Hey, welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible podcast. Happy day. Happy Friday. Opening spring training Friday. Oh, man. I know you've been waiting for this day for a long time. Uh, it's, uh, it's on my calendar somewhere. It is, perhaps, yeah, because the baseball season under spring training baseball, American religious calendars. There it is. MLB calendar. Yes. There it is. Yeah. Under American religious calendars. Awesome. Love that. Yeah, spring training is officially underway. Game start today. And baseball spring training is, what does that even mean? Well, for, for people who don't know, obviously we know, obviously, yeah. It's the preseason of baseball, so the superstars don't play a lot. They'll play maybe one inning, two innings, and then it's a lot of the young guys, they get reps and it's guys that are still trying to make a roster after they've been in the league for 13, 14 years and, and they're, this is their last shot to play. So that's what a lot of spring training is, but it means that the season's right around the corner, which I'm excited about 'cause I love baseball. How far is this like a lint thing where you put ashes on your head and the, the sign of your baseball team and then it's 40 days till the first pitch? It's close to that man. Wow. I mean, it's probably, this is religion a month and a joking. It's probably a month and a half. Yeah. Of, of spring training. So, oh man. It, it's old, but the first day is exciting. It's like, oh man, we're here. The, the season's here, it's, it's real games. They don't count, but it's, they're playing other teams. So, well, I guess it's similar with Easter when we get to the Easter sermons is these are the real sermons. These are the ones that count. Yes, yes. These are the ones where people come to church for the first time in perhaps a long time, even several months for some of them. Speaking of which I saw on the Instagrams the other day that there was a strategy that this guy was. Promoting on helping your church capitalize on Easter. And he said, rather than just making it one sermon, rather than being like, Hey, join us for Easter, you know, resurrection Sunday, we're gonna talk about the resurrection of Jesus. He said, what you should do, it's a great idea, is you should make Easter Sunday your launch point. Yeah. For a series's, a great idea. And invite people to say, Hey, if you're looking for meaning, if you're looking for purpose, join us for this four week series. If we launch on Easter Sunday, great. Great idea. I, I think it's ambitious in the right ways. Yeah. And I think if you have a compelling enough, this is one of those times where I think being topical. Topal, I like to say is permitted and even perhaps encouraged because you're gonna get people there who are not coming for a variety of reasons, right? And usually they're Christian ish. They're Christian adjacent, at least where they attend Christmas and maybe Easter. So you have a chance of capturing people to say, you need to be here and here's why. Yeah, I think it's a great idea. Yeah. Are we doing that? Not this year. Just because it was too late in the game for me when I saw that. I mean, we're still, we're a month, we're 40 days away. That's true. Mm, that's true. I, I feel like though, man, it, it just chops up first Peter too much right now. 'cause we just took that break coming out of the, the fall and, and into Christmas and then, so I feel like we just are dipping our toes back in first. Peter. I'd hate to, to pull the e-brake and jump out of First Peter again, but, mm. Well maybe next year. Alright, I'll plan my preaching calendar better. Alright. Fair enough. Which I know you'd like me to do in general anyways. Well not be better just in advance or just at more advance, just having a, you know, well, we've talked about this before. They don't need to know. Yeah, no, no, no. For sure. Sermon. Our sermon and service calendar will be possibly changing soon though, so we ought to That's true. Be on the lookout. That's a, that's a, uh, that's a hook for some people. Well, who might wanna show up to church this Sunday, be at church and don't miss important announcements. Yep, yep. I wonder what it could be. Anyways, numbers three and four. In Mark chapter three. We don't have any questions to answer, so that means those that are listening have not been, and that's okay. Asking us questions. That tells me that we are so comprehensively doing each podcast. We've done it. We've anticipated their questions sufficiently, or they, they have no other questions. None. So good. Good job. Us. Yes. Win. We're patting us on the back as, as we say this. Hey, hey. Ramadan has started. Yes, it has recently. Do you celebrate that? I do not. Okay. You should not celebrate it. We'd encourage you not to, but we would encourage you to pray for those who are celebrating and that's a good reminder. And then you, of course, you'll see people walking around re you know, you remember when we were at Frisco's founder's Classical Academy? Yep. You remember that time? I do. There was a, there's a mosque not too far down the block. Right. And I remember on Wednesday nights. We would be closing up shop for student ministry and I'd be driving past it. There'd be a ton of people at that mosque. Yep. So pray for them if you see it. Or even if you don't see it, just know that they're in their season of fasting throughout the day and they come together at night and they, they do their, some of their religious activity they eat at night together. And it would be good for you just to keep that in mind. Right. By the way, there's a book by James White that I'm listening to currently on Spotify. Oh. About Islam. And I am trying to pull up the, what every Christian needs to know about the Quran and it's Oh, yeah, yeah. Heard that one On on Spotify, if you've got Spotify Premium, you get some free audible books that you can listen to, audio books that you can listen to each week or each month. And so it's on one of those. So if you got Spotify premium, you can listen to this, but whatever Christian needs to know about the Quran. I was convicted when I had a, a evangelistic conversation with a Muslim and he knew way more about the Bible Yep. Than you know about the Quran. I know About the Quran, yeah. So I just thought to myself, man, I, I need to, to brush up on this and I appreciate white, white is an academic thinker and he is an apologist in the sense of a guy who knows his stuff really well and can make a, an adequate defense for our faith. So, that's available on Spotify. If you're interested, what every Christian needs to know about the Quran, should I read much into the fact that you're just listening to it on Audible? Is it, is it not worth having in the library or are you just still testing the waters? I just saw it on Spotify and I was like, you know what? Let me, let me just listen to this because I'm, I'm trying to, I'm reading right now. You and I are actually at different stages, but reading through the same church history series and then, whoa, you know, I've got the reading that I'm doing for preaching and for, for other things like that of it. So to add that other book in, yeah, touch right now at this point was just a lot, but I can listen. I had some time my commute just getting ready in the mornings where I'm like, okay, I can listen to a book. And so I thought, let's listen to this one and see how it is. But I'm just about. The three, four chapters into it. So far it's good. Alright. Yeah. Well I'm gonna put it, I have it in Kendall, but I'm gonna put it in the shopping cart as a physical book. A physical book. Yes. We were just talking about this. We were, yep. Yeah. 'cause physical books are, uh, helpful. Yeah. I, well, jury's still out on my side, but I, I'm enjoying, I, so I'm an avid digital book collector. Yes. But I've been trying physical and I'm enjoying it. Yes. Really enjoying it. There's something novel and fun and even exciting about holding it in your hand, and I was just saying it feels more satisfying to finish it. I would agree. Yes, I would agree with that a hundred percent. Well, let's jump into our daily Bible reading for today. We're in numbers three and four, and then we are gonna be in Mark chapter three. So numbers three and four, we get into more of God's order and plan for the the different nations, specifically for or not the different nations, the tribes specifically for the tribe of Levi's. So the Levis are gonna be addressed here They are for Aaron. And so you'll notice that in verse five, it says, the Lord spoke to Moses saying Bring the tribe of Levi near and set them before Aaron, the priest. They may minister to him. And so their job is to serve Aaron. That is help Aaron with the duties of the tabernacle and also to guard the tabernacle. And then from here he's gonna get into all the various families of the Levites and where they were to be or where they were to camp around the tent of meeting around the tabernacle there as their jobs pertain to the various. Things that they needed to do. So we get numbers here. The total number of Levites that we're gonna find, at least that are qualified here to be able to serve from a month old and upward, over 22,000. So 22,000 Levites. We find that in verse 39. But this is more of God saying, here's the order. This is what's. Supposed to happen. And then chapter three goes on to talk about the redemption of the firstborn. Now, the Levites were, we've heard time and time again already, and we're gonna read it again more in the future, that the Levites were the tribe that God said, rather than taking the firstborn amongst the people of Israel, I'm gonna take the Levites to be mine. And so this was the way of redeeming them. Well, here we get. That specifically, all the firstborn males, according to the number of names from a month old and upward that was listed were 22,273. That's for the whole nation at this point. Well, there's 22,000 levies. There's 22,273 firstborn. God has a God of detail, and so he wasn't gonna just overlook the 273 firstborn. Extra there, there was going to be a redemption price for the 273, and so they were going to have to pay five shekels per head and to take them according to the shekel, the sanctuary. So again, God's detail, God's attention to, to detail in his order. We see here in chapter three. Which actually raises the question because if you add the numbers of Koha, Marri, and Gersen, you don't get 22,000, you get 22,300. So there's a discrepancy in the text and to the point that you're just making the best and the most. Faithful way to see that is that this is likely a textual corruption. Which is something that we don't deal lightly with. We don't wanna just toss that anytime we see something that says, oh, this is not exactly fitting but it seems to be the most likely given the fact that we're dealing with tallies here, numbers that add up to one thing or another. So a textual corruption does that in any way. Influence or change our understanding of the doctrine of inspiration and a plenary inspiration that is every word of God proving true every word of God, being inspired of God. How do we handle something like that? Yeah, no, it, it doesn't challenge our view of plenary. Inspiration because what we're dealing with is the original documents. When we talk about the doctrine of inspiration authority in Errancy, we're saying the original documents as were originally recorded, written down by, in this case Moses or by the other New Testament authors, when we get in the New Testament or Old Testament authors, that those were inspired by God. Those were the words. So when we talk about a textual corruption we're talking about the fact is the manuscripts were copied over time, that the numbers got messed up. That somewhere along the lines, one of the scribes wrote it down incorrectly. Which on that note Wes Huff. Is another apologist that I've grown to respect quite a bit recently. And he's got a video on YouTube with one of the guys from Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and Midwestern Baptist is where our own director of student ministries got his master's degree from. And so we have a great deal of respect from them, but there's a professor named Dr. Peter Gry. And so Wes Huff and Dr. Gry tackle the issue and the video is called Textual Criticism and Changes in Your Bible. And so this is a great resource to deal with what we're talking about right here. Textual criticism does what we're talking about when, when we hear the word criticism, we think that's a negative. We're critique criticizing the Bible. That's right. Not really what it is. It's rather to look at something with a critical eyes to look closely at it. And so they do a great job kind of explaining that. But that's what we're dealing with here. The, at some point when Moses wrote down the numbers, the numbers were accurate. At some point in time the scribes made a mistake. And those mistakes can happen many different ways, but it seems as that's what we're dealing with with the textual corruption. And at the end of the day people who study things like this who are textual critics, again, not negative connotation. Have come up with a number of something like 98, 90 9% accuracy in terms of transmission, which is incredibly remarkable. The more we find textual documents, the more we find manuscripts things in all sorts of different formats, the more we come to realize what we have in our Bibles, the. Is highly accurate. Yeah. We are so used to 100% accuracy and precision, again, modern day accuracy that something like that could shake up a Christian to think, well, my Bible's not true. You know, there's textual corruptions in there. And, we would admit that there are, but there's so few and none of them have. Any bearing on any major doctrinal or even minor doctrinal issues. Some of them are just more like, oh, what do we do with that? Right. Some of the more famous ones are the Johanan edition that we read about, where the woman is caught in the act of adultery. She's thrown at Jesus feet. All those things. That's one of them. The end of Mark is another one, or we have a textual corruption. We believe it's an addition to the text that we don't believe was original to the text. And here's the coolest thing, is that our Bible editors will note that for us. Yep. They're not hiding it. We're not trying to do this massive coverup. There's no conspiracy here. It is honest Christians dealing honestly with the text. Well, in chapter four, we get into what the specific duties of these three tribes or these three Subtribes three families within the tribe of Levi are gonna be. So you've got, again, koha, you've got Gershon, and you've got Marri. And so we're gonna get into what those duties are going to be. And we see here that there was an age range for the Levites to serve. They could only serve. From 30 years old and upwards to 50 years old. So they had 20 years of good service to the Lord where they could help with what these situations required. In chapter four, if you're on our setup and tear down team, you should feel, a kinship with this chapter because this is all about what it looks like to tear down the tabernacle and then to set it back up again and what the different responsibilities were. And there were different teams that had to do different parts of the tabernacle. Just like on Sunday mornings when we finish up with our service, there's different teams that help with tearing down different things in the church. Now, differences, we don't have any holy of holies or we don't have any sanctified furniture in the church. And so you're not gonna get struck dead if you mishandle the pulpit or the stage pieces or anything like that. But. But they did. And so this was something they had to be really careful about as they were, were doing this and this was something that was gonna free up the priest. So notice Aaron is not really involved in this process, but this crew, the rest of the Levites, and this is part of the reason they were given to Aaron, is to help him with this process. And they were gonna tear down and they were also going to be transporting it as well. Again, I'd like to notice that here, God, God is organizing these things. It is, it is God who's behind us. Notice in verse one of chapter four says, the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron saying, let's take an, let's, let's count our people and let's find out who can do what work. And then I'm going to assign different families of groups to different, work within this tabernacle. So moving the furniture or carrying the holy things, that kind of thing. And so I, I want you to see here just how, how clear and how. Careful God conducts and orchestrates their commitment or their work in the tabernacle. I think this is fascinating, this, this just, this gets me excited. These are the small things when when you're reading your Bible, you can just easily pass this up without even thinking twice about it. And yet I think this reveals to us who God is and what he's wanting us to know about himself. And part of that is just reading between the lines, so to speak. There's a bad way to do this where you start making up stories and you get really flexible with what's there. But I don't think I'm reading between the lines too much. Would you say so? I don't think so. This, this is a, this is a, I think, a really natural reading of the text saying, look, God is organizing, yes, God's the one who's doing this. And this is very similar to what he does at the beginning of creation, where he says, let there be light. Let the larger light, a larger light rule the day, let the lesser light rule the night. God is organizing and orchestrating all of human history, all of human creation, and this is something that never ceases. In fact, Hebrews chapter one, I think tells us that he's ongoing in his participation, his active participation with creation. Yep. Well, let's turn it over to our New Testament reading, March chapter 3 22 through 35. We get a, a passage we've covered a couple times already, and, and I guess only once because just covered Matthew, but chronological reading, we got to the gospels towards the end of last year, so it still seems pretty familiar to us, but this is the blasphemy of the spirit. And here again, the, the direct. Sin involved was attributing to the devil what Christ was doing by the power of the Spirit, by the power of the Holy Spirit. So going back to Jesus' baptism, Jesus is, as he's brought up outta the water, it says the Spirit descended upon him like a dove. And so this was the anointing of Jesus for the power of his earthly ministry. In fact, I think we've recommended the book by Bruce Ware, the Man Christ Jesus which is a, a great. Study of how Jesus in his humanity demonstrated perfect dependence upon the spirit. And so a lot of what we look at what Jesus is doing, he's doing in the power of the Spirit. And so as Jesus is doing these miracles and casting out demons and so forth and so on, when the Pharisees charge him and say, you're doing this by the power of eligible, or you're possessed by alible, Jesus is saying, whoa, whoa, whoa you're. Attributing to Satan, what the Holy Spirit is doing, and that's the blasphemy of the spirit. And Jesus says that, that's a sin that's not gonna be forgiven. Those that committed. With that explanation then, it seems like it's not possible to commit that today. Would you say that? Yeah, I think I said earlier, I, I go back and forth on that only because. I, I wonder if, if that's what it is, attributing to Satan, what is the work of the spirit? Is that possible to, to do today? Could somebody look at the work of the spirit today, who is still active? Mm-hmm. And attribute the work of what the spirit does today to the enemy, to Satan, to demonic powers instead. Yeah, and I, I guess I would say that it is possible to commit the blasphemy, the Holy Spirit, although probably not in, in with that precise of language. I would say it's just, it's the willful rejection of the work of the spirit. Yeah. In that subjective sense of an objective reality is available to every person where God can make known to somebody. I'm working and I'm convicting, and I'm the one who's behind this Jesus and this gospel. And someone can have a sense of That's true. I, I resonate with that. There's something in me that tells me that's true and that makes perfect sense. If someone would say, I'm gonna project that. Well, of course there's no salvation from that because you've sealed your fate. There is no other way to salvation, beyond the spirit, awakening and bringing a dead centered life to make them aware. I need this, this, to me, connects with the, with what the Hebrew author talks about, someone who. Senses the spirit and yet falls away. They share, they participate in the spirit. Mm-hmm. And yet falls away. I think this is that person. Yeah. Yeah. I could get there too. The end of chapter three, we go back to what you brought up last episode, and that is Jesus' family is not really a huge fan of what he's doing right now. So they show up again. They're outside the house and, and Jesus is told, Hey, your, your family's here and they're here. I think, again, if we look back, because they, they feel like Jesus is. Kind of going awol on them and, and embarrassing the family name a little bit. And Jesus then makes the statement, he says, well, who, who is my family, essentially? And he says, my family are those that do the will of God. This is my brother, my sister, and my mother. And, and I think there's some correlation today to looking at when, when we conceive of our family, ideally we want our family to be our immediate family, our blood family, and our church family. As parents, if, for those of you parents that are listening to this, we want to lead our kids into the bride of Christ. We want to lead our immediate family into the family of the church. But there's also, for some, the reality that the church fam is the more intimate family that they have, then their actual family, because their actual family isn't submitted to the Lord. Their actual family isn't following Christ. And so for them those that do the will of God alongside them doing the will of God, those are the ones that are truly their kin, their mother, their brother, their sisters, and so forth and so on. So for, I guess all that to say for some your church family is your family, and really ultimately for eternity, that's the reality. We just as parents are praying that's gonna involve our children as well. Or maybe as a spouse, you're praying that that's eventually gonna involve your unbelieving. Wife or husband as well. And God can do that. But in the meantime, man, our main family is our church family. I think Jesus is probably very offensive here. Yeah, he would have to be right. Yeah. Because I think in a normal human relationship, you would probably look at something like this and be like, oh, that's, that's kind of messed up Jesus. Like, we're your family, right? Blood is thicker than water, as the saying goes. And that's true in our Western culture, especially so in an eastern culture where to your point like you're, you're hurting the family name here, we need you to. Cease and desist and Jesus straight up, I mean, back backhand. I can't see it any other way. This is profoundly offensive. I, I just can't see it otherwise. And so here's what I think that's why that's important for, besides the obvious, I think Jesus is redefining the family tie here. He's redefining what the priority is. Yeah. Now we believe that sure, blood is thicker than water, but I would say spirit's thicker than blood. Mm. The spirit itself, himself rather binds us in ways that are eternally significant. Where a family line is, is for life. That's a big deal and your genetics play a role in who you are and the way that your personality is shaped, I suppose. But the spirit's priority is evident here. Jesus is redefining what the greatest familial ties are. It used to be family and for most of us, I think it still is, you should be committed to your family. Paul's gonna later say, look, if you don't provide for your family members, you're worse than an unbeliever. So he is not saying, forget your family. Run away with the church, and go live in a monastery. What he is saying though, in terms of priority is Jesus, people are first. Yep. That's crazy. That is crazy. I guess jaw droppingly, again, offensive would be the word. And Jesus is like, this is the way it is. And I think the early church had a leg up on us in understanding that because of the persecution that they went through, when all of a sudden they realized, man, we need each other. You know, a desperate way. I think I. Church is so convenient for us that we don't have that same awareness of, man, I need these people that I stand shoulder to shoulder with on a Sunday morning and worship. Yeah. Yeah. Next to the same way I think, oh, I need my family members. And yet, if the persecution gets turned up in our country, at some point I think we will realize, man. Yeah. Those in, in the church. We need them. They are our family. Let it be though, that you don't need persecution for that. For sure. Totally. Let's work at really valuing the relationships that Jesus has established, and again, the Spirit is the one who unites us. Yeah. There's something special about being in Christ with another believer that you can say, man, I, I don't know you that well, but because we share the bond of Christ, we're close. Yeah. I love that. Yep. Well, let's pray. God, we desire to have that sort of a church, that sort of a church that loves one another to that extent, that views each other as brothers and sisters in Christ and as parents, in Christ, and that we have that kind of. Affection for each other. And so, God, I just ask that you would help us to live that way to live in light of those relationships and that we would be a church that is stronger as a result. So we pray this in Christ name, amen. Keep in your Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you. Bye.

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