Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. We're glad you're with us. I'm joined as I have been for the past few days by another, none other than my co-host, Mr. Lewis Zuma. How are you, sir? I am doing great. Excited to do This is really fun. I love doing this with you. Yeah, it's fun. It's fun. And today we get to talk about Elon, Elon Musk. Elon Musk. He, he makes his first appearance in Genesis 26. What do you think of Elon? Well, I've heard that Teslas actually don't have a new car smell, but they have an Elon Musk That is awful. There you go. That is terrible. That is a excellent job. I miss my opportunity to talk about how Abraham. That's the smartest man in the Bible because he knew a lot. Oh, so I had to get that one in there. Yeah. That, that, that's quality. That's quality. Well, yeah, we actually are gonna talk about Elon, not Elon Musk of 2026, but Elon, the Hittite. Do you think Elon Musk is named after Elon the Hitite? Maybe, but I'm disappointed that his dad is not named Base Map, just like Elon, the Hitite's father. Well, I don't know. Yeah, that is a baby name. If you're looking for one, if you're desperate, there's been someone in the history of the world named Base math. You gonna own a Tesla someday? Probably not. Probably not. Why not? Why not? I don't like the way they smell. You gonna ride to Mars on the Starship? If you church plant on Mars, I will come visit you. I did tell Julia I was like. Once there's a thousand people living on Mars, that's the point in time when we will be. Church planning on Mars Compass, Bible Church, not Mars Hill in Seattle, whatever. But that would be good because I don't know if they have the trademark anymore. Mars Hill would be a good name, wouldn't it? Yeah. That, in fact, that's a 10 out of 10. What could you do that's better than that for the first church on Mars? Mars, I, you almost have to, right? You would have to. 'cause it's from acts and anyway. Well, Julia told me. Julia is my wife. For those of you don't know, Julia told me when I told her that, that she would not be coming with me. So, wow. You know, long distance marriage. I guess, I guess it's not gonna happen, but I don't know. You can. You can dream. You can dream. Alright, let's jump into our daily Bible reading for today. We are in none other than Genesis. Chapter 25, Genesis chapter 25. Now, you hopefully have done your reading, I think it's wise to do your Bible reading before listening to this podcast. Mm-hmm. And this podcast is certainly not a replacement for your actual study and reading of God's word. So I'm gonna assume that you have read chapter 25 already. I'm gonna be honest. This can be difficult. I hope you've been being honest this whole that's, I hope this is the first time you've been honest on this podcast. Well, people say that when people say that, it's always funny 'cause it's like, yeah, we're like, I'm not gonna lie. You've been lying all the time, but now you're honest. Okay. Well, but to be frank, how about that? I thought you were, mark you really got the jokes today to be frank. Chapters like this in Genesis can be difficult to read. They can be difficult to read because there's just a lot of information in them. Yeah. At the end of chapter 25, you get some fireworks. You definitely get some fireworks with Esau selling his birthright. Mm-hmm. But all this other stuff leading up to it, it's not super engaging. I don't mean that to insult the Bible. I'm sure the Bible's very offended. Right. It's there's parts of the Bible that are hard to read. Mm-hmm. So what are some of the ways, Lewis, that when we get to a chapter like this, where it's just talking about people and kind of genealogies and factual information that's kind of maybe interesting but isn't super exciting, how should we faithfully read a chapter like this, especially the portion before we get to when Esau sells his birthright? Yeah. I think in chapters like this, you always wanna look for patterns. Patterns that have. Preceded it in the book of Genesis or in the Bible if you're in a different part of the Bible and patterns that continue on afterwards as well. Yeah, I think that's a great, I think that's a great thing to engage your mind as you read through some of these things. So like one of the examples is the direction of eastward. What do you think that direction has to do? Right? We see that specifically in there, right in verse six, number six. Why does that matter? Why does Moses include that particular little bit of information in here? Yeah. What are your thoughts on that? Especially something where it says eastward to the east country, right? Something like that. No doubt. You're like, man, that's gotta be something. Yeah. When you can go eastward to the west. Right. Let me know. I will, I will. But I think in Genesis, so far we've seen the direction of East is not good. When Adam and Eve are sent away from the garden in God's judgment, they are sent eastward out of the garden and they can't go back. There's the angel with the flaming sword, right? And then Abraham is in the east. He's away from the promised land. He's supposed to come back to the promised Land. And so I think what this is showing is that he's sending them away from Isaac, the child of promise, he's sending his. Other son, Ishmael, he's sending them away, or in this case not Ishmael and his other children, by his later wife, he's sending them away from Isaac. He's kinda just showing that these are not the promised people, right? These are not God's chosen people. And in fact, it's really interesting in Isaiah 60, a lot of these same. Nations that are named after these children are called back in redemption. Isaiah 60. The latter parts of Isaiah are all about God's salvation, his plan for the future. And it includes the nations, not just the people of Israel. And so in Isaiah sti, you see a lot of these same nations like Midian and Sheba and Iffa, all of these nations cdar, they're coming back to the Lord. And so these people who originally were not part of God's chosen ethnic people in the line of Abraham. Do get to come back and be part of God's. People in the very end. Yeah that's helpful. And maybe you're blown away by that. Maybe you're like, well, I never would've gotten that reading East Word. Well, let me encourage you by just saying, continue to read your Bible as you continue to read. Year after year, month after month, you're gonna see these interconnecting themes and these ideas. In scripture, it's helpful to listen to something like this podcast or read a commentary that help you identify those things, but you'll see those things more and more, and you'll see the beauty and intricacy and intentionality of God in scripture as you read these things. So maybe east is a little bit of a more difficult thing to catch. But there's other themes here that, that you probably should be able to see quite easily. One of them being barrenness. Who is barren here? There's another character who is barren, which is not the first time, and it's not the last time that we're gonna see one of the women, of the people of Israel struggle with barrenness. Right in verse 20, we see the reference to Rebecca. And in verse 21, Isaac prays to the Lord for his wife because she was barren and the Lord granted his prayer, and Rebecca, his wife, conceived. So as you read some of these things, look for that. Be excited about that. Recall the. The previous times when there were fireworks, when God delivered, God saved, God brought life from death. Even in just a simple little couple sentences like that, you can be recalling the goodness of God. So, this chapter may be a little bit difficult. But it does end with something particularly exciting and something that I think most people know, at least on average, pretty, pretty well, which is Issa selling his birthright. Do you have a birthright? If I do, I don't know about it. Well, if you have a birthright. Listener, let us know. I would love to know if somebody out there has a birthright, not something we really deal with these days. Certainly not in 2026 in the United States. What is a birthright? A birthright is something that you are promised to inherit whether it's material or sometimes in this case it would be immaterial as well. Yeah. And it includes not only money that we might inherit, it includes like the position. Right, right. It's not just, it's not just the stuff, physical stuff. It's also. Sort of the patriarchal title mm-hmm. For the family. And that means a lot more to someone in this day than it does in United States today. Right. That title maybe doesn't matter quite as much to us, but it matters a lot in this day. So what is Esau giving up? He's giving up a lot. And what does he give it up for? Some stew, which is, it's actually really funny, in the Hebrew of this passage, that word stew isn't even in there. It says red stew. It's just red, red. He's just giving it up for some red, which is even funnier. But I think part of this is it, when you think about this specific birthright this birthright is intertwined with the promises of God. Right. That's right. Esau is not just giving up his inheritance or his position as the leader of the family. He is giving up on the promises of God because he should know Abraham and Isaac are part of this line, and God's made these promises that your offspring are going to and through them all the nations are gonna be blessed and what Esau is saying is. I don't need that. Yeah. I don't wanna be part of God's promises. I'm gonna give up on that for some stew. Yeah. It's unbelief. It's unbelief. He doesn't believe that God is actually gonna carry out his promises. Mm-hmm. He doesn't believe that God has made these commitments to his fathers and he doesn't believe it and he believes it so little that he's willing to trade it all for. A meal. One little meal. I mean, imagine trading the promises of God for a happy meal, McDonald's. Yeah. I mean it's not far from that. What, the contrast couldn't be more extreme. Right. And that I think shows us a lot about our sin, right? Yes. It helps us put our sin in perspective. 'cause our sin is really similar. We are shortsighted, we have shortsighted desires and passions. And we feel, sometimes there are physical desires, sometimes they're emotional desires. Much like Esau is hungry. He's exhausted, he's hungry. He's like, oh, I'm gonna die if I don't get it. Which isn't true, right? But he's overcome by his short-term emotions and his desires that he loses perspective of what's really important. And that's so often what happens when we sin. We lose perspective of God's promises. We forget how good they are. We forget that they're worth it. And I'm gonna go back to that word, it's unbelief, right? Mm-hmm. When we sin, it is not believing that God's promises are true. And it's like. I don't believe help my unbelief. Right? And we need to be people who believe in God's promises so that we don't make these foolish, foolish decisions. And all sin is foolishness. And here is the pinnacle of foolishness on display as Esau sells his birthright. Yeah. And Hebrews 12 mentions this same episode and warns us against repeating this type of mistake. That's right. That's right. Well, there is another type of mistake that is an echoing theme in Genesis and in fact, throughout all the Bible, and it comes in the form of a warning from Abraham to Isaac. As we make our way into chapter 26, his warning is found there. In verse two, well actually let maybe be clear. This is the Lord's warning to Abraham. Mm-hmm. And he says, do not go down to Egypt. Dwell in the land of which I shall tell you, sojourn in this land. And I will be with you and will bless you for to you and to your offspring. I will give all these lands. What is Egypt? Have to do with any of this. What does Egypt have to do as a recurring theme that we see throughout the Bible? What? Why? Why does that matter? Yeah, so in the Bible, Egypt is usually some sort of false hope. False deliverance, false salvation, right? We see this right here. There's a famine and much like in later in Genesis with Jacob and Joseph, Egypt is okay during the famine. Egypt has a lot of food and what's what Isaac is faced with is I can either stay in the promised land and keep God's promises. To my family, or I can abandon them for material gain. I can go to Egypt and survive and not trust God, but trust my own way of doing things. And that's what happens a lot later in the Bible. The kings of Israel are always tempted to turn to Egypt to help them, right, to protect them from Assyria or from Babylon. They're always tempted to, to ask Egypt for help. Right. And that is a lack of trust in God. That's right. Something that's fascinating though is that Jesus goes down to Egypt. I know this isn't directly in our passage here, but Jesus is actually sent by God to Egypt. Why? Why is that? And I know we're jumping way ahead. I know we. We're mixing up things here, but I find it so fascinating me. I think it's worth talking about. Yeah. This is the 5 0 1 DBR podcast moment right here. But I think what's happening, you're talking about Matthew two, right? That's right. Matthew two. When Joseph is told to flee to Egypt to escape Herod, who's killing all the babies in Israel. Yeah. And that's the opposite of this warning. Right. God warns the people of Israel don't go to, don't go to Egypt. But then Jesus is going to Egypt. Yeah. And so last episode we mentioned how Matthew is painting the history of Israel through Jesus. Jesus is succeeding or Israel failed. And I think in Matthew two what's happening is he's showing that Israel is so bad that they're actually, they become the new Egypt king Herod, yep. Is trying to kill all the babies, much like Pharaoh. Remember that was trying to kill all the babies with Moses. And so instead of fleeing Egypt like Moses had to. Jesus actually has to flee Israel and take refuge in Egypt to hide from the new Egypt, which is Herod and the Israel of that time period. Yeah. Fascinating, fascinating. And I think that is, I think that's correct. I think that's a, it's a fascinating thing. Yeah. The Promised Land is where the people are to flourish, right? The promised land is where God intends to fulfill his promises. And that requires the people of Israel, and in this case specifically. Isaac to be in the land. That's very much a stipulation of this promise. There's still some problems though. Yes. And we're gonna get to something that's particularly ironic. And what we're gonna see is that Isaac is not too much different from his dad. In fact, Moses makes it very clear that he is almost exactly like his dad. He settles in the land of guar. And. What does he do? He says nothing other than my wife is actually my sister, and he says it to none other than a bialek and there's wells involved, right? This is, I think Moses is giving us every detail possible to make us call back to the previous two times where Abraham did something very, very similar. You say very similar, identical, yes. It's even with Abbe now, is it the same abbe that. Abraham came across, we don't really know. We don't really know. It could be that Aek is a title. Mm-hmm. And so it could be that it's his son, but whatever the case is, aek in both accounts is recorded as a righteous person is shown to be a faithful, righteous person. And in this account, what you'll notice is that this Alec, whether it's the same one that Abraham lied to, or it's his son knows what's up, he knows what's up and. As Isaac says, oh, this, she is my sister. He immediately says, Nope. Well, oh, full stop. We're not doing this again. Mm-hmm. God is faithful to care for his people and to. To intervene in different ways. Talk about that. Talk about how the different ways God intervenes, 'cause this is a little bit different in terms of how God interacts with this situation than what we saw with Abraham. Absolutely. so in the first two situations and what Genesis 14 with the first time with Pharaoh. Abraham is in this situation and God sends these plagues to Pharaoh. So God is directly and supernaturally intervening in the situation to prevent Pharaoh from. Marrying Sarah. Genesis 12. Genesis 12. Okay. And then the next time with the previous Alec and the wells and all that, he, God appears to have like in a dream and says, Hey don't get with Sarah. And then. This time instead of a supernatural intervention, God shows up, providentially it Al God doesn't even get really mentioned. It just says that Abbe Malaki looked out a window and he saw Isaac hanging out with Rebecca in a way that I guess only a husband and a wife should be doing. And so. When he providentially just happens to see this, that's still God at work. Right? Even though God isn't mentioned, even though God didn't break the laws of physics or come in and do something to make this happen, God is still taking care of his people and sometimes God's care for his people doesn't look incredible. It doesn't. Make the news, but it's still God at work through ordinary means to take care of his people. And you should look for that in your own life. You should look for the ordinary, simple ways that God provides for you. Maybe that's the paycheck that comes in. Mm-hmm. Twice a month. Right. Maybe it's the fact that there's food in the grocery store. Maybe it's the in-laws who are willing to help take care of your kids. Those are simple things that we can take for granted, but we need to be very careful not to. We need to be very thankful for those ordinary means that God uses to provide and protect and care for us. And I. In this life, the church is one of the kind of pinnacles of that. Definitely what a blessing it is to have a community group where you get to talk about how your life is going and you can be honest and you can seek help. What a blessing that is. And we can, again, so easily take that for granted and we need to be thankful when we. In everything. But when we see those things and we should be looking for those things Absolutely. As God provides and protects for us. Yeah. And this chapter ends with a note about Esau. It goes back, we get a couple sentences about him and he's taking foreign wives. he's doing the opposite of what Isaac did, and I think it's further showing us that. Esau is not going to carry on the promised line. In fact, in Genesis, there's this contrast between we've mentioned it before, but the offspring of the woman the good guys, if you will, and the offspring of the serpent, the bad guys. That goes back to Genesis three. There's gonna be enmity between the offspring of the woman and the offspring of the serpent. And what Genesis is often doing is showing us who's who, who's, who's the good guys, who's the bad guys? And part of this is showing us that, yeah, Esau is. He's going away from the Lord. He's not making decisions to honor the Lord. He's just doing whatever he wants. Yep. And there's Elon. Elon hit Tide. There he is at the very end of chapter 26. All right. Turn with us to Matthew nine, or if you're in the car, mentally turn with us to Matthew nine. We are gonna be looking at just verses one through 17. We talked about this a little bit yesterday. It's really important that we set up Matthew nine with Matthew eight, so hopefully you've had a chance to listen to our episode yesterday. But just high level, what's important for us to know going into these few verses in chapter nine, Lewis. Yeah. So these two chapters are all about the type of king that Jesus is. He's the Messiah, he's cho, he's sent from God, he has authority over the world, and he's coming to destroy sin and all of its effects. That is the setup for the type of king that Jesus is. And so we've seen, some miracles that he does that show that. And also some responses from people that also further highlight what type of King Jesus is. And so we had three miracles and then a response in chapter eight. And then we had two more miracles. We had the calming of the storm, we had the casting on the demons, and this is an the our second set of three. This is the third miracle, 2.3, if you will, in our second set of three. So either getting in a boat. They heels a para or they get in the boat, they cross into, so now they're back in Israel. They're back in. The, with the people of Israel, and then some amazing things happen right here that have to do with authority, right? It's a heated interaction. One of the very first heated interactions that we see between Jesus and the religious leaders, and specifically this time it's the scribes. So Jesus heals a paralytic and then. We get this revelation of God's authority, but it begins with a question from or a thought from the scribes. They say, this man is blasphemy. Why do you think they say that? Because all he did, right, he didn't even say that he was heed, right? When you look back at verse two, Jesus saw their faith and he doesn't heal him. He just says, your sins are forgiven. So why do the scribes get so worked up about that? Because. Well, we know, right? Only God is able to forgive sins. So if somebody declares that your sins are forgiven in the grocery store, you should be concerned and in some sense, they're right to be concerned except for the fact they are not paying attention to all the other things that are demonstrating God's authority. In fact. Maybe they're paying attention to it and are upset about it. Yeah. And so maybe there's some distro, dist, truth that's not really a word. Unbelief. Unbelief. Is that what you're looking for? Yeah. They're. Intentionally saying this because they're upset. Let me put it that way. Really simply, they're upset about what is happening and Jesus knows their thoughts and listen to this. He says, why do you think evil in your hearts, for which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven, or to say, rise and walk? That's stunning. That is a stunning reality. Which is easier, Louis. Well, what we're gonna see is that this miracle, the healing of this paralytic, that's the lesser miracle, right? That's gonna happen here. The the smaller thing to do is to heal a paralytic. The greater thing to do is to forgive. Yep, that's right. And we have come off a bunch of different miracles where Jesus is acting in a salvific way. Mm-hmm. But it's not super clear that it's about sin. Yes. Up until this point, and in this miracle, there is a transition in what Jesus says to making it very clear that he is not only just in charge of storms, but he's actually in charge of souls. And that is. Stunning. That is stunning as we read this, right, and to your point, it is incredible that he can heal, but it is even more incredible that he is somebody who has the authority to be able to say, your sins are forgiven. Yeah. And then we see some responses to that authority. So the crowds in verse eight, they're afraid and they glorify God. And again, the highlight. Who had given such authority to men, but they're still missing something. Yes. Right. Because what do they say? They don't say this is the Christ. Mm-hmm. They say that this is. Authority that had been given to men. So they're still missing things. There's still a lack of clarity. We are gonna get some increased clarity though, as we get into another kind of response to what's going on. And that's specifically through Jesus's call of Matthew. Matthew, don't forget, is the author of what we're reading, right? Mm-hmm. This is that Matthew and. Look at the humility. This is a point Lewis made to me before, but look at the humility of Matthew, right? He is immediately calling attention to the fact that he is a tax collector. What does a tax collector in this point in history? A traitor. A traitor. That's right, because the Jews would say that if you're collecting taxes for the Romans, you are often robbing your. Fellow countrymen of their food or their money, their food. You're working for the Romans, you're working for the enemies, the occupiers. Yep. And Jesus called Matthew to follow him. And Matthew in his account is eager to say that he was this traitor. This calls back though to what we saw in chapter eight, and I don't wanna spend too much time there, but don't forget that Jesus in chapter eight. When the scribes come to him and say, we're gonna follow you, he pretty much says, mm, nope. You're not. You're not. But Matthew does indeed follow him, right? This tax collector. This tax collector who's the traitor to the people of Israel is the one who's gonna follow them. The scribes. They don't, don't miss that, that's an incredibly important aspect to this. And it also highlights who did Jesus come to save? Who did Jesus come to save? Did he come to save everybody? Well, in one sense, yes. But I don't think that's exactly the point here in Matthew who did he come to? St. Louis. Well, Jesus says it himself right here. I came not to call the righteous, but. The sinners. And I think what the reason Matthew is highlighting his past sin, he's highlighting that he is a tax collector, that he hangs out with sinners. He gives more detail than the other gospel writers do about this section. And I think he's really trying to emphasize, I was a sinner. I was the worst type of person. Mm-hmm. And that's who Jesus came to save. He came for people like me, like Matthew, and I think that's so important for us When we think about how God saved us. We don't want to just take our old life and put it in a box and hide it. We want to show people Jesus came to save sinners like me. Look at his mercy. Look at his faithfulness. That's right. Look at his grace. Look at his love. Because he came to save someone like me. That's right. Yeah. And there's an equivalence here between that state and being sick. Right. That the analogy that Jesus uses is that he didn't come to help people who have no need of a physician, but those are sick. The reality. Right? Excuse me. Is we know that we're all sick. Right? Sin is a pervasive problem across humanity, but it's those who identify the problem, right? It's those who say, I am indeed sick. Mm-hmm. That's part of what repentance is, right? Is it's not that, yes. Part of it is in apologizing for individual. Sins that we've committed deaths. That is indeed repentance. But repentance is also recognizing that we have a sickness, right? It's saying, yeah, I actually am sick. I actually do need a physician. I know what it's like to be like, ah, no, I'm not sick. I don't need to go to the doctor. Ah, nah, nah, nah. And I mean, you know, I'm a guy, I know what that's like. And it takes humility and it takes a recognition of reality sometimes to be like, oh yeah, I'm actually sick and I actually need a physician. So what we're seeing here right is, and the word repentance is not used, but what we're seeing here is indeed repentance, right? That is who Jesus is coming to save is those. Who repent, who see their need and are looking for a physician to heal their sickness. Right? And this next paragraph picks up on that theme of the people who think they're good enough. Aren't the type of people that follow Jesus. The people that follow Jesus are the people that recognize they are. Like Matthew says in Chapter five, poor in Spirit. They need him. They're humble, they're meek. They need him. And that's what this thing about wineskin is all about. Now, this is a really interesting and sometimes confusing section. So what are your thoughts about what's the new wine? What's the old wineskins? What's, what did all these things represent? Well, I think what we're seeing here is that there's something completely incompatible with each other. Yeah. Right. The old wine skin and the new wine skin have zero compatibility together. Mm-hmm. Meaning you can't have both at the same time. You can't patch them together. You can't bring them together. They don't work together at the same time. What he's talking about is the old covenant and the new covenant. Does that mean that we just ignore the old covenant as new covenant Christians? Certainly not. That's not what I'm saying. But it does mean that salvation cannot be accomplished through trying to do both, or in fact, trying to do the Old Testament old covenant on its own. And that's why he connects it to fasting. Right? Right. That's why it's right after the conversation to fasting, what lets his, the disciples of John say, Hey, we fast the Pharisees fast. Why don't you guys fast? And what Jesus is saying is that the. Jewish way of living, of keeping the law and trying to be good enough, right? Because there's a difference between old covenant Christians, right? Mm-hmm. Someone like Abraham, right? Right. Abraham was not trying to be righteous on his own. Right? Abraham was righteous by faith. And so it's not necessarily everyone in the old covenant was a works-based religion. That's not what we're saying. But what's happening is Jesus is saying, is that the. True law keeping is not for you to be good enough on your own. True law keeping is really an act of faith in God. And that's the new wine. The new wine is trusting Jesus. And that doesn't mix with the old wine skin of trying to be good enough. That's right. Yeah. And when we are not saved, because we did some good things and then Jesus. Did the rest. Right? Right. It's not like we did 20% of our salvation and then Jesus did the rest. Right. That's not how salvation works, and we can be tempted to think that way. Definitely. We can be tempted to think that way. We can be like, ah, well, God's gonna like me more because I reached a higher level. Right? Mm-hmm. It's not how it works. Right there. The works and. Faith are not compatible as a measure of salvation or a means to salvation. Well, we're wrapped up another day. Of the Daily Bible Podcast. We're glad that you are with us. We know we've been running 30 minute episodes, so forgive us for that, but I don't know. We can't help ourselves. So let me pray for, let me pray for us as we conclude. Lord, thank you that you are our God who is. Fully able to save us. Thank you that we are not part of that equation in the sense of contributing to it. If we were Lord, we would find ourselves hopeless. Lord, you are the God who is able to save. You are the God who is fully righteous, fully good. You are the Messiah. And we are dependent on you. We are dependent on you, even as we are sometimes foolish. Like Isaac was, like Abraham was. Lord, forgive us for our sins and we're excited to be followers of you. In Jesus name I pray. Amen. Amen. All right. See y'all.

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