Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. What's up? And we have another question that was written in this time about the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I think we should read the way that it is addressed to us because this writer always has a way of creatively. Asking us to weigh in on a subject. So he calls us Eden educated elders. The alliteration skills with this one are strong. What are, what, what Eden are we referring to? We're talking about the garden. I believe I was not at the garden, just to be clear. No but are you Eden educated? I don't think so. I was not Eden edu. I mean, no, I went to Southern bro educated about Eden. Oh, okay. Well, I am educated about it. Yeah. I suppose, yes. That's, that's my read. That's my interpretation of the authorial intent of this one. So maybe I'm gonna analogize it into something entirely different. I'm gonna take the origin route. Yeah, yeah. He says, do you suppose that the fruit of the truth of the knowledge had supernatural power to grant the knowledge of good and evil? Ooh. Or do you suppose that it was just a regular tree? Ooh. But by disobeying God, Adam and Eve became aware of their sin, nature, felt shame, and became aware of their nakedness. Apparently he says. Augustine, Chrisos, Chrisos and Aquinas all go with the latter option, and I can't understand why they don't think it's simply magic fruit. It sounds like appreciate the reference of magic fruit. Yeah. It sounds It sounds like a cereal. Yeah. Trick tricks are for kids, bro. The truth of the knowledge of good evil. Evil has drawn a lot of speculation throughout the ages, including what type of fruit was it? There are people that are, will go to the wall on, it was an apple and it was a brisket tree. Yeah. You know, brisket tree for short peaches. It was this, that and the other thing. Grapefruits. Here's my take on it. I don't believe there was anything. Supernatural about the fruit itself. In fact, one of my arguments for that is the argument that Paul makes in Romans chapter five the problem was the act of disobedience. The problem was that the disobeying, he says this, he says that death entered the world through one man and death arraigned. Overall, even over those whose sin was not like Adam, from Adam to Moses. And the reason he uses Adam to Moses is the one thing that Adam and Moses' generation onward had in common is they had a law. Adam had a law. The law that Adam had was you may eat from the, any of the trees in the garden, don't eat from that tree. From the day that you eat of it, you will die. There's the law. So. When Adam reached out and took from the fruit and ate of it, he was transgressing, he was sinning, he was breaking God's law, which what took place there was the breaking of the relationship between Adam and God. I don't think there was anything physical about the fruit that brought shame and condemnation. What happened was the relationship, the unity that Adam had with the father, that Adam had with God. That's what was severed and it was severed because Adam broke. God's law. He broke God's commandment. He disobeyed God in the disobedience to God is what introduced the chasm between him and God. So his eyes being opened. I believe what took place there was something spiritual. It wasn't necessarily all physical. It was something spiritual in that he experienced guilt for the first time. He knew shame for the first time. He knew what it was to feel condemnation for the first time. But that, again, didn't have anything to do with the fruit itself, but it had to do with breaking the law that God had initiated. So I don't have anything for or against magical fruit. I don't have a dog in the race. I don't have a horse in the show. I don't have a fight. I don't have a taco on the platter. Yeah, I don't have a bowl of cereal and milk. My point is, if, if that's the case and that's the case, why wouldn't that have happened earlier? Yeah, because Eves sinned. Adams sinned by standing next to her and failed to do nothing. You could argue Adam sinned before he took of the fruit. So again, I don't think it's magical fruit. I don't think magical fruit's the answer. It must be that we're, we look at a forensic, like a slice of the pie. What exactly at what point did he send in? I wonder if maybe the whole thing, the whole event is the fall. Again Eve sent first, but nothing happened when she ate. Right. And it, well, no, hold on. Yes. When she ate, nothing happened to, to the rest of humanity. It wasn't until Adam partook that things changed, but he sinned before he took the fruit. Maybe except my pushback on that was there was no, there, there was no law for him to sin against at that point. There was no, this is the biblical order of what it looks like for you to lead your wife. That when Adam didn't lead his wife, I know as men we're quick to say, we sinned because, Adam should have led his wife and prevented her from doing that. But we're reading a New Testament understanding of a husband's role with his wife into the very first marriage. Is it? Is it not sin? And I guess that's a fair point. Usually we think about his abdication of leadership. He's not doing what he should be doing. Adam who was with her stood by. Right. But it seems to me that if Adam knew that it was wrong to partake of the fruit. That for him to fail to stop her from parting to the fruit would've also been sin. It would've been a lesser sin, but a sin nonetheless. And that's where it's, the question is, we don't, we weren't there to watch it back in real time. So even when it says Eve took some of the fruit and ate and gave some to Adam with her even to, to understand that, that she was eating before he was eating, we don't know. I think we're intended to see this as one. Contiguous whole the act of rebellion against God, rather than to parse it out to say, well, she did this first and then he followed. And I would say that's again going back to, 'cause even, Eve's words to Satan, God said, don't eat of it or even touch it lest we die. Well, God didn't say don't touch it. Mm-hmm. So you could, if you wanted, depress it, go back and say, well, Eve lied by saying that God said don't touch it. Or misattributed what he said. Yeah. Right. But others have said no. She was just trying to stress the emphasis that she understood that this tree was off limits. So yeah I would agree with you and maybe we are looking at it from too much of a western standpoint as far as our, you use the word forensic and I think that's probably true. I just am saying I don't think there was something inherent with the fruit that brought shame and condemnation. I think what brought shame and in condemnation was Adam. Broke God's law, the act of disobedience, right? Yes. And I'm just saying, I don't know when the act of disobedience started and ended. Sure. I can say that clearly the fruit was involved, but I wonder if it's before that. And all of this doesn't necessitate magical fruit, but it does. It does necessitate the act of rebellion. And I think that's the point that is made in the text. And I think you're right in citing Paul. I think he supports that idea. Yeah. Well, let's get into our daily Bible reading today. We're in numbers 16 and 17, numbers 16 and 17. So we have this brief feeling allude, and I just wanna point out here something that you brought up yesterday, that chapter 15 is there as a way of revealing that God is still a God of mercy. He's still a God of grace. And I think you're right because in chapter 16 we get right back into bad news for Israel. And so if things had stacked from chapter 14 to chapter 16 to, this would just be one loss after another loss after another loss. And so I think you're right by inserting chapter 15, it's a reminder, there's a future still for Israel. The promised land will come, they will enter, they will worship the Lord. Because in chapter 16, we get another bad scene here. And this time it's led by a man named Cora. As well as a handful of others. In fact, there's gonna be 250 men as well as Cora and these other men who are spearheading this, that are gonna take their stand against Moses and they're gonna take their stand against Aaron. And they're basically gonna say who do you think you are? And why don't we get to be, as powerful and as authoritative as you've put yourself out to be. It's pride. And Moses and Aaron call it out as such. In fact, Moses even here, which is interesting because Moses as an intercessor, when the people rebel against him, is so often humble and meek. And he falls on his face and he pleads for the people and he tries to keep God from doing anything, against him. But here this time in verse 15 Moses says, to the Lord, he says, do not respect their offering. I have not taken one donkey from them. I have not harmed them one bit. And so Moses is angry here and I don't blame him and I don't think this is arrogance from Moses. I think this is a righteous indignation that Moses has here when they are charging him, of being prideful and arrogant about his position and Aaron's position as they're trying to get their own slice of the pie themselves. Yeah, this is a sad scene and a sad event. But you'll notice that what's happening here is the people are, and it's not just all the people, it's these guys who are leading the rebellion, Cora, among the chief of them. They're calling attention to the things that they don't like about Moses, and it seems like it's a false pretense. This is not like, well, we have legitimate claims against him. We need to repent for these reasons. This is what's in the heart of a man. Everybody really, all of us. Naturally and easily grumble and discontent ourselves against the leadership that God has installed. Whether that leadership is perfect and amazing and there's no such thing we know that, or whether that leadership is something less than that. All of us have the natural inclination to do this, and I want you to see how seriously Moses takes this. This kind of complaining and bitterness against God's leadership is something that he takes so seriously that he's going to execute a severe judgment on the people. In part with Moses' cooperation because as you mention here, Moses is mad about this. Yeah. And he should be, Moses is saying, I'm trying to live faithfully before them. I'm serving them. This is for their sake. They say to Moses, you've gone too far. But then he says to them, you've gone too far. Terrifying event. Yeah. Moses does intercede because God initially says to Moses, okay, separate your, some yourselves from them, and I'm gonna consume the congregation. And Moses says, well, should the whole congregation die for one? Man sin. That's interesting. It's not been in the news as much recently, but we have talked a lot about corporate guilt and corporate responsibility for the sins of other people. And that's been something that our, even our nation has talked about. Are we responsible for the sins of our ancestors, so forth and so on. And Moses does seem to draw a line here to say, look, there is a principle in which the individual should bear their own guilt. And the congregation, the whole should not suffer. And. Face the consequences that really the, those responsible should face for themselves. They should pay the guilt that they themselves have incurred. Not necessarily that the whole congregation should be guilty for the sins of these 250 men and these leaders. And so Moses intercedes, God agrees, and Moses sets up how the people will know whether or not it's him or. Or these other men that, that God has chosen by saying, God if you've chosen me, basically let the earth swallow them in their households. And that's where it gets difficult too, because we look at the wives and we look at the families. Now, one thing that's silent here in scripture is how old the children of these men were. We don't know. We don't know if they were. Toddlers. We don't know. If they were over 20 and fighting, then we don't know. We, we just know that there is a measure of guilt being passed on within the individual family, if not through the whole congregation. Yeah. The hard thing is it says here the little ones, you can't, it's hard to look at that and say, okay, a 20-year-old is a little ones. You have to imagine there's someone young here both ways. I either way I can live with both. And here's why. In the one you have, obviously guilt that they accept, they take accountability for the. The sins that their father are committing. And I think also you're gonna find out later, Cora does have surviving family. They become part of the temple singers, and they have some psalms that we're gonna read soon. But that tells us there's a surviving remnant that did not participate in this. And I assume the reason why is because they were innocent for those who are old enough to discern. Anyway, the little ones in verse 27 suggest to me that it's either a. Your point, they're old enough to make their decisions, or B, it is their little ones, and here's why I'm okay with it. I don't love it. I'm not celebrating this, but I can see how this works. If a father is in the car with his family and he's driving fast and he's had a few drinks and he crashes and he takes out the whole car. You understand what happened there. You're not gonna look to the Lord and say, Lord, this is your fault. This is, you did this. Some people, do you understand that as well? But I think my idea here is I see how his governance, his leadership implicates the whole family. And the hard part about this is that we also have passages that say that the, that children won't die for the father sins. And I think generally speaking, that's true. However, I will say that I think God still maintains the authority and the privilege as God to make distinctions as he sees fit. Where he has a general rule of thumb, if we're gonna call it that to say the way that I deal with people is that you die for your own sin and others die for their sin. You're responsible, you're. You're a moral agent that makes decisions, but that doesn't change the fact that God still has executive authority over every human life, and he does it as he chooses. Yeah. The Hebrew here is little children. Are those unable to march? Yeah. That's rough, man. It is. Ugh. It is. I guess. Interesting concept and we're dealing with a different dispensation, different time here, but we will talk about things like infant salvation, age of accountability, things like that. I would say perhaps one of the other comforting ideas or thoughts here though, their lives are forfeit. Again, because of the sins of the father. Perhaps this doesn't imply that their eternal souls were forfeited at the same time. If they are little it's possible that God still showed the grace to bring them to be with him in this process. Yeah, we're not gonna get there yet, but in Deuteronomy chapter one I think you have one of the clearest sections where clearly God discriminates between those who can make a decision. That effectuate their sinful response and those who are not able to. Right. I take that Deuteronomy one, Jonah chapter four, those are some passages that give me a decent confidence that those who are, we use the age of accountability, those who are below that age. Right. And it's probably not an age as much as it is a development. I take comfort that those are given a special dispensation of grace and they're received. Yeah, that's my hope. Yeah. And I have a decent biblical case for that. Yeah, I agree. I agree. The rest of chapter 16 the 250 these men had in their fire sensors that they're gonna be consumed by the fire of God. And, and this is God saying, I have rejected them and their offering. As Moses had asked him to, and then Moses talked about a visual reminder. We talked about this with the tassels. This time the visual reminder is gonna be these sensors, these pans, they're gonna be taken and hammered out over the altar so that the, uh, them being consecrated for the use in worshiping the Lord. That purpose is gonna be preserved here. But this is a hard thing for sure, because this is a visual reminder for the people. Every time they come to the altar, they're gonna see these sensors from these 250 men and remember, okay, that's right. We can't step out. And usurp the authority of God and the authority of God is imbued upon Moses and Aaron and then ultimately the priestly line that's gonna come after this, which is confirmed then in chapter 17 when the rods are brought forth and Aaron's rod is the one that shows the buds, it buds the almond blossoms. And God is showing that Aaron is the one that I've chosen. So God is making it abundantly clear as they're on the doorstep of wandering for 40 years. You need to know where the authority of God lays as far as humanly speaking and is with. Moses and it's with Aaron. I also think that you're seeing the truth that godly leadership is fruitful leadership, and that's because it is attached to the vine. John 15 we esteem leaders who produce fruit in God's economy because they're the kind of people that are abiding in Christ. Now granted, there's no Jesus in the Old Testament, this is anachronistic. Yes, but the principle remains. Godly leadership is always fruitful. Leadership. Yeah. Well, let's jump over to Mark chapter six for our New Testament. We're in the rest of chapter six today, starting in verse 33 or really 30 I think, and going all the way through the end of the chapter here. But, feeding of the 5,000. Jesus comes away with his disciples. They're trying to get some rest, but the crowds, they're gonna follow him. And this is where we get that grace statement in verse 34, when he went ashore, he saw the great crowd and it says he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. I talked recently about compassion and sympathy. And compassion is sympathy and action. And here we see that Jesus has compassion on the crowds and then acts on that compassion by teaching them. And this is about feeding them physically, but the greater need that they had here is being met by Jesus before their hunger even manifests itself. Their greater need was they needed the food of God's word. They needed the food of being taught the word of God by the Word of God. And so he's gonna do that. He's gonna meet their greatest need first, and then yes, the need of hunger comes up. And I think in the rest of this miracle, and then also the miracle of him walking on water after this, we see two tests of faith that are really more about the disciples than they are about. The crowds. And so Jesus will often teach the crowds and the disciples at the same time. And he's teaching everybody one thing and the disciples a different thing. And here I think we see that when the disciples come to Jesus, Jesus says, well, you give them something to eat. That's test number one that we see in Mark chapter six. And the disciples say we don't have enough. And then Jesus meets the need. Jesus feeds the 5,000, he takes the loaves and the fish, and he multiplies it, and they pick up the baskets full. And then I think the second test is found when after this, he sends the disciples on and he. Comes to them on in the fourth watch of the night and he's walking on the sea. Okay? That's a scene in and of itself. But then it says this in verse 48, he meant to pass them by. Jesus was just gonna walk right on by them. And again, I think we see another test of faith. Do the disciples believe who this is and that he's in control and that all is okay. Now, there's another scene here that's recorded by other riders where Peter wants to get out on the boat, out of the boat. And walk to him. And Mark doesn't record that force, but the others do. And again, the test of faith, do you believe me? And so he gets in the boat with them and he says, take heart. It's, I do not be afraid. And then they reach their destination, which is Esate here, and he begins to heal and teach again because the crowds had run over to where he was going. Curious. Then in Mark six, this is typically how we understand it. Peter's gospel. Yes. And yet we don't have him walking on water. Yes. Probably the coolest thing that Peter ever did. Right. And he's like, no need to mention that. Right. We're okay without that. Yeah. This whole scene is so cool. I love Jesus walking on water. This is one of those things where it communicates his deity more loudly than almost anything else. For sure. I can't think of a better way for Jesus to say I'm God than to say, I'm just gonna walk on the water. Yeah. Watch this. Yeah. It's become such a meme in our culture that whenever someone talks about, are you walking on water? Like they're trying to say, oh are you, God, are you essentially someone who's deity? Right? And I think this is one of those passages that doesn't say, by the way, Jesus is God. But it does. Yeah. It says it as explicitly as one can understand it. This is such a cool scene. Don't miss it. In fact, another cool scene that the feeding of the 5,000, if Jesus can provide for 5,000 people with nothing. He can provide for you. Yeah. He's capable of doing that. In fact, the fact that he has 12 baskets full matching each one of the disciples, I think is meant to show them, look, I can care for you individually. Yeah, I've got you. Yeah. I'm gonna take care of your needs. I'm not gonna let you starve. I have your back. And there's nothing more comforting than knowing that Jesus is the one who's providing for you day in, day out. Just think. When's the last time you asked Jesus for your daily bread? Have you asked him for that? He tells you to. He does. And yet I, man, I just prayed for it at lunch. I was about to eat the bread that was in front of me and I'm like, Lord, thank you for giving me daily bread. Didn't ask for it, but I'm gonna ask for it now and I'm gonna enjoy it. Jesus provides even when we don't ask, oh, what a good savior. We have this, these enjoy the gospels. We're not gonna be in the gospels all year, obviously, because we're gonna move into the epistles and then some of the smaller books. But please enjoy these. These are so good. Which may be just a nugget on that. You talked about praying for our food at lunch. A lot of times we grow up and we're praying and we're saying, God bless this food. And somebody will say, give it a blessing or something like that. And if you've gone through partners before we talk about this in Partners on 1 0 1 Discipleship Program, but I think what you were just talking about there is really what we're doing when we pray for our food. It, there's nothing intrinsically different about your. A piece of pizza after you, you pray for it, other than you've expressed gratitude to the Lord for providing it for you. And that's what we're doing. We're saying, God, thank you for this. Thank you for giving me this. Thank you for giving my daily bread. We're not blessing it in the sense of now it's holy pizza because we blessed it. And so this is, is, hold on a second there. That's this holy pizza. I don't care what you say. The calories don't count when you bless it. Yeah. It when they get to your stomach, it's like wearing a pop hat. It's like, I'm good. I'm, I'm here. It's, don't worry about it. No, but we're not changing it. Right? It's, and you can get food poisoning as a Christian, just as easy as you can get food poisoning as a non-Christian and you can get food poisoning from food you prayed for. Just as easy as you can get food poisoning from food that you didn't pray for. So Les, we become overly mystical. I think it's important that we remember what we're really doing when we're praying over a meal is. Thank God. Thanks for my daily bread. Well, let's pray right now and then we'll be done with this episode. God, we thank you for the daily bread that we have in the Word of God. We thank you that we get to pick up the Bible and read it and understand it, and we pray that we would be faithful and diligent to apply its truths to our lives on a regular basis. And so we thank you for that opportunity today, even as we've talked through these passages and help pray that you would help us to remember them. Throughout our day and to apply them as we live them out. In Jesus' name, amen. Keep reading those Bibles y'all. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you tomorrow folks. Bye.

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