Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Pastors PJ, Rod, and Marc are not able to make it today, so I'll be doing the podcast. We're on Judges 6 and 7 and Luke 8 one through 21... April Fool's!!! Here's the real podcast...

Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hey guys. And hello. We have pastor Mark's back with us, obviously, and he pointed out as well as a handful of you pointed out that I made a mistake in the time for our Good Friday services. So, pastor Mark, why don't you correct for everybody's. Enlightenment, even though they already know I'm correct for me. What time the Good Friday service is at? Good Friday services are at 10:30 AM and 4:23 PM See, that's not helpful 'cause that's just muddying the waters even more. No, they are at four and 5 34 and 5:30 PM Yep. At Founders, right. Where we normally have church. Yep. And for families who have kids, they may be wondering, is there childcare? So Kidman, pastor, extraordinary, there's up to four years of age, which is typically what we do for these sorts of services, and we just find that that's a good age for. Those other kids that are a little bit older to be in service for a couple of these services? We have throughout the year. Yeah. And if you're a parent going, okay, is my kid gonna be able to listen to Pastor PJ for as long as he normally preaches for Good Friday, we are gonna do a shortened service. So this, the whole service is only gonna be about an hour. My message is gonna be around 20 minutes. We're gonna do communion together, we're gonna have some songs that we'll sing as well. So it is gonna have a different feel to it than our normal Sunday morning service does. But Sunday morning. We will be back and we'll have everything is a full go for kids, men, and everything else, right? That is right. Yeah. And that's two services. Don't forget Sunday morning. We're switching to two services now, officially nine o'clock and 11 o'clock. So plan your attendance accordingly. And don't forget, Saturday we've got an event planned on Saturday. Pastor Mark, talk to us about, we've got weather. On the forecast right now. So if it rains, are we canceling? If it rains, should we just say, oh, we're not going Tell us what's happening if it's raining? Well, God has blessed us being at Founders Prosper because we have ability to do it inside, which was not something we had last year. And so if you'll remember last year we had rain and we couldn't carry on with the event. So we had it after service on Sunday. We're not gonna do that this year. So if there's rain, we're, we'll either move to the parking lot if there's not active rain at the end that morning, or we'll move into the gym if there's what is currently on the forecast, which is what if there's passive rain? If there's passive rain, if there's passive rain, what if it's passive aggressive rain? It's passive. Like hail is hail. Passive aggressive rain. Yes. I don't know. Then we will just do it in the field. Just to be passive aggressive. Back to the rain. Alright. I like that. Sometimes I feel like sometimes rain is passive aggressive, like when it's just nailing you right down the neck as you're trying to run through it. Or it's just hitting you square on the glasses and you're going, come on. Really like. So, yeah, I think it can be passive aggressive rain. Yeah. It's, and sometimes it feels like it just hits you for some reason. Right? Not people around you. Yeah. It's just a storm cloud right over the top of you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, hey, we've got a question from one of our listeners, pastor Rod, do you wanna set that up or do you want me to set it up? You should do it. I should do it. Okay, I got it. So this question writes in, it says, my question stems from one of the recent problems with a home service company that was hired and communicated continuous. Problems to their owner with their service, and nothing changed. So they hired this service company, they didn't do their job well. The writer of this question said, we communicated it to the owner of the company. Nothing changed. We've since let that company go, but the service was so bad and costly to us due to their errors. That part of me wants to write a review of them to save others from the heartache. But I've paused and I'm curious, and here's the question. Is it more loving to leave a one or two star review of a bad company service restaurant knowing your name is attached to it? To your review. For example, Google Reviews, Facebook, Yelp, if anybody still uses Yelp out there. So that's question one. Number two, is it more loving to not leave a review at all and maybe have others experience the same treatment, whether it be financial loss, poor service, bad meals, et cetera. Basically just let it go. Tell others privately if they ask, but don't say anything publicly or third option. Would leaving a bad review affect my witness? Sticking to facts and reasons why the bad review was left, not using all caps and exclamation points to just be angry in a review. So there it is. What say y'all, I think you should leave an honest review. And if that means that the number of stars you give them is. Less than five. I think that would be perfectly acceptable. I do think it's appropriate in our American economy to help others find the best services, find the best goods, find the best products, and I think we should take advantage of the economic system we have and the rating system. We have to do that. Now, of course, you could be hostile, you could be vindictive, you could be angry in your reviews, and I would of course advise against that. Amen to that man. I don't have any problem writing a negative review. I'm not likely to do it unless I feel strongly that it's not worth other people using their service. And that I would consider that an act of love, both to the one who's doing the work and the ones who are gonna hire for the work because that person or that company, if they're not doing quality work, they shouldn't be doing that. You should find something else to do. There's a, there's a. Hammer for every nail as the saying goes. And so maybe that's not the right fit for you. This is feedback for your good and for the good of others. I have no problems at all, leading, honest and perhaps critical feedback. And is it gonna affect your witness? I am gonna say. Perhaps it might, it might be that that person, somehow has some connection that somehow figures out that you go to such and such church compass, Bible Church, and then they don't want to come. I guess that's possible, but I'm gonna say that I don't think that that should be a motivation not to leave a review. Yeah. Speaking truth is a key part of what it means to be a believer. So I think we can do that in a helpful way for other people as an act of love towards other people. I think even the fact that she jokes about it or the asker jokes about it and says, well, it's not all caps. I'm not using exclamation points. I think that's. Yeah, a good parameter. Yeah, you need to make sure that you're not trying to be vindictive or that you are not angry in leaving your review and you're not sliding these people or ad hominem attacks against their character or anything like that, that you're just simply saying, Hey, before you use this company, know, here's my experience with them. This might be helpful for you to understand and lay it out for them. Or, I went there and this was my experience here with the service at this restaurant. It really was difficult for me to want to go back. You may have a different experience, but I'd love you to know this ahead of time before you go. I think there's ways to do it where we're not after vengeance in our critical review, but really just after saying, Hey, this, in my heart of hearts, I truly do have the best interest of, like Pastor OT was saying, not only other people reading the review, but also the owner or the company, if they're gonna check their reviews, which they should, we check ours and looking at it and saying, oh, hey yeah, we need to address that. That's not a good thing to do. Yeah, I left a bad review just recently on Compass Bible Church. No, I saw your one star review for our podcast, bro. Don't think I didn't see that. Yeah, that's going down. I tried twice. I tried right after this. I tried twice. Do you wanna share your review or no? I mean, it's not excited. Shouldn't It's not. It was at a dealership. It was at Kia. They. I think many people have left bad reviews at dealerships, so I don't think it's a particularly compelling story, but I have, and I did it Yeah. Hoping that they would, you hear the term constructive, and that, that could be taken in a, cliche way. Mm-hmm. I did leave a constructive review because there was some serious problems. Should we be just as prepared to leave positive reviews then? I think so. I think that's fair. I don't think there's a necessity for that, but I do think that we should leave positive reviews because we want to promote things that are good. Yeah. We want to encourage people who are doing excellent work and so I think it is appropriate for us to to leave great reviews when that is, is helpful. Yeah, good. There you go. Asked and answered. If there are follow up questions, feel free to shoot some more our way. Well, let's get into our daily Bible reading. We're in judges six through seven and Luke eight, one through 21. Judges six through seven. Judges, six opens up and again, we have the people of Israel. Surprise, surprise, doing what was evil in this side of the Lord. And so here comes the wrath of God. They're gonna be delivered over to the Midianites. God not only delivers them over to the Midianites, but also in verses seven through 10 sends a prophet on top of that reminding them of why they're in the position that they are, but then at the same time exhorting them to trust in God. So this is a little bit of an interruption to the pattern that we've been seeing, and that it's not immediately to the judge. It's not immediately to the redemption in the mercy of God. First, we're gonna see that Yahweh's gonna send a prophet that's gonna tell them, Hey, remember, this is why you are where you are and you need to. Trust the Lord and leave off the simple things that you're doing. And then we get to the judge, and this is one of the more well-known judges for us in the book of Judges. This is Gideon. Gideon is a man who is going to waver in his calling. He's gonna be called by the Lord, the angel of the Lord. We can banter that around if we want to again, but we don't have to shows up to call. And to commission him. And in verse 13, Gideon wants to know where this powerful God that he's heard all about is and why he hasn't delivered his people from the Midianites. And then through this interaction that he has Gideon's married, aware that he's speaking with the angel of the Lord and he is overwhelmed. In response in verse 23, the Lord. Through this Angel at least tells him not to be afraid, but gives him instructions on what to do to begin purifying the nation of Israel. And so he's gonna go, he's gonna go Chuck Norris to do a hat tip towards somebody who just recently passed away, professing believer that we hope and trust is in the presence of the Lord right now, but he's gonna go. Agro and tear down the alter Baal. But notice when he does it at night. Gideon is a timid leader. Even after this encounter with the angel of the Lord, he does it at night because he doesn't wanna be exposed, although that's not gonna really work for him. And then that's gonna, I think, set up where we're gonna go in, in chapter seven. God's gonna really want to say, okay, Gideon, you're gonna know for sure that I'm the one that's empowering you and empowering your leadership here. One thing that stands out to me about God is that he does often tell us reasons why. And granted he doesn't do this in a cycle of the judges so much, but he does do this through his word in verses seven through 10 where he explains to them, he sends a prophet to them to tell them and he gives them a heads up. Here's what's the issue, here's the problem I see. And the fact that God is a communicating God, we take for granted, but should not be done. So God does not always speak as freely as you might feel like he does through the pages of scripture. In fact, you might be tempted like. Gideon to say, Lord, would you please just gimme a sign? Would you just tell me? If you would just speak to me and verbally communicate your will to my life, then I would certainly listen. Well, you see, in Gideon's life, that's not always the case. He was not satisfied with one God, one time, God speaking to him. He had to have more than once, so I would question your own. I don't know. I would be suspicious of your own motivation. If you are constantly asking God, God, just gimme a sign, tell me. Don't make decisions from fleece on the ground. Don't make decisions from clouds in the sky. Don't make decisions from guts in the feeling. Make decisions from the word God has spoken. And God continues to speak through his word, and that's the most reliable means by which we make any decision. Gideon was weak in asking for these things, and God is happy to condescend to him. But remember, Gideon does not have what you and I have. He had a small portion of scripture. We don't even know how much he did have, but we have something far better, far more robust. We have the whole canon of the word of God, and that's a far greater blessing to us than God speaking to you over. I honestly I heard of somebody making a decision about where to move from seeing a train go by and seeing the freight that said a certain name on the freight, and they're like, I'm gonna move that to that place. Serious. Wow. They felt like God had spoken to them that way. And I understand. I guess I get there's something enchanting about that and kind of exciting to say, oh, maybe God's speaking to me through these various signs. And maybe he did. I'm not gonna say nay for certain, but I will say he does speak through the word of God, certainly. And that's a far better tool to make decisions than to say, Leslie's lay out the fleeces. So work us through that. You say it's not an absolute no. It sounds like you're saying that there is a place where God may use a sign for communicating with you. Yeah. How do we interpret that though? Like how do we know if it's the train or if it's the plane or whatever it is? Right. How do we go about. Understanding that, 'cause we do have the word of God. Yes. And the word of God is definitive and clear. And if there is a place for those signs, how do we go about doing that? That's a great question. And I think for me the way that I would approach that is to say I want at least, I don't know, I'm not, I'm just gonna give a number, not that this number is scientifically I validated, but I'm gonna say I want 95% of my decision to be scriptural. I'm gonna leave room for 5% of it to be like, God is just throwing people at my for instance. Let's suppose you wanna move to North Texas to be part of a church plant, and you're deciding, man, do I want to do this? Is this right for me and my family? You might have someone say, man I feel like God wants you to leave to this, to go to this church plant. And maybe they didn't even know that you were talking about that, that would be something for me to say. Oh, interesting. Mm-hmm. I'm gonna consider that I may not put all my stock into that, but I will weigh it and I will think about it. I want it to be 95% biblical, thoughtful full of integrity, full of prayerfulness. And then I'll be open if God wants to send signs. My way to be sensitive enough to say is this you Lord, knowing well enough that I'll never be able to fully know what certainty yes, he has spoken through the cloud or through the freight train or whatever else. 95% Biblical. I'll say that, and I'll leave room 5%. Give or take to say, well, maybe got those other stuff your way to give you insight beyond what you're currently discussing. And I think that's helpful. Even as we look at what Gideon demands of God, right. Is he entirely wrong to do that? I'm gonna say probably not, but there is certainly things he does that are questionable. So you would say there's a time for us to ask for the fleece. Me, either of you? No I guess I wanna be careful. 95% biblical says I'm making a decision from the scriptures. Yeah. But I'll leave 5%. And again, those are just numbers I'm throwing out there. To give you a sense of how I wait, this where I, I'll leave room for maybe God wants to redirect me. Right. So I don't wanna say yes, lay out your fleece. Mm-hmm. I don't wanna say, shake the magic eight ball and see what God says. I wanna say know your Bible and make decisions from that. But also that God does move through his spirit and he moves through the people of God and he speaks in a variety of ways. And sometimes that is subjective experience. I don't want to rule that out entirely. That's what I'm getting at. But I wouldn't say it's a good idea to make decisions from subjective experience primarily. That's super helpful. And I think God does what he does with the fleece. There's nothing in here by the way, that says this is commendable, that Gideon does this, but God responds to it because God is. God is gracious to Gideon. God is merciful towards him. 'cause God could have looked at Gideon and been like, you're not the guy. You don't have enough faith. You're not believing in me. How much more do you need from me? I'm done with you. And moved on to somebody else. And yet God's patience and mercy with him is say, okay, yes, fine. I'll make the fleece dry. And the grass we. Fine. I'll make the grass wet and the, or the fleece wet and the grass dry. I'll do what you need me to do, Gideon. And then that even carries over into chapter seven, which we haven't really gotten into yet. When God then tells this man who's weak in faith, Hey, I'm gonna pare down your army all the way to 300 people from your thousands and you're gonna take them and go do battle again. I think God is patiently. Looking at Gideon. But even with that, not leaving Gideon in the state of doubt, but challenging his doubt and calling on Gideon to say, Gideon, I want you to believe in me more. I want your faith in me to increase. And he's doing this, I think the whole way, even with the instruction to tear down the alters of bail to the fleece interaction, to then saying, I'm gonna pare down your army and you're gonna see the power that I will display here, which is going to, I think, equip Gideon for the rest of his time as a judge over the people of Israel. All right. Let's jump over to Luke chapter eight then for our New Testament reading. Luke chapter eight verses one through 21. Right away in Luke eight verses one through three, here we have some of the notable ladies that are called out who are supporting Jesus and the disciples in their ministry. And so this is Mary Magdalene. This is also Joanna, the life of the wife of Chua. Here's a name, pastor Mark. You guys haven't any more kids? You can Yeah. If you're looking for a baby name, there's one. CHOA or Za. Yeah. Herod's household manager. That's interesting, isn't it? You've got the household manager of Herod, who is one of the band of the followers of Christ here, and then you've got Susanna and many others who provided for them out of their own means. And so that's really neat. You don't often see that the women in their role of how they supported Christ, and yet Luke makes. A point to say, Hey, these women were there and they were helping the disciples do what they were doing, go about and doing the teaching and preaching and healing and everything else. So neat that we see them even maybe forerunners of the deaconess in one regard there, as we see in in the beginning of Luca eight here. From here we've got the parable of the sower, which all three of us are gonna be dealing with in. Great detail at our men's retreat, which is coming up by the way, April 24th through 25th. So men, if you haven't registered yet, or ladies, if you're listening to this and you've got a husband or you've got a man somewhere in your life that you would like to be at this men's retreat, then this would be the time to say, Hey, there's still time to register for the men's retreat, but we're gonna be tackling this parable there. We talked about it in Matthew, but again, this is about the type of. Fertile soil that the Lord is looking for, and the soil being the receptivity to the word of God. And that's the key thing in this parable that Jesus talks about here, is how is the word received and what is the fruit that's born as a result of the word received? It's not just about what I profess. But it's also about the impact that it makes on my life, and that's important for us. One of our distinctives is we work to proclaim a biblical gospel. And this is one of the dividing lines there, because we would look at this parable, I think, and all three of us would say, the only genuine believer in this is the final soil. The others are not. Whereas I think you might have some that say, but the other show signs of life they profess faith and so they must be saved then because they believe, they confess with their mouth. So they're Christians, they just fall away. We would say no. Genuine faith transforms the life. Genuine faith produces evidence and produces fruit. And so that's indicative of what part of the message of this parable really is. What do you guys make of this specific phrase in verse 15? It is the one who holds fast in an honest and good heart and bears fruit with patients. So if I was gonna write this, I would just say good heart. Why is honest a word that's used by Luke here, why is that qualification made? Why do you think this is? The text that I'm gonna be preaching from for our last session. And I think, so both of those words mean good. You got kalos and agathas. It's saying good, good. It's another way. You're using a synonym. I think Luke is trying to capture Jesus' point, which is the kind of heart that responds well is a heart that is good through and through honesty, sincerity, receptivity. There's a humility about it. As we're gonna make the point in this series of sermons for. The soil that it is the condition of the heart that determines the fruitfulness of the response and the condition of the heart Here in verse 15, is the a heart that has been transformed, and that shows us that it takes an act of God to respond to the word as we should. And so we're gonna elaborate on that a whole lot more. There's a ta, a taste test for you, a Costco size sampler, but there's a lot going on here that I'm really excited to explore with you gentlemen. The other parable that we find out here is the lamp hidden under the jar. Nobody lights a lamp and then puts it under the jar, puts it under the bed, but sets it on a stand so that it will give light to those in the house as it's put other places here. You also have the promise there that nothing is hidden that will not be made. Manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light. So this speaks of hidden sin. This speaks of the idea that we can't think that there's something that we're getting away with, even if we don't see the immediate discipline there. It will one day be exposed and God delights to do that in the life of his children as well. One thing I wanna point out here that I think is so interesting and something that we might be tempted to, to read past quickly, is the fact that in verse two and in verse three, you find out that these women who follow Jesus are disciples of Jesus. They're not just they're not just the groupies. They're not just those who are supporting the guys by making their food. Now, maybe they did, I don't know. But what I do see here is that Jesus qualifies them. Now they are listed next to the 12th. There were the 12th who were with him. In verse two, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities Mary called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out. Joanna, you mention all these people, and I think it's interesting that Jesus had he permitted women to follow him. That would've been very unusual for a rabbi of any degree in that age. The fact that Jesus allows him to be his disciples and even dignifies them by listing them in the same breath as the 12. It tells me they played a very special role, and that special role continues in a very practical sense. You'll see here in the end of verse three, they provided for the disciples out of their means. So it's not just that these women were disciples themselves, but they were also wealthy disciples. Who used the resources that God entrusted to them to support Jesus' ministry? You can say a lot of things about Christianity, but you can't say that it looks down on women. Here, women are esteemed and they're honored. They're given a place of discipleship. Mary sits at the feet of Jesus and Jesus doesn't condemn her and say, gets a work woman. He says she's chosen the better portion. Martha, be okay with that. I'm not gonna tell her not to do that. Now, Chua he might be the very reason we have any insight into Herod's household. Because she, there's an insight here. Maybe it was Chu's wife who's like, Hey, Jesus, here's what's going on, on, on the inside, and so there's a lot of cool things that are happening here. Again, as you read this, you might read that quickly without a second glance, but I think that's pretty exceptional given the ancient Near Eastern mentality. Jesus honors and welcomes the women. Yeah, that's huge. Huge. EE, even the, them being some of the first witnesses to the tomb is another reason why. Why we point to you for the veracity of scripture. Because in this time their testimony would not have been held in high regard. Right. And yet Jesus and God does hold their testimony in high regard. Wouldn't have been even, wouldn't have shown up in scripture if it were up to the ancient near Eastern first entry mind. Yep. Well, hey, let's pray and they'll be done with this episode. Lord, thanks for these details in scripture that we get to see. And even if we've read this time and time and time again there's more there. There's always gonna be more there every time we come back to your word. And so whether it's a, perhaps a less familiar passage like we're dealing with in judges with Gideon and with some of these other passages there, or. Something in the gospels that we just read afresh with a different perspective, or we see something that we've never noticed before, like Chua the the wife of Herod's household manager, that, that's such a fascinating detail that we get to see and absorb and even just ponder over it even though we don't have all of the details. We have more that we can learn about who you are. And about the way that you've orchestrated all these things. So we pray that we would continue to be good students of your word and learn more and more with each passing day. We pray. In Jesus' name, amen. Keep reading new Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See ya. Bye bye.

Thank you for listening to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. We’re grateful you chose to spend time with us today. This podcast is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in North Texas. You can learn more about our church at compassntx.org. If this podcast has been helpful, we’d appreciate it if you’d consider leaving a review, rating the show, or sharing it with someone else. We hope you’ll join us again tomorrow for another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast.