Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello, it is Friday and we are excited to be back with you. We've got a question for today and one tomorrow. And so if we haven't gotten to your question yet hopefully we'll answer it tomorrow. There are just so many coming in, it's hard to stay on top. So let's start with the first one. Let's start with the first one. Does that make sense? Yes. Should we start with the second one? Let's start with the first one. Let's start with the first one. Okay, so some ramp up to this. There's a great book by Bruce Ware called The Man, Christ Jesus. In fact, if you haven't read that book, highly committed to you. It's a great one. Really Anything by Bruce Ware, you're gonna appreciate. I really enjoy his writing. He's a great preacher. In fact, one of my favorite preachers that we ever had at Compass Bible Church in Eliseo Viejo really liked him. Anyway he wrote this book, the Man, Christ Jesus makes a case for the humanity of Christ and what implications that has. So here's the follow up. When we see Christ perceiving the thoughts of man, especially in his encounters with the Pharisees, do you suppose that to be like Christ tapping into his divine nature. Hold on. Make sure I read that right. Do you suppose that to be like Christ tapping into his divine nature or insight from the Holy Spirit? Okay. Is it him tapping into the spirit, leaning on the work of the spirit? Or is he utilizing his divinity? That's the question at the heart of it, because if it is him doing that, then is it possible that we can tap into the heart of people by the power of the spirit as well? Or is it something that Christ alone can pull off? So there's the question in a nutshell. Go for it definitively. Answer that for us, please. Definitively. I would say I. I've always looked at it as him revealing some of his deity in those moments. For example, when he heals the man being lowered down through the ceiling and he looks at the man and says, your son, your sins are forgiven. And there's Pharisees and there's rulers that are talking amongst themselves or grumbling amongst themselves, and Jesus answers their grumbling, and we can only assume that they were talking in hushed tones and away from him such that. He wouldn't be able to hear them. There's other times where he perceives thoughts. I believe when he is in Simon's house and Simon was thinking to himself the Pharisee, if this man only knew what type of woman this was that was washing his feet, he would be appalled at what she was doing. And again, Jesus answers his thoughts. And there's other times it says, knowing their thoughts. I believe that's some of Jesus. Omniscience on display and there's other times where I think we see some of that. Where's argument that he depends upon the Holy Spirit for the things that he does in his earthly ministry. I think by and large is, is helpful. But I do also think there are times where Jesus pulls back the curtain and reveals his full deity in who he is. And even in the Mera miraculous, I think there are some things wherein Jesus is revealing his full deity and who he is. And yeah, I wouldn't go so far as depress this to say that this in indicates that we should be able to perceive the thoughts or know the thoughts of others. Now, can God give somebody the gift of discern? And they, through engaging with someone in conversation, can discern what may be really going on in someone's heart or in someone's mind and draw that out in biblical counseling, like a brings up here or other situations. Yeah I think there are certainly instances where that would be the case, but I would differentiate that from what Jesus does when he's able to know the thoughts that are entering or crossing somebody's mind and respond directly to those thoughts in that moment. Yeah, I think I'd be inclined to agree. Absolutely. We want to affirm Jesus' humanity. And I know that's why Bruce, Dr. Ware, I should call him. I don't call him Bruce. B Dub. B Dub wrote the book is because he's trying to. Add appropriate significance. Not that you're adding anything, but highlight the significance of Christ's humanity and how much of what he did in his earthly ministry was independence upon the spirit. We would never deny that, and he's right to suggest that we don't give enough attention to that. By and large, we mostly focus on the divinity of Christ. Not that that's bad either but where's point is well taken. What that means for us then is that we can, by the power of the spirit, do a lot of what Jesus does, and this is why he calls us to do those things. Still things that he does by the power of the spirit that we don't have access to. I can't definitively know your heart. I do think of the proverb, I think it's chapter 18. The heart of a man is like deep water and a wise man will draw it out. Something like that. I think there are times when you can say, I think I have a sense of what your heart is doing here. And you'd be pretty accurate about that. However, with that said, I'd still add an asterisk in that you really only scratch the surface of people's minds and emotions. Only God knows the full extent of our hearts. And I'm not saying that you can't know it truly, even if you can't know it fully. But that there's still a sense in which Jesus operates not only by the power of the Spirit yes, but by his divinity. The role that he has as a son of God was never. Oh man. I'm thinking back to Bruce's BWS book. I'm thinking back to his book and how good he, how good, great a case he made for the operation of Jesus by the power of the Spirit in most of his earthly ministry. But I don't think he would say exclusively, and that would be my position too. Yeah I think for sure we can argue that. The dependence upon the spirit is evident in the life of righteousness and obedience that Christ lived, that his obedience to the Father and obedience to the father's will was the demonstration of what it looks like to be fully submitted to the Spirit's lead in the spirit's guidance in our lives. That I think a hundred percent. I think when we get into the realm of miraculous I think it's a little bit less clear whether or not the implication is we should be able to do these things as well if we depend upon the spirit enough. I think the evidence of we should be able to. Live a life of righteousness if we depend upon the spirit is translatable for sure. But walking on water, I don't know how many times I tried that growing up, just running as fast as I can off the edge of the pool. Even as a believer, even as a believer with the spirit dwelling within me, I still can't do that. Right. You can. So I think there's things that Jesus does that the point is not. Is not necessarily, Hey, if you rely on the spirit enough, you can do this. I think it's more of Jesus is truly man, but he's also truly God. And here's an example of the fact that this is his true godness peeking out from behind the veil of his humanity. I heard water walking was a second blessing that only true Christians can do that. Well, then I don't have it. Wow. Yeah. Yikes. Cringe. Yeah, so good question. Appreciate the question. We've got another one coming in, tomorrow's episode, but for right now. We do have quite a bit of Bible to cover in our daily Bible reading, so we should jump over to that. But before I get there let me just give a plug and remind you that men listening to this tomorrow morning, we hope that you're gonna join us for men's Bible study. And so if you're not yet registered for that, jump online, get registered for that so that you can be there. Pastor i's gonna be preaching and he's gonna be preaching on the life of. Joseph Joseph. Well, one aspect of Joseph's life. Yeah. Well, we're not looking at the whole thing. Fair. But it is. It is gonna be a sermon that is urgently needed. Yeah. I would love for you to be there because it's such an important discussion that we have to have, and it's best in a certain context, and that's the right context. Please show up. And just to tease to throw a tease out there. You're not gonna wanna miss his second point. I'm just gonna leave it at that. You're not gonna wanna miss his second point, so make sure that they're there. I like for one, two, and three. Well, I'm sure they're all good. All but there's one. All of them are necessary. One facet of point number two. I think they're all good. No, and honestly and I'm excited to be there and listen to it, but I think there's gonna be some good overlap and I think it'll compliment in a good way what we're gonna talk about on Sunday as well, on abstaining from our flesh of last the. Fleshy passions which wage war against our soul. That's a great, that's a great companion to the main event for sure. And this is the closest I'll ever get to cussing. Hey, in the second point. Yikes. So be there that, if that's not enough of a hook for you, I don't know what there is or a reason not to come. No, I don't wanna be around. I'll be there. And that's Grace Church in Fris game. So join us Saturday morning. Alright, Matthew 14. We have not just Matthew 14, but also Mark six and Luke nine. Matthew 14. We get the death of John the Baptist. And this would've this would've sh shaken Jesus and did shake Jesus even as we're gonna see in the text. 'cause Jesus and John Jesus had a lot of respect for John. And they were family as well. But the thing that struck me this time is just John was bold and he was not afraid to stand up for what is rights and what's true. And we see that in what lands him in jail. And that is the fact that he was telling Herod, Hey. You, the relationship that you have is an immoral, it's an ungodly, it's a wrong relationship, and you need to break it off. This is not right. This is not okay. And so in order to silence him, harod put him in jail. As we learn in this text here, he was afraid to put him to death. And in fact it's fascinating because Harod even liked to hear from John. He liked to hear more from what John was talking about. And so he was entertained by it at the least, if not slightly convicted by what John had to say. And yet he makes this promise to this. This woman that he's in this relationship with who uses her daughter to say, Hey, I want John's head on a platter for my birthday. Herod has made this oath in front of his guest and can't go back on it. And so he has to follow through, and that's how John the Baptist ends up dead, which just is, I know it's part of God's sovereign plan and yet it's just a tragedy that something so dumb. As this foolish and rash oath that he made in this immoral and godless woman as he's immoral and godless himself as well. But this woman says, well, I want John's head on the platter because she was upset that John called out the relationship rightly so that she was in as wrong and ungodly and immoral and. And something that needed to be ended. So it's, it is a, it's a grave thing. It's a tragic thing to read about the death of John the Baptist. And yet this is going to be something that is, is going to put Jesus even further into the spotlight as far as, okay, now he is the voice. John was there to be the forerunner and he did that. And now his voice has officially been silenced. It was silenced in part when he was arrested. Now it's fully silenced and Jesus' voice is carrying on and Jesus is stepping fully into the ministry that John was pointing people towards. So John didn't fail, he succeeded. But it's tragic how his life ends. After this in in Matthew's gospel, Jesus and his disciples withdraw and it says they went to a desolate place by himself there to pray. We can assume and we can con conclude but even just, I think to mourn John's passing here, and yet in the midst of this, all of the crowds show up because Jesus is famous. And that's something that, again, we notice over and over in the gospel, the crowds wanna be around Jesus. They flock to him. And it turns out that there are about 5,000. People there and they get hungry late in the day. Now, a lot of times we only focus on the miracle, but I think it's worth noting that what Jesus was doing for the majority of the day was teaching them. And so we don't know what he was teaching them. We know some of his other teaching that we find on the sermon on the plane, the Sermon on the Mount, the olive discourse. And so it's probably similar things to that. But he's teaching them for the majority of the day, and that's what leads to the disciples to say, Hey, Jesus, you know, this has been a long day of teaching. Why don't you send them away to get some food? And Jesus, in a test of faith for his disciples, said, well, why don't you give them something to eat? And they say, well, we don't. Have enough food, we couldn't have enough a man's full salary wouldn't be enough to buy food for everybody. Jesus says, well, what do you have? And they find the five loaves and the two fish, and he takes that and multiplies it in a miraculous way and feeds the masses such that everyone eats and is satisfied. And there's 5,000 people, 5,000 men that are there, but probably much closer to a number of 15 to 20,000 people in total that are fed by this miracle that Jesus works here with the mountain crowd that had gathered in Matthew's Gospel, the. Focal point here is that in verse 13, it's after Jesus hears about John the Baptist being beheaded. That's the context here. You're gonna see in a different gospel that there's a slightly different angle that's highlighted, which I think is complimentary and not necessarily contrary. It's complimentary, not contrary. Verse 13 says that he's. In part as you said previously, PPJ, that he's doing this because he's mourning the loss of his cousin. He's mourning the loss of a godly man. He's mourning the loss of somebody that meant something to him. And yet, despite that, notice here his verse 14, compassion on these crowds provoked him to do something, even though. He's got urgent needs to deal with. He's got his own heart to, to wrestle with. He wants to pray. He wants to be with the Lord. He wants to be with his disciples, and yet he still finds time to be with the crowd. Why? Because he has compassion. His love for them provoked him to put his own needs aside, at least for that moment. And. Order to serve the very real and practical needs of the people. So many times we're put in a very similar situation where there's lots of things to attend to. There's things that our own hearts need. And I'm not saying that we should do this always. We should definitely make time for ourselves when it comes to resting and praying and grieving. But there are times, as you see here in the life of Jesus where even our needs real though they may be, are best put aside to serve the needs, the more urgent needs of others. Yeah, right after this, we talked about walking on water earlier. We see Jesus doing that here in the rest of Matthew, chapter 14, where he sends his disciples into a boat and sends them out to the other side while he dismissed the crowds. And notice it says, after the, he dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain to pray. And again, just you've pointed out a couple times and we see it again here, just his dependence upon that communion with him and the father. And you can imagine if he still is in this time of grief, after. The death of John the Baptist, that that, that may have still been on his mind, on his heart at this point in time as he's commuting with the father there. We don't know for sure 'cause we're not privy to what he was praying about. But as the evening comes, he goes to meet the disciples and he doesn't take a boat from the shore to go out and meet the disciples. Instead, he walks on the water and comes to meet them. And the disciples see this figure walking on water, which. Again is not a very common event. And they immediately are overcome by fear. And Jesus moves to comfort their fear because of his compassion. And he does so by revealing who it is. He says, do not fear but take heart. It is I. And he's calling them to understand who he is at that point. That is Jesus. Here Peter wants more, so he says, Lord, if it's really you. Let me come out to you. Let me come and walk on water to you. And so it's the famous scene where Peter gets outta the boat and he begins to go towards Jesus and move towards Jesus. And yet the waves become too much and he takes his eyes off Jesus. And he begins to sink. Jesus saves him and he gets into the boat and they they make the rest of their journey at that point. But this is somewhat representative of the arc of Peter's actual faith. Story as a whole. He's bold so much, and yet he, when it's, it matters most will end up at least. Leading up to the cross, abandoning Jesus, failing Jesus, denying Christ only to then be restored by him and go on to be useful to him in his life. So, we see a little microcosm of Peter's life here in the story. I just wanna point out verse 23, Jesus doesn't postpone his grief indefinitely. I just want you to see Jesus does make time to be alone and to pray about the loss of his, of John the Baptist. And so Jesus postpones it. He still serves people, he makes time for his own soul. And that's appropriate and right and good. But he does do that. And also Peter here in verse 30 Peter sank when he saw the wind and stop seeing the savior. And I just want you to see that often our troubles become far more troublesome when we're not looking at the right thing. If we're looking at our troubles, we're gonna sink. If we're looking at our savior, we're gonna do okay. So is it right to look at that or when Jesus calms the storms and alize things to be like, okay, Jesus is gonna calm the storm in my life and when I'm going through a trial, I need to keep my eyes on Jesus and not let my eyes go to the trial because when my eyes go to the trial, that's when I start to sink. Mm-hmm. What's the danger in over allegorizing something rather than reading it at its face value and saying, this is what it's. do you wanna tackle that? I'm not trying to push back. I'm just like, are there some parameters that we can give to say, Hey, this is where. There's appropriate allegory in application to be drawn from that. Yeah. Versus times when we might go too far. 'cause we would both say, like when somebody says, well, David and Goliath Yeah. And I'm David and the Giants in my life, God's gonna slay the giants in my life. And we would say, okay that's a wrong interpretation of that passage. Right. That, that David is Jesus. David is a type of Christ in that. And the giant Goliath is death and sin. Like we can allegorize to that extent, but. How do I do it on my own when I'm reading through my, through the scriptures to make sure that I'm not pressing something too far? I've got two Cs for you and then you can add whatever you want to this. I'm sure that you'll have a lot more to say. Canon and community. Two Cs, Canon community, Canon A when you're interpreting things like that, I just off the cuff, threw that out there. 'cause I know that's a really helpful application point for me and I'm sure it's helpful for some of you out there as well now. But I have a decent grasp of the canon and what I mean by that is the whole of scripture it's dangerous to interpret just one verse in isolation to the rest of the Bible. And you never wanna do that. Whenever you're studying the Bible, it's always context, context, context. And so it's the same principle here. If you can say, okay, what is the context of this passage? What is the context of Matthew? What is the context of the New Testament? What is the context of the whole Bible? If you can say all of the boxes, check, I'm not violating any principle of scripture in asserting this particular application point, then you're on good grounds. Secondly, community. It's not just enough to have the cannon by yourself. Lots of people go astray. Even if they have a really seemingly good grasp of scripture, they could still have some really interesting and unorthodox ideas because they're not doing theology in community. So you need the canon and you need community. You need other people that are wiser than you, that have been walking with the Lord longer than you to help check you and say, yeah, that's good, or no, that's dangerous for these reasons. So I would say at least two Cs, there's probably more, but canon and community, what else would you say? Yeah, I, I think just. Consistency. Which do another seat fits in? I've got one more seat too. Oh. Which fits in with the canon thing. But if I'm gonna interpret, for example, the coming of the storm, if I'm gonna say, Jesus always calms the storm in my life, is that consistently true across the board? And the answer to that is, is no. Sometimes he doesn't calm the storm. Sometimes he allows us to find calm and peace in the midst of trials, but it doesn't mean that the waters and the stormy waters of my life are immediately gonna become plad and so that would be something that'd be like, okay, well then maybe there's something else at work there in this text. Because I don't know that I could say that's an always true situation. I think most people say calm calms the storms in your heart. In your heart, yeah. Not necessarily the storm of the events. I've heard it both ways, but. With this one, walking on water and taking your eyes off Christ. I think there is a consistent principle there that it's never a good idea to take our eyes off Christ. Right? And so I think that that allows that interpretation. That makes sense. Yeah. Anytime I, I shift my gaze from him and I start to focus on the circumstances of my life, it's gonna cause my faith to, to waiver or to, to down Final C would just be commentaries. If you're diving into it. And you find an interpretation that you're making that none of your trusted commentaries are making that's dangerous ground to, to be in, that you probably wanna go. Okay. Maybe I'm mis misunderstanding this one, which is part of the community side of things too, because we, our community expands to the books. Books on our bookshelf too. That's right. And you should have good community. Yes. Alright, well Mark chapter six, we're gonna back up here before we get back into the death of John, the baptism and some other things that we just read about. And Jesus is rejected in Nazareth, which we've seen before. But what stuck out to me this time was that Jesus, it says there was marveling because the unbelief of the people there, which is. Is intriguing. The fact that God and we talked about this at the very beginning, truly God truly, truly man, that Jesus could marvel over anything. And here he's marveling at their unbelief and I think this is his humanity that we see coming through here. The kenosis side of things that, that. Is showing up here because God knew and had or even ordained their unbelief and ordained the unbelief of those that are gonna turn Jesus over for crucifixion and the soldiers that are gonna nail him to the cross. So this is not news to him, but I think in Jesus' humanity, he is, he's marveling here at this and not marveling in a good way. He's marveling at people's faith in other situations here, he's shocked at their rejection of him. As we go from here we get back into some ground that we just covered. For example, we get into the sending of the 12, which we didn't cover here, but we have covered so far. He calls them and sends them out into the world to go and be his witnesses to be on mission for him. You've got John the Baptist's death here recorded in Mark. And what's fascinating too is there's more detail given by Mark than there is given by Matthew, which. Isn't always the case. Usually Mark is the more concise one. But here we get more detail than we find in Matthew's account. There of John's death after John's death, you have the feeding of the 5,000. You've got the walking on water, which this time mark records that Jesus meant to pass them by when he's walking on water, which is again fascinating because Matthew doesn't record that, but it's why would he wanna pass 'em by? And I think it's the same reason why he told, tells them when they're feeding the 5,000, you give them something to eat. I think this is a test of faith moment. Do the disciples have the faith to understand who he is and to trust him as he's going on his way, or are they gonna reveal some of their still developing faith In Mark chapter six, the hardness of their hearts. This isn't a permanent hardness, but this is a softening hardness that they're not quite all the way there yet. And so Jesus is leading them to conclude who he is, and that part of that is this inner counter with him as he's walking on the water. That's really helpful. Verse 30, can I just point out to you here? The apostles returned to Jesus and told them all that they had done and taught. So in this particular account of the 5,000 being fed Jesus says in verse 31, Hey, let's go to a desolate place and rest a while. So in the previous text, we saw that it was in response to John the Baptist being beheaded. Here you have it in response to their need for a break. And again, I'm gonna tell you, they're complimentary and not contrary complimentary in that, of course, you're gonna need a break, you're gonna need some time to, to decompress and to understand what's happened when you're grieving the loss of a loved one. So you have two accounts of the same same situation, but they both focus on slightly different angles of the event. Here in Mark, we see that the reason why, at least the one that he states as being the primary reason is their need for rest. Luke chapter nine. We see here again the sending outta the 12. We see John the Baptist death. Though John the Baptist death is given hardly any notice at all by Luke. In fact, it just records it more from Herod's perspective that Herod had heard about Jesus and was so fascinated by Jesus and teaching and the crowds that he was attracting, that he thought John the Baptist had been risen. Risen from the dead that he had been resurrected, which just goes to show how significant of an impact John had made in that region, that Herod would hear about the things that Jesus is doing and think to himself, oh, I wonder if John somehow came back from the dead. You've got, again the feeding of the 5,000 which is shows up here. This, so again, a miracle that you find across the board, not only in the synoptic gospels, but also in John's gospel. So Luke nine, Matthew 14, as we just read, mark six. And also in John six, is this event, the feeding of the 5,000 Peter's. Shows up here in Luke nine 18 through 22. And so Jesus and his disciples do get away briefly. It says that he took the disciples with him and was asking them this question. And the question he ask is, who do the people say that I am? And they begin to give their kind of canned answers. Well, we've heard this, we've heard this, we've heard this. And Jesus then may more pointedly says, yeah, but who do you say that I am? And this is where Peter makes the great confession and calls him the Christ of God the Messiah of God, the son of God. The Christ of God, rather, this is a statement that Jesus then takes and says, in other gospel accounts, Peter, you're blessed for having this knowledge because men did not reveal this to you. But my heavenly father revealed this to you. So we'll get into that as we get into this confession in other texts here, but. From here, Jesus goes on to predict his crucifixion and then speak to the cost of discipleship as well, about taking up their cross and following him. And he makes the statement in verse 25, what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses or forfeits himself? Some of this is what. The disciples then would remember post-resurrection and begin to understand better because the disciples at this point don't understand. In fact, we know because later on Peter's gonna rebuke Jesus for talking about his own death. So we read these things and understand them very plainly because we know the rest of the story. But for the disciples, a lot of this was something that they were gonna have to reflect on post-resurrection, and figure out what Jesus meant by that. From here we have the transfiguration which this is the first time we come across that where Jesus takes Peter, James and John up on the mountain and he's transfigured. He appears in his full glory before them and they see him talking with Moses and Peter doesn't know what else to say other than, Hey, this is good. So he says, can we build some tents? And at that moment, he hears the voice of God the father, declaring that Jesus is his son and that they should listen to him. By the way, notice there's Trinitarian evidence right here. You've got the voice from Heaven saying, this is my beloved son. And so a lot of times Christians by some sex will be charged with believing in something. The Bible doesn't say. The Bible doesn't say the word trinity, and that's true, but we see evidence of the Trinity throughout its pages. And here's another example of that. You have Jesus the Son, and you have the voice of the Father declaring that he is his son and that he is authoritative. After this, Jesus comes down the mountain. A demon possessed boy is brought to him. He grieves over the faithlessness, which it appears to be of the disciples who weren't able to cast out this demon. And he cast out the demon. And then later on the disciples are gonna ask him about this. And at least in one of the SNAs, he says, is because you lacked faith to, to make this happen. Another story, he says, it is because you, you didn't, this kind can only be driven out by prayer. And to your point about being complimentary, I think those two things are complimentary. Saying, Lord, this is more than what we were given authority to, when perhaps Jesus sent us out as the 12, we need more than what we have to be able to see this demon come out. Either way, Jesus does it, foretells his death again. And then you've got the chapter kind of wrap up with the arguing over the greatest from the disciples. Who's gonna be the greatest? And Jesus has just said, I'm gonna die. And now they're saying, Hey, yeah but who's gonna be the greatest? And Jesus uses an object lesson of a child to say the one who becomes like, this child is gonna be great in the kingdom. And then he's gonna be rejected by Samaritans towards the end of the chapter as well. A ton in Luke chapter nine. There's so much here in Luke nine. Yeah. Alright, well let's pray and then we'll be wrapped up with this episode. Lord, help us to glean what we can from your word and to apply it to our lives as we do so. And so we thank you for the privilege of being able to read, to understand, to have translations that are helpful for us in that, and we just pray that we would take it and live it out. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Amen. Keep her in your Bibles tuning again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you then. Bye.

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Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said