of the Holy Spirit.” So quickly, let’s look at the Acts of the Apostles book out of the New Testament, Chapter 2, which is what we now call Pentecost. And when the day arrived that completed the fifty days after Passover, they were all gathered together in one place, and suddenly there came a noise, like a turbulent wind borne out of the sky, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared before them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest, one each upon each one of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and they began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them to utter. Now dwelling in Jerusalem, there were devout Judeans from every nation under the sky, and on the advent of this noise, the multitude gathered and were confused, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. And they were amazed and astounded, saying, look, are not all of those who speak Galileans? And how is it that each one of us hears his own language, the languages in which we were raised? And all were amazed and entirely at a loss, saying to one another, what does this portend? But others, ridiculing them, said, ah, they’re full of sweet new wine. But Peter, standing up along with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them all. Judean men and all of you staying in Jerusalem, let this be known to you and lend your ears to my words, for these men are not drunk, as you suppose, as it is the third hour of the day. Rather, this is what was declared through the prophet Joel. And in the last days it shall happen, says God, that I will pour forth from my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall dream dreams.” [Hart's New Testament] Pentecost by el Greco Now, it’s a much longer passage, and it’s very thrilling and exciting, but we don’t have time today to go into it. Perhaps we’ll speak about this in more depth very soon. But that is the first Pentecost, the coming of the Holy Spirit upon humanity. And I’m going to talk about that today to clear up that confusion, because I’ve always had a bit of a confusion over what we speak of as the Holy Spirit dwelling in us in a Christian manner, or the Holy Spirit coming like tongues of fire in the Pentecost story of the upper room in the book of Acts, yet we all have the Holy Spirit of the Fullness of God within every cell of our bodies and throughout our entire organism. All of the Second Order powers are infused with the power of God. So what is the Holy Spirit then? And now I understand the distinction between the infusion of the Third Order of Powers and the infusion of the Second Order of Powers. You see, we are Second Order Powers. The Aeons of the Fullness are First Order Powers. They have their place Above. We are their fruit. We are their spores. (And I actually ran across a radio preacher, of all things, again last week, saying that the original word for fruit as used in the New Testament is spore. And I’m like, yes, that is exactly what I’ve been saying. So that was another cool Gnostic insight that came by way of a Christian radio preacher. So you can never tell what you’re going to hear on Christian radio.) So, we are the spores of the First Order of Powers. We are their fruit. We are their children. We are the Second Order of Powers, and that is all living things in the cosmos. Everything that moves around, everything that’s soft and squishy, the meat, as I like to say, as opposed to the mud, which is the realm of the Demiurge—the rocks and minerals, the molecules and atoms. But the Third Order of Powers is the army of the Christ. We’ve spoken of that often. We’ve had three recent episodes about the indwelling of the Christ. For example, The Gnostic Redemption of the Nag Hammadi from May 29th, 2026, Army of the Christ, May 16th, 2026, and Understanding Gnosticism: The Path to Inner Knowledge from May 9th, 2026. These all have to do with the coming of the Third Order of Powers. And the coming of the Third Order of Powers didn’t come to Earth until Christ walked the Earth in the form of a human, and that is Jesus the Christ. He’s the only one who has ever claimed that “I and my Father are One.” Jesus is not the same as Buddha. Jesus is not the same as Muhammad or any other prophet. Jesus is not simply a good teacher or an exemplar of morality and ethics. If you think that, as many modern theologians do—the postmodern theologians, the deconstructionists—they have reduced the power of Jesus to that of a prophet or a teacher. And even people I hear, strangely enough, out there on YouTube, claiming that Jesus was a fraud—that there is no such thing as anything that happened in the Bible, Old Testament or New Testament. That’s an absurdity that is being promulgated by non-believers. If you are a believer in the Father, then you are a believer in the Christ, because Christ was the emissary of the Father to Earth to bring the correcting algorithm, I like to call it, to Earth to patch up our Second Order Power that has been forgotten. We’re born with it. We fully instantiate it within our bodies, but we’ve overlaid it with all kinds of junk, karma and memes from our environment that cloud our gnosis, cloud our ability to perceive the power of the Aeons within us. Christ came, the Third Order of Powers, the army of the Christ, to help us to remember, to remind us of our Second Order power, to remind us of where we come from, to remind us of the Father and the Aeons above. I took notes from the Pentecost sermon I listened to, and I’m going to represent these notes as a Gnostic teaching for you, because once you have the gnosis working in you, once you’ve come to terms with Christ and the Father and the Aeons and the gnosis that you were born with, once you begin to remember your inherent transcendence, then you can read the New Testament with eyes wide open. You can understand the mysteries of the New Testament much better than typical Christians do, because they’re trapped in a formula that is derivative of the early Catholics that had stripped the gnosis out of the Bible in the first place. So we must free ourselves from the doctrine, but not free ourselves of the gnosis. Tricky. The occasion known as Pentecost was when Jesus had been crucified, entombed, resurrected, and then ascended back up above into the Fullness—above the Fullness, because he’s the king of all. And he had promised that he would send a helper—to not worry. He had told his disciples, don’t worry, I’m sending you a helper to help you bring the gnosis to the world, essentially is what he said. This was also promised in the Old Testament. And here I’m going to read you a very important verse out of the Old Testament and translate it for you into Gnostic terms. The verse is Ezekiel 36:24—28, where God promises to cleanse and put a new heart and a new spirit into believers. Now it’s tricky when going all the way back to the Old Testament, because the God of the Old Testament is not the God Above All Gods. The God of the Old Testament, Jehovah, well, it’s pretty much equivalent to the Demiurge. And that’s very dicey, very tricky. The ego of the God of the Old Testament, the ego of Jehovah, is when Jehovah speaks in very egoistic terms about itself and about obedience and the law because, remember, Jehovah is law-bound. The Demiurge doesn’t remember; the Demiurge has forgotten its origins above. When this radio preacher referenced Ezekiel 36, I went to what’s called the online Bible Gateway. That’s a resource you can use. And you type in any phrase or any citation, such as Ezekiel 36:24—28, and it will give you all of the various translations. And you can choose which translation you read or you read them all. Well, since this was a Hebrew exhortation, I decided to use the Orthodox Jewish Bible, which does have a lot of Hebrew in it. So then we have to go into Hebrew translations, but that was a good exercise as well. Oh, to go back and clear up confusion about how to read the Old Testament—if the Old Testament is largely demiurgic, it’s basically when Jehovah is speaking that’s demiurgic. But the prophets were in touch with their gnosis. The prophets were talking to the God Above All Gods. They weren’t talking to Jehovah. They were talking to the God Above All Gods. So their prophecies are coming from above. That seems a pretty simple way to understand it. So the histories are one thing. That’s the histories of the of the Hebrews who were the people of Jehovah. Jehovah was their tribal god. And then there are the prophets who were speaking to the God Above All Gods and giving the Hebrews instructions from the God Above All Gods. These are higher instructions than Jehovah. You see, Jehovah doesn’t remember that it’s a fallen part of an Aeon. Here at Gnostic Insights, we talk about that Aeon as Logos. Many other Gnostics call it Sophia. I prefer Logos. That’s out of the Tripartite Tractate. Logos split apart when he fell and abandoned the chaos down below. And the Demiurge is part of that chaos. So the Demiurge put this world in order, formed the heavens and the Earth in a godlike manner, because he had all the blueprints. He had the remembrance of how things went together, but he didn’t have the remembrance of the Father or the remembrance of his better ascended Self, that being Logos, or the Aeons out of which he fell, the Fullness out of which he came. The Demiurge woke up down here in chaos and remembered that things should not be chaos, wanted them to go back into an orderly manner, had the blueprints of Paradise, essentially, that’s how you can put it, and formed this Earth. But this is an imitation. This is a deficiency of Paradise, and it’s especially deficient because there’s no love here. The minerals do not know love. The mud does not know love. Love doesn’t come from the bottom up, from the Demiurge up, from Jehovah up. Love, consciousness, comes from the God Above All Gods down to us in the form of a Second Order Powers. But we have forgotten, and the Demiurge forgot. So here is a word from one of the prophets who was in touch with the God Above All Gods, giving assurance that salvation would come, that remembrance would come. The Demiurge doesn’t block the prophets because it egotistically thinks that the prophets are speaking of it. You know, the Demiurge takes personally being God, but he’s mistaken in that. He’s a lesser god, the god of this cosmos, but the God Above All Gods is the one who speaks through the prophets. Here’s Ezekiel 36:24—26, from the New King James Version. For I will take you from among the nations, gather you out of all countries, and bring you into your own land. Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. Or as The Orthodox Jewish Bible puts it, A lev chadásh also will I give you, and a ruach chadasháh will I put within you; and I will take away the lev ha-éven (stony heart) out of your basár, and I will give you a lev basár. Now, when it speaks of I will give you a new heart, in Hebrew that is lev chadásh. Lev means inner self, the seat of will and moral character. Chadásh means anew, fresh, renewed, restored. So lev chadásh refers to a renewed inner disposition. A transformed moral center. A recreated will aligned with the Father rather than with stubbornness or idolatry. And when it speaks of and put a new spirit within you, in Hebrew that word, the new spirit, is ruach chadasháh. And it means a new spirit, an awakened pneuma. And pneuma is a Gnostic term. That is the spiritual part of us. Our One Self. So the ruach chadasháh is the spirit. Ruach is spirit, breath, animating force, inner vitality. That’s what it means. Chadasháh means fresh, new, renewed. So in Ezekiel, ruach chadasháh means a new animating principle. A renewed inner drive or spiritual vitality placed within the person. You see where I’m going with this? This is the Third Order of Powers. A new motivating force that empowers obedience and life. This cleansing of a new heart and putting a new spirit within you, ruach chadasháh. It means stripping away the meme shroud is how I generally refer to it in the Simple Explanation. Peeling off all those layers of confusion that obscure our originating Fullness. That’s the filthiness. It’s not the original sin. We aren’t born with original sin. We are born as Second Order Powers, much loved out of the first order powers of the Fullness of God. We forget when we come down here into this material world created by the Demiurge. And then we plug into this culture around us. Think of the media and the social media and all of the lies and confusions that are spread, both purposefully meant to mislead you and confuse you, and just accidentally because people make mistakes and people say the wrong things, even when they think they’re saying the right things. So that’s the filthiness. And the idols— these are the things that you cling to. Generally this narcissistic age we live in is an age of idols, but the idols that we worship aren’t little statues of gods. They are our exercise equipment and our bags of makeup and our, well, of course they can be influencers and they can be movie stars and television actors and musicians and sports figures and politicians. Those can be your idols if you treat them as idols, if you idolize them, if you go all weak in the knees and do anything they say. But we also have our own idols in the form of the things that we cling to and pile up around us that we buy, got to have this, got to have that, got to have this, got to have that. These are idols. So this is a promise to cleanse us from that. In other words, to strip away your meme shroud and let the Fullness shine forth from within you. But it goes beyond that, because it says, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you. And that new heart is the lev chadásh, which is new spirit. And the new heart is lev basár, which literally means in Hebrew, a heart of flesh, a soft, receptive psyche. Oh, see, our psyche, that is not our pneuma—that's a Gnostic term as well. We have our pneuma, which is our spiritual Fullness. We have our psyche, which is our psychological aspect—our ego lives there. And we have our hylic, which is the material to which we are bonded in this material world. So this passage promises to put a new heart within us, a lev basár, a soft, receptive psyche; that is to soften our hearts, because they’re hardened by the world and by the memes we cling to. It says, furthermore, I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh. And the heart of stone in Hebrew is lev ha-éven, meaning heart of stone, or a hardened psyche. Going to remove that heart of stone, which is very interesting, because of course, I say that the hard rocky places, the stones are demiurgic. That’s the material level, that’s the elemental level. So the heart of stone is the demiurgic heart that we have put inside of us, that we’re bonded to. But this passage wants to turn it into a new heart, a heart of flesh, a soft, receptive psyche, as we were originally born with—lev basár. So it says, I will give you that new heart and put a new spirit within you, and take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. The heart of stone, lev ha-éven. And the purifying waters are what do it. I will sprinkle clean water on you. In Hebrew, that was literally mayim tehorím, meaning clean, purifying waters. Jesus spoke of the purifying waters. In the New Testament, in the Gospel according to John, Chapter 3, a Pharisee named Nicodemus had sneaked out one night to speak privately with Jesus. He didn’t want anyone to know. And Nicodemus said to Jesus, Rabbi, we know that you have come as a teacher from God, for no one can produce these signs you perform unless God is within him. And in reply, Jesus said to him, Amen, amen, I tell you, unless someone is born from Above, he cannot see the kingdom of God. And Nicodemus says to him, how can a man be born when he is old? Jesus replied, Amen, amen, I tell you, unless a man is born of water and spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed, because I’ve told you it is necessary for you to be born from Above. [Hart's New Testament] Jesus is speaking of the same water, the water of the spirit, that cleanses us and allows us to be born again from Above. Later on in the book of John, Chapter 7, verse 37, Jesus stood up and said loudly, If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and let him drink. Whoever has faith in me, just as scripture has said, out of his parts living streams of waters will flow. Now he said this in regard to the spirit, whom those who had faith in him were about to receive, for as yet there was no spirit, because Jesus had not yet been glorified. [Hart's New Testament] And this is speaking of the Holy Spirit—what we call the Holy Spirit—because of course we have spirit, we’re born with spirit, because we have the Fullness of God within us, the First Order of Powers. But he’s talking of the Third Order of Powers, the army of Christ that comes after Jesus is “glorified.” And glorified means risen from the dead, ascended into the sky in front of hundreds of witnesses. And glorified means that Jesus is living Above, just as we will all be living Above, in a glorified body, in the presence of the Father. Now, the promise that Jesus referred to—he was quoting out of the Old Testament—something that all of the listeners in his audience already knew. And it’s from Isaiah 12:3 that says, Therefore with joy will you draw water from the wells of salvation. The water that is being drawn is this water that’s being referred to, that we’ve been discussing, out of Ezekiel 36:24—28. That is the living water, the mayim tehorím—the Holy Spirit that bathes us now within and without. We draw the living water of the Third Order Powers into us. This is why accepting the mission of the Christ into your innermost being is essential, because there’s no other way to wash away the memes, the obscurations of the world around us that confuses us and causes us to forget. We’re born with a noble nature. We’re born as Second Order Powers, directly from the Fullness above, but we get lost in the confusion of this world that is created and run by the Demiurge. We forget our ethereal origins. We forget about the Father. We forget about the Aeons and the Fullness of God. The spirit that we’re born with becomes smothered, smothered by the worldly memes we cling to and that cling to us. The living water that comes into our new softened heart can only come when you relinquish the ego that is causing you to hold on tightly to those memes, all those false promises that the world gives. They will not save you. They will not make you happy. They might give you a momentary piece of pleasure when something arrives in the box from Amazon on the front porch, but as soon as you’ve used it, it’s just another thing. But the living water never dies. It’s living waters from the Father flowing all the way downstream through the Son, through the Fullnesses, and only through Christ inside of us can we be washed, baptized from within to loosen the hold. So, the lev chadásh, renew your psychic heart, captures the same teaching that the Tripartite Tractate teaches—that the psyche must be reoriented and made stable. The ruach chadashá, awakening within you the spirit that is from Above, is the same as activating the pneumatic seed, as we say in Gnosticism, not a moral reform. The lev basár, a living heart, soft, able to receive the light, receptive, this is the Tripartite Tractate’s softened, harmonized psyche, that can receive the pneumatic imprint of Christ. And the divine seed will rise within you and rule in peace is what the Tripartite Tractate says of the pneuma ruling through the psyche once integration occurs. So, this is the Gnostic paraphrase then of Ezekiel 36:26—28: I will renew your ego's psychic heart, and I will awaken within you the pneumatic spirit—the One Self that flows from above. I will remove the heart hardened by the archons and the never-ending war, and I will restore your Second Order heart, soft, receptive, and able to receive the light. Through this new heart and new spirit, the divine seed of the Christ within you will rise and rule in peace. That’s just another way we could say the phrase in Ezekiel, in a more Gnostic way. It’s a bath, loosens the hold, washes away those memes, those sins, as the church likes to call it. But it’s more than just your mistakes and your problems. It’s all the stuff that we have around us. That is the job of the Christ, to open our eyes to our original Second Order power, to live within us, to correct our mistakes, to correct our faulty algorithms, to protect us from this demiurgic immersion that we find ourselves in, in this material world. We Second Order Powers are the children of the Aeons of the Fullness, who are themselves the Totality of the Son. The Third Order Powers are the army of the Christ, who represents all of the Powers of the ethereal plane, individually and collectively working for our redemption. Step aside. Take your ego off the throne. Take the Demiurge off the throne, if you’ve enthroned it. Put down your idols. Push away your possessions, at least long enough to allow the Third Order Powers to come in. Ask the Christ to come in and wash you with the Holy Spirit. Invite the Holy Spirit, the army of the Third Order of Powers, into your organism, literally, and it will cleanse you. It will wash you. Walk in the Spirit of God. Let your eyes be opened to the truth. We’ll talk more about this again. Until then, God bless us all, and onward and upward. Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.Name *FirstLastEmail *Stripe Credit Card *Choose your item *Item A - $10.00Item B - $25.00Item C - $50.00Total$0.00Submit

“Are any parts of the Bible taken from other cultures?” This question opens a discussion on the influences surrounding biblical texts, while also addressing intriguing topics such as the possibility of ensouled humans mating with un-ensouled humans and the role of Nicodemus in the burial of Jesus. Additionally, the dating of 2 Peter is examined, providing a rich exploration of scriptural context. Join the Catholic Answers Live Club Newsletter Invite our apologists to speak at your parish! Visit Catholicanswersspeakers.com Questions Covered: 02:00 – Are any parts of the Bible taken from other cultures? 16:16 – In the beginning of humanity, could ensouled humans have mated with un-ensouled humans? If so, would it have been sinful for them to do so? 34:28 – When I was a kid I was told that Nicodemus helped take Jesus' body off the cross. But it doesn't mention him specifically in John 19:39. Is there any truth to this? 45:00 – When do you think 2 Peter was written? A lot of scholars place it after 70 AD and I am wondering if you would place it earlier.

Nicodemus, Katja www.deutschlandfunk.de, Kultur heute

The Good Shepherd: Known, Called, and Protected – John 10:1–21 In Episode 139 of Divine Table Talk, Jamie and Jane explore one of the most beloved passages in the Gospel of John: Jesus, the Good Shepherd. In John 10:1–21, Jesus reveals His heart for His people, declaring that He knows His sheep by name, leads them with care, and lays down His life for them. Together, Jamie and Jane unpack what it means to recognize the voice of the Shepherd in a world full of competing voices, how Jesus offers abundant life beyond mere survival, and why His sacrificial love sets Him apart from every other leader. This conversation is a beautiful reminder that you are not forgotten, overlooked, or wandering alone—you are known, pursued, and deeply loved by the Good Shepherd. Whose voice am I listening to most—and how is it shaping the direction of my life? ____________________________________ Connect with Jamie: Website: www.jamieklusacek.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamieklusacek Connect with Jane: Website: www.janewwilliams.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janewwilliams

Drop us a text message to say hi and let us know what you think of the show. (Include your email if you'd like us to reply)In which John and David reflect on the gate that is always open. Along the way we discuss Pharisees, Nicodemus, sheep, thieves, Psalm 118, and the challenge of remembering that Christ calls us to point people to the gate rather than stand guard at it.  Episode 246 of the Two Texts Podcast | Jesus and God's "Name" 10If you want to get in touch about something in the podcast you can reach out on podcast@twotexts.com or by liking and following the Two Texts podcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If you enjoy the podcast, we'd love it if you left a review or comment where you're listening from – and if you really enjoyed it, why not share it with a friend?Music by Woodford Music (c) 2021________Help us keep Two Texts free for everyone by becoming a supporter of the show John and David want to ensure that Two Texts always remains free content for everyone. We don't want to create a paywall or have premium content that would exclude others. However, Two Texts costs us around £60 per month (US$75; CAD$100) to make. If you'd like to support the show with even just a small monthly donation it would help ensure we can continue to produce the content that you love. Thank you so much.Support the show

The font is where Nicodemus's question died. Where the Sadducees' question died. You went into that water still carrying the old premise — still asking what resurrection could possibly mean, still uncertain whether the age to come is anything more than this age with the dying removed. And you came out having been given something you did not generate, extra nos, outside yourself, from the One whose Name was spoken over you. The Holy Spirit begot you. The old Adam did not survive. You are already a son of the resurrection before you have died — not because of what you brought to the water, but because of whose Name is on you.

“Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory.” (Romans 5:1–2 NLT) The arithmetic of the gospel is fascinating. If you’re born once, you’ll die twice. If you’re born twice, you’ll die once. If that seems confusing to you, you’re in good company. Nicodemus, a notable Jewish scholar and leader in Jesus’ day, asked, “How can an old man go back into his mother’s womb and be born again?” (John 3:4 NLT). By “born once,” I mean the physical birth. By “born twice,” I mean a physical birth as well as a spiritual birth in which you’re born again, after having put your faith in Christ. Just as there are two births, the Bible teaches that there are two deaths: One is physical, and the other is spiritual. Jesus warned that we are to fear the second death more than the first one. Revelation 20:14 tells us, “Then death and the grave were thrown into the lake of fire. This lake of fire is the second death” (NLT). The second death is mentioned again in Revelation 21:8, which says, “But cowards, unbelievers, the corrupt, murderers, the immoral, those who practice witchcraft, idol worshipers, and all liars—their fate is in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death” (NLT). The second death is Hell. It has been said, “The second death is the continuance of spiritual death in another and timeless existence.” Thomas Watson wrote, “Eternity to the godly is a day that has no sunset; eternity to the wicked is a night that has no sunrise.” Jesus spoke of Hell in a very specific way. He warned of the fire of Hell (see Matthew 5:22). He warned about our bodies being thrown into Hell (see Matthew 5:29). And He warned of the soul and the body being destroyed in Hell (see Matthew 10:28). The Bible teaches that all Christians—that is, sinners who have been forgiven and saved because they put their faith in Jesus Christ—will be in Heaven. And that offer of forgiveness and salvation is extended to everyone. The apostle Paul wrote, “Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory” (Romans 5:1–2 NLT). Your eternal destination is really your choice. Not everyone will be saved in the end—only those who put their faith in Jesus Christ. That’s the message God has entrusted to every believer. It’s a message we must spread. Reflection question: In your circle of acquaintances, who needs to hear about the forgiveness and salvation that Jesus offers? The Harvest Crusade is coming to Angel Stadium on July 11! Stay updated on all important event details. — The audio production of the podcast "Greg Laurie: Daily Devotions" utilizes Generative AI technology. This allows us to deliver consistent, high-quality content while preserving Harvest's mission to "know God and make Him known." All devotional content is written and owned by Pastor Greg Laurie. Listen to the Greg Laurie Podcast Become a Harvest PartnerSupport the show: https://harvest.org/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Drop us a text message to say hi and let us know what you think of the show. (Include your email if you'd like us to reply)In which John and David discover that Jesus does not replace one gatekeeper with another. Instead, he becomes the gate himself. Along the way we connect John 10 with Psalm 118, Nicodemus, the healing of the blind man, and the challenge of resisting the gatekeeper that lives within each of us. Episode 245 of the Two Texts Podcast | Jesus and God's "Name" 9If you want to get in touch about something in the podcast you can reach out on podcast@twotexts.com or by liking and following the Two Texts podcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. If you enjoy the podcast, we'd love it if you left a review or comment where you're listening from – and if you really enjoyed it, why not share it with a friend?Music by Woodford Music (c) 2021________Help us keep Two Texts free for everyone by becoming a supporter of the show John and David want to ensure that Two Texts always remains free content for everyone. We don't want to create a paywall or have premium content that would exclude others. However, Two Texts costs us around £60 per month (US$75; CAD$100) to make. If you'd like to support the show with even just a small monthly donation it would help ensure we can continue to produce the content that you love. Thank you so much.Support the show

Do you have to be a bad person to need Jesus? What if being a "good person" isn't enough?In this message, Minister Mark Ashton explores one of the most famous conversations in the Bible: Jesus' late-night encounter with Nicodemus in John 3. Nicodemus was moral, religious, respected, educated, and sincere. Yet Jesus told him something shocking: "You must be born again."This message challenges the common belief that Christianity is primarily about becoming a better person. Instead, Jesus teaches that what we need most is a spiritual transformation that only God can provide. Through the story of Nicodemus, the bronze serpent in the wilderness, and the truth of John 3:16, we discover why salvation isn't based on performance, religion, morality, or good works, but on faith in Jesus Christ.If you've ever wondered whether you're good enough for God, how to be born again, what John 3:16 really means, or how to find forgiveness and eternal life, this message is for you.At Christ Community Church, we believe no one is beyond God's grace and no one is so good that they don't need it.

What do you do when it looks like darkness has won? In this sermon on John 19:25-42, we are standing right at the foot of the cross at Golgotha—the place of the skull. We see the horrific physical reality of the crucifixion. We see the sham trials before Pilate and the religious leaders. But beneath the cruelty of the Roman soldiers and the mockery of the crowds, we discover an earth-shattering truth: Jesus was in control of it all. Even as He hung between two thieves, gasping for air, Jesus was acting in perfect love. He cared for His mother. He fulfilled ancient prophecies written hundreds of years before His birth. And with His final breath, He cried out: "It is finished." What Does "It Is Finished" Mean For You? In the ancient world, those words were stamped on a debt or a bill to mean one thing: PAID IN FULL. Jesus didn't die by accident. He died as our ultimate Passover Lamb. He became our "scapegoat," carrying every single one of our sins out into the wilderness of death so that we would never have to face destruction. Here is the best news you will ever hear: You don't have to work your way to heaven. There is no good deed you can offer, no amount of money you can give, and no amount of church services you can attend to add to your salvation. Jesus paid the entire debt at the cross. It is over. It is complete. Are You a "Secret Disciple"? We also look closely at Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus. For a season, they hid their faith out of fear. But when the moment of truth came, they stepped out of the shadows, risked their reputations, and made a bold stand for Christ. Are you wrapped up in the outward appearance of religion, or does your heart belong to the Savior? There is no sin you have committed that can surpass His grace. Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more! The most important question in all of eternity is this: Will you believe in Jesus Christ today? Will you place your faith in the One who died for your sins and rose again? Scriptures in this video: John 19:25-42, Leviticus 16, Psalm 34, Zechariah 12, and Romans 6. 01:01 - Introduction and the Sham Trials 04:30 – Sacrificial Compassion: Jesus Cares for His Mother 07:00 – "I Am Thirsty": The Physical Agony of the Cross 09:10 – Paid in Full: What "It Is Finished" Really Means 11:15 – The Scapegoat: Leviticus 16 and the Day of Atonement 15:40 – Sovereign Over Death: Jesus Gives Up His Spirit 18:15 – Broken Legs and Pierced Sides: Prophecy Fulfilled 21:30 – Stepping Out of the Shadows: Joseph & Nicodemus 25:00 – The Borrowed Tomb: God is in the Details of Your Story 26:30 – The Ultimate Question: Will You Believe? We want to hear from you! Have you placed your trust in the finished work of Jesus? If you are making a decision to follow Christ today, or if you need prayer, let us know in the comments below! #JesusChrist #John19 #TheGreatestSacrifice #ItIsFinished #Gospel #Sermon #ChristianFaith #Salvation #Calvary

Amazing Grace: The Blind Man Who Finally Saw – John 9 In Episode 138 of Divine Table Talk, Jamie and Jane dive into John 9, the powerful story of a man born blind who encounters Jesus and receives his sight. But this miracle is about more than physical healing—it's about spiritual awakening, identity, and what it truly means to see. As the healed man grows in boldness and the religious leaders grow in resistance, this chapter reveals the difference between outward religion and genuine transformation. Together, Jamie and Jane unpack how Jesus meets us in brokenness, how suffering is not wasted, and why sometimes the people who think they see clearly can still miss the heart of God. This conversation is an invitation to let Jesus open your eyes—not just to healing, but to who He truly is. Where might Jesus be inviting me to see differently—about Him, myself, or others? ____________________________________ Connect with Jamie: Website: www.jamieklusacek.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamieklusacek Connect with Jane: Website: www.janewwilliams.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/janewwilliams

This powerful narrative takes us on a transformative journey through the eyes of the disciple whom Jesus loved, showing us what it truly means to follow Christ. We discover that our preconceived notions about what God should do often blind us to what He actually wants to accomplish in our lives. The young fisherman expected a Messiah who would overthrow Rome, but instead encountered a Savior who came to conquer something far more dangerous: sin and death itself. Through miraculous signs like turning water into wine, raising Lazarus from the dead, and ultimately His own resurrection, Jesus revealed that He offers something our religious efforts and political solutions can never provide. The washing of the disciples' feet teaches us that true greatness comes through humble service, not position or power. Most profoundly, we learn that Jesus doesn't love us because we're good, but because He is good. His patient pursuit of both the religious elite like Nicodemus and the rejected like the Samaritan woman shows us that everyone needs what only Jesus can provide: a new birth, living water, and life from the grave. This message challenges us to examine whether we're trying to use Jesus to fix our circumstances or surrendering completely to let Him transform our hearts.

In John 4, Jesus has the longest recorded conversation found anywhere in Scripture — and he has it with the most unlikely person imaginable: a Samaritan woman with a broken past. In this episode, we unpack why Jesus went out of his way to find her, what "living water" really means, and why he lovingly confronted her sin before offering salvation.Whether you feel too good to need a Savior (like Nicodemus in John 3) or too far gone to deserve one — this passage is for you.

Joe Stopulus concludes the “Great Men of the Bible” series with a powerful recap conversation featuring PJ McManus. In this final episode, Joe and Fr. PJ discuss: The purpose and legacy of “The Great Men of the Bible” series Why the four Gospels were written and who they were written for Key differences between Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John The spiritual maturity reflected in the Gospel of John Lessons Catholic men can learn from St. Matthew, St. Philip, Nicodemus, and others The importance of listening to the promptings of the Holy Spirit Why Scripture study is essential for every Catholic man Fr. PJ also reflects on how the early Church handed on the faith and encourages listeners to deepen their relationship with Christ through regular Bible reading and prayer. Joe closes the episode by encouraging listeners to continue using “The Great Men of the Bible” podcast as a Bible study resource and tool for spiritual growth. #Hashtags #ManUpShow #GreatMenOfTheBible #FrPJMcManus #CatholicRadio #BibleStudy #CatholicMen #ScriptureStudy #IowaCatholicRadio #GospelWriters #FaithFormation #CatholicPodcast #StMatthew #BookOfActs #ChristianDiscipleship #BiblicalMen Iowa Catholic Radio Network Shows:Be Not Afraid with Fr. Fabian Moncada and Fr. Bruce RiebeBe Not Afraid in Spanish with Fr. Fabian MoncadaCatholic Women Now with Chris Magruder and Julie NelsonMaking It Personal with Bishop William JoensenMan Up! with Joe StopulosSunday Dive with Katie PatrizioThe Catholic Morning Show with Dr. Bo BonnerThe Daily Gospel Reflection with Fr. Nick SmithThe Uncommon Good with Bo Bonner and Dr. Bud MarrFaith and Family Finance with Gregory WaddleWant to support your favorite show? Click Here Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What did Jesus mean when He told Nicodemus that he must be “born again”? Join us as we explore Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus. Discover why the concept was so difficult for Nicodemus to grasp and why we also sometimes struggle with the truth that is so central to the Christian faith. Receive Jesus often said things that unsettled the very people who thought they understood God best. When He told Nicodemus he must be “born again,” it didn't fit his framework—and he struggled to receive it. Where might the same be true for you? Is there anything—assumptions, expectations, past experiences—that could be shaping how you hear Jesus' words today? Ask God to gently reveal and release anything that's getting in the way. Nicodemus didn't understand everything at first, but he kept moving toward Jesus—stepping out of the shadows, speaking up, and showing up when it mattered most. What might your next step toward Jesus look like? Reflect  Read John 3. As you reflect on the chapter, what stands out to you?   Why do you think Nicodemus struggled to understand the meaning of being “born again” that Jesus mentioned in John 3:1–4? According to John 3:5–15, why must Jesus' followers be “born again”? Based on  John 7:50–51 and John 19:38–42, do you think Nicodemus eventually understood what it meant to be “born again” and became a follower of Jesus? How does John 3:16–17 encourage you as you read about God's immense love for you? Respond (Use this prayer to start a conversation with God) “Dear God, thank You that by Your Holy Spirit I can be born into Your kingdom. Thank You for renewing and cleansing me. Help me overcome any baggage that may be hindering me from completely receiving Your gift of eternal life through Your Son Jesus' sacrificial death and resurrection. Help me as I seek to live for You.”      Discover more about the topics in this episode with these recommended resources Mentioned in this episode: I Am the Way   The Chosen Season 1, Episode 2  The Chosen Season 1, Episode 7  Listen: The Pharisees Week 1  For God So Loved   Read: Love: What does Jesus see when he looks at me?  The Gospel Here and Now  Jesus and Nicodemus    Watch: God Loves You!  God's Daily Love

No matter where you are in your faith journey, you are one step from unstuck. In this message, we look at four spiritual starting points that show up throughout Scripture — and what it looks like to take the next step from each one. Some of us want Jesus nearby but not in control. Some of us believe, but are wrestling with doubt at the same time. Some of us are still asking questions, circling the edges of faith. And some of us carry the weight of a past failure, convinced our worst moment defines us. The good news is that none of these starting points disqualify you. Felix, the father in Mark 9, Nicodemus, and Peter all show us that God meets people exactly where they are — and invites them forward. Delayed obedience is still disobedience. Faith and struggle can exist in the same heart simultaneously. At some point, faith requires a step. And your worst moment does not have to become your permanent identity. Wherever you're starting from today, the next step is closer than you think.

Do you have questions for God? Have ever been confused about some aspect of his nature? Have you ever struggled to understand something you've read in the Bible? Under the shroud of night, Jesus meets with an unlikely figure; a religious leader named Nicodemus. This man has questions about Jesus' power, authority, and purpose. Slowly but surely, Jesus reveals who he is and why he has come.  Download the Pray.com app for more Christian content including, Daily Prayers, Inspirational Testimonies, and Bedtime Bible Stories.Pray.com is the digital destination for faith. With over 5,000 daily prayers, meditations, bedtime stories, and cinematic stories inspired by the Bible, the Pray.com app has everything you need to keep your focus on the Lord. Make Prayer a priority and download the #1 App for Prayer and Sleep today in the Apple app store or Google Play store. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Know you have eternal life through faith in Christ Jesus.Jesus told Nicodemus that being “born again” is the only way to see the kingdom of God—but what does that really mean? In this episode, Rick Hughes explains the most important decision you will ever make and how faith alone in Christ gives you a new identity, eternal life, and absolute assurance.Key Takeaways:• What it truly means to be born again spiritually • Why your decision about Jesus Christ determines your eternal future • How faith alone—not works—secures eternal life • The difference between divine viewpoint and human viewpoint • Why bad decisions limit future options⬇Download Transcript: https://rhem.pub/1082-transcript

In this profound exploration of Matthew 21:40-46, Tony Arsenal and Jesse Schwamb unpack the Parable of the Wicked Tenants and its devastating indictment of Israel's religious leadership. The hosts navigate the complex theological terrain of kingdom transfer, covenant faithfulness, and the identity of God's people across redemptive history. With careful attention to the text's original context and its implications for the church today, they examine how Christ presents himself as the rejected cornerstone—the one upon whom people either fall in repentance or are crushed in judgment. This episode offers rich insights into supersessionism, the remnant theology of Romans 11, and the practical call for Christians to examine whether they're submitting to Christ as the true cornerstone or attempting to usurp his rightful place. Key Takeaways The Self-Condemning Verdict: The chief priests and Pharisees unknowingly pronounce judgment upon themselves when they declare the wicked tenants deserve destruction, demonstrating how the natural conscience can discern God's justice even when blind to personal complicity. Kingdom Transfer as Covenant Transition: The "taking away" of the kingdom represents not the abandonment of God's elect remnant but the historical-redemptive transition from the typological Old Covenant administration to the New Covenant church gathered from all nations. The Cornerstone's Double Judgment: Christ as the cornerstone presents two modes of encounter—those who fall upon him in repentance are broken but healed; those upon whom he falls in final judgment are ground to powder with no remedy. Visible vs. Invisible Church Distinction: The visible identification of God's people shifted from the geopolitical nation of Israel to the universal church, while the invisible elect have always been saved by grace through faith in the coming Messiah. Fear of Man vs. Fear of God: The Pharisees' restraint from seizing Jesus due to fear of the crowds (rather than fear of God) exemplifies how the wicked are dominated by human opinion rather than divine accountability. Infant Baptism and Covenant Community: The joyful inclusion of children in the visible covenant community through baptism reflects God's gracious promise sealed to those who contribute nothing to their own covenant status. Fruit-Bearing as Evidence: The "new tenants" are characterized not by works-righteousness but by evidential fruit—the genuine works that flow from "true and lively faith" worked by the Holy Spirit. Key Concepts The Irony of Self-Condemnation The theological and pastoral power of this parable reaches its climax when the religious leaders, failing to perceive themselves as the wicked tenants in Jesus's story, pronounce harsh judgment upon the hypothetical villains: "He will bring those wretches to a wretched end." This moment mirrors Nathan's confrontation of David after the Bathsheba affair, yet with a tragic difference—these leaders never experience David's repentance. Calvin observes that the natural conscience, even when blind to personal guilt, retains an "hidden impulse to identify with justice." The Pharisees demonstrate total depravity in high definition: they possess enough moral clarity to recognize egregious covenant-breaking in the abstract, yet remain entirely blind to their own embodiment of that very wickedness. This irony serves as both judgment and warning—we all possess an uncanny ability to see sin clearly everywhere except in the mirror. Kingdom Transfer: Covenant Continuity and Discontinuity The phrase "the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing its fruit" requires careful theological handling to avoid both replacement theology (in its pejorative sense) and dispensational fragmentation. The Reformed understanding maintains covenant continuity: there has always been one people of God, defined not ethnically but by faith in the Messiah. What changes is the visible administration of the covenant. Under the Old Covenant, the visible church was largely coterminous with ethnic Israel—a geopolitical reality with boundaries, a zip code, and national identity. Under the New Covenant, the visible church explodes these ethnic and geographic boundaries, fulfilling God's promise to Abraham that "in your seed all nations will be blessed." This is not Plan B; it's the eschatological unveiling of what was always intended. The "breaking off of natural branches" (Romans 11) refers to covenant unfaithfulness resulting in exclusion from visible covenant privileges, while the faithful Jewish remnant—the apostles, early believers, and the ongoing elect from Israel—remain fully incorporated into the church. The vineyard hasn't been abandoned; it's been opened to "other tenants" who will render the proper fruit: Gentiles grafted in alongside believing Jews into the one olive tree of God's redemptive purposes. The Cornerstone: Salvation or Destruction Christ's invocation of Psalm 118:22—"the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone"—followed by his dual judgment ("whoever falls on this stone will be broken...on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust") presents two exhaustive options for relating to Jesus. The cornerstone in ancient construction was the foundational stone by which all other stones found their proper alignment and orientation. To fall upon this stone willingly—in repentance, faith, and self-abandonment—is painful. It shatters pride, self-righteousness, and autonomy. But this breaking leads to healing, to being properly "squared" and aligned with reality as God has constructed it. The alternative is catastrophic: to have the cornerstone fall upon you in final eschatological judgment is to experience irreversible, total destruction—being "ground to powder" with no possibility of remedy. The practical application is urgent: we must examine ourselves continually to ensure we're not attempting to be our own cornerstone, measuring righteousness by our own standards, aligning the universe to ourselves rather than submitting to Christ as the measure of all things. Memorable Quotes "There's never a time where that righteousness is removed or unapplied, but we are constantly faced with a choice as to whether we want to be the kind of people who render our fruit unto the Lord, as the faithful tenants when the unfaithful tenants are replaced. Or do we wanna be the people that reap wicked fruit and keep for ourselves?" — Tony Arsenal "The vineyard of God is still let out, the fruit is still demanded, the cornerstone is still laid. Blessed are they who receive him—and also get those babies into church." — Jesse Schwamb "This is not a wall you're gonna run through. Like you're gonna smash into this wall and it's gonna crush you. And if you are not properly assigning the cornerstone its place... the whole thing is gonna crush you." — Tony Arsenal Full Episode Transcript [00:01:05] Jesse Schwamb: Welcome to episode 492 of The Reformed Brotherhood. I'm Jesse.  [00:01:14] Tony Arsenal: And I'm Tony. And this is the podcast with ears to hear. Hey brother.  [00:01:18] Jesse Schwamb: Hey brother.  [00:01:19] Parable Recap [00:01:19] Jesse Schwamb: Well, the time has finally come for us to close out our discussion in Matthew 21. This is the Parable of the Vine growers, and everybody should just go back and list everything we said so far, but I think here's how we could sum it up. Jesus's authority gets challenged and he sets a trap so beautiful that we should put it into a museum. He tells basically the religious bigwigs, this whole story where tenants speed up servants, they kill the air. They generally behave like it's an HOA literally run by the devil. And then he asks them this question, so what should the owner of the vineyard do And the chief priest. Chest puffed up. Basically shout out the answers to their own indictment. Smoke 'em. Give the vineyard to somebody who isn't garbage. Listen fellas, you just preached your own funeral. So in this we get to see this total depravity in 4K. Sovereign grace skips the credential gatekeepers and it lands on the tax collectors and the gentiles. They elect the vineyard, the self-righteous, get the rock. And we're gonna close out what all of that means, including probably not a small amount of talk about the kingdom being transferred, whatever that means, and maybe a little engrafting. Aah, Romans 11 style. It's all there for us. And that is what is coming up. [00:02:34] Affirmations Setup [00:02:34] Jesse Schwamb: Of course before we can do any of that, we can't even get there. Tony, before we do affirmations, denials, you and I both know it's our contractual obligation. It's what the people want all over the world. If we skip this, there will be some kind of riot revolt. So we gotta start there. Let's not get too excited yet. So I'm curious as always, are you affirming with something or you not against something for this episode?  [00:02:58] Tony Arsenal: I am, I'm affirming, uh, this is gonna be like people are gonna grow and roll their eyes a little bit.  [00:03:04] Infant Baptism Joy [00:03:04] Tony Arsenal: I'm affirming infant baptism today. We had a lovely infant baptism at church, um, and a couple recently had a child. Um, there's been, this was a kind of a particularly, um, poignant baptism. Um, the, the mother was in the hospital for several weeks before the baby was born, um, with some medical challenges, so was in. In the hospital. In the hospital for like, I want to say probably four weeks, which is a long time. Um, they have several other children, which makes it even harder. Um, and then, uh, then the baby was in the hospital for quite some time. He came a little early and then had some other issues. Um, and so this family was out of church for quite some time dealing with these health issues, and we, we all miss them very much. So it was a very sweet moment. Um, and it's just a, a good reminder, right? And, and the way our church does it is, you know, the pastor, the family comes up, they do vows, they do the baptism, but he calls all the children forward and the children come and sit, uh, right in the front row and they watch this all happen. Um. Which is, is very sweet. And you know, I, I went up there with Augie, and Augie was sitting on my lap and he was very, he was like super locked into this, this whole thing, which is, uh, which was nice to see. So I'm affirming infant baptism. It's a beautiful, beautiful picture of the gospel. Um, it's, it's God's promise being sealed to someone who contributes nothing to, um, to that promise contributes nothing to, uh, their own, um, position in the church or status in the church. They contribute nothing. Um, in most cases they're not even aware of what's going on. So I know not all of our listeners are, uh, are covenant infant Baptists, uh, type people. Um, so yes, I get it. You disagree, but there is something just sweet and beautiful, uh, even I think even for people who aren't quite sold on infant baptism. Um, and I think even sometimes for people who are kind of opposed to infant baptism, I think we've commented in the PA past that there's kind of this impulse that I think all Christian parents have that their children should be. Treated in a certain way that's different than how a non-Christian family treats their children. Right. Um, so there is kind of this instinct that the, there's, whether it's a formal status or just sort of a, a way of thinking about things, there is this impulse that the children of believers are somehow set apart in different, and of course, the, the Presbyterian Covenant Baptist, um, position would, would formalize that through the rite of baptism, uh, at least in part. So I'm affirming infant baptism, both theologically, but also just experimentally today. Like it was just, it was just a balm to my soul to see this, um. And like I said, the congregation has been praying for a long time for the health, uh, and the, the welfare of this family, um, and been, you know, doing meal trains and all the stuff that churches do. But it was, it was a very sweet moment, um, to see the pastor scoop this little baby up in his arms and be able to sort of introduce him to the church as the newest covenant member of the congregation. Uh, it was just a very nice moment. [00:05:59] Baptism Dedication Common Ground [00:05:59] Jesse Schwamb: I think you're right. We can all agree that there's something really beautiful about God growing his church, at least the visible church, through just the multiplicative effect of. People having children, there's something beautiful about that, and then welcoming them in an official way into your congregation, into your midst. Interestingly, in my church, there was a baby dedication today and I was also equally moved though like I would say the promises that were invoked during that time, the equipment's made are very different than what you might hear during kind of pedo infant baptism. You're right in that the spirit of this that is like a representation kind of bringing forward of the child to say he or she is part of us and we're making a commitment to raise them in admonition of the Lord is a really lovely thing. It's like a public recognition that God is providing a manifest blessing in our midst, and that he is growing and working out his church and he's doing it by just bringing new people into it who are being, who are the subjects of procreation. Creation itself, but procreation and how can you not be like, just excited about that. And, and also a little bit like it's also, and I'm not trying to denigrate any practice here, but also just on the face also super adorable. Like when you, when you see a pastor scoop up, like you said, a little child, whether that's to pray with them and dedication or to baptize them. Either way, it's super just like lovely and just pulls in your heartstrings. Yeah. In like this very spiritual way, not just in kind of an emotional kind of way.  [00:07:26] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I don't, I think, um, when I think back, you know, Augie's, obviously you know this, but Augie was dedicated, um, Addie was not. Um, but when I think back to the vows we took, when we dedicated Augie, there are some differences, but there's also a lot that's not different like the sure close to like, raise up your child in the church and to like, pray for them and set a good example. And then, and then the sort of reciprocal vows that the congregation typically takes, that the congregation will do what they can to support the family as they, they raise this child and the Lord. Um, you know, even in, even in a lot of contexts, like in the Presbyterian church, I'm in like prayers that this, this child would come to know Jesus and would, would come to confess the faith for themselves and become a full, you know, full communicate member of the church. Like, those things are all present. So as much as I think, um. As much as I wanna acknowledge that infant baptism or, or covenant, I, I say covenant baptism versus, um, sort of like baptist theology writ, large credo Baptist theology, which is covenantal, but differently covenantal in most cases. Right. Um, even though that is a dividing line, and I think like it's a real dividing line. There's a real division that exists and that there's good theological historical reasons why those divisions exist. There still is so much that is the same. Um, in terms of how Baptists and, and Presbyterians or however formed, you know, PR Christians, um, re reflect on and think about their children. There's some differences, but in terms of like. We all want our children to come to know Jesus. We all want their first memory to be worshiping in the church and loving the Lord. We, we don't want them to ever remember a time where the name of Christ was not on their lips as their savior. Um, all those things are the same and even the, the way we promise before God and, and primarily before God, but before others, even the way we promise to nourish them in, in right doctrine and nourish them in good teaching and bring them into the church and, and set a faithful example. All of those things are the same. So I I I, I never want to diminish the fact that there are differences 'cause there are real differences and there are important differences. But I also think we often sort of like. I think because we've talked about this before, like Reformed Baptists and Presbyterians are so close that we have to bicker over the things that are different. It's like you're, it's like when you fight with your brother on whose side of the room it's on. Like you're so close that you have to find the little things to really bicker about and then you really, really bicker about them. And I think that kind of like describes the, the Presbyterian Baptist divide in a lot of ways. I know there's a lot of people that would say like, Lutherans are closer to Presbyterians and those people are just, I dunno, they're just wrong. Um, on, on, maybe on baptism, they're, they're not wrong. But in terms of general theological principles, like, you know, Westminster Confession, London Baptists, confession, like, it, it's 95% the same content. Sure. Um, and 95% like the same confession, not just the same like words, but the same meaning of the words. And, um, so yeah. Anyway, that's my affirmation. Infant baptism. It was a joy. I was happy to see it. Um, uh, we have a ton of little, little babies in the, the church. It's funny 'cause another, another, um. A couple announced today that they were expecting, and we've, we've had basically pregnant women in the church for, you know, obviously like at least nine months if someone is still pregnant. But like we've had, we've had this like rotation of, of women delivering babies for like, at least, probably, at least 16, 18 months of, of constantly having people who are, are expecting, which is really a great joy to see. So I, I love it. I love the church. I love the Presbyterian church. Um, and this was just another great example of, of the beauty of, uh, a robust confessionalism and a robust presbyterianism. [00:11:08] Jesse Schwamb: The way in which you said that made it sound like you're about to make like a grand historical statement. Like, we've had pregnant people in the church since the first century.  [00:11:18] Tony Arsenal: Well, I mean that's probably true, but  [00:11:19] Jesse Schwamb: yeah, it definitely  [00:11:20] Tony Arsenal: true. Not, not our church. Our church has only been around, our particular church has only been around for like 10 years, so I'm sure there have been times during that period where there were not pregnant people  [00:11:29] Jesse Schwamb: pregnant. It just sounded like we were going all the way back as if like to, again emphasize and maybe this isn't, this is as fair statement, like how faithful God has been like from the beginning. There's always been. Pregnant lady Church. Look, look at how faithful God is.  [00:11:42] Mic Grabbing Babies [00:11:42] Jesse Schwamb: And, and this is true, I like to play this game when there is a baby dedication. I'm not sure what the sound system is like in your church, but often our, our pastors wear like the tiny little like Backstreet Boys style. It's probably outdated reference, but microphone that comes over the ear and to the mouth and it's very discreet. But the game I like to play is like once, once he takes the child for a time of dedication or specifically prayer, the, the goal is to see like how long before that baby goes for the mic. Because as soon as like a baby sees a mic right there, it's like, oh yeah, this is the best thing that's happened to me in my tiny little life.  [00:12:20] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, it's like an angler fish is really what it is. Yes. It's like that glowing bulb that just sits in front of its face and it's, the baby's just gotta grab it. [00:12:27] Jesse Schwamb: It's just too tempting. It's just too tempting. And I, and I love, you can tell like our pastors are really adept at being able to keep the prayer going and like discreetly maneuver the child, keep the child happy. It's, it's really an amazing thing. So altogether, I'm totally with you on so many levels. It's so good to see that happen in the church. And I'm with you on that. We gotta take joy in that For sure.  [00:12:48] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Jesse, what do you got for us tonight?  [00:12:50] Book Breath Pick [00:12:50] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, something that's entirely unlike everything you just said. Certainly. Well, maybe, I guess there is a large spiritual component to this, but it's, I would say, for me, totally unexpected book recommendation and I came across this 'cause it was recommended to me and a while back, the keen or the listener who's been with us for a really long time, or a member that we talked about the book or why we sleep, this book became for me, like the equivalent of that in a totally different kind of topic or genre. It's called breath. The New Signs of a Lost Art by James Nestor and it explores how the way that humans breathe profoundly affects our health, our performance, our longevity. It's a book that is filled with both science and pseudoscience, which the author is really good at distinguishing and calling you to think about those things. But it's really totally changed how I understand like this little pattern in Habits of breathing. And it's a really interesting book of course. Like he draws from a lot of like religious influences, including of course the Judeo-Christian one. And I think that it even drew me back to understanding how God created us. And he did in a very specific way that text's giving some great description to the breadth that he gives us and how he gives us that breath. So if you're looking, I guess, for a little bit of a read, so that might surprise you about something that you might thought was automatic and simple in life and also that might. Be able to bring you some recommendations on how to better your health. Again, we're not doctors, but we are routinely considered among the top 50 healthcare podcasts. Then I would say this would be an interesting book for you to check out.  [00:14:19] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. I haven't read it, but it's been recommended to me and one of the, one of the takeaways, actually, I think it might have been my doctor, my my PCP who mentioned this to me is like, if you wanna improve your health drastically, like just make it a practice of breathing through your nose. Yes. Like something that simple and straightforward has pretty significant health impacts of like. Like the way that your brain processes breath when it comes through your nose, the way that like, there's more filtering that happens with breath, so the air that gets to your lungs is cleaner. There's just a lot of, um, I haven't read it. I've, I think I actually have it somewhere, but I have not read it yet. Um, I, I should, I should take a look at it. I, I've heard good things about it.  [00:15:01] Jesse Schwamb: At the very least, if you're a Christian, it'll cause you to marvel again. That's how beautifully complex God has made the human body and how it seems entirely impossible that anyone could even logically reasonably conclude that somehow we are just time plus matter, plus chance, and that all these things got worked out. I don't wanna spoil some of the punchline. A part of the book is about this. Breathe through your nose, which you might think was just kind of an innocuous decision. Breathe through your nose, breathe your mouth. How, how different could it be? They actually do an experiment where they plug their noses, the author and somebody else for, uh, several, like 10 days straight. And do all these these things under medical supervision to see what the impact is. And I'll leave you to read it so you can hear that. There's also something fascinating, absolutely fascinating about carbon dioxide and a study that's done where they actually have people inhale a little bit of carbon dioxide and what it does to the body. In other words, like the system that God has put into play to ensure that the body gets the kind of right amount of oxygen that it needs and how it functions when it's given the warning side of carbon dioxide, even when. Your lung capacity and your oxygen, your blood doesn't change. There's a fascinating section on that. So I didn't expect to be this interested in the book and generally I take a little time before I recommend a book. I finished this a couple weeks ago and I'm still thinking about it. So, and I'm trying to put some things into practice, including I try to do some running and for the longest time I just thought, well, when you run, like even at any like moderate speed, like you have to breathe through your mouth, this book challenges some of that. So lo and behold, I went out and started to try just a little bit to see if I could just breathe through my nose. It turns out it's totally possible, like all this time I just thought that was impossible, like God didn't make us that way, and it's actually improving how I feel when I run and the running that I'm able to do. So I am surprised, I, I'm shocked by all this, and it's just as simple as understanding breath. Who would've guessed.  [00:16:56] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. I mean, I've heard it's a great book. I, I, I. It never ceases to amaze that the, the more we look at the human body, the more we look at God's creation, the more we see the fingerprints of our creators. So not, not  [00:17:07] Jesse Schwamb: right.  [00:17:07] Tony Arsenal: Sounds like a great book. I can't recommend it from personal experience, uh, although I've heard very good things.  [00:17:12] Reading Matthew 21 [00:17:12] Tony Arsenal: So, Jesse, I think we should probably just get into it because this is now week three of, uh, one week episode and, uh, we want to wanna dig in and we wanna wrap it up so we can move on to the next best thing out there, which is of course, the parables of Christ. [00:17:26] Jesse Schwamb: Let's get some. So I'm gonna read for us starting in verse 40 because if you've been tracking then you've already been with us through the first part of this parable, and it's notoriously or variously called parable the vine growers, or I kinda like the husband men, just because that's fun to say, and you don't get to drop husband men like very often. But vine dressers, vine growers, vine workers, it's all the same. But here's starting in verse 40. This is after Jesus has already explained the parable. He set it up for them and he's gonna bring for the indictment. So Jesus says, and therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to these vine growers? They said to him, he will bring those wretches to a wretched end and he will rent out the vineyard to other vine growers who will pay him the proceeds at the proper seasons. Jesus said to them, did you never read in the scriptures the stone, which the builders rejected? This has become the chief cornerstone. This came about from the Lord in his, marvelous in our eyes. Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruit of it. And he who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces, but on whomever it falls, it will scatter him like dust. And when the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they understood that he was speaking about them. And although they were seeking to seize him, they feared the crowds because they were guarding him to be a prophet.  [00:18:48] Irony Blind Leaders [00:18:48] Tony Arsenal: Yeah, that, that last little section here is just such, it's like dripping with such irony,  [00:18:53] Jesse Schwamb: so good  [00:18:54] Tony Arsenal: that like they, they are so blinded by their own, um, I dunno, ambition isn't, maybe isn't even the right word, but something in that, that neighborhood, they're so blinded by their desire to. Maintain their own status quo, their own uh, their own status. That they fear the crowds because the crowds hold them to be a prophet,  [00:19:15] Jesse Schwamb: right?  [00:19:16] Tony Arsenal: When in reality, like there is a prophet in their midst and much more than a prophet, uh, and they can't see it because of their own blindness. So I'm stoked to get into it. This is such, like we said, this is such a, like on the nose, paril, it's crazy. This is so much like, you know, Nathan's, you are the man kind of parable. Like yes, that's right, except there never is a, you are the man moment for them. They never get it, which is. Stunning. Like I, I, it just sort of is like, I don't even know what to make of that. [00:19:41] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. There is like a wild blindness. I've been thinking about that a lot in our past conversations, but it culminates here. These chief priests and elders, I would say strangely, but I think that this is probably true of all of us, and maybe especially me, perhaps not yet, like perceiving themselves to be the vine growers here in view, they render this verdict of severe justice. It seems like you, you wanna say to them? Like, guys, guys, pull up, hold up a second. Yeah. Take a step back before you overreact here, because you're about to condemn yourselves and in the Greek here, this expression like, miserably destroy these wicked men. Or it gets like this double wretched in our translations. Mostly he will bring those wretches to a wretched end. It's this rhetorical intensification. It's incredible. And I, I think there's at least like two truths here. That come to my mind. One is, we've talked about before, but is in line with what you're saying, that the natural conscience, when not even aware of its own complicity, can still discern the justice of God's judgments. So here are these men who are so prone almost, I think what Calvin says elsewhere, like that we have this hidden impulse to identify with justice. Even when we can't see that we are the ones perpetrating something of injustice, still we can't help but cry out. We can't even help but identify it. And here they. Accurately identify it. And even though they're putting themselves exactly in the cross here, they cannot help but basically cry out that how egregious this behavior is of these vine growers that Jesus has basically, you know, created in this hypothetical environment, even still there, they're filled with rage and the rage gets turned on them. So the Pharisees here, of course, function as this unwitting witness to the righteousness of God's wrath against covenant breakers, even though they, they don't see it.  [00:21:29] Kingdom Transfer Talk [00:21:29] Jesse Schwamb: Uh, the second thing I think that comes to my mind, and maybe this is like more to the point, is that. The verse foreshadows this transfer of the kingdom from the Jewish nation to a new people that would bring forth its fruits, which I realize if I bring that up right now, that we've just committed to like six episodes just on that topic probably. But yeah, but like, we're gonna have to come to it because there's so much here. And the phrase of this, like, let out his vineyard unto other vine growers or husbandman, it does to me like anticipate this calling of the Gentiles and the formation of the Christian Church and in, in this way. It's not to me. The abandonment of the elect, remnant of Israel, but it is like the breaking off of the natural branches and then this engrafting of the wild olive shoots that come through like Allah, Romans 11. So it's, it's not like from one nation to another simply, but from like the carnal seed to a spiritual seed gathered out of all the nations, that that's wild. Right? I, I think that's all in view here. And it's like a kind of a crazy thing to say. It's certainly like a wild thing to say, no pun intended. And I imagine like, unexpected thing to say.  [00:22:38] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah.  [00:22:40] Supersessionism Clarified [00:22:40] Tony Arsenal: Let's think about that a little bit because I think too, there's, there's almost an element of, um. Man, I'm gonna get a lot of flack for saying this. You're, there's almost like a legitimate replacement theology here, right? Like replacement theology. I got covenant theology, you know, reformed, um, reformed theology often gets slandered as, you know, supersessionism or replacement theology, uh, with this idea that like, it's, it's interest. Uh, you have to have dispensational presuppositions for that phrase to even make sense because like the reformed paradigm is that there is one people of God full stop. And yes, like the identity of the one people of God seems to sort of like morph from the Jewish national people to now like Jews and Gentiles and actually predominantly Gentiles in the scope of like the whole history of the church. But what I mean by this is like, there's a visible church in the Old Testament, in the old, under the old Covenant, and the visible church under the old covenant is the national people of, of Israel. Right. By and large. Right. Um, and there are, there are sort of like Gentile, um, Clingons, not like the Star Trek people, but like gentile, like attachments to that throughout the history of, of Old Testament, um, theology. Um. That visible, that visible identification of this is the people of God being the Jewish people. Uh, these are the people that are the vineyard, the, they're the, the owner or the tenants of the vineyard or the, the visible Jewish people of the geopolitical nation of Israel under the old covenant that does sort of like get superseded by the church in the church age, in the new covenant,  right?  [00:24:24] Tony Arsenal: But where, where Supersessionism or the accusation of Supersessionism goes wrong is that there is this distinction between the visible and invisible church. And that distinction is what prevents us from being like, sort of like true replacement theologians in the way that the, the dispensationalist wanna paint us. So I, I think you're right that there is a lot to say here about the fact that, um, and, and this is where it gets, um. We have to be careful systematically. Right. God, God doesn't have to pivot. He doesn't have like a plan B. It's not like the Gentiles are the plan B, but there is a sense in almost in which the way that this is presented, the way that it appears in the scriptures is actually, yeah, there is almost like this plan B, like there is the geopolitical ethnic people of, of Israel, the Jewish people under the old covenant. And, and they don't do what they're supposed to do. They don't follow the terms of their covenant. They don't accept the kingdom that is bequeathed to them under the terms of the old covenant. And they, they reject that kingdom because of a disobedience. And, and I think what Christ here is narrowing in on is it's not just disobedience, right? It's not sort of like, um, accidental ancillary disobedience. It's not generalized disobedience. It is this sort of like usurpation of God's rightful status as the ruler and king of the nation. That's right. The the people, the, the Pharisees. And the chief priests and the scribes and the Sadducees, they want to be the rulers of the nation. They want to, they, they seem to wanna take the place of God, at least as far as Christ is presenting it. In this, they wanna usurp the kingdom. They want to take the heirs, uh, rightful inheritance, and they want to claim it for themselves. That is not a generalized disobedience, it's a special t type of covenant unfaithfulness that causes God to causes and kind of air quotes that causes God to hand over the kingdom to another people. Right. Partially, I think, uh, we don't need to get into Romans, the Romans 11 stuff, but partially I think because that's actually the way that he's going to ultimately save the Jewish people, right, is by sort of making, making them jealous of the Gentiles. Like there's a, there's a real element of that, that the salvation of the Gentiles is actually for, in some sense is for or unto the salvation of the Jewish people or the, the faithful Jewish remnant that's all here. And, and you can't really get past that in this parable. Um, this is why I think a, a lot of dispensationalist, um, uh, some of the classic dispensational sources would actually see like this, this is not for the Jewish church. This, this is for the Gentiles. This is actually part of the parentheses, um. You know, and, and again, dispensationalist divide all that stuff up differently, but this is a really interesting section for us to talk about that we can't, we can't just gloss over that. [00:27:11] Jesse Schwamb: I certainly don't mean to imply that it's wild because it's unexpected. I think it's wild because interestingly, the Pharisees, the teachers here, they challenge Jesus authority and his response to that is to challenge their covenant faithfulness.  [00:27:24] Tony Arsenal: Right?  [00:27:25] Jesse Schwamb: So it's not just if he turns it around, he uses this opportunity to explain what's going to happen to them as those who are, like you said, were supposed to be representative. And I think critically like the qualifying phrase. That that's using the text here, which shall render him the fruits in their seasons. That's like really important because these new vine growers are characterized by their fruitfulness. So this is not like a doctrine of works righteousness, but it's evidential fruit. And that's why, and I had to look this up and the Westminster Confession confession, chapter 16, good works are quote the fruits and evidences of true and lively faith, which I love. I was trying to find that language true and lively faith. So the visible church under that new administration is identified by the fruits of repentance, faith, and obedience worked out by the Holy Spirit. Again, I think that's all that is in view here, that that's a lot to say. But you know, famously, like you've kind of intimated, when we go back to the Old Testament, even we find when the Israelites leave triumphantly from Egypt, that they're accompanied by those outside of Israel. We find that other characters like Grh who continually want to identify with a Yahweh whom God is saving and drawing onto himself and here is kind. Him, Jesus, at least representing as the son of God. That kind of cli climactic view. Speaking from the prophet register again saying, this is what I was saying to Abraham. I said, like from your seed, all these nations in this spiritual sense will be gathered out. So there'll be a single nation as it were in Christ. And even now, I'm telling you, I'm breaking down those boundaries. But I think to your point, importantly Tony, in part because you have failed in the covenant promises and you who were to represent and to heed and to lead, have fallen down. And so now you're gonna trip over this stone and it's going to crush you. And as a result of that, the vine, the vine growers will be, or the vineyard itself will be turned over to those who bear this true and lively fruit.  [00:29:22] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah.  [00:29:23] Israel Failure Remnant [00:29:23] Tony Arsenal: There's an interesting, um. There's an interesting dynamic here that actually strikes me as kind of similar. It's a little bit more opaque, but similar to, uh, like Joseph in, uh, in Egypt, right when his brothers come and he says, you meant this for evil, but God meant it for good. Mm-hmm. There's a, there's an element of here, we've talked about the parables. That's sort of like systematic theology in story form. Um, there's a reality here that it's both true, that God always intended for the kingdom to be expansive and, and to expand beyond the nation of Israel. To be this universal, global lowercase c Catholic, universal church universal in the sense that it's not bound by any particular nation, by any particular geopolitical reality. Um. That's true, but it's also true that the reason, uh, on a sort of like horizontal level that that's true is that Israel failed. Right? It so God always intended for Israel to fail, yet Israel is responsible for the fact that they failed. Yes, that's right. Um, and, and, and again, we, we, we sort of commented on this before, like there are some in our broader reformed circles that turn this into a sort of antisemitism, like a sort of hatred for the Jewish people. And I don't think, I don't think that there's any warrant in scripture for that. In fact, I think scripture speaks strongly against that. Is that, um. Not necessarily because there's any particular unique special affection that God has for Israel, like, like the modern Jewish people, but, but that, like racism in general is prohibited by the Bible. But I think where we do need to be clear though, is that there is a real failure. It's a true, genuine failure on the part of the first century Jewish. Leaders and people, um, with a faithful remnant. Right? There was, um, we're, we're getting, you know, we're in the springtime and we've already had, uh, we've already had discussions about this. We've already done Easter, but like there is always conversations around Palm Sunday of like, are the crowds that are following Jesus into, into town screaming, you know, yelling, Hosanna? Is that the same crowds that are yelling crucify him a couple days later? Um, I tend to think like, no, like actually, like the people who are saying crucified, crucify Christ are probably like the Jews who live in Jerusalem or like the, primarily the religious leaders. There's a whole host of Jewish believers and kind of the hoy pallo, the, the people out in the country that absolutely follow Jesus. Like they follow him as the Messiah. They, they confess him in many cases. They convince him to be, um, they confess him to be God, to to be the savior, to be the, the figure from Daniel seven, the son of man. Um. There's a reality in which the Jewish remnant absolutely recognize Christ and they persist in the church, right? The earliest Christians were all Jews, and you know, there was a few Gentiles along the way, you know, and maybe not even Gentiles like Samaritans. I don't even know if you would call them gentiles. They're kind of this midway point, but in Jewish gentil. But there are people throughout Christ's ministry, right? Cornelius or not Cornelius, the Centurion recognizes that this is the son of God. Like there are people, the s Phoenician woman, there are people who are not part of Israel proper, who even in the, in the midst of Christ's ministry are recognizing him as God and as Messiah and as the savior of the world. But, but by and large, the earliest Christian movement was Jewish people. It was the faithful remnant of, of Israel who recognized that their Messiah had come. That is true. And at the same time. The, probably the majority, and especially the rulers and the leaders of the Israel, you know, the Jewish faith in the first century absolutely rejected him. And this is what I, this is what I think is wild, is I think sometimes we think that, um, the prophecies and the understanding of Christ and what the messiah, who the Messiah was to be and what to expect, we think of those as like super obscured and super hidden until Christ comes and then all of a sudden they're really obvious. Christ doesn't seem to treat them that way. Right? Right. He tells this parable and they rightly identify that, and this is a, this is such a thinly veiled parable. Like this is like, you killed the prophets. You're going to kill me. And there's going to be consequences. Like he practically says that outright. Um. He treats that as like they should obviously know this, right? The, have you never read in the scriptures, the stone, the builder rejected has become the cornerstone, right? This was the lord's doing. It is, and it is marvelous in their eyes that have you never read?  [00:34:06] Decree in Rejection [00:34:06] Tony Arsenal: That is a, that's a rhetorical question with the implied answer of, of course, you've read exactly like he's not, he's not teaching them something that he anticipated is new to them. He maybe is teaching them something that he anticipated they maybe you didn't recognize. But actually I think probably like, uh, there probably were many among them that were like, oh yeah, we are doing this. But then almost like we're powerless to stop themselves from moving forward in that.  [00:34:32] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:34:32] Tony Arsenal: Sort of like wicked plan. [00:34:34] Jesse Schwamb: Right. Yeah. And I think we could extend that as well to say that this rejection of Christ by this Jewish leadership, which of course was a incredible failure, like you're saying, it wasn't an accident, it wasn't an unforeseen tragedy. So just like interestingly in Acts four in his sermon where Peter quotes from the same Old Testament passage about Christ being the cornerstone, you know, it was prophesied long before. And so the doctrine of God's eternal decree, I think finds v vivid illustration even here. This is all the Lord's doing. Yeah. And even the wicked rejection of the Messiah is serving this purpose, this sovereign purpose of God's great exaltation. And so it's fascinating, and we should marvel at the fact that, again, like God means what he says when he says like He uses what is weak to overcome that which is strong, or to embarrass the strong, he uses that which seems foolish. To make the wise themselves, the ones who are actually foolish in the same way.  [00:35:29] Cornerstone Unites Church [00:35:29] Jesse Schwamb: This very stone, which men in their malice cast aside on that day. God is in his wisdom setting as this chief cornerstone. And I love like that idea of this phrase, this head of the corner denoting that amazing preeminence of Christ, that Christ is not merely included in the building of the new Covenant church. He is its chief and constituent stone that joining together both like the Jew and the Gentile, finally into one structure. And that's really, I think to your point, that's the great mystery of the hidden ages from the past. That that's the thing which Christ is bringing to like this grand display, like out on the stage in the open, in front of everybody. He's drawing it up, he's calling it to account. And so in that way, the same Jesus that was rejected by men is in God's account of inestimable value. And that should be like, I think, familiar to most of us because like there a form tradition has always insisted that. The true theology always issues in doxology and the cross and exaltation of Christ are not merely these facts, which we give these intellectual ascent, but we, we confess them as mysteries which provoke us to adoration of who God is. It's the excellency of Christ expounding at length, like the wondrous conjunction of Christ's humiliation and his exaltation, which finds its pattern here, rejected by men, glorified by God.  [00:36:50] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah.  [00:36:52] Works Covenant Failures [00:36:52] Tony Arsenal: And, and this is, um, we, we commented in our first, uh, episode on this par ball. This is not isolated to just the rulers of Israel at the time of Christ, right? This is in reality, kind of like a reflection of every failure of the covenant of works. In some sense, every failure to hold the covenant of works boils down to an attempt to make oneself, God. Right. This was Adam's failure in the garden. Um, Eve, Eve was the first person to eat the fruit, but Adam, Adam was responsible for that and he, he also ate the fruit and they, they did so in part because they thought it was useful to make them like God and, and in an illegitimate fashion. And they knew it was an illegitimate fashion. It's not as though Adam and Eve suddenly were like, maybe we can eat the fruit. Maybe like we actually are fine to do it. Like they knew it was still forbidden. Right. They did it anyways. And the Pharisees here, um, are in a real attempt. Um, they are trying to take the role of Messiah for the people. They're trying to be the savior of the people in sort of shepherding and guiding them into this like. Ultra legalistic Puritan, like puritanical in the worst sense, um, kind of approach to the law. Um, this is the, the story of Old Testament Israel, right? What is the first thing that the Israelites do? Um, at Mount Sinai? The first thing they do is try to fashion gods so that they have a tame God that they can control and that they can actually be God's over. So I think this is really key and, and this is where it becomes practical for us, is that. I think we always are faced with a choice, right? There's, there's obviously those who are Christ, who the son is set free. He's set free indeed, and they will never not be his people. Like you never become not justified. If you were justified, you always forever more are justified. Justified is a final. It's, it's the future judgment of God's people dragged and dropped into the present and applied. It's the righteousness of Christ applied. So there, there's never a time where that righteousness is like removed or unapplied, but we are constantly faced with a choice as to whether we want to be the kind of people who render our fruit unto the Lord, uh, as the faithful, the sort of the implied faithful tenants that are going to be brought forward when the, the unfaithful tenants are replaced. Or do we wanna be the people that reap wicked fruit and keep for ourselves? And I think that's, that's really the thing. Like we're either gonna rep. Fruit of wickedness, or we're gonna reap fruit of righteousness. And the only thing to do with fruit of righteousness is surrender it to the Lord. But we often are faced with that choice, like, are we gonna reap our own wicked fruit and keep it all to ourselves right, uh, to our own detriment? Or are we gonna go ahead and be the faithful tenants that give the Lord what he deserves?  [00:39:46] Kingdom Transfer Explained [00:39:46] Jesse Schwamb: We're seeing so much of the simplicity of God here that like you and I have said so many times before that his loving kindness, his long suffering ness is his righteousness, is his justice, is his wrath. And so I think it's helpful, again, to remind ourselves that we're, we are talking, or he specifically is speaking of the kingdom of God here. And again referring to this visible administration of the covenant of grace, not to the inward and invisible kingdom of saving grace, which as you just said, can never be lost from those who possess it, which by the way is a really important distinctive of reform theology. There are many that would disagree with that statement, and I think really much to their harm in, in disagreement with the scriptures themselves, this one in particular, but it is this external administration, the privileges, the ordinances, the oracles of God. That is being transferred from the Jewish nation as a corporate body to a new and broader people of God. And because I know that sounds very extreme, I did look up Calvin and his commentary on this and let me read what he says because this is interesting. I think even this could possibly mis be misunderstood. But here's Calvin who can say it better than I. He says, quote by these words, he means that God would deprive the Jews of the honor and the privilege of being his peculiar people and would call the Gentiles that out of them he might form a church end quote. And going back to what you said earlier, I'm with you. I, I. I mean, this is not, I think as some have wrongly concluded, like replacement theology in like a wooden sense. I, I see this still as like this historical redemptive transition from the typological administration of the old covenant to the eschatological fulfillment of the new. And the elect remnant of Israel is not cast off, but the national like typological privileges are being transferred to the Catholic church, gathered from all nations. And in that, I really do see this wonderful confluence of God's loving kindness, his, his fidelity to the promises that he's made and his wrath being manifested all at once. And somehow Jesus, of course, in complete perfection, can bring that all to bear in this tiny little story.  [00:41:51] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. And and isn't it just like the master teacher to like, put all of this baked into this? I mean, that's right. We think of this as like a long parable, like I think,  [00:42:02] Jesse Schwamb: right?  [00:42:02] Tony Arsenal: I think like it's, it's amazing how we think of parables as, you know, like this is a short one. A short one is a couple sentences, a long one is like a half a dozen sentences. Like, and of course like Christ is teaching broader than this. He's teaching more than this. Just, this is what's recorded by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. This is what Matthews preserved for us.  [00:42:22] Stone Breaks or Crushes [00:42:22] Tony Arsenal: But you're right, there's so much baked into this little parable and I think, um, there's something to be said about this idea of like. Not only do those who smash against the, the rock, the, the cornerstone, those who smash against the rock, like those who who fall on the rock are broken to pieces, but also the rock falls on others and smashes them to pieces. Right? And, and there's something to be said about the fact that, and I'm not exactly sure how I wanna articulate this, but it's only those who like recognize the proper place of the rock and don't either let it fall on them or don't smash themselves against it. You know, we always joke about like running through a wall. Like this is not a wall you're gonna run through. Like you're gonna smash into this wall and it's gonna crush you. And if you are, if you're not properly assigning the cornerstone it's placed, right? The cornerstone is, is the stone that's placed in the foundation of a building that all the other stones find their orientation and their proper alignment based on. [00:43:26] Jesse Schwamb: Right.  [00:43:26] Tony Arsenal: You might think of this sometimes. I've heard this articulated as like the, the arch stone. I think it's a little bit different than that. Um, but it, the, the idea is the same, right? Like there's a stone in an arch. If you think of like a classic Roman arch, you have these piles of stones until you put the final arch stone in. That, in that stone is what makes the arch stable. Until that point, either side can fall, but if you don't properly set that arch stone where it's supposed to be, then the whole thing is gonna crush you. It's gonna fall down on top of you at some point. I think this is a little different. This is the cornerstone of a, this is more like the cornerstone of a building. This is the stone that the rest of the building, building is oriented against and is aligned with. If you get that wrong, then you have a, you have like a crooked wall, a wall that's not set, that's not straight. It's not stable. What this is saying and what this, this prophecy right from, from Psalm one 10, I think I should probably look it up, but I haven't yet. But this prophecy that Christ is referring to this, this prophetic statement in the Psalms that he's assuming the audience is familiar with, right? I think that's a really important point. Like he's not only assuming that they're familiar with it, there's rhetorical force of kind of like, of course you understand this principle that there is a cornerstone coming. There is something or someone who is coming that all other things will be measured against. And if you're either in alignment with this, with this person who is coming or you're out of alignment with reality, this thing is understood by them. It just is so critical and I think like the, the, a lot of the parables don't have explanations built into them. Some of them do. We've talked about some of them. A lot of them don't, this one does, but it's kind of like a really surprising way to explain it. And there's so much, um, the more that I look at this, the more we talk about it, this really is so similar to David and Nathan, right? Right. When with the, the affair with Bathsheba, he is saying to the Pharisees, look, you're the man. Like, you're the one here. You're the guy. You guys are the wicked tenants that are gonna, you've killed the prophets. Right? Um, I'm losing my, my timeline a little bit, but John the Baptist either had been executed or would be executed shortly at this point, right? So like the, the most recent prophet either was already killed or, or Christ knew of course he was going to be killed. Um, he's saying, look, you guys are the ones that are doing this and you're going to kill me. Right. And this is obviously what the prophecy is, that you think you're going to come against the cornerstone, but in reality you're going to shatter yourself upon me. You think you're gonna come against me, I'm going to crush you. And rather than say, you know, as ba, you know, as David does, where he repents, he, he fasts and he, he refuses to eat. He's, he's in mourning over both the loss of his infant, but, but more so over his own sin, I think is the picture the text gives us. Um, he's mourning trying to uh, sort of like reverse God's decision, but there's a genuine repentance to it, right? That's where we get Psalm 51, like creating, clean me a clean heart, oh God, renew a right spirit in me. There's none of that for the Pharisees, there's none of that for the sadist of the chief priests. They just continue to smash themselves against this rock, not recognizing that it's actually the rock that is crushing them. [00:47:05] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, it's, it's a bit like, I'm gonna speak like a little maybe beyond my depth here, but there's a little bit of like that Nathan, like Strategem, and then this is where I'm outside my own experience. And then a little bit like maybe like WWE the rock in terms of like. If you want some come and get some, right? It's a little of both. And of course the passage ends very tragically, well ends humorously by them, you know, saying that at some point they were like, they understood in these parables, again, this is one of three of the same kind of topic of variety, but that Jesus was referring to them, which is funny. You wanna be like, yeah, it took a, took a long enough, I guess, guys, but you finally got it. But then that last sentence of like, they still sought to kill him. So to your point, even after all of this, there wasn't repentance. And we do get these, I think, two very distinct judgements that are depicted here, which you've already kinda led us into this first, like, whoever shall fall on the stone shall be broken. You know, to me, I think that's invoking this idea that in this life, there we are, we can be brought to brokenness through the gospel and to fall upon Christ. And repentance. And faith is to be broken in self, in pride and self-righteous. It's a breaking that does lead to healing. But this second judgment, you know the one, but on whomever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder, grind him to dust, I mean. Man, think about what a vivid image that is. I mean, that's like the more terrible of the two. That that's like the, yeah. Final Es logical judgment of those who persist in unbelief and it, it admits there's like no remedy. So there are only two ways to relate to Christ. You either fall upon him willingly in faith and repentance, which is painful, but it is saving, you know, to have him fall upon us in judgment is final in damning, and so that's what Christ presents here. [00:48:48] Psalm 118 in Context [00:48:48] Jesse Schwamb: It's, it's both of these things and you're right, it is brilliant that he goes to Psalm one 18 even that as a setup, because as you've kind of already said, I love to think, of course that's, can you manner the tone in which this was said to these scribes and Pharisees? Because of course the, the secondary indictment here is like, listen, you guys who like your great pride is that, you know, the scriptures really well. Have you read this part is familiar to you. Yeah. Can you tell me where that is? So like, we, we should go there just, just quickly. This is Psalm one 18 because I think that here again is, as I'm hearing it in context. There are some verses surrounding this that I think we might be surprised that they come right on the heels of this idea of the stone. So just a couple verses. In Psalm one 18 being in verse 22, the stone, which the builders rejected, has become the chief cornerstone. This is from Yahweh. It is marvelous in our eyes. Here's the verses that we might not recognize. Come right after it. This is the day which Yahweh has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Oh, Yahweh, save. Oh, Yahweh, succeed. Blessed is the one who comes in the name of Yahweh. We have blessed you from the house of Yahweh. Yahweh is God, and he has given us light by the festival sacrifice with corns to the horns of the altar. You are my God, and I give thanks to you. You are my God, and I exalt you. Give thanks to Yahweh for his good, for his loving kindness endures forever. And so this idea that there's rejoicing in which day, I mean, usually we kinda say that it's like, well, it's a beautiful day out. It's the Lord's day. This is the day that Yahweh is like that. That's true. But also here in particular, it is this blessed day of Yahweh giving the stone, which the builders reject and which has become the chief cornerstone. And that stone is some will run headlong into and shipwreck their lives and others will be crushed underneath it. And guess what? This is the day which Yahweh has made and we're gonna rejoice and be glad in that.  [00:50:41] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah.  [00:50:43] Mark's Angle on Fear [00:50:43] Tony Arsenal: The other thing I think, you know, we. Should, um, maybe not spend any time on, 'cause we're at like, out, like minute 50 of a 60 minute podcast. But just going to, to Mark's version of this parable real quick. Um, starting in verse, uh, this is chapter 12, verse 12. It says, and they were seeking to arrest him, but feared the people for, they perceived that he had told the parable against them. So they left him and went away. And the, the main difference here, the reason I'm reading this is Mark chooses a d. Concerning them. The verb is, or the preposition is Perry. So it's kind of like this idea that he was, he was sort of speaking around them. He was talking about them. Mark uses the, the preposition, proce, which is not, um, not against, in like the same, uh, direct sense. We might use the word against. That would be something like Kada. Um, but he's, he's speaking this parable towards them or to them, um, against them. He's, he's directing the parable at them. And this is, this is, we, we commented on this a little bit in the, the first episode here. Um, he is speaking to the crowds. But he's telling the parable about or against or concerning the Pharisees and the scribes, and they perceive this, right. The, the gospels here don't say that the crowds perceive this. Right. And I think that's key. Like the Pharisees basically look at this and say, uh, we better get this under control because he's talking about us. Right, right. Like, I'm just picturing Paul Washer's. I'm not trying to say Paul Washer is a Pharisee, although some people would probably make that connection. But like I'm, I'm just hearing Paul Washer's voice saying like, I don't know why you're clapping. I'm talking about you. He's speaking to the Pharisees here. And it's interesting because Matthew associates the, the, uh, Pharisees. Cowardice in acting against Christ, uh, because they fear the crowds and because the crowds believe Christ is a parable or is a prophet Mark associates. And again, both of these things are true, right? This is holy scripture. This is inspired, these are not contradictory accounts. This is facets of the same diamond. Mark associates this with, they fear the crowds. Um, because they had taken him. They, they understood that the parable was being spoken against them, right? So there's this element that the Pharisees are not only understanding that the, the parable is about them, they feared them because the crowds believe that Christ is a prophet and that prophet is speaking this parable against them, right? So like they're, they're recognizing full on that it's only a matter of time before the, the general population, the general people that are listening to Christ recognize that he's overturning. Not only the Pharisees, the entire geopolitical nation of Israel, he's overturning the ethnic based reality, the geopolitical based reality, that God's people have a zip code and that zip code is Jerusalem. That zip code is this little si, this little tract of land the size of like Vermont and New Hampshire in the Mediterranean, like off the Mediterranean Sea. He's overturning that. And the, the Pharisees, the educated people, the, the Sadducees, the chief priests, the rulers, they recognize it's only a matter of time before the people understand what Christ is doing. They, they follow him as a prophet and this is what he's prophesying. And

Episode DescriptionIn this powerful episode of TS Wright Speaks, TS Wright dives into The Second Epistle to the Corinthians 2 Corinthians 5 and explores what it truly means to become a new creation in Christ. Discover how surrendering to the Holy Spirit transforms believers from the old self into the new self, bringing peace, freedom, spiritual growth, and renewed purpose through Jesus Christ.Key Scripture FocusThe Second Epistle to the Corinthians 2 Corinthians 5:15–21Gospel of John John 3:1–8Gospel of Luke Luke 9:62Epistle to the Philippians Philippians 4:6–7Epistle to the Colossians Colossians 3:9–10Epistle to the Ephesians Ephesians 4:17–30Book of Psalms Psalm 100Book of Psalms Psalm 139:23–24Episode HighlightsThe Old Self Must DieTS Wright explains that salvation is not self-improvement — it is complete transformation through Christ. When believers are born again, the old self passes away and a new creation emerges through the power of the Holy Spirit.Born Again Through the SpiritUsing Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus in John 3, this episode examines the spiritual rebirth required to enter the Kingdom of God and how believers are resurrected into new life through Christ.Surrendering to the Holy SpiritThe Christian life is not about striving harder or following legalistic rules. TS Wright teaches that true transformation comes through surrendering to the Holy Spirit, allowing God to produce spiritual fruit naturally within believers.Peace That Surpasses UnderstandingThis episode unpacks Philippians 4 and reveals how prayer, thanksgiving, and dependence on God lead to supernatural peace that guards the hearts and minds of believers.Do Not Return to the Old SelfTS Wright warns against returning to former sinful patterns and encourages believers to walk daily in the Spirit, embracing discipleship, accountability, prayer, and God's Word.A Call to Full SurrenderThe episode concludes with prayers for salvation, spiritual renewal, and complete surrender to Christ, encouraging listeners to allow God to search their hearts and lead them in the everlasting way.Key TakeawaysSalvation means becoming a completely new creation in Christ.The Holy Spirit transforms believers from the inside out.Spiritual growth comes through surrender, prayer, and Scripture.God offers peace beyond human understanding.Christians are called to live Spirit-led lives and leave the old self behind.Connect with TS WrightCheck out this link to view Kingdom Cross Roads on TV.https://jesussaid.tv/?affiliate=tswright_gccTo get a copy of our new book "Embracing the Truth" or to have TS Wright speak at your event or conference or if you simply want spiritual or life coaching or just a consultation visit:www.tswrightspeaks.comVisit our website to learn more about The God Centered Concept. The God Centered Concept is designed to bring real discipleship and spreading the Gospel to help spark the Great Harvest, a revival in this generation.www.godcenteredconcept.comKingdom Cross Roads Podcast is a part of The God Centered Concept.