Hey everybody, but welcome back to a Sunday edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello, A Sunday in-person at Church edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. I was unsure at first whether or not we'd make it to church in person. I know you had a throat tickle and you were warning people. Maybe that's not gonna happen after all. It's a shot in the dark. Guys, we don't know if we're gonna do church. I am feeling the tickle in my throat. That is what I said. Word forward. That's the implication I got at least. No, my voice is strained though. Even as we're recording right now on Saturday, I am to hear it all. I can get through. I can't hear it at all. And normally because I'm so used to your voice. Yeah. 'cause you talk all the time. Yeah, all the time. I can hear. The most subtle nuances in your voice. Okay. Right now it sounds perfectly fine. Well, good. I'm intentionally not straining as I'm talking. Okay, well good. I'm reserved. You picked that up. I had save the energy a meeting and then I had to record my loom twice 'cause I failed the first time. And now I'm recording. Podcast. How did you fail? I didn't. Didn't plug the microphone into the box. So, yikes. You're gone for a few days and you forget how to do everything. It was 20 minutes of my life that I will not get back. Well, if it brings you any comfort, you and I have shared that experience before. Yes, with the DBR podcast we have, thankfully not today, hopefully watching it. I'm watching it right now. I see the sound waves on the screen. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. We've had stuff like this happen before where. We see the right things. Yeah, we get the wrong results. Pastor Mark and I had that happen while you were out. We started and Oh good. And it just disappeared and it went to like this red blocks on the screen and it was like, but I knew this time. So we stopped. We didn't record the whole episode. Oh, well that's helpful. I knew enough to be like, oh, it failed. When did stop? How long? Into five minutes in. Oh yeah. So it wasn't terribly long. Well, your Learning Blocks app, probably it showed up in the middle of your podcasting, but you'll know your shapes. So there's that. Yes. What. That's what caused it to crash. Right. You said there was these red blocks. Oh no. Learning the shapes. The app that you downloaded from the Mac app store. Yeah, it was only $75. That's a great deal. You got it on sale, so good stewardship. Speaking of, I've seen it pop up a couple times recently and I don't even know why, but have you seen, back when the app store first launched, there was an app called I'm Rich and it was an app for I remember that. Yeah. $999 that did nothing other than it was a flex to say, I bought this $999 app. And what's more surprising? People bought it. People bought it. That's crazy. I think they got, I don't know, I don't know if it was more than double digits, but several. Yeah. Where you had to say he was the winner. He got it. Yeah. Apple pulled it from the store because they're like, what is this nonsense ruining our garden? Right. But I applaud the guy for having the wisdom to say, people are gonna buy this to show. And he got several thousand dollars out of it. And I don't know what apple's cut was. Clearly it wasn't enough for them to keep it. Yeah. Yeah. Just appealing to the pride, right. Pride of mankind. Yeah. Well, hey, we have a follow up question to a subject that we discussed in one of our previous episodes that, somebody would like us to go a little bit more in depth on, and that is the issue of the Old Testament and polygamy and, The person writes in and says, man, I've struggled with this as I've gone deeper into my Old Testament reading the last few years and I get it. and it's a tension there. He says, God never explicitly approves polygamy and states that it's clearly a sin. If you look at the whole of scripture, we can see that. But he does permit it in the Old Testament. In other words, he doesn't say this is okay, but he does permit it. and he says, I struggle with why God would not just have permitted it. Prohibited outright said, this is wrong. Don't do it. And so we talked about that a little bit. We attempted to, yeah. Yeah. One would question whether or not we succeeded in it. Right. But we did attempt to talk about it, so let's ask some questions and I'll just be the guy shoving the needle or not the needle, the knife shoving the knife deeper here. Yeah. Okay. Clearly, yeah. God could have said, and he has said things like, you should not do this and that. Yeah. He can be very explicit when he wants to be. Mm-hmm. This seems like one of those things where. God could have said, pastor PJ, it is wrong. You shall not commit adultery, nor shall you commit polygamy. You and I might assume, if you're a reader of the Bible, and I assume that you are pastor PJ I a few times, yeah, you might assume after reading your Bible, that to say adultery is to say the same thing is no polygamy. But clearly they didn't see it that way. And if they did, it's not evident from the text. So why didn't God just say, thou shalt not commit polygamy or polyandry. So here's my response. I do think God's design for marriage being between one man and one woman is in the text. I think it's clear. I don't think we'd argue with that. Right. That's Genesis one and two. We're all about that. Yep. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. Even that language there. God's design for marriage is one woman, one man. He allows polygamy in the lives of some of the key figures in the Old Testament. you've got Abraham, you've got Jacob, though. Jacob was. Kind of tricked into polygamy, you could argue, David was a polygamist. He had multiple wives. You've got Solomon. He was initially tricked, but then he participated willingly after choosing their, what do you call those? Their handmaids? Their hand servants. Yes. Yeah. Wet nurses, whatever you wanna call 'em. Yeah, no, that's true. That's true. so you've got a lot of these figures that are polygamist. In fact, it's almost harder to find somebody who wasn't than somebody who was in the Old Testament as far as our. Key figures, and I'll say this, when we find polygamy, we rarely find good things taking place. we find a lot of problems accompanying the additional wives in the lives of these men. even when you look at David, when David takes multiple wives, his family was a mess. when he takes on Bathsheba after that whole situation. You've got Absalom, you've got the murder, you've got the situation with his, one of his daughters who is defiled by one of his other children. it's a mess. even Abraham, I would argue that's not a great family dynamic. the situation that happens with him, with multiple wives and the offspring that God uses with Jacob and Rachel and Leah, and yes, he still brings Israel out of the offspring there, but it's not good. You've got Simeon, you've got Levi, you've got the turmoil. It's. It's never a good thing. God is never holding up these families saying, this is the paradigm. This is what's good. So. It happens and yes, I'm with you. I wish God would've come out and said, don't do it. Polygamy is wrong. And he does prohibit kings from amassing wives. My take is Exodus 2014. You shall not commit adultery. I would hold that as taking an additional wife is committing adultery. And so I do believe that it was wrong for these other men to take additional wives. God. Used them and used their situations, maybe even in spite of their sinful waves. But I do believe that it was wrong. I do believe this is transgressing, God's design that we established from the very outset. One man, one woman, my best attempt at answering this question as directly as possible. And the question is, why didn't God just say, don't do this specifically this thing? Because it was a clear pernicious sin that they persisted in. As early as Genesis chapter four or five, sixes, I forget where it is, but Leic takes on two wives and it's like, Hey, this is what I'm doing. This is a good thing. so here's my best answer. If I am looking at God, ultimately we don't wanna put God on the dock. We're warned against this. We don't judge God and say, God, why don't you do A, B, C, and D? He's the one who judges us. So let's just start with that posture. And when I look at something that offends me, that God does, I assume I'm in the wrong here. Something about my perception is Shortsighted, and therefore, because my perception is only singular, that is, I alone look at this from my own perspective and not from God's perspective looking at all of human history and everything else at the same time, I assume that my visibility of what I'm looking at is. Shortsighted limited, and therefore, I'm not in the best place to judge God. So that's my starting place. I'm gonna say God knows what he's doing. I don't, God has revealed to me certain things and I'm gonna do my best to understand them, but at the end of the day, I'm gonna have to take some things at face value and trust that God knows what he's doing. That's set, that's my preamble. The second thing I would say is that whatever God does, and I wrote this down 'cause I don't wanna mess this up, that there must be a sufficiently good reason that warrants a necessary evil for God to permit it, a sufficiently good reason to warrant a necessary evil. My best and most potent arguments is to point to Jesus Christ. A sufficient good in this case is the salvation of everyone who would bow the need of Christ. That was a sufficiently good reason to allow, and this is the most amazing part, the grievous and ugliest evil where Jesus was. Beaten, dishonored, bloodied, spat upon given a crown of thorns. And so the sufficiently good thing was our salvation, but the necessary evil was his dishonor, his humiliation. So God permits evil things to take place all the time. He even governs the evil thing. You might remember when Moses is, he writes in the book of Deuteronomy that if you're going to divorce somebody, here's how you do this. When Jesus is asked about this later on, he says, it is for because of your hardness of hearts that God permitted this, where Moses tells you to do it this way. He says, but in the beginning it wasn't so. And he points to Adam and Eve being the template for everyone else after them. And so Pastor Pier, you pointed to Adam and Eve. And I think it's a fair point 'cause that's what Jesus points to and we should do the same. However, Moses did that and Jesus says, God permitted that, but not because God wanted that he was regulating a grievous evil, that if he had not regulated it, it would've resulted in further evil. So all that to say, limited to my visibility, two, there must be a sufficiently good cause that warrants a necessary evil. And the best that I can come up with, and this is just my stab in the dark and looking at other people who responded to this is. Polygamy was a lesser evil than letting women be unprotected and potentially threatened to do, to engage in prostitution or to sell themselves as slavery, because they didn't have many options outside of a man who could protect them and provide it for them. There's even some ambiguity about this, and I, we haven't talked about this. I'm just gonna throw it out there. Levert marriage isn't entirely clear that it's only if the brother is unmarried. Right? Do you remember Levert marriage? Levert marriage is the idea that if a brother, who is married dies and he has no kids. That man's brother is supposed to marry that deceased brother's wife and perpetuate his name. Right? Well, we'd say, well that sounds great. Oh, it makes perfect sense. He's protecting his brother's widow. And that makes perfect sense until you say, what about when the brother's married? Does that change anything? And we have no examples in scripture where you have that exact situation. I'm sure God did that on purpose. Leave us here. All of that said such a good question. I don't see everything, but there's my best guess. God has a sufficiently good cause. I don't know what that cause is to allow and to permit a necessary evil. At the end of the day, he's going to bring greater glory to himself and show himself to be righteous. Good. And just, that's my best take. Yeah, that's helpful. So hopefully that cleared everything up. so clear. But, if not, feel free to write in follow up questions, but we need to get into our Bible reading for it today. You go for it. I'm gonna lay now. Go for it. Alright, great. Exodus 27, 28, and then we've got Matthew chapter 21. The rest of, of Matthew 21 there. Exodus 27 gives some more instructions for some of the components of the tabernacle. We've got the bronze altar there. and then you've also got the quarter of the Tabernacle. And again, these are. According to the pattern shown to Moses on the mountains. So again, Moses is seeing these things and also hearing these things and receiving these instructions very peculiar and specific about how God wanted the tabernacle to be constructed and to be made and to be designed. And then in chapter 28, he gets into the garments of the priest and what they were to wear and how they should be designed and what was supposed to be on them. And there's a lot of, there's a lot of ink given to these garments for the priest to wear, and a lot of it is ceremonial and symbolic. In fact, in verse nine, you shall take the two onyx stones and engrave on them the names of the sons of Israel, and then later on he's gonna have elements for the breastplate that are gonna have the names of the 12 tribes of Israel again. And this. Is because that's who the priest was representing when the priest went in before the Lord. So the Lord wanted the priest always to bear in mind that he's bearing the weight of the people as he goes before the Lord. So there's significance to these things. There's symbolism here to what God is doing with this, but. Pastor Rod I'd love to get your thoughts. If we in the New Testament can look back at something like this and draw in conclusions as to whether or not we should spend a lot of time and focus in what we wear when it comes to church on Sunday morning. Is there significance that, because the Lord gave so much attention to what his priest wore, that there's something about what. We should think about as we consider what we wear. Is this gonna result in you asking somebody to make you priestly garments? Yes. You want, you wanna do this? I want the turban. I'm going to give a, an answer to this and in a few different ways. first, I think absolutely just from the place of love, I want to be thoughtful about what they were, because I care about the people around me. Mm-hmm. So I don't wanna be distracting, I don't wanna stand out for the wrong reasons. I wanna make sure that I show up in a way that's. Almost invisible and I don't wanna draw. Necessary attraction, number one. Number two, does God want us to carry that same mentality? I know there's lots of churches, even some that are local, that their style of dress is far more, it's less casual in some ways and far more, upscale. Not upscale, that's the wrong term. Formal. Formal is the better term. Thank you. Some churches are really formal. a lot of churches that are more formal tend to be the ones that are more conservative. They got the organ, the preachers wearing a suit and tie. And so, there's a certain feel, a certain vibe that comes with these things. And I think every church has the freedom to make certain decisions about this. And so, on the one hand I'm gonna say, you should be thoughtful about what you show up to and how you show up to the Lord. on the other hand, I wanna say there's freedom to do certain things. Now I try to be, we've been given from our sending church, our old pastor would say, you gotta be above the 50% mark, whatever that is, you should always be above the 50%. I think that's a good rule of thumb. but of course, if everyone does that, then we're all gonna be, we're gonna continually be getting nicer and nicer as we wear our things. I think you should be thoughtful. At the end of the day, it should be thoughtful. You should be dressing in such a way that you could say I'm contented doing this as a means of offering to the Lord. I know with my particular role as a pastor, I often think about that. What does my clothing say? Am I saying the right thing with what I'm wearing? Am I being too casual? Am I being too fancy? Am I standing out for the wrong reasons? That's kind of my rule of thumb. What would you say to all that? Yeah. When you said the 50% rule, that may not be super clear. What that means is look at the status quo. Look at the average. Yeah. Above average. And aim for above it. Shoot for just above that. So I, yeah, I'm with you on that. And I've gone back and forth and worn different things even from the pulpit and everything. I think the biggest thing is for us not to be a distraction. Yeah. With the people that it wouldn't be, that so many people are more concerned about what we're wearing up on stage than they are. What's being conveyed, what we're there to do. And that can be dressing down too casually. That can also be dressing too formally, that can be giving too much attention to what you're wearing when you're up there. So we're not Old Testament priests. We're not carrying things up there symbolically in the same way that they were. but it's interesting. God does care here about the dress. He does care about the garb. One of the things that I consider as I get dressed in the morning on a Sunday like today is. What we're doing, with our clothing and what we're physically doing with our bodies. And so because we're a set up in Tear Down church and I participate in both of those ministries. Yep. I tend to wear clothes that work for everything. Yeah. I don't bring a second set of clothing. I have done that before, but, it's just too much. I'm already carrying my guitar and all these other things, so I think practicality plays a role too, but it's not the first question I ask. It's one of the questions downstream. Yeah. The first question I ask is this distracting? Does this honor the Lord? Is this something that I feel good about? What my conscience that is. I'm not feeling good as in like, did my feelings. Yeah. Vibe with that. It's about does this feel right and appropriate given the context? Yeah. I always think it's interesting in this section on the priestly garb that he, they tied a rope around his waist, because when he went into the Holy of Holies, if he did something to, draw the wrath of God and he would drop dead, then it's not like you could just waltz in there to pick up the body and carry him out. So they had to have a way to retrieve. The high priest after he went in there. And that's also, the tradition holds why he had bells on his garment as well, so that they could hear him continually moving around in the behind the veil there as he went into to make atonement. So interesting. details on the priestly garments. Alright, Matthew, chapter 21, 23 through 46. We get more of this controversy. Remember Jesus is taking the Pharisees and their challenges to his authority head on. And this continues as he's gonna be asked a question, about his authority. And what we see here is that Jesus. His authority is always intact. He's always in control. Jesus has never caught flatfooted on a question where he has to panic or wonder, how am I gonna answer this? And he responds with this question about the baptism of John, and it's a masterful response. 'cause he knows that he's going to trap them. It's much like. Earlier in his ministry when he was asked a question about the resurrection and the Sadducees, or I guess this is later, we're gonna see this in tomorrow's reading. he's gonna ask a question and he's going to, make a point to talk about the resurrection. And he's gonna pit the Sadducees against the Pharisees. Paul's gonna do the same thing there. And so Jesus is a master, tactician here. And so he asks this question, the Pharisees aren't able to answer. Jesus says, well, I'm not gonna answer your silly question about my authority, either, from here he goes on and gives a parable about. That is really indicting the Pharisees and the Reli religious leaders. He tells the story of one son who says, I'll go do your the work that you're asking me to do, father, this would be the Pharisees. And then he's talking about the others who would say, no, we're not gonna do that. But then later on, they're the ones that actually go and do what was asked of them. And so these are those that are going to listen to the words of Christ and obey them. And so again, he's indicting the religious leaders of the Jews here and does this ultimately in one final one here in chapter 21 with the parable of the tenets when. He compares this to a vineyard with a fence put around, and it was lended out. The vineyard was to these, these tenants to take care of it. And this is the Pharisees, again, to care for the nation of Israel. And then the father, this being God sends. Servants, the prophets, the Pharisees the religious leaders of Israel, they ignore them. They end up beating them. Killing them. And then finally he sends his son and they say, this is the one. This is the heir. Let's take him. Let's kill him. Let's eliminate him. And God ultimately, is displeased to the point that he's going to judge the wicked servants. And that's what Jesus indicts the Pharisees and the religious leaders as saying, you're these ones and you're gonna be punished as a result. Yeah. One of the things that stood out to me this time is. And I brought this up recently and I continue to bring it up and only in part because it was such a novel revelation to me, not that this is new revelation, but Jesus doesn't answer their question. They ask him a question and he says, tell you what, I'll answer yours if you answer mine. And this is surprising to me because I've always been under the opinion and the impression that when someone asks you a question, you give them a direct answer to what they ask. And here, even though I don't know if it was an opponent, I think I still would likely lean on, just be honest, say what it is. Say what is true here. Jesus doesn't do that. they ask him a direct question. Now there's nothing here that tells us they're trying to entrap him. Except he knows that they're opposing his authority, they're opposing his ministry. And so there's nothing in the text that tells us they're specifically trying to trap him. We know that because we're reading the gospel. We've already seen these characters, but they ask him a question and he says, well, tell you what. I'll answer your, if you answer mine. So I think one of the principles I can draw from this is that a dishonest question doesn't necessarily warrant an honest answer. Or even an answer in the first place. He doesn't answer them dishonestly, he just doesn't answer them. I think that is an interesting insight. I referred back to Matthew chapter seven. This came to mind as I was thinking about this, and he says here in chapter seven, verse six, don't give to what is. Don't give to dogs what is holy, and don't throw your pearls before pigs unless they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you. This is so liberating to me. This adds more complexity to the way that I think about conversation. But this is liberating because this tells me just because someone asks you doesn't mean I need to answer. I should be wise enough to not throw pearls before pigs as Jesus says here. And that's gonna require a whole new level of, of thoughtfulness and wise application as I interact with others. This was something that was interesting to me. I found it so brilliant. Number one, Jesus is just so masterful. You called him a wise or skilled tactician. He is that and so much more in the way that he deals with these things. I'm learning so much from the life. And the interactions of Jesus. So if somebody asks you a question and you don't respond to it, then they should go home feeling like, ah, he thinks I'm an opposition enemy guy. You don't know. Weak wink. I just, again, I don't have these kind of interactions. Often. We're not talking to enemies with any regularity. It's true, but it does help me think. A question doesn't always warrant a direct answer. That's fair. Depending on who's asking and for what reason, they ask. Now Jesus knows their hearts and so that's a whole different ball game, but still That's fair. That's fair. Well, hey, let's pray and then we'll be done with this episode. God, thanks for your word and for today, being back in person together at church, we are so thankful for that, for celebrating communion together as a church and even just for the text that we're looking at of the importance of being a strong church. So we wanna pursue Christ in this world. So I pray that you beared fruit from it. Thanks for your word. we were able to read together this morning in our DBR pray that we would understand it as best as we can. Even as we're wrestling with hard things like we did at the beginning of this podcast, we thank you that we can trust you and that we can lean upon you for your wisdom as you continue to reveal it to us. We pray this all in Jesus name, amen. While Hey guys, keep reading your Bibles and tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast where you will have all of your questions answered. Come back now. Bye.

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