Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. What's up? I heard you preached at the Women's Bible study this last weekend. How did that go? It was fine, but like I said, people kept interrupting with questions, so, well, that's awkward. I heard you handled it swimmingly though, and that you answered the questions Well, it was no, it was a q and a with our women and it was great. I loved it. It was awesome to be there. The room is definitely louder when the women are there, fellowshipping than it is with the men. It's wait a minute, buddy. That sounds like a sexist remark. I, what are you intending to say? I'm saying no, it's a slant against the men. 'cause I walked and the din of fellowship was. Was palpable. The cacophony of fellowship was just overpowering. It was. So are you saying that the women just know how to have a party better? It seems that way. It seems that way. Maybe it was the food. What kind of food do they have? They do have other food. They had some scrambled egg stuff. They had bacon, they had I think there was some sort of maple syrup concoction somewhere in there. I didn't eat 'cause I was about to go up and speak, but I. Enjoyed a cup of coffee and yeah, it was great. It was great. What were some of the most helpful questions that you think, oh man, the guy should think about this too. Oh, there's a lot of questions about marriage. We talked a lot about marriage. Mm-hmm. Which was It's on their minds, huh? Was Yeah. Which was good. And I made, and they were all single women who asked. Yes, absolutely. I made a point with our ladies and I told them that I would make the same point with our men. And so I guess there's an opportunity to do it here, and that is. Ultimately, our marriage is not about our happiness. It's about our, whoa, our sanctification. It's about our holiness. And there are difficult circumstances in marriages that are out there on both sides of the equation. In our church like ours, we've got a lot of good marriages. And I made that point too. I said marriage is a good thing and it's, it is to be enjoyed and it should be if it's, if both spouses are pursuing the Lord together, it's a great thing. But there's a lot of times in the reality of our fallen world, well, you'll have one spouse that is pursuing the Lord and one spouse who's not always that they're an unbeliever. But that can create a lot of friction and tension in the marriage. And especially when you do have one spouse that's a believer in one spouse, that's not a believer. And so a lot of the questions were, how do I navigate that? How do I do that in a way that is honoring to the Lord? Even just some hard questions of do I have to stay in a marriage that's difficult if it's not a clear cut case of. When the Bible would let me out of the marriage, what do I do? How do I keep going in that? So a lot of questions about that. And it was, I think a helpful time. I'm glad to hear that. Yeah, that's, those are really interesting questions. Hard questions. Yes. Because there's so many circumstances that might make it more tenable for one thing versus another. For sure. The default is always we wanna preserve marriages. This is what God wants. You said something though that I'd love to tease out a little more. God is not interested in our unhappiness. As much as More than, right. Something like that than our sanctification in marriage. Our sanctification. Yeah. Okay. On the other side of that. But wouldn't you say that those who are most holy are also those who are most happy? Absolutely. Yeah. And that's why I try to balance that is by saying that, in that context on that morning is that marriage is a good thing. I didn't want to answer all those questions such a way as to be like, well, just put up your marriage. And there's eternal rewards for being faithful. There are eternal rewards for being faithful in a difficult marriage, but there's also marriage. In and of itself is a good thing. God gave it to us as a gift to be enjoyed, and it's a great thing when both are pursuing Christ and your marriage is never gonna be stronger in than when both are actively pursuing Christ and wanting to be obedient to the Lord. In one Corinthians chapter seven, Paul is talking to the Christians saying, if you're a believer who's married to an unbeliever. No need to pursue divorce if they're willing to live with you. Right. If they consent to do that. But he does say something super interesting, and I know we're not there yet. It's gonna be a minute before we're in First Corinthians, but I'd love for you to talk about this part. He says that the unbelieving spouse and the kids are made wholly by the believing spouse. What do you think he means by that and how can that be an encouragement to us to stay in a difficult marriage that you're talking about? Yeah I believe. It in both instances, part of the being made holy is there's the opportunity for them to come to faith and repentance in Christ. The, if they are married to a believer, if they're seeing the believer and they're exposed to the believer's testimony, witness and even hearing the gospel, then they're in a good position. So that's part of it. The other part of it too is the blessings that God bestows upon the family. I think when there's a believing spouse in the, that family the unbeliever and the children of that. That marriage are going to receive blessings that otherwise they wouldn't have because of their connection in that marriage where there's a believing spouse. These are not necessarily eternal blessings, but more of the common grace that they're going to receive by proximity to those that are believers. Just like I think there's some of this, when the writer of Hebrews talks about in Hebrews chapter six, the person that has tasted of the heavenly gift been made partakers, I think they're talking about somebody that's been a part of the church and even benefited from the presence of the church and they've experienced the good that comes by being around other believers. But I don't think that person's a genuine believer. So there's some things by proxy that can overflow into the lives of those that are in fellowship with Christians by living life with them that otherwise they wouldn't have. So the, they're encouraged to stay in the marriage then because it could be the very thing, the very vehicle that God uses to bring an unbelieving spouse and their kids right to a saving knowledge of Christ, however long that might be. And that's the part that we don't know, right? It could be a long time. Far beyond what we're thinking about. Okay. Excellent. The one distinction that I just wanna make clear there is when he says they're made holy, not in a salvific sense, it's not guaranteed. Just by fact that they're under your roof does not guarantee that they're gonna be saved. Or that there's some special dispensation of grace extended to them because you stay married to them. You know, I read something recently. That made the opposite case, and I'm not, I'm gonna keep the author out 'cause that's not as important as what they were saying. Essentially, if you believe for your family, and this wasn't a health wealth prosperity gospel, this is an otherwise sure godly teacher who is saying, if you shepherd your kids, specifically your kids, not your husband, who shepherds your kids in a biblical way. You can have a strong assurance that God wants to save them and that God will likely save. In fact, I don't even think he's hedging his bets. I'm hedging 'cause that's the language that I'm comfortable with. But he would say, look, if you do right by your kids, you should expect to see them saved. And that's what it is to believe on those promises, to stand on those promises that God has made to you. How would you respond to that guy? I don't know how broad his circle is that he runs in, but I know of plenty of people that I think were fit. Were Godly parents, not perfect, but godly parents whose children were raised and aren't necessarily following the Lord. I don't know that that bears out just with my own experience of watching other people who I think prayed for their kids, disciplined their kids, brought them to church, exposed them to the gospel at a young age, and yet they weren't saved. So I think it's a dangerous precedent to establish to, to guarantee your promised parents, Hey, if you do right by what God wants you to do, that he's going to, or he loves your kids enough that he will save them. I think it's the best shot that we can, it's as much as we can do as parents to, to work towards that end. We can't save our kids, but we can do a lot to, to help put them on the right path. And we should do that, but I just don't know that I would go so far as to guarantee that it is gonna happen. Yeah, it seemed like a really dangerous position. Well, speaking of, this is before we jump into the text here. For most kids, this is spring break week. Yep. Easter week. Any recommendations that they should do this week while they're, I mean, one of them, I can tell you for sure. I have one recommendation. If they're in junior high or high school, I would love for them to join us for not RWE this week. So you could still sign up for that. That's Wednesday and Thursday. Only one overnight stay, so it's not a big imposition to what you guys are otherwise doing. But we'd love for you to do that if you have a junior hire or high schooler. Register them for the retreat. Yeah, the subject. Covered during the teaching times of that are gonna be so good too. Talking about some pretty key apologetic issues, existence of Yes. Of a good God, problem of evil, things like that. Yeah, our Compass ladies have a fellowship on Friday, so this is something that's brand new, a new initiative that our ladies are doing and that is aimed, it's gonna be at a park, I think it's David or Jim Ledbetter Park over in McKinney. Never even heard of that. And they're gonna be gathered together. It's intended to be. Is something for outreach, but also for the young moms in our church as well as empty nesters, single ladies, everybody to be there to fellowship together and to have an opportunity to encourage people as well as be a witness to those that are gonna be out there in the park as well. So that's gonna be on Friday, and you can find out more information on our website, I'm sure on that. So that would be a great opportunity for you. If it's not there yet, we will get information up there. God willing. Yes, God willing. Yeah. Yeah, spring break. That is this week, huh? It is. Yep. Which is good. Means some slower mornings in our household. We're not trying to get up and get everybody out the door right away, so that'll be nice. Nice change of pace. Yep. Alright, let's get into our daily Bible reading today. One chapter in the Old Testament and it is plenty for us to digest because it is Deuteronomy chapter 28. And so not only is it a long chapter, I mean we're dealing with how many verses here? 68 million. 68 verses. 60 million verses. Yeah. But just the content. And this is a chapter that details the blessings if Israel will be obedient and the cursings if Israel is going to be disobedient. So as you get into this chapter, you'll note that it is another one of those chapters with the if then formula. So the blessings begin or the formula begins right off the bat. If you faithfully obey, there's the if. If you jump down the Lord, your God will set you on high verse one. So the if then of the blessings in verse one there the if then for the curses takes place over in verse 15. But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord, then so if you look at that, there's 14 verses that are connected to the blessings. Now, a lot of these blessings are going to be connected to the Abrahamic blessings. If you look back up at verse 11, the fruit of your womb will abound. And the fruit of the ground within the land that the Lord your God, swar are your fathers to give you. So there we see the offspring, we see the land promises there, there's some Abrahamic blessings that are being referenced here. But all that to say there's 14 verses for the blessings for obedience. And then starting in verse 15, all the way down through verse 68, there are. All of the curses for disobedience. And so this is slanted heavily towards the warnings about disobeying God. And I believe the reason being is because God wanted them to be abundantly clear about what was at stake. He wanted them to fear these things. He wanted them, them to fear the curses. It's not bad to be motivated by blessings. That's fine. But it's certainly good to be motivated by saying, I fear the Lord. And if I transgress as covenant. Or Transgresses law. These things are gonna happen. In fact, it's interesting what stood out to me this time is how many times it says the Lord will. The Lord will. The Lord will. In fact, I think nine, 10 times here, it says, the Lord will actually, I take that back 17 times total in the curses. It says God will do this. So these are not just natural consequences that are happening for disobedience. These are things that God is bringing as far as his discipline on his people. If they disobey him right, and this is God's. Desire to do this because he's trying to bring them back to himself. Ultimately, all of these things are like speed bumps. Now they're very aggressive speed bumps. They're not easy. The kind that you just slowly go over. These are painful speed bumps that are meant to turn them around to get their attention, to wake them up to their sin, and then help them to shoo. To turn, to repent, to turn back to their Lord. And of course you know that this is long because this is exactly what they go through. In fact, as you read through this, you might already notice some of these things that are fulfilled in Israel. Deuteronomy 28 is meant to foreshadow for us what we're going to read in the rest of the Old Testament. And what we see is that Israel is going to fail spectacularly. You have seasons where they're doing really well, where they're godly and there's someone good on the throne who's leading them to love Yahweh and to fulfill his law. But by and large, what we're gonna see is that these curses for disobedience are affected on them. And what this shows us is that God is intent to discipline the one him whom he loves. This is Hebrews chapter 12. He does this in Proverbs three. He does this because he cares about his people. And this is true for us in as New Testament Christians God disciplines. Those whom he loves as a father, the one in whom he delights. This is what it might look like. It doesn't look exactly like this in terms of the specific curses, but God still does this today. Yeah, absolutely he does. And it's right to fear him for that. We do talk about the difference of fire insurance. Maybe that's. Something that's helpful at this point do we wanna save somebody by just making them fear hell is that an okay thing for us to do? And sometimes you'll hear people talk about salvation is more than fire insurance. And I agree with that a hundred percent it is. But I also think that it's appropriate and good for us to warn them of the dangers of. Rejecting God and the penalty that exists there so that they will fear that as well. I think that's a good thing. I don't think it has to be isolated out, one or the other for us to say, well, we don't want you just to be saved with fire insurance. True. But that's part of what salvation, the good news of salvation is you're not gonna be cursed by God. Amen. That's exactly what I was gonna say. In fact, Romans two says, it's the kindness of God that leads us to repentance and yet. They won't appreciate or respect his kindness. Right. Until they see his severity. Yeah. And so I'm of the opinion, you have to talk about the judgment and the destruction in order for them to see, oh my, the Lord has resolved that for me. He's taken on all of that torment and wrath upon himself so that I can avoid that. Yeah. That helps me appreciate his kindness. Far more than if you just say, Hey man, God loves you. That's great. What's that famous Paul washer sermon? Great. I love me too. Yeah. God has a wonderful plan for your life. That's fantastic. I have a wonderful plan for my life too, and God suddenly becomes a servant and not the master. Yeah. Yeah. Let's flip over to our New Testament reading as we conclude. Mark chapter 15, and we begin there in verse 27, but I wanna back up to verse 25. It said it was the third hour when they crucified him. So just some time markers here we're, they're talking about things we're not used to as far as a keeping of time. The third hour would've been from Don Don. They typically counted from 6:00 AM so third hour would've been about 9:00 AM. This is when Jesus was crucified. This is the beginning of the crucifixion. Jesus is gonna be on the cross for six hours. We say how do we know it's gonna be six hours? Because three hours, well, six hours before his death. I should clarify. Three hours later, verse 33, when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over the holy land until the ninth hour. At the ninth hour is when Jesus cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? We talked about that in Matthew. This is not Jesus complaining. This is Jesus feeling the fullness of the weight of God for God's wrath. That is for our sins, the fullness of the weight of our sins, and the fullness of his holy and just wrath. But the ninth hour there, and then in verse 37 it says, and Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathe this last, so he's crucified at the third hour that would've been 9:00 AM He ends up dying at the ninth hour. So if we go three hours later, we're at noon plus three, so 3:00 PM So he's on the cross for six hours before he dies here. And still, that was a short amount of time because when the disciples go to ask for the body later on they're surprised that Jesus is already dead at this point. So crucifixion was meant to be one of the most. Painful and drawn out processes of execution. The word excruciating that we use in English comes from the Latin word for for to crucify. And that's why it comes from that. It was the most intense amount of pain and suffering anyone could go through. And Jesus did that for us here. Your Bible already probably does this for you. It'll put a little note there. It tells you what time it is. I like to write this stuff in my Bible just so I can more easily see it. Sure. Our ESV is faithful to the original text in that they're gonna say what the text says. Yeah. In this case it says it was the third hour Other bible pa other Bible translations. We'll just say it was 9:00 AM. And I like that. I appreciate that, but I just put it in my own Bible. I would recommend you do the same. Yep. One of the interesting things too here is the mockery of the crowds. When they're deriding him, wagging their heads. Aha. You who destroy the temple and rebuild it. Three days, save yourself. Verse 30. They didn't realize what they were saying there because if Jesus had saved himself, he wouldn't have saved us, and so their. Cr, they're beckoning him. Save yourself, come down from the cross. He could have absolutely easily in verse 31, the irony again, he saved others. He cannot save himself. His greatest act of saving others came from the fact that he didn't save himself from the wrath of God. And so it's interesting to hear the mockery of the crowd and to read it through our Christian eyes and to say, man they didn't realize what they were doing, what they were saying in that. Yeah. And the irony is that he would not be able to save others if he saved himself. Right. He had to. Die in order to save. It's the, yeah. The irony is thick. You would do well to make sure that you see it and that you try to do your best you can to feel it. Yeah. Feel what that was like. And just think about people that provoke your iron when they're deliberately scorning or mocking you. Mm-hmm. And they're just poking you. And Jesus Al is already on the point of mm-hmm. Defense here, and yet they're going after him even further. It wasn't enough. It wasn't enough that he was on the cross humiliated. They're adding more humiliation now. Think about the honor, shame culture first century. This is how it works. Even in Eastern countries, it's still this way. Yeah. They're adding more scoring and shame to Jesus who's already naked, bloody, and bruised. Yeah. That's not enough for them. They're so blood thirsty. And how about Mary? His mom is right there at the foot of the cross listening to these things too. Oh yeah. That's gotta be yeah. Her own heart. Yeah. Her own soul will be pierced. And you wonder if that's the prophecy, if that's what led him to look at John and say, John, this is your mother. You need to care for her. Yeah. And to, to Mary. Behold your son. Jesus' compassion for his mom there on the cross. I think just realizing, man, this is hard for him in a totally different way with the wrath of God and everything else, but so hard for his mom being there too. Which also raises a question for me. Where were his brothers? Where was his family? Because normally yeah, you would give the care of the family to the eldest. The next eldest. Jesus himself was the first. He was the first born, yeah. Of Mary, but he had other siblings. So where were they and why weren't they? Why were they not part of Jesus equation to say, who's gonna take care of my mom? Well, where's James? And yet there's John. John gets the responsibility, which is interesting because of the way that the First Century family Unit worked well, and it's likely at this point that his brothers aren't believers yet because they were. Mocking him. Even to the point of when he was going up to the feast right before the passion week too, they were like, Hey, let's go up. It's time for you to take center stage. Come on. We wanna ride your coattails into glory. And it seems that they didn't come to faith until later. We know they did because obviously you've got Jude writing, Jude, you've got James, that is gonna play a key role in the church as well. So they do come to faith. But it just seems that maybe at this point they're not, and maybe that's why his instructions to John are what they are. Yeah. I have to believe that there's something like that going on. But at the same time, you would say, even if they weren't believers, that as Christians, they were still men of their own time they would have risen to the occasion. For the mere fact that their Honor is at stake. They don't wanna be the guy who gets his shoe taken off and spit in the face. That's essentially the equivalent here. Yeah. They would've still done it just because that was what they were, that was what they were supposed to do. And yet Jesus says, I'm gonna give them the, I'm gonna give you to John. Instead, John's gonna take over responsibility from here on out. Which again, I find fascinating for a lot of reasons, but who knows? Yeah. After this, Jesus is gonna be taken down from the cross. He's given to his followers and Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council. That would've been the Sanhedrin. So not all were anti or opposed to Jesus because here comes Joseph who comes forward and he's willing to put forward his property, his tomb, for Jesus to be laid in that tomb. We know from later on that Nicodemus is also gonna be involved in this from the other gospel accounts. And so this is the burial. But Jesus is gonna be taken down and he's gonna be laid in this tomb. And we note there in verse 47, again, Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Joseph, saw where he was laid. That's significant because they're gonna come back to find hi. The tomb empty the next day. So one of the opposition points to the resurrection of Jesus, they went to the wrong tomb. The gospel writers are careful to note, no. These women knew where Jesus was. They saw him laid there, and they went back to that same tomb the next day, and it ends up being empty. But we'll cover that in our reading tomorrow. One point I wanna draw to your attention is verse 39, where a centurion, not a Jew, not one of the faithful, not one of the closest ones, a centurion, one of the people from the Italian cohort, which means he's a Gentile. In case you didn't catch that, he's the one who confesses truly this man was the son of God. And if you've ever seen that one with John Wayne, truly this man was a yeah. It's, that's what's happening here. But what's also fascinating is that in verse one of Mark one, you'll see, it says, this is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The son of God. And so what we have here are two bookends of the book. This is Mark's way of saying, look, he's the Son of God. Chapter one, verse one, and then the crescendo, the high point of the book where Jesus has confessed as the Son of God, and this is right after he dies. This is when he says, truly this man was the son of God. Mark's making a point for us that we ought not to miss, and it's simply Jesus is son of God. So don't miss it. Well, let's pray and then we'll be done with this episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. God, we are rich in that we have access to your word. We are rich in that we have access to all the different resources that we have here with the study Bibles and the online resources and Bible software. I pray that we would take advantage of it, that we wouldn't waste this that we wouldn't waste this season, this era, this dispensation that we find ourselves on in as New Testament Christians part of the church. Who can learn so much and glean so much from who you are. And so thanks for this opportunity to study your word, pray that we would continue to do so and grow in our understanding of you. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Keep reading those bibles and tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you tomorrow. Bye.

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