Hey everybody. Welcome back to a spooky edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Are we allowed to say happy Halloween? I wouldn't say happy Halloween just because I'm not really a big Halloween guy, but I'm not like convictionally opposed to somebody saying it. I always feel weird when the predecessor to whatever the holiday is. Happy, I mean, happy Halloween. I don't know. It's just odd. I don't say it 'cause I think it's weird sounding, but again, I don't have any convictions like you do. Or you don't? I don't, yeah. No, I mean, it's one of those weird cultural phenomenons and, and we talked about it I think a week ago or so, or Yeah, that's earlier this week. And our sending church does their fall fest on Halloween night, every single year. And they, they do that to provide an alternative so that kids can come to the church and get candy and be around the church and positive things rather than being out, you know, celebrating and dressing up as GULs and goblins and things. It. Also, on the flip side of that, it pulls us out of our neighborhoods on a night during the year when there's a lot of people that are out and about. So I know our family's planning on going around and knocking out some doors and getting some candy. Not that they need any more candy. After fall fifth, I saw how much Luke had, dude, he showed me his bag and. I think the bag might've weighed more than he did. I am just saying we, I think Amanda went around to all of the people and we're like, don't have pity on them because they're pastor kids. You can tell them No. In fact, have less pity on them because they're their pastor's kids. Well, that didn't work because I saw saw. I know, I know. So we're gonna go do that. Around the neighborhood and then we're gonna just come back and, and have a fire pit outside on our driveway and, and greet neighbors as they come by and pass out candy. So, yeah. And we're gonna, we're gonna go as well. We keep it pretty simple, low key, but yeah. We think it's worth, knocking on neighbor's doors and getting to know them a little bit. Yeah, I think it'll be good. So, yeah. Yeah. Egg some cars. Yeah. Teepe some trees. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Commit some. It's not COVID anymore. Misdemeanors. Toilet paper is reasonable. That's, you can, I remember during COVID it was like, you remember when we used to take this stuff and throw it on trees? Yeah. Yeah. That was crazy. It became more, more valuable than gold for a minute there. It did, man. It did. Hey, we do have a question that was written in and we, we addressed this a little bit here, but, this is on behalf of somebody who's in high school. And they wrote in, instead of if someone were to die for 10 minutes or any amount of time and then be brought back to life, what happens to their soul during that time? And the follow up to that is how do we understand the stories of people that have experienced coming back to life with more clarity? So how should we understand these things? I remember. Back in I don't know when it was, early two thousands probably. There was that book, heaven Is For Real. And it was written by the dad of this little boy who died and came back and purportedly, according to this dad told him all about what heaven is like and what Jesus is like. And so the dad wrote this book, heaven Is For Real. There were T-shirts I think there I, maybe there was even a movie. I can't even remember, but it's kind of the sensational thing that came out there. And I had students at that time, I was a, a youth pastor, and then even in college ministry, ask me, what do we do? Things like that. And, and I would kind of borrow the title of the book and say, heaven is for real. And then I'd follow it up with How do you know? And the answer is because the Bible tells me so. Right. I mean, that's it at the end of the day. Do people have out-of-body experiences when their heart stops and then they're brought back? You know, there's a lot of people, there's enough people out there that have said, yes, I had that experience. Yeah. I haven't had that myself, thankfully. Right. But there are lots of people who say that. Right. And based on that, I don't know who I am to sit here and say, no, you didn't, but. I think what makes me uncomfortable is two things. When people who have that experience look to profit off of it. Yes. Or off of their five-year-old little boy's experience. And then that's a red flag for sure. Yeah. And then the second thing is when people are putting more weight in this out of body experience than they are in what God tells us happens to the soul after we die. That's right. Right. And the Bible doesn't clarify this for us. It doesn't clarify it for us. So we don't have an. Absolute answer, right? I think there's things that we can experience that that may be legitimate. There's also things that are profitable on and you know, turned into salacious stories. Yeah. And we do know a couple things. We know, for example, that the Bible tells us to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Yep. Second Corinthians chapter four in five indicate that. When we, when we die here, we, we go to be with the Lord. And so that's when Paul is saying, whether we're at home or away, we make it our aim to please him at home, being here at home on Earth. But away is when we go to be with the Lord. We make it our aim to, to please him. And so we know that when, when a Christian truly dies, and I use the word truly there, that they're going to be with the Lord and. There are exceptions where somebody physically, biologically their, their body dies. They're going into cardiac arrest, their heart stops pumping, things like that. And, and it can be a prolonged period of time as well. And then they're resuscitated, right? And they come back to life. And I would look at that and say, okay, there's in the eyes of God, that was not their true death. Because they came back, they were resuscitated, they were brought back. In other words, God was not yet done with them here on Earth. So I think we have to be careful to. Normalize anything or draw any, you know, broad sweeping applicational points from these near death experiences because those are the exception, not the norm. The Bible's clear. When we die, truly die, our souls gotta be with the Lord. And then we await our resurrection bodies. So these people that have the near death experiences, some of 'em talk about a bright light, some of 'em talk about feeling at peace. There's others that go into more vivid detail. I don't know, but I'm not gonna anchor my hope and my confidence and my trust in what happens to us on their accounts. I'm gonna look at the Bible and say, the Bible gives us the, the teaching on what happens. Yeah. That's right. That's right. Yeah. And I mean, it would be great if we could hear an account of what Lazarus saw after Jesus called him out of the tomb. Well, you'll be able to someday. That's right. But not today. Right. Right. And so if that's you out there and, and you say, Hey. Look, I had one of those out-of-body experiences. I had one of those, you know what? Great. And that's great. I just would even for you say your hope in heaven can't be even that experience primarily, it's gotta be the word of God. It's gotta be, I believe that I'm gonna go and be with the Lord because the Bible tells me so. Because that's the more certain thing that we have to hold onto in situations and instances like that. All right. So anyways, all that to say have a good time tonight. If you're gonna go out and trick or treat, if you're gonna take your kids around, if you're gonna pass out candy, if you're gonna be involved, if you're gonna go hang out at somebody's house, it's Friday night. I don't even know. I, the world's here, I think starts back up. Maybe on Friday night. I don't know. The Dodgers are about to lose though. That's exciting. And maybe I'm gonna eat my words, but hey, I'm just saying that anytime, and even though it's Canada, I'm still saying, Hey, the Dodgers losing. That's a good day. That's a good day. I don't know. The Canadians winning gives me deep trouble in my soul, so. Well, you know, well. Although it was, yeah, whatever. I don't know mean I, have they ever won anything ever before? So maybe we should give this to them. I mean, maybe we should give it to 'em. They won like the battle of the pancakes. I don't know. We'll give it to them. Yeah. Who knows. Anyways Matthew 19, and Mark chapter 10 is our. Reading for today. So Matthew 19, we're talking about right outta the gates, a pretty controversial topic within the church, although I don't know that it needs to be as controversial as we make it out to be. And that is the subject of divorce. So Pastor Mark summarized for us, what do you think Jesus is teaching on divorce amounts to here in the first dozen or so verses of Chapter 19 I think we see clearly here that God hates divorce. Yes. And I use that word strongly intentionally. Tell my kids not to use the word hate unless it relates to sin. That's just something we do in our house. But I think it's a demonstration that God hates divorce. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, and so Jesus is teaching here and the crowds are following him. And, and so the Pharisees you'll note here, and we're gonna read quite a few times in the coming days about the Pharisees trying to trap Jesus. They, they are wanting to destroy him, and they know in order to destroy him, they have to have something to charge him with. So they're constantly sending more people to him to try to. Trap him in his words. And so they're gonna ask Jesus here, is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause? Some of the questions are, they're looking for the gotcha. Some of the questions are just looking to set the crowds against Jesus. They're looking to turn public opinion against him. So they're gonna ask this question, is it lawful to divorce a a man's wife for any. And Jesus responds and very plainly says this, and he gives God's definition of marriage right here. He says, the two verse six are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together. Let no one separate. So that's the standard right there. Unity, the, the union of husband and wife. And then they say in verse seven, well then why does divorce exist? Why did Moses allow for divorce here? Tell us that. And Jesus in a masterful turn here says something that's pretty astonishing. In verse eight, he says, he said to them, because of your hardness of heart, Moses allowed you to divorce your wives. But from the beginning it was not so. In other words, Jesus is saying this, God's plan from the beginning was that divorce would never happen, but because of your unwillingness to forgive is really what it amounts to here because of the hardness of your heart. Moses allowed in certain circumstances to. Allow for divorce to permit divorce. And then Jesus says in verse nine, the only exception clause that he gives there, he says, I say to you, whoever divorces his wife except for sexual immorality and marries another commits adultery. Yeah. Look how integral our design and God's intention of us being male and female is in the relationship it has to marriage. I mean, you cannot separate those things from, from this you see right. In, in verse four, him talking about us being made male and female, right? And then he talks about from the beginning, that is an integral part of this. And obviously you can get into questions of like the lgbtqia plus world when it relates to these things and what marriage is intended to be by God. But I just want you to make sure that you. See how important it is that marriage is part of our nature, it's part of our original design. It's part of who we were made as male and female. And one of the key things that God made us to relate to others with, specifically our spouse. Yeah. Yeah. Now, maybe you, you're. Throwing a flag here going, this sounds pretty harsh. I've heard that there's more than one exception to the rule that you can divorce the spouse in, in multiple situations. And number one, I wanna say this as believers committed believers in a marriage between two believers, we should never be saying how many exceptions are there to the rule here. Yeah, it's a good point. Yeah. Number two. There is, and you're right on that. In one Corinthians chapter seven, the Apostle Paul expands here and says that there's another occasion where somebody is free from the marriage relationship. And that is if, if an unbelieving spouse abandons them, if an unbelieving spouse does not agree to continue in the marriage, when you've got a believing spouse then the believing spouse is free from the marriage. There's debate there about whether or not that freedom permits the. Believing spouse to then go and remarry, or if they have the freedom to simply terminate the marriage and no longer be, be bound to them in that legal sense of the marriage relationship there. Jesus says here in Matthew, except on the grounds for sexual immorality, I think that is the only case where there is. A strong degree of confidence for us to say, if this has taken place, you can divorce and then you're free to remarry in that situation. But even then, we're still going to counsel towards reconciliation. And so if you are in a tough situation, tough spot in your marriage, number one, please get help. Yeah. Get counseling from your pastors. That's why we're here. We're not just here to preach to you on Sundays or for men's Bible study or, or anything like that. And we're here because we want to help you and shepherd you. So if your marriage is in a tough spot, come and meet with us. Seek counsel from your pastors, but know that we are going to fight for your marriage. No matter what that that is gonna be where we're gonna land. The majority of the time we're gonna fight for your marriage. That doesn't mean we're gonna keep you in a foolish situation. I know there's a lot of questions that come up with the, the safety of the spouse or the children involved. And if there's issues there, we're going to counsel you to take appropriate measures to make sure that you are protected and that you are safe. But we are always going to, because God does hate divorce and the love's marriage, we are always gonna say is this marriage salvageable? And really unless it's the immorality or the abandonment. I mean, God is telling us that, that it should be salvageable or man, this is gonna be about you. Coming to that reality of going, my marriage really isn't about me. It's about me honoring the Lord by being faithful to, to the roles that he's commanded and given to me for the rest of my life. And that's a hard thing. That's a sobering thing. We're even gonna talk about that a little bit this Sunday. 'cause Peter's instructing people to submit to. People who are in authority, who may be harsh or unjust. And I think there's something to say about marriage in that situation. But Jesus loves marriage. God loves marriage. We love marriage. And so I don't want you to shy away from coming to meet with us because you're afraid that, well, they're not gonna gimme the green light to divorce. I want you to come in and meet with us because we wanna help you. But I just want you to know under no false pretenses, we are going to fight for your marriage because we believe that God loves marriage. Yeah. And we. Hate divorce. I mean, because God hates divorce. We hate divorce. You can see the damage so abundantly in our culture, society, and even in the church today. Oh yeah. And it's a serious issue. And so we hate divorce. Not, I mean, hopefully someday we'll hate it as much as God does, but we hate it. We hate it. And we're not gonna, we're not gonna just casually let it happen. Because it's such a serious issue. Lemme ask you this. Why is it. The one exception. Why is sexual immorality the one exception? Yeah, it's going back to the two, becoming one flesh. I, I believe it's, the clearest perversion of that that exists is when you leave that and go and join yourself to another. I mean Paul even talks about in acts of sexual immorality being, joining the Holy Spirit, in relationships that are not God honoring. So I think that's why, that's the exception clause. It's the greatest. Again, perversion, undermining of God's design for marriage. That really exists out there. Now I wanna come back here. When you hear us say We hate divorce I want to clarify. If you've been divorced or you're in that situation, we don't hate you. That's right. That's right. We love you. And there's a place for people in the church, whether you're coming outta that or you're coming outta alcoholism or you're coming out of something else like that. The church is a place for grace and forgiveness. And there's different standards, even for somebody who went through these things as an unbeliever versus somebody who goes, who chooses to pursue these things as a believer you're a new creation in Christ. And so there's a lot of. Layers to all of this, it is multifaceted in that regard. But man, we do love marriage and, and we are gonna fight for marriage and we are gonna love you and your spouse through that process. And we're gonna call sin sin and we're gonna call for repentance and we're gonna seek the wellbeing and physical wellbeing and safety of tho all those involved. But man, we love marriage and we're gonna fight for marriage because gal loves marriage. That's right. And I'm glad you bring that clarification up 'cause I, I, that is an important thing to. Make sure that you know it's also true that god loves you. God has died on the cross to, yes, to solve these problems, right, to solve the problem of sin, that causes divorce. And God, God loves you. He doesn't love your sin, but he loves you believer enough to go to the cross to die for, for the, the cost that these things are that you experience if you're divorce in your life. Yeah. Yeah. The rest of Mark chapter 19 is very similar to what we read yesterday. He does talk about childlike faith there, which again, we covered that Pastor Mark. And so your, kids, men pastor duties are are. Our boxes checked there. And then he talks about the rich young ruler, which again, just as a reminder, Jesus is pressing on his idol. Yes. And so if this was somebody that wasn't wealthy, but somebody who had a different idol, Jesus would've said, you need to go and do this. And you would've gone after that idol in that man's life. It just happened that this man's idol was wealth. The disciples are astonished at, at this, by the way. They're shocked who can, who can enter in because they looked at. Those that were wealthy is those that had incurred the favor of God, that God had blessed them. And so that's why they were wealthy. That's why they had possessions, especially the Pharisees and some of the others. They would look at those things and say, okay, well then somebody with wealth, clearly the hand of God's favor is upon their life. They must be okay. And so I think that's some of their astonishment here. Yeah. And, and we need to not miss the application on our own lives. Maybe it isn't that we literally have to sell our possessions, but we do need to have hearts that are. Eager, ready to leave everything. Yeah. Whatever it is. Whatever it is in our lives, we need to be eager and ready to follow Jesus at any cost. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Mark chapter 10, as we flip over to our next chapter for today. A lot of this is, is parallel. What's interesting here is when Jesus gives the. The, the charge, he does not give the exception clause a sexual immorality, and that's just of note in verses 11 and 12. He says whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. So there's no exception clause given here in Mark's account. We know the exception clause was there because of Matthew's account. Matthew was there. He was an eyewitness, an ear witness, if you will. Mark is using Peter's account. And so for whatever reason, Peter didn't relay that as a qualifier there for mark, but if you're looking at this going, why isn't the exception clause here, but it's there. It's also reiterated and confirmed for us in one Corinthians chapter seven. So we know that this was part of Jesus' teaching about divorce and remarriage because it was there. It's, it's in those, those other locations. We have the childlike faith. We've got the rich young ruler in Mark chapter 10. And, and then we get to another one of Jesus's statements about his impending death. And, and again, I think the disciples are being kept from this because they would've, they would've drawn their swords and charged the castle at this point to, to protect Jesus. And so I think they're being kept from understanding so that they don't overly interfere with God's plan and his his hour. That is for Jesus to eventually go to the cross. But right on the heels of this, you, you get tone deaf James and, and, and John. This bold request, can we sit at one at your right hand, one at your left? And, and this is bold. When you consider that Jesus has just been talking about dying and the first shall be last and the last shall be first. And then the other disciples, they're not any better off because they find out that they're asking for this and they're incensed. And so their own pride shows up. And so then Jesus corrects them and, and goes after them and goes after their heart. He says, look, it shouldn't be like this among you. This you're acting like the world rather. Whoever wants to be first must be the servant or slave of all. For even the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. So that that paradigm of following in Jesus' example that way. Yeah. What an amazing, amazing thing. And you know. It just shows the, the disciples who, you know, we constantly expect to have some sort of upper hand on these things, just getting these things wrong and, and frankly embarrassing themselves. They don't have the Holy Spirit. That's part of it, but. Also you know, they, they're, this, these things are new to them in a way that they probably shouldn't be. So I think, you know, Christian, we need to, one, rely on the Holy Spirit, which is a gift that we have to, to not make these sort of blunders, but also to you know, we, we need to. Take this as an example. We need to hear these stories, see these things that were said by the disciples, and be cautioned to not do those same things in our own lives. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, and Mark chapter 10 ends with the story of a blind Bartimaeus. And what's interesting in this one, and, and maybe you noted this, but Matthew records two blind men but Luke and Mark only record one, and Mark gives us his name as, as Bartimaeus here and. There may be a, a concern there to say, well, why are the numbers different? And this is, is similar to the Demoniacs and we, we talked about this when it came to the Demoniacs, that there was probably a spokesman that if there were two demoniacs in the land of the gne, then one of them was the one speaking to Jesus. And that's why in, in one of the accounts, it's only the one that is there in speaking to Jesus. And I think that's probably the same thing here. There may have been two blind men and I don't think we need to doubt Matthew's record of this, but. The one, and that's the one that stood out here to Luke and to Mark as they were recording this, the one is the one that spoke and, and he's his name, theirs is Bartimaeus. And he says, you know, we wish to see rabbi, I wish to see. And Jesus says to him, your faith has made you well. And then from that day on, he went to go and, and follow him. So I don't think we need to panic over whether or not there was one versus two. I think this is similar to the healing of the, the, the democ there. This is the one that. Is, is the spokesman. It's also possible that this is similar to the, the 10 lepers. Jesus healed the 10 lepers and only one came back to him to say thank you. The, and Jesus said, where the other nine? So perhaps there were two. But in the healing process, the, the other one didn't express the same devotion to Christ that Bartimaeus does. And Bartimaeus is the one that's going to end up joining Jesus and, and following him as part of his band as a result of this. Yeah, I think one temptation might be to say like, oh, these are just different accounts. You know, on a casual reading you might just be like, oh, there's discrepancies. These are just different accounts. I think that's a difficult place to, to suggest given the textual criticism that is done on these, I think they are the same. Account details. Yeah, the details of the text. Yeah. The details are clear. They're going to Jericho and all the accounts. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Yep. Yeah. But, and I think we talked about it before, this is such a, a good microcosm of the gospel here. The, the blind needing only what Jesus can give and that is the, the spiritual side that we need. And he gives the physi physical side here. Yeah. And it's the faith that has made him well, yeah. Yeah. Yep. Alright, well there you go. You're all Bible up. So now you can go out. And you can knock on doors and ask for candy and not worry about anything happening. That's right. And if, if you go blind because you ate so much candy, I got a solution for you. Well, we're not, oh, that's not how that works. Yeah, no, we're, we're cessationists. We're cessationists on that one. So of course not jest. Of course I jest. But yeah. No, and, and we don't mean to make too much light of, of Halloween. I know there are people with very strong convictions on that. And if, if this is an area where your conscience doesn't allow you to participate in this because you believe it's it's participating in, in the darkness and things like that, then by all means do not sin against your conscience. And that's, that's totally fine. There's no problem with that whatsoever. I would caution you though, against looking at any believer who does participate and say, well, they're in sin for doing that. That's where we get into the problem of the weaker brother and applying what is something that's a matter of conscience for us. That may not be a matter of conscience for somebody else, and that's not. Explicitly stated right or wrong in the Bible, we gotta be careful on that. So we do recognize that, that for some, this is a, a day of the year that is verboten and this is, we just want to go to bed and get through it. And I understand that. And that's fine. But if you do choose to be outside and, and be around other people tonight, try to make it redemptive. Try to point them to Christ. In fact, invite them to church. Friday night, we got Sunday right around the corner. What a great time to be able to say, Hey, what are you doing on Sunday, by the way? We'll give you more candy if you show up. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Alright y'all, let's pray in then what we're done with this episode. God thinks for Your Word and for just the encouragement of being able to read it. And Lord, we are grateful for the gift of marriage. I think everybody listening can, can say that that marriage is a good thing, whether we're married or not. And marriage is, is a good thing. It's the foundation of, it's the, the cornerstone of culture and society at large. And we know that marriage has been under attack for so long in our culture and our society, and I think we're suffering as a result of that. But I pray that as the church we would be different. I pray that as a church, especially with us at Compass Bible Church, you would give us strong godly marriages, Lord, that, that are thriving and growing and where. Forgiveness is quickly offered and, and receipts are not kept, and where we can continue to build into what is a, a relationship that's meant to model Christ's relationship with the church. And so we thank you so much for the opportunity to do that. And we pray by your grace and your mercy that you would en enable us to have just a strong, strong church full. Godly marriages that, that are doing great things for the kingdom. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Keep in your Bible. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Bye everyone. Bye.

​Well, thank you for listening to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast, folks! We're honored to have you join us. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about our Church at compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review, to rate, or to share this podcast on whatever platform you're listening on, and we hope to see you again tomorrow for another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. Ya'll come back now, ya hear? Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said