welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast and a happy St. Pat Tuesdays Day to you. Yeah, if you, that's pretty good, man. That was pretty, I was gonna say it. I was gonna say it for all of us. Wow. That was so good. You should be an actor. Ooh, man. Gee, was that snap was that you breaking your arm? Pat you on the back, yourself? On the back? Oh man. No, it was okay. I'm sure anyone who's actually Irish is like, dude. I'm offended. They're probably more offended about that than I'm offended about street tacos on your part. The Irish shirt, or at least as offended, are an interesting group because it's like one day a year that you find out that people are Irish and it's this day. Outside of that, I don't feel like anybody's really going around boasting and being Irish. Well, I have some fun news for you. My 23 and Mes, I'm also part Irish. Of course. You're Of course, you're, I'm just kidding. I Is there anything you're not? I, no, no, no. I'm a, I'm a, I'm a man of the nations here. Apparently. Apparently Native American, Jewish, that for sure. Yep. All those things. Yeah. And Irish. And Irish might as well. I don't know if I could substantiate that with the data, but I'm just gonna assume it. Okay. Given that amazing. Dialect that is pulled outta nowhere. It was quite inspiring. I mean, come on. Yeah. Happy St. Patrick's Day. What is St. Patrick's Day? Do we, should we celebrate it? Should we start drinking? Do we wear green? Do we wear orange? What's the deal here? So St. Patrick was a missionary to Ireland and he is commendable for that, for taking the gospel there. But. As with any saint, there's a lot of extra stuff that's been added to his story and his legend and myths that have been introduced and other things like that. So I think it's worth saying, Hey, we want to, we wanna honor people that do the work of the Lord. In fact, we have our own missionaries. We have the UBank that are we training right now and getting ready to be sent. And we should remember them. We should honor them. We're not gonna have St. Garrett and St. Kirsten's Day though. Why not? Well, you know, I like that idea, and I guess that's an important distinction in the Protestant church. We don't canonize anybody. And that's what it means to be a saint to canonize them, is to hold them up and say that they're worthy of the honor and reverence of the church in a special way, in a distinct way. And there's different. Approaches to that, different perspectives, but one of the most egregious is when we begin to look to Saints to help us as believers here with our, especially with our prayer life. A lot of times the Catholic church will deny that they pray to saints, but what they'll say is they'll say, the saints. Aid their prayers. They carry their prayers to Christ. And so sometimes when they say, when we pray to, for example, Mary we are saying a Hail Mary and we are asking her to carry our prayers to the son we would reject that outright as Protestants because we believe that the book of Hebrews clearly says that we have access to the throne of grace to find mercy and grace to help and time in need. We don't need anyone else to intervene. So when we look at somebody as a saint that's a lot of times there's more to it than that. But that's one of the. The key things that we as Protestants would throw a flag on and say, wait a minute, that's not okay. We're gonna say that's not biblical. Even that, that's anti-biblical what you're doing there. Mm-hmm. Patrick didn't ask to be made a saint and so a lot of these people didn't ask this when Mary, and I don't know how much she's aware of right now in the presence of God, but if Mary was aware of what the Catholic Church was doing, she would not be happy with the Catholic Church venerating her the way that they do, calling her a emrex, that she's somehow a participant in the reactive redemption alongside Christ. She would outright reject that as ungodly and unworthy of the teaching of the church. So. Yeah. Honor St. Patrick for what he's done as far as being a missionary. That's good. That's something to celebrate. If you wanna wear green, wear green wear orange. Sure. I guess orange is acceptable as well. The drinking thing. Yeah. That's a different conversation. I don't know if that one fits the parameters of the podcast here. What does St. Patrick think? What does Patrick of Ireland think about the fact that people gets lost on his birthday? Probably not much. Or his day. I don't think it's his birthday. Yeah, I don't know that that fits. I'm not sure where that came up. I'm sure. Here's the thing, we in America are pretty strict about our. Alcohol consumption. It's one of those things that still, I think, taboo. It has a fundamentalist background where for a long time the conservative church was very much opposed to it because of the implications. Scripturally we don't say that alcohol is inherently bad. We can say that scripture is replete. That it's in fact he tells Paul, tell sympathy, take a little wine for your stomach. Yep. Your stomach is hurting. Take some wine. So we're for what scripture is for, but we're not, for what? Scripture is not for either, which is drunkenness. And so if you are one to drink something in honor of St. Patrick be sure you know who he is. That'd be a good thing. And secondly, don't get drunk. Here's something interesting that comes from a little AI research on the drinking connected with, oh, is it hallucinating? I if I trust it? Nope, because March 17th falls during lent. The church historically granted a one day exception from the usual lent and restrictions including fasting from alcohol. So feasting and drinking became part of the celebration of St. Patrick's Day. Oh. Yeah. I see. Okay. I get that feasting and drinking. That goes together. But again yeah, this gets complicated. You are not allowed to be drunk as a Christian. Right. That's for sure. And again, where that line is only, it's in your heart. You'd have to discern for yourself where that line is. But feasting there is a time to feast and that there, there is good seasons to do that, but even feasting can turn into a sin called gluttony if it's not moderated with the kind of spirit that Christ gives us with self-control, with love, with what the desire to do good to the Lord and to even honor him as you feast, right? So if you're one of those people great. I guess just be careful with. Yeah. Yeah. It seems that it, it evolved into, or devolved, I should say, into what it is today because Yeah. Then bars capitalized on it and they were like, oh, discounts, special discounts on St. Patrick's Day, which, yeah, if you're wearing green and improves, you know, or increases the likelihood that people are gonna drink more and Right. So anyways, that's a little bit on St. Patrick. So happy St. Patrick's Day. Wear your green. Otherwise you're gonna get pinched by somebody. Are you gonna do that? I'm not. You're not. You're not. Alright. No, but. Somebody might, Hey, let's do our daily Bible reading today. Deuteronomy 29 through 30 in March 16, Deuteronomy 29 through 30 in March 16th. Deuteronomy chapter 29, mark, not March. Mark. Mark, did I say March? March 16th. March 16th. It's not March 16th is it? I think it's March 17th on Sunday. I just preached about covering love, covering a multitude of offenses. It's March 17th today. I feel like that could have been one that you just covered over. 'cause I don't think anybody believes. I think that there's a Book of March podcast. There are people are looking for the book of March announcing, where is it? I don't have it. Bible Pastor Fu has a different book. Anyways Deuteronomy 29. There's the covenant renewal here. Now we don't have the the Modic Covenant. In our vernacular as far as Christians go, we've got the Mosaic covenant, but we don't have this one singled out. And why do we see it here? And I think the answer is because we find in verse 12, so that you may enter into the sworn covenant of the Lord your God, which the Lord your God is making with you today, that he may establish you as the people and that he may be your God as he promised you, as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac and Jacob. So this is a new generation. So Moses is renewing the covenant with them because they were. Children at best during the original giving of the law, during the original days of Sinai. And so here, the covenant is gonna be renewed because this is a new generation. And so they are entering formally into this covenant here with the with the Lord. Yeah. One of the things that I like here is in verse 18 because it, it sounds a lot to me, like Hebrews three 12 and 13. Mm-hmm. In verse 18, he says, beware lest there be among you, a man or woman or clan or tribe whose heart is turning away today from the Lord our God, to go and serve the gods of those nations. Beware lest there be among you a root bearing, poisonous and bitter fruit. And so he continues on saying, look, you gotta look out not only for you. But for everyone else around you, you are responsible to make sure that there isn't anyone in your tribe or your clan who's pursuing other gods. Hebrews three 12 and 13 says. To be aware, unless there be in any of you, an evil unbelieving heart leading you to fall away from the living God, but exhort one another every day, as long as it is called today, so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. You see, it sounds similar to what we have here in Deuteronomy 29, which tells me. This is the heart of God. This is not just what he's saying to them, although it is unique to them. He's also saying this to us. You have a responsibility to keep an eye on your brother and your sister in the Lord, to guard them against this kind of decept deceitfulness and this kind of straying from faithfulness. To Yahweh, and I think he described some of what that looks like, which is still a threat today. When he continues In verse 19 he says the person who in his heart says, I shall be safe, though I walk in the stubbornness of my heart. He says, this will lead to the sweeping away of moist and dry. Like the Lord will not be willing to forgive him, but rather the anger, the Lord in his jealousy will smoke against the man. This is the person that, that attends church, that shows up, that goes through the motions, but all the while has. A life of sin that they are keeping back from the Lord and they think to themselves, it's okay. I can have my cake and eat it too. I can have one foot in the world and one foot in Christianity, and at the end of the day, God will be fine because at least I was, at least I showed up on Sundays. At least I read my Bible. God is gracious. Yeah. And that's what he's warning against here. That's explicitly the person who says, I'm safe. Even though they're still harboring a stubborn heart, God wants all of us, not just part of us. And that doesn't mean perfection, but that it means, and we've talked about this recently, that persistent mentality like David in Psalm 1 39 to say, Lord, turn me inside out. Shake me out so that I can find any sin or rebelliousness or stubbornness that is, is in my heart that I might get rid of it. And so this is a warning that is one that is sobering and it's good for us to remember as well. We also tend to highlight this verse, although probably outside of it's specific. In immediate context. So can you talk us through then verse 29? This is, we're at the end of his speech to the Israelites. He's renewing the covenant and then he says in verse 29, almost seemingly outside of everything else, he says, the secret things belong to the Lord our God. But the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. Yeah. The secret things I agree with you. We do take it outside of the context and we say man's sovereignty, God's responsibility, or God's sovereignty, man's responsibility. Wow. Strike that Inverse. March 17th. 17th. Yeah. The secret things belong to the Lord and yet I do think that's the heart here. The things beyond the knowledge of man, the things that aren't ours to know, the things that are, that belong to the purview of God and his administration, those are things that are his, they're not ours to know, but what we do know. What we do have, the things that are revealed, those things belong to us and our children forever, and those are sufficient for us to give ourselves over to for the rest of our lives. We're not gonna get to the place to say, okay, God, we've majored on all of the revealed things. Can you give us some more? Can you give us the secret things now? We've got enough there to take up the rest of our lives and studying those things and being accountable, those, to those things. Even kind of what Peter says when there, he says, there's in the scriptures everything necessary for life and godliness. I think that's some of what he's after in Deuteronomy 29 29. Right. It seems like the first part of 29 is kind of the minor key. It's not the main thing. Sometimes we take it that way because we're trying to make a point that there's things about life and creation and all sorts of things that God has just chosen not to tell us. But what he is saying here is that there's things that you have questions about Israel. I understand that. But I've told you what I want you to know, and that is sufficient so that you can be obedient. And I think he says the same thing to us today. There's questions that we all have about God, about bible, about people, about all sorts of stuff, and yet God says, I haven't told you those things. There's things that I only know, and that's okay. Trust me, you have sufficient information to operate, to live and to be faithful. Second Peter, chapter one. Now all things that pertain to life and godliness you're aware of. You have the Bible, you have the spirit. Get to work. Yep. Chapter 30, he is gonna talk about the future for Israel. That's gonna involve their repentance. He's already talked, we mentioned this back in chapter 28, about the threats, the curses for disobedience. Some of those being exile. And he alludes to that again here where he says that they will be scattered among the nations. Well, if you return to the Lord. So if there's genuine repentance then the Lord is gonna gather them again. And he talks about gathering them in from the. Uttermost parts of heaven, verse four. So I think there's gonna be both the near and the far fulfillment in this, the near being, what happens after they're exiled to Babylon, but also the far term being what we're still anticipating for Israel in the future. And that is that God will restore them once again. That they will still be a nation, that will be His people, that they're gonna dwell in Jerusalem, millennial kingdom ideology coming through as well. So I think there's a near and. And far fulfillment that is in view in chapter 30 as well when it comes to repentance and the promises of God. Absolutely. Because we look at verse six, this is one of those recurring themes in scripture that we have to say, this is pointing us to the New Testament where God himself circumcised the heart, and this is what we would refer to as regeneration. Yeah. He makes us brand new. He makes us to be born again so that we can feel the way we should feel about God and toward God. And so absolutely. This is a. Now in near term, God's going to call them back to himself. He wants them to do that, but ultimately it's not gonna be sticky until the circumcision of the heart really takes place. And even then, I guess I should qualify that because there is real faith and that real faith is a kind of circumcision. But it really isn't the whole thing. It looks forward to the full thing under the new covenant. Yeah. The second half of chapter 30 is just one of those moments where Moses is looking at this next generation saying, okay, this is it. Now it's time. It's time to draw the line in the sand and to decide. He says. Famously there, I've set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore, choose life. Choose life for you today and for your family, for your household. In fact, we're gonna get it. Joshua. Joshua says, in, in early on, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. So that's the call that Moses is giving the people to of Israel here. Towards the very end of his life, he doesn't have much more time with them. He's saying, I've laid it all out. Now's the time to make a decision. Yeah. At the top top of my Bible, I guess I should say, in verse 11 through verse 14, he says something that confused me at least a while ago. It says here the word is not too far off, neither, or it's not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It's not in heaven that you should say, who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us that we may hear it and do it. Neither is it beyond the sea that you should say who will go over. The sea for us and bring it to us that we may hear and do it, but the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart so that you can do it. I think the point here is that the word is accessible and it's reasonable. You don't have to we just got done reading the secret things belong to the Lord, but what he has told us is sufficient. It is sufficient enough to be accessible to you. The Bible is hard and we haven't hidden that. We've made that clear. We do believe that the Bible is hard because of somebody. The cultural factors and the fact that it's written so long ago, we just have to do a lot more homework to get the sense of it. But beyond that, God is encouraging us and Paul's gonna repeat this same theological argument in Romans chapter 10. He's gonna pull this outta Deuteronomy 30 and say, this is same idea. It's not too hard. It's not too far. The word is accessible and reasonable. Give yourself to it and it will open up wonders to you if you stay with it. Let's get over to Mark chapter 16. Mark. Mark, mark. Not March. Mark with a K, not with a C. Mark. 16. Verses one through eight, which appears to be what the original context was. Why are you, okay, go ahead. I'll just let you do it and then I'll, and then I'll be the belligerent person. But you'll see why here in a second the resurrection account. So Mary Magdalene married the mother of James Salome brought spices so that they might go anoint him. So they show up at the tomb expecting to find the body there as they had probably done with other members of their own families or kin that had passed away and died. Remember, death was something that was very. Very much a part of their daily activities that much more so than it is for us today. When somebody dies today in our lives, they go to the mortuary. They go to be prepared by somebody else. That was the job of the family here. And so they're going to do something that perhaps they had done multiple times before. They're going to expect the body, they show up at the tomb. The, they're even asking on the way who's gonna take the stone away from us? And when they get there, the stone is the least of their problems. It's gone. And they enter the tomb and inside they see a young man sitting on the right side dressed in a white robe. This appears to be an angelic being. And he says, do not be alarmed. You see Jesus of Nazareth who is crucified. He has risen. He's not here. See the place where they laid him and then he gives them instructions. Go and tell his disciples, Peter, that he's going be and Peter, that he's going before you to Galilee. There you'll see him just as he told you. And then verse eight, they went out and fled for trembling and astonishment and seized them, and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid. Period. Now that. Doesn't feel like a great ending to a book. Nope. And that's why at least it's speculated that we have verses nine and following, and it is such that people suggest or argue that there were scribes that made an addition to the end of the gospel mark believing either that we lost a portion of it. At some point in time, or that it needed to be rounded out at some point. And so once it creeps into one manuscript, then that manuscript tradition or family is going to begin to multiply itself. And that's why it's still here in your Bible state. Just like in John eight, there are old manuscripts that contain this, but the stronger manuscripts, and that's why it's bracketed out here, don't contain this longer section of mark. It seems like this was a scribal edition. And the scribe probably did it in order to try to provide some sort of closure that he didn't feel like was there, because it looks like the, it's just an abrupt ending period, end of story done. And yet most of the manuscripts that we would say are more trustworthy don't include it. But there's enough there that we leave it in our Bibles nonetheless. Why do we have it in our Bibles then? If we. Suspect. We don't believe that this is authentic to the original manuscript. Part of the reason is, again, the same reason why we still have Social security. It's a broken system, and yet nobody wants to be the guy that kills it in the end. And so I think there's a hesitance from any of the editors of the Bibles to all of a sudden take this out because tradition has held it in for so long. Yeah. They're gonna bracket it off and say, look, our best guess, our best evidence says that this is probably not original, but nobody wants to be the first guy to be like, and we don't have it in our Bible. Explain. Then for those who might just be questioning in themselves, what does it matter that some of the earliest manuscripts don't include it? And it just says some of the earliest manuscript. Does that mean that there are others that do, and can we be sure that this isn't part of the Bible? Yeah. The earliest manuscripts are typically viewed as the stronger manuscripts because of their age and especially when we find additional text, the addition of text or longer readings are less likely to be there in the earlier ones than they are in the later ones because it's less likely for ascribed to intentionally take something out that was there previously. Than it is for the scribe to add something in. So scribal additions, sometimes they were even put in the margins. As these scribes are copying the manuscripts, they're not intending them to become part of the manuscript tradition. They're put in the margins. They're scribal notes, similar to a commentary that we would provide that are then at some point in time, added in as though this was part of the original text there. I'm not saying that's what happened here. But sometimes the scribes would add things. They were less likely to take something out that was there previously. So that's one of the reasons why we would say it's likely the shorter manuscripts earlier on are the more accurate manuscripts than the longer ones that we see later on. If that's the case, then we have to suspect that for a lot of Christians or years verses nine through 20 were scripture. They understood it that way. They received it that way. Does it? Does that become scripture then, or is it just that they thought it was and they were mistaken? Why would God allow that? So I can see someone else asking, and this is related to some of the questions that we had about other ver other passages in verses, why would God allow A, B, C, and D? Why is this not you 100% perfect, like a Xerox copy answer some of those questions that people might be asking of themselves. I think in some ways, we look at it. Akin to the passage in John eight. We have to look at it and say, is there anything that is contrary to doctrine or scripture or truth in this longer ending that we would say we can't allow for this to be authoritative in any stretch or any circumstance here. And I think the answer that we have to have is no. There's some things in here that we would say as Christians, okay, like the handling of the poisonous serpents and things and is that really what are we, should we apply that today? And there are some people that do that. There are some Appalachian churches and others. You'll see snake handling and they're taking that from a passage like this. But I would even say, okay. If Jesus gave those instructions, then I would put that in concert with what we look at, with the healings that took place in the early church, that there were some miraculous things that early church was enabled to do. The message being validated by some of these things, the messenger, and the messenger being validated by some of these things without making them. Principles for us to apply to the church. So I think we can read the end longer ending of Mark cautiously Understand there's nothing here that denies the deity of Christ. There's nothing here that undermines anything about our faith. There's nothing here that contradicts other passages in scripture. We just need to treat it carefully like we do that passage in John eight with the woman count in adultery and say, I don't know that we can with confidence, say thus says the Lord. So we just need to be careful about what we glean from it. That's really helpful. And even, I guess it helps us to say we can appreciate it and be thankful and read it. But we don't want to rely on anything in verses nine through 20 to say, I'm gonna build my theology off of this clear passage of scripture. And you shouldn't do that with anything that we have any doubts about. Again, the woman caught in adultery and the second ending or the second half of Mark 16 are both the best examples. 'cause they're the, those are the largest examples of. Textual inundations that we think are additions to the text, right? And because of that, we don't use them to say, because of that verse in Mark 16 verse 18, this Sunday we're gonna pick up serpents. Guys, if you trust the Lord enough, you're gonna see that we do this and that. And again, some people do. We think that's not a helpful way to approach this because there is so much concern and caution over the, these last several verses, so that's great. Is there any reason that this should shake someone's faith? No. No. Again, I don't think so. Again, because when you read it and read it, we're not saying, don't read this. Stay away from it. There's something in here that's bad. Read through it and you'll note that there's nothing in there that would undermine your faith or give you pause. Whether this is part of the original or not part of the original, I think we can still have absolute confidence in the fact that our editors are careful enough with the text to set it off as saying, Hey, you need to know that this. Probably wasn't in the original manuscripts. That should give us confidence because they're willing to do that and they're not doing that with the whole Bible because the whole Bible is reliable. Right. What a good point. We, Christians can get nervous and scared when we see things like this, but it is such a mark in our favor that we are so committed to truth. Jesus taught us this, that we're willing to call ourselves out and say, look, here's an area that we're not sure we value integrity and truthfulness so much that we're even willing to point that. Those canons of integrity and truth at ourselves and say, okay, we're not sure about this, but we want you to know that Christians don't hide stuff. We're not gnostics. We don't believe in secret knowledge, which this, seeing something like this should give you confidence that we are committed as a people, as God's people, as Christ's people, to the value of truth in our churches. Well, let's pray and they'll be done with this episode. Lord, thanks for the reliability of your word and its faithfulness, its truthfulness and the trust that we can have in it. I pray that you'd build that confidence in our lives, but ultimately, Lord, that our faith would be anchored to you and who you are. So give us what a relationship with you, a genuine love for Christ. I pray that the word of God would stir our affections for you, Lord, that we would be moved closer to you in how we. Pursue you, even just in our own prayer lives. God, that is such an important part that is a handmade to our time in the Word is to also pray at the same time and to pray in response to your word. And so God, I just ask for that. I ask that we would draw near to you through this time in your Word, each and every day that we spend together and spend as a church. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Keep bringing the Bible y'all and tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible podcast. Please and thank you. Bye.

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