Is the Bible The Word of God, or is Jesus? - Evan Wickham
*The GoodLion PodcastAugust 22, 2022
8
01:28:5061.02 MB

Is the Bible The Word of God, or is Jesus? - Evan Wickham

🎙️ Aaron Salvato🎙️ Aaron SalvatoHost
🎙️ Brian Higgins🎙️ Brian HigginsCo-Host

Years ago I heard one of my mentors, Evan Wickham, use a phrase I found compelling. He said: "Jesus is what God has to say." It was powerful and it stuck with me. Over the years I've been mulling over this phrase and thinking about how it intersects with one of the debates that's being had within Christianity about the concept of “the word of God.”



Some people insist the Bible is the word of God. Still others insist, no Jesus is the Word of God. Where does the truth lie?



That's the question we are going to dive into today.



On this episode I'm joined by that same mentor I learned the phrase “Jesus Is what God has to say” from: my former youth pastor and good friend, Evan Wickham. I know you're going to be blessed to hear from Evan today. If you don't know him, he's a worship leader, Husband and father of 5 kids, a graduate of western seminary, and a church planting pastor who leads Park Hill Church in San Diego.



I can't speak more highly of the guy. He's been one of the people in my life who has challenged me and inspired me to follow Jesus the most. He's always encouraged me to dive deep, not shy away from tough questions, and has always pointed me back to Christ. In fact, if it wasn't for the ways he impacted me over the years, this show and ministry of GoodLion probably wouldn't exist!



With all that said, I know you're going to enjoy todays episode as we explore the concept of the "Word of God", and ask who, or what, is the Word of God? We get deep. We get Biblical. I know that I learned a lot, and I hope you do too.



I hope this conversation between a teacher and his former student blesses you, encourages you, challenges you, and surprises you.



Youre listening to the GoodLion podcast



This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit goodlionpod.substack.com


00:00:01 --> 00:00:02 Years ago,

00:00:02 --> 00:00:06 I heard one of my mentors use a phrase that I found compelling.

00:00:06 --> 00:00:09 He said, Jesus is what God has to say.

00:00:09 --> 00:00:11 It was powerful and it stuck with me.

00:00:12 --> 00:00:12 Over the years,

00:00:12 --> 00:00:15 I've been mulling over this phrase and thinking about how it

00:00:16 --> 00:00:16 intersects with one of

00:00:16 --> 00:00:19 the debates that's being had within Christianity about the phrase,

00:00:20 --> 00:00:21 the word of God.

00:00:21 --> 00:00:24 Some people insist the Bible is the word of God.

00:00:25 --> 00:00:29 Still, others insist, no, Jesus is the word of God.

00:00:29 --> 00:00:30 Where does the truth lie?

00:00:30 --> 00:00:32 That's the question that we're going to dive into today.

00:00:33 --> 00:00:33 On this episode,

00:00:34 --> 00:00:36 I'm joined by that same mentor that I learned the phrase,

00:00:36 --> 00:00:38 Jesus is what God has to say from,

00:00:39 --> 00:00:41 my former youth pastor and good friend,

00:00:41 --> 00:00:42 Evan Wickham.

00:00:42 --> 00:00:44 I know that you're going to be blessed to hear from Evan today.

00:00:44 --> 00:00:45 If you don't know him,

00:00:45 --> 00:00:46 he's a worship leader,

00:00:46 --> 00:00:48 a husband and a father of five kids,

00:00:49 --> 00:00:52 a graduate of Western Seminary and a church planting pastor who

00:00:52 --> 00:00:53 leads Park Hill

00:00:53 --> 00:00:54 Church in San Diego,

00:00:54 --> 00:00:55 a fantastic church.

00:00:55 --> 00:00:56 If you're in that area, check it out.

00:00:57 --> 00:00:58 You won't be sorry.

00:00:58 --> 00:01:00 I can't speak more highly of the guy.

00:01:00 --> 00:01:03 He's been one of the people in my life who has challenged me

00:01:03 --> 00:01:04 and inspired me to

00:01:04 --> 00:01:06 follow Jesus the most.

00:01:06 --> 00:01:08 He's always encouraged me to dive deep,

00:01:09 --> 00:01:10 not shy away from tough questions,

00:01:11 --> 00:01:13 and he's always pointed me back to Jesus.

00:01:13 --> 00:01:14 In fact,

00:01:14 --> 00:01:17 if it wasn't for the ways that he's impacted me over the years,

00:01:17 --> 00:01:20 this show and ministry of Good Lion honestly probably wouldn't exist.

00:01:21 --> 00:01:23 So we here at Good Lion are very thankful for Evan.

00:01:24 --> 00:01:25 With all that said,

00:01:25 --> 00:01:28 I know you're going to enjoy today's episode as we explore the

00:01:28 --> 00:01:29 concept of the Word

00:01:29 --> 00:01:33 of God and ask who or what is the Word of God.

00:01:34 --> 00:01:34 We get deep,

00:01:35 --> 00:01:35 we get biblical,

00:01:36 --> 00:01:37 I know that I learned a lot,

00:01:37 --> 00:01:38 and I hope you do too.

00:01:38 --> 00:01:41 I hope this conversation between a teacher and his former

00:01:41 --> 00:01:42 student blesses you,

00:01:42 --> 00:01:43 encourages you,

00:01:43 --> 00:01:44 challenges you,

00:01:44 --> 00:01:45 and even surprises you.

00:01:45 --> 00:01:47 You're listening to The Good Lion Podcast.

00:01:55 --> 00:01:55 Hey, everybody.

00:01:56 --> 00:01:57 Welcome to the Good Lion Podcast.

00:01:57 --> 00:02:02 This is Aaron Salvato, and I'm joined with my good friend, Evan Wickham.

00:02:02 --> 00:02:03 How's it going, man?

00:02:03 --> 00:02:04 Hey, Aaron.

00:02:04 --> 00:02:04 Really good.

00:02:05 --> 00:02:06 It's good to have you on the show, man.

00:02:06 --> 00:02:09 Again, it's great to be talking to you.

00:02:09 --> 00:02:11 We've been talking a little bit before we hit record,

00:02:11 --> 00:02:12 and it's just been great to catch up.

00:02:12 --> 00:02:15 I'm really excited you're here today because the topic that

00:02:15 --> 00:02:16 we're going to be

00:02:16 --> 00:02:18 discussing is one that is very near and dear to my heart.

00:02:19 --> 00:02:22 yeah yeah first of all thanks so much for having me back last

00:02:22 --> 00:02:23 one was really fun we

00:02:23 --> 00:02:26 had a long meandering conversation about i think it's kind of

00:02:26 --> 00:02:27 related actually how

00:02:27 --> 00:02:31 people want to you know kind of question the things we've been

00:02:31 --> 00:02:31 handed i think i

00:02:31 --> 00:02:34 think the theme was deconstruction i think yeah one of the

00:02:34 --> 00:02:34 things we want to

00:02:34 --> 00:02:38 deconstruct is how we view the bible and what the bible is and

00:02:38 --> 00:02:39 so you know as

00:02:39 --> 00:02:42 followers of jesus it's a really important conversation yes

00:02:42 --> 00:02:43 thank you i love i love

00:02:43 --> 00:02:45 what you're doing you're really good at what you do man

00:02:45 --> 00:02:46 Thanks, man.

00:02:47 --> 00:02:49 It's a really important conversation.

00:02:49 --> 00:02:51 It's great to have you here to talk about it.

00:02:51 --> 00:02:53 The concept that we're going to go over is actually one that I

00:02:53 --> 00:02:55 learned indirectly from you.

00:02:55 --> 00:02:58 I picked up from you and it's blessed me for years.

00:02:59 --> 00:03:00 And yeah, I do agree.

00:03:00 --> 00:03:02 This is a very important conversation and there's a lot of

00:03:02 --> 00:03:04 confusion around it.

00:03:04 --> 00:03:07 And here at the show, we love to dive into those nuances.

00:03:07 --> 00:03:08 And so...

00:03:08 --> 00:03:09 Yeah, it's good to have you back.

00:03:09 --> 00:03:09 I mean,

00:03:10 --> 00:03:11 you've been on the show several times,

00:03:11 --> 00:03:13 but it's only once officially.

00:03:13 --> 00:03:14 And then the other times are like,

00:03:14 --> 00:03:17 I'm taking a clip of you teaching and putting it into an

00:03:17 --> 00:03:17 episode because it

00:03:18 --> 00:03:20 reinforces something we're talking about.

00:03:20 --> 00:03:22 So it's good to have you here officially.

00:03:22 --> 00:03:24 So why don't we jump right in?

00:03:31 --> 00:03:35 There is a phrase that I learned from you indirectly,

00:03:36 --> 00:03:36 you know,

00:03:36 --> 00:03:37 heard you say it in sermons.

00:03:38 --> 00:03:39 You've mentioned it on social media.

00:03:40 --> 00:03:41 It's one that stuck with me.

00:03:41 --> 00:03:47 And it's the idea of Jesus is what God has to say.

00:03:48 --> 00:03:51 And it's connected to the idea of in the beginning was the word

00:03:51 --> 00:03:52 and the word was

00:03:52 --> 00:03:53 with God and the word was God.

00:03:53 --> 00:03:55 Jesus as the logos, as the word of God.

00:03:56 --> 00:03:57 And so that's a phrase that

00:03:58 --> 00:03:59 I've embraced.

00:03:59 --> 00:04:00 I love it.

00:04:00 --> 00:04:01 Others, I brought it up.

00:04:01 --> 00:04:02 There's some pushback.

00:04:02 --> 00:04:04 There's some confusion around it.

00:04:04 --> 00:04:06 And so I want to get into all that with you.

00:04:06 --> 00:04:06 But to start out,

00:04:06 --> 00:04:10 I'd love to just have you clearly define what does that phrase

00:04:10 --> 00:04:12 mean to you?

00:04:12 --> 00:04:14 What is Jesus is what God has to say?

00:04:14 --> 00:04:15 What does it mean to you?

00:04:16 --> 00:04:17 Yeah, Aaron, that's great.

00:04:17 --> 00:04:19 I heard that phrase.

00:04:20 --> 00:04:20 To me,

00:04:20 --> 00:04:22 it made a whole lot of sense of the whole New Testament,

00:04:22 --> 00:04:23 really,

00:04:23 --> 00:04:25 and everything the Old Testament was longing for,

00:04:25 --> 00:04:29 and that was for God to finally speak through His Son.

00:04:29 --> 00:04:33 And Hebrews 1 is probably the go-to place for,

00:04:33 --> 00:04:34 you know,

00:04:34 --> 00:04:37 New Testament grounding for this idea that Jesus is what God has to say.

00:04:37 --> 00:04:40 And, you know, I have my Lagos Bible open here, and...

00:04:42 --> 00:04:43 Yeah, Hebrews 1.

00:04:44 --> 00:04:45 In the past,

00:04:45 --> 00:04:49 God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times

00:04:49 --> 00:04:50 in various ways.

00:04:50 --> 00:04:56 But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son.

00:04:57 --> 00:05:00 And, you know, another way of saying that is Jesus...

00:05:01 --> 00:05:05 is what god has to say he's he's the final word capital w yeah

00:05:06 --> 00:05:06 even that even that

00:05:06 --> 00:05:09 word logos means word and that's the second person of the

00:05:09 --> 00:05:11 trinity in the beginning

00:05:11 --> 00:05:16 was the the capital w word and i get i get the pushback

00:05:17 --> 00:05:17 You know,

00:05:17 --> 00:05:20 a part of the fear,

00:05:20 --> 00:05:22 and I resonate with this concern,

00:05:22 --> 00:05:23 it makes me nervous,

00:05:23 --> 00:05:25 is when people say things like,

00:05:25 --> 00:05:25 hey,

00:05:25 --> 00:05:26 Jesus is the word of God.

00:05:27 --> 00:05:28 When people say that,

00:05:28 --> 00:05:32 often what's implied there is that the Bible isn't true.

00:05:33 --> 00:05:35 Jesus is the word of God, not the Bible.

00:05:36 --> 00:05:38 I've actually heard that in more progressive circles,

00:05:38 --> 00:05:43 almost trying to separate Jesus from biblical authority.

00:05:43 --> 00:05:47 And I think that is not just dangerous,

00:05:47 --> 00:05:51 but heretical and not remotely what Jesus would be interested

00:05:51 --> 00:05:52 in us doing.

00:05:52 --> 00:05:56 But yeah, so to me, Jesus is what God has to say.

00:05:56 --> 00:05:58 Jesus is the center of the gospel.

00:05:59 --> 00:06:05 It is a very Jesus-centered way of approaching all of the world,

00:06:05 --> 00:06:05 all of life,

00:06:05 --> 00:06:06 all of the Christian faith,

00:06:07 --> 00:06:07 and the scriptures,

00:06:07 --> 00:06:07 too.

00:06:08 --> 00:06:09 And I remember you said,

00:06:10 --> 00:06:10 you know,

00:06:10 --> 00:06:12 when we were getting ready for this podcast the other day,

00:06:13 --> 00:06:15 you pointed to John 5,

00:06:15 --> 00:06:18 39,

00:06:15 --> 00:06:18 where Jesus looks at the religious Bible people.

00:06:18 --> 00:06:18 Yeah.

00:06:19 --> 00:06:20 He looks at the Pharisees and he's like,

00:06:20 --> 00:06:21 you guys,

00:06:21 --> 00:06:24 you search the scriptures thinking in them you have eternal life,

00:06:24 --> 00:06:26 but you've missed me.

00:06:26 --> 00:06:29 The scriptures point to me.

00:06:30 --> 00:06:33 They reveal me as the living word.

00:06:34 --> 00:06:34 And...

00:06:36 --> 00:06:37 So just right up front,

00:06:37 --> 00:06:41 a clear distinction for me and my brain that helps me kind of

00:06:41 --> 00:06:41 see the two.

00:06:42 --> 00:06:44 The Bible as the word of God and Jesus as the word of God.

00:06:44 --> 00:06:46 Jesus is a capital W word.

00:06:46 --> 00:06:48 The Bible is the little W word.

00:06:48 --> 00:06:49 They're both a word.

00:06:49 --> 00:06:52 We could talk more about that, but that's kind of a summary.

00:06:55 --> 00:06:56 That's great.

00:06:56 --> 00:06:57 That's a great summary.

00:06:57 --> 00:07:00 I feel like I was going to ask you first, what does it mean to you?

00:07:00 --> 00:07:02 And then I was going to follow up with what doesn't it mean?

00:07:02 --> 00:07:06 And I think you started to hit both of those things really well.

00:07:06 --> 00:07:06 On this show,

00:07:06 --> 00:07:10 a lot of times we talk about things at length because I think

00:07:10 --> 00:07:12 repetition is good.

00:07:12 --> 00:07:15 It helps concepts sink in because often you can hear a concept

00:07:15 --> 00:07:16 in a one-liner,

00:07:17 --> 00:07:19 but it doesn't actually fully sink into your brain until it's

00:07:20 --> 00:07:21 been discussed,

00:07:21 --> 00:07:22 until you understand it.

00:07:22 --> 00:07:22 So...

00:07:23 --> 00:07:24 That's what we want to do.

00:07:24 --> 00:07:25 We just want to talk about this concept.

00:07:26 --> 00:07:26 You know,

00:07:26 --> 00:07:26 for me,

00:07:27 --> 00:07:29 what that phrase has meant to me over the years,

00:07:30 --> 00:07:30 you know,

00:07:30 --> 00:07:31 as somebody,

00:07:31 --> 00:07:32 as a young youth pastor,

00:07:32 --> 00:07:33 heard that phrase from you,

00:07:34 --> 00:07:34 adopted it,

00:07:35 --> 00:07:35 started to wrestle through,

00:07:36 --> 00:07:36 pray through,

00:07:36 --> 00:07:37 what does this mean?

00:07:37 --> 00:07:38 And the place where I got with it was...

00:07:39 --> 00:07:43 this understanding of, okay, we have the Bible.

00:07:44 --> 00:07:47 The Bible is super important, but what is the purpose of the Bible?

00:07:47 --> 00:07:50 The purpose of the scriptures are,

00:07:50 --> 00:07:53 it's a unified story that leads to Jesus.

00:07:53 --> 00:07:56 The point of everything is Jesus.

00:07:57 --> 00:08:00 It sums up, it fulfills itself in Jesus.

00:08:00 --> 00:08:01 And so for me,

00:08:01 --> 00:08:02 when I look at the phrase,

00:08:02 --> 00:08:02 you know,

00:08:02 --> 00:08:03 what Jesus is,

00:08:03 --> 00:08:04 what God has to say,

00:08:04 --> 00:08:07 I think of it almost like if someone came to me and said,

00:08:08 --> 00:08:10 What is what is what is God's message for me?

00:08:10 --> 00:08:13 Like, what is God trying to say to me?

00:08:13 --> 00:08:17 And if you just open up to some random passage in the Old

00:08:17 --> 00:08:18 Testament or even the New

00:08:18 --> 00:08:19 Testament and there's no context,

00:08:20 --> 00:08:22 there can be so many messages that someone could walk away with and go,

00:08:23 --> 00:08:23 oh,

00:08:23 --> 00:08:23 so God means this.

00:08:24 --> 00:08:24 God means that.

00:08:25 --> 00:08:26 But if you look at in the context,

00:08:27 --> 00:08:30 Jesus is what God has to say to people and that he uses the

00:08:30 --> 00:08:30 scriptures to say it.

00:08:31 --> 00:08:33 Jesus reveals God's heart.

00:08:33 --> 00:08:36 Jesus reveals God's mission, his mindset.

00:08:37 --> 00:08:40 And I'd argue his primary method of accomplishing his goals,

00:08:40 --> 00:08:44 which is grace and forgiveness and restorative justice.

00:08:44 --> 00:08:45 Like, yes, he's a God of justice.

00:08:45 --> 00:08:47 Yes, he punishes sinners.

00:08:47 --> 00:08:51 But Jesus reveals to us that he has this agenda of trying to

00:08:52 --> 00:08:54 restore broken people

00:08:54 --> 00:08:55 and the broken world.

00:08:56 --> 00:08:58 So that's that's what it's meant to me over the years.

00:08:58 --> 00:08:59 It's beautiful.

00:08:59 --> 00:09:00 Thanks, man.

00:09:01 --> 00:09:01 I love it.

00:09:01 --> 00:09:02 It was well said.

00:09:13 --> 00:09:15 We threw out something in the beginning about the logos,

00:09:15 --> 00:09:17 about in John 1,

00:09:17 --> 00:09:18 in the beginning was the word.

00:09:18 --> 00:09:19 You've been to seminary.

00:09:19 --> 00:09:20 I haven't.

00:09:21 --> 00:09:23 I did one semester of Bible college in York, England.

00:09:24 --> 00:09:24 Loved it.

00:09:24 --> 00:09:25 Met my wife.

00:09:25 --> 00:09:26 It was a really great experience.

00:09:26 --> 00:09:26 Awesome.

00:09:27 --> 00:09:28 I wish I would have paid more attention.

00:09:28 --> 00:09:30 I wish I would have taken better notes.

00:09:30 --> 00:09:32 I've tried to make up for it by just being a lifelong learner

00:09:32 --> 00:09:33 and reading.

00:09:33 --> 00:09:36 But for you as a seminarian, can you break down for us

00:09:37 --> 00:09:38 The logos.

00:09:38 --> 00:09:39 What does that mean?

00:09:39 --> 00:09:39 Like,

00:09:39 --> 00:09:42 I know it's a it's a basic question,

00:09:42 --> 00:09:44 but I think there might be people listening.

00:09:44 --> 00:09:46 There might be some people listening where they're not as

00:09:46 --> 00:09:47 familiar with that as they could be.

00:09:47 --> 00:09:50 So how does that connect to Jesus being the word,

00:09:50 --> 00:09:51 Jesus being what God has to say?

00:09:51 --> 00:09:53 How does that connect to John one?

00:09:55 --> 00:09:58 Yeah, well, first of all, I'm, you know, no, no Greek specialist.

00:09:58 --> 00:09:59 And,

00:09:59 --> 00:09:59 you know,

00:09:59 --> 00:10:00 in seminary,

00:10:00 --> 00:10:01 my MDiv is just,

00:10:01 --> 00:10:02 just,

00:10:02 --> 00:10:05 you learn just enough Greek over one year to be very

00:10:05 --> 00:10:06 detrimental with the Greek language.

00:10:07 --> 00:10:08 So you don't,

00:10:08 --> 00:10:08 you don't,

00:10:08 --> 00:10:11 you don't know enough to say that you know the language.

00:10:12 --> 00:10:12 or Hebrew or whatever.

00:10:12 --> 00:10:13 And,

00:10:13 --> 00:10:13 you know,

00:10:13 --> 00:10:14 I'm not an expert in,

00:10:15 --> 00:10:15 you know,

00:10:15 --> 00:10:16 anything,

00:10:16 --> 00:10:17 but I,

00:10:17 --> 00:10:18 but I do,

00:10:18 --> 00:10:19 I love,

00:10:19 --> 00:10:23 I love the gospel of John and I'm thankful for all the

00:10:23 --> 00:10:24 interpreters that have given

00:10:24 --> 00:10:25 us English translations.

00:10:25 --> 00:10:26 And I just love,

00:10:26 --> 00:10:27 you know,

00:10:27 --> 00:10:33 in the beginning was the word and John one is clearly mirroring

00:10:33 --> 00:10:34 Genesis one.

00:10:34 --> 00:10:36 And I love how,

00:10:36 --> 00:10:37 if you've seen the chosen,

00:10:37 --> 00:10:39 I don't know if you've seen that TV show.

00:10:39 --> 00:10:39 So good.

00:10:40 --> 00:10:44 I think it was the first or second episode of season two where

00:10:44 --> 00:10:46 John is writing his

00:10:46 --> 00:10:51 gospel and he flashes back to Jesus teaching in a synagogue and

00:10:51 --> 00:10:52 Jesus asks John,

00:10:52 --> 00:10:53 what should I preach on?

00:10:55 --> 00:10:59 and and jesus who is the second person of the trinity aka the

00:10:59 --> 00:11:01 logos the word second

00:11:01 --> 00:11:04 person the son the pre-existent son that's what that means the

00:11:04 --> 00:11:05 pre-existent eternal

00:11:06 --> 00:11:09 son he asks john the son of thunder what should i preach on and

00:11:09 --> 00:11:10 and he's like i've

00:11:10 --> 00:11:12 always liked genesis 1 he's like that's it that's what that's

00:11:12 --> 00:11:13 what i'll preach on

00:11:13 --> 00:11:17 in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth and the

00:11:17 --> 00:11:17 earth was without

00:11:18 --> 00:11:21 form and he begins to unpack genesis 1 and john's flashing back

00:11:21 --> 00:11:22 just like weeping

00:11:23 --> 00:11:26 Because he's realizing, that's where I'm going to begin my gospel too.

00:11:27 --> 00:11:30 In the beginning, was God created?

00:11:30 --> 00:11:35 No, Logos was with the God who created and was God.

00:11:36 --> 00:11:38 And everything was made through this Logos,

00:11:38 --> 00:11:40 this second person of the Trinity,

00:11:40 --> 00:11:41 this pre-existent son.

00:11:41 --> 00:11:45 You could just see John weeping over this revelation.

00:11:45 --> 00:11:46 Jesus is that word.

00:11:46 --> 00:11:47 Because he knows Jesus.

00:11:47 --> 00:11:48 Right.

00:11:48 --> 00:11:50 He knows Jesus, deeply knows Jesus.

00:11:50 --> 00:11:53 He was the one who leaned back on Jesus's chest and felt

00:11:54 --> 00:11:56 Jesus's own pulse rate at

00:11:56 --> 00:11:57 the communion table.

00:11:57 --> 00:12:00 He's like zooming out and he's seeing the magnitude of it.

00:12:00 --> 00:12:02 Like this person who's been his friend for years.

00:12:02 --> 00:12:05 And now it's like he was there at the beginning.

00:12:05 --> 00:12:06 Like he created all of this.

00:12:06 --> 00:12:07 Yes.

00:12:07 --> 00:12:09 He said all this and it's powerful.

00:12:10 --> 00:12:14 And it's interesting that John pulls from Greek philosophy a

00:12:14 --> 00:12:15 word that was very

00:12:15 --> 00:12:17 common in the secular world at that time,

00:12:17 --> 00:12:18 and that was logos.

00:12:18 --> 00:12:19 And I,

00:12:20 --> 00:12:20 again,

00:12:20 --> 00:12:23 I'm not an ancient Greek specialist at all,

00:12:23 --> 00:12:28 but I do know that that word existed in pagan circles to

00:12:28 --> 00:12:30 describe what is the thing

00:12:30 --> 00:12:32 behind the thing.

00:12:33 --> 00:12:34 What is ultimate reality?

00:12:34 --> 00:12:34 Mm-hmm.

00:12:36 --> 00:12:40 Because everything we know is because of that reality.

00:12:40 --> 00:12:40 What is that?

00:12:41 --> 00:12:45 And they called it this logos, this knowing, this word.

00:12:46 --> 00:12:47 And John pulled that.

00:12:47 --> 00:12:49 He said, oh, I know who that knowing is.

00:12:49 --> 00:12:51 I know who that word is.

00:12:51 --> 00:12:54 He said so himself when he unpacked creation for us.

00:12:54 --> 00:12:54 Hmm.

00:12:55 --> 00:12:59 And so to say Jesus is the word of God is to take Genesis 1 and John 1,

00:12:59 --> 00:13:03 superimpose them on each other and center them on the baby who

00:13:03 --> 00:13:04 was born to Mary.

00:13:04 --> 00:13:07 And there's no better time to think on that than now.

00:13:07 --> 00:13:09 We're recording this the week of Christmas.

00:13:10 --> 00:13:14 And one of my favorite books I read in seminary was a

00:13:14 --> 00:13:17 1700-year-old pamphlet called

00:13:17 --> 00:13:21 On the Incarnation by Saint Athanasius,

00:13:21 --> 00:13:22 a hero of the faith.

00:13:22 --> 00:13:23 Mm-hmm.

00:13:23 --> 00:13:24 It's called On the Incarnation.

00:13:25 --> 00:13:26 And throughout this little book,

00:13:26 --> 00:13:28 it's like 60 pages or something,

00:13:28 --> 00:13:33 the main term Athanasius uses to describe the Jesus event,

00:13:34 --> 00:13:35 the main term is the word,

00:13:35 --> 00:13:36 the logos.

00:13:36 --> 00:13:38 He prefers that term even over Christ.

00:13:38 --> 00:13:39 Obviously,

00:13:39 --> 00:13:40 Jesus is the Christ,

00:13:40 --> 00:13:47 but he's referring to this event where God spoke through not just a text,

00:13:47 --> 00:13:47 but

00:13:47 --> 00:13:48 But through flesh,

00:13:48 --> 00:13:49 bone,

00:13:49 --> 00:13:49 life,

00:13:50 --> 00:13:50 death,

00:13:50 --> 00:13:50 resurrection,

00:13:50 --> 00:13:51 the Jesus event,

00:13:52 --> 00:13:53 it's this word.

00:13:53 --> 00:13:55 And Athanasius is channeling the author of Hebrews.

00:13:55 --> 00:13:56 He's like,

00:13:56 --> 00:13:57 oh my gosh,

00:13:57 --> 00:13:58 so many prophets,

00:13:58 --> 00:13:59 so many poets,

00:13:59 --> 00:14:01 so much text that's come to us from God.

00:14:02 --> 00:14:03 100% the Bible is the word of God.

00:14:03 --> 00:14:04 But in these last days,

00:14:05 --> 00:14:06 God has finally,

00:14:06 --> 00:14:09 fully spoken through his own son.

00:14:10 --> 00:14:12 And Jesus is what God has to say.

00:14:12 --> 00:14:15 So to me, that's kind of how I put the pieces together.

00:14:31 --> 00:14:36 I love the acknowledgement of the relationship between Jesus

00:14:36 --> 00:14:37 and the Bible.

00:14:38 --> 00:14:40 One of the things that I've heard when I've studied the Logos

00:14:40 --> 00:14:42 is the word Logos.

00:14:42 --> 00:14:45 One meaning you can get from it is sort of not just a word like

00:14:46 --> 00:14:48 the or God,

00:14:48 --> 00:14:50 but it's a message.

00:14:50 --> 00:14:51 It's a statement.

00:14:51 --> 00:14:54 So it's like in the beginning was God's message.

00:14:54 --> 00:14:58 In the beginning was what God was trying to communicate to us.

00:14:58 --> 00:14:59 And that's Jesus.

00:15:00 --> 00:15:01 But when I was younger,

00:15:01 --> 00:15:01 you know,

00:15:01 --> 00:15:04 just just by the nature of the environment I grew up in,

00:15:04 --> 00:15:08 I would hear all the time people refer to the Bible as God's word,

00:15:08 --> 00:15:09 which I don't think is a bad thing.

00:15:09 --> 00:15:09 But,

00:15:10 --> 00:15:10 you know,

00:15:10 --> 00:15:10 I'd be like,

00:15:10 --> 00:15:11 bro,

00:15:11 --> 00:15:13 what have you read in the word this morning?

00:15:13 --> 00:15:15 You know, it was always kind of the word.

00:15:15 --> 00:15:16 So as a young man,

00:15:16 --> 00:15:17 the Bible,

00:15:17 --> 00:15:19 the Bible doesn't really refer to itself that way.

00:15:20 --> 00:15:20 That's true.

00:15:20 --> 00:15:20 Right.

00:15:20 --> 00:15:21 Yeah.

00:15:21 --> 00:15:24 So when when I would read John one as a young man,

00:15:24 --> 00:15:27 as a very young man child,

00:15:27 --> 00:15:28 I would,

00:15:28 --> 00:15:28 you know,

00:15:28 --> 00:15:32 in the beginning was the word I imagined this Bible floating

00:15:32 --> 00:15:33 through the cosmos,

00:15:33 --> 00:15:34 you know,

00:15:34 --> 00:15:35 just flapping its pages,

00:15:35 --> 00:15:38 its onion skin pages like wings.

00:15:39 --> 00:15:43 And and so, you know, and and I think to some extent,

00:15:44 --> 00:15:48 I want to go in a direction with this because before we get

00:15:48 --> 00:15:49 into fleshing out what

00:15:49 --> 00:15:53 we mean by the Bible being God's word and Jesus,

00:15:53 --> 00:15:54 but them meaning different things,

00:15:55 --> 00:15:57 can you maybe speak into sort of the stereotype?

00:15:57 --> 00:15:58 Like you've traveled all over.

00:15:59 --> 00:16:01 You've been to so many different churches as a worship leader.

00:16:01 --> 00:16:03 You've been around so many different kinds of Christians.

00:16:04 --> 00:16:08 There's a stereotype with some Christians where they view the

00:16:08 --> 00:16:09 Bible almost as the

00:16:09 --> 00:16:10 fourth member of the Trinity.

00:16:10 --> 00:16:11 You know,

00:16:11 --> 00:16:12 there's that expression of father,

00:16:12 --> 00:16:12 son,

00:16:12 --> 00:16:14 Holy Bible instead of,

00:16:14 --> 00:16:14 you know,

00:16:14 --> 00:16:15 Holy Spirit.

00:16:16 --> 00:16:16 Have you seen that?

00:16:17 --> 00:16:19 Like, is that a caricature or have you seen that?

00:16:19 --> 00:16:22 And in some ways, how have you seen that play out in a negative way?

00:16:23 --> 00:16:23 If you have.

00:16:24 --> 00:16:27 Yeah, it's mostly, it's not a character in some places.

00:16:28 --> 00:16:29 At the beginning,

00:16:29 --> 00:16:29 I mentioned,

00:16:29 --> 00:16:30 you know,

00:16:30 --> 00:16:33 kind of a progressive way of separating Jesus and the Bible,

00:16:34 --> 00:16:37 where it's Jesus versus the Bible.

00:16:37 --> 00:16:40 They try to pit Jesus against the text.

00:16:40 --> 00:16:43 I think the same separation happens on the conservative end

00:16:43 --> 00:16:45 with what I call bibliolatry.

00:16:45 --> 00:16:46 I've heard that before.

00:16:46 --> 00:16:46 I didn't make it up.

00:16:47 --> 00:16:49 But bibliolatry is what you just described,

00:16:49 --> 00:16:52 where your mental image of the Bible is false.

00:16:53 --> 00:16:56 It's this golden tablets thing that descended from the sky,

00:16:56 --> 00:16:58 and it is fourth member of the Trinity,

00:16:58 --> 00:16:59 often third,

00:16:59 --> 00:17:02 taking priority before the Holy Spirit in practice.

00:17:03 --> 00:17:07 And that's equally incorrect.

00:17:07 --> 00:17:10 The Bible is not golden tablets that fell from the sky.

00:17:10 --> 00:17:16 The Bible is a thoroughly human book and uniquely divine

00:17:16 --> 00:17:17 collection of scriptures.

00:17:18 --> 00:17:23 It's both divine scripture and a thoroughly human book that infallibly,

00:17:23 --> 00:17:28 inerrantly points to Jesus as the center of the gospel and the

00:17:28 --> 00:17:29 prime reality behind

00:17:29 --> 00:17:30 the universe as creator.

00:17:30 --> 00:17:30 Hmm.

00:17:31 --> 00:17:36 And so the danger comes when I think we have this dictation

00:17:36 --> 00:17:37 theory model of the

00:17:37 --> 00:17:39 Bible where we think the Bible is,

00:17:39 --> 00:17:39 you know,

00:17:39 --> 00:17:42 golden tablets that came through meat puppet humans that just

00:17:43 --> 00:17:44 dictated something

00:17:44 --> 00:17:45 beyond their brains.

00:17:45 --> 00:17:46 That's how I always thought it was.

00:17:46 --> 00:17:47 Like they were filled,

00:17:48 --> 00:17:50 possessed by the Holy Ghost and then their hands just start,

00:17:50 --> 00:17:51 you know,

00:17:51 --> 00:17:52 writing.

00:17:52 --> 00:17:52 Yeah.

00:17:53 --> 00:17:54 Yeah,

00:17:54 --> 00:17:57 and that's the danger in that is when you then go to read and

00:17:57 --> 00:17:58 apply the scripture,

00:17:59 --> 00:18:00 you can overemphasize,

00:18:00 --> 00:18:00 you know,

00:18:00 --> 00:18:01 the Bible says it,

00:18:01 --> 00:18:02 I believe it,

00:18:02 --> 00:18:03 that settles it.

00:18:03 --> 00:18:07 And you miss one important piece, and it's I interpret it.

00:18:08 --> 00:18:08 Yes,

00:18:08 --> 00:18:09 God says it 100%,

00:18:09 --> 00:18:10 but you have to interpret it,

00:18:11 --> 00:18:13 especially if you don't speak ancient Greek or Hebrew.

00:18:13 --> 00:18:15 There's been an interpretation along the way somewhere.

00:18:16 --> 00:18:20 And we trust that those interpretations are fully valid and we

00:18:20 --> 00:18:22 have ways of verifying that 100%.

00:18:23 --> 00:18:27 But eventually you have to like decide how to work out a letter to,

00:18:27 --> 00:18:27 you know,

00:18:27 --> 00:18:34 a first century Greco-Roman pagan city like Corinth and wonder,

00:18:34 --> 00:18:37 should my wife be praying with her head covered?

00:18:37 --> 00:18:37 Yeah.

00:18:38 --> 00:18:38 Right.

00:18:38 --> 00:18:40 At church, because Paul commands it.

00:18:41 --> 00:18:44 And if we're honest with our reading, it's a command.

00:18:44 --> 00:18:48 So if we ignore the I interpret it part,

00:18:49 --> 00:18:50 we can get into heaps of trouble.

00:18:51 --> 00:18:51 Yeah.

00:18:51 --> 00:18:52 So I have this book here.

00:18:52 --> 00:18:55 I know you can see me, but the listeners cannot.

00:18:55 --> 00:18:58 But this is Unbreakable.

00:18:58 --> 00:19:01 It's a book called Unbreakable by Andrew Wilson.

00:19:01 --> 00:19:02 And again, it's very short.

00:19:03 --> 00:19:05 I'm recommending pamphlets only today.

00:19:06 --> 00:19:06 Great.

00:19:08 --> 00:19:08 Yeah.

00:19:09 --> 00:19:09 Unbreakable.

00:19:10 --> 00:19:10 And the subtitle is,

00:19:11 --> 00:19:11 you'll love this,

00:19:12 --> 00:19:15 what the son of God has to say about the word of God.

00:19:15 --> 00:19:16 Yes.

00:19:17 --> 00:19:17 I love it.

00:19:17 --> 00:19:18 I do.

00:19:18 --> 00:19:18 Yes.

00:19:18 --> 00:19:19 You were right.

00:19:19 --> 00:19:19 Yes.

00:19:19 --> 00:19:22 And, uh, and it's exactly what we're talking about.

00:19:22 --> 00:19:24 Did Jesus view the scriptures as God's word?

00:19:25 --> 00:19:26 The answer is an emphatic.

00:19:26 --> 00:19:26 Yes.

00:19:27 --> 00:19:27 Yes.

00:19:28 --> 00:19:28 Emphatic.

00:19:28 --> 00:19:28 Yes.

00:19:29 --> 00:19:33 And for him to say that competes with his status as the word of God,

00:19:33 --> 00:19:34 he would laugh at that.

00:19:34 --> 00:19:34 Hmm.

00:19:35 --> 00:19:36 He would laugh at that.

00:19:36 --> 00:19:39 And so how do we begin understanding this?

00:19:39 --> 00:19:42 And Andrew goes to Jesus, and I love this.

00:19:42 --> 00:19:42 I'm going to read this.

00:19:42 --> 00:19:43 It's amazing.

00:19:43 --> 00:19:45 He says, basically, where do we start?

00:19:45 --> 00:19:45 He says,

00:19:45 --> 00:19:50 this book will use Jesus as the starting point for coming to

00:19:50 --> 00:19:50 the Bible.

00:19:50 --> 00:19:51 And he says, that's controversial.

00:19:51 --> 00:19:52 I know.

00:19:52 --> 00:19:54 Some people want to start with the Bible to get to Jesus.

00:19:54 --> 00:19:55 But he's like,

00:19:55 --> 00:19:55 no,

00:19:55 --> 00:19:57 this book's going to start with Jesus to get to the Bible.

00:19:58 --> 00:19:59 And he's like, that's controversial.

00:19:59 --> 00:20:00 Ultimately,

00:20:00 --> 00:20:00 you see,

00:20:00 --> 00:20:03 our trust in the Bible stems from our trust in Jesus Christ.

00:20:04 --> 00:20:04 Hmm.

00:20:04 --> 00:20:05 The man who is God,

00:20:05 --> 00:20:06 the king of the world,

00:20:06 --> 00:20:07 the crucified,

00:20:07 --> 00:20:07 risen,

00:20:07 --> 00:20:09 exalted rescuer.

00:20:09 --> 00:20:13 I don't trust in Jesus because I trust the Bible.

00:20:14 --> 00:20:17 I trust the Bible because I trust in Jesus.

00:20:17 --> 00:20:20 I love him and I've decided to follow him.

00:20:20 --> 00:20:24 So if Jesus acts and talks as if the Bible is trustworthy,

00:20:24 --> 00:20:24 authoritative,

00:20:24 --> 00:20:25 good,

00:20:25 --> 00:20:25 helpful,

00:20:25 --> 00:20:26 and powerful,

00:20:26 --> 00:20:27 then I will too.

00:20:27 --> 00:20:31 Even if some of my questions remain unanswered or my answers

00:20:31 --> 00:20:32 remain unpopular.

00:20:32 --> 00:20:32 Hmm.

00:20:33 --> 00:20:33 Hmm.

00:20:34 --> 00:20:35 I love that.

00:20:35 --> 00:20:37 And that's the model we use in our community.

00:20:37 --> 00:20:40 I think that's the historic model of understanding the Bible.

00:20:40 --> 00:20:42 We follow it because Jesus tells us to.

00:21:01 --> 00:21:04 Maybe what I can do right now is I can kind of play the

00:21:04 --> 00:21:07 audience because this is a

00:21:07 --> 00:21:09 teacher talking to a student right now.

00:21:09 --> 00:21:10 You were my youth pastor.

00:21:10 --> 00:21:13 I've been somebody who considers myself someone who's been

00:21:13 --> 00:21:14 learning from you over the years.

00:21:14 --> 00:21:16 So I can maybe tell you

00:21:17 --> 00:21:20 how I've absorbed this information and where I've gone with it.

00:21:21 --> 00:21:22 And maybe you can tell me,

00:21:22 --> 00:21:23 you know,

00:21:23 --> 00:21:25 if that is the right way to think about it.

00:21:25 --> 00:21:26 So the place where I'm at with all of this,

00:21:26 --> 00:21:31 because I've been wrestling through this topic for quite some time now,

00:21:32 --> 00:21:34 and I will probably continue to wrestle with it.

00:21:35 --> 00:21:39 The place where I am at with it is basically I understand the

00:21:39 --> 00:21:41 Bible to be divine.

00:21:41 --> 00:21:46 And what I mean by that is the Bible is the way that God

00:21:46 --> 00:21:49 decided to communicate his message.

00:21:50 --> 00:21:55 to humans the messages about Jesus the method of communication

00:21:55 --> 00:21:56 was Scripture it was

00:21:56 --> 00:22:00 not just you know oral tradition passed down to become a

00:22:00 --> 00:22:00 telephone game but it was

00:22:01 --> 00:22:05 actually things written down to us the way the Bible is a human

00:22:05 --> 00:22:06 book because I see

00:22:06 --> 00:22:09 some progressives try to go oh yeah the Bible is just a human

00:22:09 --> 00:22:09 book and what they

00:22:10 --> 00:22:13 mean by that is it has no authority like it is just a bunch of

00:22:13 --> 00:22:15 opinions and

00:22:15 --> 00:22:16 thoughts and

00:22:16 --> 00:22:18 And poems and histories,

00:22:19 --> 00:22:22 but it really doesn't have any authority over your life is what

00:22:22 --> 00:22:23 my more progressive

00:22:23 --> 00:22:24 friends would say and what they have said to me.

00:22:25 --> 00:22:26 I reject that notion.

00:22:26 --> 00:22:30 I do believe the Bible to be a human book in the sense of just

00:22:30 --> 00:22:32 as God has done

00:22:32 --> 00:22:33 throughout his entire plan.

00:22:34 --> 00:22:38 He has partnered with flawed humans to produce things like he

00:22:38 --> 00:22:39 did not have to do

00:22:39 --> 00:22:41 what he did through Adam and Eve.

00:22:41 --> 00:22:42 He did not have to pick Noah.

00:22:42 --> 00:22:44 He did not have to work with Abraham.

00:22:44 --> 00:22:48 The scriptures themselves show us that God's preferred method

00:22:48 --> 00:22:50 to do things is to

00:22:50 --> 00:22:51 work through flawed humans.

00:22:51 --> 00:22:53 And it's not always a perfect result,

00:22:54 --> 00:22:55 but it's it's him working in and through.

00:22:55 --> 00:22:58 So with the scriptures, you know, the way I view it is.

00:22:59 --> 00:23:00 whatever I'm reading in this book,

00:23:00 --> 00:23:03 this is a part of what God is trying to communicate.

00:23:03 --> 00:23:05 It is what he wanted to be here.

00:23:06 --> 00:23:08 It was divinely inspired.

00:23:08 --> 00:23:11 He didn't possess anybody and they didn't go into a trance and

00:23:11 --> 00:23:11 start writing,

00:23:12 --> 00:23:16 but he like through this insane work of divine,

00:23:16 --> 00:23:18 I don't know if the word's providence,

00:23:18 --> 00:23:20 but just his divine will,

00:23:20 --> 00:23:23 he worked through humans to produce this book that leads us to Jesus.

00:23:23 --> 00:23:24 So

00:23:24 --> 00:23:26 It's like when when I'm reading,

00:23:26 --> 00:23:27 for instance,

00:23:27 --> 00:23:30 Peter makes a comment in his letter to one of the churches

00:23:30 --> 00:23:30 where it's like,

00:23:30 --> 00:23:30 yeah,

00:23:30 --> 00:23:31 Paul's kind of hard to understand.

00:23:32 --> 00:23:37 I've moved from a place of like God divinely possessed Peter to

00:23:38 --> 00:23:39 say that about Paul

00:23:39 --> 00:23:41 and more of like that was a little bit of Peter's humanity

00:23:41 --> 00:23:42 slipping through.

00:23:42 --> 00:23:45 You know, that's where we get the human side.

00:23:45 --> 00:23:45 Right.

00:23:45 --> 00:23:48 Yeah, I think that's an important piece.

00:23:48 --> 00:23:53 The humanity is always gushing through on every page.

00:23:53 --> 00:23:56 It's not that God holds back any author's humanity at any point.

00:23:57 --> 00:24:00 That's part of kind of getting rid of the old paradigm.

00:24:01 --> 00:24:03 It's not that God let Peter's humanity slip through in that one

00:24:03 --> 00:24:04 moment and the rest

00:24:04 --> 00:24:05 was like divine.

00:24:06 --> 00:24:07 Humanity is gushing through on every page.

00:24:07 --> 00:24:08 Yeah.

00:24:08 --> 00:24:12 error and polygamy and, and I don't mean error in the text.

00:24:12 --> 00:24:13 I mean,

00:24:13 --> 00:24:14 error in the human sense,

00:24:14 --> 00:24:16 in the story and the events behind the text.

00:24:17 --> 00:24:17 Yeah.

00:24:17 --> 00:24:21 And I was already expecting a listener to be like, what did he just say?

00:24:21 --> 00:24:22 So that's, that's a good clarification.

00:24:22 --> 00:24:22 And even,

00:24:23 --> 00:24:24 And even error,

00:24:24 --> 00:24:29 so what modern minds might call errors are not concerns for the

00:24:29 --> 00:24:30 humans that wrote it.

00:24:30 --> 00:24:35 Like, we have mismatched measurements in the Kings and Chronicles.

00:24:36 --> 00:24:39 Bronze lavers, like manufactured pools of water that...

00:24:39 --> 00:24:41 In one place, it says it's this wide.

00:24:41 --> 00:24:43 In another place, it says it's that wide.

00:24:44 --> 00:24:47 A perfect circle versus non-perfect circle in an oval.

00:24:47 --> 00:24:48 It's like, well, which is it?

00:24:48 --> 00:24:49 Oh, my gosh.

00:24:49 --> 00:24:50 There's an error.

00:24:50 --> 00:24:52 Therefore, God's not writing the Bible.

00:24:52 --> 00:24:52 No.

00:24:53 --> 00:24:58 For some people who've been given, I hold to a principle of inerrancy.

00:24:58 --> 00:24:59 But for some people,

00:25:00 --> 00:25:05 they take inerrancy so far that if they discover that any of

00:25:05 --> 00:25:05 those measurements

00:25:05 --> 00:25:07 might be off in some way,

00:25:07 --> 00:25:08 it throws off their entire faith.

00:25:09 --> 00:25:10 For me,

00:25:10 --> 00:25:11 reading Joshua Ryan Butler's book,

00:25:12 --> 00:25:13 Skeletons in God's Closet,

00:25:13 --> 00:25:14 there was something he said in there that really helped me

00:25:15 --> 00:25:15 where he was talking about,

00:25:16 --> 00:25:16 you know,

00:25:16 --> 00:25:17 the Bible says they,

00:25:17 --> 00:25:17 you know,

00:25:17 --> 00:25:18 battle.

00:25:18 --> 00:25:19 Joshua fought somebody.

00:25:19 --> 00:25:21 They killed, let's say, 2000 people is what the text said.

00:25:22 --> 00:25:25 If the number of people that were actually slain was like one

00:25:25 --> 00:25:26 thousand nine hundred

00:25:27 --> 00:25:27 and fifty six.

00:25:28 --> 00:25:32 Is my entire faith thrown off now if I went back in time and

00:25:32 --> 00:25:32 discovered that?

00:25:32 --> 00:25:33 Like, oh, the Bible's wrong.

00:25:34 --> 00:25:36 It's like, no, there's a literary method here.

00:25:36 --> 00:25:37 There was humans involved.

00:25:37 --> 00:25:40 They're using a generalization.

00:25:40 --> 00:25:42 You know, that's how they talked about battles.

00:25:42 --> 00:25:44 When a battle was won,

00:25:44 --> 00:25:47 they'd look at the number of people that died and they'd kind

00:25:47 --> 00:25:48 of round it up to a

00:25:48 --> 00:25:49 certain number.

00:25:49 --> 00:25:52 So it's just understanding those kind of things that can help.

00:25:53 --> 00:25:53 Oh, big time.

00:25:53 --> 00:25:55 That's very, very important.

00:25:55 --> 00:25:58 And it's not a concept I had in my early years as a Christian.

00:25:58 --> 00:26:01 It's that the Bible's thoroughly human.

00:26:02 --> 00:26:03 It's thoroughly human.

00:26:03 --> 00:26:07 It's not that God possessed meat puppets to write special words

00:26:07 --> 00:26:07 that were beyond

00:26:07 --> 00:26:08 their understanding.

00:26:09 --> 00:26:10 God has meaning.

00:26:10 --> 00:26:11 Absolutely.

00:26:11 --> 00:26:12 He's he's put meaning.

00:26:12 --> 00:26:15 He has meaning for us to grab from Scripture that are

00:26:15 --> 00:26:16 absolutely beyond the

00:26:16 --> 00:26:17 author's understanding.

00:26:17 --> 00:26:17 Otherwise,

00:26:18 --> 00:26:18 you know,

00:26:18 --> 00:26:21 how how would we be able to apply First Corinthians to San Diego?

00:26:21 --> 00:26:24 You know, the author was not thinking of San Diego.

00:26:24 --> 00:26:29 Paul was not thinking of Costa Mesa or London when he wrote

00:26:29 --> 00:26:30 Jews and Gentiles

00:26:30 --> 00:26:32 better stop fighting over circumcision in Galatia.

00:26:32 --> 00:26:32 Hmm.

00:26:33 --> 00:26:34 But the Holy Spirit was.

00:26:34 --> 00:26:41 And so we trust the Holy Spirit's process of not controlling,

00:26:41 --> 00:26:42 not possessing.

00:26:42 --> 00:26:48 The biblical word is God breathing his scriptures through fully

00:26:48 --> 00:26:49 human persons.

00:26:50 --> 00:26:55 It's a pneumatic Holy Spirit breath that filled the sails in a

00:26:55 --> 00:26:57 unique way when the

00:26:57 --> 00:26:59 humans who wrote the Bible wrote the Bible.

00:26:59 --> 00:27:00 And it's unique.

00:27:00 --> 00:27:02 I've heard on the progressive end,

00:27:02 --> 00:27:06 I've talked with a friend who runs a podcast that's pretty

00:27:06 --> 00:27:08 popular in liberal circles.

00:27:09 --> 00:27:10 And he said this,

00:27:10 --> 00:27:10 he's like,

00:27:10 --> 00:27:13 I don't believe that God was involved in the writing of the

00:27:13 --> 00:27:14 Bible in any meaningful way.

00:27:14 --> 00:27:15 Wow.

00:27:15 --> 00:27:17 And I'm like, um...

00:27:18 --> 00:27:22 I need you to clarify because before I mention this to anyone else,

00:27:23 --> 00:27:24 I want to represent you right.

00:27:24 --> 00:27:26 Are you saying what you said?

00:27:26 --> 00:27:27 Do you really think you said it?

00:27:27 --> 00:27:28 Or did you just like,

00:27:28 --> 00:27:29 you know how you run a podcast,

00:27:29 --> 00:27:30 you say something you didn't mean?

00:27:31 --> 00:27:31 Yes, all the time.

00:27:32 --> 00:27:33 He's like, no, no, no.

00:27:33 --> 00:27:33 Yeah.

00:27:34 --> 00:27:34 No,

00:27:34 --> 00:27:34 he's like,

00:27:34 --> 00:27:38 I don't believe that God was involved in the writing of

00:27:38 --> 00:27:39 scripture in any meaningful way,

00:27:40 --> 00:27:40 he said.

00:27:40 --> 00:27:40 I'm like,

00:27:40 --> 00:27:45 how do you say that as and stand in the line of church history

00:27:46 --> 00:27:46 or at all?

00:27:46 --> 00:27:46 He's like, well...

00:27:48 --> 00:27:49 I do stand in the line of church history.

00:27:49 --> 00:27:53 I just believe that the Bible's inspired the same way a song I

00:27:54 --> 00:27:54 wrote about my wife

00:27:55 --> 00:27:56 is inspired by my wife.

00:27:59 --> 00:28:01 And I actually, I get that.

00:28:01 --> 00:28:03 That's what the word inspired means in the English language.

00:28:04 --> 00:28:06 The Bible's inspired by God.

00:28:06 --> 00:28:09 It's all these great songs inspired by God written by people or whatever.

00:28:09 --> 00:28:12 But that's not the word in Greek.

00:28:13 --> 00:28:15 That's totally the English word inspired.

00:28:15 --> 00:28:18 But the word in Greek is God breathed it.

00:28:18 --> 00:28:19 God breathed it.

00:28:19 --> 00:28:19 Right.

00:28:19 --> 00:28:22 The difference between his view and your view is in his view,

00:28:23 --> 00:28:26 God did a bunch of stuff and there were people standing by who

00:28:26 --> 00:28:27 saw it and said,

00:28:27 --> 00:28:28 that's inspiring.

00:28:28 --> 00:28:32 And they wrote it down versus God did stuff and then came to

00:28:32 --> 00:28:33 people and said,

00:28:33 --> 00:28:36 I want you to write this down and I'm going to fill you with

00:28:36 --> 00:28:37 the Holy Spirit and

00:28:37 --> 00:28:39 guide you as you write it,

00:28:39 --> 00:28:40 because this is really important.

00:28:40 --> 00:28:41 It's something that I want to say.

00:28:42 --> 00:28:43 Correct.

00:28:43 --> 00:28:45 And in guiding you as you write it,

00:28:45 --> 00:28:47 I'm not going to bypass everything human about you.

00:28:47 --> 00:28:49 I'm not going to make you a meat puppet.

00:28:49 --> 00:28:49 Right.

00:28:50 --> 00:28:51 Which is amazing.

00:28:51 --> 00:28:52 It's like a paradox.

00:28:52 --> 00:28:56 Actually, it's just like Jesus, who's both fully God and fully man.

00:28:56 --> 00:28:57 Yeah, it's...

00:28:58 --> 00:29:01 It's such a hard it's I think it's the right position to hold,

00:29:01 --> 00:29:04 but it's hard because it introduces tension and it introduces

00:29:04 --> 00:29:05 uncertainty with

00:29:05 --> 00:29:06 certain things,

00:29:06 --> 00:29:09 which is hard because if you come from a more fundamentalist background,

00:29:09 --> 00:29:12 it's all about certainty and it's all about my tribe

00:29:12 --> 00:29:13 understands these texts

00:29:14 --> 00:29:15 perfectly and everybody else is off.

00:29:16 --> 00:29:20 I think that the way that you're trying to hold the scriptures though,

00:29:21 --> 00:29:24 is a more faithful way in my mind,

00:29:24 --> 00:29:27 even though it's harder and it's more prone to people

00:29:27 --> 00:29:28 misunderstanding you.

00:29:28 --> 00:29:29 I think it's, it's more faithful.

00:29:30 --> 00:29:30 Yeah.

00:29:45 --> 00:29:49 So Evan, I want to jump into pushback that people give to this concept.

00:29:49 --> 00:29:54 And I don't want to caricaturize anybody giving pushback as like,

00:29:54 --> 00:29:54 oh,

00:29:54 --> 00:29:57 this is just some unintellectual person.

00:29:57 --> 00:30:00 These are valid pushbacks and valid fears that people have.

00:30:00 --> 00:30:02 That's one of the things we want to do on this show is we want

00:30:02 --> 00:30:03 to recognize...

00:30:03 --> 00:30:05 We don't want to sit here and say, hey, we've got it all figured out.

00:30:05 --> 00:30:06 We know it.

00:30:06 --> 00:30:08 We want to recognize that in the Christian family,

00:30:09 --> 00:30:11 there have been debates about these things for years.

00:30:11 --> 00:30:14 And a lot of it is coming from a valid place of wanting to

00:30:14 --> 00:30:16 remain as faithful to

00:30:16 --> 00:30:17 Scripture as possible.

00:30:17 --> 00:30:19 So the first pushback,

00:30:19 --> 00:30:20 and I think the most common one,

00:30:20 --> 00:30:22 this is actually one that my friend,

00:30:22 --> 00:30:24 when I was discussing this concept with him,

00:30:24 --> 00:30:24 he threw out at me.

00:30:25 --> 00:30:25 He said,

00:30:25 --> 00:30:26 okay,

00:30:26 --> 00:30:28 if Jesus is what God has to say,

00:30:28 --> 00:30:32 what if it leads to people focusing so much on Jesus that they

00:30:32 --> 00:30:34 lose reverence for

00:30:34 --> 00:30:34 the rest of Scripture?

00:30:35 --> 00:30:37 I would just say that's a false dichotomy.

00:30:37 --> 00:30:39 I totally get the fear and the nervousness there.

00:30:39 --> 00:30:41 But the more you focus on Jesus,

00:30:41 --> 00:30:43 the more you listen to what Jesus has to say,

00:30:43 --> 00:30:44 the more you hear him saying,

00:30:44 --> 00:30:45 it is written,

00:30:45 --> 00:30:45 it is written,

00:30:46 --> 00:30:46 it is written.

00:30:46 --> 00:30:46 Mm-hmm.

00:30:48 --> 00:30:48 Have you not read?

00:30:48 --> 00:30:49 Have you not read?

00:30:49 --> 00:30:50 Have you not read?

00:30:50 --> 00:30:52 I have not come to abolish the law and the prophets,

00:30:52 --> 00:30:53 which was his word for Bible.

00:30:54 --> 00:30:57 The law and the prophets was his Bible, aka our Old Testament.

00:30:57 --> 00:30:58 And the more you read Jesus,

00:30:58 --> 00:31:02 the more he was absolutely obsessed with hearing his father's

00:31:02 --> 00:31:03 voice through scripture.

00:31:03 --> 00:31:05 And so if you say, you know...

00:31:06 --> 00:31:08 The more you focus on Jesus, you might lose reverence for the Bible.

00:31:08 --> 00:31:11 Then it might not be the Jesus seated at the right hand of the

00:31:11 --> 00:31:12 father that you're focusing on.

00:31:12 --> 00:31:15 It might be some other Jesus in your mind.

00:31:15 --> 00:31:17 That's what I would say to that.

00:31:17 --> 00:31:19 I think Jesus and the word.

00:31:19 --> 00:31:23 So Jesus and the Bible are not in a competitive relationship.

00:31:24 --> 00:31:24 They're just not.

00:31:25 --> 00:31:25 Yeah, right.

00:31:26 --> 00:31:29 They're in a symbiotic relationship.

00:31:29 --> 00:31:30 They feed into one another.

00:31:31 --> 00:31:33 So yeah, that's how I'd respond to that.

00:31:33 --> 00:31:33 That's good.

00:31:34 --> 00:31:34 Yeah.

00:31:34 --> 00:31:35 I think that's a really,

00:31:36 --> 00:31:39 really good answer because in my mind,

00:31:40 --> 00:31:41 the whole idea of reverence for the Bible,

00:31:41 --> 00:31:43 you just hit the nail on the head.

00:31:43 --> 00:31:46 Jesus himself has reverence for the Old Testament scriptures.

00:31:46 --> 00:31:49 Like that's another concept that I'm glad that you taught me

00:31:49 --> 00:31:50 because you taught me

00:31:50 --> 00:31:51 Jesus is what God has to say.

00:31:51 --> 00:31:54 And then right after you threw out the Hebrew Bible,

00:31:54 --> 00:31:55 that's Jesus's Bible.

00:31:55 --> 00:31:57 That's what he's quoting.

00:31:58 --> 00:31:59 That's what he's referring to.

00:31:59 --> 00:32:01 That's where he's drawing his theology from.

00:32:02 --> 00:32:05 But the difference is that he is the fulfillment of that theology.

00:32:06 --> 00:32:06 You know,

00:32:07 --> 00:32:09 this whole thing about putting Jesus versus the Bible,

00:32:09 --> 00:32:10 it was interesting.

00:32:10 --> 00:32:11 I was talking to a friend of mine.

00:32:11 --> 00:32:12 He's a seminary guy as well.

00:32:13 --> 00:32:19 And he was pushing back on the idea of a Christ-centric lens to scripture.

00:32:19 --> 00:32:22 And I would have to really sit down with him and find out

00:32:22 --> 00:32:23 exactly what he means by

00:32:23 --> 00:32:25 his pushback because we barely got into it.

00:32:26 --> 00:32:28 But one thing that I kind of threw out,

00:32:28 --> 00:32:29 because he was talking about,

00:32:30 --> 00:32:31 I brought up the idea of,

00:32:31 --> 00:32:31 okay,

00:32:31 --> 00:32:32 when we read the Old Testament,

00:32:32 --> 00:32:35 we need to read it through the lens of Christ.

00:32:35 --> 00:32:36 And he sort of disagreed with that.

00:32:36 --> 00:32:39 The thing that came up from my side of the argument was I was

00:32:39 --> 00:32:40 talking about,

00:32:40 --> 00:32:40 okay,

00:32:40 --> 00:32:41 we've got Star Wars,

00:32:41 --> 00:32:42 right?

00:32:42 --> 00:32:43 And Star Wars,

00:32:43 --> 00:32:44 when it first came out,

00:32:44 --> 00:32:45 we got episodes four,

00:32:45 --> 00:32:45 five,

00:32:45 --> 00:32:46 and six,

00:32:46 --> 00:32:46 right?

00:32:46 --> 00:32:49 A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi.

00:32:49 --> 00:32:51 You can watch those in a vacuum.

00:32:51 --> 00:32:53 I love where this is going right now.

00:32:54 --> 00:32:56 You can watch those in a vacuum and there's things that you

00:32:56 --> 00:32:58 don't know about Anakin Skywalker.

00:32:58 --> 00:32:59 You don't know his backstory.

00:32:59 --> 00:33:00 You don't know any of that stuff.

00:33:01 --> 00:33:01 Eventually,

00:33:01 --> 00:33:03 you're going to watch the prequels,

00:33:03 --> 00:33:03 episodes one,

00:33:03 --> 00:33:04 two,

00:33:04 --> 00:33:04 and three,

00:33:04 --> 00:33:06 and it's going to reveal new context.

00:33:07 --> 00:33:08 As I was talking with my friend,

00:33:08 --> 00:33:11 it seemed like he was implying the right way to watch Star Wars

00:33:11 --> 00:33:12 under this paradigm

00:33:12 --> 00:33:14 would be when you watch episodes four,

00:33:14 --> 00:33:14 five,

00:33:15 --> 00:33:15 and six,

00:33:15 --> 00:33:17 you should not be thinking of anything that happened in the

00:33:17 --> 00:33:18 prequels because it's

00:33:18 --> 00:33:20 meant to exist just on its own.

00:33:20 --> 00:33:20 And I would argue that

00:33:21 --> 00:33:23 that once you understand Jesus,

00:33:24 --> 00:33:26 like if you're reading the Old Testament and you don't know

00:33:26 --> 00:33:27 anything about Jesus

00:33:27 --> 00:33:29 and you don't have the New Testament,

00:33:30 --> 00:33:31 things are going to seem a certain way.

00:33:32 --> 00:33:36 When you get the context of Jesus and you go back and reread

00:33:36 --> 00:33:37 the Old Testament,

00:33:37 --> 00:33:39 you should be applying that context of who Jesus is,

00:33:40 --> 00:33:41 what God's mission was,

00:33:41 --> 00:33:41 what his,

00:33:42 --> 00:33:46 it should completely open up this new way of understanding.

00:33:47 --> 00:33:48 It doesn't do away the Old Testament,

00:33:48 --> 00:33:51 but is anything that I'm saying making sense?

00:33:52 --> 00:33:53 100%.

00:33:52 --> 00:33:53 Yeah.

00:33:53 --> 00:33:57 So I'm going to come at it from kind of a story in my past that

00:33:57 --> 00:33:58 it was a moment of

00:33:58 --> 00:33:59 revelation for me.

00:33:59 --> 00:34:02 At the time, I was not ready for what I was reading.

00:34:03 --> 00:34:05 It was in my early Bible college years.

00:34:05 --> 00:34:09 I went to Trinity College of the Bible in Newburgh, Indiana online.

00:34:09 --> 00:34:11 It was a great school.

00:34:11 --> 00:34:14 One of the books that my Old Testament professor had me read

00:34:15 --> 00:34:15 was a book by

00:34:15 --> 00:34:20 Christopher Wright called Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament.

00:34:20 --> 00:34:20 Yeah.

00:34:21 --> 00:34:22 I don't know if you've read that.

00:34:22 --> 00:34:24 No, I'll have to.

00:34:25 --> 00:34:29 One of the premises of this book, and I didn't have a paradigm for this.

00:34:29 --> 00:34:30 I was not ready.

00:34:30 --> 00:34:36 One of the premises was Jesus was so saturated in the Old Testament.

00:34:37 --> 00:34:44 Jesus actually relied on the Old Testament scriptures to come to his own

00:34:44 --> 00:34:47 realization of his identity as Messiah.

00:34:47 --> 00:34:47 Yeah.

00:34:47 --> 00:34:51 I've heard that before, and that's a really challenging concept for me.

00:34:51 --> 00:34:51 Like,

00:34:51 --> 00:34:54 what I would like to believe,

00:34:54 --> 00:34:55 because the way it's always kind of been taught,

00:34:55 --> 00:34:57 I don't know if anyone's ever even said it,

00:34:57 --> 00:34:58 but it's always kind of like,

00:34:59 --> 00:34:59 you know,

00:34:59 --> 00:35:01 Jesus always knew who he was.

00:35:01 --> 00:35:02 You know,

00:35:02 --> 00:35:02 like,

00:35:02 --> 00:35:03 not as a baby,

00:35:03 --> 00:35:06 but when you get to the point where he's lost in the city,

00:35:06 --> 00:35:07 and they find him at the temple,

00:35:07 --> 00:35:09 and he's talking to the priests and the...

00:35:10 --> 00:35:13 temple workers about his father's work it's like yeah at that

00:35:13 --> 00:35:14 point he knew and and

00:35:15 --> 00:35:17 and yeah there's that verse that jesus i would agree with that

00:35:17 --> 00:35:19 okay okay i would

00:35:19 --> 00:35:22 agree that he knew at that point but what was he debating what

00:35:22 --> 00:35:23 was he what was he

00:35:23 --> 00:35:26 talking about with the teachers of the law and the prophets he

00:35:26 --> 00:35:27 was talking about

00:35:27 --> 00:35:29 the law and the prophets he was talking about the hebrew

00:35:29 --> 00:35:30 scriptures that shaped

00:35:30 --> 00:35:32 their entire culture you know that that

00:35:32 --> 00:35:35 The Hebrew Scriptures were not just some religious book they

00:35:35 --> 00:35:36 read at church.

00:35:36 --> 00:35:37 They had synagogue.

00:35:38 --> 00:35:39 The Hebrew Scriptures were more than this.

00:35:39 --> 00:35:41 They shaped the entire language and culture.

00:35:41 --> 00:35:43 It was the primer to read.

00:35:43 --> 00:35:45 It was everything they knew about their identity as people.

00:35:45 --> 00:35:49 And so Jesus was most likely extremely fluent in Old Testament.

00:35:50 --> 00:35:53 by the time he was 12 just like most just like most other boys

00:35:53 --> 00:35:54 at the time i just

00:35:54 --> 00:35:56 want to frame the question because because the the question

00:35:56 --> 00:35:57 that comes up in my

00:35:57 --> 00:36:01 mind based on that book is two scenarios which is which is

00:36:01 --> 00:36:03 right scenario one is

00:36:04 --> 00:36:07 jesus as the second member of the trinity before he became

00:36:07 --> 00:36:09 human he knows all he

00:36:09 --> 00:36:12 possesses all wisdom he knows everything so everything that's

00:36:12 --> 00:36:12 been written in the

00:36:12 --> 00:36:15 old testament it's already downloaded into his brain like he

00:36:15 --> 00:36:16 knows that stuff

00:36:17 --> 00:36:20 Becomes a human and all of that knowledge just is with him.

00:36:20 --> 00:36:22 It's already the it's been downloaded to the matrix.

00:36:22 --> 00:36:23 It's uploaded.

00:36:23 --> 00:36:25 He's got it and he's ready to go.

00:36:25 --> 00:36:29 The other view would be by becoming human.

00:36:30 --> 00:36:32 Jesus actually put him in a position.

00:36:32 --> 00:36:35 He put himself in a position where he had he had to relearn everything.

00:36:35 --> 00:36:38 And the way that he relearned everything was through the

00:36:38 --> 00:36:39 scriptures and through the Holy Spirit.

00:36:40 --> 00:36:46 Like, he became so human that he subjected himself to limited knowledge.

00:36:47 --> 00:36:47 So, yeah, what do you think?

00:36:50 --> 00:36:53 I mean, I think the New Testament is clear on that.

00:36:53 --> 00:36:54 Jesus learned.

00:36:54 --> 00:36:54 Yeah.

00:36:55 --> 00:36:59 Luke 2.52 says he grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with

00:36:59 --> 00:37:01 God and in favor with men.

00:37:01 --> 00:37:04 And Hebrews says he learned obedience through what he suffered.

00:37:04 --> 00:37:07 Jesus learned character formation according to Hebrews.

00:37:08 --> 00:37:10 He learned wisdom according to Luke.

00:37:11 --> 00:37:12 And Luke knew what he was talking about.

00:37:12 --> 00:37:13 He's a very learned doctor.

00:37:14 --> 00:37:16 To say that Jesus was always omniscient is just,

00:37:17 --> 00:37:19 I would say it borders on heresy.

00:37:19 --> 00:37:24 The heresy of docetism was cast down in the early church,

00:37:24 --> 00:37:28 and that was basically Jesus was not fully human in every way

00:37:28 --> 00:37:29 like Hebrews says he was.

00:37:29 --> 00:37:30 Instead, he was Superman.

00:37:31 --> 00:37:34 Clark Kent had the big S on his chest under his suit,

00:37:34 --> 00:37:36 and he could pull back the suit any time.

00:37:36 --> 00:37:37 He didn't really experience pain.

00:37:38 --> 00:37:39 He didn't really experience unknowing.

00:37:39 --> 00:37:42 He didn't really experience grief because he knew the end

00:37:42 --> 00:37:43 completely from the

00:37:43 --> 00:37:44 beginning because that's what Yahweh does.

00:37:44 --> 00:37:45 That's actually functional heresy.

00:37:48 --> 00:37:50 It was voted down by the early church.

00:37:50 --> 00:37:52 Jesus was human in every way.

00:37:52 --> 00:37:58 How do you explain temptation when you know everything in every way?

00:37:58 --> 00:38:04 Temptation, by its very definition, is experiencing a limit.

00:38:05 --> 00:38:06 Man,

00:38:06 --> 00:38:08 it's always fun when you learn that you may have been carrying

00:38:08 --> 00:38:09 around functional

00:38:09 --> 00:38:11 heresy a little bit in your toolkit.

00:38:11 --> 00:38:11 That's...

00:38:12 --> 00:38:13 Oh, that's a great, great time.

00:38:13 --> 00:38:15 You're blowing up my paradigm.

00:38:15 --> 00:38:16 So that's good, man.

00:38:16 --> 00:38:16 I appreciate it.

00:38:17 --> 00:38:17 Yeah.

00:38:17 --> 00:38:17 Well,

00:38:18 --> 00:38:18 I mean,

00:38:18 --> 00:38:19 Philippians 2,

00:38:19 --> 00:38:23 Philippians 2 is probably the clearest doctrinal declaration of

00:38:23 --> 00:38:24 this very fact.

00:38:24 --> 00:38:29 And that's be like Jesus, be humble like Jesus who considered it.

00:38:29 --> 00:38:32 He didn't consider it robbery to claim equality with God

00:38:32 --> 00:38:32 because he was God.

00:38:32 --> 00:38:37 Fully God, never lost his Godness, never lost his divinity in any sense.

00:38:37 --> 00:38:38 And yet,

00:38:38 --> 00:38:39 in Dr.

00:38:39 --> 00:38:40 Bashir's words,

00:38:40 --> 00:38:40 who we both love,

00:38:41 --> 00:38:46 Jesus laid aside the use of his God card.

00:38:46 --> 00:38:47 And by that,

00:38:47 --> 00:38:48 Gary,

00:38:48 --> 00:38:52 means what all the creeds mean is that Jesus laid aside the use of his

00:38:53 --> 00:38:54 incommunicable attributes.

00:38:54 --> 00:38:55 Hmm.

00:38:55 --> 00:38:59 His omniscience, his omnipresence, his, what's the other omni?

00:38:59 --> 00:39:00 Omniscience, omnipotence.

00:39:01 --> 00:39:03 Omnipotent creatures do not die.

00:39:05 --> 00:39:06 Jesus died.

00:39:06 --> 00:39:08 Omniscient creatures do not learn.

00:39:08 --> 00:39:09 Jesus learned.

00:39:10 --> 00:39:13 Omnipresent creatures can't say, I'm not going to be where you are.

00:39:13 --> 00:39:15 Jesus said, I'm not going to be where you are.

00:39:15 --> 00:39:21 And so all this points to this reality that Jesus learned and

00:39:21 --> 00:39:23 submitted to his

00:39:23 --> 00:39:27 father's authority through the scriptures and was therefore

00:39:27 --> 00:39:29 perfectly spirit filled

00:39:29 --> 00:39:33 to live sinlessly and perform miracles and be raised from the dead.

00:39:33 --> 00:39:36 Because he says, I can do nothing apart from my Father.

00:39:36 --> 00:39:37 Nothing.

00:39:38 --> 00:39:38 Nothing.

00:39:38 --> 00:39:43 And so the point of Chris Wright's premise is beautiful.

00:39:43 --> 00:39:46 It actually raises the authority of the Old Testament.

00:39:47 --> 00:39:48 It gives a higher view.

00:39:48 --> 00:39:51 If Jesus depended on the Spirit and the Scriptures,

00:39:51 --> 00:39:52 how much more must we?

00:39:54 --> 00:39:58 If Jesus depended on the prophetic text of the Old Testament to

00:39:58 --> 00:39:59 see the identity of

00:39:59 --> 00:40:00 himself as Messiah,

00:40:00 --> 00:40:03 how much more do we depend on the Old Testament to fully know Jesus?

00:40:03 --> 00:40:06 This is the call to submit to the scriptures.

00:40:06 --> 00:40:08 No, this is exciting.

00:40:08 --> 00:40:09 It's exciting to me.

00:40:10 --> 00:40:13 I just always love it when a new layer of the onion is kind of

00:40:13 --> 00:40:14 peeled back for me.

00:40:14 --> 00:40:14 And this is really good.

00:40:14 --> 00:40:16 I hope for you guys listening,

00:40:16 --> 00:40:17 even whether you agree or not,

00:40:17 --> 00:40:20 I hope it's an important conversation for you to hear.

00:40:20 --> 00:40:21 But for me,

00:40:21 --> 00:40:25 the reason why it's exciting is because it's showing,

00:40:25 --> 00:40:31 it's revealing that in order for Jesus to discover who he truly

00:40:32 --> 00:40:33 is and to fully

00:40:33 --> 00:40:36 live out who he truly was,

00:40:37 --> 00:40:41 he needed both the scripture and the holy spirit those were the

00:40:41 --> 00:40:42 tools that god used

00:40:42 --> 00:40:47 in his life to help him become who he was meant to be and so

00:40:47 --> 00:40:48 for us like why would

00:40:48 --> 00:40:51 it be any different and then it to me it just gets me even more

00:40:51 --> 00:40:52 excited about the

00:40:52 --> 00:40:55 power of the scripture and the holy spirit working together in

00:40:55 --> 00:40:56 my life to help me

00:40:57 --> 00:41:02 become who god has truly meant me to be so it's exciting so good

00:41:28 --> 00:41:31 So here's another objection that I hear from people pushing

00:41:31 --> 00:41:32 back against the idea

00:41:32 --> 00:41:35 of us saying Jesus is what God has to say.

00:41:36 --> 00:41:37 And hopefully for you listening,

00:41:37 --> 00:41:40 just this conversation has helped you understand what we mean

00:41:40 --> 00:41:41 and what we don't mean,

00:41:41 --> 00:41:43 as we've talked about it at length here.

00:41:43 --> 00:41:48 One objection that comes up is progressive Christians tend to

00:41:48 --> 00:41:50 focus on Jesus's kindness,

00:41:50 --> 00:41:51 inclusiveness,

00:41:51 --> 00:41:52 love,

00:41:52 --> 00:41:53 compassion,

00:41:53 --> 00:41:53 empathy,

00:41:53 --> 00:41:54 which...

00:41:55 --> 00:41:56 I'm not saying those are bad things.

00:41:56 --> 00:41:58 Those are great things that I love about Jesus.

00:41:59 --> 00:42:01 Those are some of my favorite things about Jesus.

00:42:01 --> 00:42:04 But progressive Christians tend to focus on these things.

00:42:05 --> 00:42:08 Does this give them then a license to throw out,

00:42:08 --> 00:42:12 does saying Jesus is what God has to say give them a license to

00:42:12 --> 00:42:13 throw out the Old

00:42:13 --> 00:42:16 Testament and any passages they deem problematic on things like

00:42:16 --> 00:42:18 judgment or

00:42:18 --> 00:42:23 sexuality or particular sins that they might not agree as are sins?

00:42:23 --> 00:42:25 Does it give them license to just throw those things out and say,

00:42:25 --> 00:42:27 I don't need that stuff.

00:42:27 --> 00:42:28 I just need Jesus.

00:42:29 --> 00:42:31 first of all I just want to say the whole like you know liberal

00:42:31 --> 00:42:32 conservative or

00:42:32 --> 00:42:36 progressive fundamentalist those those kinds of framings I used

00:42:36 --> 00:42:36 to think they're

00:42:36 --> 00:42:39 really helpful and they set up you know they set up the

00:42:39 --> 00:42:40 conversation smart and

00:42:40 --> 00:42:44 stuff and sometimes they do but often I found that they box in

00:42:45 --> 00:42:46 the conversation and

00:42:46 --> 00:42:49 they make they immediately they immediately end listening

00:42:50 --> 00:42:51 because I want to listen

00:42:51 --> 00:42:55 like it can it can paint people with too broad of a brush and

00:42:55 --> 00:42:57 Yeah, yeah, it's, yes, yes.

00:42:57 --> 00:43:01 And I just want to say to my more progressive brothers and sisters,

00:43:01 --> 00:43:03 like I resonate 100%.

00:43:03 --> 00:43:06 I think the church has missed the boat on communicating

00:43:06 --> 00:43:07 compassion to the people

00:43:07 --> 00:43:09 that are far from God in our lives.

00:43:10 --> 00:43:12 And to my conservative brothers and sisters,

00:43:12 --> 00:43:12 I'm like,

00:43:12 --> 00:43:13 I'm one of you,

00:43:13 --> 00:43:13 like 100%.

00:43:13 --> 00:43:20 And I'm so grateful for the constant challenge to return to

00:43:20 --> 00:43:21 orthodoxy and return to

00:43:21 --> 00:43:24 that which has been revealed through the Christian tradition

00:43:24 --> 00:43:25 for millennia.

00:43:25 --> 00:43:25 Yeah.

00:43:25 --> 00:43:28 And I just think I think the answer is beyond the spectrum.

00:43:28 --> 00:43:31 The answer is beyond, you know, framing it as progressive conservative.

00:43:31 --> 00:43:34 It's it's not it's not about being liberal or fundamentalist.

00:43:34 --> 00:43:35 It's about being faithful.

00:43:35 --> 00:43:37 And so, yeah, you know, it's good.

00:43:37 --> 00:43:39 Your question is valid.

00:43:40 --> 00:43:43 I think I think both conservatives and progressives and

00:43:43 --> 00:43:46 moderates and other can

00:43:46 --> 00:43:49 take Jesus and make him our poster child.

00:43:49 --> 00:43:50 Yeah, I would agree.

00:43:50 --> 00:43:53 And listeners of the show know that we agree.

00:43:53 --> 00:43:53 Yeah.

00:43:54 --> 00:43:55 Yeah,

00:43:55 --> 00:43:57 like just to use some extreme examples,

00:43:57 --> 00:43:58 you know,

00:43:58 --> 00:44:03 we've all seen pictures from last January of Jesus saves next

00:44:03 --> 00:44:04 to Capitol riots.

00:44:05 --> 00:44:07 And we've all seen pictures of,

00:44:08 --> 00:44:09 you know,

00:44:09 --> 00:44:14 whether it's pro-abortion rallies saying Jesus supports woman's choice.

00:44:15 --> 00:44:15 Yeah.

00:44:15 --> 00:44:18 We've seen Jesus be used by everybody.

00:44:18 --> 00:44:19 Everybody likes Jesus.

00:44:19 --> 00:44:20 Yeah.

00:44:20 --> 00:44:20 Yeah.

00:44:20 --> 00:44:22 We even talk about the historical Jesus,

00:44:22 --> 00:44:24 like the quest for the historical Jesus.

00:44:24 --> 00:44:26 You go to the grocery store and you see Time Magazine,

00:44:26 --> 00:44:27 who really was Jesus?

00:44:28 --> 00:44:28 And,

00:44:28 --> 00:44:28 you know,

00:44:28 --> 00:44:32 eventually we have to move beyond all the binary debates and we

00:44:32 --> 00:44:32 have to say,

00:44:32 --> 00:44:35 where's the source of authority on who Jesus is?

00:44:35 --> 00:44:37 It's the eyewitnesses, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.

00:44:38 --> 00:44:40 I'm not interested in the historical Jesus.

00:44:40 --> 00:44:42 And I can go on record and say that.

00:44:42 --> 00:44:45 I am not interested in the historical Jesus.

00:44:48 --> 00:44:52 I'm not interested in what he really said or,

00:44:53 --> 00:44:53 quote,

00:44:53 --> 00:44:54 that's with air quotes,

00:44:54 --> 00:45:00 in what he really said or finding the first mosaic of Jesus

00:45:00 --> 00:45:02 that indicates his whatever.

00:45:02 --> 00:45:06 I'm interested in the Jesus of Matthew and the Jesus of Mark

00:45:06 --> 00:45:07 and the Jesus of Luke

00:45:07 --> 00:45:08 and the Jesus of John.

00:45:09 --> 00:45:12 This is the only Jesus we have.

00:45:12 --> 00:45:13 And by the Spirit,

00:45:13 --> 00:45:18 we can know him just like John knew him in intimacy through the text,

00:45:18 --> 00:45:19 through the word of God.

00:45:19 --> 00:45:20 We can know him.

00:45:20 --> 00:45:22 It's a matter of trust.

00:45:22 --> 00:45:28 You're trusting that the way that God wanted to reveal Jesus to

00:45:28 --> 00:45:29 us is what was

00:45:29 --> 00:45:29 written down in the text.

00:45:30 --> 00:45:34 You're trusting that that is, for the most part, what was actually said.

00:45:34 --> 00:45:34 I mean,

00:45:34 --> 00:45:36 maybe there was a word that was different here or there or

00:45:36 --> 00:45:37 something or one

00:45:37 --> 00:45:39 sentence came before the other or whatever.

00:45:40 --> 00:45:44 But you're trusting that that is the representation that God

00:45:44 --> 00:45:45 has given us of who

00:45:45 --> 00:45:46 Jesus is and therefore who he is.

00:45:47 --> 00:45:48 Oh, yeah.

00:45:48 --> 00:45:48 I mean,

00:45:48 --> 00:45:49 I know,

00:45:49 --> 00:45:52 we all know for a fact that there were plenty of other words said.

00:45:52 --> 00:45:56 John, the Gospel of John specifically says that.

00:45:56 --> 00:45:57 There are more things that he did.

00:45:57 --> 00:45:59 If we don't have a library big enough, he said.

00:46:00 --> 00:46:01 Yeah.

00:46:01 --> 00:46:02 And even the Sermon on the Mount,

00:46:03 --> 00:46:06 to think that that was just one sermon one time is to miss the point.

00:46:07 --> 00:46:09 I remember when I was sitting with Gary and he's like,

00:46:10 --> 00:46:14 this is Matthew patchworking the wisdom of Jesus for

00:46:14 --> 00:46:16 communities of Jesus that are

00:46:16 --> 00:46:19 trying to take the Old Testament and apply it to the Jesus event.

00:46:19 --> 00:46:23 And the Sermon on the Mount, maybe it could have been one sermon.

00:46:23 --> 00:46:25 It was probably not.

00:46:25 --> 00:46:28 It was probably the teachings of Jesus.

00:46:29 --> 00:46:29 Yeah,

00:46:29 --> 00:46:33 a collection of greatest hits that Matthew had a theological

00:46:33 --> 00:46:34 agenda behind.

00:46:34 --> 00:46:35 Mm-hmm.

00:46:35 --> 00:46:38 So Matthew and Mark and Luke and John each have their own

00:46:38 --> 00:46:40 theological agendas,

00:46:40 --> 00:46:43 and that is from the Spirit too.

00:46:43 --> 00:46:43 Right.

00:46:44 --> 00:46:47 And their theological agendas give us the Jesus that the Father,

00:46:48 --> 00:46:48 Son,

00:46:48 --> 00:46:49 and Spirit want us to receive.

00:46:50 --> 00:46:50 Right.

00:46:51 --> 00:46:52 That's good, man.

00:46:52 --> 00:46:54 So, I mean, yeah, there's so much there.

00:46:56 --> 00:46:57 No, that's really good.

00:46:57 --> 00:47:01 I think that at the core of the conservative versus liberal thing,

00:47:02 --> 00:47:05 it all comes down to whether you're conservative or liberal is

00:47:06 --> 00:47:07 either accepting God

00:47:07 --> 00:47:13 at his own words or trying to use his words to allow you to be

00:47:13 --> 00:47:14 able to accept

00:47:14 --> 00:47:15 whatever belief you've given yourself.

00:47:15 --> 00:47:16 Yeah.

00:47:16 --> 00:47:18 And and that's a big problem.

00:47:18 --> 00:47:20 I remember I was talking to a guy friend of mine,

00:47:20 --> 00:47:21 more conservative,

00:47:21 --> 00:47:23 and he was trying to argue that,

00:47:23 --> 00:47:23 you know,

00:47:23 --> 00:47:25 because Jesus said to his disciples,

00:47:25 --> 00:47:26 go and buy a sword.

00:47:27 --> 00:47:28 The Bible was saying that,

00:47:28 --> 00:47:28 you know,

00:47:28 --> 00:47:31 every Christian needs to go and buy a gun.

00:47:31 --> 00:47:35 And I was like, I don't have a problem with guns personally.

00:47:36 --> 00:47:38 Like I go shooting with my wife's dad.

00:47:38 --> 00:47:40 Sometimes we shoot, you know, cans in the backyard.

00:47:41 --> 00:47:45 But that is not what that is not what the original authors and

00:47:45 --> 00:47:46 intent of the

00:47:46 --> 00:47:48 scripture was trying to communicate in that moment.

00:47:48 --> 00:47:49 You are.

00:47:49 --> 00:47:52 And I spent some time trying to debate with him of why,

00:47:52 --> 00:47:52 you know,

00:47:52 --> 00:47:54 I don't think that that's what that verse means.

00:47:54 --> 00:47:54 I think,

00:47:55 --> 00:47:55 you know,

00:47:55 --> 00:47:56 Jesus said,

00:47:56 --> 00:47:59 go buy a sword to fulfill the prophecy that he would be among

00:47:59 --> 00:48:00 the transgressors.

00:48:00 --> 00:48:00 That's a whole thing.

00:48:01 --> 00:48:02 I've been wanting to do an episode on that for years.

00:48:02 --> 00:48:08 But the point was, you're not accepting the Bible.

00:48:08 --> 00:48:10 You're not taking it at face value.

00:48:10 --> 00:48:13 You're trying to use it as a grab bag to just apply to whatever

00:48:13 --> 00:48:15 you want to say in your life.

00:48:15 --> 00:48:17 And by the same token, here's an extreme example.

00:48:17 --> 00:48:20 But I found this just the other day on a very progressive account.

00:48:21 --> 00:48:23 Deconstructionist, ex-mangelical account.

00:48:23 --> 00:48:27 Very, very anti-church and Christian account.

00:48:28 --> 00:48:29 But they posted this, and it just blew my mind.

00:48:29 --> 00:48:31 They said, And to me, it's like...

00:48:48 --> 00:48:49 We can talk about liberation.

00:48:49 --> 00:48:50 We can talk about embodiment,

00:48:50 --> 00:48:53 but that's not what the scripture is trying to say through the

00:48:53 --> 00:48:53 story of Mary.

00:48:54 --> 00:49:00 Like either reject the Bible outright and just leave it behind or like,

00:49:00 --> 00:49:00 but don't,

00:49:01 --> 00:49:04 don't just keep it and decide that it just applies to whatever

00:49:04 --> 00:49:05 you want it to apply

00:49:05 --> 00:49:05 in your life.

00:49:05 --> 00:49:07 That's what I see people doing on both sides of the,

00:49:08 --> 00:49:11 the aisle is just the Bible just serves whatever agenda they have.

00:49:11 --> 00:49:14 And to me, that's, I think where we get it twisted.

00:49:14 --> 00:49:14 Yeah.

00:49:14 --> 00:49:18 yeah yeah i mean that um whoever that was that that reading of

00:49:18 --> 00:49:20 of mary is is almost

00:49:20 --> 00:49:23 not worth responding to but your overarching point is is true

00:49:23 --> 00:49:25 you know we all of us

00:49:25 --> 00:49:29 are tempted and it's not just progressives again it's it's moderates it's

00:49:29 --> 00:49:31 conservatives i think when we try to pit ourselves against

00:49:32 --> 00:49:33 those wrong people over

00:49:33 --> 00:49:36 there i think we fall and we're tempted to fall in the same same trap but

00:49:37 --> 00:49:38 What I'm tempted to do,

00:49:38 --> 00:49:39 what I want to do,

00:49:39 --> 00:49:39 you know,

00:49:40 --> 00:49:45 is find a story of Jesus being nice in the Gospels and then

00:49:45 --> 00:49:46 find a story of someone

00:49:46 --> 00:49:48 being oppressed in the Gospels,

00:49:48 --> 00:49:49 put them together,

00:49:49 --> 00:49:49 form a lens,

00:49:50 --> 00:49:52 and then read the whole Bible through that new lens and I

00:49:52 --> 00:49:53 suddenly have a Jesus of

00:49:53 --> 00:49:54 my own making.

00:49:54 --> 00:49:55 Yeah.

00:49:55 --> 00:50:00 You alluded to the Jesus of the sword or the Jesus of the gun.

00:50:00 --> 00:50:02 I know you don't want to talk about pacifism,

00:50:02 --> 00:50:05 nonviolence and using Jesus to endorse violence.

00:50:06 --> 00:50:07 I would love to on another episode.

00:50:07 --> 00:50:08 That happens all the time.

00:50:09 --> 00:50:12 Like, let's do a whole episode on that.

00:50:12 --> 00:50:17 I think that's similar to the woman who wants a Mary who's

00:50:17 --> 00:50:17 having passionate sex

00:50:18 --> 00:50:19 and reading feminist erotic literature.

00:50:20 --> 00:50:22 It's not the author's intent.

00:50:22 --> 00:50:26 It is a story of your own making that you've read.

00:50:26 --> 00:50:28 Some false readings are more sensible than others to us.

00:50:31 --> 00:50:37 And I can see why it would be sensible to read self-defense,

00:50:38 --> 00:50:39 violence as self-defense,

00:50:39 --> 00:50:42 out of the Jesus pick up a sword story.

00:50:42 --> 00:50:43 I can see that.

00:50:43 --> 00:50:46 I totally get that.

00:50:46 --> 00:50:48 If it wasn't for the context.

00:50:48 --> 00:50:52 And the context, as you mentioned, tells us what Jesus was doing.

00:51:17 --> 00:51:18 So Evan,

00:51:18 --> 00:51:21 a place that I want to go in the conversation is I want to talk

00:51:21 --> 00:51:23 about when we have people,

00:51:23 --> 00:51:24 when we have Christians,

00:51:25 --> 00:51:28 and they sort of do this thing where they look at the Old

00:51:29 --> 00:51:31 Testament and things that

00:51:31 --> 00:51:33 are said in the Old Testament as if this,

00:51:33 --> 00:51:34 whatever is said,

00:51:34 --> 00:51:37 anything that is said in the Old Testament is definitively truth,

00:51:38 --> 00:51:38 instruction,

00:51:39 --> 00:51:41 how Christians should live for all time.

00:51:41 --> 00:51:42 If it was said in the Bible,

00:51:42 --> 00:51:43 it's like God said it,

00:51:43 --> 00:51:43 I believe it,

00:51:43 --> 00:51:44 that settles it.

00:51:45 --> 00:51:45 And...

00:51:46 --> 00:51:47 There's truth to that, I think.

00:51:47 --> 00:51:49 But there's there's problems that arise.

00:51:49 --> 00:51:52 And one extreme example I can think of is I was talking to a

00:51:52 --> 00:51:54 guy online once and we

00:51:54 --> 00:51:55 were debating something.

00:51:55 --> 00:51:56 I can't remember what.

00:51:57 --> 00:51:59 But in in the conversation,

00:51:59 --> 00:52:02 he brought up I think I said something along the lines of,

00:52:02 --> 00:52:02 OK,

00:52:03 --> 00:52:03 in the Bible.

00:52:04 --> 00:52:05 We stone people, right?

00:52:05 --> 00:52:07 Like, we stone sinners.

00:52:07 --> 00:52:09 We stone children for disobeying their parents.

00:52:09 --> 00:52:10 And the guy responded, and we should.

00:52:11 --> 00:52:12 Like, why did we stop doing that?

00:52:12 --> 00:52:13 The Bible said it.

00:52:13 --> 00:52:15 So, I mean, it's in the Bible.

00:52:15 --> 00:52:17 Why did we stop doing that?

00:52:17 --> 00:52:18 And for me, I was just like...

00:52:19 --> 00:52:24 I feel like we're completely divorcing the text from the entire

00:52:24 --> 00:52:25 narrative in Jesus.

00:52:25 --> 00:52:28 And when Jesus shows up, something happens that changes things.

00:52:29 --> 00:52:30 So how would you speak into that?

00:52:30 --> 00:52:32 How would you speak into people that sometimes look to the Old

00:52:33 --> 00:52:34 Testament and just

00:52:34 --> 00:52:35 anything in the Old Testament,

00:52:35 --> 00:52:37 it's divorced from the context of Jesus?

00:52:37 --> 00:52:38 How do you help people walk through that?

00:52:39 --> 00:52:40 Yeah, good question.

00:52:40 --> 00:52:42 What I love about talking with you,

00:52:42 --> 00:52:42 Aaron,

00:52:42 --> 00:52:43 is I don't know what you're going to ask me.

00:52:44 --> 00:52:48 So I get I'm just going off the cuff on the fly.

00:52:48 --> 00:52:50 So these answers are going to be imperfect and I don't have all

00:52:50 --> 00:52:51 the answers.

00:52:51 --> 00:52:52 I'll respond in the moment.

00:52:52 --> 00:52:53 First of all,

00:52:53 --> 00:52:57 I've I've never met anyone who's said that they feel like they

00:52:57 --> 00:52:57 should obey the

00:52:57 --> 00:52:58 stoning laws.

00:53:00 --> 00:53:01 It was bizarre.

00:53:01 --> 00:53:03 It was really a bizarre combo.

00:53:03 --> 00:53:06 That seems like an extreme, to put it lightly.

00:53:06 --> 00:53:08 But the extreme does prove your point, I think.

00:53:09 --> 00:53:11 It makes your point very vividly, you know.

00:53:12 --> 00:53:13 Let's lighten it up a little.

00:53:13 --> 00:53:14 And some people,

00:53:15 --> 00:53:17 one woman came up to me at church fairly recently and said,

00:53:17 --> 00:53:18 I don't even,

00:53:18 --> 00:53:21 I'm not sure that I'm supposed to eat bacon.

00:53:23 --> 00:53:26 I'm not sure that I'm, I think maybe I'm supposed to avoid shellfish.

00:53:27 --> 00:53:27 Yeah.

00:53:28 --> 00:53:29 Because the law is good.

00:53:29 --> 00:53:32 And David says, Psalm 119, I love your law.

00:53:32 --> 00:53:37 And Jesus said, not one piece of the law will pass away.

00:53:37 --> 00:53:38 He didn't come to destroy it.

00:53:38 --> 00:53:39 And the law has,

00:53:39 --> 00:53:40 don't get a tattoo,

00:53:40 --> 00:53:43 don't eat bacon or shellfish and make sure you separate cheese from meat.

00:53:45 --> 00:53:46 And so those, it's actually a good question.

00:53:46 --> 00:53:50 I think we all would intuitively know the Bible doesn't want us to stone,

00:53:50 --> 00:53:51 like kill people with rocks.

00:53:52 --> 00:53:55 But the question, like just saying that, right?

00:53:55 --> 00:53:57 Like the Bible doesn't want us to stone people,

00:53:58 --> 00:54:01 but then you look in the Old Testament and Moses,

00:54:01 --> 00:54:01 right?

00:54:01 --> 00:54:05 The leader of God's people is leading people to do that.

00:54:05 --> 00:54:07 So I think that's where the disconnect is.

00:54:07 --> 00:54:07 Totally.

00:54:08 --> 00:54:09 And I would also point out,

00:54:09 --> 00:54:11 this is how,

00:54:11 --> 00:54:11 you know,

00:54:11 --> 00:54:13 most atheists are very kind and thoughtful.

00:54:14 --> 00:54:16 I know I've met many of them.

00:54:16 --> 00:54:18 I just recently had one in my home to talk about Jesus,

00:54:18 --> 00:54:20 and it was a lively conversation.

00:54:21 --> 00:54:24 Full deconstructed ex-Catholic atheist professor,

00:54:25 --> 00:54:26 kinesiology professor at a UC University.

00:54:27 --> 00:54:28 He's just great.

00:54:28 --> 00:54:29 He's thoughtful.

00:54:29 --> 00:54:30 Once in a while,

00:54:30 --> 00:54:33 you'll hear online an extreme version of atheism that will say

00:54:33 --> 00:54:35 it will agree that

00:54:35 --> 00:54:38 he or she will agree with that person who said the Bible

00:54:38 --> 00:54:39 teaches us to stone.

00:54:39 --> 00:54:43 So the Bible's but they'll say that show us how the Bible's bad.

00:54:43 --> 00:54:46 So it's the same reading from two opposite sides, two opposite extremes.

00:54:47 --> 00:54:50 And really it boils down to like read a book.

00:54:50 --> 00:54:52 We all know how to read a book.

00:54:52 --> 00:54:55 You read a poem not thinking it's historical.

00:54:55 --> 00:54:58 You come to it going, oh, this is intentionally a poem.

00:54:58 --> 00:54:59 I'll read it as a poem.

00:54:59 --> 00:55:02 Or you come to history and you don't treat it like a poem

00:55:02 --> 00:55:03 because it's not intended

00:55:03 --> 00:55:04 to be a poem.

00:55:04 --> 00:55:05 It's history.

00:55:05 --> 00:55:09 We need to come to the Bible as whatever genre it's presenting

00:55:09 --> 00:55:10 itself to us as.

00:55:11 --> 00:55:13 And yes, it was historical.

00:55:13 --> 00:55:20 God in history gave Israel instructions on how to deal with

00:55:20 --> 00:55:22 situational ethics in a

00:55:22 --> 00:55:23 time when,

00:55:23 --> 00:55:24 honestly,

00:55:24 --> 00:55:26 Canaanite empire city-states...

00:55:26 --> 00:55:32 were making up all kinds of violent rules in the name of their gods.

00:55:32 --> 00:55:36 And Yahweh stepped into history lovingly.

00:55:36 --> 00:55:37 This is always what he's doing.

00:55:37 --> 00:55:38 Here's the answer to all the problems.

00:55:39 --> 00:55:41 I think this is, it doesn't fix all the problems.

00:55:41 --> 00:55:43 It doesn't make us feel good about the problems.

00:55:44 --> 00:55:48 But it is a helpful response and framework for how to come to

00:55:48 --> 00:55:49 the Old Testament

00:55:49 --> 00:55:50 troublesome text.

00:55:50 --> 00:55:52 I just had a conversation with a woman about this last Sunday

00:55:52 --> 00:55:53 who's having a hard

00:55:53 --> 00:55:58 time with violence in the Old Testament that God seems to approve of.

00:55:58 --> 00:55:59 Here's the framework.

00:55:59 --> 00:56:03 God steps into history lovingly with his people,

00:56:03 --> 00:56:05 meets them where they're at,

00:56:05 --> 00:56:09 and gently moves them forward without destroying them.

00:56:11 --> 00:56:12 So with slavery in the Bible,

00:56:13 --> 00:56:15 does God come right out and say,

00:56:15 --> 00:56:17 I abolish all slavery,

00:56:17 --> 00:56:18 all slavery's evil,

00:56:18 --> 00:56:19 stop owning slaves?

00:56:19 --> 00:56:20 Does he say that?

00:56:20 --> 00:56:21 The answer is no,

00:56:22 --> 00:56:26 because that would destroy human civilization that did not know

00:56:26 --> 00:56:27 how to function

00:56:27 --> 00:56:29 apart from the systems they had inherited.

00:56:30 --> 00:56:33 And so God steps into slave cultures and he says,

00:56:33 --> 00:56:34 oh my gosh,

00:56:34 --> 00:56:35 this is not ideal.

00:56:35 --> 00:56:36 I'm going to limit,

00:56:37 --> 00:56:40 and then he gives slave-owning laws that limit the evil of

00:56:41 --> 00:56:42 slavery and then

00:56:42 --> 00:56:46 lovingly move his people beyond those evils toward Jesus who

00:56:46 --> 00:56:47 will ultimately

00:56:47 --> 00:56:48 abolish slavery.

00:56:49 --> 00:56:53 Jesus ultimately abolished slavery as evidenced by history

00:56:53 --> 00:56:55 following Jesus where

00:56:56 --> 00:56:58 Jesus' followers for the last 2 years have been on the

00:56:58 --> 00:57:00 leading edge of the

00:57:00 --> 00:57:03 abolitionist movement such as William Wilberforce and others.

00:57:04 --> 00:57:06 In the name of Jesus, slavery has been abolished.

00:57:06 --> 00:57:07 Yes.

00:57:08 --> 00:57:11 There have been some mistakes along the way.

00:57:12 --> 00:57:16 Case in point, American Christian justification of owning black bodies.

00:57:17 --> 00:57:18 But from within that,

00:57:18 --> 00:57:21 we had Jesus followers rising up and saying,

00:57:21 --> 00:57:22 this is not the way it's supposed to be.

00:57:22 --> 00:57:23 Look at Jesus.

00:57:23 --> 00:57:24 Look at Paul.

00:57:24 --> 00:57:28 So when you read the Old Testament and you see laws about

00:57:28 --> 00:57:31 owning slaves or paying a

00:57:31 --> 00:57:34 cheaper price for female slaves than male slaves,

00:57:34 --> 00:57:34 you're like,

00:57:34 --> 00:57:35 wow,

00:57:35 --> 00:57:36 this is layers of problems.

00:57:36 --> 00:57:41 But God is stepping into a pre-existing culture soaked in evil.

00:57:41 --> 00:57:45 And he's limiting that evil with these laws and moving his

00:57:45 --> 00:57:47 people beyond the evils toward Jesus.

00:57:47 --> 00:57:50 Israel is not there yet in the Old Testament.

00:57:51 --> 00:57:55 We want God to just hit the reset button and bring justice in

00:57:55 --> 00:57:57 the Old Testament stories.

00:57:57 --> 00:57:59 But that would destroy his people.

00:57:59 --> 00:58:02 So instead of erasing and destroying his people,

00:58:02 --> 00:58:05 God's merciful and he's relational.

00:58:05 --> 00:58:06 And so he gets himself messy.

00:58:07 --> 00:58:08 He gets himself messy.

00:58:08 --> 00:58:09 Just like Jesus on the cross.

00:58:09 --> 00:58:14 Jesus becomes sin so that we might become the righteousness of God.

00:58:14 --> 00:58:15 We might become healed.

00:58:16 --> 00:58:19 God's the same in the Old Testament as Jesus in the New.

00:58:19 --> 00:58:20 In the Old Testament,

00:58:20 --> 00:58:21 God becomes,

00:58:21 --> 00:58:22 he gets messy,

00:58:23 --> 00:58:27 and he starts creating laws that seem so convoluted to our

00:58:27 --> 00:58:30 modern post-cross eyes.

00:58:30 --> 00:58:31 But pre-Jesus,

00:58:31 --> 00:58:32 my goodness,

00:58:32 --> 00:58:32 God's like,

00:58:32 --> 00:58:38 I'm going to work with my family that is completely deceived,

00:58:38 --> 00:58:41 and I'm going to move them beyond the deception,

00:58:41 --> 00:58:43 and I'm going to restore their sight.

00:58:43 --> 00:58:44 Yeah.

00:58:45 --> 00:58:47 That's the same thing with, you know, all kinds of laws.

00:58:47 --> 00:58:48 That's why,

00:58:48 --> 00:58:48 you know,

00:58:49 --> 00:58:52 short answer to the guy who wants to quote Moses's laws today,

00:58:52 --> 00:58:55 the 613 laws of Moses are done.

00:58:55 --> 00:58:55 They're done.

00:58:56 --> 00:58:59 They don't have the same prescriptive authority over God's

00:58:59 --> 00:59:01 people as they did pre-Jesus.

00:59:01 --> 00:59:02 They still have wisdom.

00:59:02 --> 00:59:04 They show us how God moved people forward,

00:59:05 --> 00:59:08 but we don't have to avoid shaving the sides of our beards in

00:59:08 --> 00:59:10 the name of Yahweh anymore.

00:59:10 --> 00:59:10 Yeah.

00:59:11 --> 00:59:12 Yeah, thank goodness.

00:59:12 --> 00:59:13 Yeah,

00:59:13 --> 00:59:14 even the Ten Commandments,

00:59:14 --> 00:59:15 they have tons of wisdom,

00:59:15 --> 00:59:17 and Jesus reaffirmed all of them.

00:59:18 --> 00:59:20 And because Jesus reaffirmed them,

00:59:20 --> 00:59:21 the Ten Commandments are to be followed.

00:59:21 --> 00:59:24 But they're not to be followed because they're simply Moses' law.

00:59:24 --> 00:59:27 Moses' law is expired like an old driver's license because

00:59:27 --> 00:59:28 Christ was crucified,

00:59:28 --> 00:59:29 risen,

00:59:29 --> 00:59:31 and exalted and gave us the spirit,

00:59:31 --> 00:59:34 which was always meant to be the expiration date of Moses' law.

00:59:34 --> 00:59:37 This is how to read the Bible as the word of God that points to

00:59:37 --> 00:59:38 the living word,

00:59:38 --> 00:59:39 Jesus.

00:59:39 --> 00:59:39 It's good.

00:59:39 --> 00:59:39 Yeah.

01:00:11 --> 01:00:15 I think the way that I parse it out in my mind is this is kind

01:00:15 --> 01:00:16 of the theological

01:00:16 --> 01:00:18 construction that I've thought through in my own mind.

01:00:18 --> 01:00:20 But the analogy that I use is,

01:00:21 --> 01:00:21 you know,

01:00:21 --> 01:00:22 we ask the question,

01:00:23 --> 01:00:23 okay,

01:00:23 --> 01:00:26 so are we pitting Jesus against God?

01:00:26 --> 01:00:29 You know, Yahweh of the Old Testament versus Jesus of the New.

01:00:30 --> 01:00:32 And we would say, no, God is one.

01:00:32 --> 01:00:34 Like he has not changed.

01:00:34 --> 01:00:35 He is the same.

01:00:35 --> 01:00:36 He has always been the same.

01:00:36 --> 01:00:36 Yes.

01:00:36 --> 01:00:37 But then it's like,

01:00:37 --> 01:00:37 okay,

01:00:37 --> 01:00:40 so why is he telling people to stone people in the Old Testament?

01:00:40 --> 01:00:41 But in the New Testament,

01:00:41 --> 01:00:44 Jesus is actually preventing a woman caught in adultery from

01:00:44 --> 01:00:44 being stoned.

01:00:45 --> 01:00:45 And to me,

01:00:46 --> 01:00:50 the analogy that I have come up with and that I use is it's not

01:00:50 --> 01:00:51 that somebody changed.

01:00:51 --> 01:00:52 It's not that God changed.

01:00:53 --> 01:00:56 It's that have you ever had a plan, a multi-phase plan?

01:00:56 --> 01:00:59 And in those phases, you acted differently.

01:00:59 --> 01:01:01 But throughout the entire process,

01:01:02 --> 01:01:05 you were the same person and you had the same goal and the same

01:01:05 --> 01:01:07 objective in mind always.

01:01:07 --> 01:01:08 It never changed.

01:01:08 --> 01:01:10 And so, you know, I think of baking a cake, right?

01:01:10 --> 01:01:11 You have a plan for that.

01:01:11 --> 01:01:12 You've got a recipe.

01:01:13 --> 01:01:15 And phase one of the plan is violent.

01:01:15 --> 01:01:19 You're cracking eggs and beating things in a mixing bowl, you know.

01:01:19 --> 01:01:20 And then phase two,

01:01:20 --> 01:01:20 you know,

01:01:20 --> 01:01:23 you're putting things in the oven and things are getting hot.

01:01:23 --> 01:01:26 But in phase three, the cake comes out and you enjoy the cake.

01:01:27 --> 01:01:31 And if you were to go back and do the violent phase one things

01:01:31 --> 01:01:32 in phase three,

01:01:32 --> 01:01:33 like imagine trying to eat the cake,

01:01:33 --> 01:01:35 but you're cracking eggs and beating,

01:01:35 --> 01:01:36 you know,

01:01:36 --> 01:01:38 frosting or whatever all over the cake.

01:01:38 --> 01:01:40 That's not going to be enjoyable for anybody.

01:01:41 --> 01:01:42 But you never changed.

01:01:42 --> 01:01:45 It wasn't that you were violent in phase one and then you got

01:01:45 --> 01:01:45 to phase three and

01:01:45 --> 01:01:46 you're like,

01:01:46 --> 01:01:46 oh,

01:01:46 --> 01:01:47 I've had a change of heart.

01:01:48 --> 01:01:50 It's like, no, you always were planning on the cake being there.

01:01:51 --> 01:01:53 And I see the Old Testament as phase one where it's like God is

01:01:54 --> 01:01:54 doing something.

01:01:55 --> 01:01:57 But sin is wicked.

01:01:57 --> 01:01:59 Sin is poison to humanity.

01:02:00 --> 01:02:02 It's not that God is just so...

01:02:03 --> 01:02:03 You know,

01:02:03 --> 01:02:07 I just he he he just hates people for their sin and he's

01:02:07 --> 01:02:09 disgusted by people and he

01:02:09 --> 01:02:09 can't stand people.

01:02:10 --> 01:02:10 It's like,

01:02:10 --> 01:02:10 no,

01:02:10 --> 01:02:13 God realizes that sin is poison to humanity,

01:02:14 --> 01:02:15 to the spiritual realm.

01:02:15 --> 01:02:16 Sin is destructive.

01:02:16 --> 01:02:20 And so there is a violent cleansing at times that happens.

01:02:20 --> 01:02:22 There is punishment for sin.

01:02:22 --> 01:02:26 But it's leading up to this phase three where Jesus is is born,

01:02:27 --> 01:02:27 live,

01:02:27 --> 01:02:29 crucified and resurrected.

01:02:29 --> 01:02:31 And then all of a sudden people don't have to be stoned.

01:02:32 --> 01:02:36 for their sins anymore because jesus died instead of us like he

01:02:36 --> 01:02:37 died so that we

01:02:37 --> 01:02:40 didn't have to he was crucified so that we no longer had to be

01:02:40 --> 01:02:41 stoned for our sins

01:02:41 --> 01:02:44 he took that punishment and so to me that's that's reading

01:02:44 --> 01:02:46 scripture in the context

01:02:46 --> 01:02:50 of the meta-narrative it's not just doing what i used to do

01:02:50 --> 01:02:50 when i was in middle

01:02:50 --> 01:02:53 school and you were my middle school pastor but it had nothing

01:02:53 --> 01:02:53 to do with you like

01:02:54 --> 01:02:56 It was just the way that, you know, we grow up in the church.

01:02:57 --> 01:03:00 I would flip through the Bible and just go to random verses and go,

01:03:00 --> 01:03:01 how does this apply to my life?

01:03:02 --> 01:03:03 How does this random verse,

01:03:03 --> 01:03:04 you know,

01:03:04 --> 01:03:06 what does it teach me about morality and how to live?

01:03:06 --> 01:03:07 And when you read it that way,

01:03:07 --> 01:03:09 divorced from the context,

01:03:09 --> 01:03:12 it's so easy to find something in the Old Testament and apply

01:03:12 --> 01:03:13 it when God's like,

01:03:13 --> 01:03:13 no,

01:03:14 --> 01:03:15 that's part of the recipe.

01:03:16 --> 01:03:19 We're in the phase where you're supposed to be enjoying this cake,

01:03:19 --> 01:03:19 if that's

01:03:19 --> 01:03:20 If that makes sense.

01:03:20 --> 01:03:22 I don't know if it makes sense, but that's... No, it does.

01:03:22 --> 01:03:23 It does make sense.

01:03:23 --> 01:03:24 And,

01:03:24 --> 01:03:24 you know,

01:03:25 --> 01:03:28 the ground zero New Testament text that supports everything

01:03:28 --> 01:03:29 we're saying is

01:03:29 --> 01:03:30 Galatians 3.

01:03:30 --> 01:03:31 If anyone's ever read it,

01:03:32 --> 01:03:34 they'll know that Paul,

01:03:34 --> 01:03:35 he agreed with you,

01:03:35 --> 01:03:35 Aaron.

01:03:35 --> 01:03:36 Rather,

01:03:36 --> 01:03:39 we agreed with Paul because he said this very thing that the law...

01:03:41 --> 01:03:45 you know, the 613 laws of Moses, they were a guardian.

01:03:45 --> 01:03:46 They were like a nanny.

01:03:47 --> 01:03:51 They were a hired caregiver to watch God's kids until God's

01:03:51 --> 01:03:53 kids matured and were

01:03:53 --> 01:03:56 no longer minors and could step into their inheritance.

01:03:56 --> 01:03:59 And when they turned 18, when Jesus came, it was go time.

01:03:59 --> 01:03:59 You know,

01:04:00 --> 01:04:00 the new cup,

01:04:00 --> 01:04:04 the spirit of God was now activated in everyone's hearts who

01:04:04 --> 01:04:05 trusts in Jesus.

01:04:05 --> 01:04:06 That wasn't true under the law.

01:04:07 --> 01:04:11 So you're right, the cake was baked, to use your metaphor.

01:04:11 --> 01:04:12 The cake was baked,

01:04:12 --> 01:04:13 crucifixion,

01:04:13 --> 01:04:14 resurrection,

01:04:14 --> 01:04:17 and the exaltation of Jesus into heaven at the right hand of

01:04:17 --> 01:04:18 the Father where he

01:04:18 --> 01:04:19 currently sits.

01:04:19 --> 01:04:23 And now the Father and the Son breathe the Spirit onto everyone

01:04:23 --> 01:04:24 who follows Jesus.

01:04:25 --> 01:04:29 And literally, Moses' 613 laws are expired.

01:04:29 --> 01:04:32 They're expired in their prescriptive sense.

01:04:32 --> 01:04:35 They still carry the authority of the Word of God in a

01:04:35 --> 01:04:37 historical and wisdom sense,

01:04:38 --> 01:04:40 but we don't have to apply them as literal laws anymore.

01:04:40 --> 01:04:45 We don't have to, you know, weigh the scales of slave trade monies.

01:04:45 --> 01:04:49 anymore because that was for a context.

01:04:49 --> 01:04:52 It's now expired because it was never the ideal.

01:04:52 --> 01:04:53 It was never God's best.

01:04:53 --> 01:04:57 It was good, but it was never God's best.

01:04:57 --> 01:04:59 Paul says this explicitly in Galatians 3.

01:05:00 --> 01:05:02 Now, how do you parse that out, though?

01:05:02 --> 01:05:03 How do you determine?

01:05:03 --> 01:05:04 I mean, I should just read it.

01:05:05 --> 01:05:05 He says,

01:05:05 --> 01:05:05 you know,

01:05:05 --> 01:05:06 brothers and sisters,

01:05:07 --> 01:05:07 you know,

01:05:07 --> 01:05:09 let me take an example from everyday life,

01:05:09 --> 01:05:10 Galatians 3.15.

01:05:11 --> 01:05:12 And he's talking about a human covenant.

01:05:13 --> 01:05:14 It can't be set aside.

01:05:14 --> 01:05:17 And the covenant is God promising Abraham,

01:05:18 --> 01:05:20 I will be your God and you'll be my family.

01:05:20 --> 01:05:23 And through your family, every family will become my family.

01:05:24 --> 01:05:25 This was the intent all along.

01:05:25 --> 01:05:28 And it says those promises were spoken to Abraham.

01:05:28 --> 01:05:29 They were spoken to Abraham.

01:05:29 --> 01:05:32 Abraham's like, I don't get it, but I believe it.

01:05:33 --> 01:05:34 And it's going to be wild.

01:05:34 --> 01:05:36 I'm old and I'm going to have a kid.

01:05:36 --> 01:05:37 And through my kid,

01:05:37 --> 01:05:38 like through my kid,

01:05:39 --> 01:05:40 the stars of the heavens,

01:05:40 --> 01:05:42 that's going to be like all the kids that come from my kid.

01:05:42 --> 01:05:43 I'm like 90.

01:05:43 --> 01:05:44 That's crazy.

01:05:44 --> 01:05:46 But Yahweh, you are to be trusted.

01:05:46 --> 01:05:48 You are to be trusted.

01:05:48 --> 01:05:50 And Yahweh says, that's what I'm talking about.

01:05:50 --> 01:05:51 That's my kind of guy.

01:05:51 --> 01:05:52 That's righteous.

01:05:52 --> 01:05:55 When God says Abraham's righteous, he's saying, that's my kind of guy.

01:05:55 --> 01:05:59 And so Abraham's like, I believe that your promise is going to come true.

01:06:00 --> 01:06:04 And it says those promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed.

01:06:05 --> 01:06:06 The scripture does not say to seeds,

01:06:06 --> 01:06:07 meaning many people,

01:06:08 --> 01:06:09 but and to your seed,

01:06:10 --> 01:06:11 meaning one person who is Christ.

01:06:12 --> 01:06:17 And so God promised through Abraham that Jesus would come to

01:06:17 --> 01:06:18 make all the promises come true.

01:06:19 --> 01:06:21 This is what the scriptures are about.

01:06:22 --> 01:06:24 And Paul is saying, hey, this is what the Bible is about.

01:06:25 --> 01:06:26 This is what the word is about.

01:06:26 --> 01:06:27 This is what the word is about,

01:06:27 --> 01:06:29 that God will bring the living word in Jesus.

01:06:30 --> 01:06:31 He will bring Jesus himself.

01:06:32 --> 01:06:34 And then Paul, he sees that we're confused.

01:06:35 --> 01:06:36 So he says, what I mean is this, verse 17.

01:06:39 --> 01:06:39 The law,

01:06:40 --> 01:06:42 which is Moses' 613 commands,

01:06:43 --> 01:06:46 introduced 430 years later,

01:06:46 --> 01:06:49 it doesn't set aside the covenant previously established.

01:06:50 --> 01:06:51 And it doesn't do away with the promise.

01:06:52 --> 01:06:55 And then he's like, okay, well, why was the law given?

01:06:55 --> 01:07:00 Why did we need 613 commands to confuse a bunch of Americans in

01:07:00 --> 01:07:00 2022 about stoning?

01:07:00 --> 01:07:00 Yeah.

01:07:02 --> 01:07:04 Why do we need this in our Bibles?

01:07:04 --> 01:07:10 He says, because it was added because of sins until the seed.

01:07:11 --> 01:07:12 We have to get that.

01:07:12 --> 01:07:12 You know,

01:07:12 --> 01:07:13 the woman who came up to me at church and was like,

01:07:14 --> 01:07:15 I don't know if I'm supposed to eat shellfish.

01:07:15 --> 01:07:16 And the guy who's talking to you like,

01:07:16 --> 01:07:20 I think we should still stone disobedient kids or whatever.

01:07:20 --> 01:07:25 like those laws were added because of temporary sins of an

01:07:26 --> 01:07:27 ancient nomadic nation

01:07:28 --> 01:07:32 of israelites they were always meant to expire when the seed

01:07:32 --> 01:07:33 comes when the messiah

01:07:34 --> 01:07:38 comes and his spirit fills every heart of messiah followers

01:07:38 --> 01:07:40 yeah so moses expired

01:07:40 --> 01:07:44 it's it's expired but can i pick at that just a tiny bit just

01:07:44 --> 01:07:45 just for the sake of

01:07:45 --> 01:07:47 i'm thinking through listeners and the way that they're

01:07:47 --> 01:07:48 probably going to be

01:07:48 --> 01:07:49 picking at that

01:07:49 --> 01:07:51 Let's pick at it with Galatians 3 open.

01:08:12 --> 01:08:15 So the question I'd go to is,

01:08:15 --> 01:08:15 well,

01:08:15 --> 01:08:17 first I'll say in my understanding,

01:08:18 --> 01:08:20 based on what you're saying and just what I know,

01:08:20 --> 01:08:25 I think you're right to point out that we have this Old Testament law,

01:08:25 --> 01:08:29 this large portion of the law that is specific to the time of

01:08:30 --> 01:08:30 Israel and what

01:08:30 --> 01:08:31 they're going through.

01:08:31 --> 01:08:32 You know,

01:08:32 --> 01:08:35 it's phase one of that plan and God is recognizing in order to

01:08:35 --> 01:08:36 get Israel through

01:08:36 --> 01:08:38 the desert and keep them alive,

01:08:38 --> 01:08:41 I need to make a law that they don't eat bats and pigs,

01:08:41 --> 01:08:41 you know?

01:08:42 --> 01:08:44 There's all that kind of stuff going on.

01:08:44 --> 01:08:47 And also just dealing with ethics and dealing with sin that is happening,

01:08:47 --> 01:08:50 specific sin that is happening in the land at that time.

01:08:50 --> 01:08:54 But then like, so the talk about the Ten Commandments, right?

01:08:54 --> 01:08:55 That's the big one everyone always goes to.

01:08:55 --> 01:08:58 And that's like, keep that sacred, keep it holy, keep it safe, right?

01:08:59 --> 01:09:00 And in that sense,

01:09:00 --> 01:09:01 like my question would be,

01:09:02 --> 01:09:06 where do we draw the line and how do we find out what laws are

01:09:07 --> 01:09:08 specific and done

01:09:08 --> 01:09:09 away with?

01:09:09 --> 01:09:11 And then what laws reflect God's heart forever?

01:09:12 --> 01:09:14 If you have somebody in your church who comes up to you and is like,

01:09:14 --> 01:09:14 hey,

01:09:14 --> 01:09:14 Evan,

01:09:15 --> 01:09:15 I'm married,

01:09:15 --> 01:09:17 but I really want to commit adultery,

01:09:17 --> 01:09:17 you know?

01:09:18 --> 01:09:20 I've been talking to this girl and things are going great.

01:09:20 --> 01:09:24 And, you know, the Ten Commandments, yeah, but that's done away with.

01:09:24 --> 01:09:25 That's the old law.

01:09:25 --> 01:09:26 That's expired.

01:09:26 --> 01:09:28 You know, I have freedom in Christ.

01:09:28 --> 01:09:30 So how do you deal with those kind of situations?

01:09:31 --> 01:09:35 Well, I want to kind of repeat Paul here again.

01:09:35 --> 01:09:36 Why was the law,

01:09:36 --> 01:09:38 and he means Moses' 613 laws,

01:09:39 --> 01:09:40 including the Ten Commandments.

01:09:40 --> 01:09:42 The Ten Commandments are the first ten.

01:09:42 --> 01:09:42 There's another 603.

01:09:42 --> 01:09:43 Okay.

01:09:44 --> 01:09:47 All of Moses' laws were given and they were added.

01:09:47 --> 01:09:48 They were added to what?

01:09:48 --> 01:09:51 They were added to Abraham's promise.

01:09:51 --> 01:09:53 That's the thing that never goes away.

01:09:53 --> 01:09:54 When Paul talks about the law,

01:09:55 --> 01:09:58 you can see it in Galatians 4.21 explicitly and also Romans 2.

01:09:59 --> 01:10:01 He talks about the law in two ways.

01:10:01 --> 01:10:07 Law number one is the 613 laws of Moses that are expired at Pentecost.

01:10:07 --> 01:10:08 Law number two,

01:10:08 --> 01:10:09 same word law,

01:10:09 --> 01:10:10 and there's debate about this,

01:10:10 --> 01:10:14 but I think it's very hard to argue the other side based on the text.

01:10:14 --> 01:10:17 Law number two is the scriptures, the whole Torah.

01:10:17 --> 01:10:19 Genesis through Deuteronomy.

01:10:19 --> 01:10:22 Jesus called this the law and the prophets.

01:10:22 --> 01:10:23 That was the whole Old Testament.

01:10:23 --> 01:10:24 So the law,

01:10:25 --> 01:10:27 as Moses' 613 commands,

01:10:27 --> 01:10:32 is expired in its prescriptive form for new covenant children of God.

01:10:32 --> 01:10:35 That's Christians, multi-ethnic, global body of Christ.

01:10:35 --> 01:10:39 Moses' laws no longer apply to us in the same way.

01:10:39 --> 01:10:41 That includes the Ten Commandments.

01:10:41 --> 01:10:42 That's all of them.

01:10:42 --> 01:10:43 But the law,

01:10:43 --> 01:10:44 you can say capital L,

01:10:45 --> 01:10:46 the whole Torah,

01:10:46 --> 01:10:50 the story of Abraham coming from Eden and moving into Israel,

01:10:50 --> 01:10:54 the story of Abraham is authoritative as the word of God

01:10:55 --> 01:10:56 through the lens of Jesus

01:10:56 --> 01:10:58 for all of God's people for all of time.

01:10:58 --> 01:11:01 And that's what Jesus was talking about when he said the law

01:11:01 --> 01:11:02 and the prophets will

01:11:02 --> 01:11:03 never pass away.

01:11:03 --> 01:11:03 Hmm.

01:11:03 --> 01:11:04 So for the person who says,

01:11:04 --> 01:11:05 well,

01:11:05 --> 01:11:06 if the law is expired,

01:11:06 --> 01:11:08 if Moses' commands are expired,

01:11:08 --> 01:11:09 what about the Ten Commandments?

01:11:09 --> 01:11:10 Can I murder now?

01:11:11 --> 01:11:11 Well,

01:11:11 --> 01:11:12 thankfully,

01:11:12 --> 01:11:16 we have Jesus who picked up on that law and said,

01:11:16 --> 01:11:16 actually,

01:11:16 --> 01:11:18 I'm going to make it tighter.

01:11:18 --> 01:11:22 If you're angry in your heart, you've sinned, not just killed someone.

01:11:23 --> 01:11:24 And then you're like, well, what about adultery?

01:11:24 --> 01:11:26 So I can now sleep with who I want?

01:11:26 --> 01:11:26 Well,

01:11:26 --> 01:11:27 no,

01:11:27 --> 01:11:29 Jesus got tighter on pornea,

01:11:29 --> 01:11:32 which is the biblical word for sexual immorality.

01:11:32 --> 01:11:33 He got tighter and he said,

01:11:34 --> 01:11:36 not only do you commit pornea with your body,

01:11:36 --> 01:11:37 but you commit it with your mind.

01:11:38 --> 01:11:39 And so, and Jesus practiced Sabbath.

01:11:39 --> 01:11:44 He said the Sabbath is made for humans, but not humans for the Sabbath.

01:11:44 --> 01:11:45 Jesus,

01:11:45 --> 01:11:45 he,

01:11:46 --> 01:11:46 he,

01:11:46 --> 01:11:47 in that statement,

01:11:47 --> 01:11:48 in that statement,

01:11:48 --> 01:11:48 he proved this point.

01:11:49 --> 01:11:51 The law is no longer prescriptive, but it's life-giving.

01:11:51 --> 01:11:52 You know what I mean?

01:11:52 --> 01:11:54 The Sabbath is not made to be your master.

01:11:55 --> 01:11:57 The Sabbath is made to serve you.

01:11:57 --> 01:12:00 Hopefully you do it and rest and learn that you're not God and

01:12:00 --> 01:12:00 you don't have to

01:12:00 --> 01:12:02 work to keep the world running.

01:12:02 --> 01:12:03 That's God's job and you can rest.

01:12:03 --> 01:12:08 So even the Ten Commandments are no longer prescriptive in the

01:12:08 --> 01:12:09 same way they were

01:12:09 --> 01:12:12 for a nation of ancient nomadic Jews,

01:12:12 --> 01:12:14 ex-slaves trying to figure out how to make it across a

01:12:14 --> 01:12:16 wilderness and start a country.

01:12:16 --> 01:12:18 Those laws don't apply in the same way,

01:12:18 --> 01:12:22 but they do continue to carry God's eternal,

01:12:22 --> 01:12:23 authoritative,

01:12:24 --> 01:12:25 inspired,

01:12:25 --> 01:12:27 scriptural wisdom in

01:12:27 --> 01:12:32 You're a fool if you willingly disobey any of the Ten Commandments.

01:12:32 --> 01:12:35 And that's obvious because of the new covenant.

01:12:35 --> 01:12:38 We have the Spirit in our hearts who leads us to Jesus who says,

01:12:38 --> 01:12:39 love God and neighbor.

01:12:40 --> 01:12:43 If you flagrantly violate any of the Ten Commandments,

01:12:43 --> 01:12:47 you are violating the Spirit's law written on your heart that

01:12:47 --> 01:12:48 is summed up in love

01:12:48 --> 01:12:49 God and love neighbor.

01:12:50 --> 01:12:53 The other 603 commands, there's a lot of wisdom there too.

01:12:53 --> 01:12:54 There's a lot of,

01:12:54 --> 01:12:56 we could talk about this another time,

01:12:56 --> 01:12:57 and I think we will on a podcast.

01:12:57 --> 01:13:01 There's a lot of commands that show us that God wants humans to

01:13:01 --> 01:13:02 be a lot less

01:13:02 --> 01:13:06 violent than we are and possibly nonviolent in relation to our enemies,

01:13:06 --> 01:13:07 in relation to our neighbors.

01:13:08 --> 01:13:12 And generous and give freely of our own estate to the stranger

01:13:12 --> 01:13:13 and the foreigner

01:13:13 --> 01:13:14 and the immigrant.

01:13:14 --> 01:13:15 Like, my goodness.

01:13:15 --> 01:13:16 Yeah.

01:13:16 --> 01:13:19 There's a lot of wisdom in the law of Moses,

01:13:19 --> 01:13:24 but none of the 613 laws are prescriptive over new covenant

01:13:24 --> 01:13:26 family members of God,

01:13:26 --> 01:13:29 which is also why capital punishment should never be applied to

01:13:29 --> 01:13:30 someone who breaks

01:13:30 --> 01:13:30 the laws.

01:13:32 --> 01:13:34 Because we're not under the old covenant.

01:13:34 --> 01:13:36 They're expired in that sense.

01:13:37 --> 01:13:38 So when I say expired,

01:13:38 --> 01:13:42 don't hear me say the Bible's no longer authoritative.

01:13:42 --> 01:13:42 That's not what I'm saying.

01:13:43 --> 01:13:44 I'm saying the 613.

01:13:44 --> 01:13:45 I'm saying what Paul's saying,

01:13:45 --> 01:13:50 that the law was added as a nanny to take care of the kids

01:13:51 --> 01:13:52 until they grew up and

01:13:52 --> 01:13:53 could inherit the will.

01:13:54 --> 01:13:54 That's...

01:13:54 --> 01:13:56 That's literally what Paul says.

01:13:56 --> 01:14:01 I'm just parroting Paul in Galatians 4, the first seven verses.

01:14:01 --> 01:14:04 The law was a guardian so that the kids could grow up and

01:14:04 --> 01:14:05 receive the inheritance

01:14:05 --> 01:14:06 of their father's will.

01:14:06 --> 01:14:10 And the father's will has now been liquidated to his kids

01:14:10 --> 01:14:11 through the Holy Spirit

01:14:11 --> 01:14:13 in the new covenant after Pentecost.

01:14:13 --> 01:14:13 That's the church.

01:14:14 --> 01:14:15 We no longer have the nanny.

01:14:15 --> 01:14:16 We no longer have a nanny.

01:14:16 --> 01:14:18 Now we're priests.

01:14:18 --> 01:14:21 We're a kingdom of priests to one another, just like God always wanted.

01:14:23 --> 01:14:23 Thank you.

01:14:43 --> 01:14:45 Yeah, you know, this is really good stuff.

01:14:45 --> 01:14:46 And to me,

01:14:46 --> 01:14:51 what it's doing in my mind is it feels like you're calling people,

01:14:51 --> 01:14:52 you're calling listeners,

01:14:52 --> 01:14:57 you're calling Christians to move from this very surface level

01:14:57 --> 01:14:58 of I'm just going to

01:14:58 --> 01:15:02 flip to different Bible verses and try to figure out how to

01:15:02 --> 01:15:03 apply whatever it's

01:15:03 --> 01:15:05 saying to my world,

01:15:05 --> 01:15:05 my situation.

01:15:05 --> 01:15:08 And instead, you're calling people to read the book.

01:15:09 --> 01:15:13 within the context of the book to not open up a letter and just

01:15:13 --> 01:15:14 read a random

01:15:14 --> 01:15:15 paragraph and say,

01:15:15 --> 01:15:18 I'm going to apply this paragraph perfectly to my life,

01:15:18 --> 01:15:20 but instead you read the letter.

01:15:20 --> 01:15:24 And then you sum up what this letter is and you absorb it and

01:15:24 --> 01:15:24 you live it out.

01:15:24 --> 01:15:25 And the last thing,

01:15:25 --> 01:15:25 sorry,

01:15:26 --> 01:15:27 the last thing I want to say on this,

01:15:28 --> 01:15:29 and I don't need to say any more.

01:15:29 --> 01:15:31 I just think this last thing is important.

01:15:31 --> 01:15:33 What I'm saying is not new.

01:15:33 --> 01:15:33 Yeah.

01:15:34 --> 01:15:38 This isn't progressive Christianity.

01:15:38 --> 01:15:39 This is the opposite.

01:15:40 --> 01:15:42 This is the most ancient,

01:15:42 --> 01:15:44 most historic,

01:15:44 --> 01:15:50 most theologically humble in the sense that we are just reading

01:15:50 --> 01:15:51 what our fathers

01:15:51 --> 01:15:52 and mothers of faith have always said.

01:15:52 --> 01:15:58 It is very new to open up a Bible and play Bible roulette and

01:15:58 --> 01:15:59 think your own

01:15:59 --> 01:16:02 private interpretation of a text is the one that's correct.

01:16:02 --> 01:16:02 Yeah.

01:16:04 --> 01:16:05 For 1 years,

01:16:06 --> 01:16:06 for 1 years,

01:16:07 --> 01:16:09 until Gutenberg invented the printing press,

01:16:09 --> 01:16:11 Christians did not have private Bible quiet times.

01:16:12 --> 01:16:13 There were no private Bibles.

01:16:13 --> 01:16:14 You said that in a sermon once,

01:16:14 --> 01:16:15 and it blew my mind,

01:16:15 --> 01:16:19 because we live for this personal relationship with Jesus framework.

01:16:19 --> 01:16:20 Don't get me wrong.

01:16:21 --> 01:16:25 Yeah, it's great that we all have our own English Bibles on our shelves.

01:16:25 --> 01:16:25 Yes.

01:16:25 --> 01:16:26 But that's...

01:16:26 --> 01:16:27 Very, very new.

01:16:29 --> 01:16:31 For three quarters of church history,

01:16:32 --> 01:16:37 the way the Bible came to people was through group readings in

01:16:37 --> 01:16:38 synagogues and in

01:16:38 --> 01:16:41 church gatherings where one person had— In community.

01:16:41 --> 01:16:42 In community,

01:16:42 --> 01:16:48 where one person had one scroll or one hand-copied book,

01:16:48 --> 01:16:50 and it was kept safe.

01:16:50 --> 01:16:54 In Jewish synagogues, you see the big cabinet where the law is kept safe.

01:16:55 --> 01:16:56 And everyone would come and hear it read.

01:16:57 --> 01:16:59 And you'd read it literally in community.

01:16:59 --> 01:17:00 There was no other way.

01:17:00 --> 01:17:06 And so I say that to say the Bible's meant to be read humbly in

01:17:06 --> 01:17:08 a community of voices.

01:17:08 --> 01:17:10 And what I'm suggesting, what I believe...

01:17:13 --> 01:17:14 is that this view of,

01:17:15 --> 01:17:15 you know,

01:17:16 --> 01:17:19 the Old Testament containing 613 laws that were fulfilled in

01:17:19 --> 01:17:20 Jesus and are no

01:17:20 --> 01:17:21 longer prescriptive,

01:17:22 --> 01:17:22 this is not new.

01:17:22 --> 01:17:26 This is what the community has always, always said.

01:17:27 --> 01:17:32 And it's very new to read the Bible very flatly as kind of a

01:17:32 --> 01:17:33 divine rule book that

01:17:33 --> 01:17:34 fell from the sky.

01:17:34 --> 01:17:38 And I just read a law about not getting a tattoo in Leviticus

01:17:38 --> 01:17:39 and therefore,

01:17:39 --> 01:17:39 you know,

01:17:39 --> 01:17:42 I'm supposed to not get a tattoo on my arm today in San Diego.

01:17:44 --> 01:17:45 Like you said,

01:17:46 --> 01:17:49 there's a story from which these laws come to us,

01:17:50 --> 01:17:51 and Jesus is the point of the story.

01:17:52 --> 01:17:54 So, yeah, this is not progressive remotely.

01:17:54 --> 01:17:55 This is like the oldest.

01:17:55 --> 01:17:56 Yeah.

01:17:57 --> 01:17:57 Yeah.

01:17:58 --> 01:18:02 It's way more progressive to say the other side.

01:18:02 --> 01:18:03 Yeah,

01:18:03 --> 01:18:04 to just pick and choose,

01:18:04 --> 01:18:05 cherry pick,

01:18:05 --> 01:18:07 whatever fits whatever you want it to be.

01:18:07 --> 01:18:08 And by progressive, I hate those labels.

01:18:08 --> 01:18:13 By progressive, I mean new and unprecedented.

01:18:14 --> 01:18:16 I think we could say theologically liberal,

01:18:16 --> 01:18:18 and by that we don't mean politically liberal.

01:18:18 --> 01:18:22 We mean taking the Bible's authority and instead placing our

01:18:22 --> 01:18:23 own authority over it,

01:18:23 --> 01:18:26 and the Bible is whatever we want it to be.

01:18:26 --> 01:18:27 Sure, all these labels.

01:18:29 --> 01:18:30 You know, it's hard to exist without him.

01:18:30 --> 01:18:32 But I do agree, though.

01:18:32 --> 01:18:33 I hate being labeled.

01:18:34 --> 01:18:35 I'd rather exist without labels.

01:18:35 --> 01:18:36 But anyway,

01:18:36 --> 01:18:37 yeah,

01:18:37 --> 01:18:37 you know,

01:18:38 --> 01:18:38 for me,

01:18:39 --> 01:18:42 like the way that this is playing out in my mind as you're

01:18:42 --> 01:18:44 describing it is you're

01:18:44 --> 01:18:47 calling people to not read the Bible in this flat way.

01:18:47 --> 01:18:48 But instead,

01:18:48 --> 01:18:49 you're calling people,

01:18:49 --> 01:18:51 you're challenging people where it's like,

01:18:51 --> 01:18:51 hey,

01:18:51 --> 01:18:54 if you have a question about whether or not something is a sin,

01:18:55 --> 01:18:58 don't find some random verse and cherry pick.

01:18:58 --> 01:19:00 Look at what Scripture says.

01:19:01 --> 01:19:02 Scripture interprets Scripture.

01:19:02 --> 01:19:03 Look at the progression.

01:19:04 --> 01:19:05 Look at the story.

01:19:05 --> 01:19:07 And so when we look at Jesus and it's like,

01:19:07 --> 01:19:07 hey,

01:19:08 --> 01:19:09 Jesus is what God has to say.

01:19:10 --> 01:19:11 you do not stone your children.

01:19:11 --> 01:19:13 And someone's like, well, no, the Bible says it.

01:19:13 --> 01:19:13 And it's like,

01:19:13 --> 01:19:14 yes,

01:19:14 --> 01:19:19 but Jesus comes and he creates this way through the cross where

01:19:19 --> 01:19:20 it eliminates that

01:19:21 --> 01:19:24 need for the stoning of our children for disobedience because

01:19:24 --> 01:19:26 Jesus absorbs the

01:19:26 --> 01:19:27 penalty for our sins on the cross.

01:19:28 --> 01:19:31 And so for any ethical question, we can't just cherry pick random verses.

01:19:31 --> 01:19:34 We have to look at the entire story.

01:19:34 --> 01:19:36 We have to look at the entire narrative.

01:19:36 --> 01:19:38 And if, you know, go into the whole thing on adultery,

01:19:39 --> 01:19:39 Yes,

01:19:39 --> 01:19:40 we have the verse in the Ten Commandments,

01:19:40 --> 01:19:43 but if you look from Genesis to Revelation,

01:19:43 --> 01:19:46 you can see a consistent ethic given by Yahweh,

01:19:47 --> 01:19:47 Jesus,

01:19:47 --> 01:19:48 the apostles,

01:19:48 --> 01:19:51 that confirms what the Ten Commandments says about committing adultery.

01:19:52 --> 01:19:53 Bathing a goat in its mother's milk,

01:19:54 --> 01:19:56 you don't necessarily find that consistent ethic.

01:19:56 --> 01:19:58 And so that kind of reveals,

01:19:58 --> 01:19:58 yeah,

01:19:58 --> 01:20:00 that was a specific law for a specific time.

01:20:00 --> 01:20:01 And so...

01:20:01 --> 01:20:02 It's complicated,

01:20:02 --> 01:20:05 but I feel like we need to accept that the Bible is complicated.

01:20:05 --> 01:20:09 I feel like we need to accept that we're not called to read the Bible in

01:20:09 --> 01:20:12 VeggieTales mode or flannel graph Sunday school mode.

01:20:12 --> 01:20:15 We're called to dive deep and wrestle through these things.

01:20:16 --> 01:20:19 And also it's important to say this was the plan all along.

01:20:20 --> 01:20:20 In the Old Testament,

01:20:21 --> 01:20:24 God said he would no longer require a law written on stone,

01:20:24 --> 01:20:26 but on human hearts by the Spirit.

01:20:26 --> 01:20:30 It's not like the New Testament came along and Jesus shocked

01:20:30 --> 01:20:30 everyone and said,

01:20:31 --> 01:20:33 you know what you all heard in the Bible?

01:20:33 --> 01:20:35 It's all done now.

01:20:35 --> 01:20:36 That's not what Jesus did.

01:20:36 --> 01:20:38 It's not what Jesus did.

01:20:39 --> 01:20:41 He taught the Bible experts.

01:20:42 --> 01:20:44 how to read the Bible better from their own text.

01:20:44 --> 01:20:46 He didn't say the text no longer matters.

01:20:47 --> 01:20:49 I really want to stress this because I think this even gets

01:20:49 --> 01:20:50 missed in conversations

01:20:50 --> 01:20:51 like this right now.

01:20:52 --> 01:20:57 The Old Testament always had a plan where the Moses law would

01:20:57 --> 01:20:58 no longer be required

01:20:58 --> 01:20:59 in the same way.

01:20:59 --> 01:21:00 It was always written in there.

01:21:00 --> 01:21:01 You can see it in Deuteronomy.

01:21:01 --> 01:21:04 The law itself says, I will no longer require the law.

01:21:05 --> 01:21:08 So it's not like Jesus pulled something out of his hat in the

01:21:08 --> 01:21:08 New Testament.

01:21:08 --> 01:21:09 Jesus was not,

01:21:09 --> 01:21:09 you know,

01:21:10 --> 01:21:10 to use the label,

01:21:10 --> 01:21:14 he was not just progressive for progressiveness sake.

01:21:15 --> 01:21:17 He said, no, hey, look at the words.

01:21:18 --> 01:21:20 The word says that I'm the fulfillment of those words.

01:21:21 --> 01:21:24 So he's not, yeah, it's not arbitrary.

01:21:24 --> 01:21:27 It's not totally alien to the ancient text.

01:21:27 --> 01:21:29 It's actually very, very local to the text.

01:21:52 --> 01:21:55 So Evan, this has been a really, really good conversation, man.

01:21:55 --> 01:21:56 I've enjoyed it so much.

01:21:56 --> 01:21:58 I feel like you brought a lot of clarity.

01:21:58 --> 01:22:00 Going back to the very beginning of this discussion,

01:22:00 --> 01:22:01 you know,

01:22:01 --> 01:22:03 we're talking about this debate,

01:22:03 --> 01:22:07 this conversation in theology where it's this idea of Jesus

01:22:07 --> 01:22:08 versus the Bible.

01:22:09 --> 01:22:12 You know, and we say, you and I would say, Jesus is what God has to say.

01:22:13 --> 01:22:17 He is the revelation of God's heart, his character, his ethics, his plan.

01:22:17 --> 01:22:19 All of that is summed up in the logos.

01:22:20 --> 01:22:24 And the logos means the word of God, the message of God.

01:22:24 --> 01:22:24 And,

01:22:24 --> 01:22:25 you know,

01:22:25 --> 01:22:28 this is kind of something that I thought of the other day when

01:22:28 --> 01:22:28 I was thinking

01:22:28 --> 01:22:29 through this issue.

01:22:29 --> 01:22:30 You know,

01:22:30 --> 01:22:31 when we have this question of,

01:22:31 --> 01:22:35 is Jesus the word of God or is the Bible the word of God?

01:22:35 --> 01:22:36 I think the answer is yes.

01:22:36 --> 01:22:37 Yes.

01:22:37 --> 01:22:39 Yeah, absolutely.

01:22:39 --> 01:22:40 And yeah.

01:22:41 --> 01:22:41 And,

01:22:41 --> 01:22:42 you know,

01:22:42 --> 01:22:45 something that popped in my mind on this was just the idea of

01:22:45 --> 01:22:46 words and how words

01:22:46 --> 01:22:47 have meanings.

01:22:47 --> 01:22:50 And sometimes the same word can have a different meaning.

01:22:50 --> 01:22:55 Like we talk about Jesus as the son of God, but I also am a son of God.

01:22:55 --> 01:22:57 I'm a child of God.

01:22:57 --> 01:23:00 But does that mean that I am also the Messiah,

01:23:00 --> 01:23:02 like the one who existed before time?

01:23:03 --> 01:23:03 No.

01:23:03 --> 01:23:05 And so when we say Jesus is the word of God, yes.

01:23:06 --> 01:23:08 When we say the Bible is the word of God, yes.

01:23:08 --> 01:23:11 But that word has a different meaning applied to each.

01:23:11 --> 01:23:15 So how would you close out this conversation in your own words

01:23:15 --> 01:23:17 about Jesus as the

01:23:17 --> 01:23:19 word of God and the Bible as the word of God?

01:23:19 --> 01:23:21 What closing thoughts would you want to leave us with?

01:23:21 --> 01:23:24 I mean, it's hard to improve on what you just said right there, Aaron.

01:23:25 --> 01:23:28 I just want to emphasize that Jesus loved his Bible.

01:23:28 --> 01:23:30 He lived by his Bible.

01:23:30 --> 01:23:33 Not only is Jesus Yahweh embodied,

01:23:33 --> 01:23:38 but Jesus also upheld and valued and lived by Yahweh's scriptures,

01:23:38 --> 01:23:41 not wanting a single word to be removed or taken away.

01:23:41 --> 01:23:43 That's the same thing to be added or removed.

01:23:45 --> 01:23:49 And Jesus gives us a lens for reading the Bible correctly.

01:23:49 --> 01:23:50 And then,

01:23:50 --> 01:23:50 you know,

01:23:52 --> 01:23:55 the lifelong pursuit of reading the Bible well is how can we

01:23:56 --> 01:23:56 read like Jesus?

01:23:57 --> 01:24:01 How can I know Jesus through the Old Testament and New Testament?

01:24:01 --> 01:24:04 And I'll just go back to the law.

01:24:04 --> 01:24:06 Moses wrote in Deuteronomy,

01:24:06 --> 01:24:06 you know,

01:24:07 --> 01:24:08 Deuteronomy 30,

01:24:08 --> 01:24:09 verse 6,

01:24:09 --> 01:24:10 he's talking about,

01:24:10 --> 01:24:10 you know,

01:24:10 --> 01:24:11 a future.

01:24:12 --> 01:24:14 From ancient Israel's perspective, it was the distant future.

01:24:14 --> 01:24:16 But from our perspective, this is now.

01:24:17 --> 01:24:17 And he says,

01:24:18 --> 01:24:23 Yahweh your God will circumcise your hearts and the hearts of

01:24:23 --> 01:24:24 your descendants now.

01:24:24 --> 01:24:27 So that you may love him with all your heart and with all your

01:24:27 --> 01:24:28 soul and live.

01:24:28 --> 01:24:33 And Moses wrote that in a time when it wasn't the heart that

01:24:33 --> 01:24:34 was circumcised.

01:24:34 --> 01:24:35 It was something else.

01:24:35 --> 01:24:37 It was another body organ that was circumcised.

01:24:38 --> 01:24:38 And that...

01:24:39 --> 01:24:40 And that was a big deal.

01:24:40 --> 01:24:41 That was a big deal.

01:24:42 --> 01:24:46 You're only in if you follow the law and circumcise your

01:24:46 --> 01:24:47 reproductive organ if you're a male.

01:24:48 --> 01:24:52 Because one day God's going to reproduce the Messiah.

01:24:52 --> 01:24:55 But until we get there, let's keep cutting at our flesh.

01:24:56 --> 01:24:57 But in that law...

01:24:58 --> 01:25:01 Way back then, God baked into it this promise.

01:25:01 --> 01:25:04 The Lord your God will one day not circumcise your flesh,

01:25:04 --> 01:25:07 but he'll circumcise your hearts by the power of the Spirit.

01:25:07 --> 01:25:09 This was always the plan.

01:25:09 --> 01:25:12 The plan was always that Moses would be temporary,

01:25:13 --> 01:25:14 that Moses' laws would be temporary,

01:25:14 --> 01:25:16 that circumcision would be temporary,

01:25:16 --> 01:25:16 that,

01:25:17 --> 01:25:17 you know,

01:25:17 --> 01:25:20 you be like me in order to belong will be temporary.

01:25:21 --> 01:25:24 But God would create one new family around Jesus,

01:25:24 --> 01:25:26 the living word of every nation,

01:25:26 --> 01:25:26 tribe,

01:25:26 --> 01:25:27 tongue,

01:25:27 --> 01:25:28 every cultural background,

01:25:28 --> 01:25:29 family history.

01:25:29 --> 01:25:32 And we would all say yes to the lamb that was slain.

01:25:32 --> 01:25:34 And in that moment, we say yes to Jesus.

01:25:34 --> 01:25:37 The spirit comes in and performs a circumcision of heart.

01:25:38 --> 01:25:40 And it's not just for men anymore.

01:25:41 --> 01:25:44 It's for men and women and children and all who would trust

01:25:44 --> 01:25:45 that Jesus actually has

01:25:45 --> 01:25:47 what it takes to forgive and heal the world,

01:25:47 --> 01:25:48 including us.

01:25:49 --> 01:25:52 And this was always the point, always the point.

01:25:52 --> 01:25:55 And so that's why Jesus would say,

01:25:55 --> 01:25:55 yes,

01:25:56 --> 01:25:58 I love and I submit to the Bible as Jesus.

01:25:58 --> 01:25:59 Jesus would say that,

01:25:59 --> 01:25:59 but he would also say,

01:25:59 --> 01:26:02 you can completely read the Bible wrong.

01:26:02 --> 01:26:05 You can read the Bible as not the word of God.

01:26:06 --> 01:26:09 If you are reading it and not coming to me,

01:26:10 --> 01:26:11 which is a crazy thing to say,

01:26:11 --> 01:26:13 but Jesus says it in John five.

01:26:13 --> 01:26:13 Yes.

01:26:14 --> 01:26:14 So good.

01:26:15 --> 01:26:15 So good, man.

01:26:15 --> 01:26:16 Thank you.

01:26:16 --> 01:26:17 Thank you so much for this.

01:26:17 --> 01:26:19 I, I love your ability to explain things.

01:26:20 --> 01:26:24 I love your passion for this stuff and just for helping people

01:26:24 --> 01:26:26 understand who Jesus is.

01:26:26 --> 01:26:27 You know, that, that's the,

01:26:28 --> 01:26:30 It's the same passion I remember when you were my youth pastor,

01:26:30 --> 01:26:31 and I've only seen it grow,

01:26:31 --> 01:26:32 man,

01:26:32 --> 01:26:33 and it inspires me.

01:26:33 --> 01:26:34 Thanks, man.

01:26:34 --> 01:26:35 Thanks for this conversation.

01:26:35 --> 01:26:37 I'm amazed at the man you become.

01:26:37 --> 01:26:41 I know I said it before, but you are impacting a lot of lives.

01:26:42 --> 01:26:44 You're leading a lot of leaders, actually, and I know you know that.

01:26:45 --> 01:26:46 And congrats on the new baby.

01:26:48 --> 01:26:48 Yes.

01:26:48 --> 01:26:49 Thanks, man.

01:26:49 --> 01:26:50 Thanks so much.

01:26:50 --> 01:26:51 Really appreciate that.

01:26:51 --> 01:26:51 All right.

01:26:51 --> 01:26:52 Well,

01:26:52 --> 01:26:55 Evan will be back on the show sometime soon to talk about

01:26:56 --> 01:26:57 Christian nonviolence.

01:26:57 --> 01:26:57 Oh my gosh.

01:26:57 --> 01:26:58 So be prepared for that.

01:27:00 --> 01:27:01 Thanks, Evan.

01:27:01 --> 01:27:02 We'll talk soon.

01:27:02 --> 01:27:02 It was a joy.

01:27:07 --> 01:27:10 Man, what an incredible episode.

01:27:10 --> 01:27:14 I really think Evan brought so much clarity.

01:27:15 --> 01:27:17 I was so blessed to see how much respect,

01:27:18 --> 01:27:18 reverence,

01:27:18 --> 01:27:22 and dedication he has to the authority of Scripture and the way

01:27:22 --> 01:27:23 he helped us see

01:27:23 --> 01:27:26 the role of Scripture in leading us to Jesus.

01:27:27 --> 01:27:30 If you've enjoyed this episode, we'd love to hear about it.

01:27:30 --> 01:27:32 You can send me a direct message on Instagram.

01:27:32 --> 01:27:34 My handle is just at Aaron Salvato.

01:27:35 --> 01:27:36 You can also find the Instagram account for the show,

01:27:37 --> 01:27:39 which is just at Good Lion Ministries.

01:27:40 --> 01:27:41 If you'd like to help the show,

01:27:41 --> 01:27:44 you can leave us a review on Apple Podcasts.

01:27:44 --> 01:27:46 The more reviews that we get,

01:27:46 --> 01:27:48 the more that people find out about our show and the ministry

01:27:48 --> 01:27:49 work that we're doing here.

01:27:49 --> 01:27:51 For more content from Good Lion Ministries,

01:27:51 --> 01:27:53 you can visit our new ministry website,

01:27:53 --> 01:27:54 goodlion.org.

01:27:55 --> 01:27:59 There you'll find tons of podcast episodes organized by themes

01:27:59 --> 01:27:59 and topics,

01:27:59 --> 01:28:02 as well as videos and theology courses that we've developed.

01:28:03 --> 01:28:06 All content is free and available to help you as you follow Christ.

01:28:07 --> 01:28:09 Check it out and share it with somebody you think it might bless.

01:28:10 --> 01:28:14 The Good Lion Podcast is brought to you by Calvary Global Network,

01:28:14 --> 01:28:16 a family of churches working together to proclaim the gospel,

01:28:17 --> 01:28:18 make disciples,

01:28:18 --> 01:28:19 and plant more churches.

01:28:19 --> 01:28:21 The show is produced by myself,

01:28:21 --> 01:28:22 Aaron Salvato,

01:28:22 --> 01:28:22 and my co-host,

01:28:23 --> 01:28:23 Brian Higgins.

01:28:24 --> 01:28:28 Our goal will always be to be an ally for you on your path of discipleship.

01:28:29 --> 01:28:31 We work hard to engage tough questions,

01:28:31 --> 01:28:32 avoid easy answers,

01:28:32 --> 01:28:34 and help people fix their eyes on Jesus,

01:28:34 --> 01:28:37 the God who is not safe but is very good.

01:28:37 --> 01:28:38 Thanks for listening,

01:28:38 --> 01:28:41 and we'll see you on the next episode of The Good Lion Podcast.