Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. How's it going everybody? We hope you're reading your Bibles, pastor Mark, I know how big of a baseball fan you are. I am. You are the biggest baseball fan that has ever walked face the face of the planet. I was so. Monday night, this is a few days ago now. There was a baseball game that lasted 18 innings. Yep. Did you hear about that? I did. I did. Yeah. Yeah, I did. And Shhe, Tani broke the record for the most number of, most times on base. Most times on base, eight times. If any game, not just posties, right? Yeah. E ever. Yeah. The guy's a machine. Yeah. I'm convinced he's the first robot. What are they paying him? Like $700 million. I feel like that might not even be enough. I you, after games like that, you wonder. Yeah, you wonder. But we're not here to talk about the evil empire of the Dodgers. They're the evil Empire part two. I guess the Yankees were number one. Now it's the Dodgers. Who would you rather win? The Canadians or the Americans? Oh, the Canadians a hundred percent on this one. Not even a question. Not even a question. But I feel bad for our Canadian friends because. That game won 18 innings and it ended at 3:00 AM Canadian time. You know, Canadian time up in that. Yeah. That's a thing that region, they also have multiple time zones, you know that right? Yeah. So part of Canada. Well for Toronto, though, I'm pretty sure they're parallel with East Coast. Yes, that's right. That's right. So yeah, 3:00 AM and they lost. It's not like they sit up till 3:00 AM and they won. So I gotta imagine there were a lot of grumpy people on Tuesday in Canada. No doubt. No doubt. Yeah. I went to an Angels baseball game once. This was a number of years ago. Congratulations. Yeah. It was riveting. Yeah. That's all games are. Yeah. At the Angel Stadium, you know, of course. We left at the 11th inning. Why we stayed that long. Don't ask me. Yeah. But we went home, went to bed, woke up the next morning and had gone to 16 or 17 innings. Yeah. And I was like, well, good thing we left when I did. During the regular season now, that's why they do the ghost runner on second base. Yeah. So every extra inning you start with a runner on second base because they're trying to end the game faster. Postseason. They don't do that anymore. And so that's why this game went 18 innings and that's why they used to go so long, but, and they walked shhe like six times or something, right? Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. It's crazy. I think they need to switch to something like you're only allowed to walk intentionally, walk a player once a game. But then how do you regulate that? How do you make sure that that's, I don't know, man actually being done, you know? 'cause you can fake walk somebody. You could, yeah. You could just, oh, I missed, I didn't pitch that well enough. Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. But hey let's talk about something else. We had Fall Fest on Sunday. Yeah, we didn't get to talk about that yet this week. And we do wanna recognize that. We wanna recognize you guys out there that served at that. Well done. We had over a hundred volunteers. That's right. And it was great. Pastor Mark, tell us about a fall fest. Well, first please tell Allie thank you. I'm sure she doesn't want me to do that, but Allie put in a ton of work. Thank you. A ton of thought. Into making this event. Great. So if you get the chance to thank her, please do. Because she really was a faithful servant in carrying this out. But that's Sing her a thank you song. That's right. Yeah. Maybe to the tune of happy birthday, but yeah. Well, nevermind. Yeah, great event and we're really excited because, we had a lot of people that were there because you guys invited them. Yep. You had people that were your friends, your family that were there. Thank you for doing that. We had people from the nearby neighborhoods as part of the outreach efforts that we did that were there. So thank you for doing that. And I know prayer went into that. We are really excited to see God bring people from that event. That's the purpose of that event, right? Not just to at least this is our intention with it. It's not just to throw a party for people to come and get free cotton candy, but ultimately we wanna see baptisms from the this event. So be praying for that, be praying for that, even this coming Sunday with. Some of these people who may be making the decision to come and join us or not be praying for them. Yeah. And if you know them or you had a chance to reach out to them, give 'em a call. Give 'em a, send 'em a message. Encourage them to come threaten them, because that's our ultimate Yeah. Well, don't threaten them. Yeah. Maybe not. Yeah. Yeah. Don't do that. You could maybe kind of tell them about hell through a gospel presentation. You could. You could. Yeah. Which is a appropriate threat, right. Sure. Yeah. That's a different question. Yeah. Anyways, fall Fest was awesome. It was great. Yeah. We're probably gonna make a few changes next year. Maybe we're gonna get a turtle that's a little less active in the petting zoo. Yeah. That turtle was wild. Yeah I've never seen a turtle. Take that many steps ever. Yeah. And it was going round and round. The bunnies were like scared in the corner, but the turtle was trying to escape. I don't know what was, I didn't make my way over there at any point, but my son did Luke, and he said he pet a duck and the duck bit him. So yeah, ducks do that. Ducks growing up. Pet ducks. Yeah. And then my son told me it felt like a swan bite or a no, A goose bite. Yeah. I was like, how do you know what a goose bite feels like? Actually, I do recall he was attacked by a goose. You'll have to ask Luke about the time he was attacked by a goose. Not, not a good time. I'm sure it's not a story for the podcast necessarily, but I mean it's entertaining there. There is that. All right. Well, yeah, fall Fest was awesome. So good job everybody. We, I love doing events like that. Can't wait to do it again next year. We've got, we'll do extravaganza back out on that field. I think the venue worked great. Yeah. And that was really great. Really cool to be able to do that. We had the police officers there, which was fun. Amir showed. Yeah, he was dressed all police officer gear. Oh, that wasn't a costume. You know, I asked him, I was like, is your gun fake? And he was like, no. He's committed to the, I also said, can I hold it? And he said, no. So there's that. Yeah. No I was telling him though, and Pastor Rod, I. I still like when I'm around police officers, even if I know them like am Mirror, I still am like a little kid. I'm like, dude, you've got a gun. Like that's crazy in handcuffs you can turn on his lights. You've got real, I know, right? Like, will you turn on your siren? No. The the Prosper Police officer that was there though, officer Jones, he's been here for 18 years in prosper on the beat as they say. Wow. Yeah. Wow. So he's seen this place go from middle of nowhere to, yeah, metropolis. He said when he first started here, he was on the overnight shift and there were 6,000 people total in the town. And if anyone was out on the road, he pulled them over because they were up to no good. There was just, by default, default, there was no other reason to be out on the, there's no other reason. They were either thieves or they were drunk. Like that's the only reason that they were out on the road. Late at night at that point. Different place now. Different time. Different time. For sure. Hopefully he's gotten a couple raises since then. I hope so. Yeah. Seems like a nice guy. Yeah. He and his wife are having twins, so we were talking about that. Or they have twins. They have five month old twins and so, we were not commiserating, that's the wrong word, but we were connecting over that. Yeah. Talking about that adventure. Right. Exactly. The great adventure. Yeah. This is the great adventure. Alright, hey, let's get into Luke 18. And by the way, we have a question that we're gonna. Ask an answer in the middle of the question in the middle of this, because it's been asked about a passage in Luke 18. So in Luke 18, we open up here with a parable about prayer. And this is told in an interesting way 'cause it kind of almost portrays the pray ye the prayer prayer. As that's right, as the one who is. It's almost a negative connotation. Yeah. All, albeit not really because you feel bad for the widow. The widow has a need, and so the widow has this need and she keeps going and this need is somebody is oppressing her and she's asking for justice to be done with this judge. And the judge keeps turning her way, turning her way, turning her away, and. It says in verse five, yet, because this widow keeps bothering me, I'm gonna give her justice so that she will not beat me down by her continual coming. And then the Lord saidhe what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God give justice to his elect who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will give justice to them speedily. That's difficult because we don't always see speedy justice administered. So, pastor Mark, how do we think about. This widow, her persistence here. We've seen other things where Jesus has said, Hey, don't heap up empty words like the Gentiles do. Your father knows what you need before you even ask. And so is this something for us to employ, to say, okay, we need to be persistent like this. How do we understand some of these things? Yeah, I think the first thing we need to remember is that prayer is something that's expected and commanded of Christians and. So when we look at that, we can either look at it as a burden as something that's oppressive, even in some sense, or we can look at it as a privilege. And I don't just mean privilege in the like Christianese word sense of that, but truly a privilege. Right? Something that's a joy to do. That's. That's yes, commanded, but we understand that command to be for our good. I'm gonna say that this example of the widow in this unrighteous judge is actually an example of it being a burden, right? It's difficult to fight against somebody like this. And then the contrast is that we don't have an unrighteous judge. We have a very righteous judge. We have a loving father who is eager, who has elected us, who is eager to respond to our prayers, and it is something that's necessary for us to do, but it's also. A great good, a great joy to do. Yeah. And I think when it comes to the question of how quickly does God answer, why does God not answer as soon as we'd like in the way we'd like, I think we have to turn to passage like Second Peter that talks about how the timing of the Lord is not. Our timing. Right. A day to the Lord is as a thousand years and a thousand years as of today. And he's not slow as the way some of us would like to consider slowness to be. I think there's other passages you go to, but that would be an example of one that I think would be helpful. No, yeah, for sure. And there's other examples in church history. George Mueller is a guy that, that. Prayed for the same five people until they one by one began to be saved. But there were two people. He died praying for their salvation. And you can imagine he's the persistent widow in that instance. Yeah. Going to the Lord over and over again, saying, Lord, please save these people. And eventually those last two did get saved. Now that's always not gonna, that's not always gonna happen that way. Sometimes the Lord chooses not to answer the prayer even when we come over and over and over and over again. And that's where we have to have the mentality to say. Lord, we're gonna pray this and say, if it be your will, this is what I'm asking. Yeah, that's right. And to trust. If it's not his will, he's not gonna give it to us. But Jesus earlier talked about the child coming in, asking his father for a fish. And Jesus says, you're not gonna give him a snake. Yep. You're gonna give him what he's asking for what he needs. Then he said, how much more will your father, who knows what your needs are, give you good things? And so we have to trust if it's good for us. As God defines good, he's gonna give it to us. And we can be persistent. We can be bold like this widow because God is delighted to hear the prayers of his children. And sometimes God's gonna ordain our prayers to accomplish his will, but it's going to accomplish his will for that prayer that we started praying maybe 10 years ago. It's gonna. He's gonna choose now the Yeah. To be the time to answer it. He didn't want to ordain it to happen 10 years ago in his perfect timing, but we're gonna persist in that. And now today's the day that he's gonna answer the same prayer that you prayed 10 years ago. He's gonna answer it today. He works that way. It's cool to see that and know that he does work that way. Yeah. And if you need to practice this and you're a parent, let me suggest the first place to do this is to be praying daily for the salvation of your kids. Absolutely. Obviously we're not. Not everybody's parents in the church, but most of us are. And if you need a place to PR, practice this persistence. Start there. Be praying every day for the salvation of your kids, whether that's your little kids in your house or maybe your adult kids. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Well, let's go on and talk about some more prayer. And this time it's a story of parable of a tax collector and a Pharisee. Now to, to set the context, understand the tax collector was considered to be an unrighteous individual. He was hated by his own countryman. He often worked for Rome. He was considered to be a traitor, a turncoat. He would most of the time be a thief as well, skimming off the top of the tax collection. So this is not somebody that you look at in any way, shape or form and consider to be a righteous person. Contrast that you've got a Pharisee who is. The definition of righteousness. And Jesus says that there were two of them, these two men, and they both went up to the temple Mount to pray, and one a Pharisee one, a tax collector. And the Pharisees prayer is given first for us. In verse 11, the Pharisee standing by himself prayed. Thus God, I thank you that I'm not like the other men, extortioners. Unjust adulterers, or even like this tax collector. Then he appeals to his righteousness. Here's the things that I do. And then the contrast is the tax collector who went up and beat his chest, beat his breast and said, God, be merciful to me a sinner. And Jesus says, this is the one that went home justified rather than the Pharisee. So we got a question written in. And the question is this, what precisely was wrong with the prayer of the Pharisee? And then the follow-up is, would you recommend against praying any or all of the following examples? God, I thank you that by your grace, you've kept me from adultery, so may many others around me have fallen and I know that I would do the same apart from your grace or God. I thank you that by your grace you've kept me from adultery, unlike other men or God, I thank you. I'm not an adulterer like other men. So could all these be good prayers depending on the heart posture? Pastor Mark, what are some of your thoughts there? That last little phrase there is, what's key is it's a matter of the heart. It's a matter of what your heart posture is. Look in verse nine at who's Jesus is talking to in verse nine. It says, he also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves. Yeah. That they were righteous, right? So he's addressing people who, trust in themselves who have a heart posture that is not relying on the Lord. Right. That is not thankful for what the Lord has done. Right? So if we're talking about being grateful to God for the righteousness that he has instilled in us through the spirit I think that's a good prayer. Yeah. When we are trusting in him and not trusting in ourselves for that, and even to the extent when we talk about. The sanctification that we've seen in our life with other Christians, right? If we're talking about it as a way of extolling our own ability, our own strength, our own goodness, et cetera, et cetera, that's a problem. If we are talking about it in the context of the trust that we have in the Lord that's a totally different thing, and that, that brings glory to God. Yeah. Yeah. And so as you give these examples of prayers, the one I would say. I would hold back on is that final one? God, I thank you. I'm not an adulterer like other men. Yeah. That's the prayer of the Pharisee here. I think the difference is the first two prayer examples that you gave, you said, God, I thank you that by your grace, right. God, I thank you. That by your grace. And that gets into what you were saying there that that conveys that I'm not trusting my own righteousness. I'm not saying God, I thank you that because I'm so good. I'm not like these other people, but by your grace I am who I am. Right. And. That mentality of saying, but for the grace of God would I be there? And that's a humble prayer, that's a prayer that's aware of our dependency on the grace and mercy of God as this tax collector was aware of his need for the mercy of God as well. So, the problem with the prayer of the Pharisee was, as you pointed out, it was a prayer all about himself. Mm-hmm. And not about the grace and mercy of God. And so it was a prayer of arrogance of pridefulness and not a prayer of humility there. Yeah. The tax collector says, be merciful to me. A sinner. Right, right. It's about his sin, his problem with God. It's not about outward comparisons or other comparisons with people and saying, oh, at least I'm not. Not as sinful as that person. Yeah. It's about his recognition that he's desperately in need of God's mercy. Yep. Yep. Rich young ruler. Let's jump down there in chapter 18 verse Oh, can we talk about the little children? No, we can't. Yeah, yeah. No, we can. We got, our kids been passed around here. Let's do that. Yeah. Talk, talk to us about the little children. I have a question for you, so hopefully you've read this passage for you. Listener. Please read this passage, verse 15 through 17. I have a question for you. How young can a kid be saved? There is no age limit to salvation Zero. There's no age limit to salvation. So as soon as I put a number out there, then the hard thing is there's gonna be parents that are gonna not teach their kids about Jesus until that age or whatever it may be. We do know that there has to be the cognition. Ability there to understand their need for Christ. Right. So your newborn, even Warren, right? Warren is very advanced. He's almost, you know, dunking a basketball on a 12 foot goal or a 10 foot goal, even as that's what it's actually supposed to be 14 foot, you know? Yeah. Just making it a little harder, you know? And Warren has a sin nature in him. In that he wants what he wants and isn't really mindful of what other people need, like sleep or, patience or anything like that. Now we've talked about man, God's special grace that I think he preserves for people that don't have the awareness or the ability to understand, man, I'm a sinner and I need Jesus. And I think that, that is biblically defensible. But I think once our kids begin to come to that recognition stage of being able to say. Okay, I understand sin is doing what's wrong. Mm-hmm. And I understand God's mad at me for my sin. Mm-hmm. And I understand that he loved me enough to gimme Jesus, to die on the cross for my sin so that I can be forgiven and rise again so that I can live with him forever. I'm gonna choose to believe in him. Man if you get a kid that. Understands that and says, I believe in Jesus. Mm-hmm. Then I'm gonna point to a pastor like this and say, Jesus committed childlike faith. Mm-hmm. And so that's why I would say there's no age limit to salvation. Yeah. I mean, technically if you press me Sure. There is, like a child who's 5, 6, 7 months old doesn't have the mental ability to understand the gospel. Yeah. But we don't put an age limit to say, Hey, you have to be at least eight before we think that you can really make a decision to put your trust in Jesus. Yeah. And each kid is different. Two, you know, there's a hundred percent. Yeah. Kids have different abilities or even some may have birth problems that cause them to not have the cognition necessarily For sure. As soon or maybe it takes a little longer. Yeah. And so I don't think it's appropriate to put an age on it. I do think we need to have a heart that is like Jesus, right. That is eager for the little children to go to him, to, yeah. And I think we need to be, expecting that in the sense that we know the gospel has power. Yeah. And it has power even for kids. Yep. And for us to just take this posture that the someday or hopefully in the future, I think we need to be pursuing it now. And we need to do it carefully. Of course. Yeah. But I think we need to be, we need to be eager for the gospel to have its power and its impact in even the youngest of our kids. Yeah. I agree a hundred percent. When we do get to the rich young rule really quick here, the one thing that I wanna point out is the problem was not. That he had money, but that he had his full confidence and trust in his money. Mm-hmm. And so that's where Jesus is a masterful teacher and tactician here, because the question, what must I do to internal inherit eternal life? Jesus knew that the money was his idle. But first he starts with his righteousness. He says, well, you have to keep the law, you have to keep the commandments. And the man goes, well, I've done that. And Jesus says, okay, now go sell everything that you have and give it to the poor, and then come be my follower. And it says, the man went away sad before he had many great possessions. Again, the problem wasn't his possessions or his money, but that that was his idol. Mm-hmm. And Jesus was saying, you wanna follow me? You have to put your idol to death. You have to surrender everything you have to. I'm Lord, it's not. And we've seen this principle previously there, but it's just reiterated to hear in this story. Yeah. It's so easy to think that we can have some of the world and also be a Christian. It's so easy to think we can go to church on Sundays and then jump right back into the world and just like everybody else Yeah. The next day. And here's yet another example of Jesus making it clear that's not possible. Yeah. Yep. We have another prediction of Jesus' death. The third here, and again, the disciples are not understanding. And part of that is, is they're being kept from understanding that at this point. And the reason why for that is because if they knew, I mean remember Peter in the garden. Peter draws his sword and cuts off Malcolm's ear in the garden. So if they really understood what was gonna happen there, they would've done everything they could to oppose Jesus getting to Jerusalem in the first place. So I believe that's one of the reasons why, even as though he's being plain in what he's saying. Number one, they're not expecting him to die. And number two they would've tried to intervene and stop as Peter's already done multiple times. He's, Jesus said, get behind me, Satan, to him at one point, and then he's gonna cut off Malus ear at another point. So, if they had really understood, I think there would've been problems. And then Luke 18 ends with a story that I think just encapsulates salvation so well, and it's the healing of Bartimaeus, which is the name that we're told. I don't know if it's here, but in another passage, we are given the name Bartimaeus in a parallel account. Where he's there and he hears that Jesus is passing by and he cries out. He turns to Jesus for what only Jesus can provide, which is sight. And he says, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And then he's being pushed back by people, Hey, no, you're. You be quiet. He's not here for you, but he just cries out all the more. 'cause he's desperate for Christ and he knows his hope is only gonna be found in Jesus. Cries out. All the more Son of David had mercy on me. Jesus stops and calls him to himself. He comes to Jesus and he says, Lord, let me recover my sight. Other translations you, the older translations would say, sir, I wish to see. And I just love that language there. Mm-hmm. For us. And Jesus heals him and he says, recover your sight. Your faith has made you well. And it says, immediately he recovers his sight. So now he's made to see and he follows, Jesus. This is salvation. That those that are spiritually blind, hearing Jesus' nearby, calling out to Jesus. Jesus calls us to him. We come to him. We say we wish to see. Jesus gives us the spiritual sight to be able to see through conversion, and then we follow him. This is such a good reminder of the power of God to do what only God can do in our lives. Yeah. And Christian if he has saved you, then you should go about today, this very day glorifying God. Yeah. You should go about today, the rest of the day. Praising him for what he's done. Yeah. And saying Jesus did it. That's right. Yep. Yep. Let's pray. God, we are so thankful for our church family. We love our church and we love everything that happened this past weekend at Fall Fest. We pray that you'd bear fruit from it. We ask that you'd bring families to our church from that event. We ask that even those that are lost would be saved through an encounter with the gospel as a result of this event that we put on this thing that we did. Lord we are so thankful though for all of the volunteers from our church that showed up and gave of their time and sacrificed Lord, so much to be there with us and to serve the community. We just pray that you'd. Need to allow us as a church to thrive and do more things like that. And we are, as we talked about in this episode the prayer, the tax collector. We wanna be mindful of our need for your mercy, just like even blind Bartimaeus here at the end saying, Lord, we, we want to see and we need you, you to enable us to be able to see. So God, we pray that we would follow you and give you all the glory that you're due for the rest of our lives. In Jesus name, amen. Keep in your Bibles, tune in, get tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you guys tomorrow. Bye.

​Well, thank you for listening to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast, folks! We're honored to have you join us. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about our Church at compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review, to rate, or to share this podcast on whatever platform you're listening on, and we hope to see you again tomorrow for another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. Ya'll come back now, ya hear? Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said