Hey Bible readers. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello. We are back with Monday. Monday. 'cause yesterday was Sunday. So today's Monday it's the fifth, and we're back in Genesis, and we will be back in Matthew again. But before we get there, one of the things that we do if you're new with us is we answer questions. So if you have a question, you write it into podcast@compasstx.org. Or if you text one of us or ask one of us in person we will do our best to try to get it answered on the podcast. And so I think we have one of those questions on this episode. Do not. We do. And I got this one as a text message. So here's what they say. If after death we will no longer experience sadness and grief, I believe that's Revelation 21, 1, 3, and four. If we no longer experience these things, how will we not, when we witness our human loved ones in France, turning from Christ they mentioned this in particular to the context of the millennial reign of Christ. When there's long life, longer lifespans and you get to spend a lot more time with your loved ones and they rebel, how could you not have human sadness in emotions? Emotions when your favorite people? Are undergoing the wrath of God? What a great question, and one that's worth us taking carefully in consideration. So what do you say to that? PPJ? Yeah, I would say with regards to millennial kingdom, the millennial kingdom is not the same as the eternal state. So Revelation 21 does not apply to the millennial kingdom. The millennial kingdom is not gonna be free from sorrow or. Grief or heartache. In fact, sin is still gonna exist in millennial kingdom, not for those that are in the church, those that have glorified bodies. But for those that are the inhabitants of the millennial kingdom, they will still sin. And those that turn to faith in Christ will still feel heartache over their. Offspring their loved ones their spouses who don't turn to faith in Christ that just like today, that happens. And so the millennial kingdom is going to be similar to today. In that sense that grief and sorrow will still exist over the eternal state of those that are loved ones that are lost, that don't follow Christ. When we get to Revelation 21, the thing that gives us that. That confidence that there's no more sickness, sorrow, tears, mourning, anything else like that is what it says that the dwelling place of God is with man. And so that reality is gonna be so at least in my understanding, my comprehension is gonna be so, overwhelming to us and all consuming to us that it's going to capture all of our thoughts and minds and intentions and everything else. And so, any grief that we may have felt will be swallowed up by the joy of being in the presence of Christ. That's one component of it. The other component of it, and gr admittedly this is less savory and less enjoyable to discuss, is that we will have such an appreciation for the justice of God. At that time and in that moment that we will glorify him for the administration of his justice, the full execution of his justice, even over and above the reality of the fact that justice may be meted out against those that we. That we loved while we were on Earth. And I know that is more than difficult or even perhaps it's borderline incomprehensible for us at this point. And I understand that and I track with you on that, but I also. Would say equally as much the joy that we will feel in the presence of God is so all consuming that I think it will swallow up the grief that we otherwise would've had. Yeah, I would aim into that as hard as this is for us to wrap our human minds around. Well, we have to understand that one of the things that makes. This difficult for us is that we see this purely from our perspective. We get hints and glimpses of God's perspective in the Book of Revelation when they say things like this. After this, I heard what seemed to be a loud voice of a great multitude in heaven, crying out, hallelujah. Salvation and glory and power belong to our God for his judgments are true, and just he has judged the great prostitute who corrupted the earth with her immorality. And he has avenged on her, the blood of his servants. And so I have to imagine that some of those people that are being spoken about, there are family and friends, it's impossible not to think that there they have to be some Right. Right. There just has to be Right. We suffer from a skewed view of reality because we live as time-bound creatures who have limited visibility of both. How the thing really works. That is how creation is designed and how God's operation of justice is. Justice is executed in, in, in our interactions. And so I'm gonna suggest to you that when you are glorified. It's not that your emotions get put away, it's that they're rightly calibrated to feel and to be exercised the way that God designs 'em to be. So you'll be reset to the factory default settings, except even better, and you will be able to celebrate God's righteous decrees, the Christian for the Christian life. Really, Jesus says, you shall so it's hyperbole. He's not saying that you should hate your family, but he says your love for me ought to make it look like your relationship to your family is hatred. People will confuse it because your love for Christ will be first and foremost. And so I think it comes down to, for all of us who have family and friends here, Christ is always first. And we have to be feeding that heart and that ambition, even if that means that it puts us in opposition to our favorite people, our family, and our friends. And so what we see here in the scriptures is that there is no. Equivocation. There's no, oh buts I wish you would do it differently. Everybody is singing God's praises because of who he is and what he's doing. We will not doubt one bit that this is the right and good thing for God to do, and I think that we'll have to include our family and friends. So while we yearn for them now, and we should, we will recognize that someday we will sing his praises and there won't be, there's no indication of it, and to your point with the question that you asked, there's no indication that we're gonna be grieved in the way that we would be today. Right. Right. Hard but true. Hard and true. Yes. Well, let's jump into our reading for today. We've got our Old Testament, Genesis 12 through 14, and then in our New Testament, first part of. Matthew chapter five. So Old Testament, we got introduced to Abram at the end of chapter 11. And so we pick up with Abram in chapter 12, and it seems rather stark, and yet that's why the running start is helpful right before this. 'cause God is gonna appear to Abram and say, go from your country, from your kindred to your father in your father's house to the land that I will show you. And so God is. Moving to create his people. That is the people of Israel. And that's gonna involve the land that is gonna be the land of Canaan, the promised land. It's also gonna involve what he's gonna promise Abraham, that is not only the land, but also the seed, which is the offspring of Abraham and the blessing that's gonna come from Abraham. So those are three key components about Abraham, and we see them right off the bat here in the call of Abraham. And so Abraham. If he's gonna be obedient to the Lord is gonna receive these things. And we see in verse four that Abraham is indeed obedient to the Lord and does go. And so he's going to do what God has called him to do. He's gonna enter into Canaan and he's gonna pass through to the land, to the place called check Him to the oak at Moray. And it says there at the time that the Canaanites were in the land, the Lord is gonna appear to Abraham there again and say to your offspring, I will give this land. So again, the promise of land and seed here. So Abram builds an altar there to the Lord where he had appeared to him. By the way, I haven't referenced it yet this year, so let me do it again. Expedition Bible. That channel on YouTube has a great video on this area. Schechem in the Oak of Moray. You can find it on his channel there. You can read, you can see exactly where this is taking place. 'cause we can go there today and point to it and say, this is where Abraham met God. Pretty cool. So Expedition Bible on YouTube there. After this Abram is going to. Face a situation where he's in the land, in the promised land there and there's these interesting situations where God promises something and then something else comes up. And it seems almost as though it contradicts what God has promised. So there's a famine that arises there in the land of Canaan, such that Abram ends up needing to leave the place that God told him to go. And so he goes down to Egypt. Egypt is going to be a thorn in the side of God's people forever. Essentially. And so here, Abram is gonna go down to Egypt to find food. While he's down there and on the way, he's going to look at his wife Sara, I, who apparently was a looker, and tell her, Hey, you got to tell them that you're my sister, not my wife. Now this is a half truth because she was his half sister, but he's doing this so that they won't kill him to take her for the pharaoh, for the leader there. And indeed, Pharaoh does notice. Sariah wants to take her as his wife and God. Protects Sariah and does not allow this to happen. Abram is then sent back and he is sent back to Canaan at this point where he goes back and that's basically where we end chapter 12 here. What's so fascinating about this whole thing here is. A that Abraham is called a man of faith. He is honored by God. He just receives this incredible covenant from God. Genesis chapter 12 is one of those critical places that you'd do well to remember, because this is where God promises to do something great with Abraham. And then in the very next section, almost as if you blink your eyes and now he's in Egypt and he's like, all right here's how we're gonna finagle this. You say You're my sister 'cause it's kind of true a little bit, right? And I'll be your brother and we'll just, we'll keep things as they are. This is fascinating because he shows such a lack of trust in God in this one area where his faith is clearly real. I think for me, this encourages me that faith is, even if it's real faith, it is an imperfect faith. Yep. And granted, Abraham is an Old Testament patriarch, so he's not filled with spirit in the way that you and I are, but this shows us that there's an imperfect nature to our faith, and it's always exercised with humility and awareness that there's 1,000,001 things that we don't know. And those are just for the things that we know that we don't know. There's a lot of things that we don't know that we don't know, and that's infinitely greater in God knows. Here's another fascinating feature. Peter Commends, saray Sarah, right? Peter in first, Peter chapter three, you just preached this. Yep. And this is fascinating because if I'm her, I'm thinking, no, like not on your life, buddy. No, we're not doing this. Let's go somewhere else. Let's pull the car over. Let's have a conversation. She doesn't do that. Maybe she did. But we don't see that. What we see is that she submitted to his leadership and Peter says he says, look, as Sarah obeyed Abraham calling him, Lord, you're Sarah's children if you do good, and don't fear anything that is frightening. You wanna talk about something that's frightening. This is it right here. And in fact, her worst fears are probably imagined because Pharaoh says, you know what? You're coming with me, right? I gotta, I just can't imagine what she's going through. And yet God commence her. And I think all of this is just, again, evidence of God's hand, his care, his protection for Sarah, even though. Abraham's acting like a fool at this point, at this particular juncture, and God just shows, man, I'm in control of all these things. You can trust me. Yeah. Yep. Abraham's back in Canaan then in chapter 13, and he is there with his nephew Lot and Lot and, and Abraham both have large. Possessions and large herds. And this is part of the blessing from Genesis chapter 12 three. Some of the reality of this is beginning to be realized in Abraham's life or Abraham's life. And so Abram and Lot can't live together because their herds are too much, and so they have to separate. So lot is going to turn, choose to settle down in the valley near Sodom and Gamora, and he's gonna really live in the shadow of Sodom. And it's gonna even say there already in some foreshadowing, the men of Saddo more wicked and great sinners against the Lord so lot is not making the best decisions for himself. And that is gonna be compounded because later on in chapter 14, then lot is gonna find himself a prisoner of war because there is a war that takes place with all of these different kings, including the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah. And they are going to be defeated and lot is gonna be taken captive as a prisoner of war. And we see Abram is not just a good shepherd but he's also a pretty adept warrior because he's gonna take his crew and he's gonna go on a rescue mission and he's gonna get a lot back for him himself to save his nephew there from the situation that he had found himself in. So chapter 13, chapter 14 at least the first part of 14 Abraham and Lot are separating. You've got a set up here with what's gonna happen with Sodom and Mura later on. And and then in chapter 14, Abram shows up for his nephew there and cares for him by rescuing him from a pretty dire situation. I am just gonna call a lot out right here and point out that lot. Sodom Gilmore had a reputation. I'm Convi, I'm convinced of that. Yeah. And he yet, in verse 12, he moved his tents as far as Sodom. He may not have gone in the gates at Le, at least not initially, but he was close enough to it where he knew that there would be temptation and a pole and a gravitational force exerted upon him. He gets caught up in the whole thing. He would not have even needed Abraham to do this if you were not flirting with the line. What a good reminder for us. Don't flirt with the line of sin. Yeah, stay far away from the tent. Don't even put yourself in that situation. Yeah. Rest of chapter 14, we are brought back to. To reckon with the character that we left off last year. If you were with this in the daily Bible reading in Hebrews, and that is this character of Melek. So Melek comes on the scene here in Greece, Abraham and Melek, king of Salem brought, brings out bread and wine. He was a priest. It says the most high God, Psalm one 10 which is the writer of Hebrews argument that Jesus is a priest in the order of ek. And then he blesses Abraham and the writer of Hebrew says it's undeniable that the greater blesses the. Inferior or the lesser. So here Melek is blessing Abraham showing that Melek is even greater than Abraham. And then Abraham acknowledges this by giving Melek a tithe. And so this is the figurehead Melek here, it's his priesthood that Jesus is ultimately going to come in the line of. So it's a fascinating interaction between the one that is, in so many ways, the father of Israel, then the one that is going to be the head of the priestly line that Jesus is gonna come from. So one of the things that I asked as I read this time around was, how is Jesus. A milk is aian priest, where does he like, does he get a card? Was there something in the mail? An application that he filled out and sent it back? And my studies, that led me back, of course, back to the book of Hebrews. And I think the best way to think about this is that he is a priest after the order of milk isek by divine decree, right? And that's essentially it. He's a priest because God says he's a priest. Right? Or in the tribe of Levi, you didn't take the honor for yourself. You were essentially voted in by somebody, not God, and then you were appointed to that office. But God does that for Jesus. And so what's interesting is that Jesus is not a descendant of Mc deck. He's a descendant of the tribe of Judah. And that's what part of the argument is in the book of Hebrews that Jesus is not a Levite descendant. His relation to Melek then is by God's connection. It's not anything more than that or less than that. God said, you are a priest after the order of Melek, you're a priest after his order forever. Psalm 90 says one, two. Psalm one 10. That's right. That's right. So all this to say, the connection here, if you're thinking about it, is it biological? Is it familial? No, it's divine. God decides Jesus is a priest after that order. So there you go. Yeah. Nothing genetic there. Yeah, you're right. Yep. Good observation. Matthew chapter five for our New Testament reading then. Go ahead and take your Bibles and flip on over to Matthew chapter five if you're following along with this. But we start out here with the Sermon on the Mount. It's called the Sermon on the Mount because Matthew five one, seeing the crowds. He went up on a mountain and when he had sat down, his disciples came to him. So if you go to Capernaum in that region today, the northern region and Galilee there there's a mount called the Mount of Beatitudes, and this is where church. History tradition holds that this is where Jesus taught. It's a little underwhelming because they don't have a grand amphitheater there or anything else like that. But it is kind of a mountainside and no one's exactly sure exactly where this sermon took place, but you can go to the general region today where where Jesus taught here. But again, like I said yesterday, this seems to be what it means that he's preaching the gospel of the Kingdom of God. The Sermon on the Mount there's different ways to look at it, but I think what's. The most helpful way to look at it is this is what Kingdom Living is supposed to entail. This is what it's supposed to look like to live in the kingdom of God in a way that pleases the Lord. And so he's gonna walk through a lot of different things in here that are gonna have to do with our godliness, our holiness, and he begins even just with the posture of the person in the. The Beatitudes here where he talks about the poor in spirit, the mourn, the me, those who mourn, those who are meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. The merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers. These are the characteristic qualities of somebody who fits in God's kingdom. This is what God is after. And a lot of these are things that when you look at from a world standpoint, they would look at that and scoff at that. But in God's economy, he looks at this and says, this is a good thing. And even those that suffer whatever the want might be, on the one hand, are gonna be fulfilled in God's kingdom. On the other hand, some of the things that stand out here have been, so, I mean, the Beatitudes why are they called be attitudes? I guess. Let's talk about that first. Oh, there's nothing here that says this is a B attitude. What's a B attitude? Because God doesn't want a B attitude. He wants an a attitude. But he called, they're called B attitudes though. No. Do you have any idea about that? It's not from blessed 'cause blessed is from a Greek word that means happy. Right. And so you would think they would be the blessed attitudes. Yeah. And that weird yeah I don't know the word beatitude well enough just frankly to be able to say whether or not there's, I mean, it looks like the connection is too beautiful. And so you wonder if this is the beautiful life. The Beautiful Mind. Yeah. Beautiful Mind if you ever saw that movie, John Nash. Are you there? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I don't know the answer to that either, so I'll just let you figure that out for us. Okay, so in the next section here, Salton Lights, obviously these are really famous words that Jesus communicates, but one of the things that I wanted to point out to you. Is where Christ came to fulfill the law. I want you to see how there's a dual function being accomplished here. One, Jesus himself fulfills the law. He fulfills all that the law and the prophets pointed to, and he does that by his life, his death, his resurrection. But on top of that, he also says something fascinating for those of us who believe that Christ really did fulfill the law. He says, those who relax one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called the least in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. So Jesus, on the one hand says, I fulfilled it, and on the other hand says, and yet I still want you to obey it. Help us put those pieces together. PPJ. Yeah. The fulfillment was not to say that you don't have to do it anymore. And Paul's gonna get into this in Romans. It's some of what Paul says when he says, should we sin that Grace May a bound more and more? If grace abounds when we sin, because Christ is the one that fulfilled the law. He did what the law could not do. As Paul says should we go on sitting there? And he says, may it never be. Don't miss. Stake this. This is not so that you can go on and just live antinomian. That is anti law. Yeah, but rather you don't have to be justified by the law. That's what Jesus is teaching here. In fact, he says there, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you'll never enter the kingdom of heaven. Oof, nobody can do that. The scribes and the Pharisees were the righteous of righteous. And so humanly speaking, nobody can be more righteous than them. And that's what his point is. I'm the one that fulfilled the law so that you can be that righteous, but that righteousness is gonna come from me. But he's not saying the law has no place anymore. I'm not here to say the law doesn't matter anymore. It just, it doesn't matter for your justification anymore. Yeah, so that's critical and I think that's a masterful job. I wanna also point your attention to this next section where it talks about anger. So he says something fascinating, PPJ and I would love for you to elaborate on this here. He says, if you're angry with your brother, you're liable to the judgment. What does he mean by that? It's the heart of the issue is the heart issue. Right? And that's what Jesus is doing here with anger. He's gonna do it. This is tomorrow, but he's saying, you can be so caught up on the letter of the law that you missed the spirit of the law. And so even the, that idea, you should, you've heard it said, you shall not commit murder. Okay, well, you're patting yourself on the back thinking I've never committed murder, but you've still got a heart problem. And that a heart problem is that you've fallen short of the law because you've harbored a murderous heart. Towards your brother in your heart when you've been angry at them, or you've said in your heart, you fool the same heart that produces murder produces the slander, or produces the grumbling or produces the evil thought about that other person in your heart. And so you're guilty of the law even if you don't transgress the law itself. So the difference it seems then is not in kind, but in degree you can not commit murder. Right? But you can still have. A murderous heart and God will hold us accountable for that. Mm-hmm. To the point where he says, if you remember. That you have something against somebody or they have something against you actually. So he goes, if you remember that, your brother has something against you, so this is not even you, right? This is saying, oh, I know that Pastor PJ's upset with me for some reason I do not worship the Lord until I go and attempt to reconcile that first, be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gifts, come to terms quickly with your accuser while you're going with them to court. Les your accuser, hand you over to the judge and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. And then he says, you won't get out until you paid the last penny. So God puts the onus on reconciliation on you. He puts the onus on you, whoever you are, who's listening, he puts the onus on you to reconcile. So he doesn't want you to wait and say, I'm just gonna give him a silent treatment and I'm gonna scowl at them when they walk by, and they're gonna know that I'm mad. He's gonna say, no you go and you reconcile. If you know that they're upset with you, you go fix it. Yeah. Don't let it stay that way. If there's any one of you. Who are here in this, and you have anything against your brother or sister, let this warn you. Jesus is saying the kind of murderous heart that is harbored in a Christian cannot be the case. I don't think that anybody sees it this way, but it's so serious that Jesus is saying, don't worship me until you have this figured out. Attempt to reconcile. Hey, let's wrap this one up by answering the question that we asked about Beatitudes. So I use, what are Beatitudes? I use the Logos Study Assistant, which is their new AI component. Oh. Which works much like an AI agent. So it's not the same as the AI search components. Okay. Which also helpful. I hit the link in the show notes for Pastor PJ's referral code. You can get a discount. You can just type straight in to this, your question. So I said, why are they called the Beatitudes? Here it is. The term beatitude derives from the Latin beat Tudo. Because the opening word of each statement in the Latin vulgate is beatti, which corresponds with Matthew's Greek word s, which is blessed. Okay, so it does come back to blessed. It does. Or through the Latin Greek. There you go. That we did Latin just a couple days ago, right? And here we are doing it again. Again, Latin for the win. All right, let's let's wrap this up in prayer and then we'll keep on going tomorrow. Well, we're grateful for the righteous, that righteousness that we have in Christ, that he did come to fulfill the law. That it's not on us to try to be more righteous than the scribes and the Pharisees or to fulfill the law ourselves because we can't. And so we are so thankful that Jesus did that for us, and so we're grateful even to be able to see the gospel in something like the Sermon on the Mount, and to be thankful for Christ's atoning sacrifice for us in his great exchange where we get his righteousness and he takes our sin. So we pray that we would live in light of that reality. Not to forsake the law now, but to live obedient to him because of all that he's done for us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, hey guys, keep going. Keep reading your Bibles. This has been awesome so far. It's so good to be in this new format. I'm really enjoying it. Hopefully you guys are too. I'm too. We'll be back again tomorrow for another episode. We'll see you then. Bye.

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