Hey folks. Welcome back to Monday's edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello and happy Monday to all of you. Hey, you may have noticed yesterday that the sound was a little bit different than it normally is interior for multiple reasons. No offense to any of our people. No, none. None Taken. None at all. None taken on behalf of them. Yeah. We had someone from Watermark showing up. Her name is Becca. Yeah. She runs their sound. I don't know if they call it a ministry or a department, whatever it is. Yeah. Becca. She came and visited us this weekend for our rehearsal on Thursday and on Sunday. Yeah. And I don't know if you noticed this either, but we also have some new equipment. There was a suber two subwoofers actually. And you might've felt the bass, which by the way, we had Abe on bass guitar. Yeah, he, well, there's this song that we play from Sovereign Grace and there's this really fun bass lick Yeah. That we haven't done yet for a variety of reasons. But Abe did it this weekend. Nailed it. Oh man. It was so good. Yeah. I am, as a previously, I used to play bass, and it's one of my favorite instruments because it's so funky. It's got such great grooves, and Abe just knows how to do things. And you can, if you listen closely to the bass, and man, I wish I would've pointed it out before the service. Now I think about it. Hey guys, as you're worshiping, just listen to Abe. Okay. Just be sure to listen to the Abe for this song. It's so good. We had a great mix. We had a great Abe. Yeah, we had a great weekend. Yeah I've watched Abe on the bass before. He has fun on the bass. I like watching back there. He does. Whenever someone plays a good lick, I can't help but turn around to smile at them, but yes, nailed it. Yes. Yeah. You bring up whether watermark calls themselves a ministry or not, and I do remember that from sitting in on one of the leadership conferences that we've gone to them in the past we did. Kind of a back of house tour with their audio people, but they talked about their whole tech team and they said, we are a ministry. And that's how we view ourselves. We're not just the tech department, that when we're creating slides, we want our people to think about the fact that they're participating in the act of worship. Because if they have a typo on one of the slides that could interrupt somebody's worship out there. Yeah, that's true. And so we wanna do things with excellence because we want people to be able to worship the Lord without obstacles. And so she said even putting slides together and putting the lyrics together is something that's an act of worship for them. They're participating in it. It's not just something the tech team does. They're participating with the whole church service because this factors into worship. Yeah. I'm not surprised by that. One of the things that you and I were just reflecting on is how much we appreciate watermark's culture. Yeah. There are some big differences between us. Obviously there are just a few people larger than we are, but besides that, just a few. There's philosophical differences between us and those are the kind of things that we were talking about yesterday that we don't allow to separate us, right? We still hold the primary things in common, and for that we can rejoice and we lock arms with them. We've visited their CLC conference and as we said previously we have Becca, their sound engineer here with us, so we appreciate them tremendously and one of the things that I appreciate most about them is their generosity of spirit. They have such a great perspective on the work that they do, including looking at everything that they do as ministry and not segregating it and saying, well, the pastor, pastor pj, he preaches, he's doing ministry, but I'm just Right. I'm just mopping. Right. I'm just cleaning the bathroom toilet or whatever. I love watermark for that reason. Yeah. Yeah. Well, hey, let's jump into our DBR for today. We've got Joshua nine and 10, and Luke chapter three. Joshua nine is one of those chapters that I'm like, no, don't do it. Anytime I, I come across a few of these, like when Moses hits the Rock and Moses, does it ever change? Moses? Don't do it. Never changes. Never changes, huh, boy. But I still read it like maybe like, just don't do it. And so in Joshua chapter nine, we encounter somebody. Who's another inhabitant of the promised land here. One of the inhabitants that God said, I'm gonna drive them out. Don't give them quarter, don't make any treaties with them. That would be the Gibeonites and the Gibeonites. They know what Israel is there to do. So news is spreading within the Promised land. And they understand, okay, there's this new people that are showing up. God brought them out of Egypt apparently. Took out Jericho, they took out AI and people are beginning to become nervous about this. I don't know what that says about the amount of time that's passing, because we've talked about the advent of social media and the fact that we are never far from. 24 7 news headlines. And what that can make it feel like is that this world is worse than it ever has been before. That's true. And in some ways maybe it is, but on the other hand, we gotta think back in this day, which Joshua and Moses, they weren't checking X and finding out all of the different headlines of all the atrocities that were being committed throughout the world either. So it's a little ambiguous to know, how much time is passing to get this news spread to these various peoples. Were there runners that heard about this, that took off and wanted to say, this is what Israel's doing here. Anyways, the Gibeon, find out Gibe Knight, find out they launch a, they probably check Twitter Shrewd plan. Yeah. Yeah. They launched a pretty shrewd plan, and that is they're going to make themselves look like they're from a long way away, even taking stale bread and worn out sandals that they had laying around, and they're gonna put those on. And they're gonna show up and they're gonna say, Hey, we are from far away. Can you make a treaty with us? Because we know that you are of the people of God. And I think that the most tragic thing in this is not as much, even the treaty, though that is the fullest expression of the tragedy, but it's the fact that it says they did not ask counsel from the Lord. Verse 14, Joshua didn't go to the Lord and we. Say, well, they said they were from far away, and yet at the same time it was, I think, Joshua's responsibility no matter what. Totally. Before making a treaty with anyone to say, Lord, is this right? For sure. It's a lead pastor's job to, to do it for sure. It's always a lead pastor's responsibility. Well, if Watermark wants to come make a treaty with us, then we're gonna seek counsel from the Lord and be like, we'll do it. Wait, is watermark gibbon I deceiver here? No, that's not what I mean. Yeah. One of the things that's interesting we talked about God having more than one mo. It's always a holy mo. He does things according to his plan and his purposes. But I wanna point out here, I think the enemy also has more than one mo as well. He's had a lot of time to observe humanity, so I think he gets us, he knows, not like the advertising campaign. He gets us in a different way. He. And his job is to deceive us, to hurt us to bring us down. And so what we see here is that he has multiple tricks in his bags. One of the tricks he has is he's gonna come as a conquering lion, a fierce one that wants to devour you. And there's also the kind of trick where it's, look, he's a, he's the angel of light. Look we're here and we're just, we're humble before you. We just wanna, we wanna be on your side. Look we're not even close. He comes deceptively. And I think that's one of the big takeaways from me here. Is to be on guard. That my job is to be, and I was quoting it recently to be as wise as a serpent and as gentle or as innocent as the SB says, as a dove, I don't want to be cynical and jaded, but I don't wanna be gullible either. And the Christian has to do this special tap dance where we're not allowing our hearts to grow calloused and cold. But neither are we allowing our hearts to become gullible. And easily deceived. We have to strike that balance. And Joshua chapter nine is a good example as to why. Yeah. Well, in chapter 10, the consequences of this decision to make this treaty immediately rear their ugly heads because the gibeonites are going to call for Israel to act on this treaty. They are going to call to Israel's. Armies to say we need help. Because there are kings that found out that the gibbon knights had made treaty with Israel, and they don't like this. So they're gonna come up to attack gibeon. And there's these five kings, these five Amorite kings and they're gonna come against the people of Gibeon and Gibeon sends for Joshua to come help him. Now this is another example of where God. Clearly is the one fighting the battle here on behalf of the people of Israel because God is gonna cause something to sta to take place that has not taken place ever since then. And that is the sun is gonna stand still. And it says, and not set for a about, it says in the text a whole day. And so there's not the precision of it was exactly 24 hours. It was exactly 23 hours. It's about a whole day, and what that does is it enables the Israelites to fight and win this battle. There's questions about whether or not that was the sun there or whether or not this was the moon, was this God enabled the cover of darkness to persist so that Israel could fight under the cover of darkness and even avoid the heat of the day. I know there's one commentator Daniel Block, who I respect. He's a well-known Old Testament commentator. He holds the darkness view. I hadn't heard that before encountering him, but either way, what's clear is God is the one that's. Intervening supernaturally here to give victory to Israel over these five kings. That's a really interesting point. I haven't heard that either. Although it does say here, the sun stopped in the midst of the heaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day, which would mean it, it stopped for some part of the world, right? There's light. The other part of the world is darkness. There's darkness, right? So it makes perfect sense. It's not being loose or a freestanding with the Bible that's letting the Bible speak and we're just trying to understand it the way that it's presented here, because it says in verse 13, the moon also stopped right until the nation took vengeance on their enemies, which tells us also this means this is not a local event. Yes. Sometimes people have said and suggested this is maybe a local GT one God does something special for this particular part of the world. Everything else stays the same. I, and I think, no, we can't say that based on those two markers alone. Yeah. The sun and the moon are global things and not just local. I think another factor here that's interesting to me is that God honors their covenant with the gibeonites. Yeah. I saw this and just, it just struck me afresh that even though this was a sinful covenant, that God did permit to take place, he honored their covenant. And I think one of the, one of the potential applications here is that our covenants with one another, even in marriage when their sinful covenants are still honored by God, I think. So it's, part of it is that God honors marriage. Yes. But I think God honors our word. Jesus says, let your yes Bs don't go beyond this. Make sure that your people who are people of your word. If you say yes, and it's a sinful thing, then you better do something about that. But you can't be a person who breaks their word. God honors their covenant and he decides to come and support them, even though. This was not good for them. Yeah. One of the five kings who's gonna be executed here is the king of the Jebusites. Now, the Jebusites always stand out to me because the Jebusites are going to be those that inhabit Jerusalem, and so Jerusalem is a key to Israel. When we think about Israel, we often think about Jerusalem. Shortly after that. And because that becomes the capital city. That's David's city, but that's just it. That's David's city. And so the Jebusites are not gonna be driven out of Jerusalem just yet. And that's part of the failure of the Israelites and taking the Promised land. So even though the king of the Jebusites here is going to be killed, and later on we're even gonna find out that they even attacked the city, they don't fully deal with them until much later on. And and this is an indication of the fact that they're failing here to do what God is gonna. Call them to do, which is to drive everybody out. But Jerusalem, if you're wondering, where's Jerusalem? Those are the Jbe sites. And so you can think of Jerusalem as you think of them during this reading. Yeah. There are hints throughout the text to your point here, that show that they're not doing the job that they're supposed to be doing. Right. In fact, some of the language, then you begin to wonder for instance, at verse 30, they captured it, struck, debe Deber struck its king in all its towns, and they struck them at the edge of the sword. Devoured. I'd rather devoted to destruction every person in it. None. Left remaining. He did this to Hebron and Lib bna, and some of these people show up later. Yeah. So you have to say maybe it's the language that is being depicted here is not deceptive. This is not God's saying this didn't really happen. It's just, it's part of the language of the time. Yeah. The lingua franca. This is how they talked about conquering other people's and it showcases the fact that God was shown superior. And sometimes the language is not meant to be understood in a literal wooden fashion. Yeah. Yeah. I also noted in verse 34, it said that they came to Laish and Lon and they laid siege to it and fought against it. Laying siege is a time. Timely ordeal here. And so I wrote a note in my margin here. This is time for more rehabs, if there are any, within the, these towns of lon and Laish to come out and say, Hey, hey, wait a minute, I'm, I wanna be with you guys. I'm not. Here's I wanna, that's a great with you guys', so, yeah. Yeah, I think just this time through reading through the conquest of the promised Land, I'm seeing more of God's mercy than I think I've seen in the past. Which is ironic because this is often the passage that so many people point to and they look at this and they say, God is cruel because look at all these evil things that he's having Israel do here. Yeah. And I think part of the plan here is that we're reading, trying to say, okay what matches what we see, what the text and what we know of God and trying to put the pieces together. This is the work of exegesis. Trying to pull out what is there and sometimes to your point. You're seeing things that aren't always the black and white on the page you're trying to say, okay, let me make sure I understand the whole picture. And understanding the whole helps you understand the parts better. And I think that's what we're trying to do. And I think it makes sense that we could say, well, God is opening up doors of opportunity for mercy to abound to those who repent and put their trust in the God of Yahweh. Well, let's flip over to our New Testament reading, which is Luke chapter three. Luke chapter three, and we're gonna be dealing primarily with the ministry of John the Baptist here, which is always helpful because sometimes we don't get all of that focus from some of the other Gospel writers. And so Luke gives us an extended treatment of his ministry. Again, we see the detail of Luke, the 15th year of the Reign of Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, Herod being the Touch Ark of Gal, that you notice that Luke is different. This is not how John records things. This is not how Matthew records things or Mark records things. So Luke is giving us all of these details. By the way, if you're wondering, year 15th year of the reign of Tiberius, that would've been about 29 ad. So 29 ad. This is right as Jesus is going to begin his earthly ministry shortly after this. We believe that Jesus, we know because of the number of Passovers, Jesus. Had a, an earthly ministry of about three years. So that gives us a date for the crucifixion. Sometime between 32, 33 ad In that ballpark, you'll hear differing numbers from some people including the age of Jesus. Some people actually believe that Jesus was born actually BC era, which is unusual because BC means before Christ. Before Christ. Yeah. But some will argue that he was born even six years prior to the zero mark there in the pivot of time. But we're at 29 80, all that to say in Luke chapter three. And you've got John the Baptist. And we read about John. John was there to prepare the way for the coming Messiah, and that was gonna be his role, and he was going to do that through this ministry of baptism and calling people to repentance. So Pastor Rod, I'd love to get your thoughts on the type of baptism and what. What was he calling them to? Because this is not the same thing as when we call people Yeah. To faith and repentance as Christians. Yeah. It seems like John is calling people to a kind of baptism that symbolizes their turn to the Lord, their preparation for the Lord's coming. This is, I think, akin to the baptisms of purification. There was multiple baptisms people had. And so John is saying, this is symbolic. This is not in any way efficacious for your salvation. This doesn't make you right with God, but this showcases that you're willing to live afresh and anew waiting for the coming Messiah. Now, John is called the forerunner of Jesus. He's the one, he's like the herald who says The king is coming, the king is coming, and he tells the town ahead of them, prepare. The king is on the way. And then that town would be under obligation to make preparations. Mm-hmm. The king is on his way. You ought to be ready for his coming. It would be a great shame upon you not to mention the king if you're not ready when he comes. And that's John's job. He's telling people, the king is coming, the king is coming, be ready. And his point here is bear fruits and keeping with repentance. The baptism is symbolic of that heart posture in preparation for the king to show up. And so I think that's what's happening here, and that's a great message for us today. The king is coming. Jesus is returning. He came one time. Foretold by John, and he's coming back this time. I don't think he has a forerunner. This is just a surprise party for Jesus. He's gonna come and get his bride. You ought to be ready for that. The king is coming back. Yeah. Verse 23. We the rest of this chapter is the genealogy of Jesus. Verse 23. When Jesus began his ministry, he was about 30 years old, 30 years of age. Again we get their time their. Perspective on time and the passage of time was different than ours is today. That's right. And so there's general ballpark numbers being given here, even by somebody as detail oriented as Luke is, he's saying. Yeah, he was. He was about 30 years old as he began his ministry. Now we might argue there, okay, well if it's 29 ad when Luke is writing and it's about 30 years old, that could give us close to that zero timeframe. But. Regardless, here's a genealogy that's gonna go this time. Not like Matthews back to Abraham, but all the way back to Adam. And that has to do a little bit with Luke's intention. Luke's point here in his provision of this genealogy was to show that Jesus is indeed the son of God, and that's why he traces. His genealogy all the way back to Adam, and he starts here with Joseph, although a lot of people believe this is the genealogy of Mary, whereas Matthew had the genealogy of Joseph, which would explain why there's some different names that we see here at the outset. That this was Luke showing that Jesus actually had a biological. Biological connection to David, not just an adopted connection to David. Yeah these are some challenging passages here, and for that reason, it gets a little tricky. But all I can encourage you to do is to persist with stuff like this. Don't let this throw you off. Let it be an encouragement for you to dive deeper into either study Bibles or your good Bible reading software. There are tools out there to help you look at this. And in fact, logos has. Genealogy pictures for you. I don't know if that's helpful for you at all, but I like those things. I never outgrew the picture books, I guess, but those are helpful tools for you to use. And as you read your Bible through, some of these days are rather short, they're really easy to get through. You can get through them in probably 15 or 20 minutes. Those are the days where if you wanna spend an extra 10 minutes camping on a certain passage or answering a question that tickles your fancy, that would be a really good time for you to spend. And I would encourage you if you plan for. I dunno, 45 minutes or so in the morning to read your Bible and you finish it in 20, what a great way to spend the next 20 minutes. Yeah. Figure some stuff out, dive deeper. There are endless depths to scripture and we're not even scratching the surface guys. Yeah. Yeah. I sometimes I'll use a pencil and I'll just write a question mark in the margin and I'll keep reading so that once I'm done reading, I can come back and find that question mark and go and, oh, okay. Lemme do a deeper dive there because I do have a question that's there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And remember we're reading it through, and this is something that you focused quite a bit on recently because of the books that you're reading, but we're reading it through different eyes than it was written to its original audience. That's right. And so when you've got some of the questions, some of that can be cleared up as we go back to, okay. How would've this been of understood by the original audience there? Yeah. So one thing that's not. Different from us is, I think in verses 10 and following here, the crowds ask John for application. He preaches a sermon and says, Hey, you're Bruta Vipers, y'all. Y'all are stinky. Prepare for the king's coming and bear fruits and keeping with repentance. God's gonna come and he is coming soon to judge. And then they say, well, it tells what to do then what do we do? Yeah, what do we do? What's point number one? And they say, point number one is, write this down if you're taking notes, and I wish that you would. And they're looking for application. This is a mark of good preaching. Yeah. Helping people apply the word that God has given. Yeah. Yeah. You know, anything about that? I don't know anything about that. Hey, let's stick a pin in that. Let's start tomorrow's episode though by talking about why taking notes during sermons is helpful. Oh and, yeah. You know, one thing that's different between the church that we came from and this church on that same topic. I know what you're gonna say. What am I gonna say? Laptops. Laptops. Yeah. Everyone encompass Av Aliso Viejo put has it's, you hear clickety clacking the whole time. Yeah. Yep. Hardly anybody with the physical Bible. And yet our church is, I think the exact opposite. You hear pages turning. It's far more that than the opposite. Yeah. Let's talk about that tomorrow. We'll, that tomorrow. Alright guests. Let's pray. Lord, thanks for your mercy. Even as we look back at Israel in the covenant that Joshua foolishly made with Gibon, you didn't wipe them out at that point, nor did you wipe them out after all of their failures or us after all of our failures. But you were patient with us, merciful with us, gracious towards us, not wishing, even as you sang your word, that we should perish, but that we should reach repentance. So, God, we're grateful for that patience. We pray that we would extend it to one another as well. And so we thank you for this. We pray for a great rest of our day. In Jesus name, amen. Amen. Keep your Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See ya'all. Bye.

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