Hey folks. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello and happy Saturday. Happy Saturday. Yeah. Yeah. I hope you take the day off since you've been working all week. Working hard all week long. Yeah. My kids were supposed to have my boys were baseball evaluations today and they canceled those 'cause it's, I think it's still supposed to be pretty cold today. Not freezing necessarily, but still pretty cold that, and it's probably pretty slushy too, if it is melting mud and all sorts of nasty things out there. Yeah, that's true, that's true. But our plan is to be in person tomorrow for church, so we're excited to be back. Yeah, I think we talked about it yesterday, how much we've appreciated the, this time at home and time with family. I did not appreciate not being together as a church family last Sunday though, so I'm excited to be back with everybody this week. You know, I would agree with that, but I also enjoyed that there's something special about being home with the fam. And we watched the sermon, we watched Pastor Mark on his his video, which my kids were thrilled when they saw the background. Everybody was asking, is that real? And so I texted Pastor Mark, if you know what the video is, you saw it. I think it became pretty evident pretty soon that it was real, because you could see the. The fog from his breath as he was teaching and notably absent was any fog from Pastor PJ's breath as he was teaching. It didn't seem like you cared as much as Pastor Mark did, but pastor Mark's was fun. The kids loved it, and we watched yours of course, together as a family. And so it was cool. It's not church, it's not the same thing, but I did find it to be better than I expected. Yeah. That's fair. That's fair. Well, tomorrow, hopefully you're planning to be with us because if you are there tomorrow Oh yeah. You're going to be there. Yeah. Well that's good. That's good. You're gonna get some swag to take home with you. And so if you show up to church and you're like, oh, man, you know what? I'm kind of cold. We got you covered literally because we have a brand new sweatshirt for you that says on the front. In fact, if you watch the sermon from last week you saw it. I was wearing it. It says, to live is Christ on the back says to die is gain. It's got our church name on the side of the arm there. And so we want to give this to you because we want you to wear it. We want you to wear it. We want you to represent our church. We want you to represent Christ. Mm-hmm. And so these are gonna be our gift to you. We've got a initial run done. Now, pastor Rod, I. And you know me, I'm always quick to say that I was wrong on something, right? I'm never stubborn about anything. So never ever have I ever known you to be stubborn about anything, bro. Just straight up like putty, putty in my hand, melted in keeping, I put in the microwave. And it's even more flexible like that all the time, in keeping with that that characteristic of who I am. Man, people are saying for the next run of these sweatshirts or the next slide that we do, you know, what they were saying would be really cool, is a black sweatshirt. Oh, interesting. Cool. So I'm not gonna say that you were the one that suggested the black one, but it may have been that and I may have picked the green one out, but it wasn't. It just, yeah so there you go. So there are people that are saying, Hey, a black one would be really cool, so maybe the next run will be in black. I'll tell you what the genesis of this whole thing, and this is why Green makes sense to back you up here. The genesis of this sweater was that we wanted to give you an easy on-ramp to talk to your neighbors, talk to your friends about Christ. Sure. We slapped our church sticker on it. We want people to know that you belong to Compass, but we also want people to know that more importantly, you belong to Christ. Mm-hmm. So to live his Christ to die as gain is a really great. Everyday kind of thing that you could say. And it's peaks, it peaks the interest enough for people to say, what do you mean by that? Or I remember one of my students who had their sweater on it was something very similar to this. They were standing in line somewhere and someone saw the back of it, which said, to die is game. And they said to her, are you okay? Do you need counseling? Do, can we talk? And she says, no, look at the front of it. And then he realized, oh, you're a Christian. You're one of those people. And so it starts a conversation. It'll be a fun thing for you to wear. It'll look good. It'll feel good. What a great thing for you to do, and we'd be happy to print off more of these if you'll wear them and get yourself in the community. Maybe for the summer we'll make some sleeveless workout gear with the same thing on the front and back. Who knows what we got cooking. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. If they create good conversations for you, good gospel conversations, praise God for that. And then the other thing too is let us know. We would love to hear that. We'd love to hear, Hey, I was wearing my sweatshirt. Somebody asked me about it. And so I got to share Christ with 'em. We just talked about that. In fact, last Sunday is the importance of that, that being our mission. That's what we're here to do. So, that's part of the reason why we wanna provide these sweatshirts. So be there tomorrow to get your sweatshirt. And we have 'em down through size small. So if you got really little ones these, this is more of a run for our, probably our, true north ministry on up because it's more geared towards the adult sizes than it is anything younger. If you want swag for your kiddos, maybe talk to the pastor, mark in in Ally about that and see what they might be able to come up with there. But. Hey. Hey. Kidman is making so much swag. They are. I don't think we could if they, if we're encouraging them. They're already made, they've already made 15 things. I'm gu I guarantee you that's true. Take that back. I'll be out this weekend. I take that back. You don't need any more stuff for your kids, so, enough. No. Well, hey, let's jump into our David Bible reading. We are in Exodus 25 and 26, and then we are gonna be in Matthew for the triumphal entry in Matthew chapter 21. Chapter 25, we get into starting to talk about the construction of the tabernacle. The tabernacle is different from the temple, which I don't wanna take that for granted. This is not the permanent dwelling place of God. That's why it is a tabernacle, which is the word for or the concept of this tent. It's a temporal dwelling place. And so this is going to be where God is gonna meet with his people throughout the wilderness. Wanderings the 40 years of wilderness wanderings, and really a. Up until the temple is gonna be built by Solomon, the Ark is even gonna reside in Jerusalem in a tent itself. So, this is gonna be God's dwelling place and this is why he cares so much about it. He's gonna go through in chapter 25, all of these different instructions for the. Furniture initially here of the tabernacle. So that's gonna include the arc of the covenant. That's gonna include the table for the show bread to be placed upon it, and the golden lampstand to provide the light. But in chapter 25, notice verse eight, it says, let them make me a sanctuary that I may dwell in their mist exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle in all of its furniture. So you shall make. That's worth note because if you think about. The New Testament may remind you of a passage from Hebrews. In Hebrews chapter eight, the writer says They serve a copy and a shadow of the heavenly things for when Moses was about to erect the tent. That's the tabernacle. He was instructed by God. See that you make everything according to the pattern that was shown you on the mountain. So the writer of Hebrews is calling back to Exodus. 25 9. This is what's happening. Apparently Moses is not just being told what this should look like, but God is showing him some sort of visual representation as he's telling them what this should look like for what these elements should be as Moses oversees the construction of them. And one of the cool things about this, and we're gonna see a lot of repetition in these coming chapters, the arc of the covenant, as God shows in the pattern's, gonna be revisited almost word for word in Chapter 37. Same thing for the table of the show, bread and the golden lamp stand. What we're seeing here is God saying, Moses, this is what you're going to make and here's how you're going to make it. In the coming chapters we're going to see, and this is how Beel and a holy yeah did it. They executed almost precisely word for word What we're gonna see here, so this is the beginning. We're gonna have a little sandwich in between, and then we're gonna see this again later on. But these elements. The tabernacle are important because they all represent something significant about their relationship with God. I don't know if now's a good time for us to talk about that, or maybe you want to visit this back in the next, the coming chapters. Yeah let's wait. Let's hit 'em in the coming chapters as we get back to that, because it does repeat so much of it. I think it'll be helpful. We can bring some of the more significance in that point. That's great. Let me make a plug for, I think it's called the Tabernacle Experience. I forget if that's the precise language, but there's several companies that kind of float around doing a lot of the same thing. We were in California when we saw this. This was in about the San Diego area when we were in South Orange County. We got to go to this biblical tab Tabernacle experience where you go to a Lifesize setup of the tabernacle and they give you these earphones to wear, or these headphones to put over your ears, and then you take a self guided tour through what is the tabernacle, at least what they think would be a really good artistic representation of the tabernacle. It was. So cool. Hear me on this. So cool. So worth it. So valuable. I don't even know what the tickets cost anymore. They were probably 20 bucks a pop and myself and my two sons went well worth it. Highly encourage you. If there's ever something like this in your area, go do it. You'll thank me later. Yeah. It looks like there is something called the Tabernacle Experience. The Biblical Tabernacle experience, which seems to travel around to different churches. Yeah, that could have been it. If there's ever one in the Texas area, well, Texas is big. If there's ever one in the North Texas area, we oughta go. As a church. It would be so cool. Yeah, absolutely. And to Israel. Someday we should go there. Well, amen. Yeah. Yeah. Also, again, if you have the ESV study Bible I think has a depiction of some of these things. Your logos Bible software will also be able to provide you some visuals, even if you can just look at some of those, it's gonna be helpful as you read this. 'cause otherwise it's hard to track, especially when you get into the construction of the tent itself, which is. Chapter 26 is all about when you get into talking about all these different curtains and the rings of gold and the bases of silver and the frames that are made of this wood and you've got the goat hair, covering on the outside of it. It's easy to get lost in all of this is what I'm trying to say. So if you have a visual representation in front of you that you can read this and then look at the picture of it, the artist depiction, whatever that is that's gonna be helpful for you to to take note as you go through this. But something that always stands out to me in chapter 26 is when he talks about the veil because the veil is always gonna be that reminder that though God was coming to dwell with his people, there was still gonna be separation. That it wasn't gonna be a free for all the intimacy with Yahweh for. Old Testament, Israel is not the same intimacy that you and I enjoy today through our relationship with him by faith in Jesus Christ. And so there's the veil that's there, and only the high priest is gonna be allowed to go through there. We're gonna get into the priestly instructions later on. But this is something that is, is even here as God is giving Moses the directions. Hey, there's going to be separation between me and you. Yes, I'm gonna be there. But part of the whole purpose of the tent even is to create a separation from the people to where the glory of God is gonna really show up in earnest. So all of this, there, there's mercy here and yet part of the mercy is in God veiling himself from the people, lest they be consumed in their sin. And so this is part of the reason why the structure is even needed at this point. Yeah. And what's interesting about those curtains, the veil, is that there are Cher Beam skillfully worked in them. Now, if you remember the Cher Beam show up first in Genesis chapter three, where that Cher beam had a sword, that flame with fire, and kept Adam and Eve from partaking of the tree of life after having fallen in the sin. And so what you see here, again, I'm hinting at the symbolism, is that everything in the tabernacle is meant to say something about God's dwelling with man and. And part of it is the access isn't free the way that it used to be. There is a way to access God that is prescribed and descriptive. You can't show up any way you want. You can't show up any time you want. There is a prescribed way, and even today we can see that when we show up to God. You can't show up any way that you want. You can't say, well, I prefer Buddhism and I prefer Zoroastrianism. I prefer Hinduism. You have to show up through Christ. He's the only entryway that gives you access to God. Now we don't have to worry about the chair beam. They don't guard us anymore because we have free and full access. See, I can't help myself. I can't stop. Sorry. But let me just say that's important stuff. You gotta pay attention to that. Yeah, no, for sure. For sure. It is the other thing too, that, and I know it was a different culture and he was in the presence of God and God was showing him these things, but this is a lot of detail for Moses to remember. As he comes down and relates all this. God was certainly I think with him and with his mind to be able to help him. But it often convicts me too of just how much we have voluntarily doled our own senses to what our brains should be capable of being able to do and retain and understand and memorize. And for as much as I, I love the resources that I have on my phone, my Todoist and my Notes app and everything else like that I can't help but think, man I've. Exported a lot of the ways that I can glorify God with my brain and my men mental abilities to these apps and things that, that we've been given to help remember things. What a great point. I hadn't considered that Moses had to retain all this in some way, shape, or form. Now, the easy thing that we could say is, well, of course God en enabled him to do that, and that's certainly true, but your point is well taken and we should feel the weight of it. I wonder if suddenly everything disappeared, our internet and our phones. If our memory and our focus and our ability to think would not improve, I'd be hard pressed to say that wouldn't be a natural result. And in fact, there are people who. Encourage you to pretend like that is in fact the case. Now, I think about one named Cal Newport, who is a he's a college professor. He's written several books about the deep life, which is a reference to what he would say is some of your best hours of the day spent thinking and doing deep deep and difficult work. And so he talks often about not using your phone as a distraction tool and not using, he, he doesn't even suggest using any social media. Now, but you're right, we probably have sacrificed much to our modern day sensibilities where we might otherwise be better off if we abstain from some of these things. Yeah. Well, let's jump over to our New Testament reading for the day, which is Matthew 21. And we get the triumphal entry. This is recorded here. It's recorded also in some other of the gospels as well. I know John records it. I believe Luke records it. Is it present in all? Does Mark record it? I can't recall if Mark does have a recording of the triumph entry. But. This is the moment. This is the launch of what we know as the passion week. This is Palm Sunday as we observe it in the liturgical calendar. The church calendar today this is Jesus coming into Jerusalem, and this is gonna mark the beginning of the end for his earthly ministry because this is gonna be the Sunday before he is crucified and and goes through everything else. And so as he comes in there's a lot going on here. There's a lot of Old Testament ill imagery that's happening and fulfillment that's happening. Even as he tells his followers to go and get the donkey to fulfill Zechariah nine where that's quoted there in, in Matthew 21 5. Behold, your king is coming to you, humble and mounted on a donkey. On a coal, the full of a beast of burden. That was a royal mount for a king who was coming in peace not in on a wared, but a king that was coming in, in, in victory and coming in peace. This fulfillment here from Zechariah nine, then you have the shout of the crowds, Hosanna to the son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. That's Psalm 1, 18 25. That's a Messianic attribution. So much so that the Pharisees later on are going to chastise Jesus and say, you need to silence the crowds. Do you not hear what they're saying to you? And this is when Jesus is gonna say, yes, but have you never read out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies? You have prepared praise. And that's from Psalm eight, two. So Jesus is stepping into his messianic identity more and more. And he's doing this because, as John says, his hour has come now, this is the beginning of the hour of the glorification of the Son of man. And it's gonna happen here with the triumphal entry. So Jesus is doing a lot here, including cleansing the temple, which I hold to be the second cleansing of the temple. I think there's two, I think there's one at the beginning of his ministry and then one here at the end of his ministry. I know some have argued, well, it's one, but John puts it towards the beginning and Matthew puts it towards the end. I think this is a unique one that's distinct for Matthew. Amen to that. I would agree. O one thing I wanna point out here is that you have both expressions of anger take place. First, you have Jesus righteous anger when he enters the temple and he drives out all who sold and bought. He overturned tables. He said, it's written, my house shall be called a house of prayer, but you make it to dinner robbers. Here you see a righteous expression of anger, which on the one hand tells us that anger in and of itself. Doesn't have to be sinful. However, Jesus, of course, is a son of man. He is a son of God, and so he's under control not under control. He possesses control of his emotions. In ways that we probably don't know, at least in this level of maturity, you see anger also expressed, but sinfully, so by the Pharisees and the scribes, verse 15, chief priests and scribes say, saw the wonderful things that he did. The children crying out and they were indignant. They were sinfully anger, angry at Jesus. And so Jesus of course, responds to them about that. But here you see two pictures and two paradigms of what anger looks like. Here on the one side, you see anger out of a righteous sense of, jealousy for God's glory, and I think also for the access of the Gentiles into the court where they could pray. On the other hand, you have anger born from jealousy and threat. They saw Jesus not as the coming Messiah, but as someone who is going to upset their stability and their leadership. And so both of those pictures help us see a little better, what anger should look like and what we ought to be warned against, how it can express itself. Yeah, this is quite the show in, in, so in John six, I believe it's John six, that's where the Disciple or Jesus' brothers want him to go up to the temple with them, to the Feast of Boots. And Jesus says I'm not going up with you at this time. And yet this is what they were looking for is what happens at the triumphal entry. And the difference being again, is the hour. It's when is the moment of glorification. 'cause Jesus shows up, he does all these things to step into his messianic identity. He's not hiding it anymore. And then once he gets there, he cleanses the temple. And then he says there in verse 14 in the blind, and the lame came to him in the temple and he healed them. So he's doing all these miracles on top of this and this is him just. He's making waves now. He's saying, okay, it's the end is coming. It's near and there's no shying away anymore at this point. Right, and of course Jesus because he knows his hour. This is exactly when he's gonna reveal all of those things. It's exciting. I wish I was there to see this. You know that question. People often ask, like, if you could be at any place in human history, when would it be? I would want to be here at the last week of Jesus' life. I wanna see him interact with people. I wanna see what it looks like when the religious rulers, because in our minds we, we craft a story. And this is a story. Certainly it's not less than that though. There's a lot more happening that I'm sure Matthew, mark, and Luke and John are saying we're not telling you everything John says as much in his gospel, but I would love to be there to smell the smell of the air, to hear the sound of their an antagonism and their anger. I just wish I could be there to see this all. Yeah. The rest of our section verses 18 through 22 he, again is taking the Pharisees on head on, and he's gonna make this statement here about the fig tree. And he's saying this, I think about Israel's leaders when he says, may no fruit ever come from you again. And the fig tree withers at once. And so Jesus is really doing all of this. He's stepping into the conflict, stepping into the moment. And and this is going to end ultimately in the Pharisee saying we've gotta do it. We've got to end up taking him out. We've gotta. To kill him. Do you think it's fair, as some have argued to say that the voices crying out, Hosanna are the same voices that were crying out, crucify him, what, four or five days later? I don't see a distinction between the crowd, so, maybe not May, maybe not in a technical sense. Maybe there's different people that assemble, but I think the audience that's in view I think the gospel writers are intending for us to see a, a. Homogenous whole. The crowd is often depicted in my understanding in the gospels as a character that is, it's not several people making up a crowd. It's the crowd is itself a character in the show. And in the show the crowd is often fickle. And so I think it's the same people in that it's meant to depict the same kind of crowd, although not necessarily the same precise people, if that makes sense. Yeah. What would you say to that? Yeah, I would agree. I would agree. Yeah. 'cause we can't. We don't have an attendance role to be able to say yes, it was exactly the same people that were there. The at the one that was there at the other. But I would agree with you, especially when you consider I think we want to give people the benefit of the doubt, but even as close as followers. Were crushed after the crucifixion. They walked away going it was all a lie. He failed, and that's what we find out in Luke 24 with the disciple on the road to Emmaus. So I think we, we can't expect the crowds to believe better than his closest followers believed. And so I think there's something to that. You're right, that the fickleness of the crowds there. What would you say about verse 22? This seems to be a blank check for prayer. He says, whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive if you have faith. This is often co-opted by false teachers and those who proclaim a health, wealth, and prosperity gospel. But what say you, pastor pj, can we take this to the bank and declare things on behalf of God? I think we have to read this verse in light of the rest of the corpus of Christ teaching on prayer. And we know that's true, that if we ask anything in his name, right? And so we have to talk about what does it mean to ask in his name? Well, it's to ask him for his glory and in accordance with his will. And we have to trust that the fathers gonna give us every good thing. If you being evil, know how to give to your children what is good, how much more will your heavenly father give to you? What is good? So when we take those things into account, we can understand here that there are other caveats, there are other conditions to what we pray for. Besides just saying we have to pray, believing that we'll receive it. Well, yeah, that's part of it. But we also have to pray for the things that are in accordance with the will of God and for the good of his glory and in our good, in accordance with what his def definition of those things are. So I think that's what governs our interpretation. Right. I would agree with that. There's a lot of there's a lot of shenanigans when it comes to the way that people talk about this, especially for those who have large platforms and they have personal private jets. But if there is a ditch that our camp can fall into. It's not taking this seriously enough. Sure. Because we're afraid of falling into the health, wealth, prosperity camp, and I do think that's an error we need to avoid certainly. But on the other side, I wonder if there's things that God wants us to exercise a certain level of faith for and say. Pray for that. Ask me for that and take it by faith. You brought up and you continue to bring up throughout your preaching fairly regularly, the ministry of George Mueller. Mm-hmm. Who in my estimation, as I read his biography and things that are written about him, I think, man, he's testing God over and over again. Mm-hmm. And yet God seems to answer that kind of testing. So I think there is a I don't know if there's a happy medium or if I'm just, it's a fallacy of the middle ground to think that there maybe is a middle ground between. Where we typically fall as conservative, reformed Christians versus where Mueller is. Maybe, yeah, between Mueller and the health wealth prosperity guys. Yeah. No, that's fair. That's fair for sure. Well, speaking of prayer, let's do that as we wrap up this edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. God, thanks for your word and for this time together that we were able to spend in it. We pray that we would continue to give thought to the privilege that we have in being able to draw near to you and do what we're doing right now to pray Lord that we have access to your presence, that we can draw near and boldness and confidence and seek mercy and help and time of need that even as the writer of Hebrews was unpacking so much of what we have that's so much better than the old covenant was. And so as we even read about the tabernacle in the coming weeks and we read about these things in the coming days, what help us to be grateful for the closeness that we have with you through Christ and help us to take advantage of that as well. I think if we went back and explained to some of the Old Testament saints the axis that we have and then they were to look at our lives, I wonder if they would be aghast at how little we take advantage of that. And so help us learn to live faithfully. And to seek you as much as we possibly can to do as Paul says, to pray without ceasing, to live constantly dependent upon you, and knowing that we can come into your presence at the drop of a hat. So we thank you for what a glorious reality that is. Pray that we would live as such that are using that and living in a way that, that honors Christ. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Hey guys, keep on going. Keep reading your Bibles and tune in again tomorrow. That's gonna be someday for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. We'll see you then. Bye.

Thank you for listening to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. We’re grateful you chose to spend time with us today. This podcast is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in North Texas. You can learn more about our church at compassntx.org. If this podcast has been helpful, we’d appreciate it if you’d consider leaving a review, rating the show, or sharing it with someone else. We hope you’ll join us again tomorrow for another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast.