Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast, and may I be the first to say Happy Thanksgiving. It's not this week though. It's close enough. It's next week. I'm start saying it. Dude, you I've been wishing Merry Christmas for weeks now. You get this last year too. I want get on top of it. The first to see, I want you enjoy the first all these things. Let me just be the first to say Happy New Year as well as they're getting at it. Hey, speaking of New Year's we've been kicking around the idea of maybe changing things up on our daily Bible reading plan. Yeah, we're considering a change. Oh, see, now you put this out there way early. People are gonna, don't, I mean, bail on us. We are flirting with it, and here's why we think that it's. Easier and more accessible to jump onto a plan that isn't chronologically based. I love the Chronological plan. You love it. Yeah, we've enjoyed it. This has been such a great ride for us and so beneficial for my Bible reading, but I also think that getting people who are joining our church, brand new people who are joining our church to say, Hey, we're starting. We're in a Bible boarding program. We're just working away from the Old Testament and New Testament all the way through. That just feels. Different than it's chronological and, right now we're in the middle of acts, and then we're gonna be in James next week, and then we're gonna be in Galatians the week at, it just feels different even though it's. Largely the same amount of reading, it just feels more accessible to say, Hey, we're doing the Old Testament, new Testament. Please join us and we can draw from a large reservoir of prior content and materials that we've used before. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And we are passionate about in fact this is one of our focal points for us as. Pastors is leaders starting a radio ministry named the same. Yeah, focal be better. Focal point.com is that what we're calling it? Focal or pointer? More vocally pointed. Most focal pointed.com Radio ministries. We want this to be a point of emphasis for us next year and not just next year, but we want the our church to read the Bible and we want. Our people to read the Bible every single day. And that's why we call it the Daily Bible Reading. We're convinced that this should be a part of your every everyday intake. That this is not something that fits your schedule, but that your schedule should make room for time of the word every single day. And that's why we do the podcast. That's why we do the encouragement for the reading of the Bible. And that's why we're saying, Hey, if there's an easier on-ramp to get people doing this, let's do that. Because we. Believe that this is invaluable to get God's word in us on a daily basis. Okay. I'm gonna ask all the questions that people are asking. Okay. Ask all the questions. Voice those questions. One. We're gonna hit 30 minutes again on this podcast. One sub point, a sub point a are you still mad about the Dodgers winning the World Series? I was never mad about it. I just was unin was nonplussed about it. Nonplussed. Okay. But you have a hat now. Will you wear the hat? You know, the people that gave me the hat, I, I, I love them dearly. I love them dearly, and it's in my office. The hat is in my office. I didn't get rid of it. It's here and I appreciate it and I will. I think I might be starting a collection of hats of teams that win the World Series. I think that might be a cool thing to have. Okay, so are you gonna get it encased and maybe put it in a nice glass case that's airtight so that it stays nice? I don't think I'll go that far 'cause I'm against idols and idol worship and I might be tempted if it was inside of a glass case like that to just maybe think, oh man, look at how pretty that looks. I should worship that. I see idols in your office better. Encased in glass? No, but those are pictures of, but they're encased in glass. But they're, they're pictures. Those are actual idols. Right. You're seeing the idol. Okay. Real question. People are gonna wanna know, is the Daily Bible podcast gonna continue then in its present form? What's gonna happen with this? Are you guys closing the shop down? We are not closing the shop down. Okay, so what are you gonna do then? Yeah we've. Lemme just give the caveat. This is still a little bit influx and so, and you, you announced it though, so we have questions. Well, but you kept going so you have questions. We are gonna continue the Daily Bible podcast. One of the things that we talked about is maybe slowing it down a little bit and doing, for example, next year, focusing on, in, on just the Old Testament for the full year and kind of putting those in the can that these would be episodes that people could go back to at any point in time to, Hey, I've got a question about. Second Kings chapter four. And so you could go there and you could find it on our website and click on Second Kings chapter four. And here are our thoughts on Second Kings chapter four. And then the next year do the New Testament. So it would feel a little bit different 'cause we wouldn't be talking about all of the current events and things like that, but we don't like that. We're just gonna say that to you right now. We don't like it. We don't like that idea. But why would we do that? Because we don't wanna do this anymore in two years, we'd be done with it. No, I, well, it's, we wanna build a database. We do a repository of resources. And it's not to say we can't do that, and we just replace it as we build it. We could do that, and we could, maybe we will. But it does allow us to scale what we're doing. And that's what we wanna do. We'd like to make our website a place where you can, I mean, if you wanna know some of our inspiration, just go to Compass Treasure Valley. Treasure Compass Church tv. I think it's something like that. Yeah, it's so Compass, Bible Church, treasure Valley, pastor Ben and the team there are doing great work and they're putting so many of their resources on their website that I'm like, why we, we gotta do this. We should, we have to do this. And so we wanna do something similar while still keeping the flavor of what we do. I think it's really endearing and fun to do it with us, to you're growing with us. Yeah. And I think that's important for you to see too. And you're not gonna get that if we can it. So canning would be convenient for us, but maybe we don't and we just have you join us as we continue to grow. And you do the same. It's possible. We also have some, we've got ideas, we've got all these ideas and plans. Like we've got some other thoughts of ways that we want to further equip our church in and promote it in media and promotion. Mm-hmm. And how we want to, potentially even provide some more resources for you to deal with other things. Not necessarily, Hey, here's some Googling and commentary on the Bible. But we're gonna tackle some subjects, some questions, and we're gonna answer those with you. So, uh, stay tuned. We're trying to. Get better at what we're doing and help you get better at following Jesus at the same time. One of our ideas that we all are gonna share credit for is wrapping Pastor PJ's car with the Compass Bible Church North Texas logo a. Agree or disagree that that would be a helpful way to promote our church? You are so serious about this. When you first brought this up, I was like, he's joking about this query. Oh man, this, it's such a great idea. It's, I'm just saying this is our idea, by the way. This is not my, our idea is to promote the church. What better way to do that? We're all around town. We live and work in the same place. I'm just thinking people will see it. They'll at least, at the very least, they'll look up our website. That's true. They're, and they'll say what are these guys about? And they'll see your mug up there preaching. Yeah. I think it's a good foot in the door. Yeah. Well, you know, so if you think it's a good idea along with myself, pastor PJ and Pastor Mark, let us know if you hate it and you, do you think it's a terrible idea? Tell us why. So what about, what if I can I buy the Gold Bentley then and wrap the Gold Bentley? Well, well see. That's that says a different message I think. It'd catch people's eye though. It would. It would be for Jesus, but for the wrong reasons. I don't know for the wrong reasons. Tell you what, I will buy a Tesla on the church's dime. I'll get a cyber truck. Those get wrapped all the time. Uh, that's pretty natural. People do that all the time. Yeah, I'll do that for the team. Okay. Alright, well there you go. Uh, if you're new with us and listening to us, just know that we have a sense of humor that's a little bit drier sometimes than other times. Try. It's just pretty wet humor if you ask me. Do you have more questions though? Uh, yeah. Oh, so started, you said you had all the questions. Yes. Started. Yeah. So I guess another thing, one of the things that's we'd like to do is give people a way to listen to the Bible. So yes. I didn't know that we had this Yes. On the website you can listen to the day's reading. Yep. Will you still have access to do that and maybe we can make that a podcast. Is that coming down the pike? Yeah. Yeah we'll get you access to some form of audio Bible, because we do think that that's a valuable resource. You can go to our website right now and under the DBR page, you can click on that. Up at the top it's got the ESV and I can't remember the ESV guy's name. You know the, the name of that? David Cochran Heath. There you go. DCH as I like to call him. Oh, yeah. Guys are good friends. He. We'll read it to you. And so if you hit that play button it, he will read both chapters or I, however many chapters that are, I have no idea you could do that. Yep. That's great. Great. Great job. Danny. Danny did that for Danny Mayer, so I think he did that for us. I think so that's fantastic too. I, I wanna do that and I wanna get that on a podcast so that you can just get it delivered right to your phone every morning and be ready to go so that if you're too busy to read that morning, you say, you know what? I'm not gonna skip it. I'm just gonna play it on the podcast so I can at least listen to it, and then I can hear what PPJ and PR say about it. There you go. Or Pastor Mark. Yep. We should get to the Bible now. Let's do it. Yeah. So Acts chapter four, five and six chapter four, this healing of the man from Peter and John caused quite a stir. And so Peter and John are arrested by the Jews the Sanhedrin they brought before the council. And Anis and Caiaphas. Remember you've got the high priest and the father-in-law, the high priest here, father-in-law being Anis, I believe, Caiaphas being the acting high priest, or is it the other way? No, I think that's it. I think you got it right. Yeah. And they're present. So this is a big deal when you've got those two present and they're asking them, Hey, what's going on? What happened here? Peter, again, filled with the Holy Spirit, it says he's had this transformation. He's bold. He's standing up and he's saying, look, this is what happened. You crucified Jesus. And here again, he's even gonna point to God's sovereignty over this. He says that you are all gathered in this city to do what God's hand predestined you to do. So there we go. It's not just that. According to his definite plan and foreknowledge. But here this is God predestining, the acts of the Jews and the Romans to crucify Jesus in imperfect, accordance with this plan. So Peter's saying, you were the one that did this. And the Jewish authorities in response to him are pretty powerless to be able to do anything other than to tell them to stop. Preaching and yet that's not gonna work. And we talked about that a few weeks ago in our message on submitting to the governing authorities, because Peter says, whether it's right to obey you or to God, you're gonna have to under, you're gonna have to make that judgment call. But for us, our conviction is this. We can't do anything other than what God has called us to do, which is to preach what we've seen. And what we've witnessed. And so this is the first part of chapter four, the rest of chapter four. The very end of chapter four really is laying out what the early church looks like and the sharing of materials, the selling of possessions, which really sets us up for where he's about to go in chapter five. One of the unsung heroes of the Book of Acts is the Holy Spirit. And in fact, if you pay attention, you'll notice that he's brought up pretty much every chapter. In fact, if you see the Holy Spirit in chapter four, it's him who's provoking Peter to act with this kind of courageous boldness. In fact, in verse 31, it says, when they prayed, the place in which they were gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled. With the Holy Spirit. And notice this they continue to speak the word of God with boldness. And so the spirit's job in part is to make us holy, but also to make us bold, to make us willing to open our mouths and say things that are uncomfortable for people to hear and uncomfortable for us to say. But that's one of the features of the spirits and dwelling. He makes us willing and able to be bold with our salvation. Chapter five, again, holy Spirit in view here, and I think this is one of the areas that is significant to our understanding of the Trinity and the deity of the Holy Spirit because you've got these two people, an Ananias and Sari. So chapter four ends with the church selling all they had and bringing the proceeds and the apostles who were distributing the proceeds to any that had need which by the way is setting up something that's gonna take place in chapter six as well. But. This is what's taking place. And then you've got these two people, Anani and s fire. Well, they sell their house and they come to the apostles and they say, Hey, here's what we sold our house for. And here it is. And yet the problem is they're holding some of it back. They're not giving everything. And Peter asks the question and first it's with Anani. And Anani says, yeah, That's what we have. And Peter says this, he says, you've lied to the Holy Spirit. But then later on in verse four, he says, you've lied not to man, but to God. So there we see again, part of our doctrine of the Holy Spirit, that the Holy Spirit is God. Peter puts the Holy Spirit on par with God, just like Jesus. We saw in the gospels was put on par with God. Here the Holy Spirit is called by Peter God. And so this is pointing to our Trinitarian understanding of the Godhead as well. But the consequences for an Ananias and then following for his wife are gonna be that they are struck dead for lying to him. And it says, fear gripped everyone there. And so I think God is doing two things. Number one, he is punishing an anani and a fire for their deceit. And number two, he's reminding the church the infant church, the fledging church of the high stakes of their holiness and why it matters that they would be men and women of integrity because of what's at stake if they don't. Are Anani and s believers, are they Christians? Yeah. I don't know. We can't point to this and say this is evidence of the fact that they're not, but. It's certainly not a good look for them. But God's discipline sometimes does result in death. Paul's gonna talk about people eating the Lord's table in an unworthy manner and getting sick and dying for that. Yeah. So this is not the unpardonable sin, but it is grave no pun intended. It is a helpful clarification because it is important to see. They could have been deceived. They could have had their own hearts deceived in saying, I want status in the church. I want people to think well to me, so let's. Collaborate, let's collude and say that we sold our home for this many dollars and now people think we're really generous and we enjoy some acclaim and perhaps some privileges. And the Lord's not about that. He doesn't want us to posture for people's approval. He wants us to do the real thing for his approval. Yeah. Yeah. From here verses 12 through 16, lay out the miracles that were taking place, the signs and wonders that were happening and just acknowledging again, like we've talked about, that these are things that are happening to validate the message and the church as a whole, as the church is beginning to come on the scene and people are taking note of it. So much so that the apostles are gonna be arrested again and they're brought back in. They're imprisoned. They are publicly arrested. They're in prison. They're meant to be humiliated here. And yet what we find happen is God frees them and they go right back to preaching, and then they're rearrested and brought back. And the Jewish people want to put an end to them the Sanhedrin ready to execute them. And then you've got one guy named, and he's an important name to, to note because he has bearing in Paul's life. Saul, then later Paul. But Galio stands up and says, Hey, we gotta be careful. Because there have been a Messiah claims, messianic claims in the past, and those have just kind of petered out. Those have turned into nothing. We have to be careful not to work against these guys because if this is true, then what will be found is will be found opposing. God, if it's not true, in other words, just kinda let it go and it will fizzle out in the end. And so rather than executing the apostles and perhaps creating more of a problem for themselves they beat the apostles and release them, and then they go back. Just amazingly rejoicing that they were considered worthy. It says to suffer for the gospel, suffer for Jesus. What a profoundly different response than what you would expect. You know, someone gets taxed excessively because they're a Christian, or they're a church, or they're a nonprofit, or someone does something. A neighbor has their dog, do something on your lawn. We're not gonna respond. We're not gonna respond with like, I'm, praise God. I was able to suffer for Christ's name. This is more evidence of the spirit's work inside the life of a believer. Yeah, it's a. Fundamentally different attitude shift to say, thank you, God, that you considered me worthy to suffer on your behalf. And I think, man, whatever it needs to happen for us to get there, I think that's the goal for us. I don't think this is meant to just be, here's how they acted, but man, this is the beginning of the church. These are the leaders. So you expect them to act in a certain way. I think this is one of those areas in scripture where it's our goal to have that same mind that Christ Jesus had, and that's what they're doing themselves. So, man, if you don't have that spirit. And I don't think many of us would say that we have it in spades. We probably should pray for more of that. Mm-hmm. The right mindset to suffer along with Christ and to welcome whatever might come our way. And this actually fits really well with your sermon series in Peter right now. Yeah. Because you're talking about unjust suffering and whether or not someone should just be a doormat and be walked all over first for the sake of Christ, or whether someone should stand up for their rights and say, Hey, I've got, my first amendment rights or what have you. I think it's a lot more challenging today given the fact that we do have. Rights that are acknowledged, God-given rights that are acknowledged by our government to know whether or not to exert them or to exercise them, or whether or not to sit back and say, I'm just gonna let this happen in order to do it for the sake of Christ. Do you have any clear guidance on that? When should we stand up? When should we sit down and take it on the chin? Man I think what we find with the apostles is their main concern was the name and reputation of Jesus and being able to be as effective in witnessing for Christ as they possibly could. And so I think if our motivation isn't the glory of Christ, I think we need to. Work to either get there or to perhaps realize that maybe there's more glory for Christ in me suffering, even though I have the right to not and to look to endure it. And as we looked at a couple weeks ago, continue entrusting ourselves to the one who judges justly in that situation, I don't think it's wrong to appeal to our rights. I don't think it's wrong for us to exercise our rights. You mentioned they're God-given. I think they are God-given as a stewardship. The Christian in Nigeria doesn't have the Bill of Rights. I don't think we're any better than that Christian. But. They haven't been given that stewardship either of having the Bill of Rights. And so we have been, and so we should use it and apply it in a way, that if they're sitting in our shoes, they'd be like, are you kidding me? You're not making use of the things that you have. Why are you not? Look at what we're going through over here. So I think there's something to us saying we should use those things. But I think we need to really make sure that we're doing it because we want the glory of Christ, not we want to be comfortable. I think one clarifying answer to this is also found in the chapter itself. They say here in verse 29, we must obey God rather than man. And so they did the right thing. Right. And they suffered for it. Yeah. So it's a, it's not necessarily an either or. It very well could be a both. And you do the right thing in God's sight, and maybe the government does come down on you for that. Maybe you are taxed accessibly. Maybe there is something that. Happens poorly because you're seeking to obey God. And to your point, if we're seeking to honor Christ with our life, then there are times when it's gonna make sense to assert the rights and privileges that we have, the stewardship that you called them. Other times it's gonna make sense for us to say, the calculation doesn't make sense for me to push this. I'm gonna sit back and take this one on the chin. For the sake of Christ. 'cause I don't wanna seem A, B, C, or D. It doesn't, the calculation is not coming together. But, I would argue we probably are far more, as Western 2025 Americans we're far more likely to assert our rights and privileges and to legislate those things as opposed to saying, what does the Lord want? And I think that ought to be our first posture than the other one. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. And you're right. Even when we are doing everything that God is calling us to do and doing it the way that he's calling us to do, it's not a guarantee that it's gonna go well. We're talking about that. We talked about husbands on Sunday, we're gonna talk about wives of this next Sunday. You can be the godliest spouse and do everything the way that God is calling you to do and still be in. Difficult situation in a marriage. Right. And that's why it's so important for us to remember the ultimate reward is coming from him, not from the earthly relationship, not from the government, not from our circumstances. The ultimate reward is gonna be ours there and then, not necessarily here and now. Yeah. And God's not a genie, right? He doesn't grant wishes. He's not. You give him $5, he gives you 50. It's not the way God works. He's a person. He responds to our needs and our situation. Yeah. Yeah. Well, in chapter six, I mentioned earlier that. Part of what was going on was everybody was bringing all their things and the apostles, were passing them out and giving to all as any had need. And there were other needs that were arising in the church that were becoming overlooked. And some of the widows of the Hellenistic widows, these would've been the Greek widows. Think gentiles more than Jews here. And they were being neglected. And so there was a complaint that arose and the apostles realized, man we can't do all that. We need to do right now. We need other people to be able to help us in this. We need to be able to delegate some of these responsibilities to other people that can do some of these service needs that are still significant and still important. But that would free us up to do what God has tasked us to do, which is to give ourselves over to the preaching of the word and prayer. And so they. Install and institute. The office of the deacon and deacon comes from our Greek word, deano, which means servant. So these are servants and there are seven men. It says here in the text that were of good reput, good reputation, full of the spirit and wisdom. Now, when we get over to First Timothy chapter three, we're gonna see some qualifications of deacons that are given later on in the church. But right now we see that these were the types of men that they were looking for. And so they select these seven men. They list them there in chapter six. One of them, Stephen. Is going to rise to the surface and he's gonna make such an impact that the Jews are gonna begin to not like him and they're gonna trump up some false charges on him. They're gonna arrest him, and we're gonna see what's gonna happen to him in chapter seven. Important to know that this text it provides a template for us. This is not necessarily the copy and paste that we're supposed to do. Obviously we have apostles here. That's a different status than what we have today. And interestingly, I found this out. I was reading a book unrelated to this. It was actually, I think DA Carson. It was one of Carson's books, and he was making some point about people are making an argument about. Deacons and Deacon Nesses having the ability to speak freely in the church because you see that happening in Acts chapter six and Carson's Point was a, the Acts chapter six never says that these are deacons. Like there's not a single word that says that they're deacons. Mm-hmm. He would argue that they're prototypes of what would eventually become the deacons, the servants of the church. But just because you have someone like Steven who spoke eloquently and was demonstrating acts and supernatural things that only the apostles did, he says that's enough of a distinction to say that these are not necessarily deacons as we understand 'em in the New Testament. Therefore, it doesn't hold the same. Argumentative wait to say, oh, because these deacons spoke, Stephen in particular, all deacons should speak in the church, including, you know, one of the female deacon is in the church. Mm-hmm. So it's something like that. So I found that to be fascinating. I had never realized that there was nothing in here that says that these are deacons, except I've imported that into my thinking and I think Carson has a fantastic point there. Another note here that I found out is that these names that they identify, Stephen, Philip Pro, Nick Andor, Timon, pba, eu, Nicos, all these guys. Here's what tins are saying. I'm not a professional here, so I'm just citing an authority. These are Greek names. Right? I noticed that too this time. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. They're Greek names. Yeah. Which tells us that the church decided as a show of love, I suspect we wanna honor what we think is maybe a fair complaint. So let us put some Greeks there to help us make sure that we manage this well. I thought that was fascinating. I'd never noticed that before. And that stood out to me as being exceptionally loving and kind of the first church body. I thought that was really neat. What do we do with this though, in, in Acts 10 and Cornelius? What about Cornelius? Because if these are Greeks, are they Jewish Greeks? Are they, proselytes and then they're convert? Well, they are ProSites. At least nicolais here in verse five, Nicolais a ProSite of Antioch. So I think you'd have to say they were, 'cause they're hellenism. There is hellenism widows, right? Here's an interesting point about acts. It's messy. It is messy. It's not as clean as we would like to say that it is. And I think God's okay with that. God is rolling out his new agenda, kind of like a scroll being unfurled, right? He's rolling it out and it's not all at once, but it is happening and part of the process is a messy understanding of what's happening here. Yeah I would have to argue if you're going, what are you guys talking about here? I would have to believe that these were Jewish proselytes that had now come to faith in Jesus, and that's why they were okay with them being included in this. Because in Acts 10, you've got Peter initially going, wait a minute. No. What is the deal with Cornelius and what's going on here? Yeah. And then you've got the Jerusalem council. All that stuff is still future. Yeah. Where they're trying to wrestle with what do we do with the Gentiles? The Gentiles, and how do they fit in this? Yeah. So I don't, they must have been believing. Believing GR Jewish believing Greeks. That makes sense. That were the circumcised and everything. Yeah. They would've been proselytes to Judaism as it was. Understood. And they're grafted into this new program. And because they already accepted those things, there was no question about circumcision that made perfect sense of Acts chapter 15 Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, hey, let's pray and they'll be done with this episode. Oh, that was quick. What the ending or I didn't realize we were done. Yeah. Great. Oh, what, what else do we got? Oh, nothing. I was just, I, yeah, I'm good. Let's do it. That's great. Okay. Lord we thank you for the book of Backs and just the evidence even here of the endless depth of scripture that we can continue to come back to it. And even though we've read it so many times, learn more and notice new things, and so I pray that you help us do that by your spirit and that we'd be excited to come to the Word of God for those reasons. At the same time, God guard us from drawing in incorrect conclusions or pressing something too far. But I do thank you so much that the word of God is afresh for us every time we come to it. And so, use it to shape us, to mold us, to make us more like Jesus. We pray in his name. Amen. Amen. Keep your new Bibles tuned again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you everybody. Bye.

​Well, thank you for listening to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast! 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.

Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said