Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. What's up? We're back. We are here again and I think it's, what is this? It's Thursday at this point. We've gotta be back in office by now. I'm almost positive we will be back in office by Thursday. I hope so. Maybe even yesterday. But yeah. And Lord willing, we'll be back in church this Sunday. Man, there's another round of this cold weather that's coming. We're gonna get just a small dose of it, but it's gonna hit the east again massively. Some of those areas like Mississippi had huge power outages. I was listening to one guy. That was saying that they, there's some in Mississippi that could be without power for weeks after the storm that came through. Wow. Yeah. What a devastating reality that would be. Yeah. Yeah. And they're gonna get hit again. There's another band of this cold arctic blast that's coming down there. It's gonna miss us. It's gonna barely hit us. No inclement weather, I don't think. Just cold weather. But yeah, it's crazy. Yeah, I've been preparing for our time here at home and I wasn't expecting it to go longer than just a couple days, so I'm thankful that we're, again, at the end, I hope we're at the end by the time this airs. But for those who had power go out, I've been tracking that a lot of people in East Texas had power go out. And I saw that, I think we had 50,000 people at one point that were without power during this cold. I'm just thankful that we've had our utilities pretty steady the whole time through. Now. We were dripping water and we were trying to save some water here and there just to make sure, but boy, I do not wanna live through something like this and not have utilities. That would be a nightmare. Yeah, I have great would for sure. Empathy for those who do. Yeah. Yeah. And people were all doing crazy things. There was a bunch of ATVs downtown Dallas, driving through downtown Dallas and their four wheelers and stuff, and I heard they got ticketed. Yeah. Because they're not supposed to do that. Right, right. Some cop was like, no, we're gonna put an end to that, but we're. Yeah, there was, I don't know if you heard about, in Frisco, there was a tragedy of there was two teenagers being towed behind a truck and on a sled, sled hit a tree and one of them passed away. I think the other one's in critical condition, but, that's another one of those moments to talk to my kids and especially my older kids, and be like, you're, what do you always say? Pr You say you're one mistake away from ruining your life or one dumb thing away from ruining your life. Close enough. Yeah. I said the same thing to my kids and I said, pay attention, learn and be wise. You're not thinking about it being a life and death thing until you can't avoid it. Right. Tragic man. So tragic. I felt for that poor girl. She's a sophomore in high school in Frisco and I've been. I know I'm a sucker for things like this. I've been reading everybody's comments about her and I'm trying to put myself in the head space of her parents and even the families that are involved. I'm thinking that would be the worst. Oh, mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Lord forbid. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, let's jump in to our DBR for today. We're in Exodus 19 through 21 Exodus 19 through 21. Sin in chapter 19. Israel comes to Mount Sinai, and this is one of my favorite depictions in Exodus is this scene because God shows up in. Flexes, for lack of a better term, for the nation of Israel. So he's been doing this kind of along the way as he's led them out of Egypt, as he's led them through the Red Sea, as he's provided manna, as he's provided the water. But now he's going to put the fear of himself in them, at least temporarily. As he shows up his presence does on this mountain. And what he does first is he gives Moses instructions and says, listen, you need to be ready. I'm about to set up a covenant with you that's gonna consecrate you as a people and you are gonna be a holy nation to be a kingdom of priests. That shit sound familiar from our time in First Peter chapter two, because Peter picks that up and applies that to the church. But God is gonna say that about. And so he is gonna tell Moses, Moses, you need to consecrate the people. That is something that means to set them apart as holy, to set them apart, as useful to the Lord. And he says, you need to get them ready to meet me. And so that's what happens here. Moses brings them on the third day. It says in verse 16, there were thunders and lightnings in a thick cloud on the mountain in a very loud trumpet blast so that all the people in the camp trembled. So they're terrified at this point. And then it says, then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet. God, Mount Sinai, it says, was wrapped in smoke because the Lord descended on it and fire the smoke went up. It's just this amazing, powerful scene. This is why I love this. Sometimes I think to myself, man, I would love to. See this and here's why. Nobody's grumbling and complaining at the foot of Mount Sinai when God is doing this. They're trembling in fear before God. They have a right view of themselves and a right view of God. In a moment like this. It's the other moments, this is the scene and this is the picture of God that I wish I could possess more of in my life on a daily basis, so that when I'm tempted to grumble and complain, I remember that this is the same God today. He's immutable, he's the same God that we worship as they worshiped. And so nobody's grumbling and complaining in exits 19 because they are, have been put in their place by the God of the universe, and they're realizing just how powerful and terrifying in an appropriate way. He truly is, and he does this in order to convey to them that this is a serious task, that he's a serious God and that they're to be a serious people about how they follow him. And that's gonna set up where he is gonna go in chapter 20. That does bring up a great question that I think people might have about this, and it's that exactly what you said. If God would just do this, a lot of people would be. Convinced of who God is and why you should serve him, and why he's superior to all the other idols and so-called deities that people serve. So why doesn't he, if he did it for Moses and Israel back in the old days, why doesn't he do that today? Well, and I think it would be more effective for those that are genuine believers already than it would be for those that aren't. And the reason I say that is because he does this for Israel. But as we're gonna find out in the rest of our reading, this doesn't stay with Israel. This isn't the silver bullet. This doesn't mean that they're all of a sudden they're going to be faithful to the Lord. In fact, an entire generation is going to be unfaithful to him and die off in the wilderness and not enter the Promised Land. So even though they witness all of these amazing things. What they see doesn't con compute to what they believe and what they really own in, in faith. So the reason I say I think it would be more beneficial for Christians today than unbelievers is the same reason. It's kind of the similar arguments in the New Testament when we see Jesus doing all these miracles, or even in the early church, when we see some of the apostles doing these miracles, we think, well. If God would just enable the church to do that today, then people would believe. And yet there were so many people that didn't believe, or even in John chapter two, after Jesus did the miracles, Jesus said he did not believe in their belief because he knew what was in the heart of man. And so seeing something like this, witnessing something like this doesn't. Automatically equate to saving faith. But for those that do have saving faith, this should be a scene, even as we read it in the black and white pages on our Bible, that compel us to say, wow, God is a powerful God and I need to be mindful of that and how I live my life before him. Yeah. To your point, Jesus, were to say something like this, even if someone were to come back from the dead and tell your family members. Hey guys, it's real. That that wouldn't be sufficient. What Jesus does point to layer hope upon is his word. Let them read the law and the prophets, Jesus says and that's important for us to see. It would be great to see some genuine miracles or to have some kind of experience with God where there's a spec, a spectacle like this where you would be awestruck. But to, to what you just said, PPJ it's fickle. It's leading. Those things are not the things that we can stick our hope upon. Instead, we have to stick our hope upon what he says in his word. His promises are, his promises are always yes in Amen. Those are the things that we have to say. I respectively be cool, but the scriptures are better, and we know that because that's effectively what God says. Yeah, well, Moses is sent from the Lord back down the mountain to the people, and he's sent to give them the 10 Commandments. And that's what we find in chapter 20 as he rattles these off and gives them to us. Again, these are familiar words to us. These are familiar texts. In fact, in the United, in, in Texas, at least I believe the state laws that these have to be displayed in public school classrooms even. And so these are things that. Even the world recognizes and knows, if you're familiar with Ray Comfort, Ray Comfort will use these as an evangelistic tool to say, okay, let's talk about which of these you've broken. Are you really a good person? I think what struck me this time is when the people respond afterwards, it says in verse 18, the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, and they were afraid. And they said to Moses, you speak to us and we will listen, but do not let God speak to us lest we die. And Moses' response is unique. He says to the people, do not fear. For God has come to test you that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin. So Moses on the one hand says, do not fear. But fear, don't be afraid, but be afraid. And so these are the two different types of fear that there, there are when we talk about in the New Testament, perfect love, cast out fear. Don't be afraid that you're gonna be immediately consumed but fear God because he has the power to do that. And you should fear him in such a way that causes you to be, to obey him, that you may not sin. And so have the right kind of fear is basically what Moses is telling the people. And that's really what the 10 Commandments really, what the law of God. What the word of God should do for us as believers. Is remind us of what it looks like to fear God. To fear God is to keep his word, to keep his commandments, to walk in accordance with them. So when we read these things, it's really describing this is the type of life that does fear God. And that's how Moses en encourages and exhorts the people after they witness all of this. That's right. That fear is so important because it's something that should carry us through the totality of our Christian life. But you brought it up, so let me have you elaborate on it. Talk to us then if we're called to fear God and Jesus affirms us in the New Testament, he says that this is a right fear. We should have fear. And yet you just quoted perfect love, cast out fear. If God himself is love first John four, and we're also called to fear him appropriately. How do fear and love work together in the heart of a Christian? What would that look like practically and how are they not in conflict with one another? If we're called to have both for God? Yeah. Yeah. I think God is so kind to reveal himself to us as a father and to create the, that relationship within the family home. And I know that not everybody has had a great relationship with their earthly father, but still, I think we can conceive of what that should look like at least most can. And I think that conveys a lot of what it looks like to experience fear and love from the same person. There's the fear that you can have that your dad is the authority. The authoritarian in the home. He's the one that, that carries the mantle of discipline. And so when you get in trouble, he's going to discipline you. And so you fear him in that sense. You fear doing something that would draw his wrath, draw his anger, cause his displeasure to come upon you in the form of discipline. But at the same time, that fear is not so much that you shy away from him. That fear is not so much that you don't also desire the closeness with him, the intimacy to him, and that the warmth of his embrace and the love that he has for you as a dad has for his child where you would climb up in his lap and experience that warmth in that love that he has for you. It's similar in our relationship with the Lord. We want to have a fear. Of his discipline and doing anything that would draw as a discipline because he's a God who will bring discipline because he's a just God. And so that should be the fear that we have, but that at the same time, it shouldn't cause us to shy away from him because we would know that if we're doing what he desires us to do, if we're walking in accordance with his rules of his household, so to speak, then we have nothing to fear. That's the fear that is cast out by love. We can draw near to him. We can experience that familial connection, that love that the father has for his children. We can experience that. With God. So it's, I think if we consider that father child relationship, we can see how love and fear can coexist at the same time. It's a helpful framing of it because it does speak to the way that we interpret our relationship with God if we see it merely as transactional. Putting those two pieces together is very hard. Like two opposite Lego pieces, it's not gonna work. But when we see it as a relationship of father son or father daughter, that does really help inform the way that we. View our rule keeping and our love for God. And in fact, that's what the 10 Commandments actually speak to our relationship with God and our relationship with others. Jesus will later say in the News Testament that the greatest commandments is to love the Lord your God, with all of your heart, soul minus strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. He draws this from the old Covenant, so this is not brand new, but the 10 Commandments and really everything else in the scriptures that we see that are the laws and the guidelines are in some way, shape, or form. An expression of love for God and love for people. And that even informs the way that we fear God because we love him. We fear displeasing him. We fear offending him. We fear dishonoring him. So love and fear definitely work together. But it's the holy love and a holy fear. It's not the kind of sentimentality or sappiness that you might see in a Hallmark movie. This is biblical love and biblical fear. From this point forward, we're gonna get into a lot of specific law that he's gonna give and kind of case law, civil law for us here as he continues to prepare the nation of Israel to be just that, to be a nation and to know how to conduct themselves as a nation. They're starting out going, do we continue to do what we did in Egypt? Do we operate differently? What are our policies and procedures? And that's really what God's gonna give them. From this time forward. He starts out at the end of chapter 20 with some laws about the alters because they were gonna need to worship God. And so he wanted to make sure that they were going to build alters in the correct way here, at least before they got into the Tabernacle instructions. But then he gets into, in Chapter 21, laws about slaves life for life. He's gonna talk about even. Hitting a pregnant woman so that her children are born and come out. And if that child dies, then it's life for life. That tells us that the life in the womb is life. It's not life after birth or anything else. Life in the womb is life. And we even see some of that there. But something that's fascinating in that I'm still wrestling with we've talked a lot about polygamy from time to time as we've done the Daily Bible Podcast and it comes up and we're always saying, God never condones it. He never says this is a good thing. There's something here in chapter 21, and I still am gonna argue that he's not condoning it as something that's good. But part of me said, man, why not just prohibit it? Why not just say, don't do this? And he says it here in, in verse 10. Now he's talking about a situation with marrying a slave, the daughter of somebody that's been sold into you. And so marrying a slave daughter, and then he says this in verse 10. If he takes another wife to himself, other than the slave that has been given to him, or that he's purchased and married, if he takes another wife to himself, he shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her marital rights. So that leaves the door open to multiple wives. And there's, I've read commentaries on this. People are saying, this is most likely a concubine, not necessarily a wife in the first instance, but still it goes back to this idea of monogamy and says, why are we not. Just saying don't do any of this. This is wrong. And I guess the best I can assume is just God is either speaking into situations that have already taken place within Israel and so he's addressing what's already there or anticipating what's going to happen and providing laws to give some sort of structure there. But I don't know if you have any thoughts on that perplexity in here. Yeah, it's a, it's the same question that we would ask when it comes to something like slavery. And you're right, this is different because polygamy. Here's my 10 cents in this. There have been pastors recently that are coming out to support a polygamy. Maybe this is what prompted your studying of this. There've been a few guys in particular that have made waves on social media because they're now coming out with full throated endorsement for polygamy, saying it's a biblical practice to what you just said, PPJ. There's no explicit condemnation of it. In fact, it seems like God regulates it with the anticipation that he's going to. Not just allow it, but permit it in a real sense and at least a neutral, if not a righteous sense. So I would put this in the category of questions that I have for God that I don't think have really easy answers. I think it becomes clear throughout the New Testament, the Old Testament we have progressive revelation. We see how God operates with and among his people. And part of the thing that he does, I think, is that he. Engage them. I would call baby talk. He speaks to them at the level that they are and not where the level that they should be 20 years from then, or 500 years from then. And under the old Covenant, God clearly permitted polygamy. He never endorses it, but he does regulate it and he permits it. But under the new Covenant, it seems to be much clear to me that it's not God's ideal. God permits it in the same way that he permits a lot of sin and a lot of nonsense in the life of his people and even the life of his kings. But that doesn't necessarily mean that God is tacitly approving it. I would say that between the Old Testament and the New Testament, the whole canon. We can look and say with a backward glance, the new covenant makes clear one woman man is the ideal. That's what God desires. But he also has in history tolerated a plural marriage. That's the best I got on that. I don't think that it's permitted today. I think it's clear in the New Testament, but in the old things are different. Yeah. And we're looking, someone once said history is a foreign land because we don't know the customs, we don't know the people. Maybe for them this made perfect sense. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's the best reading of it as well. But yeah there's difficult things for sure. Notice verse 32 here. If the ox gore's a slave, male or female, the owner shall give to their master 30 shekels of silver, and the ox shall be stoned. The reason why that should stand out to us is because there's another 30 pieces of silver that's gonna be given for the life of another. And that is gonna be in the New Testament. That is the price that is going to be paid to Judas for his agreeing to betray Jesus. It's some belief traced back to here, to this is the valuation of a person's life, 30 shekels of silver, or at least a slave's life. And so here you have Jesus valued the same as a slave saying, okay, here, we'll pay you 30 shekels for you. Betraying him, turning him over to us. So it's interesting. Note and allusion over to the New Testament that we pick up there at the end of of this section. Let's go over to the New Testament then and pick up in Matthew chapter 20. We're on verses one through 16. And this is an interesting story for. Us to read as those that have been children and those that have been parents. I think this is one of those situations where the issue of what is fair is gonna be discussed. And so here the story is told where a man goes out and hires laborers. And at the beginning he hires a labor referred denarius. That's a fair wage for a day. That's a full. Payment for a full day's work and the people agree to that. Then he goes out a little bit later, hires more and agrees to the same amount for them and so forth. Does this two or three times. Then at the end of the day, when he comes to settle up, those that work the whole day are gonna protest and say, this isn't fair. We were with you longer than these. And the master says, but this is what we agreed upon. So this is indeed what is fair and so is not. My prerogative to do what I wish with what I have. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Then he says, or do you begrudge my generosity? So the last will be first and the first last. Now, what is Jesus doing here? I don't think this is really about business practices. I think this is more about the hostility that he's experiencing from the Jewish people over the inclusion of the gentil. Over the fact that there are others that the Lord is turning to who are going to come to him, so to speak later in the day, versus the nation of Israel who's been with God from the very outset. As we're reading about even back in Exodus and those that are the Pharisees and the sad Sadducees and the Jews are saying, this isn't right, this isn't fair. They don't belong to the covenants, they don't belong to the promises. I think this may be a way of Jesus teeing up to the fact that saying, Hey the gospel is gonna go beyond this, and it's my prerogative to do that because I'm the one who is. The Lord of all, I'm the one that's in charge of all of this. That's at least my take on it. And that's a great take. I would add onto that only that this is, this clearly is meant to instruct us for how God interacts with his people, both old and new. And one of the things that I read one commentator made mention that, or the people that showed up later, they didn't negotiate wages with the master where it seems like those who started earlier. Agreed with him. Well, after verse two, after agreeing with the laborers for a denarius a day, they, on the front end said, here's what we think is appropriate. And he says, okay, I agree with that. That's an appropriate day. Labor wages, where those who came later didn't even say anything, they just trusted that they'll get whatever the master thought was. Was appropriate. And so, one commentator suggested maybe this is one way that we ought to interact with God and that we don't tell God what we think we deserve, but let him establish the wages. I think that's fine. That's a helpful take. And perhaps it is primarily about Gentiles coming in later and the Jewish people actually getting. At least pushed aside for the time being because the Gentiles are now put front and center for a particular season. But I do think this speaks to God's generosity and one of the things I think it speaks to is the inequality of God's distribution, of gifts, of time, of talents, of resources, and to expect that this is the way things are gonna be. And most often when he does distribute things. In, in, in equally or unequally, it's because he is generous and we ought not to begrudge his generosity, but to celebrate those things that other people get that we don't get. That's a hard pill to swallow, but man, I've seen this so many times in my life where I'm like, oh, that guy deserves this much more. And that guy deserves less, but he got more somehow. And I don't understand why God blesses that person this way and this person another way when it seems to me like this is the better option. God does what God does, and it's our job not to challenge him and to say, why didn't you and why should you should have done this instead to let him be God and us be the submissive servants and say, Hey, praise God for this particular situation we can celebrate and rejoice in that. Rejoice at those rejoice as scripture says. Yeah. Yeah. Well, hey, let's let's pray and then we'll be done with this episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. God, we pray for more of an awareness of your ex's 19 reality in our lives as we are believers, as we are followers of you, that we would walk that line of what it looks like to fear you and yet to love you at the same time, and help us to do that well God, to not shy away from you, to lean into our relationship with you, to desire closeness with you. And yet also to have a fear of you that would guide what that approach to you looks like and how we battle sin and how we pursue holiness, how we pursue godliness. And so we thank you so much for Christ. We thank you for the access that we have to you and that we can draw near to you. And we should pray that we would live faithfully to you over the next couple of days, including the rest of today in front of us. In Jesus name. Amen. Well, hey guys, keep reading your Bibles and tune in again with us tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Bye.

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