Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. What's up everybody? It's Friday. Also, let me letter from the editor really quick here, or podcast participant. Okay. I messed up in our conversation about the. New World Translation the other day on the podcast. 'cause I referenced the Mormons after that. And it's not the Mormons, it's the Jehovah's Witnesses. The jw Yeah. That embrace the New World translation. So if you were listening to that saying, Hey Pastor pj, you seem a little bit confused. I was a little bit foggy brain the other day. Not just on that. A couple other things in the office too. So just to clarify, it is the jws, but the book that I recommended, reasoning from the Scriptures with the Mormons, there's another one. Also by Ron Rhodes reasoning from the scriptures with the Jehovah's Witnesses. He also has one for reasoning from the scriptures with the Muslims. Really everybody. Catholics, he's got a broad range, super and laws. He has one for those guys too. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think so. Not on that one. Yeah. But even Carm the website that I referenced, Carm has things on Jehovah's, witness has mu things on Islam, has things on everything that, that you're gonna run into as far as apologetic arguments. It's not as, it's not the deepest dive you could have, but it's gonna get you started in any of those topics. So cm.org, great place to go, as well as those books by Ron Rhodes, dude Carm, Matt Slick. Yeah. That's the OG man. Yep. How that website has been around for so long. It has. He's been producing that for I don't know how many years, decades at this point. Yeah. I remember signing up for one of his training classes I did that. I got this big monster of a behemoth book that he produced. It's basically a print out of all of his articles. Yeah, I had that in paper. That's awesome. It was crazy and I appreciated it. It was really helpful back when I needed it. And the fact that he's still doing good work pleases me. I'm glad that he's doing that. Yeah. Yeah. Same here. Same here. Let's talk about something that Mueller brought up on yesterday's edition of the podcast. The Briefing that is briefing, not our podcast. We didn't have him in here. He, not yet. He's got other things that, that he's doing. He brought up this development in. Reproductive technology, if we can put it that way, where people are making the egg out of skin cells crazy. What do we think about that is he was not favorable about it. Is this something that we would look at and say, this is good. In a world of a lot of infertility out there, a lot of couples struggle with that. Something like this. Should we celebrate this as the church and say, okay, look, these couples might be able to have a baby because of this, or he made the point that. Infertility is not something that is infertility. He said it this way, is something that is, it's understandable to grieve over it, but not every. Pursuit of overcoming infertility is a good pursuit in overcoming fertility. He said it differently, more eloquently than I just did, but that was the gist of it. Paro, what are your thoughts on this new development where we can take a skin cell? Apparently now they haven't actually had a baby emerge from this process yet, but they've developed. The technology towards that end. What do we think about it? I can tell you what I think and I'm sure that we'll have our points of disagreement, which I think is helpful. Yeah. Often, not always, but often. I, man, I welcome the advance of technology. I think it's overall. A positive and net good for humanity insofar is that it is useful for the purposes of Christians doing what Christians are supposed to do to honor God, to glorify him, and to make his name great among the nations by spreading the gospel. I think technology generally allows us to do more of that and not less, I think about translation apps and even on the fly live translations that are now possible with Apple products. I can put earphones in my ear and I could talk to somebody in real time and have it translate for me what they're saying. I think that's phenomenal. So there's lots of advantages and benefits on the other side, technology is not. All gravy. There's lots of complicated scenarios that it introduces, such as to what degree should we use technology should how far should we divorce the normal relations that has to take place to produce a baby to help other couples along with someone with something like this. And I think we're so far down the track now I don't know where you stop. And I'm very concerned about what happens to. I don't know. I think I, if I remember him saying this, he talked about Taylor Swift having babies that she didn't know about. Other people having babies they don't know about. That's terrifying. And what that does for the child or the children that come from this kind of a, I don't wanna call it a union, but this kind of technology. Is mortifying. It's so far removed from God's intentions for how families are made and developed that it seems to me to be an almost entirely negative process unless you police it so well that there's no possibility of accidental babies being produced, or even more than that nefariously. Producing babies where someone doesn't have a right to say yay or nay. You just introduce so many different layers of complexity and ethical issues into this that even though I think it could be a good thing, I'm far more concerned about the negative repercussions for something like this. Yeah, I agree with you. Yeah I just I'm there and I think there's. Other realms of reproductive technology that are out there right now that, that are less controversial, that still create their own issues and problems. Even Christian couples thinking about pursuing IVF have to deal with the question of what about the embryos that are produced that aren't implanted? Or what about the doctor that says we're gonna put 12 embryos in and maybe two of them are gonna survive? You know that's. There's moral implications here of intentionally discarding life. Yeah. That that we have to be careful of and that's gonna happen with this technology as well. And I think Molar made the point of we're starting with skin cells, but how long until we're using, we're going so far in using basically the parts of. Human beings and they're, they become a commodity, and we're producing, we're growing parts of babies to then try to make other babies out of that. Yep. You're just dealing with a nightmare of Frankenstein's monster kind of implications here going on. And I'm with you, the nefarious means and then also just the spiritual component of the conception of a child that is there, that is part of God's design that I wonder if we're bypassing that. That, not that those that are born with through reproductive technology don't possess a soul. I'm not arguing that at all, but I'm saying there is something that God designed to be a spiritual component of having children. And when we take that into a laboratory, I can't help but feel like we're evading that. We're bypassing that. Oh yeah. To some extent. Oh yeah. Yeah, there are Christian couples who have gone about pursuing, for example, IVF in a very godly way. They've said We're only gonna produce as many as we're gonna implant and we're not gonna implant 12. We're gonna implant two. Yeah. And we're gonna pray that God gives us two babies. Yeah. And they've done and they've had kids from that. And God is blessing that. And those kids can grope and follow Jesus just like any other child has the opportunity to. We're not saying that this is all bad but. It just opens a door of Pandora's box that we've gotta be careful about the implications of, for sure. And scientists, it's one of those age old statements they don't ask, they don't ask if they should do something. They just ask us they can. And asking if you can do something is not the same thing is asking whether it's right and good. That's where you start to get into territory, where the theologians should be working alongside scientists who are advancing fields of study like this and perhaps adding breaks. Where for them it's all gas because there's often questions that they're asking that have nothing to do with the ethics behind it. They're asking questions of. Can we do it and will it make us money? There's of course, parties involved that are supporting this research and supporting the use of it because they have, I don't want to say it's only money, but there's certainly a large impetus behind them to say we wanna make a lot of money. Yeah. This is one way for us to do that. And I would agree that's probably true, but they're not thinking like theologians, they're not thinking like Christians. They're just thinking like businessmen and women who are trying to make a buck. And I know that's overstating and oversimplifying it. But it's not altogether untrue. Yeah. And some of the frightening aspects of that is a lot of them are trying to be first to accomplish this. And anytime we're rushing and we're dealing with human life that, that's not a good equation either. And the reason why is because we believe that all people whether they're made in a laboratory or whether they're made in the normal means that God designed, possess the. Image of God and therefore they are specifically distinct and noble creatures that God has designed for his purposes. And we don't have the privilege of doing what we want with them. God alone possesses the ability to say, I wanna do this, I wanna do that. I wanna have them be born in this particular way, this particular time. The closer we get to doing what God does, the more uncomfortable I become with that. Now you could say that about everything really. Yeah. You could talk about any advancement of technology and say you're playing God if you do this pacemakers. Exactly. Exactly. You keep someone alive on a machine, you're playing God. And there are of course times that do that, which again comes back to my concern for the ethical consideration of the things that we're doing. And often technology is not asking those questions. We're asking entirely different questions and therefore getting different answers. Yeah. I'm saying as Christians, we need to think more carefully about that. I would agree. Let's think carefully about God's word. We only have one chapter today, so we had a little bit of an extended opportunity for some googly at the front end. Hopefully it was productive for you. But we are in Matthew chapter two for our DBR. So Matthew chapter two, familiar passage around Christmas time. We're hear about this passage a lot. We're dealing with the wise men from the East, the Magi, and they're gonna come to visit the child, Jesus. And we say that because it's been a, it's been some time. It is been a couple years now, and they're not coming to Bethlehem, they're coming somewhere else. They're not coming to the major, they're not coming to the place of the site of the birth. But they're coming there, um, visit the Christ child. And I guess they are coming to Bethlehem. I'm wrong on that. They're coming to Bethlehem, but they're not coming to the original birth site. And that's what I meant to say. So the wise men show up on the scene and they come from the east. Some people argue that they could have even come from Babylon. Or Babylonia in that part of the legacy of Daniel and the Jews living in that region, even after the exile are some of the reasons why they had access to these documents to suggest that this was going to happen. Some people wonder if this star is the star referred to in numbers 24 17. A star shall come out of Jacob and a scepter shall rise out of Israel. Maybe the wise men understood that and were interpreting the star that rose in accordance with that. Either way, they make this long journey. We assume there's three of them because there's three gifts. I'm okay with that. I'm not gonna sit here and say, throw away your three wise men or add six more, but we don't know. We don't know. We don't. There could have been more. Yeah, there's at least two. There's at least two. But why do you think Pastor Rod, that when they come and they ask Herod. Where we've come to, to see him who's born king of the Jews. I understand why Herod is troubled by that, but it says, Herod and all Jerusalem was troubled by this. And then I'm also amazed when they say where was he to be born? And Herod consults the religious leaders and the religious leaders say in, in Bethlehem, they knew. And here's the Wiseman saying we've come from afar because his star showed up and we're, we've come to visit the king of the Jews. Why wouldn't the Jews have been excited about this news? Yeah, I think there's every reason to see this in light of the rest of the gospel. They are largely opposed to this Messiah. And for a variety of reasons. John talks about them loving the darkness rather than the light. To as many as did receive him to, to them gave he the right to become children of God. There's lots of people that are biologically connected to Abraham's line, but are not spiritually connected to God. And I think this is just the beginning, the the introduction to the kind of resistance the Messiah would receive. The fact that all of Jerusalem is troubled tells me that I think they're more concerned about their political stability and their position as a nation than they are concerned about their spiritual position before God. Those are my two, 2 cents on that. What would you say to that? No, that's good. I, yeah, I hadn't thought of that. From the, their love of political stability over caring about what's right and men, we've gotta be careful about that as Christians too. We can't. Sit back and think, you know what we don't, we just want everything to consider to continue Republican and conservative and all the things and make it easy for us to be Christians here when really some of the times of the greatest explosion of growth in the church have been when the persecution has been turned up. And that's when God refines this church and true believers show up and the gospel does a lot of really powerful work. Yeah I think that's a good take on that. Yeah. Someone said recently and reminded me that it's been said throughout church history. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. Often we grow through persecution and not very much during times of abundance. And acceptance because we get spiritually lazy. And we start to let our foot off the gas. Whereas in under times of persecution, we are far sharper and we're more ready than we are otherwise. It just makes us men and women of prayer makes us men and women of the book. It really sharpens our senses. Yeah. And those of the world around us. I think af after nine 11 people felt so insecure and Churchill were packed. Yeah. Because the world was like, wait a minute, I don't feel safe anymore. Yep. The United States was like, wait a minute, we can be attacked. So yeah, contrast the response of the Jews and her to the response to the wise men when they saw the star, it says they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. Which reminds me of when the angels showed up to the shepherds and they said, I bring you good news of great joy. And so here again the good news of the gospel is met by the shepherds and by the wise men not by the religious elite, not by the people you would expect it to be met with exceeding joy, but by these outsiders. In fact, these are gentiles and they're re responding to this with exceeding and great joy. It's just. Emphasizing doubling up on the emphasis of how joyful they were over the appearance of this star. And they couldn't have even had the foggiest idea of the significance of the birth of this one other than the information they had through the prophecies that may have been left behind and. Here's the star and here's this baby. But it's interesting. The faith of the Wiseman is unique. It's gonna be fascinating to get to heaven and find out if these guys are there, I know church history holds that they went on and did more than this, and even records, I think some of their names for us. But it'll be fascinating to get there and see. What, did you know what was your takeaway from all this wise? Man? Did you know there it's verse five of that song? Yeah. I think it's really cool the gifts that they give 'em. I know sometimes there's been disagreements about the nature of the gifts and what they signify. Yeah. But I think there's something, at least to the gifts in that you could say, man, they're expensive gifts. They're meaningful gifts, and they show maybe a little more knowledge than what. We initially might think about them. At least they have some sense of, this guy is special, he's worth special gifts. And at least we can say that much, whether there's a sense of gold for kings. And what's the other one? Frankincense a burial, a burial fragrance. And what's the other one? Mer. I forget what the ME stands for, but there's different meanings ascribed to these different things, and they may or may not be right. We don't know ultimately but what we can say is that they recognize this guy as someone special. And that's pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah. Chapter two takes a turn after this because Herod doesn't want his throne challenge, and so he is seeking the death of this child king, that the Wiseman referred to the Wiseman leave because they're warned not to go back the same way. Here. Sends out an edict that all children two years and younger should be killed. And he ascertained that by when the Wiseman said the star first appeared. And that's what happens. And so meanwhile, Joseph is warned in a dream, Hey you gotta get Jesus and Mary and get outta here. And so they go down to Egypt and in so doing, they're gonna fulfill a prophecy from Hosea. Which said, out of Egypt, I called my son That was about Israel in the Old Testament. It's about Jesus here in the New Testament as it's applied to him. But. In the remainder of the chapter, there's a great slaughter of these children that takes place under Herod, and it's awful, and it's just a reminder of the depravity of the world into which Jesus was born. It's a reminder of the reason why Christ was needed. It's a reminder of the difference between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of man. Herod is the representative of the kingdom of man, and you've got Jesus the king of kings who's being born here, and the world is trying to do everything it possibly can to stop him from what he is. Has been sent to do, and that will be for the rest of his ministry, and they'll finally think they've stopped him when they put him into death only to realize they were playing right into the plan of God the whole time. That's right. People before have asked why if this has happened in. In biblical times why this wasn't recorded elsewhere. Some have suggested that this is an event that was made up in order to reinforce this kind of narrative about this special sun. And on it goes. And I think what's important to know here, and I have, we have no doubt about what the scripture's saying here, but what one thing that you should know is that Bethlehem was a small. Town. It was not large. It was not a metroplex of millions of people or even thousands. What we're likely dealing with here in terms of the number is probably dozens of people. And that's still a tragedy and it's still a massive slaughter and it's awful. But we're not talking about hundreds or thousands of young men and women we're talking about. We're talking about probably dozens. Again, given the predicted or the estimated size better said about Bethlehem. So that's one reason you probably haven't read about it Outside of other historical sources. Another observation about this is that the devil hates babies. Have you noticed that the devil. Loves to destroy the young. Yeah, I hate that. Yeah. And it that, that burns me up inside. But let's just make note here. This is one of the devil's strategies and tactics. He loves to destroy the image of God, especially in infant form. And we ought to hate it. We ought to be so opposed to this as to be working all that we can, as makes sense, as your conscience will suggest to you to find ways to protect the innocent and most vulnerable among us. And of course, there's a lot of parallels to today. How you see the devil who loves darkness and loves death doing the same stuff, his strategy hasn't changed a whole lot. Part of his strategy is to destroy the image bearers of God, and especially those in infant form. Yeah. That's a good observation. Yeah. The chapter concludes with. The death of Herod and the angel shows back up to Joseph and says, Hey, you can take Jesus. You can take Mary and go back. But they know that one of Herod's kin is ruling in Judea in place of his father. One of Herod's sons is ruling there, and so they go up to Galilee and again, this is just all seeing God's sovereign plan unfold because he's going to begin his earthly ministry up there. This you'll note, he went and lived in a city called Nazareth, and so that. Call back to John chapter one when Philip said, can any, or when Nathaniel rather said, can anything good come out of Nazareth? This is why they're in Nazareth, is because of this whole situation here. And so God is setting up the stage for a lot of Jesus' earthly ministry, which is gonna be done there in the region of Galilee in the north. And that all comes about because of the situation with her, the flight to Egypt, and then the ultimate return. There you go. One chapter today that's I think there's another one coming up in a week where we're only reading John Chapter five or something like that. I like that. Yeah. Yeah. Full breaks. But yeah, we've got a few more coming up and it's fun. It's fun to see in the gospels how the chapters all fit together. And again, remember this is an editor that's putting this together. This is not thus says the Lord. This is how the scriptures are to be read together. There's gonna be some things that we're gonna read and say, this could be a parallel account or could be a different account. But for the most part it's fun to read all these things in concert with one another and see how the different takes from the different authors are presented. Let's pray and we'll be done with this episode. God, we pray that you would preserve life and the love of life and the honor of life and the protection of the unborn God. Our nation has recently overturned Roe versus Wade. And we don't wanna be satisfied just with that. We want it to be abolished. We want abortion not just to be limited, but to be completely gone and not to settle for anything less than that God. And we pray that you'd be gracious to our country towards that end. We don't know. This is the beginning of a revival as a lot of people have been leaning in more towards the gospel and more towards Christ, and we've seen a lot happen right now in our nation. Lord we would love nothing less or nothing more than to see revival come to our nation. But Lord, we want your will to be done. We certainly know that it would take an act of a revival to see something like abortion abolished in our nation, but we do love the unborn and we know the enemy, as Pastor Rod was saying, hates the unborn. And so help us to fight for what is good, according to what you've declared to be good, and certainly life is good as you create more and more in your image. We pray that more and more would come to follow Jesus as a result. We pray this all in his name. Amen. Amen. Keep in your Bibles tune again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Bye bye.

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Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said