"King and Country: the King’s Constituents" by Leo Eby

Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. Well, good morning, everyone. Welcome here to Strength to Strength this morning. Nice to see all of you who have begun their Saturday bright and early.

So I'm excited to introduce to you the subject for this morning. This is part six of our series, King and Country, and the title we gave it is The King's Constituents. So our brother Leo Eby of Pennsylvania is bringing us this talk this morning. I count myself blessed to know Leo since three years ago at his daughter's wedding.

His daughter, Missy, married my cousin Charles Burkholder. It doesn't take long in listening to Leo talk with someone to hear him get on the subject of the Kingdom of God. I've been in a circle listening to him discuss the subject.

His passion for this is real, and we're glad to have him share this talk with us this morning. So throughout the talk, be thinking of questions you can ask Leo at the end, and we will open it up for Q&A.

So let's begin with prayer.

Heavenly Father, this morning, we're so grateful. Grateful to have you as our Father and grateful to have you as our King. And we're also grateful for this opportunity to look at this subject before us, the King's Constituents and our part in your kingdom. Help us, Lord, to open our hearts and see where we can learn and grow and be more useful and be a servant for you.

Bless Brother Leo as he brings this subject to him. Give him wisdom and strength to share what he has on his heart. And pray that your word would go out and encourage believers in their walk with you. We pray this all in the name of Jesus. Amen.

All right. Brother Leo, it's all yours.

Well, good morning, everyone. I hope you can hear me well. Greetings in Jesus' name. And truly, Jesus is the definition of the ultimate definition of new humanity, where you have God and humanity coming together in one body. And so this subject excites me, not because I feel like I'm qualified to talk about it, but because I'm experienced being part of this new humanity. And so on that basis, I'm willing to try to take a stab at this because it's experiential reality.

Our subject this morning on the new humanity, the King and his country and his constituents, is not a subject of science fiction. It's not a subject of even spiritual fiction. It's a subject of experiential reality with the future anticipation of faith giving way to sight. And this subject, as I see it, spans the entire history of mankind. Not only that, it actually goes before God said light because we have evidence in the scripture that the concept of redemption and Jesus' involvement in that was before the creation. We have several passages in the Bible that mention that fact.

So this subject of new humanity is one that actually starts—we're going to start with the creation and just kind of bring a brief overview from the creation forward and what we're anticipating. And then I'm going to sort of narrow it down to a few scriptures in the New Testament, basically out of Ephesians, a little bit of Colossians and Galatians, and a little bit out of John.

And actually, the subject of new humanity is a subject that human beings in general are interested in. There was actually a New Age magazine called The New Humanity that was published by a man by the name of John Henry Quadra from 1975 to 2001. And he titled it—he was the editor of the magazine. And the title of the magazine was The New Humanity, but it was from a New Age perspective. And it was interesting to discover some of the things that were peculiar about this magazine.

One of them was that this man coined the term pneumocracy, which means the rule of the spirit. And the magazine was a political spiritual magazine for the independent thinker and philosopher. And the maximum that went with the—the maxim that went with this magazine was neither left nor right, but uplifted forwardly. Very spiritual language that it was called. And the platform for this magazine was this pneumocracy, which means the rule of the spirit. Now, here you have a man who's not coming from a direction from the spirit of God, but rather a New Age perspective. And he's using language like that would be familiar with Christian language of the spirit.

So I find that interesting perspective. So to start with our subject, I'd like to reference the new humanity that God brought into being at the creation when he created the heaven and the earth. And on the sixth day, he created the human being. And he created this human being out of dust. And he breathed into him the breath of life. And he became a living soul. And in that sense, human beings became a very unique aspect of God's creation in the sense that man was created in God's image.

And along with that, you have—in this time period, you have man and woman and God in perfect harmony. And you had heaven and earth. There was very little differential between heaven and earth because God dwelled on earth with the human beings. They walked together. They talked together. They shared together. And it was the rule of God with human beings on earth. But the rule was broken by humanity when the serpent was beguiled Eve and her husband. And we know the story well, what we call the fall. And from there on, we have human beings in a disadvantaged position with God because of his sin. And God, down through the ages, began to develop a renewed humanity.

And I want to focus today on the new humanity that is related to the new covenant. But there's also a very real sense in which the new humanity, the renewed humanity, began with Genesis 3:15, where God said that he made the promise that of this woman's seed, he would crush the serpent's head.

And that covenant that God made with humanity was an unconditional covenant. It was a unilateral covenant that he made with humanity. And down through time, we have God making additional covenants with Noah. And then he has with Abraham, where he called Abraham. He said, "Get thee out of thy country and out of thy kindred and out of thy father's house into a land which I shall call thee." And he promised Abraham a son. He promised him a land. And he promised him that of his son, of his seed, all the nations of the earth would be blessed.

And then we have the covenant that God made with Moses. And we call that the Sinaitic covenant or the covenant that God made at Mount Sinai with the children of Israel, which were descendants of Abraham. And again, it became a conditional covenant of blessing and cursing based on their obedience and also their disobedience.

We also have in Samuel and in 1 Chronicles where God made the Davidic covenant, where he promised that of David's seed, there would be a kingdom, an everlasting kingdom, an everlasting throne, and that the kingdom would have no end.

And then we have in Jeremiah 31, we have the prophetic language of a new covenant that would come in the future.

And so we have Jesus coming on the scene as the perfect example of new humanity, where we have God himself dwelling in a human body.

Now, I'd like to back up just a little bit and talk about a person named we know as Moses, who was, you could say, a forerunner of Jesus or a deliverer or a person who brought about a type of the new humanity that would be part of the new covenant.

When we have Moses, God raised up Moses with a spectacular birth and child raising and bringing up. And he grooms Moses in a special way with education and with knowledge. And he grooms Moses in the wilderness for 40 years. And then he has Moses go down to Egypt to draw enslaved people out of Egypt into a land that he had promised their father, Abraham. Moses went down into Egypt. He was trepidatious about his responsibility.

And when he went there, he had to convince the Israelites that he was their deliverer. He had to convince Pharaoh that God was almighty and that in spite of all of his hardness of heart, God was going to perform his will. And through mighty acts and wonders, Moses convinces the children of Israel that he is their deliverer.

And through additional acts and wonders, God uses Moses to convince Pharaoh that out of Egypt, he will call his son, his son, Israel. So we have Moses as this great deliverer, pulling humanity out of Egypt. And through mighty acts of deliverance, God brings them through the Red Sea, through the wilderness. And in the wilderness, God provides these people with food and water and meat and brings them to Mount Sinai.

And you have this unruly lot of people that God brings a discipline to the Decalogue that he gives at Mount Sinai. And these people that he brought out of Egypt, we think they are slaves, but they are actually wealthy slaves.

They brought along with them much wealth out of Egypt. But the problem was, in the wilderness, there was no place to spend their wealth. There were no vendors. There were no fast food places. There were nobody hawking wares for them because in the wilderness, it was truly a wilderness. There was no food. There was no water.

But God sustained these people by miraculously providing water and bread in the manna. And not only that, Deuteronomy tells us that he taught them that man should not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.

And through much hardship and travail and struggle, the Israelites who wandered in the wilderness for 40 years under the leadership of Moses were able to witness God working through Moses and giving them mighty demonstrations on Mount Sinai of his holiness and his power and his desire for them to be a people that he had called out for himself.

In Exodus 19:5, he describes his intentions for these people. He says, "Now therefore, if you will obey my voice indeed and keep my covenant, then shall ye be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people, and for the earth is mine."

So in this wilderness, God is developing, you could say, a new humanity, a people who carried with them the embossed in their flesh, the covenant of circumcision, which was passed on from one generation to another generation that reminded them of the covenant that God had given Abraham, their father.

But in spite of all of that, all those mighty works of God and them being recipients of the Decalogue and their mighty leader of Moses, they failed miserably. So that when at the time when it came for them to move from the wilderness into the promised land, Moses dies off the scene. And Joshua takes up the responsibility of leading the people into the promised land and to make inheritance. But only two people that left Egypt enter into the promised land.

And it gives a vivid illustration how many are called, but few are chosen. And these people move into Canaan, and they begin to inherit this land, and they fight their battles through the leadership of Joshua. But the rule of Moses, who administered the covenant on Mount Sinai, becomes the epicenter of who the Jewish people were.

Moses was their total understanding of what God had for them and what God intended for them. And so Moses was, forever after that, the great figure of leadership in their minds.

But remember that Moses himself, in Deuteronomy 18, said that their God's going to raise up a prophet like. Unto me, Moses speaking. And whatever he says, you're going to be accountable to. And that there's going to be consequences if they didn't.

Now, we're back into the New Testament, where we have Jesus coming on the scene, being born as a baby in the humility of being born in a manger. We have God taking on flesh. And God introduces this deliverer to his people, Israel. And again, it's through mighty acts and wonders and miracles that God proves to the Israelites that he has raised up a prophet, the prophet, like that Moses had prophesied of. But the people he came to, again, resisted this deliverer. And so much so that in John 6, they said, "Well, Moses gave our fathers bread in the wilderness. What can you do?"

And Jesus' reply to them was, "Moses gave you not that bread in the wilderness. My Father gives you that bread." And then he goes on to explain that, "I am the bread of life." And through the whole chapter of John 6, we have Jesus identifying himself as the bread of life, which came down from heaven, of which a man can eat and live forever.

This new humanity is gendered not by a natural way of producing offspring, but by a miraculous spiritual gendering. And this is described in John 1, when John is introducing Jesus in his gospel.

In verse 11, it says, referring to Jesus, "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." Again, this was typical of the way it was with Moses. It took a while for the Israelites to learn who Moses was.

"But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believed on his name, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."

And this is crucial. John is introducing a crucial concept of what the new humanity is about and how it comes to be. "The word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."

John 3, we have more teaching on this new humanity. We have this man that knocks on Jesus' door in the middle of the night, and he has a question.

And for a grown man to get up in the middle of the night to go seeking wisdom from Jesus indicates that he is wrestling with something that he needs help with. And he comes to Jesus, and he knocks on his door in the middle of the night. And he begins and he introduces his conversation with Jesus by saying, "Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God. For no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him." And before he was able to get another word out of his mouth, Jesus answered a question that he never even asked.

And he said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God."

And Nicodemus' reaction was, "Well, how can this be? Can a man enter the second time into his mother's womb and be born?" And again, Nicodemus, his mind is trying to relate to something spiritual by thinking of the natural, which is the way we all do.

To understand spiritual things, we need to relate to it through the natural. And that's one of the wonderful things about the gospel, is that it's not irrelevant to the material things that we live in. So that Jesus can use the illustration of a seed to teach us something about regeneration. He can teach us something about natural birth to teach us something about spiritual birth.

His next reply to Nicodemus, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Marvel not that I say unto thee, ye must be born again." And he goes on to describe the work of the Spirit.

John 6, after that description where Jesus is illustrating to his listeners the fact that he is the bread of life and that if any man will live, he must eat his flesh and drink his blood, which was a very difficult concept for his listeners to comprehend. So much so that it says that many were offended at him and no longer followed him because of what Jesus taught in John 6 relating to his flesh and relating to his blood.

But Jesus gives us a key to understanding what he was teaching in John 6:63. He said, "It is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing. The words I speak, they are Spirit and they are life."

And so that verse unlocks the teachings that Jesus had just given about who he was and what we must do to have a regenerated mind and to be part of his new humanity that he is delivering out of Egypt.

So the point that I'm developing is that the new humanity is gendered, not by the will of man, but by the will of God. And it is a miraculous thing that has nothing to do with natural genetics and DNA, but rather spiritual genetics and spiritual DNA.

I think I'm going to take my thoughts to Ephesians. The book of Ephesians is a great book that illustrates the new humanity, I think, about the best of any of them. The first three chapters of Ephesians describe our position that we are in Christ. The last three chapters describe our condition that we find ourselves in Christ. But in Ephesians 3, well, one of the things I wanted to mention was there's no words or language that is peculiar only to the work of the Spirit.

But rather, it is the Holy Spirit that takes our words, our language, regardless of the language we're speaking in, whether it's English or Hebrew or Greek or any language of the world. It is the Spirit's responsibility to take words that we use and to make spiritual understanding happen through that. So when Jesus uses parables, when he uses natural illustrations like birth and seed, he's using natural things for the Spirit to use to quicken us with.

In Ephesians

1:17, we discover that God is a revelatory God and that it's his greatest pleasure and joy and intention to reveal to humanity who the real new humanity is, and that is Jesus Christ. And so God is very special in this fact that he is not aloof. Rather, he wants a relationship, and it is his utmost will and his desire to reveal Christ in us. And the last part of Ephesians 1, it describes what Jesus is, and it uses very descriptive language.

For instance, verse 21, "For he's far above all principality and power and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. And has put all things under his feet and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all." Now, that word church is translated out of that word, the Greek word ecclesia, which means, from what I understand, it had the Greek meaning of people getting together. And it had an ancient meaning of the citizens gathering together. And the church is illustrated in the New Testament by the words temple, body, household.

These are descriptions to illustrate what this ecclesia is, this group of people that meet together. And by meeting together, by the church meeting together as a new humanity, is one of the most important acts of the new humanity, this church, because it is in the meeting together that we fellowship one with another and with Jesus Christ. And we experience the communion of the body of believers in fellowship around the gospel and in partaking of the eminence of the bread and the wine and in washing feet together. This is how the church enjoys the fellowship of the new humanity with Christ, who is the true new humanity. I want to take you to chapter 2. I want to spend a good bit of time in chapter 2.

And Paul is talking. He's addressing the Gentiles. And he says, "And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sinned, wherein in times past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air and the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience." But verse 3, while he's addressing the Gentiles, he himself includes himself in the same address by saying, "Among whom also we all had our conversation in the times past, in the lust of our flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others." And I see Paul, as a Jew, representing the new humanity that he experienced, humbling himself in his address to the Gentiles by saying, "Even though you Gentiles were outside of the covenants of God and were being manipulated by wicked works," he said, "We also," referring to the Jews himself as a Jew, "who were given the covenant and embraced the covenant of circumcision in his flesh," he's saying, "We also fulfilled the lust of our flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others."

And so I see it's a very humble statement for Paul to say in addressing the Gentiles. He's basically saying, "I'm identifying you with your corrupt nature. Even though I'm a descendant of Abraham and embraced the covenants that the Gentiles didn't have a partaker of," he said, "I'm still identifying with the flesh that is unruly and the sin that rules in our flesh."

And he says, "But God, who is rich in mercy for his great love, wherewith he hath loved us." So again, he is saying that I, as a Jew, with you Gentiles, are experiencing the mercy and love wherewith God loved us. Even when we—now he's talking about a—he's talking about Gentile and Jew. We were dead in sins. It wasn't like the Gentile was dead and not the Jew, or the Jew was dead and not the Gentile. We were both dead in sins. He says, "While we were dead in sins, Christ has quickened us together with Christ. For by grace are you saved and have raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places."

And again, he's illustrating the position that Christ has subrigiously given humanity for those that will enter into this new birth and this regeneration of the mind. He's describing the position. He said, "We're sitting together with Christ in heavenly places."

And then in verse 7, he says that in the ages to come, he might show the exceeding riches of his grace and his kindness to us through Christ Jesus. "For by grace are you saved through faith and that not of works. It is the gift of God."

So through faith and grace, we are generously invited and called into this new humanity that he describes. "Not of works, lest any man should boast," which immediately makes a confrontational statement against the covenant of works at Mount Sinai. And he says, "For we are his workmanship," referring to Jesus. We are Jesus' workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, again referencing the new creation, the new humanity, the transformation. "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them."

And I find this interesting in this aspect is that we talk about the old covenant and the new covenant.

But in many ways, the new covenant pre-existed the dawn of the first day in the fact that it was pre-ordained before the foundation of the world that Jesus should be the Lamb of God. So the old covenant that we refer to is actually a covenant Paul refers to. It was added because of wickedness and unbelief.

But the covenant of Jesus and the intention of Jesus being the Savior of the world and the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world and regenerates our mind, was before the foundation of the world.

Now he goes on in verse 11, "For wherefore remember?" He's talking to the Gentiles again, "that ye being in the times past, Gentiles in the flesh who are called uncircumcision, but them that are called circumcision in the flesh made by hands, that at that time ye were without Christ." That's the sobering part that he's telling the Gentiles.

"You were aliens from the covenant of promise, aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenant of promise, having no hope and without God in the world." And I'd like to add, "Let alone the world to come. But now in Christ Jesus, ye who are sometimes or far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ."

So he's pulling them back in by the fact of the work of Jesus. He says, "But now, now in Christ Jesus, ye who are sometimes or far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ. For he, Jesus, is our peace, who has broken down that middle wall partition between us, having abolished in his flesh to Jesus' flesh the enmity. And he describes this enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances, which is referring to what we call the old covenant. "For to make in himself," there's so much being said in this verse. It's really hard to comprehend it. "For to make of himself, Jesus, of twain, Jew and Gentile, one new man, so making peace, and that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity thereby."

Now, on the surface, he's teaching that God is bringing the opportunity for both Jew and Gentile into this new humanity, the church, the ecclesia, which is a fellowship around the work of Christ. But what also is what he's teaching is that the body of Jesus, the person of—I should say the person of Jesus represents in his body and person both the Jew and the Gentile in the aspect that the flesh represents the Gentile and his inner man represents the Jew.

And I'm saying this because I'm trying to describe how God has been grooming a new humanity from ages past. And I'm going back to the development of the Jew through Abraham, who bore in his flesh the covenant of works and the covenant of circumcision.

And the purpose of that was to create a people that demonstrated the holiness and the will of God in earth. And while in many ways that failed, in many ways, it was a light to the world around them. And if you need a reference for that, Romans 3:19 illustrates that by saying that through that covenant, God brought the whole world guilty before him.

So going back to my discussion on the flesh and the inner man, by Jesus, when he died on the cross, his flesh was crucified. But in the garden of Gethsemane, before the cross, Jesus faced another cross where he had to let go of his own will to do the will of the Father.

And it's in that cross that every one of us should be able to identify who wants to be part of this new humanity, where we need to lay down the will of our flesh in order to take up the will of the Father.

And in doing so, we end up with a new man, not a Jew, not a Gentile. And the scriptures, especially in Romans, and Jesus also refers to this, that the gospel comes to the Jew first and then to the Gentile.

And if you think of yourself, or I'm going to use myself as my person, I have the inner man, and then I have the outer man. And this shouldn't be any stranger to anybody that reads the Bible because it talks about the old man and the inner man, the outer man and the inner man. And the inner man is represented by the Jew, and the outer man is represented by the Gentile. And in this crucifixion, we have the gospel, or in this narrative, this redemptive narrative, we have the gospel coming to our Jew first, which is our inner man, who can respond intellectually to the gospel.

The Jew needs to be converted first because our flesh is never converted. But our flesh is brought into subjection to our renewed inner man, which is the new Jew, so that our flesh becomes crucified flesh and becomes into subjection to the inner man. So that in this kingdom, in this country that we're describing as king and country, God is using men and women who are a born-again Jew and has adopted the mind of Christ and has brought their crucified flesh into subjection to the inner man, which is the regenerated man, the new Jew, the true Israel of God, so that the only way God's will can be accomplished in this country of his is by crucified flesh that is subject to the renewed Jew.

And I find that illustration very helpful to helping me understand what my responsibility as identifying with the new humanity in his kingdom in this world.

And later on in that chapter, he talks about the—I'll finish that. "For through him, we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father." And here again, we're using the illustration of a Jew and Gentile, but we end up with a new creature, not one or the other. And we have access to the Father by the Spirit. "Now therefore, we are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God." Here's one of the words that depicts the new humanity, household. And then it goes on to illustrate the structure, this temple, which is built by this new humanity which God dwells in. And there's no longer sacred structures and buildings, but rather sacred persons where God—sacred persons in an individual way, in a sacred person as far as a corporate way as the church of God, where the new humanity God dwells in us as a group and both individually and as a group.

Gospels chapter 3 is another very descriptive of our condition that we find ourselves in Christ and what we're to do is to—well, let me back up just one word. It was in Ephesians chapter 5.

Pardon, Ephesians chapter 4. "This I say therefore and testify in the Lord that ye henceforth walk not as other Gentiles walk in the vanity of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindness of their heart, who being past feeling have given themselves over to lasciviousness to work all uncleanness with greediness." And Paul's saying, "This is not who you are in Christ, but you have not so learned Christ, for this isn't the way Jesus has taught you. If so be that ye have heard him and been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus, that ye put off concerning the former conversation, the old man, which is corrupt according to deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness."

Gospels 3 makes some descriptions of that. "And put on the new man," Gospels 3:10, "which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him." Here again, we are referencing the creation that Jesus has brought about in us, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, sentient bond or free, but Christ is all and in all. "And put on therefore the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, unblemished of mind, meekness, long-suffering, forbearing one another, forgiving one another. If any man had quarreled against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do you." A beautiful description of the new humanity. People that lay down their own will to do the will of God and to prefer others before themselves. "And above all these things, put on charity, which is the bond of perfection, perfectness, and let the peace of God rule in your heart in which you are.

Ye also ye are called into one body and be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your heart to the Lord. And whatsoever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God in the Father by him."

Beautiful description of the new humanity. I also want to go to Galatians chapter 4. In Galatians chapter 4, Paul uses the illustration, and he had people that were followers of Jesus who wanted to—they were not understanding the transformed mind that comes through the new covenant. And they were trying to identify with Christ by having their feet in the old covenant, but their mind in the new covenant. And he's trying to explain to them that this doesn't work because one of the distinctives of the new covenant is that it makes you free from the old covenant.

And it frees you from the—not only the distinctives, but also the bondage that the old covenant puts you in. And he uses this argument, and he says, "You folks that want to keep your feet in the old covenant and to live by its dictates, let me explain something to you." He says in verse 21, "Tell me, ye that desire to be under the law, do ye not hear the law?" And then he goes on to use the story of Abraham's two wives as an allegory of the two covenants.

And while there was actually more than one covenant in the Old Testament, Paul reduces it to one covenant, and he compares the old covenant and the new covenant. He says, "For it is written that Abraham had two sons, the one by a bond woman and the other by a free woman.

For he who was of the bond woman was born after the flesh." And while I'm reading this, I want you to think about what I just read in John 1, where it says, "Being born not of the will of men, but by the will of God," which things are an allegory. For these are the two covenants, the one from Mount Sinai, which gendereth to bondage, which is Agar, which that's how the King James renders the word Hagar. So I just want to make sure everyone knows that Agar is the same as Hagar.

And this Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and answer to Jerusalem, which now is and is in bondage with her children. Paul's saying is that the old covenant, which was given to Mount Sinai, is illustrated in this allegory by Hagar, which was the servant maid that became Abraham's wife when he took upon himself to fulfill God's promise his own way.

And also in verse 24, it uses the word gendereth, which has to do to produce children. And the title of this chapter is called The Children of Promise, which is describing who this new humanity is.

"But Jerusalem," verse 26, "which is above, is free, which is the mother of us all. For it is written, 'Rejoice thou that beareth,' pardon me, 'Rejoice thou barren that beareth not. Break forth and cry thou that travaileth not, for the desolate have many more children than she which hath a husband,'" again, illustrating the birth process of this new humanity that has nothing to do with male and female.

"Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise." So now he's referencing the miraculous birth of Isaac and saying, "That's how we are in this new humanity. But as then he which was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so it is now. Nevertheless, what sayeth the scripture? Cast out the bond woman and her son, for the son of the bond woman shall not be heir with the son of the free woman."

Interestingly, my friend Jim pointed out to me that Hagar's name is used in this chapter, but not Sarah's, which again, it seems to be absent because of the fact that this describing of the children of promise is not illustrated by natural production of children, but rather through miraculous production of the children of promise.

There was a saying—an airline had a slogan one time that said that the difference between a little bit and a whole lot is not as great as the difference between a whole lot and a little bit more. Let me say it one more time. The difference between a little bit and a whole lot is not as great as the difference between a whole lot and a little bit more. Jesus is that little bit more that makes a huge difference than the whole lot that was given on Mount Sinai. The new covenant that Christ ministered and was the administrator of creates a tremendous differential between the old and the new and produces the new humanity that God is preparing to inherit the new heaven and new earth, which is what we are anticipating.

I think that's about where I'm going to draw to a close.

If you want to, you can open it up for comments, discussions, questions, whatever.

All right. Thank you, brother Leo. I did enough talking. I enjoyed that.

So I like the thought that you shared about God beginning the new humanity already in the garden with Adam and Eve and that promise He gave them and that God was working throughout the Old Testament to bring new humanity to reality. So are you saying the Old Testament was not so much a waiting period, but a time of preparation for this new humanity and for Christ to establish His kingdom?

I think that's well said.

One of the things that becomes problematic is if you don't include the Old Testament saints in our discussion, where are you going to put them? Because I anticipate spending eternity in the new heaven and new earth with people like Samuel that hacked his enemy to pieces with a sword.

I expect to spend eternity with Abraham, who had more than one wife, things that are not descriptive of the new humanity in Christ. And yet, at their particular time in history and the revealed knowledge of God, they were new humanity in the sense that God was grooming them for the coming perfect new humanity that He was going to bring into the world. So I'd like to include the Old Testament saints into our understanding of the new humanity, even though they didn't live under the new covenant.

Yeah. I like that. And Hebrews writer says, "The day without us was not made perfect." Something to that effect. The last verse of Hebrews chapter 11.

Very good. All right. Does anybody else have thoughts or questions to share here? Really appreciated that message this morning on the new humanity. One of the things I think about, and it is often my answer, in the last few days, I have been in discussion with a skeptic who is very skeptical of Christianity and of the Bible and so on. And where I always come back to, I think, is looking at Jesus as the perfect example of what humanity should look like.

So this new humanity is modeled after who Jesus is. And I think if we would look at Jesus, His teaching and His life and His example, if everybody in the world was like Jesus, we would live in the absolute perfect world. We would live in heaven, or we would live in the new creation.

Right? And so this new humanity being modeled after Jesus is the answer. So if you have a—if you're skeptical, if someone is skeptical of Christianity and they say, "Look at these terrible people. Look at the Crusades. Look at the Inquisition. Look at everything, the colonization of native people throughout the world, the slavery," and so on. And the question that I come back to is, is that the example that Jesus left us?

Is that the picture of the new humanity, the new creation, what Jesus taught us? And of course, the answer is no. And so it's not a question of what evil people did throughout the world in history, but it is this, what did Jesus do and what did Jesus teach? And are we following that?

And I guess in my mind, that's a simple way of bringing together a lot of different questions, bringing them back to Jesus, our King, our leader, our prophet, our high priest. And that is something that we can heartily defend. We don't have to try to cover anything up. We don't have to explain things away. We can defend that, what the new creation, the new humanity is modeled after, if that makes sense. So I just appreciate that whole message. And I'm sure there's so much more you could share on that. And there's so much more to be talked about in this area. So anyways, thank you. Thank you, brother.

Very good. Anybody else? So when I think of coaching my theology or where I put it, I guess I kind of started at the beginning with the creation as perfection. That's the way God intended it to be. And after the fall of man, then He had to use the old covenant to create a culture into which to bring Jesus Christ to redeem us, to bring us back to perfection.

And so in my mind, the Bible is simply the story of God creating this perfect people who fell. And then the Bible is simply the story of how we get from the fall in Genesis back to Revelation to the way God intended it to be.

And so the Old Testament is simply that culture that He created to put Christ into, to make Him fit in there. And so when we think of the purpose of the kingdom, the purpose of salvation, it's simply to take us back to what God's intended perfection was in the garden.

So I don't know if I have theology for this, but I think heaven will be a lot like the Garden of Eden. That's my idea. Yep. Thank you for that. I don't know if I'm right about this or not. And you're welcome to comment on this however you want. I agree with you. It's about a restoration of a relationship with God that we lost in Eden. I agree with you on that. I'm suspicious that the new heaven and new earth is somehow going to be even—it's going to have even a greater dimension of glory because of the redemptive culture that I think that's that term you used. Did you use the word culture, the redemptive culture that God brought into the world?

I think there's going to be additional splendor and glory to the fullness of that Jesus brought in, of the redemption that Jesus brought into—again, I'm not sure if I'm explaining myself in a way that's understood or even if I'm right in saying what I did. But somehow, I think it's going to be even a greater than the Eden experience.

I'll just drop it there because I don't want to confuse people with that, but. That is true. I guess I hadn't thought of it in that perspective. My old friend used to say that the song of the redeemed, the angels don't sing the song of the redeemed.

They haven't been redeemed. But the redeemed, we have a song, which is better than what the angels sang. So in that way, I get where you're going though. Yeah. I see that. Well, exactly. That's a good illustration of what I'm talking about. Adam and Eve didn't sing the song of the redeemed because they didn't even know what it was about.

But that's going to be a part of that heaven experience or the new heaven, new earth experience that there's going to be an added dimension to our understanding and comprehension of how great God is just through the redemption narrative.

Very good. Really appreciate those thoughts about that redemption aspect and the glory of God being brought out through that. All right. Well, it looks like we're two minutes past 7:00, so we should wrap this up. Next week, we are again meeting here on July 31st at 6:00 in the morning. And we're going to be talking about reflections on my use of apologetics by Bill Shiley. So if you think of it, be in prayer for that topic and that speaker. And I think that'll be a blessing to look at that. All right. So why don't we wrap this up with prayer? Brother Leo, why don't you lead us in prayer?

Heavenly Father, thank you for your faithfulness in generations past to this present. And we also know that you'll be faithful into the new heaven and new earth. Well, we shall dwell with you forever and experience the pleasure and joy of our Lord forever. And we'll be fellow heirs with Him in the glory and the splendor that we will enjoy when we are in your very presence because of this redemption that has been brought to us through Jesus Christ. So today, Lord, may your Spirit and your Word continually transform our minds from what we are by nature to what we are by grace and continue to blot out our shortcomings and iniquities with the blood of Jesus and wash us in His blood, sanctify us through your Word, which is the truth, and sustain us through that eternal bread of life of which we can eat and live forever in this new humanity that you have provided for all humanity, whosoever will.