Satanic Power

Welcome to Have You Not Read, a podcast seeking to answer questions from the text of scripture for the honor of Christ and the edification of the saints. Before we dig into our topic, we humbly ask you to rate, review, and share the podcast.

Thank you.

I'm Dylan Hamilton, and with me are Michael Deere.

And David Kazin, Chris Kiesler,.

And we also have Andrew Hudson here with us, and he will comment as he feels the need, but we only have four chairs here, and somebody had to get knocked out, and he drew the short stick, so here he is.

But we've been in discussion with each other and with a lot of people in our lives, either here at the church or family members, and it seems like a topic that's been coming up lately and just in general conversation is maybe, the context of it is spiritual powers and maybe Satan's or a misunderstanding of Satan's authority now, what it might have been in the New Testament or in the Gospels, and how we are to view it from the scriptures, how it is today and how we are to function, whether that be in prayer life, in church with one another, concerning what powers or what spiritual authority, if any, that Satan and his minions may have.

So we're gonna go ahead and have that be the subject broached here, and Michael, if you wouldn't mind starting us off.

So many times there are unhelpful, shall we say unbiblical pendulum swings as regards the enemy and thinking about Satan, and we can think about that trajectory in a couple of ways. One, someone who is very thoughtful about opposition to good things, thinking about the root cause of sickness or stress, setbacks, difficulties, and so on, will instinctively know that God is good and everything that he does is good.

God desires good things so that when bad things happen, and it seems pretty clear that they're bad, that all the credit should be given to a power other than God. When we see the death of children, the sickness of families, the division and falling apart of churches, when we see the kidnapping of missionaries, when we encounter various things and see various things, there is a hesitancy amongst sincere saints to say, I wonder what God is up to?

Because they're going to say, well, it's clear what Satan is up to. He's trying to keep the gospel from going out. He's trying to keep people lost. He's trying to destroy. He's stealing, he's killing, he's destroying.

I certainly see the work of Satan here. And when that kind of thing shows up in their own lives, they sense the need to engage in spiritual warfare and oppose what they see to be diabolical forces, demonic forces, indeed Satan himself.

Now, the pendulum swing can be one in which every negative happenstance can be interpreted as demonic oppression, opposition from the enemy, and so forth. Okay, there is another pendulum swing of saying, I think that's too much.

I don't think it's right to find two or three demons behind every bush. And I think that in the main, it's okay to just acknowledge that we live in a fallen world, and yet God is sovereign and he uses difficult things in our lives for our good.

And I don't have to attribute every negative circumstance to Satan. And I think while that's probably a healthy move, there's also the tendency to then kind of live as if there is no enemy, as if there are no spiritual forces of darkness whatsoever, as if they have no influence and there is no actual impact in the world in which we live today, kind of a little bit agnostic towards demons and Satan.

Okay, so I would say that either pendulum swing would be unhealthy in a biblical manner. Now, I think there could be a lot of agreement with someone who is concerned and perhaps they have a heightened awareness of things in their own interpretation of events, and they see demonic opposition in a variety of events in their lives and experiences and other people's lives, that that doesn't mean that they don't give all the credit to a sovereign God who's in charge of everything.

And they say at the end of the day, of course, God is in charge, he's sovereign over everything. In fact, we can see in the scriptures where God used demons as his means to achieve his ends.

We even have references in the Old Testament where the indictment against Israel is that when they're sacrificing to these foreign gods, to these gods of Canaan, they're actually sacrificing to demons.

We're not saying that that doesn't exist or that demons don't exist or that those things are just irrelevant or that they're metaphors, these are real things.

Yes, and that's good to acknowledge. So I would say that somewhere, not in terms of third wayism or anything, but to not swing the pendulum over to agnostic side where we sure like the Bible and the theology and the doctrine of it, but when it comes to demons and Satan, we just don't even pay attention to that.

It kind of muddies things up. And then the other side of it is over-emphasizing, over-privileging demonic forces in everyday events. Okay, now why can we say that biblically? Because I think that when we read the scriptures, that's the balance that we have in the scriptures.

We are encouraged in certain directions in the word. Where should our confidence be? Where should our focus be? Taking those exhortations to heart, we are far better off to be at peace and at rest in the good care of our good shepherd and not overly alarmed about the enemy and yet also not unaware of his devices.

I mean, when you read the gospels and you read the book of Acts, I mean, you're actually preaching through Acts right now on Sunday mornings, and then you look at some of the letters of Paul in the New Testament and Peter as well, you get a sense that this stuff happens often.

I understand that those are the stories that the writer's focusing on that point in time. As we read through it, as we read through the gospels, read through Acts, read through some of the letters, it seems to happen quite a bit, at least in that time, and that hasn't really been my lived experience today.

So we can talk about some of the differences and some of the different time periods, but there seems to be an emphasis on that, and let's say, just say in the gospels, the number of times that Christ himself went up against a very real demonic force.

And we're telling people that, hey, have you not read? I mean, we're telling people to read the scriptures and to pattern their life off those, and this is what God is teaching you. So at the risk of being hypocritical, are we telling people that that doesn't matter?

Are we telling people that, well, that kind of stuff happens, but that's for Jesus to take care of? I mean, if we read the scriptures, where is that balance?

Yeah, so I think the balance is in paying attention, paying more attention to the stories, not less. So when you have these encounters between Christ and demons or Satan's temptation of Christ in the wilderness, the history of the miracles through the apostles in the book of Acts, the description of spiritual warfare, for instance, in Ephesians chapter six, and John, first John, and in the book of Revelation.

These are just a sampling, but I think the way we should approach that is more study, more reading of that, more careful reading of that, not less. So in other words, there's a difference between, well, I think someone once put it this way.

Someone once told me, he said, I'm not an exegetical preacher. I'm not like an expositional preacher. Really, I'm a textual preacher.

Huh?

And what he meant by that was, although I've never been trained to be like expositional, he does preach text after text, but the text itself is simply introducing themes to explore, right? So you could preach one passage after another in order, but that's not necessarily expositional preaching.

It could be just textual preaching in which, hey, this text has these certain themes, and now let's go explore those themes.

So it's like abstracting, or like trying to find the abstract principles of the text rather than the actual meaning of the text, is that what you're saying?

Yeah, and of course, everyone's interested in the meaning of the text, okay? The difference is, approaching the scripture, if you're gonna approach it expositionally, what you're thinking is, how does this passage fit, particularly in a peculiar manner, in its unique manner, with the surrounding passages?

How does it actually fit within the flow of thought, the development of the teaching, the flow of the story? So for instance, I'll give you an example. When Saul visits the witch of Endor, this is a passage that would be a prime opportunity to develop the theme of witchcraft and how it needs to be opposed.

And in general, there's a great application there, obviously, but so much is going on in that passage that is not primarily about ghosts and witches and sorcery. Okay, there's a lot going on in the passage talking about the downfall of Saul, the judgment of God.

There's a lot going on in that passage. It is incredibly rich, given the themes of 1 and 2 Samuel.

It's not just a bad example to say, don't do what Saul did. Please don't go talk to witches and then raise people from the dead. That is bad. While we would agree that's bad, that's not the main point.

Yes, so when we come across a passage where Jesus, where he resists the temptation of Satan, okay, very often this passage gets taken and it's used textually. Like, this is really important. This is good information.

This is really applicable. Here's how we do spiritual warfare. We're gonna model Christ. I've got nothing to oppose that at all. I agree that we should take our lessons from Jesus in resisting temptation from this passage, but there is so much going on in that passage that is not about handing you a formula for spiritual warfare, okay?

And it's not time, and you don't spend about, you know, 10 minutes with the text and then begin bringing in other demonic encounters and, you know, and then land in Ephesians 6 and everyone goes out feeling like they're ready for battle.

So could you give us an example of what you're talking about as far as like, there's so much more to the text instead of, like, trying to extrapolate a meaning for us to apply. What else is going on in that text that you would say needs to be thought of before that application?

Okay, so, yeah, good question. David?

I thought the direction you were gonna go was talking about these major themes about Christ as the king and the coming kingdom and what he is doing against the forces of darkness and that the encounter with the demon appears to be almost, not secondary, but this is just an overall symptom of the coming of the kingdom, which is not of this world, whose power is not drawn from this world.

And it's just another example of his overall power, his power over creation and his power over these demons, his power over sickness and his power over this shows who he is. But how does that fit in the overall context?

Is that the overall context for what he's, what the author is trying to get at, trying to say who this person is?

Well, it seemed like earlier, you had mentioned the, like the number of accounts we see of demons in the gospels. Like, it seems like it's really ramped up the times that Jesus has confrontations with demons.

And I think that something is being said in that because we have references to Satan in the Old Testament, even titles like Prince of the Power of the Air. There's even comments in the New Testament about him being the God of this world and things like that.

I think we see there was an old system in which Satan in some sense was ruling, not that he had rightful ownership of it, but in some sense he was ruling, he was getting in the way, he was messing things up.

And then consistently we see in the New Testament, the talk of my kingdom has come, the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God is at hand. And I think that's why we're seeing so much of that conflict is you have two kingdoms coming into contact with each other.

And one is claiming to be God of this world and has been acting in such a way, but then you have the son of God entering into creation and making certain claims and doing certain things. And in the midst of all that is the disciples that are caught in between an old way of things and the new way of things.

Yeah, you certainly have a heightened level of spiritual warfare throughout this New Testament era, which marks the last days of the old covenant and the inauguration of the new covenant. And one of the questions you might wanna ask is this, why were there so many demons in Israel?

Like in general, or is there in that time period? Because there appears to be like periods when there was a lot of demonic attack and then it kind of went like times of miracles and then it kind of comes back down.

It seems to be almost like an ebb and flow or a feast and famine, if you can use that term.

Yeah, I think it was that time period, but also that area, like what in the world? I remember John MacArthur talking about it one time and it was his perception. I don't know how accurate this is, but it got me to thinking.

It was his perception that through Jesus's ministry in Galilee and Judea, that he was, I don't know if he said it was the diseases, particularly, maybe it was, but more or less his opposition to the demons.

He basically cleared out all of the demons out of the entire area. I don't know if that's true or not, but it sure reads like that when you start reading through, like wow, they all seem to get taken care of everywhere Jesus goes.

And yet the evil people still murdered him.

Yes.

Shows that even though all the demons were gone, it still happened.

So it's good to know that people can, I don't know if it's good to know, it's helpful to know that people can be evil and kill Jesus even if they're not demon possessed. Not everybody who is evil and evil minded is demon possessed.

That is helpful to think about. Now, if we're going to think about an example of where reading carefully, keeping things in context, reading expositionally rather than textually, we should take the chief example, right, of Jesus being tempted by Satan.

So in Matthew chapter four, interesting fact about Matthew chapter four is that it follows Matthew chapter three. And Matthew chapters one through four is introducing you to the king. There are seven fulfillments of prophecy in chapters one through four that introduce you to the king.

And then he goes up on a mountain and tells you what his kingdom's all about in Matthew chapters five, six, and seven. So it's nicely laid out for us and we get to be introduced to the king. Now when we get to chapter four of Matthew, we come to the last of the seven fulfillment passages where Jesus in his ministry in Galilee fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah chapter nine verses one and two, where Galilee of the Gentiles sees the light.

Right before that though, in Matthew chapter three, there's another fulfillment. And this one is focused on John the Baptist. And you'd say, well, it's a fulfillment of prophecy by John the Baptist. It really doesn't have anything to do with Jesus.

Actually it has everything to do with Jesus because he's the forerunner of the king.

He's the herald.

Yes, and John the Baptist is the greatest out of the whole old covenant. And where is he? By the way, he's the son of a Levite, a son of a priest. And he's doing his ministry in the wilderness. He is not in Jerusalem.

What does that tell you about how bad things are in Jerusalem, how bad things are in the temple? And he has nothing positive to say about the Jerusalem religion and the temple religion. In fact, when the key representatives from the temple religion come down to see what all the fuss is about, he calls them a brood of vipers.

He calls them snakes. And I don't think he was, I think it was pun intended. Okay, I think he knew what he was talking about when he called them snakes. And the wilderness ministry of John the Baptist is an indictment against the temple system.

He preaches very, very clearly judgment upon the entire thing. And then Jesus comes as the beloved son in whom God is well pleased. He is showcased in the baptism at the spot in the Jordan River where the first Yeshua took the generation into the promised land of rest.

Here's the fulfillment of Joshua, Yeshua himself. He's going to bring the people into the promised rest. And no, it's not gonna be through that temple in Jerusalem. So then we get to chapter four where immediately after his baptism, the spirit leads Jesus out into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan.

And we have three temptations. And it's actually more helpful to think about this passage, Matthew chapter four, verses one through 11 as the three responses, right? Because there were any number of passages that Jesus could have quoted to refute the temptation of Satan.

Why these three? Because these three passages also indict the temple religion as well. I mean, he goes hard, not just against Satan's temptation, but he also goes hard against the unfaithful steward of the old covenant in the temple system.

And he starts off with reminding them about the rebellion at Meribah and Massa. Deuteronomy 8 .3, he quotes from Deuteronomy chapter eight and says, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, reminding the people about their grumbling, that they didn't have the food in the wilderness.

It was God who let you be hungry, right? Reminding the people of their rebellion, the fact that they were not abiding by the word of God. They were not abiding by the scriptures. And then in the second temptation, go up to the temple, make a big show of yourself, throw yourself off and his angels will not allow you to dash your foot against a stone.

And then what does Jesus say?

But the Lord do not do the test.

Yeah, well, what was Israel always doing, right? And in connection with the temple, right? The third temptation where I think we're getting to one of the points that Chris was making. The Satan is not making an illegitimate offer.

In a sense he is, but in a sense he's not. He's offering Jesus possession and control of the nations.

Why?

Because he has them in his grasp. He has been deceiving the nations, right? He's the great deceiver. He was deceiving the nations. He was possessing them and he was hampering them. He was pulling the wool over their eyes, pulling the veil over their eyes, keeping them deceived.

And he's offering control of all of them to Christ in a crossless road to glory. Just fall down and worship me. And then Jesus says, what? He says, it's the Shema. This is the John 3 .16 of the Jewish life.

And what's the problem with the Jews? John and Jesus and later on Stephen and the apostles point out that they are idolatrous. They're not really worshiping God, they worship the temple. In fact, Jesus rebuked the Pharisees for allowing oaths based on the temple, but not the gold of the temple.

You can tell what they were worshiping. They were idolatrous. Stephen was stoned because he called them idolaters, that they worship the idol of the temple. Jesus answers Satan's temptations in a way that takes aim at the temple system.

And it makes sense that he's in league with John the Baptist who just baptized him. They're in agreement. John was in the wilderness preaching. Here Jesus is in the wilderness and he's preaching. He's given three responses to Satan and they're recorded for the benefit of the hearers, the readers of Matthew's gospel.

And then

Which is particular to a Jewish audience.

And then following right up with that, we have the fulfillment of Jesus preaching in Galilee amongst the nations. Well, that corresponds with the final temptation, all the kingdoms of the earth. And then the next thing that happens is Jesus calls disciples to follow him come to me versus, that's a new covenant temple versus the old covenant temple, which was the second temptation.

And then the outboundry of this parallelism is, hey, you need bread, don't you? And at the end we see Jesus meeting physical needs. Okay, so there's a thematic pattern throughout Matthew chapter four.

So when we look at it, it's a yes, Jesus did quote scripture to refute the temptation of Satan. All right? That's why we teach our children to memorize scripture and then remind them to quote scripture and resist temptation.

And we remember the admonition from Psalm 119, how can a young man keep his way pure?

Okay?

I've hidden your word in my heart that I'm not sinning against you.

Yeah.

Now, when we keep reading though expositionally and we think about how it's all connected and what Matthew's up to by the Holy Spirit, I think it's helpful to be reminded that the scriptures are safe enough for a child to wade and deep enough for an elephant to drown.

Studying this area of the scripture, I have to cut it off at some point. I just can't keep going. I've got to move on to other things. There's just more and more and more to see. But to your point, Chris, there is a power struggle going on in this moment in time.

Jesus talks about binding the strong man in Matthew chapter 12, plundering his possessions. He talks about, we have the description in Revelation 20 in the victory of Christ in his ascendancy in his reign, which he's reigning now as ruler of the kings of the earth, king of kings and Lord of lords.

Peter preaches in Acts chapter two that Jesus Christ possesses the throne of his father, David, now from the right hand of God. So welcome to the thousand year reign. During this time, Satan is bound in what way?

Particularly, it says in the text, not bound in every possible way, not sequestered away into apparent non-existence, but he is restrained and bound particularly in that he cannot deceive the nations anymore.

Well, what happens in concert with the death and resurrection of Christ and his commissioning of his followers is what preaching the gospel to all the nations, right? So there is a moving aside of the old and moving into the new.

And in the process of that, there's a lot of spiritual warfare that goes on. But I would have us note that a lot of the spiritual warfare as is described in the New Testament is focused on the satanic control, demonic possession of the stewardship of the old covenant versus the new covenant and Christ coming as the mediator and defeating the enemy.

So when Christ comes and he curses the temples, he's made a den of thieves, he says, you are of your father, the devil in John 8, 44. He's not playing around. He's not using hyperbole just to make some noise.

He's not clickbait. He's saying

Not rhetorics.

Yeah, it's not rhetorics, right? He condemns that kind of stuff, that kind of language. He is saying, you are Satan's spawn. You are Satan's tool. And when he's talking about the problems that are going on in the temple, it's not that they got some of the stuff wrong and just being conservative like they were.

They just didn't like change. You got a little bit irritated with Jesus and his new ways. No, he was exposing the fact that they were being controlled by the enemy. And this is language that Paul picks up in his letters as well.

So you asked a question earlier and I don't know if anybody spouted off an answer. Why did the demon show up at this particular time and in this particular place, right?

Yes, so there was a great deal of opposition. Jesus is coming to, remember when David shows up and Saul is jealous and he is plagued by a oppressing spirit, right? And this oppressive spirit would stir Saul up to do what?

Try to kill David.

Try to kill David. Well, the greater David shows up and those to whom the kingdom had been entrusted but they were not a people after God's own heart, that he's tearing the kingdom away from them and giving it to one who is after his own heart, are stirred up by oppressive spirits and in rage, they come after Jesus.

Jesus identifies them as being under this influence and Matthew chapter 12 was a good passage to go look at as they're trying to accuse him, they're kind of projecting accusing him of being in league with Beelzebub.

And in that passage, he has a very telling thing in Matthew chapter 12 where he exposes their bad logic in a sense, but he does have a bit of a prophecy here. So in Matthew chapter 12 and verse 43, and this is after Jesus has clarified that he is greater than Solomon, they want a sign.

He says, no, here's the sign of Jonah. Remember that Jonah was in the belly of the fish, comes out, this is apparent death and resurrection here of Jonah. This is the sign that Jesus is giving to them.

Jonah comes out and says, 40 days, this city is gonna be overthrown. Jesus has risen from the dead and he says, within a generation, within 40 years, this city is gonna be overthrown. Time to repent and believe.

So he calls, he puts Jerusalem on something like the same level as Nineveh, you know, that kind of pagan.

Even the language that he uses, the judgment coming on Jerusalem was the same language he used to the pagan nations, you know, in Isaiah and Joel. So it's similar language. He's treating Israel and that generation as a pagan nation.

Right, and so then he follows up in verse 43 of Matthew 12. He says, when an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest and finds none. Then he says, I will return to my house from which I came.

And when he comes, he finds it empty, swept and put in order. Then he goes and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there. And the last state of that man is worse than the first.

So shall it also be with this wicked generation. So now Jesus is not just telling stories. He's not giving advice for proper spiritual warfare. He's saying something about the judgment. In the context of Matthew 12, this is very important.

Now, what has Jesus been doing in his ministry? He's been casting out demons, just casting out demons everywhere he goes. He's cleaning out things and making things orderly. He goes to the temple. And what does he find in the temple?

It's pretty disorderly, isn't it? And there's all sorts of deceit going on there and people are being robbed because of the money changers.

The place where the Gentiles were supposed to come to worship was made a marketplace.

Yes, you have made my father's house a house of identity thieves. Jesus cleans house. He cleans house. If you've ever done a little bit of study about what Jerusalem and what the temple was like within a generation near the end, it was definitely seven times worse chaos going on in the temple when the end came.

And Jesus is talking here in Matthew 12 and all throughout Matthew talks about this wicked and perverse generation and very clearly states that this wicked and perverse generation is going to see the destruction of the temple, the destruction of Jerusalem.

They're gonna be judged. And he says here that their end is going to be one that is sevenfold possessed by demons. They already are. They already have this problem and it's gonna get worse. So Jesus is not talking about all Jews.

He's not talking about there's an ethnicity that's always demon possessed. He's talking about the final cataclysmic end of those who reject Messiah and go down in the flaming ship of the old covenant which was well designed, perfectly bestowed by a good and favorable God.

And when God found fault, he found fault with them, Hebrew says, not with his covenant that he made. His covenant was good. And in fact, he was good and holy and right to judge them in the way that he did.

He didn't find fault with his own covenant. He found fault with them. But I would have us note that when we read in the New Testament all these encounters of demons and spiritual warfare, how often does it have to do with the connection between the Jews who are holding fast to the old covenant stewardship but not holding fast to the old covenant God who are covenant transgressors and so on and they're just trying to hold on to power.

Not always, we don't always find the spiritual interaction, the spiritual warfare happening along those lines but very often we do.

Well, I'm gonna give an example then. And Chris had talked about this off mic earlier talking about the God of this world. You have 2 Corinthians 3, even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing.

In this case, the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God. And is it, would it be appropriate, looking at the paragraph before or the chapter before, that this would be calling Satan the God of this world, the one who has veiled their hearts?

Would it be, in the context that you just mentioned, I'm thinking of a cross-reference out of Matthew 13. We're talking about the parable of the sowers, saying that it's an indictment from Isaiah 6, to hear with understanding.

That's why I'm speaking about them in parables so they wouldn't hear. But chapter, verse 19 says, "'The evil one snatches away "'what has been sown in their heart.'". That was that parable of the sower.

I encourage everybody to go and read that. But there was one where the birds come and snatch it away. Well, that was the evil one coming and snatching it away. So we have 2 Corinthians, you have the God of this world and the veiled hearts, and you're speaking in parables.

And is this another example of that time period where you have people whose hearts are veiled, you have Israelites who's veiled, who are adhering to a previous covenant, you have Gentiles in the nations where Satan has power over them, the power is waning, but he is deceiving the nations.

Is that in the same theme with what you have just been saying?

Yeah, I think it has to be because when you start reading in verse 7, it's, I mean, Paul makes it pretty clear. He says, "'But if the ministry of death "'written and engraved on stones was glorious.'".

He's talking about the law, the old covenant, okay.

This is in chapter 3.

Chapter 3 of 2 Corinthians 7, yeah. Verse 7 of chapter 3. "'So that the children of Israel "'could not look steadily at the face of Moses "'because of the glory of his countenance, "'which was glory passing away.'".

Now, remember, do you remember the story? They didn't wanna have anything to do with Sinai, it was too much. But then when Sinai got all over Moses, they didn't wanna have anything to do with Moses. And Moses comes down out of the Mount Sinai, and Moses is now the burning bush, and they don't wanna have anything to do with him.

It's just too much. They're like, put a veil over that. You are scaring us, stop. Now, that's some glory, Paul's saying. And he said, "'And that glory, nothing compared to the greater glory.'". That glory is passing away.

He's saying this weight, this light, this significance of the old covenant, as powerful as it is, is something that is passing away. This whole arrangement of interacting between heaven and earth by this mediator, this is all passing away.

This wasn't even the main show. Okay, so let's move on. Verse eight, he says, "'How will the ministry of the Spirit "'not be more glorious compared with the letter, "'ministry of the letter, "'versus the ministry of the Spirit, "'the old covenant versus the new?

"'How often do we read in the New Testament, "'or Jesus saying, Jesus is greater than, "'always greater than?'. Okay, so obviously, if there was glory in the old covenant, and boy, was there ever, how much greater glory do we have in the new?

"'For if the ministry of condemnation had glory, "'the ministry of righteousness "'exceeds much more in glory. "'For even what was made glorious "'had no glory in this respect, "'because of the glory that excels.

"'For if what is passing away was glorious, "'what remains is much more glorious.'". Again, we are being told, this is passing away, this is passing away, this is passing away. We are reminded of Hebrews 8, 13, that the old covenant is obsolete and ready to pass away.

This accords with all the other expressions of the apostles and Christ talking about these are the last days of, what, this age. Okay, this whole system of how this old covenant were in the last days, okay?

"'Therefore,' verse 12, "'therefore, since we have such hope, "'we use great boldness of speech, "'unlike Moses, who put a veil over his face, "'so that the children of Israel "'could not look steadily at the end "'of what was passing away.

"'But their minds were blinded.'". Right, just like in the way back when, when the veil came over Moses' face, they couldn't see the glory. So he says, "'For until this day, "'the same veil remains unlifted "'in the reading of the Old Testament.'".

Right, the law, the prophets, and the writings, Jesus, God, Nazareth, he reads from Isaiah, and he's reading, today this is fulfilled in your hearing, and then eventually they get really mad.

And try to kill him.

Yeah, they get ticked.

Yeah.

And he says, but the veil, he says in verse 14, is taken away in Christ. So this whole thing, he's talking about Jews, he's talking about those who are the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who are in this tradition of Judaism, but it's not just tradition, this is actually the old covenant, generation after generation, and they have a veil over their eyes when they read the Old Testament.

They can't see the real glory, just like they couldn't see Moses' face, but the veil is taken away in Christ. When you come into the new covenant in Christ, that veil is taken away, and then you can see the real glory of the old covenant.

Okay, verse 15, "'But even to this day, when Moses is read, "'a veil lies on their heart.'". Man, that's sad. Remember, this is Paul who has a very deep burden for his brethren according to the flesh.

He so desires to see them saved that even though he gets frustrated from city after city when he gets rejected by the synagogue, he comes to the new city, he can't help himself, he's back in the synagogue.