Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. What's up folks? It's Saturday. It's Women's Bible Study. Saturday. Happy Women's Bible Study Day. I hope you're all making your way there now. Yeah, man. You are excluded. Yep. Yeah, you don't need to be there. In fact, please don't. 'cause that'd be weird. Probably not the best thing for you to do with your time in the first place. Being at a women's Bible study. Exactly. But there's other good things that you could do. Yep. Hey, we'll meet next week, by the way. Yeah, we are, yeah. Yeah. Women are, y'all are meeting to continue your study of Ephesians chapter one, talking about our security in Christ and why you are saved and guarded by the, the power of God in that salvation. So should be a great message. I'm looking forward to hearing about how it goes, and hopefully it'll be an encouraging one for you. Can't wait. Yep. Should, we're gonna listen to it, right? Yes. Yes, maybe yes. I, I, my wife, if y'all listening, don't know, she's the one that, that teaches our women's Bible study. Although pastor Rod, I think Kristen is gonna be teaching coming up here later on in the spring. And, and even over the summer some, and, and we help with that process of, of message prep. I mean, my wife does the, the heavy lifting on You write it for her and the study I do. Tell her what to say. Well, actually I have ai write it. Tell the women. Oh, okay. And then, and then I give it to her through ai. Perfect. Like hear ai Perfect. To preach this. No, she does the heavy lifting, but she does run it by me. And, and we workshop it together and workshop the text together and talk through application, everything else. So I have a general understanding going into it. You know what, what she's, what she's got. I'm excited for this one. I think it, it's great. I think the content's good. I think she's gonna do a great job. Are you not excited for the other ones? No, I am. Okay. I just, just checking. It's been fun. She's new to this relatively speaking and I just, it's been neat to see God develop this I think gifting in her and, and she's getting better and better as as it goes. We always say all the time to those that want to go into pastoral ministry or not, that she wants to go into pastoral ministry. It's gonna be a pastor. Hold on a second. Let's back that up. We tell everyone, check that all of our wives No, those, that, that. Want to become better at preaching. The best way to become better at preaching is more reps. The more reps you can get, the better preacher you're gonna become to a certain degree. You can study in the classroom all you want. Yeah. But that can only take you so far. The more you're up there. Yeah. If, if the giftings there, the more you're up there, the better you'll become, generally speaking. Yeah. I think there's still a great place for critical feedback. Yes. Even as a, as a tenured teacher of the word I, I, I, I love it actually. I don't love it. I hate it, but I love the effect of it. I love having an outsider's opinion. Yeah. Yeah. That's the one thing I miss the most about not being at a, well, not, I guess there's a lot of things I miss. I don't know if I miss this the most. That's one of the things I miss about not being at av. Whenever we'd have those sermon reviews at Pastor Mike, I mean, I'd want to cry. Yeah. Most of the time. That was, yeah, that's the end of that sentence. I wanted to cry most of the time, but it made me a better preacher. That's, that's just, that's the end of, of the story. That's it. I just wanted to cry, but I, I, I did become a better preacher, I think. Yeah. Well this is take two. Yeah. We had an issue with the last one. I recorded it on our D script platform. That's the thing that we used to record our podcast. Yeah. And I went into the office to edit it and it's like, Hey, I had an issue. If this happens again, restart your computer. Oh, really? Thanks to script. I appreciate that. So this is take two. Hopefully you can't tell it. We're just as exciting. We're just as enthusiastic, just as passionate. But we're also the, we're doing this the next day. So we had a nights of sleep on it. Cry a little bit. Now we're back. Maybe we said something in the first one that God just didn't want out there. I don't know. I do a lot of editing, so sometimes I cut stuff out that I don't like that you say. I'm like, ah, he doesn't need to say that. Sometimes I'll weaken your argument by just cutting out critical. That's great. That's, man, that's awesome. You'll, that's awesome. Just, you'll just be saying things incoherently. That's, I was wondering why I was getting all those texts about things going, Hey, that sounded like heresy, what you said. Yeah, that's that's about right. Yeah. Well anyways, we're in numbers 14, 15 and Psalm 90 today. And numbers 14. This is this is not good for the people of Israel. This is a, a rather disastrous chapter, in fact, for the people of Israel because they're gonna choose to believe the reports of the, the 10 spies over those of Joshua and Caleb. And as a result, they're gonna say, we're not going, we're, we're gonna refuse to take the land. And in the process, they're gonna grumble and complain against Moses and Aaron and even to the point that they're suggesting going, we're gonna go back to. Egypt rather than rather than do what God wants us to do, these scoundrels, horrible, I mean, yeah, the, the, the atrocities in Egypt that they left, the things that, remember God sent Moses to them because they were grumbling under the weight of the slavery that they were suffering under in Egypt and how quickly they forget, and we can be prone to that too, of saying. Man, life is, is hard. It was better back then. And we forget that, that where we're at now. There, there's good things about where we're at now, even when we walk through some difficult times. So they're grumbling, they're saying we're not gonna do it. But God intervenes and declares that for the rebellion, none of the, the Generation 20 and Up we're going to enter into the Promised land. Except for Joshua and Caleb. And so after this, the people kind of get together and say, you know what? Nevermind God, we, we change our mind. We're gonna do it anyways. And Moses says, you better not. And they say, we're gonna do it. And, and then they go and the Amalekites end up beating them because God was not with them there. But we, we talked about this. I remember now my memory's jogging the, the first time we recorded this episode. Mm-hmm. But. The concept of the age. I think you were the first one to bring up, hey, these are the guys 20 and up. What do we do with the guys that were 19 and a half, almost 20 years old here, right? They seem to get a pass. People that we think are adults, we'd call 18 and adults, and yet they don't seem to have the same culpability as those who were, what you brought up in our. Podcast that never got recorded. These guys are the fighting, the the fighting age people. The one, the one, the ones who were drafted into military service. And so I think there's something about God that does provide a, a, an opportunity for people to respond according to their knowledge. Not to say that everyone goes to heaven. I'm not a universalist, I don't think that's what we're talking about here, but there are times when God has treated people differently because of their age. Right? And it seems like God is. I don't know, there's maybe there's a dispensation of grace that is special for those who are of a certain age or maybe even a certain mental capacity. Yeah, I've often wondered about that myself. But you have evidence of this. Deuteronomy chapter one, we'll see this soon in short order, and you also see it in Jonah chapter four, where he says, look man, shouldn't I have mercy on those who, there's so many thousands of people who don't know their left hand from their right hand. That is to say there, there's a certain level of ignorance that God says I, I. I care about that and I wanna do something about it. Yeah. And this is where we as, as Dispensationalist, depart a little bit from our Covenant brothers and sisters out there who are believers. We're gonna be in heaven together, we're gonna spend eternity together. But we, we differ in the area of baptism. We've got baptisms coming up in March, by the way. It's gonna be exciting. We're gonna do that on campus in March. They're at the church, so dude, you're telling them stay tuned for that. Wow. We're gonna find out, you'll find out more about that as, as we go along. But it's gonna be Sunday morning, a blow up pool. It's got unicorns and rainbows in it. It's gonna be the best. It's gonna be amazing. Blippy is gonna be there. This got weird. But we, we've talked about this. We baptize professing believers. Our covenant brothers and sisters, especially in the Presbyterian church, they will baptize. Babies. And one of the reasons they baptize babies, Allah, what you were just talking about, pastor Rod, is they believe that that is an extension of the covenant, the new covenant protection over that child. And so it's, it's a marker, just like circumcision of their belonging to the people of God, the people of God being the church. And so they would say, they, they, that act of baptizing a baby brings them into the covenant relationship, the covenant community there and protects them until. The age of accountability and just like us, they would say, we, we can't define what the age of accountability is. Right. My problem and my contention is the difficulty there is I don't see anywhere in scripture that anyone ever leaves the new covenant. And so when, when we're saying we're, we're taking a baby and baptizing the baby to bring them under the covenant protection there, then at some point we're gonna have to say, they're gonna have to leave the covenant in order to actually repent and believe and be saved and be regenerated for themselves. Right. And when does that happen? And and where's the biblical precedent for somebody leaving the, the new covenant relationship with God? I, I, I don't see that there. And, and that's a difficulty, but I think we would agree. All of us would agree that you're right. God does provide categories of, of special grace for people who may be of a certain age or mental capacity, whatever it may be for extending a special dispensation of grace towards them. Yeah, and this, again, is not universalism and this doesn't apply to everybody. And this is I, I don't claim to know God's operations, his internal operations, but I do know that what we see in scripture is that God does seem to show some kind of protection, and I don't wanna call it favoritism, but again, I think dispensation is the best word for it to protect people of a certain age. Yeah. And again, we call it the age of accountability. As a shorthand way of referring to this, but there's not a specific age in mind, I don't think. Here you have an age, you have 20 and over who are gonna be judged. Those who are under the age are obviously given some kind of pass, but that pass is not without consequence. They still have consequences. In fact, that's one of the things that happens here. God condemns them to 40 years of wandering numbers. 14 is a really important chapter because this is referred to throughout scripture, but just because he forgives them mm-hmm doesn't mean the consequences go away. The consequences remain and they're gonna be painfully experienced for 40 years. Yeah, this is a bad situation. Yeah. And, and you know, you mentioned this is the, those of fighting age, it is possible that those are younger than this. They didn't have a say and so they, they didn't have a voice to say whether or not they should go into the promised land or, or not, and that's why they're excused, so to speak. But to the point that you just made, I think this is an example of God visiting the sins of the father upon the, the. Other generations that there are consequences that the, these younger generations are gonna have to suffer these 40 years of wilderness wandering because of the sins of their father. The lack of faith in God's promises is gonna trickle down and impact their family now by the wilderness wanderings and also the loss of the, the life of their loved ones, they're, they're gonna lose their dads. They're gonna lose their grandpas because of their disobedience and their rebellion. Yeah, this is a bad situation. And, and that's the thing just because you experience the consequences of your family sin doesn't mean that it was because you're culpable. It's just the natural order of things. Yeah. When you sin, especially as a leader of any organization, whether it be the family unit or something larger, the people that are serving underneath you. Are gonna suffer because of that. Yes. That's how sin works. Yes. And it's awful. Which is another reason why you ought to run from sin. You ought to flee from it. Scripture says, in order to protect not only yourself, but for the people that you love most. Yeah. Yeah. Well, chapter 15, we get into some familiar territory here talking about material. We've, we've seen before about laws and offerings that were to be brought for sacrifices and, and some things about unintentional sins. And we'd seen a lot about unintentional sins before. But in this. Chapter, he's also gonna talk about intentional sins. Now, the unintentional sins, that's something that somebody does, they don't realize they're sinning when they do it. The intentional sin is, is the exact opposite. Obviously it's, it's somebody who knows what the law states and still decides to do what they're gonna do regardless. And for that person, there was no sacrifice. There was no atonement. They were gonna be cut off from their people. So there was, this is a grave thing to know what God's law says and still to willfully break it. And I just found myself thinking about this. It's, it's God's mercy and God's grace in our current dispensation of being part of the, the church age and the new covenant, the, the standard is not the same today. Now we need to be care. Very careful about sinning. Even when we know what God's command says we need, we can still commit intentional sins ourself, but we're not cut off from the people of God in, in the same sense there. So this gets into a little bit of what we were talking about yesterday or Yeah. Yesterday's podcast about the idea of. Of eternal life in the Torah and, and progressive revelation. And there, there is a matter of, we are in a privileged position where we sit today under the dispensation that we're currently in. There are, are things that we know and that we get to experience today that, that these people didn't get to experience. And that's a difficult one. That's a little bit of that Romans nine category there of going, okay, God is sovereign. Over the unfolding of the way that he interacts with his people at different times in different ways. In fact, that's what a dispensation is. A dispensation is defined by, in part, at least the way that God interacts with his people and the way that God establishes a pattern for his people to interact with him. And the dispensation of the law, which is what we're currently under here as we're reading this, is different than what you and I enjoy as the dispensation of the church age, where we get to enjoy the, the blessings of the new covenant, and we don't have to fear being cut off from the people of God because of an intentional sin or being executed. I. A cutoff can mean banishment by the community or execution. Exactly, yeah. And we're not doing either really. The, I guess the closest parallel is when you're cut off because of church discipline. Right. Which is different. But there are similar effects. And the goal is actually not to punish the person, but to restore them. It's meant to be redemptive in its practice. And so the cutting off in our case looks like when someone sins with a high hand, they're sitting against the, the body or sitting against someone. Matthew 18 gives us directions for how to deal with that. And the goal is that we send them outta the church. We condemn their sin in order that they'll repent and be brought back into the fold. So even the, that, it's still different here. I don't think that you read that the goal is redemption, right? The, the, the flavor of it is these are the consequences for acting in these ways. So I'm grateful. And, and I think someone might argue or contend, well, it seems like there's a different God in the Old Testament. Mm-hmm. You have the God in the New Testament who is gracious and kind, gentle Jesus. Me, Ken Lowly as Christopher Hitchens once talked about him. Well, he did that actually quite a bit. He would talk about Jesus and the God of the Old Testament being this maniacal what, what was, what was his phrase? He had a lot of ways of talking about the God of the Old Testament, but essentially identifying something that you and I are talking about here, which it seems like, man, God is different in the under the old covenant. And I would say that God is doing different things with his people. But he is fundamentally the same God. Different aspects of his character are highlighted. Mm-hmm. But God is telling a story. And that's one thing we often forget when we talk about the meta narrative of scripture. We're talking about the story that overarches all the stories. And in this meta narrative of scripture, God is painting a picture of who he is and his operations with his people eventually to culminate in Christ the church and the end of the age. So keep that in mind as you read your Bible. God is not a different God. He's showcasing and highlighting different aspects of his character. As fitting for that dispensation and, and still it's important to remember that the, the operative act of, of what made somebody a part of, of God's covenant community was still what made Abraham a part of the covenant community, which is faith. That's right. Paul picks this up in Galatians three, in, in verses 17 and 18. He says, this is what I mean, the law, which came four 30 years afterwards, after Abraham does not annu a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promises void for if the inheritance comes by the law. It no longer comes by promise. But God gave it to Abraham by promise. So, so the. The operation is still there. The offer of you can be declared righteous by fate. The same way that Abraham was is still ex, it still exists. It's still there for the people of God. This is just a different way that they're interacting with one another. Chapter 15 also deals with a couple of other things. There's a Sabbath breaker. So the people find somebody breaking the Sabbath, gathering sticks on a Sabbath day that was against the law, and they are. They bring him to Moses and they, they put him in custody trying to figure out what to do, and they determine, okay, this guy's gotta be put to death. So they take him outside the camp and they, they put him to death. And so, again, another example of the different dispensation there tassels on the garments towards the end. This becomes something during the New Testament that the Pharisees use as a sign of their self-righteousness. But it was really meant to be a reminder at, at this time or to remember the commandments of the Lord. And, and so that's what this, these tassels were there to. To represent visual things. And that's always a good thing to have visual things in our life that can jog our memory about something that God has done. Like raising the pile of stones, crossing through the Jordan River, or a, a visual reminder for something about a law or the, the what's it called? Memory palace, right? Yeah. Where you can use visual things in your house or somewhere like that to memorize scripture even. Mm-hmm. So that when you see that thing, it reminds you of a passage of scripture which is a, a biblical precedent here because we see that in number chapter 15. One of the cool things about this particular passage is that Jesus followed the law, so he would've had these tassels, the fringes on his clothes. In fact, you read about someone touching the fringes of his clothes. That's what we're talking about here, the tassels. When the woman who had the issue of blood for 12 years, he touches the fringes of his garments and she's made whole. So this is a really cool connection. Obviously, we don't do this today, but to what you just said, I, I think it, it's still important that we find. And make visual reminders for ourselves that help remind us of what we're doing, what we're about, and what's important to us. Which might look as simple as what you put on your wallpaper for your phone or what you put on your wall at home or something like that, or what's in your car to remind you about what matters. Some people do that with their family. Pictures naturally, you know, you'll put your, your family picture in your dashboard or something like that. It's also good as a family who loves the Lord if you're trying to train your people up in the way of the Lord to make sure that you have reminders all throughout your home for again, what matters. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, we as we turn to, to Psalm 90, I wanna jump back to a, a conversation that we had yesterday about the idea of, of the afterlife. We'd referenced that a little bit earlier in today's podcast as well. Something that, that came to mind this morning. Actually, Friday morning, as, as we're recording this. It's actually something that Jesus said, and this is in Matthew chapter 22. And this may help us a little bit in our conversation because Jesus is, is talking here and he's dealing with the Sadducees in the question about the resurrection. Whose, whose wife will she be? And he answers this towards the end, he says in verse 31, as for the resurrection of the dead. Have you not read what was said to you by God? And now he quotes all the way back to the Torah, to our, our passage here, Exodus three six. And he says, what was said to you by God, I am presently the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. Is he not the God of? He's not the God of the dead. Jesus says, but the God of the living. Mm-hmm. And so there's an example there that quoting from Exodus, Jesus is appealing back to something that God said as evidence of the fact that there is life after death. 'cause God says there presently, I am the God of present tense. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and he's speaking to Moses at that point, well guess who was already gone by the time that he's talking to Moses, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and yet he says, I'm the God of the living, not the dead. That's the application that Jesus brings as he's shedding light in that commentary. Back on the Torah in Exodus chapter three, verse six there. That's a great reference and I might even. Add to that Jesus is arguing from the grammar of the text, which is why we read the Bible the way that we do. Yeah, we read grammar. The grammatical historical approach is our understanding of how you should appropriately. Understand the Bible that's called hermeneutics, your the art and Science of interpreting Scripture. And we argue that the way that you do that is by the grammar and the history. That is, you understand the original audience. How would they have understood that? That's how we should understand it. And then we make application from that point. But Jesus gives us an example of what that is to, to do. He's looking at the text and saying, here's what it says grammatically. Of course he's the Lord, so he knows, but he says, this is what the grammar is. You should have understood this. Yeah, that's a great reason why you should read the Bible the way he does. Yep. Yeah. So we get into Psalm 90 and, and Psalm 90 is actually not written by David or ASAP or any of the other psalmists that we see, but it's written by Moses. And this is a, a psalm where Moses is acknowledging the sin of the people. So coming outta number chapter 14 probably, and that it was not hidden from the Lord, that this was not something that they had concealed. It's a Psalm pleading for mercy and for the people to learn to be satisfied in the Lord. And again here along the same lines of what we were just talking about when Moses says in verse 12, teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. I think implied there is this expectation of something beyond our life. Help us to live carefully. To live wisely because this life is not all there is. If this life is all there is, then I don't wanna number my days 'cause that's just gonna remember how short my life is. But if there's something beyond this, then yeah, help me number my days. So I know that there's more than, than what I'm just living for right now. Well, I probably would. I think there's a both end in, in that, in that text there because it's, it is like if, if my life is fleeting and short and what I do now matters for eternity, then what I do really matters. Yeah. The few minutes that I spend doing this, or that has enormous value when compared and contrasted against the future that it's presenting for me. Everything we do is imbued with eternal weightiness and that means. The way that we talk to each other and the way that we lead our families, the way that we love the, the grocery store attendant, the way that we talk to the flight attendant, all these things matter because they're contributing either to our eternal reward or our loss Yeah. Of eternal rewards, which I know people have pointed out in the past. Well, you're not gonna be sad about that 'cause you're gonna be in heaven. Yeah, I, yeah, sure. You're not gonna have tears about it. But I can't help but wonder maybe there is a sense of loss without being sad about it. Yeah. I don't know. I, I'm not perfected yet, as is obvious, but I do say all of us should. Look at eternity counter days and say, man, I wanna make this life count because I, I want to be rewarded by the Lord and I ultimately want to give him more glory with my life and not less. Totally. And, and yeah, I mean the, the passage, I think it's in First Corinthians where Paul says some are gonna be saved, but only as through fire. Mm-hmm. That, that, that's gonna be different. Then the one that's not saved through fire. And so there's gotta be something negative there about that as far as the assessment of eternal reward there. And, and it, to your point, I, we don't know exactly what that's gonna be like. Yeah. Eternity. There's no more tears. There's no more sorrow. But maybe there is that moment of final regret before you realize that that is that last moment of, of sorrow, that last moment of pain that you feel because you are being. Delivered, but as through fire because of the life that you, you didn't lead. Oh, that's interesting, interesting, interesting. Take that you would be, I don't know, before your glorification takes place, you're, you're viewing your life. That'd be interesting. 'cause then you could feel regret. Right. And sorrow before. It's like, I'm gonna let you feel this and then I'm gonna save you completely. Right. I'm gonna finish your glorification before I give you your new body. That's interesting. Which would prompt all the more your glorification of Christ. Just aware of that. His, his mercy, his grace in, in spite of all of that, you still totally. It brought me in here. So yeah, that's first Corinthians three for you, for you all tracking along here. First Corinthians three 15 is what Pastor Peter was quoting, but it's that section where he talks about how each of us should take care of how we build upon the foundation that is Christ and the gospel. Yeah. And how we live our lives and what the consequences will be for that. Yep. Now the, the episode that is lost. Into the Ether world forever. We brought up Shay and Shane in Oh, we did the song Arise. Do you wanna re recap that? Well, it was, it was in the moment. Okay. So we, I don't think we can recreate anything. We can't recreate it. Yeah. Shane and Shane have the song called Arise and they talk about they, they cite Psalm 90. Yeah. And we were kind of enjoying it, but only to realize that one of their lyrics was. Who cares about care, about meaningless things. And then one of the Shanes is like, well, I do, I care about Yahoo and I care about R two. We, we thought, you know, I don't think we can ever sing that song in church because it, they're talking about yahoo.com and R 2D two, R 2D two. I don't think we're gonna be doing that. But they also have Psalm 90 satisfy us in the morning, which is a better version of, yeah, Psalm 90. So I mean, they've been around for so long. It's amazing that they haven't said more things that are dated. They're gonna have some clockers. They do such a good, they did. They have done such a good job though, overall. Yeah. I mean, they have lasted 20, 30 years. I don't know. It's been a long time. Yeah, it's been a long time for sure. They've had a pretty stellar career for sure. Yeah. I was going to see them in in high school, so it's been more than 20 years. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yep. Alright, y'all, let's let's pray and then we'll be done with this episode. God, thanks for technology being able to, to do this again, even though the first time it didn't get recorded and, and we joke about maybe we said something, but, but perhaps that's it. And, and we wanna be humble enough to acknowledge that we certainly are, are imperfect in our take on things. But we thank you for the wisdom that you've given us by your spirit. We should pray that this episode would be beneficial and helpful. We pray that you keep us from the presump presumptuous just arrogance and lack of faith that we see in Israel in numbers 14. We want to be those that trust you and that walk faithfully after you, and don't look back over our shoulder at the Egypt that we've come out of and desire to return to that. And so guard us, we pray in that regard, and we ask this in Christ name. Amen. Amen. Keep in your Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you. Bye.

Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of the daily Bible podcast. We hope and pray this has been a blessing to you and your time in the word. If it has, if you would subscribe to this podcast, leave a like, leave a comment and share it with some friends and family. That would be awesome. If you need more information about Compass Bible Church here in North Texas, you can go to compassntx. org. Again, that's compassntx. org. And we'll be back with you tomorrow for another episode of the daily Bible podcast.