Welcome to Friday's edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. You made it through another week. What's up folks? We are excited to be with you. We're excited to be reading the Bible together and doing this podcast together. So I don't know what our numbers have been this year, but Pastor out, have you checked? Are people listening to us? I haven't checked. But I do know that people are listening. People are listening. People will say things to me and give the impression, at least that they're listening to what we're saying. So that's a mild comfort. But I don't know how many we're looking at. And part of the reason why we know people are listening is because people are questioning people are That's true. Asking us questions. And we have a big one that I don't know that there's a really straightforward answer too, but we're gonna tackle this one anyway. We got one. And the question is essentially this is it. Right or wrong, is it sinful to do a job that has a cover story? For you to share with your family and friends. So I think about different jobs in the government sector, like an intelligence position or, spy craft, those kinds of jobs where you're forced by nature of what you do to not be forthcoming with people around you and maybe problematically, especially those whom you live with, like your kids or whoever else that you do life with. So, question is this, is it sinful? That's the question. Is it sinful? But there's probably a lot of. Qualifications you would add there. So let's start working that through. Yeah, so my family and we're reading one of those Benji biographies B-E-N-G-E are the author's last name. And so we're reading one of the those on Dietrich Bonhoeffer right now. So you take a guy like Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Oh, that's providential. Yeah. Bonhoeffer was a pastor, a German pastor, but he also took on turns Spy a role. Yeah, as a spy. And put himself directly in those positions on purpose and decided to join a plot against, not a cult, but a plot against Hitler and trying to work towards the assassination of Hitler. Now at the same time for the protection of his family and for the protection of others in his life. He wasn't sharing all those details with them as well as for the good and success of the mission at hand. He believed that this the good that he was working to accomplish. Allowed some of the deceit that he was necessary to do, what he was doing, what he was needing to do. So it was almost a lesser of two evils situation. So sometimes we talk about a wartime allowance for situations like this. We think of Anne Frank hiding the Jews and the Nazis come in and knocking on her door saying, are you hiding Jews? And she lies. She says, no, I'm not. Was that okay? In a situation like this, I think we can't answer this question, just blanketly in saying yeah, it's fine for you to use a cover story with your family and with your coworkers. It's, that's totally fine. No big deal. We can't say that across the board because it really has to do with towards what end, and I know that in, in this situation, we don't, sounds like pragmatism. We don't know. Right? We don't know the nuts and bolts pragmatism. I would say it's probably I would prefer to call it discernment. For us to be able to say, is this really working towards the greater good? Is what I'm doing the task that I'm being asked to help accomplish is this something that is for the greater good to where I could feel in my conscience, like this is an okay thing for me to do between me and the Lord. And that's where we can't point to. A chapter in verse and say, across the board in every situation, here's your verse for this, A lot of this is gonna come down to the conscience of the person that's at question. So would you be able to say then a Christian hypothetically could participate in something like this, assuming that their conscience is fine with it. Is there anything in scripture that would lead you to believe that this is an impossible thing for a Christian to do? I don't think so, because even. You had the circumstance. We've talked about this before in passages when we come across it like Rahab hiding the spies and you've got other situations where the midwives, we've, here's one that we've already covered this year, right. The midwives are telling Pharaoh, the Hebrew women are too robust. They give birth too quickly. We can't get there. Okay. That's a. That's a lie. The midwives were working to help the Hebrew women conceal their male children and God commends them. You go to Hebrews chapter 11, God is commending them. The only caveat I would give to that is they're directly working for what is good Biblically, like this is a clear, this is biblically a better thing for me to preserve the life of these Hebrew children than it is for me to participate in the murder of these Hebrew children. And so if a lie is gonna help me continue to preserve the life of the Hebrew children, I'm gonna do that. So there is a scenario which I could say, yeah, a Christian could do this, and I would say not be culpable for the sin of deceit because it's working to accomplish the greater good. The hard thing is discerning how do we know if this is really working to accomplish the greater good? So the rule of thumb then would be a decision that you have to make. Like this would require you to be able to make it by faith with a clear conscience as you already identified. So the starting place for. Question like this is, do I understand sufficiently what the scripture says about truth, about deception, about lies and how God has interacted with that in, in the scriptures? And so principally what we can say is that God has made provisions or allowances where the lie was the lesser evil. Now, when you introduce words like that, we start talking about pragmatism, which most Christians are rightly wary of. Sure. We're not pragmatists. Sure. In fact, I would say that only God can be a true pragmatist because he can guarantee that the ends. Justify the means, right? He alone has that knowledge. We can only guess and hypothesize and it might lead to certain ends. So we still have to make the calculus though. Does this make sense? Given the circumstance? And I think that for me, is gonna be one of the pivotal questions. Does my lie seem or my deception, does my deception seem to weigh sufficiently or to weigh less than what the alternative would be? So in other words, if I don't lie. What is the alternative? We do see that God endorses spycraft, God initiates spies to be sent from Israel into the land of Canaan, and they're to bring back information, they're to bring back intelligence, we would say in the modern vernacular mm-hmm. About this land so that they can consequently destroy them. Now you could say, well, this is what God told them to do. And I would say, that's absolutely right. God did tell 'em to do that, but principally speaking, this happened. Yeah. And so it's not a leap to say that. It's clear that God provides allowances for this to take place. And of course someone, someone would say, well, the only allowance is God told them. Right. And of course that would dis, that would disallow that ever taking place today because there's, God's not saying those things anymore. I would argue to the contrary that scripture shows us by example. How God has dealt with some of these things. So if Spycraft in and of itself I would say is permissible and spycraft necessarily involves deception, yeah. Would you agree with that? I would. I think when it comes to those closest to you, I think there's a way to avoid perpetuating deception too far and deceiving only to the degree that you feel like you need to, or that's necessary in the sense of this if you. Let's say you get married and you happen to be a spy, and you tell your wife, do not ask me what I do exactly. Hey, you know what? My job is gonna require me to do things that I can't talk about. And so if I'm traveling, if I'm going somewhere I know it's a big ask. Yeah. But I'm gonna ask you to trust the Lord with my safety, my wellbeing, and not ask me too many questions because I can't share with you everything that I'm gonna be doing in my career. And I don't want to lie to you. And so that puts, and I thought about that here. Here was my counter. Okay. If my wife knows that I am engaged in sensitive information and that information alone puts her at risk. Mm-hmm. Wouldn't it make more sense if my superior saying here's what we're gonna tell you to say to people, and this includes your closest family. They need to hear this and their protection, they need plausible deniability. Right. And this means that I need you to tell them this. Right. You work construction on 42nd and fifth Avenue. How would you feel about that? Yeah, I get that. 'cause in the scenario that you're captured and they find out who your family is, you don't want to put your family in danger. You want them to have full deniability of any knowledge and not be able to give up anything. It doesn't guarantee their safety after all. It doesn't, but it does help. Yeah. Yeah, I guess. How much does it help? What are they gonna assume that your family knows? And I suppose that there's a whole host of questions that we can't answer, right. We're just working off of the hypothetical here. Right. But I, in a situation like that, would you say that the impetus is strong enough to say Okay. I guess in that sense, I could see the wisdom in not being forthright with my bride or my kids or my husband. If it's the case of a female, I work for the CIA. Yeah. Maybe other than like. If that's just what it is. If she, over the course of getting married to somebody, you, they know because these are conversations that are gonna come up that you work for the cia. Then it's just that, that it's one conversation at the outset of the marriage, Hey, look this is my job. My job is gonna involve me doing a lot that I can't talk about, that I can't discuss, and. Let's just kinda leave it at that, right? I mean it's, I think, extremely rare. Not totally unheard of, but I think it's extremely rare to find somebody that has to deceive from the very word go of. Yeah, I sell hot dogs on a street corner when really they're, committing espionage and working for the Navy seals and rescuing people from the inner circles of terrorist organizations. But there's probably those people do exist. Oh, for sure. They do. And how, and then they be in our midst for that matter. Touche. The problem with this is that scripture says that Christians are to bear truthful testimony. Yes. Right. We're to be honest with one another. Yes. We're truth tellers by and large. There's concerns even if you practice lying and you get really good at it. Yeah. Is that a good thing? Yeah. Is that a kind of virtue that you wanna be known for? Man, that guy's poker face is so good. Right? He can lie and tell me what I think is telling me the truth and he's totally lying to me. There's problems with this and we're not gonna pretend like this is easy peasy and that it's just one calculation to make this decision. Obviously there's lots of things involved in this, not the least of which being. Do you want to cultivate that kind of character, right? Because you have to, right? If you're gonna be good at this, you have to get really good at deceiving people, and you don't want, you, you probably don't want that skill. No. We're not able to compartmentalize that successfully, as some people think that we can't. I think who you are is who you are, is gonna leak. And maybe it's to the point where you say, I. This is enough of a conscience burden for me that I need to not do this, I need to resign. I need to quit. Which comes back to the very beginning of the conversation. The decision you have to make is, can I do this by faith? Right? With a clear conscience, right from what I know from scripture, and of course you get to make that decision. And what is not from faith is sin is what we're told in scripture. Hebrews chapter 11. So if you can make the decision by faith saying, this is what I see from scripture I see that there's provisions made, there's allowances. Okay, Lord, I'm gonna do this as a sacrifice to you. It's a worship, it's worship in my life to show that I trust you, even in this weird, murky situation. And if you want a great conversation on this, I found one spycraft. And Soulcraft on the front lines of history, a conversation with James Olson. This is Dr. Mueller's thinking in public. Okay. This is a former spy. Okay. Who talks all about it. And he's a Roman Catholic, so he talks about some of the moral complexities. Yeah. And the conversation with Dr. Mueller is just so fascinating. Yeah. I highly encourage you. There's also a book that, there's two books that this guy wrote, Olson and I've got one. On the way to my house. A physical book. A physical book. A physical book. That's another conversation for another time. Yeah, it's but I recommend that Spycraft and Soulcraft on the front lines of history, a conversation with James Olson, that's Dr. Moeller, that's on YouTube and all the podcast platforms. I highly recommend that you listen to that. Closest I've ever come to knowing a spy was one of the elders at a church that I worked at in Arizona who was the executive VP of Aerospace for Honeywell. So he was working on like rocket components and, oh, fun. Not like the air conditioner Honeywell, like the components on the space shuttle and the rocket ships and stuff when he would. Go down to his house in Mexico when he's flying back into the United States. He would get a text as soon as he entered American airspace from Honeywell saying, welcome back to the United States. Wow. They were tracking him that closely because of what he knew, which is Wow. Fascinating. Also, I don't think I would wanna be him. I don't know. It'd be kind of fun. I maybe for a minute. Yeah. If you want our honesty here, speaking of being truthful, we track you just as clear. Closely. Well, you don't send me a text though when I get back. Yeah, we don't do that. 'cause we don't wanna alert you to how closely we're tracking. But suffice it to say we know everything about you, pastor. Well, I know the Lord does. That's for sure everything. Let's turn to his word as we do this together. Let's go to Exodus 39 and 40 as we finish up the Book of Exodus today, and then we'll be in Matthew 24, Exodus 39. This is all about the weaving and the making of the priestly garments and I think the one that's on the scene here is probably mostly, oh holy ab. We've talked a lot about Belo, but O Holy was the one that was weaving and working with the Scarlet and the yarns and everything else, and we see that here in what's going on with the priestly garments. So I think. Holy. I probably had the majority of the oversight with the priestly garments here. But again, a lot of repetition here from what we already have seen, and this is going to be the manufacturer of the garments the robes the shoulder pieces, the breastplate that the priest was gonna wear. And with all the names of Israel inscribed on these because he was representing them as he went in before the Lord, to bring the sacrifices, to bring the offerings. And again, like you said pastor Rad, I think in one of our last episodes, part of the reason for the repetition is what we read down in verse 32. Thus all the work of the tabernacle, the tend meeting was finished and the people did, according to all, the Lord commanded Moses. So they did. So this is just showing us they did it exactly as they were told to do. If you do want the cross reference, you're gonna look at chapter 28 primarily. That's going to show you the initial instruction given by God for how to make the priestly garments. And you probably notice this as you're reading through, but it is worth at least marking up in your Bible. If you have a physical paper Bible, you're gonna see repeated over and over again. Something like the end of verse five. As the Lord had commanded Moses mm-hmm. The end of verse seven, as a Lord had commanded Moses the end of verse 21, as the Lord had commanded Moses, you're getting the picture right and so this is really, there's sim symbolism laden with what the materials are and what the colors are. In fact, if you have an ESB study Bible, they do a really good job of some of the art artistic work they do to show you an illustration of what they think it could have looked like. So in the ESB study, Bible would be worth having just for those pictures. Those are so much fun and they're so good to look at. They really do help. Give you a sense of what it was meant to be. That said, all of it has symbolic value and the thing is that unless scripture gives me a good sense of what that is, it's hard to know. You could guess probably pretty accurately, but I'd still be careful. Appreciate it for what it is. Get your ESV study Bible, look at some of the images and enjoy what God's people did. They obeyed the Lord. This is a highlight. Yeah. Of Israel's history. 'cause it's not gonna last us very long. No, it's not. And we see that even at the end of 39 verse 42, according to all the Lord of command of Moses. So the people of Israel had done all the work and Moses saw all the work, and behold they had done it as the Lord had commanded. So they had done it. And so just that emphasis there, that stamp of going, you guys did it. We're gonna grade you and you pass. Which is I remember being in school, turning an assignment and just watching the teacher grade it live in front of you. Did you ever have that? Situation. Oh yeah. And you're just going, okay, is this gonna be good enough or is he gonna send me back? Yep. And when, whenever you got it done in pass and accepted, it's like, yes. Got it. I liked when you had the pass your paper to your neighbor. Oh yeah, that, that's great. Together. Yeah. That was fun. Yeah. Or humiliating, depending on how you look at it. Yeah, it's true. Depending on who was sitting next to you, chapter 40, then we're going to see the tabernacle is gonna be constructed. It's set up now. And one thing that's gonna happen here is the tabernacle is gonna be officially consecrated, which is a word that means to be set apart. Up until this point, it was all just being manufactured, or it was designed, or it was in theory, and now it's here and it's gonna be built. And so now they actually have to go through the act of consecrating it. That is setting it apart. And so that's starting in verse nine. What. What God is gonna command Moses to do, to take the anointing oil and anoint the tabernacle and all of its furniture. They're gonna consecrate the altar. They're gonna consecrate the basin. They're gonna consecrate, even Aaron and his sons, they're gonna be brought to the front of the tent of meeting. They're gonna be set apart as the priest to serve here in the tabernacle. So the tabernacle is built, and now they need to prepare it for the work that it's going to do. And this is the consecration here. We also see that same phrase that you talked about in the last chapter here in chapter 40 again, verse 19, as the Lord had commanded Moses, verse 21, as the Lord had commanded Moses, verse 23, so forth and so on. Again and again and again. We see it here. Moses can obey the Lord and then the stamp of approval. Shows up in verse 34. The cloud covered the 10 meeting. The glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. This is the way they know they officially did it right, is God has come to take up that temporal residence in the tabernacle. What did that look like? Do you think the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle? So clearly there's some kind of something visible vis right, some visibility that God is depicting there for them. Do you think that this was fire, the cloud, was this some combination betwixt? What are we looking at here? Or are we looking at anything? I would imagine it has something to do with light just because over and over again in scripture. I think when we consider the glory of the Lord and when we see emanations of the glory of the Lord usually involves light and sometimes brilliant and blinding light. And I wonder if that's why it says Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting. I wonder if it was so brilliant, so glorious that he was not able even to enter in because of the brilliance of the glory. I wonder if there's a combination of the two of them, because you have here in verse 34, it says, the cloud covered the tent of meeting. So is the cloud and the, and God's glory, are those working together? Is this a separate thing? I have more questions than I have answers, but it is fascinating to think what did this look like? Yeah. And yet I should make known the glory that was part of the tabernacle pales in comparison to the glory that Christ brings true. He tabernacles among us. And even though we don't see him face to face today someday we will, and the glory that we would've saw. We would've seen rather in the tabernacle, will not even hold a candle to the glory that we'll see when we do see Jesus face to face someday. Yeah it's kinda like when we're here in Texas during the springtime especially, you get those big, fluffy white clouds and sometimes the sun pierces through those clouds and it's such that it's beautiful and yet at the same time, you can't look at it for very long because it is so brilliant, the white of the clouds and then also the sunshine shining through the cloud there. I continue to look until I can't see anymore. It's amazing the sun staring game. It's a bad game. Alright, well let's turn it over to Matthew chapter 24. Matthew 24, 1 through 22. We are gonna start talking about the signs of the end here. And so Jesus is gonna begin by talking about the destruction of the temple. This is going to be fulfilled in 70 AD as Titus PHAs is gonna come into Jerusalem there with his forces, his Roman forces. They're gonna destroy the temple and they're gonna knock down every stones that not one stone is left upon another Jesus, just as Jesus prophesies here in Matthew chapter 24. In fact, on Expedition Bible I was watching a video where the. Host was talking to a Jewish rabbi who himself on the video, said, look, I'm not a Christian. And yet the host said, Jesus predicted that this was gonna be the case. And they're standing there looking at the rubble, which you can still see today in Jerusalem, piles of rubble from this destruction. And the host says, what? What do you think this is saying about Jesus's prediction? And this Jew said, this is saying that Jesus' prediction came to pass, that this is true. This is what actually happened. That's crazy. Yeah. It says here that, well, in my study bible it says that this is the first half of the tribulation verses three and following. Do you subscribe to that? I hold, no, I don't because I hold this to be 70 ad destruction. There. Are you looking in ESV study Bible? I have a note and I didn't put where I got it from, so I think it was my, because the ESV would hold that because the ESV is not dispensational. So the ESV is looking at an amillennial. Kingdom. And so we're in a metaphorical thousand year reign of Christ that is inaugurated with his earthly, with his first appearance and his ascension. Ah, yes. So we just endorse the e sb study Bible, and I think the pictures are great. Yes. Maybe not all the notes are on the same page with us theologically, but the pictures are still great and not in disparate. We're not saying this is a view that's heretical that needs to be rejected. It's just a different view. Yeah. And so if they're gonna look at this they're gonna interpret it differently than we would and they might say, this is the mark of the beginning of the tribulation period. Through that, a lot of times you'll see people that hold a more of an non-millennial view. They'll look at a figure like neuro as the antichrist or an antichrist and try to project that the tribulation period back on things like that. Yeah. Well, two things that stood out to me in this chapter. The first one is I see he says, see that no one leads you astray, which tells me we are responsible for this. This is interesting 'cause if you're. Lead astray. It seems like maybe you don't have much of a choice. You're deceived into thinking something that you shouldn't think. And yet Jesus says, see that no one lets us, that no one does this to you. How do you do that? Well, he tells us ahead of time, here's what you expect. People are gonna come in my name and say that I'm he. So he says, basically, don't get fooled and bamboozled by these guys. But I think this is a shorthand way of saying no, your Bible. Yeah, know your Bible so well that no one can mislead you because you know the word. Yeah. Second thing that stands out here is verse 12. He says, lawlessness will be increased and the love of many will grow cold, which tells me that there's an inverse relationship between love and lawlessness. If I grow in love, my law abiding will also grow. If I grow in lawlessness, my love will decrease inverse relationship where one increases the other decreases. And so if I'm walking with the Lord in closeness, in intimacy, my love will be inflamed and my righteousness will also similarly increase. But if I walk in lawlessness, my love will also decrease, which is a fascinating connection that I haven't thought about before, or at least a whole lot, but I think it's there in the text. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That's a good connection. In verse 15, in following we do turn to the tribulation period, the abomination of desolation. We see the verse 21. There will be great tribulations such as not been from the beginning of the world until now, nor will ever be. And he talks about the elect multiple times. And here we hit on this last year when we went through this, but the elect that he's talking about here are not the elect the way that we think of them today. But these are gonna be the tribulation saints. These are gonna be those that are gonna be saved. Out of the tribulation period during this seven year period of God's judgment on the earth. And so Jesus is telling them all about these signs, and it's all in response to this question when the disciples say, what will be the sign of your coming? Which is fascinating because they didn't expect him to leave. And so I'm wondering. What they were thinking about when they're asking him, okay, tell us about what's gonna be the sign of your coming, because they were ready for him to go and inaugurate the kingdom at that moment. And so it's interesting that they're trying to ask this clarification question there. Yeah. I don't know if they even knew what they knew. Yeah. I don't know if they know what they're asking and why they're asking it, but you want more at the end of this. You want to tell me more? Jesus. Yeah. What I do know what he says here, I. How far do we go in this today? 24 to 22. Okay. It's, and tomorrow. Then, in any case, this is exciting. I like. What is he, Andy? The, for the sake of the elect, the days are gonna be cut short. Explain what that means. I like that he says that. Yeah. It's exciting. Is this an astronomical sign? Is this, is he actually shortening the days? What do you think is happening here in that verse? I think this is the days meaning the time of the tribulation period, that this is going to be cut short. It could have gone on longer. Oh, I see. Instead for the sake of the elect. So this isn't like the time on the clock, right? This is days as in the season. Right. Okay. Yeah. Cool. That's my take on it. Well, hey, let's pray and then we'll be done with this episode. God, thanks for your word and for our relationship with Christ, which tells us that our future is waiting to be with him. Even as Pastor Rod was talking about, that we will behold his glory and it's gonna be even better than what was seen when your glory filled the tabernacle. And so we can't wait for that day. We don't pretend to know exactly what that day's gonna be like other than we will be overwhelmed with gratitude when we stand before Jesus for the fact that we're there because of what He's done for us. So, Lord, we look forward to that day. In the meantime, help us to be faithful and Jesus. Name, amen. Keep you in those Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow as we tackle more from Matthew 24, as well as start a brand new book in Leviticus. We'll catch you. Yeah. Congratulations on Finishing Exodus. We'll see you tomorrow. Bye.

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