Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello. We have another question that we should get to. We're gonna get to this right off the bat here, and it was written in by Mike Clementi. Now Mike is one of our HCPs, highly committed participants. He's a guy who's attending, he's connecting, he's serving. One of the ministries he serves in is our true North student ministry, our high school ministry, uh, and junior high honor. Yeah, but he's with our high school guys and they were having a lively discussion, I guess, this last week, and he had a question that he wanted to bring to us, and he says this, after the great white throne judgment, does God still love the people who were cast into hell since they didn't repent of their sins and are living eternally separated from him? If he does, what does that love look like? Yeah, what do you think? When we know that God is immutable. We've talked about this before. We, in fact, I think Pastor Mark and I talked about this in an episode last week, where God is not sometimes love and sometimes wrath, and sometimes holiness and he is all of these things all at the same time. But he directs his love. He directs his affection. He directs his mercy and his grace. Towards objects of his choosing. And so I guess the question is, does he direct any of those things towards those that are in hell? And I, my position has always been on this one. I don't think he does. I believe that his wrath is there, his judgment is there, his anger that is there, his fury is there. I don't believe that his love is present in hell on those, that he is pouring those things out on. The wonderful thing about life is that we are given things that we don't deserve. Sometimes theologians talk about the good gifts of God being common grace. The sun arises on the just and the unjust. He sends rain for the wicked and the righteous. All of us participate in the blessings that God bestows upon us in this life. And the beauty of it is that this is the season. This is why Hebrews, the author, pleads with them. He says, now, today is a day of salvation. Do not harden your hearts as they did in the wilderness. He's talking about Israel in the book of numbers, when they continually rebelled against the Lord and against Aaron and Moses. And so he's pleading with them saying, today is today's a day of salvation. I think we forget. All too quickly that we do believe in a heaven and a hell, a forever here and a forever there. I think the question of God's love is relevant, but it's not as important as, where am I gonna be at the end of my life? Because you're going to be at one place where the other, and even if you could say, and I don't know that you can. That God does love the unbeliever in hell. They're still in hell. Yeah. That doesn't change. And maybe you could say, well, if God loves them maybe they're experiencing less hell than what they deserve. And I don't think that stands scripturally either, because the Bible tells us that God's going to, as you just said, pastor pge PO's wrath in just measure on those who do not obey the gospel of God. And so I don't know. Of any text that gives me any hope to say that the unbeliever is loved by God. In fact, I think because the unbeliever in hell has none of the common grace that God affords to us here and now that their perpetual existence before God is one of, how does Scripture put it? Grinding their teeth. Mm-hmm. Gnashing, weeping and gnashing of teeth. Weeping and gnashing of, thank you. That's the terminology I was looking for. They're weeping and they're gnashing their teeth. Those two terms don't convey any amount of solace or happiness or relief or reprieve. The gnashing of teeth tells me they're still angry with God. They're still vitriolic toward him. There's still a sense of, we don't like you. I, why am I here? Maybe there's a sense of injustice on their part. Of course, it's not. God is just. But when you perish the first time in your flesh and you go to hell and you perish the second time, there is no change in who you are. A Christian can look forward to our glorification, we're gonna become different. But an unbeliever dies in their sin and they continue to sin against God. We have no reason to think otherwise. And so I'm with you. I don't see any reason to think that an unbeliever shares in God's affection or love in the afterlife. But here and now you have God's good gifts. His common grace is bestowed on everybody, and therefore, now is the time of salvation. If you're hearing this message and you're not in Christ, let me plead with you, today is a day. Mm-hmm. And even that, I mean, his love towards the lost right now is a love that is intended to lead them to repentance. It's intended to result in the softening of their hearts and them coming to faith in Christ and their salvation once someone is gone. There is no more opportunity for that. And so there is no his love, if he were to pour out his love to those that are in hell there's no potential for that love to be actualized in their salvation because it's, it exists for man to live once and then comes judgment. So yeah, I think that's a helpful distinction that you were talking about there, for sure. Yeah, and I guess it's important for us to note. Again, it's not, the question about God's love is not the question in the afterlife here and now. It matters a ton. Does God love people? And the answer is yes. Scripture tells us. Right? And that's the love, as you mentioned, Romans chapter two, that his kindness leads us to repentance. Hebrew chapter nine, it's a point for man wants to die and then comes judgment. Yep. Those are the things that matter here and now and the next life. Man, our fat is sealed. Yeah. There's no other way to look at it. Yep. Well, hey, let's jump into our Bible reading as we're going to turn into a new book in the Old Testament, and that is gonna be Exodus. So we are in Exodus one through three today, and in your reading you're gonna see multiple vignettes little snapshots, little scenes here as these chapters unfold. And really what chapter one is doing is it's setting the stage for the conflict that's going to happen here. It's mentioning, again, the number of the descendants of Jacob there in verse five, being 70 persons. But then it's, from there we're gonna talk about the. Multiplication of the Israelites, and that's gonna create a problem because it's gonna say in verse eight, there are Rosen, new King over Egypt who did not know Joseph. So he has no reason to show any sort of favor or kindness towards the people of Israel. And the problem is the people of Israel were growing in multiplying in numbers, no longer just 70 people anymore. And so he's going to take the approach of saying, in order to slow them down, we need to discourage them and to discourage them, we need to enslave them and we need to treat them hardly and be cruel. Task masters. For them to afflict them with heavy burdens, as it says in verse 11. But it backfires verse 12, because the more they're afflicted, the more they're multiplying. This should cause us to remember the Abrahamic covenant. Not only the creation mandate be fruitful and multiply, but also the Abrahamic covenant that God had told them that Abraham, that he would make him a great nation. And even the words that he gave to Jacob before Jacob left Beersheba to enter into Egypt, there at the very end, God told him, Hey, you're leaving the promised land, but I'm gonna make you a great. Nation as you go down into Egypt. So that's what God's doing, and Pharaoh can't stand it even to the point that he can instruct the Hebrew midwives to kill the Israelite children, the males as they're born. The midwives here, they fear God and they refuse to do this. And they even deceive Pharaoh when Pharaoh asks about it. And he says that the Israelite wives are too robust and they give birth before we're able to get there. And this is a lie, but it's a lie that God condones, and we've talked about this before because this is a unique situation. Our descending pastor used to talk about wartime rules, right? That during war a spy, if he's caught, is not gonna admit to being a spy and spill all the secrets. He's gonna still employ deception for the greater good of what's happening here in the bigger picture of things. And I think that's what we see here with the Hebrew midwives. This is not condoning saying, yeah, lying iss fine. Go for it and lie. This is a unique circumstance where they're. Choosing the better part of what is good over the more evil part of what they could have done in those situations. Yeah. Shif ua, first of all, we think based on their names, that they're probably Jewish. So these are not Egyptian midwives, I think, I think their names are enough evidence to suggest that they're Jewish, they're Israelites. Yeah. And there's probably more than two. I'm just gonna go out on a limb here, given how many kids there are, how many people there are in the Exodus account, we're looking at about a million to 2 million people total. So there's probably a lot more than Chira and Pua. I'm guessing that maybe they were the leaders of the overseers of the other midwives. We don't know. Ultimately I just know that there's probably more than two. That's gonna be my working hypothesis here. And I want you to notice here, we have noticed that they did deceive the Pharaoh. He. He was lied to, but notice what God commends in verse 21, because the midwives feared God. He gave them families. It was because of their faith in the Lord, not their deception. Although deception is un unavoidably part of what they did here. But it was because they feared the Lord. They made a decision thinking this is the best thing we can do given the circumstances, and God honors their fear. Another way to put that is God honors their faith, their faith in him, that they trusted him, they wanted to follow him. And so I think that's what you ought to focus on. Yeah. I agree. I agree. Yeah, and I'm with you on that. I think they're Hebrew. Yeah. If I misspoke and called them Egyptian midwife. Nope, you didn't. I was just clarifying for their sake. Well, in chapter two, one of the children that's gonna be born, one of these Hebrew boys that's gonna be born is gonna be born to a man in the house of Levi. Now that's of note because this tells us that Moses a lot of times we think about the main characters like David in the Old Testament, and we think, okay, line of Christ. Well, Moses is not line of Christ. Moses is actually a line of the priestly family. Now they're not. Yet the priestly family, they will be, but this is the tribe of Levi. And so, Moses is born to this man and his wife, and he's gonna be hidden. And until she can't help concealing him anymore it's becoming noticeable. His crying, whatever it may be, she takes him, she puts him in this tar covered basket and puts him in the Nile River. And this is where the. The famous story, the well-known story, Pharaoh's daughter happens to find, the baby recognizes him as a Hebrew, but rather than killing the child, she takes the child. Now, the rudder of Hebrews says it was because of the beauty of the child that his parents hid the child. And it's also probably because of the beauty of the child that Pharaoh's daughter decides to take the child and keep the child for herself. But. God's kindness here in allowing his sister to observe all this. Moses' sister, Moses' sister goes and calls his mom to be the child's nurse. And so Moses' mom, in a kind of kindness of God, gets to be with her child for a little while longer there until then, she turns the child back over and he's gonna be raised in the house of Pharaoh. So interesting birth account here for Moses. Yeah. This is clearly God's providential hand caring for his people. They don't know at this point. And of course. Neither does Moses or his mother, father, Amram and Jakobe. They don't know what this child's gonna be, but God, providentially cares for him, protects his life in order to protect the life of the whole nation. This is a really cool way that God operates. He doesn't always do stuff like this, but here you can see the thread of God's sovereign control happening in even small events like this. Moses is gonna turn into that deliver. But he's not quite ready when he first moves to provide deliverance or salvation for his own people. And that is what is recorded in the rest of chapter two. 'cause he finds an Egyptian mistreating an Israelite, and he rises up and kills the Egyptian. And then he hides the body. And then the next day he sees two Israelites quarreling there and they are fighting. And he goes to stop that fight and they say, well, are you gonna kill us too? And then he realizes, man, this is known what I've done. And he ends up having to flee. Pharaoh finds out, and Pharaoh wants to kill him as well for killing an Egyptian. So Moses is doing things the wrong way. He's not yet ready. God's gonna say, I'm gonna put you in this wilderness area called Midian for another 40 years before you're ready to go and deliver the people the way I want you to deliver my people. And so that's where he ends up at the home of Jethro. He's called rule or I guess that's how you would say that rule. That's how I would say it. At least. I don't know how R-E-U-E-L, that is the same as Jethro. Just a different name there. And he's gonna end up in hi in his house. And this is where Moses is gonna meet his own wife, Zipporah. And this is where he's going to begin a family during this time in Midian, but Midian was in the middle of nowhere. It certainly was not the place you would expect to find the person that God is gonna use to do what he's gonna do with Moses later on in his life. Yeah. So Moses is 40 years old when he kills the Egyptian, which tells me he's lived quite a number of years and he knows that he's a Hebrew. Yeah, which is also interesting. You don't find out when he finds out, you don't know what the story is behind that. You don't know what his mother, his adoptive mother tells him. We just know that he's aware of who he is at this point. But the problem is that he takes his matters into his own hands. He goes and kills the guy instead of pursuing some kind of legal means. And one, one would tend to think given Moses position, yeah, maybe he had the ability to do some things, to pull some strings and say, mom. Help me out here. There's a situation, or maybe she wasn't on the scene. I don't know. I'm making a lot of speculation, but I just want you to see Moses knows who he is. He takes matters into his own hands. He's 40 years old at this point, and he makes a boneheaded decision, but God is not done with them yet. This is one of the most striking things to me, is that Moses is an imperfect deliverer from the very beginning. He tries to do things in his own strength and his own power, and God's like, you know what? You're not ready yet. So he sends him into the wilderness to bake a few more years in order to prepare him to bring him back. Wherever you are, baby God has you in the wilderness of. Your life and you're not where you wanna be, but God knows what he's doing. Trust his hand, trust his leadership, and be patient. Moses has to wait another 40 years before he's ready to come back and do some things. Yeah, I take great comfort in that because I trust that God is working even when we don't realize it. 40 years to bake is a long time, but that's what God does for Moses. Yeah. And not necessarily in a place that he would want to be. Oh, for sure. He went from the Palace of Pharaoh to Rule's House. I mean, Jeff's house was probably nice, but it certainly wasn't Pharaoh's. No, I mean, I heard the Egyptians had modern, well, not modern, but they had air conditioning. Yeah. They had in indoor plumbing of some sort. Not as sophisticated as we have, but these guys had the best of the best. Yeah. They were intelligent people. And so you're right. He goes from the palace. To the pit. Yeah. In a matter of days. It's the opposite of Joseph. Yeah. Well, in between chapter, that section, and in chapter three, we get the impetus here of what causes God to act at least from our perspective in real time. And that is he hears the groaning of his people. Pharaoh is afflicting the people of Israel again. Concerned about their growing numbers. And so it says here that God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham. This is in, again, another one of those anthropomorphism where it describes God in a human way for us to be able to understand something. It's not as though God had forgotten about Israel because God doesn't forget anything. He's a God who is perfect in his knowledge, perfect in his memory, perfect in his recollection. But rather this is basically him saying, okay, this is the time's. He's beginning to act in accordance with his perfect plan to deliver the people of Israel. And it's described here as remembering his covenant with Abraham because his promise to Abraham was still active even though it didn't look like it. His promise was still active and he was going to bring it to fruition. And so then we get into chapter three where he begins to move towards preparing Moses to be the deliverer that he wanted him to be. And this is the burning bush. And so Moses is out and he is. Doing his shepherding duty and he sees a bush that's on fire and yet it's not being consumed. So he turns aside to see what it is he's told by the bush, take off your sandals for the feet. The ground on which you are standing is, is holy. And it says that this is the angel of the Lord who appeared to him in the burning bush. Now, we talked about Christoph, he with Pastor Mark, because Pastor Mark doesn't like Christoph. He apparently he doesn't like Jesus in the Old Testament. I heard that. Yeah. So, this says the angel of the Lord appeared to the burning bush. A lot of times we see the angel of the Lord, and when the angel of the Lord speaks for God, when it's appearing as a, as a. I guess physical being, we would say that that is the pre-incarnate Christ. This is the angel Lord appearing as a burning bush. So it's the same individual, the pre-incarnate Holy Spirit. I, yeah, I, I don't know, jumping into this, some pretty shaky theology there, but it's God nonetheless, right. Yeah, this one's easier for me to say. This is God the Father. Yeah. And I guess you, again I know it was a joke at the beginning, but fire, when you start thinking about fire, it's often associated with the Holy Spirit. I mean, think about Acts chapter two. Yeah. Flames of fire on their head, or tongues of fire. That is so I look the Holy Spirit, the Father, the son, they all operate in ways that aren't quite, they're unique to God. Yeah. That is all I'm gonna say. So it's good to be confused by this. Yeah, I'm with you. And he calls Moses and he says, look I've got a job for you, Moses. And this is where we begin to get into Moses's insecurities and his lack of faith, because he's gonna argue with God and he's gonna continue to argue with God for quite a while beyond chapter three here. But God is going to reveal himself finally here as the. Covenant God, and this is happens in verse 13, when Moses said to God, if I come to the people and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you, they're gonna ask me what's his name? Who shall I say is sending me? And God answers. I am who I am. This is the name Yahweh. This is the name that is going to be the significant name still, even today for Jews today, the name that many will still not even pronounce, but this is his covenant name. Is he's not the God who was, he's not the God who will be eventually, he's the God who is presently these things. He is the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham and Isaac. And this speaks to his internality, and he's also it speaks to the idea that he is the God of the living. And this is the God who's coming for his people, and he's gonna fulfill the promises that he had made to their fathers, to Abraham. He's the guy who's. Able to do this. There's so much wrapped up in the name Yahweh, in the name. I am who I am, and that's what he's commissioning Moses to go with as he goes to announce to the people that God is here to deliver. You don't forget here that Moses is now 40 years older, so he's 80 years old. In fact, he turned 80 back in chapter two. Starting I think at verse 23. I think that's when we start looking at the next 40 years of his life. So we, you miss 40 years of Moses growing up. For 40 years of him maturing and becoming something new. And yet I'm not too encouraged by this scene because you're right, he's arguing with God. Yeah. Like, dude, what were you doing in the wilderness? Did you not learn your lesson? And yet this is still the man that God chooses to redeem his people. And I love the end of chapter two. I wanted to point it out 'cause it's so sweet. Look at verses 24 and 25. If you're looking at your Bible, Exodus chapter two, God heard. God remembered. God saw, and God knew. I love that God is. Active here. He's aware he's not distant. Chapter three, he becomes more active in present and he's commissioning Moses to go and do his bidding. And Moses is, this is not his finest hour, let's just say that. I'm not impressed, although I am imp impressed and I guess this is the point I. Not with the deliverer that God chooses, but that the fact that God chooses to deliver through this guy. And at the end of the day, this is how Paul talks about his role. He says, who? Who? Who is? Who is Paul? Who is Apol? These are men through whom we preached and you believed at the end of the day, one plants and another waters. But God gives the increase. God gives the growth. Every man that you interact with, preacher, pastor, overseer is a man still at best, and therefore, every good man who's doing his job well is gonna point you not to himself, but to the Lord whom he serves. And so I guess Moses here in chapter three just reminds us, even the best of men are still men. At best, keep your attention and your focus and your ultimate hope on the Lord himself. Let's flip over to our New Testament reading, which is Matthew chapter 15, verses 21 through 39. Matthew 1521. They certainly at this point, are now fully in gentile territory. We can say that with confidence. They're in the region of tire and side, and here we have a Canaanite woman. Now that should ring a bell from our time in the Old Testament. She's not an Israelite, she's not a Jewish woman. She is somebody from outside of that. And she hears that Jesus is there and she comes up crying out. Lord have mercy on me. Son of David, she even applies this title. It's fascinating. There's so many people that we encounter where it's, I wanna ask the question, how did you know, how did you get this information? And this is one of them. How did she know that he's the son of David? How did she know that that's significant? If she's this Canaanite woman, she has to have some sort of background here. And he says, she says, my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon. Jesus initially doesn't respond to her, and his disciples came and said, Hey, send her away for, she's crying out after us. And he answered, well, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. She kneels and says, Lord, but help me. And he says, it's not right to take this is borderline it. It feels harsh Jesus' interaction with her and yet. We know the heart of Christ is for the lost and he's drawing out her faith. And that's what she eventually does when she says yes Lord. But even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table. I think this is more for the disciples than it is a rebuke of her. I think it's more him telling the disciples and showing the disciples that his mission is bigger than they can even fathom at this point, because he does elicit from her this great statement of faith and he commence her and says, A woman, great is your faith, be it done for you as you desire. And it says her daughter was healed instantly. So, this is. Something that can look like Jesus is being really harsh. But I think this is Jesus teaching his disciples and then pulling this faith out of this woman, which she responds in a great statement of faith there to him. From here we get into more of his miracles. He's now by the region of the Sea of Galilee. He's going up to the mountain. He's healing. He's healing the lame, the blind, the crippled, doing all of these miracles and. He's meeting the needs as they're coming to him. And it says that the crowds were glorifying the God of Israel. They're coming to him because they recognize that he had what they needed, and yet really they needed something that, that was even greater than the physical healing that he was providing. And this concept of he has what they need continues in verse 32, he's now teaching and this crowd is there because he's doing all these miracles and they get hungry and we have the same situation. And the disciples say, Hey, why don't you send him away? He says well, how many. Loaves do you have? And they said, well, we have seven and a few small fish. And then he takes these loaves, he breaks them and he feeds this time the 4,000 instead of the 5,000. So this is a different instant, but he's doing the same thing. He's feeding and then he sends the crowds away and he's gonna leave to go to another region in Galilee there called the region of Maan. There at the end of chapter 15. It's my favorite dinosaur. I think that this is, my guess anyway, is that this is Gentile territory. Yes, the whole time. Okay. You don't know that though. It doesn't tell us specifically. In fact, when you got to verses 29 through 31, that little summary statement about Jesus' ministry stuff. Yeah. Doesn't say that he's in Gentile territory. It just says that he's walking beside the sea of Galilee. The one hint that I saw, I think that could be there, is the fact that they glorified the God of Israel, which it could go either way. It could be them saying, this is just the reality. He's the God of Israel. And it also could be he's the God of Israel. He's not our God as we understand him. You know, whoever these gentiles are, it's the God of Israel. I also think that because in verses 32 through 39, you already noticed here that and noted that this is a different account for the feeding of the 5,000. From the feeding of the 5,000. I could see the feeding of the 5,000 being for Israel. They picked up 12 loaves afterward, signifying, in my estimation, the 12 tribes, the hold of the tribes of Israel are gonna be blessed under this coming Messiah. But in chapter 15 here, with the feeding of the 4,000 and having the. Seven baskets full. Seven often being the number of completion. I think this is him speaking to the crowd saying, I'm gonna provide not only for the Israelites and the 12 tribes, but also for the Gentiles. And this will be a perfect and complete salvation offered both to Jew and to Greek alike. That's my take on these verses here. The fact that it's the same the same miracle event feeding of the. Multiplying of the fish and loaves, I think solidifies my understanding of that. What do you think? Yeah I see that as well, and I've heard that the same position before as well and as the gentile I'm thankful for that. That's right. I'm glad for you guys as well. Pastor Mark and I were, we were celebrating our gentile identity. Good for you guys. Yeah. So, you know. Well, welcome to the team. Yeah. We're glad to have you. Happy to be grafted in. Shalom, happy to be grafted in. Alright y'all. Let's pray and then we'll be done with this episode. God, thanks for your kindness in delivering us, God. Not through an imperfect man like Moses, but through the perfect man in Jesus Christ. And we thank you so much that our deliverance is is not just a temporal deliverance, but an internal deliverance. That our sins have been forgiven, that we have salvation through Jesus Christ. I pray that that message would go out further and that we would be your mouthpiece as Moses would be your mouthpiece. That we would be your mouthpiece in a way with the gospel, with the message of salvation, with the message of hope in Christ, and that you would lead other people to freedom from their slavery. From sin just through us going with the message that can deliver them. And so we thank you for the Exodus and how it points us to the even greater exodus that we have in Christ. We look forward to continuing to read about it, and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Keep reading those bibles to y'all and tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you. Bye.

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