Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Merry Christmas Eve. It's Eve It's, yeah, it's, I wasn't done yet. Okay. I wasn't done. You gotta gimme time. I'm trying to build the momentum and a little bit of theater here. It's such a fast talker. It's Christmas Adam, Christmas Adam. See Adam was created before you. I see. I understand that one. Yep. Yep. I didn't come up with that. Somebody else did. So if you hate it, it's somebody else's fault. If you love it. Well, you heard it from me first, so there you go. podcast@compassntx.org. So next year. New Bible plan. New reading plan. That's right. What else is gonna be new about the podcast People have been asking. Everybody wants to know really. Well, we're gonna do a few new things. A new song, I think. I'm pretty sure I've landed on the song, new Outro, and we'll see if we can get someone from our church to record something. That'd be fun. Okay. I like the idea of getting different voices. Yep.

Remember to email podcast at compass ntx dot org and tell the pastors that you would miss Bernard!

And then I think that's it. Okay. I don't know if there's anything else. If our people are excited about this and they love our current format, 'cause we're in Old Testament and New Testament. We are. And so all year long are they gonna get as much depth from us, from both sides? Every time? You know, this is an interesting question. We haven't done it yet, so I can't tell you for sure what it's gonna look like. We do what we do, like we play jazz. There's a direction, there's a start, right? There's an end. But what happens in between is a lot of like, let's just see what happens. Yeah. We read independently, we study independently. So I would imagine that. We will still have some really fun and riveting conversation about the text, even if it's different in form. So I don't, I'm not concerned about that. I don't know what the form is. I think it's just gonna be a lot of this just with a different plan underneath it, driving the conversation. In fact, we were just talking before this, you told me we're gonna go a lot slower. Your, your favorite, your passage you're looking forward to the most is we're gonna go through some books a little more slowly than others. We'll go through slowly the book of Ezekiel, which Wow. Actually I appreciate that. 'cause that'll gimme more time to study it before we start talking about it. And then we're gonna go a little more slowly through other books that maybe are a little spicier. Three days in your favorite book of the Old Testament. Three days. You, it's funny 'cause this is the book that I think you are most uncomfortable with me. You're blushing the whole time up. Whole the time You're blushing the whole time as you're talking about it. Your face is red. I was at, I've been outta town the last two years that we've covered that book. You've covered it solo. I don't think. Cell. Or maybe I covered it so well, you covered it so well. No, I think it was you. I don't know about that. I'm pretty sure our people can remind us. I don't recall that. But anyway I think we're gonna have a lot of fun doing a new plan. I'm excited about it. In fact, someone was saying this is kind of nice to just change it up. Yep. And maybe there's something to that. Maybe in a couple years we'll look at the plan and say, let's do a different plan and you guys can let us know if you prefer our care. Maybe you don't care, you just wanna plan to get to the Bible and we're okay with that too. But that's it. Maybe we'll read the Bible backwards to forwards. Ah, revelation to Genesis. Yeah. Taking a different view. That might be fun. Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited about it. I'm excited to start. We're gonna record a ton of episodes soon 'cause you're taking some time off. I am again, I am at the beginning of the year again, the most time, the most important time of year. So we're gonna record several to make sure that we start the year strong. With some fun stuff. Yeah. Hey, let me just tell you guys again and you're gonna hear more and more about it, but as we're looking at 2026, one of the things that we keep saying over and over again, and hopefully you're gonna hear from us on a regular basis, is this we want to grow. You just showed us talk about that, a few episodes ago. We're gonna talk about it again because we're talking about the new year. Coming up here, talked about. Reaching people. Yesterday's episode, we got 2200 invites out to houses around our church here. We want that to happen this year in multiplication. One of the best ways for us to get people to show up is to get our name and our information out there as far and wide as possible, because the people that are looking for a church, if we sit back and say, well, they'll find us because they'll look at the Master seminary church finder, or they'll find us because they'll Google Bible churches near me. They'll find us. For whatever reason, we can't assume that. And so we want to put our information in the hands of people, invite them to come and be a part of our church. And you know what? People are really friendly when you are out there. My family and I were out on Saturday and this past week we were walking neighborhoods and there were some people outside. And at first you're a little gun shy. You think, oh man, they probably don't. Wanna be bothered or anything else, but if you smile and you say hi, and especially if you've got kids with you right. Then people are genuinely friendly. Yeah. And we ran into a few that already go to another church, but we ran into a couple others that were like, oh yeah, I'd love to take a look at the card, the information. Man this next year our focus is we wanna grow, we wanna do more than what we're doing right now. And to be able to do that, we need more people. And and we also wanna grow because we wanna be effective as a lampstand. We don't want to just be content with what we've got and create our holy huddle and just wait till Jesus comes back. We want to continue to grow and get, Lord willing, larger and larger, and see what God will continue to do through our church. That would be exciting. And we need your partnership to do that. We can't do it without you. We do. We don't wanna do it without you really. We'd like to do this together as a team, as a church. And in fact, would all of the Lord's churches who are faithful to Christ, would they all grow? We wanna see that happen because we wanna see more people brought into the faith, and that's part and parcel with what God has intended for his people to do. Speaking of the faith. We want to grow and we want to do this because the writer of Hebrews actually says that we have access to something that all of your heroes from the Old Testament wish they had access to. And you have it. And the question is, and I have it, and the question is, what are we doing with it? And we want other people to come to know it. And so in, in our reading today, Hebrews 11, 12, and 13, we open which chapter 11, which a lot of people call the Hall of Faith. And you'll see why as you read it, because. Over and over again. The author's talking about faith, by faith, by faith, by faith, by faith. And he lists some pretty amazing people. In Chapter 11, people, you're gonna recognize, you're gonna know their names, but the thing that always just causes me to say, wow, that is amazing, is what the author says in verse 39. He says, all of these people, all of these heroes of the Old Testament, though commended through their faith, did not receive what was promised since God had provided something. Better for us, that apart from us, they should not be made perfect. What's better that we have that they didn't. What's the theme of Hebrews? Jesus is better. Jesus. Jesus. Yeah. So you think about Abraham, you think about Isaac, he, talks about Sarah, he alludes to Daniel, he eluded, Samson, Samuel, all these amazing people, Moses. And yet what you have in the gospel is better than what they had. And so when we talk about growing, when we talk about reaching people, when we talk about having the conversation with your coworker, your neighbor this is why, because if Moses and all of them sat there and they knew what you know and they said, man, you have knowledge. You have this. Access and understanding, how could you not tell other people about what you know? And so chapter 11 is just, it's a humbling chapter to me because I look at all of these heroes of the faith and think to myself, man, if they knew what I know they wanted to know what we know. If they only had logos. And a really nice Bible. Yeah. Yeah. This is the, this next section that we're looking at, chapters really 11, 12, 13. I guess you could throw that one in there too. Is the right response to everything he was just talking about. Yeah. If Jesus is better than Moses and the angels and he's got this great high priesthood from the order of Melek, then if that's all true, and if that's all what is been theologically presented, then here's the right way to respond and the right response is faith. Faith in God. Yeah. And sometimes faith is challenging because it can be used in a lot of different ways. It's like the word love. You talk about love for this, love for that, and the word can become convoluted and a little less clear as to what it means. Well, he defines it for us. I like that faith is the assurance of things hope for and the conviction of things not seen. So it's being able to say, I trust in this, even though I can't see this. And what's so remarkable about all these guys here, he brings up people that I would not put. There if I were him, Gideon, Barrick, Samson, Jeff, the, yeah, I would skip those people. Not on my list of he heroes of the faith, and yet he puts 'em there. And I think it's important because that tells us faith is never gonna be perfect in its formation. It's always gonna be flawed in this life. It's always gonna be a work in progress. And yet we get to look at them and say, God was faithful and they exercised faith in God to the best of their ability, at least. To their ability. I don't know if it was their best, but it shows us that God is still content to use imperfect people because there's no other options. Yeah. I loved reading about Enoch this time around. Enoch is one of those mysterious figures a little bit in the Old Testament. He's taken up. He was not, he walked with God and he was not anymore because God took him. And I just love the way this is described here. He was not found because God had taken him. Now before he was taken, he was commended as having pleased God. Even just that, like that's what a simple statement. And yet it was. Convicting because he's singled out for that. This means this is not just the default passive state of believers as those that please God. There is a way that we can live that pleases God. That's a good point. And Enoch lived such that he would please God. So much so that God took him and then he was not. So Enoch was one that stood out to me this time. For sure. That's such a helpful insight and a good observation because I hear people say it all the time. If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it. Every time. Paul says, we make it our aim to please him. This is our goal, guys. This is, and we have to pursue that goal, especially as we're talking about the end of the year. You're making New Year's resolutions or goals. What a worthy goal to put on your list. I wanna please Christ, whatever that looks like. And it's similar to, I suspect, what you said at the altar in sickness and in health. Richer for poor. For better, for worse, I wanna please the Lord make that. Goal and aim for that, whatever that looks like. In fact, James Clear's book, if you haven't read it yet, it's called Atomic Habits. I think I'm gonna have my boys read it again. I have read it. Yes. It's such a good book. Yes. And the insights are so practical and so useful. I actually, if you haven't read it yet and you're listening to this podcast, I'd love for you to give it a shot. If you have Spotify premium, I think you can listen to it for free. Okay. If you have Spotify premium, I think it's part of their audiobook library. Right. Anyway, I digress. The goals that you should have are really gonna define so much of what you do throughout your day. Yeah. And if the goal is, I wanna please Christ, well then you can use that to start saying, okay, what would it look like then if I were to live this year to please Christ in the best way possible? I'm gonna read my Bible, I'm gonna pray, I'm gonna memorize, I'm gonna go to church, and all these things. What a worthy goal for sure. Please aim for that. For sure, for sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. And is Spotify premium on their audio books, is there still like a limit to how much you can listen to each month? Yes. Yeah, but they're getting they're letting you buy more hours if you want it. So if you want to add additional hours, you hit the limit. You can do that. Gotcha. I've been an audio book guy for the longest time and I find great value. Do you count those as books read? I'm gonna ask that question. I mean, yes, but there's a difference. So do they get half credit y Almost, almost half credit. Yeah. Because I like to interact with my books, which it is still a work in progress for me. I'm working now with mind mapping as I'm reading books to try to cool to do that a little bit better and retain more. Yeah. I can't do that when I'm in the car listening to an audiobook. So if I'm listening to a bio, I'll listen to a lot of biographies on audiobook. 'cause I'm not mining that for as much information as I am a theology book or a leadership book or something. Right. And I would say that counts. There's gonna be nuggets that I remember from that, but I do think it's different for sure. I think there's a different shade of how much you're really able to retain with an audio book versus a paper book. It is qualitatively different because you, to your point I think when I find things that cause me to say, Hmm, I'll just pause it. Rewind it and I'll try to commit it to memory 'cause I'm like, oh, that was really helpful. I get frustrated 'cause I'm like, how am I going to remember this? I wanna put this somewhere so I can use it and utilize it in my sermons or find someplace to preserve it. Yeah. So I agree there is a difference, but I still count it. I say, oh, that's a good, that's a book. Some books I don't wanna read because they don't warrant my kind of attention. Sure. Some books I do wanna read because they're that good and I want them to have my attention. I often will use audiobooks for that purpose to see if I want to go through. The actual print book and often, often, I, I do not always. I was gonna ask if you've read an audio or listened to an audio book and been like, man, I gotta go get that actual book and read it all the time. Yeah, I will test. In fact, I use Spotify for that purpose. I'll listen to book 'cause it's free. I can just listen to the, I listen to the book and if I like it, I'm like, okay, I'll stop this. I'm gonna go get the book and I'll chow down on it a little more thoroughly. That's awesome. Well, that was a little hiatus in the middle of our discussion of Hebrews, but that's okay. They don't mind. So yeah, end of chapter 11, he says, we have something better than all of them had because we have Jesus. And that's where the transition to chapter 12 comes in where he says, therefore, we have all these witnesses and that's all the people of Chapter 11 and so many other people and their witnesses, not in the sense that they're in awe of us. Like there was the LeBron James ad campaign for a long time that said, we are all witnesses. And it was when he was at the peak of his career and it was, in other words, we're witnessing greatness. And it was about. Us watching him. These are not witnesses watching us. They're witnesses testifying to us. They're witnesses who are pointing us towards someone else, and the one they're pointing us to is Jesus. Verse two, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who, for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame in his seated at the right hand of the throne of God. In other words, you've got. All of these voices through scripture testifying to you saying, we ran our race, now you're running yours, and here's what you need to do. Run to Jesus. And they're pointing us to Christ. And so that's the pivot there for us to say, this is what we're called to do now as, as believers. After this, he encourages us to press on and to persevere even as we experience discipline in our lives. And he holds out discipline as something that's actually good, which is not something we're inclined to think because he says we're disciplined. So that. We will be more godly. God is as a father, disciplining us for our good, that we would be holy. And so he says, don't despise the discipline, but welcome the discipline even as a sign that you are part of God's family as you are waiting for this future, which is where he goes in the last part of chapter 12, which is a kingdom that's coming to us that's different than any earthly kingdom that we have here. A kingdom that's coming, that's going to be a kingdom that is better in every way. And so we are waiting here for that. And as we wait as he ends there and. 12. He says, let us offer acceptable worship with reverence and awe for God is a consuming fire. Yeah. And more reason to be in awe and in reverent fear. He says in verse 17 that Esau, after afterward, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected for, he found no chance to repent. Yeah. Scary words yet again. That tells us, even though we don't think in these terms if we're gonna reject Christ, if we're gonna be apostate, there is a line that there is no return from. And we don't know what that line is, but we know that there is one, because we see it here again for the second time, I think at least the second time that we've read in Hebrews. So verse 16. Then when he says that no one is sexually immoral or unholy like Esau, that's a line that's. Interesting because the story that we know of Esau doesn't necessarily involve sexual immorality. So do you think the writer's implying that there was more of to Esau's story that they knew that we don't know? Or is this two separate things? There's the sexual immorality that he's singling out. 'cause oftentimes that sin is identified uniquely in scripture and held out as distinct. And then also saying, and there's the un holiness of Esau and they're not to be mingled. Are they conjoined? Somehow there, I remember thinking about this. Someone brought it up maybe on a podcast or something like that. I don't recall. And now that I'm looking at it, I don't remember what the answer to that was. Yes. What's your, what's your gut on that? My gut is that they're separate because I, I mean, I think they are. I just don't know why those two are paired. I think they are separate. I don't think that those are the same thing. But he's saying this is equivalent to this. Right. But why those? Yeah, I don't know. Other than it, it is such a prevalence sin sexual immorality is such a prevalence sin in the church today. And it was back then too. And in fact he's gonna go on in chapter 13 to specifically identify the marriage bed and say that the marriage needs to be held in honor. The marriage bed needs to be undefiled because God is gonna judge the sexual sexually immor immoral and the adulterers. And so that's been from the dawn of time, the a, an avenue that Satan has pursued to, to pull Christians away from Christ to pull. People away from Jesus. And so, in a book that's written a lot about being careful not to drift from him, I think that it makes sense that he would identify that sin. It's just maybe the Esau thing that's a little bit more of a non-sequitur for me, other than the fact that he wanted to repent but couldn't do it because it was too late for him at that point. Right. And I think we're both in agreement that it's probably not announced sequitur, we just dunno the connection that he's making. Right, right. Yeah. Chapter 13. So chapter 13 gets into some interesting concepts here. We've got the opening there about entertaining angels and aware, which makes me think back to News Boys at entertaining. Yes. Thank you Angels. Thank you for getting that album. My TV that scream. That was a good album. Do you remember that album? It was, take Me To Your Leader. That was a good one. Yeah. Breakfast in Hell was also on that one. Was that, was that in there too? Yep. Yeah. That was a good song. Yeah, it was. If you have not heard that album, you can go to Spotify. Just look up, take it. Take me to your leader and just listen. It's so ironic because it's such an upbeat song. Yeah. And then it's talking about some really great reality. It's such an odd one. It's, anyway, it's a good album. It is for sure. Anyways. Yeah. So he talks about that, and that's crazy that when we show hospitality to strangers, it could be that we're entertaining angels. Unaware. That's fascinating. And kind of like a, just throw in there at the end of the book. I feel like this could have been an entire chapter at least of like, let me explain what I mean by that. No. Yeah. This is fantastic. How many angels do you think you've interacted with? I, right. This is casually and that tells us then that they take on human forms. Yes. At least so that they appear to be human. We know that they do something like that. I wonder what their true form is then. I don't know. I don't know. All I can think is when I was growing up, my mom and I was learning how to drive. She would always tell me, pj, the person that cut you off, that's such just God an God's angel trying to slow you down. And maybe she was right. Now I need to apologize to my mom. Hold on a second here. This says nothing about them driving cars because they would have to materialize a car and a body. Are they doing both Well, but if they're materializing the body, they could materialize the body and then get into a car. Oh. Someone they'd have to steal a car then, is what you're saying? Well. So angels are hijacking cars to cut you off, to slow you down and God is pleased with it all. Oh, okay. I mean, yes, I suppose I don't know that angels are hijacking cars. I'm just, I, I love Dorothy. I just don't know that I agree with her in this particular area. Fair enough. Fair enough. He does talk about the marriage bed there which I don't mean to gloss over. This is significant and this is significant in our culture, and we as a church need to guard our marriages because this is an area that the enemy will attack. It's an area that we see the world attacking left and right. And as Christians, we need to be distinct and different from the world around us. So, we need to make sure that. Marriage is honored and that the marriage bed is kept undefied. And he makes that clear as to what that means. No sexual immorality or adultery in that. And remember that that would include more than just the physical act. That is also going to include the heart as Jesus dealt with that in the Sermon on the Mount as well. He gives some instructions there on greed, similar to James. Be aware of the love of money, be content with what you have. And then the last section here, which is where we've talked some about this recently, but the sub subjection to the leaders, but also even remembering those leaders that went before us and thinking about their way of life and trying to be like. And to imitate them in that. And then pointing us to the submission and calling us as pastors to say, Hey, we as your pastors have to give an account for the way that we that we shepherd you. So, yeah, some final instructions that he gives here to the recipients of the letter. And that's Hebrews. And that's Hebrews. Well, let's pray and then we'll be done with this episode. Lord, we love our church. I can say that I think on behalf of Pastor Rod and Ian, pastor Mark as well, Lord we love being shepherds of this church and we love the fact that so many in our church are just like this. They allow us to do our jobs with joy, and I pray that would continue. Lord, I pray that you'd make us a church that is holy, that is Godly, and I pray that you'd make us a church that's running hard for Christ. I pray that you'd make us a church that is just continually aware of what we have in the gospel. And that we would not take that for granted or allow that to take a backseat or become white noise to us Lord, but that we would always be in awe of Christ, always be in awe of what we have in and through Him. So we thank you so much for this time, this opportunity, and we pray for a great rest of our day. In Jesus name, amen. Amen. Keep bring your Bibles tuning again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Merry Christmas Adam. Bye.

​Well, thank you for listening to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast! We're honored to have you join us. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about our Church at compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review, to rate, or to share this podcast on whatever platform you're listening on, and we hope to see you again tomorrow for another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast.

Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said