Everybody welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. To note or not to note. That that is the question, is the question. So you said on yesterday's podcast you tease this thing about taking notes during sermons? Yeah, and people are I've gotten so many text message and email have you today, and people wanna know why. We should take notes. Yeah. And how we should take notes. That's it. What do you recommend? Good questions. Yeah. If you think about it, when you go to school, when you, if you can think back there, for some of you it's a longer time in the rear view mirror than for others. But when you were in school, in class, my guess is especially once you got into high school and then college, you were expected to take notes in the lectures. And the reason your professors did that was not because they wanted to punish you, not because they just wanted to give you busy work to do. They wanted you to take notes because it's been shown that when we take notes, when we were. Write things down, we're more prone to remember them, number one, but number two, we've got something to go back to at a later time to look back on something and remember what it was that we were studying or heard or learning in a similar fashion. And I would argue even more importantly. When we're studying God's word and when we're listening to the Bible being exposited for us, we should want to write notes down for those same reasons, because we want to remember the sermon. We want to remember the things that are being taught to us. One of the reasons why we do outlines when we preach, 'cause not everybody does. There's different forms of preaching out there. Some preaching, they'll just start preaching and there's no point number one. Point number two, point number three, one of the reasons why we do outlines is they become pegs for us to hang the rest of the. Ideas from the sermon on those things so that we can organize our thoughts. So it's not just an info dump where you're walking away going, okay, how do I begin to parse all this out? We're creating points, whether it's men's Bible study or women's Bible study or in main service or in our student ministry because we want to break the passage down in an understandable way. And so that's why we encourage you to take notes. That's why we provide our worksheets in the bulletin for you to be able to have a way to. Understand the passage. I've said a few times now recently that my job primarily as a preacher is to help you understand the passage better than you did when you first showed up and to know what to do with it as a result. We talked about application yesterday and those two things are going to be helped and buoyed if you will, take notes as you listen to the sermon being preached. Okay, so one of the things that I've heard recently, in fact, on Christian Twitter, we were just talking about this not too long ago. Jared Wilson responded to someone who said, look. The way that someone hears a message is not that helpful. In fact, he says, of all the learning methods, lecture is the least effective, only a 5% retention of what you hear. If this is the case, then why do we still do so much of it in the church? Jared Wilson responds with, well, maybe. Preaching isn't primarily about memory retention. And then Patrick Shriner also chimed in and said, yes, you are formed by the impressions of the moment more than you realize, even if you can't recount the information. I think a lot of Christians would agree with that and say, yeah, I may not remember exactly what Pastor PJ said, but the way he made me feel to quote that old trope that, that stuck with me and I think that's made an impression on me. What would you say to that person? Yeah, I think I, I disagree with. The approach there. One thing I will say is this, Piper has said about reading books. He said it's I, he can't point to very many books that have changed his life, but he can point to sentences from books that have changed his life. He can point to paragraphs from books that have changed his life. And so in other words, he's saying, if you're reading a whole book, don't feel like you have to remember and memorize the whole thing word for word, but when something stands out to you. Note that that can change your life, that can be transformative. That can be something that pops up later on in your life. And I would say in some ways, it's similar with a sermon. You may not be able to give the digest of the whole sermon at the end, but if you can break down a few things from that sermon that are helpful, that's going to be good for you in the future to be able. Able to recommend or remember when you come to that passage again. And so that's why we say we're gonna try to give you memorable points. We're even gonna try to make our points. What we do here is imperative points so that the application is built into the point that you're writing down. We're gonna call you to action with each of the points that we're giving you. If all it is, is the moment, then I think we're leaving a lot on the table as far as the youthful usefulness of scripture and the usefulness of preaching. Now I can resonate with the fact that I think two, some preaching is. Too luxury. It's too much like the classroom. You don't have the opportunity for the connection with those that you're preaching to. You don't have the dynamics there. You don't have the illustrations there. You don't have the good, here's what to do with this and why it makes a difference in your life and I think that. Can be dull and hard and you probably don't remember much from that, but that's why we work at what we do in the office for the week, preparing a sermon, trying to craft it in such a way that it is memorable and it is helpful and taking notes is a good way to further that and carry that impact beyond the Sunday morning experience. Yeah. People may not realize how much effort we put into making it engaging. Not just to make it informative and helpful. Yeah. But to, it feels like entertainment, but it's, we're not going for entertainment. Right. We want it to feel like, man I'm tracking, I'm thinking along with you. I'm being motivated and inspired and convicted and all those things. That's really hard to do. So talk to me then also about the mode of note taking. For some people, for most of our people it's pen and paper or something like that for others. It's a keyboard and, access to the internet and all those other things as well. What do you recommend on that? Do what, what works best for you and is gonna be as least distracting for you? I think there are some people out there that if they had their laptop open on a Sunday morning it would be hard for them to stay locked in. They'd be tempted by their email. They'd be tempted by, opening up their YouTube TV and streaming the football game during the sermon. That by, is that not a good thing by jumping on social media? Whatever it may be. What if they're tweeting while you're preaching? They might be tweeting. The sermon might. Good line. I'm gonna use that one right now. Yeah. So whatever is gonna be most effective for you, and people learn different ways. My dad who listens to this podcast, he's an old school guy and he would tell you handwriting notes is better for your memory or attention than typing them in. And I think for some people that would be true. So he's not like, he's not tweeting. Pigeon carrier, right? Right. He's writing it down. He's got the pigeons, he's sending them out. Yeah, send this to my neighbor. So it, it depends upon the person, the goal is it has to work for you. And so don't try to take somebody else's model and say, well, it works for them, so it's gonna by default work for me. Find what works for you and is most effective for you and helpful for you, and do that. Alright, so if pen and paper is old tech and computers and laptops and all those other things are new tech. Yep. The latest tech is AI note takers. I've heard about this. Yeah. How do you feel about those? I think it's too far removed for me. I know there, there's people, in fact I've seen it recently and there's even reels where there's an app that's out there now that is meant to take sermon notes for you. Yeah. It's like, oh, you can't keep up. It's okay. Just pull out the app and let it do it. It's soulless. It's right. And I was just recently having this conversation with Lewis this week in the office about AI worship music. Mm. Because there's some people out there, like there was a guy that was like, I'm gonna create a passion style, a song in the style of passion. Oh yeah. And I'm gonna use Psalm 1 0 9. It sounded so good. And it was biblical. It's this That's awesome. It's Psalms, right. That's awesome. But then we were talking about can you use that in worship? Absolutely. Is that you would say yes. I don't know. I'm conflicted. Yeah, me too. Me too. And, Lewis isn't here to defend himself, but he was like, absolutely not. You can't do that because it doesn't have the soul. The author matters to him. Okay. So I think that's a different conversation for us, but I would say it's like that with AI note taking for a sermon. You're not engaging with that. Those aren't the things that stood out to you. Those aren't the points that the spirit within you was going Yes. That's pressing in on an area of your life that you need to work on. And so you should write that down. You're trusting a computer to do that, and I don't think that works. Yeah. I think the point of note taking is to be actively engaged with the content. Yeah. And. Passivity is such a danger for us, whether it's paper or pixels, or whether it's an AI note taker, especially that one, it's easy to be passive and that really isn't the goal. Yeah. The goal isn't to passively receive information. The goal is to actively engage with it, and that's what's gonna help it become a little more sticky than if you just sat there and let it wash over you. So I'm with you on that. I like AI note takers. I use them Yeah. In addition to crafting my own notes. And then AI does what it does and helps me put it all together. But I'd like to be engaged with what I'm doing so that's one, one at least. Tick in favor of the ai, but not without your mind. It's like saying, if I have ai pray prayers for me. Does that count? I don't think so. It's not the point, right. That you need to do it. Right. I think the point with note taking is the same. Yeah. I'll say this 'cause I know a lot of people have come up to me and said, pastor Pia you talk too fast for me and you have so many cross references and I can't always write 'em down and everything else really. So I know that's shocking. And so for that person, they're like, how do I take notes and keep up with you? And that's fair. I would say we, we post our sermons same day, usually within a couple hours after church is done. And so if there's a section that you miss, or even if you went back and listened to the whole thing again, you could do that and you could even slow it down. Now don't do it too much because then the, but you could do that if you needed to and glean what you missed there. And that might be helpful too. Yeah. And maybe you're taking notes the wrong way. Maybe you're trying to transcribe what he's saying. Right. As opposed to just. And I think that's the benefit of pen and paper is that you're forced to say, let me think about how to put this succinctly. Yes. And then if you do that, you're thinking more engaged with the sermon as opposed to trying to say, okay, he said this, then this, this, then this and this. You're gonna get lost. You're not gonna be able to keep up with anybody For sure. 'cause you can't write that fast. But you can think as fast as him and say, okay, how do I turn that into a singular thought for me? That makes sense. Just don't do voice dictation during the sermon. That would be funny. You know, interestingly, I know at least one parishioner. Who listens to your sermons and then he doesn't even write down your points. Yeah, he writes down his own points. Okay. To make them his. Okay. So that they're memorable for him, which I think that's interesting. Yeah. That is interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. As long as it works. As long as it works. Yeah. And if he's more like Jesus and praise God. Alright, Joshua 11 through 13. He is our DBR for today in Luke four, one through 32 Joshua Levin. We've got more of these packs of these foreign kings. Another coalition of Canaanite Kings forms and comes out to battle the Israelites and they're large. In fact, if you note there, it says in verse I think it's verse four, that they were like, the sand that is on the sea. Now, I wonder if Joshua's writing that down as even a, an allusion to the Abrahamic covenant. 'cause that's one of the promises that God is gonna do for Israel. I'm gonna make you like the sand of the seashore. Part of that was driving out the inhabitants of the promised land and in driving them out, they initially appeared like the sand of the seashore, and yet the remembrance that Joshua May be calling the people to mind here is God's faithful to his promises. You're the ones that are gonna be like the saint of the seashore, not them. And so they go to battle against these kings, and sure enough, the battle's fought. Israel's gonna win, and Joshua devotes them to destruction in obedience with the Lord's commands. This takes us all the way down through verse 15, here of chapter 11. Yeah, and I think the point here for us as we look at this as modern day readers who are no, no longer bound by the Old Testament and no longer called to do things like this, I think one of the things that we need to take away from this is the fact that this is a battle metaphor is something the New Testament does import. We do. Take language like this and apply it to spiritual warfare. Just think of Ephesians chapter six. You're to put on the full armor of God. Well, what are you doing that for? Well, because you're engaged in battle. You're part of the battle that God has added you to, and there's no spectators in God's battle force. We're all soldiers. Mm-hmm. No spectators. Everyone's a soldier, and we all have a job to do. Mm-hmm. It doesn't look like this, but we are fighting and we are working toward something and we're working against an enemy. And so chapter 11 may not be as, as. I don't know immediately relevant to you, at least in practice, but it is in your spiritual practice. We are do the same thing. We're taking land for the sake of Christ. No. No Kingdom will be able to withstand the advance of Christ's gospel. And if you're willing to do them, and this is what life's gonna look like for us, we're gonna be going up against God's enemies and taking souls captive for the sake of Christ. We talked about that on Sunday. Yeah. Did we did. That was really good. I remember that part of the sermon I was moving. Do you remember that point? 'cause we, you took notes about it. I did take my AI took notes for me. All right, good. So I know that not much. Okay. Something interesting. Again, just a note here, as we're talking about this theme, again, look at verse 18. Joshua made war number one a long time with all those kings. And so the passage of time here we read it quickly, but there's a long time that's going on here. And then it says this, there was not a city that made peace with the people of Israel accept the hitts, the inhabitants of Gibbon. So just the gibeonites here. It's an interesting note. Why does the author include that? They weren't going to be extended terms of peace, and certainly Israel was not gonna extend terms of peace. I wonder if this is telling us again, there were no more rehabs, there were no more that, that came forward to say, we know who you are and we're gonna surrender ourselves to the mercy of God here. Well, it says no cities, so I think as in terms of like a whole people group, yeah. I would say that has to be the case, but I don't know. I don't think that it necessarily says no individuals did. That's true. It's an argument from silence both ways. Yeah. But I do think, yeah, for sure. No cities did. Yeah. He does go on and say for, it was the Lord's doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle in order that they should be devoted to destruction. And we talked about that a little bit with pH. Yeah. We see him hardening hearts again here in in the Promised Land, chapter 12. I feel like this is just Joshua score boarding. Go ahead. Let's just real quick here. Yeah. I just wanna point out no one deserves mercy. Yes. That's a painful thought to hear. It's painful for me to say, but none of us deserve mercy or grace. They're related. They're some somewhat interchangeable, but let's just be clear here. No one deserves it. Right. As painful as that is for us to hear, we just have to know we, we don't deserve it. Right. If everyone got what was fair, we would all be destroyed. Yeah. That's an important thought to recall. Yeah. Chapter 12. This is again, Joshua's score boarding on his predecessor a little bit. 'cause he's like, let's talk about all the kings of Moses defeated. And then he lists two and then he is like, oh. And then here's all the kings of Joshua defeated. And then there's 31. And so there's a little bit of a maybe a tacit flex here by, by Joshua. Well, look, Moses only had the trans Jordan opposition. That's all he had. He didn't get to go to the promised land, otherwise there would've been more. That's my guess. I don't think he's trying to scoreboard necessarily for sure. But it is true. But that's because he never crossed the border. Yeah, yeah. No, that's true. But again, just kind of a keeping of account for the people of Israel for their future, for the history books. 'cause again, we're in the books of history now. And Joshua is recording here. These are the kings defeated by Moses. 'cause this is all about the conquest, the entire conquest. This is not to your point, score boarding. This is saying. The whole process here of God delivering the people into the land. Well, chapter 13 with Joshua Alder, the Lord wanted to be sure that the Israelites were clear on the land that remained to be conquered. And so he's going to provide an account of that. And he is also gonna remind them in verse six, I, myself, are gonna drive them out, will drive them out from before the people of Israel. So God is reminding them, I'm the one that's gonna do battle here. Joshua said to be old at this point. This is not the same as when Moses had to prepare the next generation to enter the promised land, because that's not what's happening here. But still, at the same time, God wants the future generations to know after Joshua's gone, who's fighting the battles, what their job is and what needs to be done. And so in verses eight through 33, you get this description of the land that belonged to Israel on the eastern side of the Jordan River, which is the land given to Reuben Gad and the half tribe of Manassa There. A couple thoughts here. Number one, I see that in verse six when he says like, you're gonna drive these people out. He says, I'm gonna drive them out myself, as you made mention here. But I wanna point out to you again, it's God doing it, but he's doing it through their. Efforts. Yep. They had to fight. They had to risk their lives to do this. And yet God says I will do it, but I'm gonna do it through you. Yeah. And not apart from you. God has the ability to do it apart from us. He has the opportunity to do that, but he chooses to use us as his vessels and we honor him by taking steps of obedient faith in trust that he's going to do exactly what he says. This is like us stepping into the Jordan. Our sandals are getting wet, and after we step in the Jordan, then God says, okay, I'm gonna hold back the waters now. Two. Josh's age is interesting to me. One of the things that scares me is that as I get older I will downshift and stop pushing. Hmm. I'll stop trying. And I don't know. I think there's a sense in which our culture encourages that. It's almost like we tell our old folks, Hey, get out of the way, make room for the next generation. That's not a bad thing. I'm not saying that you should stay in a place where you're stopping some young buck from getting experience or reps. But Josh is old and advanced in years, and yet he's saying, look guys, there's still work to be done. We're not done yet. Mm-hmm. He's gray haired and he's pr maybe even balding, and he's maybe hunched a bit, but he's not settling. He's not slowing down. Right. And my encouragement to those of you who are older is to not let yourself back off too much. There's gonna be physical limitations that are part of being older. Ecclesiastes talks to us about that, particularly chapter 12. But I don't want you to say, well, Lord, I guess I'm clocking in. I'm done. And retire early, so to speak. God will tell you when it's time to retire and God's gonna keep Joshua going throughout the duration. You saying The last time when we close out the book of Deuteronomy, Moses died full of vigor. Mm-hmm. He was not ready to clock out. God said It's time to clock out, and he was still ready to go. Right. Our job is to keep so, so help us God with all the grace that he allows to keep pushing until God said. Rings the bell for us. Yeah. Until then, please, if you're older, don't count yourself out. We have work to be done. We're excited to work with you and partner with you in ministry. The Lord wants to use you. Don't clock out. Yeah. In fact you touched on that a little bit on Saturday with the life of Elijah. 'cause when God comes to him and sends him back, one of the things Elijah has to do is anoint his successor. Yeah. But yet he's still got work that God wants him to do at the same time. Right. He's not like, I'm done with you. Just tap Elisha and then you're out. Yeah. Pick a young buck and do that. Yeah. Have it not a successor necessarily, but someone that you're just, you're feeding and pouring into someone that you see a spark of interest in. Yeah. And teach them what God has taught you. What a good thing that would be for our church. We long to be a multi-generational church. Yes. And we want to, we wanna reflect our community, so it's not like we're gonna try to do anything finagling. We wanna look like what our community looks like. And I think by and large we do do that. But we would love to see more intergenerational. Multi-generational interactions and so we'd encourage you, find someone to invest in. Yeah, find someone to disciple. Yeah. Well, hey, let's flip over to our New Testament reading in Luke chapter four, which opens up with the temptation of Jesus here in the first 13 verses. Note in verse one, it says, Jesus full. Of the Holy Spirit. And so the Holy Spirit descended upon him at his baptism. But this anointing was also an indwelling, so we've mentioned it before, but Jesus was dependent upon the Holy Spirit in his humanity, his true humanity married to his true divinity, his true deity. In his true humanity. He had a dependence upon the spirit, and we see that right off the bat as he inaugurates his earthly ministry through this temptation period in the wilderness. He's gonna be tempted in the wilderness for 40 days, and he's probably tempted by Satan throughout the 40 days, not just at the end, even though it's just at the end that we get these three specific temptations. I believe that this was something that persisted the entire time. Luke's recording of the Temptations, though he is going to. Basically give us Matthew's account, except he flip flops the last two temptations here in his list. And so there's been some reasons given for that. Maybe Luke wanted to emphasize the temple temptation more than others. Matthew May have wanted to e emphasize the kingdom temptation. That was one of Matthew's themes is the kingdom of Heaven. So Matthew May have put that one in a place of emphasis instead, or it may be that there were multiple of these sorts of temptations throughout the 40 days. And these are the ones that they're picking and choosing to highlight here. The recording of the events. Either way, nothing to shake your faith, but just a difference that you'll find between those two accounts. You'll notice here that Jesus is tempted for 40 days, or he is in the wilderness for 40 days at least. And. That's important, that 40 days in the wilderness. You might remember Moses leading the people of Israel. I do remember him. That's good. We're catching on here. 40 years in the wilderness, not 40 days, but Moses has two occasions at least, where he goes up to see God and he fast for 40 days and 40 nights. Elijah also has a period of fasting in the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights, and now Jesus steps in. And he fasts for 40 days and 40 nights. I think what you're meant to see here is that Jesus succeeds where others have failed. Elijah's 40 day and 40 night fasting was not for a good reason. Jesus is suffering under the temptation of the enemy. He's being driven into the wilderness by the Spirit. And where Israel fails miserably, Jesus succeeds gloriously. He suffers all the temptations, and he comes out on top. This is the new Adam. This is meant to showcase to you not only how to. Fight against your own temptations, but also how Jesus, the true victor, the true crowning achievement of our salvation conquers the enemy. He pushes back all the temptations of the enemy. He comes out on top, and man, this is the Messiah that you want. He's the one who gets every temptation and doesn't resist even a little bit. Yes, you ought to love this Messiah. Amen. Yeah. Well, from here, Jesus. Returns from the wilderness and steps right into to ministry, steps right into the work of the ministry and we're picking up right, essentially where Mark's gospel launches in, in this same general vicinity. Here after the temptation, after the wilderness here Jesus is gonna be up at his hometown. He's in Nazareth, and he's going to begin to teach there. He goes into one of the synagogues and he reads from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah. In fact, he asks for it. He finds Isaiah six. One, one through two. That's what you'll find there, set off as prose in your Bible there or as poetry rather in your Bible there verses 18 through 19. And then he rolls it up and he says, this has been fulfilled in your hearing today. And initially the response that he gets in verses 20 through 27 is excitement. They're saying it, could this be the one is he the promised Messiah? But Jesus. Is going to respond to their excitement, the excitement of the crowds here by warning them and saying, you know what? You're excited now, but you're going to reject me and you're eventually gonna say to me, physician, heal yourself, and so forth and so on. He's then going to reference this senior, he is gonna say, he's going to go to. Others as Elijah had gone to the widow of Zarephath, and Elisha had cleansed name in the Syrian. Those two were Gentile people. And so he's speaking to a Jewish audience saying, well, you're excited about me as the Messiah, but really, and he's foreshadowing here. What's gonna happen with the gospel? The gospel's gonna go not just to the Jewish people, but to the Gentiles, because you are gonna reject me. Yeah, that's powerful. And speaking of his power, I wanna point out something to you that I'd like for you to see in verse 22. It says Here, all spoke well of him and marveled at, get this, here you go. The gracious words that were coming from his mouth. I love that when they heard Jesus, they heard words of grace. It sounds a lot like John's opening, prologue the words of grace and truth. Mm-hmm. But notice also. In verse 32, the last verse of our reading today, they were astonished at his teaching for his word possessed authority. I wanna help you see there. There's a connection between gracious words and authority. Sometimes we think authoritative words are words that lack grace. All by themselves. But here we see Jesus possesses gracious words that are also authoritative words that is so akin to Matthew 11. He says, come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I'll give you rest. He says, take my yoke upon me, upon you, and learn from me. In other words, follow my leadership. Let me be your authority. But that authority is a restful and gracious authority that will serve you well. Oh, how could you not love this Messiah? I think it's, it is fascinating here. After this conversation with the crowds they're pretty angry. They drive him to a cliff's edge. In fact, if you go to Jerusalem today, to Israel today. It's an area called the Mount of Precipice. And it's a traditional region and they take you there and you look out over the edge and they're like, this is where the crowds drove Jesus there in the region of Nazareth because they wanted to push him off the mountain so much rose gracious words. Yeah. And then he just says, but passing through their mist, he went away. Now I get it. It's because it's not his. Yeah, but what in the world was that? He's like, yeah, guys, we, but they're confused. We're not gonna do this. Yeah. And then he just walks through them like, wait, wait, what? I tend to think it was a miraculous thing. Like he just, he phased through them like the flash when he phases through solid objects. Okay. I think that's what Jesus did exactly. Like the flash. And then afterwards the crowd's like, wait a minute, why are we here? Yeah. What happened? Why are you here? What's, why do we have these stones in our hands? What's going on? I don't know. But that's pretty cool. If I could go back in time to see things, that would be one of the things I'd like to see. Yeah. Yeah. What was that like? Yeah. I wonder if that'll be something we'll be able to do in heaven to flashback and see historical things and watch them unfold. Yeah. I don't know. What would that be like g God, God has access to it. Would he be able to share with us some way to sh What would that look like? I don't know. That's a great question. I hope that's, I hope the answer's yes. Yeah. Yeah. That'd be cool. Alright, well let's pray. Lord, right now all we have access to is your word, which tells us what happened. And so I pray that we would also, as the crowds, were marveling and astonished at your words of grace and recognizing the authority there. I pray that we would have the same response to scripture, that we would see the gracious words that you have here, but also your authority in the Word, and that we would submit ourselves to it. And so we thank you for the opportunity to do that through reading it each and every day. We thank you for this day in front of us. Pray that we would live it well for you. In Jesus name, amen. Amen. Keep in your Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow. Pastor Mark will be back with us for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you folks. Back.

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