Everybody welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello. It's not April 1st anymore. Pastor Rod, did you survive the day everybody has been asking? I did not. I am still in that day. Just so we're all on the same page here. We are recording on that day, and I have been bamboozled multiple times a day, only because I don't think about it. Yeah. It's just not top of mind. Yeah. It happened to me once today, and that is, I, it was pretty substantial, man. You're making a big church life decision and you're like, based on this thing right here, we're doing it. Yeah. And then everyone's but hold on. Where did you see that information? And you're like, oh thankfully, X Thankfully they didn't accept my resignation and we're good to go. No, I I saw a post about the Tesla robot that was pre-orders are available and you were bamboozled. I am not interested in a Tesla robot, but I work with people who are very interested in the Tesla robot, and one of them in particular was like, Hey, I'm jumping on. I, I wanna find this thing out. And he was like, wait a minute. It's April Fools. That's what got me. I don't know I'm not ready for a life-size robot to come and live with my family. I'm ready for it to live with your family. You'll take the hit for me on that one. You'll allow me to take the, for you, I how you take the hit. I, I want to know if it's worth getting and if it's getting it for you and makes sense, then I would be happy to let you take the hit on that. We're gonna have to wait and find out what our, what Mark thinks about it because I'm not planning on doing, not doing that. Yeah, it would be pretty cool. I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, that's that's coming down the road, but I'm, who knows? Who knows if it'll take off? I'm sure it will. People will buy 'em. They, we will have robots. It'll be the Jetsons. I remember growing up thinking, I want that. And now that I'm grown up, I'm like, I don't want that. I think I do. I think I would want it. It's expensive. If it is what we think it's gonna be, it's gonna cost a ton of money. But you could argue how much will it say? This is the whole situation bef the advent of the car. Oh, my horse work's just fine. Do I really wanna get a car? So I think we're gonna be in that stage where at some point everyone's gonna have one. It's gonna be that whole Terminator. What's that Will Smith movie where he's fighting robots? That one too. I Robot iBot. It's gonna be that for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Meet the Robinsons. Did you ever watch that one? No, it was Disney's version. But it wasn't, somebody didn't blow up there. Oh, I don't think I call that one. But they were featured in, I think they were robots in that one. I don't remember. Who knows? Anyways, yeah, so happy post April Fool's Day. Nobody's trying to prank you anymore as this podcast is rolling out today. One thing that wasn't a prank is that the inter varsity press publisher has put all their Kindle books on sale. I did buy several. Some were killer deals. So I don't know, by the time you hear this, I don't know if it'll still be going, but I'm a Kindle guy. I like Kindle and I read on my iPad all the time. And so this was pretty cool. They got John Stotts Bible studies. They got the Tindale, old Testament and New Testament commentaries on sale. Some of them as cheap as five bucks, which is a killer deal. They're great resources to have. Granted this is not logos. I prefer logo os books, especially if it's a commentary. But other books that are more pop level. Or books that don't necessarily need all the tools that logos brings to the table they're worth having. And they're just so good to, even for reference purposes, they're just so good. All of the they're terrible covers, but it's the Biblical theology series. They got all these biblical theology books on sale for five or six or seven bucks. Such, such a good deal. Yeah. You said killer deal twice in that killer deal. Two minute. I don't know. I killer. I chased a rabbit hole. I wasn't really paying attention to what you were saying people were saying for these, but you and I already talked about it. Yeah, I just, I'm trying to figure out where the earliest known use of the noun killer deal is in the 1930s apparently. So there you go. 1930s. That's where it came from. Is that what you were doing while I was talking? Yeah. 'cause I'm like, why do we call something a killer deal? Because it is, it's man I would die for that deal. And this is one of those times to die for those deals. I guess they're good, man. I'm looking at some of the books on here. I'm like, oh, maybe I'm not done buying stuff yet. There's just some cool stuff here. Okay. Here's one on a if you want a multi-view series spectrum, multi-view series, or are Not bad, there's one on the atonement that I think is also on sale, but let's just find out the nature of the atonement. Four views. So if you're a nerdy. Theological type. This one's on sale for six bucks. Let's see what it nor let's see. I can't easily see what it normally goes for, but I know for this series you're looking at about $20 for a book. This is IVP academic. Yeah. Some good stuff out here. Yeah. I would caution us on the four views that if you're. Unsure if you're, if you haven't really delved into an area and you don't really know where you stand as far as your convictions go, just be careful with the four views series because it's, it is just that, it's four people, different authors that embrace each of these. Different views that are out there and they write on the views and they present their view with the strongest arguments that they can't. And now granted, there's usually responses in those books from the people that don't hold those views, but even those responses aren't gonna be from people that we necessarily would say are biblically faithful and accurate and they're in. And so just be careful with those because you're gonna encounter views that are some of them aberrant, some of them heterodox, even outside the bounds of what we would consider orthodox Christianity. Some of them are just gonna be variances here and there, but some of them are gonna introduce concepts that we would say, no, that's. That's not just wrong, that's Unbiblical in the holding of that position. We're friends of, or fans of at least of Trumper Longman. He's got a couple good books on sale too. How to read Proverbs, how to Read Ex Exodus how to read the Psalms. Trumper Longman is a good author worth considering. So lots of good things out there. Of course there's exceptions to the rule in terms of what you can get the deals. The price may still be overpriced for some of the authors, I'm sure, but over overall, this looks like a really good a really good sale if you're. If it's still April 1st, when you hear this, it's a kid in the candy store. Alright, let's jump into Judges eight and Judges nine. Our daily Bible reading for the day. We are continuing with the story of Gideon. And Gideon is continuing the fight. Remember, this is the fight that God said we're gonna deliver you guys with 300 people and these are the people that are gonna drink like dogs from the stream. This is who Gideon's got. The fight is continuing and as it's continuing and as he's pursuing these Canaanite kings, he stops at these two places at KO and at penal along the way to seek rations for his weary men. And both of these cities refuse, and Gideon ends up punishing them after he returns it. Victorious. After the win, the people want Gideon to rule over them as king, but he refuses. He says, no, we're not gonna do this. I'm not the king. God is king. And instead he makes a golden ephod. So he goes from a high point to a really low point there. And this golden ephod you can think of Aaron's calf. In some ways, that becomes an idol for the people in the chapter then ends with Gideon's death. Chapter eight. N not, you've got high points but some low points for Gideon and chapter eight here. Yeah, those two cities that you just mentioned, just for the sake of reference here, those cities are part of the trans Jordan tribes. So you think about the half tribe of Manas, GAD GAD in particular actually is where these two cities are located. And so they're kinsmen, they're friends. They're supposed to be able to help and say, yeah, we got your back. We'll supply you. And so the fact that they didn't does not bode well for them. And then Gideon doesn't like it, so that's why. That's why this is in there. They should have responded favorably to that because they're working against common enemies and they're like you haven't won yet, buddy. We're not sure we're gonna support you. Yeah. And yeah, so it's the countrymen that are not supporting there. Yeah. Not a good look for them. Not a good look for Gideon with that e thought at the end, that becomes the no, the snare to the people. That is a, that is problematic. Yeah. I don't know what he's up to with that. It's like Aaron, I just, the people, I just took their gold and threw it into the fire and out came this. This calf. I don't know what happened. God. Yeah, I guess so. That's a bad, that's a bad excuse. Yeah, it is. I was talking with somebody this week about in Sunday sermon I just mentioned the fact that there's a lot of Islamic temples that are, or mosques rather, that are popping up all over. I'm gonna be talking about that a little bit again, even this Sunday. But he mentioned that there was a plan for a gigantic monkey god statue in Frisco that got overruled. Thankfully. And he said what would we do if there was this gigantic, false statue of a false God across the street from the church and march around it seven times. Yeah, exactly. And here we've got, the golden ephod we're gonna get into later on the, the idol that, that Micah makes and everything. And what we have to understand is these false gods are here. They're in our midst. They're just not as easily identifiable as they were during this day. In some ways it's true. The giant monkey God statue is easier for us to go. Don't worship that thing. That thing's a fault. God. We're too sophisticated for that anyway. Exactly. Yeah. So instead we carry our gods in our pockets. We carry our gods in our. Apps on our phones, or we carry our gods on our bank accounts with our numbers or whatever it is. And so the false gods are there. So we read something like this and we're like, how can they be so dumb to worship a golden eod? And yet. We have our own idols still that are more acceptable because they're more cloaked, they're not as obvious as they were back in that day. And even though we might shake our heads at this let's not be too quick to judge and let's examine our hearts and go, God is. Or maybe let's be quick to judge, but let's be quick to judge ourselves. As well as judging Gideon for what he does here. Such a good word. I think one of the best and highest qualities that any Christian can pursue as he or she reads the Bible is humility. If we could read the Bible with humility, that would really impact the way that we understand the text and the way that we apply the text. Yeah. Yeah, on chapter nine, we get into the descendants of Gideon here. And ab Bialek, who's one of Gideon's sons conspires against his brothers in a power play and ends up killing all but one of them. And after this, the people of Shechem there make him king. And so quite a contrast. Gideon, after delivering the people refuses to be king. Here's a bialek. One of his sons who kills all his brothers except for one, and then agrees and says, yeah I'll be your king. I'll be your leader instead. The surviving son, his name is Ham, and he is he confronts the people of Schechem and tells them this parable about trees seeking a king and settling on bramble in the end, which is not a very noble. Noble Bush or noble Tree. And then he issues a challenge saying that if they had acted treacherous in this fire, would come out and consume these leaders and ab bialek. And then after saying this, Jonathan runs away. So Jonathan is not as bold as we might like him to be, but he does confront the error, confront the wrong here. And then in, in the rest of Chapter nine here, AB Bialek initially enjoys some success in his battles against surroundings people against surrounding peoples, though not without the considerable help of Yahweh, but he needs a tragic end. And he humiliating. And when a woman from a tower that he was attacking throws this millstone down from the tower, that crushes his skull and ends up killing ab bialek there in a pretty shameful way. He actually asked his armor bear to thrust him through. So it wouldn't be said that ab bialek was killed by a woman, although it's recorded in scripture pretty much for the rest of time that he was indeed killed by a woman. So good try. But it doesn't happen. Exactly. Yeah. I the last line in this chapter nine, verse 57, God also made all the evil of the men of shek and return on their heads, and upon them came the curse of Ham, the son of j Romeo. So here's something I think that would be worth noting and highlighting in your own brain is that, and it's that God is just on his timetable. Here in the situation with the bialek, God took care of him eventually. This wasn't an immediate an immediate judgment on him, but it was an eventual one, and that's the case for most of us today. The reason that we can overlook sin and offer forgiveness is because God will ultimately judge those who commit evil, and that's true for everybody unless Christ becomes their substitute. So as you go throughout life and you experience situations like a Bilac, I'm sure or yeah, I'm sure that during his timeframe. People were saying that this is a tragedy. How could he get away with this? God, where are you? Why aren't you responding to us? You touched on this on Sunday, pastor pj, talking about the fact that suffering comes to all Christians talk about Jesus and how he fits into Ju Judges chapter nine. I'm suggesting here that God is gonna be the just judge of all the Earth at some point eventually, even though he delays. Is there anything else that you might wanna offer up to us as we think about this from the vantage of the New Testament and Christ? As far as justice coming for Christ Justice coming. Yeah. Through Christ. Yeah. Justice, being satisfied in Christ. All the angles, whatever you wanna highlight, right? Yeah. And that's, that is hard when we have been wronged and I did talk on Sunday a lot about surrendering our sense of justice to God's sense of justice. And we think to ourselves, man. This is wrong and this is what needs to happen to the person that wronged me. And when we surrender our sense of justice to God, it's more than saying, okay, God, you're gonna cause that person to burn in hell. And so I can find some comfort there because what if that person repents from their sins and puts their trust in Christ? Has justice not been done? And the answer is justice has been done. Justice was done at the cross, though, not in eternity, in hell. And just like for all the sins that you've committed, justice is not gonna be done on you in eternity in hell. And you're thankful for that, and you're grateful for that, right? For that person, that repents who wronged you that then ultimately the offense, which is more against God than against you, is gonna be dealt with or was dealt with retroactively at the cross and not in an eternity in hell. So yeah, justice ultimately is either displayed in eternity, in suffering, or at the cross in the suffering that Christ bore on our result. Or our behalf. That's right. Yeah. Two chapters today not a ton. Beyond that kind of the story of Gideon and then his offspring, I, ironically the name of Bialek Pastor Rod, what does the name of Bialek mean? My father is King, right? And here we had Gideon who said, Nope, I. I'm not gonna be king. Yeah. And his son like but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You were, and I'll be king too. And it's, there's a lot of, there's a lot, there's multiple aex in scripture and so it's possible that this was, his name was something else, and he took this name on himself in a posture to try to gain this poi position in this prestige amongst his brothers. Yeah. Yeah. Not a good dude. Don't name your kids a Bialek, probably a. Bad idea. Don't see great things for yourself. Yep. Let God be the one to give you the great things. There's the greatness that you should pursue is the greatness that lasts beyond the grave. Yep. And that's the greatness that's permanent. That's the greatness that will ultimately be valuable in the next life. Yeah. Yep. Let's pray and then we'll be done with this episode. God, give us a passion for just that, for not building our empire here our riches here worshiping even the idols that we were talking about earlier here. But. But keeping our focus on you, worshiping you, and being willing to count the cost of living a life here that may not look exactly the way we want it to, but knowing that this is a life that honors you and pleases you, and that's worth it because in the end, we'll be with you. So keep our focus and affections and attention upon you as we navigate this world. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Keep reading your Bibles. Tuning again tomorrow for another Daily Bible podcast edition. Bye bye.

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