Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello, good morning. Happy Saturday. Happy Saturday. Oh, it's Saturday Men. I hope you're at Men's Bible Study. Please be there. Yes, I would love to see you there and I can't wait to share some food with you. I'm not sure what we're doing, but I'd like to see you there. Some bread. Some bread of life, at least that, maybe even actual bread. I'm not sure what else is coming with us, but we're gonna be there one way or another. Even if we're fasting, we'll fast together or break fast together. Maybe that, maybe both. Yeah. Fasting until you get there. Okay, we have a question. Here's another one. This is a fun one. We haven't had this one in a little bit, so this is from a new listener. Someone who's new to our church as well they said that they've thanks for writing in. Yeah. Thank you for doing that. Yeah, we appreciate that. They're asking that from their prior church and church history, they've always been exposed to the King James and the new King James Bible. They wanna know. Why our church has chosen to do the ESV, the especially sanctified version, as some people call it, or the English standard version. So that's the question in a nutshell. Pastor Peja, tell us definitively, again, definitively why we're using the ESV. Yeah. Well, first off, I think it's important to establish the reality that every. Version of the Bible that we have is a translation of the Bible. Mm. Especially any English translation that we have. Unless you're gonna go back to the Greek and go back to the original manuscripts, which we don't even for the New Testament have the original manuscripts anymore. We have copies of the original manuscripts and certainly the same can be true of the Old Testament. We're gonna be reading a translation and so any translation is going to be. By nature of the fact that it's translation interpretive there's no one translation that is an exact parallel to the Greek thoughts that, and the Greek words that are out there because there's a difference. 'cause we're crossing over. Right? That's what translation is. So. For a long time. The KJV was the standard and the King James version was the standard of biblical fidelity. And it's a fine translation. There's nothing wrong with it inherently. It's difficult to read for a lot of people, especially the original KJV because it used the these and vows and the. Th is at the end of words and like hath and things like that. So the new King James came along and said, well, let's modernize it. Let's make it a little bit more readable so that people can understand it more readily, and it's appealing to a new generation, so to speak. And so they didn't really alter any of the meaning of the text. They just modernized it to make it more readable. But they were still striving for biblical fidelity. Well, since that time you've had other translations come along, so one of the other leading. Translations that was super popular for a long time and still is today, is the New American Standard Bible. I believe the dominant version was the 95 translation for the longest time, and since then they've updated it once or twice, but that was even more wooden in some ways than the King James. And so you read the NASB. It's gonna be as faithful to the Greek, including word order, even in some sentences as it possibly can be. Besides the NASB, you've got more recently the LSB, the Legacy Standard Bible. Again, a great translation. It's very similar to the NASB. They've translated Doulos as slave and they've also translated Yahweh and the Old Testament. So there's some moves that they've made along those lines there with the LSB and then you've got the English standard version as well. The English standard version is going to be similar. In that it's on the biblically faithful side that the fidelity is to word for word and that's really the two categories, broad categories that we deal with. In Bible translation, you've got what's known as formal equivalence, which is word for word. So all the translations I've mentioned so far would all be formal equivalents. That is the editors are striving for faithfulness to the original text. Going for word for word of what the original text says. Then you've got on the other side of the spectrum dynamic equivalence, which is thought for thought. So there, the most extreme example of that is Eugene Peterson's Bible, the message. And some would say, that's not even a Bible, it's just a, an interpretation or it's a commentary on the Bible. But that's not even trying to get word for word that's just thought for thought or concept for concept. One of the more. Probably one of the more faithful translations that would be dynamic equivalents. That's, that can be helpful to read sometimes just to get a different perspective. The new living translation will give you a different point of view. It will save things in a different way and sometimes that can be super helpful for us. The NIV is another one that would be closer to the thought for thought than it would be for the word for word. Bridging the gap. You've got the CSB, the Christian Standard Bible. That's probably closer to the middle ground there. All that to say we land on the ESV because when it comes to study and when it comes to expositing, the scriptures and unpacking the scriptures on a Sunday morning, we wanna land with the text that's gonna be as biblically faithful as we can, and also as accessible, broadly accessible as possible. We find that the ESV kind of hits both of those notes really well. It's not that the LSB is bad, it's not that the NASB is bad or the KJV or New King James, those are great translations in their own right. We just find for what we're trying to do with the church on a Sunday morning, which is not only to study it on the Sunday morning, but also to put it in the hands of our people to do what we're doing right now, which is to read their Bibles during the week. We find that ESV is a really helpful translation to hit the, a broad swath of people in our congregation. I grew up. With a new King James version Bible, and for the longest time, I loved it. It read well. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the lofty language. It was really helpful for me to grow up with, and I found it to be really, really good. In fact, it was my second Bible that I ever got, and this is one that my dad bought me. It was a leather bound and KJV Spirit-filled life application Bible. Ooh, spirit-filled. Yeah, spirit-filled. Okay. It was edited, I believe, by Jack Hayford. And I really enjoyed that Bible. It was one of my favorites. I enjoyed memorizing from it. If you want to call it that, I guess a couple phrases stood out to me. But all that to say I grew up on that. I love the new King James version, and I still will on occasion go back to it just to read it and enjoy it for it's the way that it verbalizes things. But one major difference between a lot of the translations that we use today versus the NKJV or even the KJV, is the textual tradition behind them. So if you want a bigger reason behind why we choose the ESV. Is in part because we believe in the textual tradition behind it. And that's a bigger argument, that's a little more philosophical. Both of those have to deal with how you treat. Ancient manuscripts and whether you favor the bulk, the majority of manuscripts, which many of them are Byzantine era manuscripts, and they, there's a lot of them, and that's what the new King James version will utilize. It's gonna use the majority of manuscripts that are available, and sometimes the shorthand phrase for that is the majority text. Whereas what a lot of other Bible versions will use is what's called the critical text. Critical is not a bad word here. Like sometimes it's used today. It just means that these texts are gonna be the ones that have the greatest degree of oldness, I should use that word. It's not a technical word, oldness. They have. Authenticity and they showcase to be probably closer to the originals than even what the majority text might otherwise say. And so you're getting into what's called textual criticism at that point. But we favor the critical text approach versus the majority text approach, which again, primarily byzantine. So if that sounds at all interesting to you, you might be a great candidate to study textual criticism because there's a lot of stuff that goes into it, and we'd be happy to point you to some resources, but. Yes, we love the ESV. We love all sorts of Bible translations, but we think the ESV is a really great, helpful translation. Although we know many of you guys use the LSB and that's fine, but we love the ESV and we as a church have chosen to use it. So we'd encourage you, make sure that you bring an ESV to church. 'cause after you're gonna hear us preach, yeah, we're using that. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, I've come across him recently in, in, enjoyed a lot of his stuff. I haven't found anything so far that, that gives me pause. But there's a guy named Wes Huff, HUFF. He's a good dude and he has a YouTube channel. So if you go on YouTube and you search Wes Huff, you'll find his channel. And he does a lot dealing with the. Tradition of biblical criticism and how we got the Bible that we have and why we can rely on the Bible that we have. Right. And I think he even deals with some King James questions in some of those videos that he has on there as well. So Wes Huff, WES, and then HUFF. I would commend him to you. I think he's super helpful. Let's get to our DBR today, which is John chapter six. Rather than getting bogged down in a ton of the details and maybe pastor you've got some questions you can throw in here, application thoughts as well that we can kick around here. But what I want you to remember with John is the most theological gospel writer that we have. So Matthew, mark, and Luke are. Writing for their own distinct purposes but John's kind of uniqueness that he brings to the table, and it's because he wrote his gospel so much longer after the events. And so he had so much more time to think about and to ponder and to formulate theological conclusions about the life of Christ than did Matthew, mark and Luke, who wrote much more in much more close proximity to the events that they were recording there. This doesn't mean that we call into question what John's recording. It doesn't mean that he's recording things that didn't actually happen or altering things. He's just framing it in a different way and that's why I think so many people are attracted to his gospel because there's such rich depth there. There's multiple layers, and I think that's what we get in John chapter six. John Records here. The feeding of the 5,000 right off the bat. Right. Which we've read about in the synoptic gospels. And so a couple of observations here. There's no mention by John of the death of John the Baptist proceeding this and what John does do is he mentions here the proximity of the Passover and you wonder, okay, why mention the proximity to the pass Passover. They're not in Jerusalem, so it's not as though he's saying he was going up to the feast to, to do this. So why mention that here? And it seems to be, this is one of those theological moments because after the feeding of the 5,000 and the walking on water, John's going to record what we know as the Bread of Life discourse, and that's gonna be John 6 22 through 59. And Jesus is going to be talking to the crowds that have just been fed. By him, the 5,000 plus. And they're gonna rush to meet him because they wanna be fed again. And Jesus is going to take that and spin that into their need. Not for physical bread but for the spiritual bread that really he's gonna allegorize as his own body. He's gonna say, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will no longer hunger or thirst. And there's some hard things that he says in this whole discourse, especially that at the very end, people are leaving and the disciples he looks at the disciples says, do you wanna leave too? And they say, no. Where are we gonna go? You have the words of life. They get it. They understand it, although not fully, but they're beginning to understand it more and more. But John is doing this. In the concept of presenting the theological impact here. And I think that's why he reconnects the Bread of Life discourse. Right on the heels of the feeding, the 5,000. You happen to have preached through this book, if I'm not mistaken. I did. You did. So where might somebody go if they want to hear more about John chapter six? They can go to compass ntx.org is our slash sermons website slash sermons. And then all of them are there. Yep. Okay. And if I have questions, I can always email you and ask specific questions about the text that I'm reading through. Totally. Every day. Any day. Yes. Day or night, a hundred percent. I can text you on your cell phone and you'll answer within 10 minutes. There we go. And my phone number is (555) 555-5555. No. But on that note I, uhoh, uhoh. Here it comes. I wanna be careful here. Be careful guys here because, 'cause I wanna set everybody's expectations appropriately. But when I preach. I understand that sometimes I'm gonna preach and it's gonna create some questions for you. And I understand that there's gonna be times that I preach and you're gonna say, okay, I hadn't heard it that way. And I'm hoping that's not gonna happen too often because that means, again that maybe I'm drifting a little bit there, but if you do have questions, you can email me. I'm happy to respond. I may I be able to get back to you right away and if I preach a clunker and I get a ton of emails, then you may be low on the list before I get back to either I delete it. But I wanna be helpful is what I'm saying. I don't want to have a fog in the pew if there's a fog in the pulpit or whatever that statement says there. So, if you've got questions on that then shoot me an email. Say, Hey, pastor pj, you know, when you were preaching you said this I, could you clarify more on that? Yeah. Or that's gonna help me shepherd the flock better too, because I'm gonna know that. Maybe I'm missing the mark. We meet so I'm not pre prepping my sermons in a vacuum. Yeah. We meet on Tuesdays you and I and Pastor Mark and Louis, and we all kind of together kick the text around and you guys gimme a lot of helpful insight that helps shape a lot of my sermon prep process. But, man I'm open to your emails. I would just ask, and I trust that you will because I love you guys and I trust your hearts and I know you guys, if you can do it respectfully, you know, not be like, Hey, dear knucklehead, like, why'd you say this? But I'd be happy to try to clarify things and even learn from some of the things that, that maybe you're asking questions about. Yeah, and you can send it to podcast at compass ntx org. That's true too. Yeah. And then we can kick it around on the podcast and I can ask and maybe ask follow up questions on your behalf. Yeah. Listeners. I hope I do a good job of that. But lemme go back to our John chapter six. Yes. My point was to say, Hey, if you wanna hear more about this. Pastor PGE has at least three sermons, maybe more. I can't, I didn't count. But there's several sermons on John chapter six. You're welcome to browse our library and hear about that. Lemme take you to verse 28. They said to him, what must we do to be doing the works of God? And then Jesus says, this is the work of God, that you believe in him, who he has sent and what way is believing in God. The work is that our work is that is John's point or is Jesus' point to say, look, your work is actually not work. It's to believe. Help us clarify that. I think our faith is our first act of obedience. Our understanding of. A person's salvation is that God opens their eyes and gives them the ability to then put their faith in Jesus as their Lord and Savior. And that comes from Ephesians two, that we're dead in our trespasses and sins. It comes from Second Corinthians four, that the God of the world has blinded the eyes of the lost to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel. So we believe that it takes an act of God prior to us believing, to enable us to then be able to believe once that has taken place, which we believe is what the Spirit does. John, chapter three, the regenerative work of the spirit. Then our first act, our first work of obedience for God is to believe in Jesus, is to put our faith in Christ. And so I think that's why Jesus says this is the work of God, that you believe in me. That's where it begins. That's not the only work of God because then that launches us into a life of obedience to him, a life of faithful following of Christ. But the, it starts, the genesis is when we put our trust in Jesus for our salvation. Fantastic. And. Other people will say, well, okay, fair enough. But Jesus, if he really wanted us to know who he was, he would say, I am Jesus. I am fully God, and I'm fully man, or I'm truly God and truly man. Talk to the skeptic who might be listening. And would say, Jesus never said that he was God. If that was really important, Jesus would've said in the gospels, I am God. So I do see here, Jesus says in verse 35, I am the bread of life. Is that something we should read into? Is that something we should look at and say, this is Jesus claiming to be God, or is this something different? Have Christians misunderstood this passage? How do we see this contributing to or not contributing to Jesus'? Question of divinity. Yeah, so there's a connection back here to the Old Testament, which goes back to the Passover as well, which again was John's comment there. Which connects us back to Moses. Moses. In fact, the leader said, Hey Moses gave us manna to eat in the wilderness. What do you give for us? And now that question, they understood that that manna came. From God. And so Jesus then responds by saying, well, Moses gave you manna, but I'm telling you something greater than Moses is here. I'm giving you something greater than Moses gave. I'm giving my life, my bread. The my life is the bread that you need come down from heaven. So there's layers of Jewish understanding here that, that contribute to our understanding what Jesus is saying. Just like in John chapter five, when we saw Jesus said, my father is working until now and I myself am working. Yeah. And it says right on the heels of that, that the Jones. The Jones, the Jones family. The Joneses are man, those guys, the Jews picked up stones to kill him because he was making himself equal with God. So there you see, the Jews understood. He's saying, I'm God. Mm-hmm. And so I think that to, to claim that Jesus never claimed to be God is simply not to consider the facts that we find in the Gospels, though some of them are a little bit. Require a little bit more digging like this one about the bread of life and the connection back to the provision of manna and where did that come from? It came from God. Now, Jesus is saying, I'm giving this to you, just like the Father gave the manna in the past. That's a connection that's an illusion to his identity as fully God. If Jesus really cared that we understand that, why would he say it in a layer instead of just being like, Hey, I am God. Yeah, because people are still gonna reject him, right? When he heals, when we talked about it yesterday when the boys lowered through the roof and he looks at him and says, your sin sins are forgiven. And the Pharisees look at him and say, who can forgive sins? But God alone? And Jesus says, you're right. And so that you may know that I'm God, hey, you who are lame. Pick up your bed and walk. And the He does it immediately. And it's not as though everybody in the room was like, you're right. You're God. We believe now we fully believe. So there are times when Jesus gives a full direct disclosure, right? Even with the Samaritan woman, I'm the messiah. And yet that's not enough for a lot of people. Still, that's not enough. He's going to die and resurrect and people are going to be confronted with the fact that he, the tomb is empty and he's resurrected and the eyewitnesses of his life are right there and still, people are gonna say, I'm not gonna believe in him. So even if Jesus had said, I'm the son of God, I'm the Messiah, I'm here, I'm the fulfillment of all of these Old Testament prophecies, believe in me. It still would not have been enough for those that have had their eyes blinded by the God of this world. Yeah. For some skeptics, there's no amount of evidence that would ever suffice. Right. Their need for certainty. Okay. How about this verse in chapter six verse 44? No one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him. Explain what that means. Yeah, that's coming back to what I was just referring to earlier about our state prior to regeneration is according to Paul, in Ephesians chapter two, spiritual death. It. Paul says in second Corinthians four that our eyes have been blinded by the God of this world. So he's saying here until the father operates and works on us, we can't come in faith to the son. We can't believe in the son. So it takes that initiatory act of God. Our lives to be able to enable us to then put our faith and trust in Jesus. And so that's why he says no one can come to the Father to me unless the father draws him, but the ones that do, I'm gonna raise up on the last day. Does that suggest then that the gospel call is an inauthentic call? Because if only those who the father gives can respond to it, it's not a genuine call to anybody or everybody. Is that right? Well it is in that it's a general call versus an effectual call. So the general call is everyone repent and believe in the gospel. The effectual call is those that God has given the ability to come to the son, John 6 44. Those are the ones that are gonna respond in faith and repentance. And again, I've said it before, I'll say it again. It's a great mercy of God that he doesn't tell us who's who in that. Mm-hmm. That we can go out with the general call and. Pray that it's gonna be effectual for anyone that we share the gospel with. And that's what Paul means in Romans chapter 10 when he says, how are they gonna believe unless they hear and they're not gonna hear unless somebody preaches. And so we need to get out and we need to preach the gospel and pray and trust that God could use it to, to open the eyes of that person and lead them to faith. But this isn't fair, it seems like. This doesn't seem like this is right, man. Why would God, it seems like God chooses, he already knows. Then what purpose is it for us to do the gospel and to talk to people about it? 'cause I, man, I don't know if he's a believer or not. Due to what you just said. This doesn't seem fair. That's my heart. I'm yearned, I'm concerned by this. I'm yearning for my relatives, my neighbors, et cetera. What do I do with that? Yeah. There's the empathetic side that says, man, this is hard and this is not something that should give us the warm fuzzies. But then there's the doctrinal side that says but this is what is true and. Paul identifies this and talks about this in Romans nine and even anticipates these very objections, and he finally comes to the conclusion of saying, Hey, it, it's not on us, it's not our prerogative. Or right to, as the clay say to the potter, how dare you. Yeah. Which is really hard but this is why Jesus says what he says here. He says in John 6 64, he says, there are some of you who do not believe, for Jesus knew from the beginning, those who were, who did not believe in who it was who would betray him. And he said, this is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it's granted him by the Father, because this is so hard. And so this is the things that Jesus teaches, including doctrines like this are so difficult. And he's saying, this is why. The only way that we can embrace this is if God enables us to embrace this in the first place. And that's why he looked at his disciples and he said, do you want to go too? And they said, no. We've come to believe and know that you are the holy one of God, that you've got the words of life. Yeah. I wonder if we're understanding it right. If the same potential response is offense, just like it was for them in verse 66, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him because this truth that he just revealed to them was so offensive and reprehensible to them that they couldn't stomach it. Yeah. They just say, okay, I can't follow that kind of God. I could never serve a God like that. Yeah. Is what they would say and what many of their predecessors will also say. So it helped me out with that. Then. God chooses those who he will draw to himself. Now, at least that's what we're talking about. Some people call this Calvinism, right? And maybe we might be okay with that moniker. But suppose I don't believe that. I mean, maybe I don't, maybe we could talk about John six more, but I don't believe that. Am I in the faith? Am I out the faith am might out bounds here. How do you talk about those things? This is a, what we would call tier two issue. So tier one issues are a matter of salvation. This is a tier two issue, and this is something where believers can disagree with believers on this. And so a believer could say, no I, that's not my understanding of this. I believe that anyone can choose of their own free will to put their faith in Jesus and to believe in him for salvation. And then you may have our camp that says, you know what? No we believe that the spirit has to operate to open the eyes of that person at the end of the day. Both are gonna sit across the table and say, well, I've put my trust in Jesus. One is gonna say, I did that freely. The other is gonna say, Hey, God opened your eyes to be able to do that. But at the end of the day we're both in Christ. And then the other thing that is important to know is at the end of the day, we're both gonna pursue the loss the same way. We're both gonna say, you know what? We're. That person could be somebody that is gonna believe in Jesus. So let's go share the gospel with them. Yeah. So this is something that is, is a tier two issue. This is something that probably impacts, well, I don't, I don't even wanna go that far. It, it's a tier two issue. It's not, certainly not anything at all to divide believer from unbeliever because this is not a test of salvation. Amen to that. And I guess I'm convicted about what we just talked about. God chooses. That's hard for me to say, but I'm also very comforted by that. Yeah. Because then that means if he's the one who's chosen I can't lose what he's gained. Right. And I would challenge you if you struggle with this, go back and read John six again. Yeah. This is one of the key texts that we would point to, to say, it could not be clear. Jesus says it and black and white, and we'd have to do some pretty strong acrobatics and gymnastics with the text to make it say something other than what it appears to say. So I can understand this is hard to swallow. But as someone who's convicted that the word is infallible and inerrant, I have to take it for what it is and say, okay, I'm gonna take it. At face value and let the Lord work that into my soul and massage that into me so that I can trust him and say, you are good, you're righteous. And even if I don't think you're fair, and granted he's not, it's not fair for God to say that anyone should be a Christian. All of if you, God, were fair, he would give all of us what we deserve, right? But by his grace, he's chosen some to be vessels of mercy. And I praise God for that. And maybe if you're struggling with this, you can pray that God would open up your eyes and ears to be humble and sensitive to his word and let him do the work. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's pray and then we'll be done with this this episode. Yeah. We do pray for that. We pray that you'd give us a greater understanding and even an ability to say at the end of the day with some of these things, the secret things belong to you. And to trust you with that. And yet, I know this is such an emotional subject because we all know people that aren't following you right now. We all know unbelievers and none of us wanna think that maybe they're not part of. Those that you've elected, and again, I thank you that you haven't given us the insight into whether or not that's the case, but you've called us to, as long as we still have today, go and share the gospel again. I'm reminded of George Mueller praying for 50 years for the salvation of some of his friends and two of them not being saved until after his death. And so, God, we never have to sit here and conclude, well, this person's not. Elect or this person's not part of it. And that's not the goal of this doctrine. Rather, this is more about who you are and your sovereignty and us worshiping you and praising you and standing in awe of you and relying upon you. 'cause you do the heavy lifting here. And so there's a comfort there for us to know that as long as we're faithful with the message, you are the one that's gonna do the heavy lifting of bringing faith and bringing life to the dead that needed it. And so we pray that you would do that more with those in our lives that we know that need that life. And so we ask this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Keep your new Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition, the Daily Bible Podcast. Bye bye.

​Well, thank you for listening to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast, folks! We're honored to have you join us. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about our Church at compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review, to rate, or to share this podcast on whatever platform you're listening on, and we hope to see you again tomorrow for another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. Ya'll come back now, ya hear?

Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said