Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello and hello. Oh, who's this? This is Three Voices at Foreigns, A Foreign Voice. Will they be able to take it? I don't know if they can. I don't know. Probably not. If two are better than one, three must be better than two. And then there goes four is better than three. Well, no, let's not get crazy. Five is better than, let's not get crazy. Would Solomon didn't say that? A threefold chord. That's right. A threefold chord. Maybe we rename the podcast guys a threefold chord. I know we have a fourfold cord. A. Text thread. Yes, but threefold chord podcast. Sounds fun. It does. So explain what's happening. Welcome in Pastor Mark. We're glad to have you with us. I feel welcomed. We thought, pastor Mark is one of our pastors on staff and has good insights. You've heard of his voice on the podcast already in the past, and so we thought, you know what? Let's bring him in and see how this goes with us. I know. One of the risks we talked about is that this could make our podcast longer. 'cause Pastor Mark can bloviate with the best of them. Man, excuse me. The bloviation, you know, is on point. All of us can. That's what we do for a living. That's why we're pastors. Right? That's right. But no, we thought it would be fun to to bring 'em in. So, pastor Mark, on this momentous day, what do you have to say to the podcast audience? I hope you guys are all doing well. There it is. There it is. See, that's, that's profound. Profound. He's a simple guy. I love it. And his voice is unique enough. Somebody else told me the other day that they were having trouble deciphering my voice from your voice. They said We sound the same. I heard that and I don't understand it, but I believe them. I just don't hear it myself. Yeah. And did you hear it, pastor Mark? Do we sound alike? I know you guys pretty well, so I, you don't sound no the same to me, but I guess I could see it or hear it as it were. My wife says we sound distinct. Yes. So I think if that count, I hope your wife can tell the difference between the two of you. I don't know. We never know. That's true. Yeah. That would be a good thing. Yeah. Why don't we switch roles. Let's try for this podcast, let's switch roles and see who notices. Yeah. Well, you just announced it All right. Before switching roles. We'll delete that part or every other sentence. All right. Welcome to the Daily Bible Podcast. What's one of the things that you, what does he say? What are some things that he says all the time? Yes. Right. You're listening to the podcast. Yes, church. That's right. Welcome Church. Church. I don't like this. See, we're having too much fun already. See, I don't think you guys need my help getting longer. No we change our minds. Welcome to help. Yeah. Well, hey, we have a question that actually was written in by somebody that you work with closely. Pastor Mark, your admin has a question for us, and this is actually based on something that we talked about recently. Apparently we didn't answer it. To her satisfaction. Oh, so there's more. So she said this, she said in my DBR text group, a conversation about pride being the root of all sin came up this morning. A sister brought it up, how it started in the garden with Adam. Choosing to sin and questioning God's authority isn't that sin Before he sinned AKA Oh, the pride. In other words, she said, which came first, the chicken or the egg? So let's solve that one first. The chicken came first because without the chicken, there's no hatching of the egg. You have to have the chicken to incubate the egg, right? And God created the animals. He didn't create the eggs of the animals. And so the chicken came first. I think we can put a pin in that one. But what about this? Did Pride proceed the disobedience of eating the fruit? My take on this is I think we can over parse the fall. I think we can read it through our New Testament understanding to an extent that we are trying to divide where we weren't really intended to divide. Think the general account of the fall is meant for us to understand that there was a law that God had given and the fall came when they broke God's law for us to try to get into the weeds of, okay, but when did the actual sin take place? When did they actually fall? Scripture is not. Explicit on that and to argue one way or the other is to go beyond the pale of what we know. They didn't have a fallen nature at the time, and so I was talking earlier with them about the fact that this is more akin. The temptation of Adam and Eve is more akin to the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness than it is to the temptations that we face on a regular basis. When somebody cuts us off in traffic, when somebody cuts us off in traffic, the temptation for us to lash out in anger is that which comes from within Adam and Eve, not possessing a sinful nature, didn't have anything corrupt within them to be able to boil up inside to cause them to lust after. This tree or lust after the food of the tree. So this is more akin to when Satan took Jesus to the wilderness and said, you're hungry. Here's some rocks. Make these rocks bread. And whereas Jesus succeeded, they failed in their attempt. And I think that's the more important thing about the fall of man is the breaking of God's law, the failure that took place therein. Yeah, that's interesting. I haven't thought of it that way. The way that you framed that, I'm gonna have to chew on that a little bit. Because they weren't glorified. We would say that they weren't yet true sinful in the sense that we understand it post fall, but they clearly something in them. Yeah. Cause them to do something sinful and what that is, I guess to your point I don't know. I don't know at what point they crossed a line. I felt settled by thinking of the whole thing as an event, as instead of a particular point in the event. Sure. I wanna look at the whole thing holistically, as I just mentioned, and I think that helps me see this as one whole thing rather than splicing it up into a lot of small things. I do think though, that there's evidence of if we don't wanna use the word sin of error that occurs before the fall, because what the woman repeats to the serpent about God's instruction is not exactly what. God said, and Adam was the one who received that instruction and he is rightly communicating that to Eve, but he doesn't do it in the right way, or he leaves things out or he allows her to interpret it in the wrong way, and she actually adds to that command and subtracts to that from that command that God originally gave Adam so. Was that sinful? I think that's a question that can be answered, but I do think that there was an error made by Adam prior to the interaction that begins in Genesis chapter three. Is it error or is it perhaps Adam's conveying this to Eve and wanting her to understand, Hey, this tree is dangerous. We have to stay away from it. Don't even touch this tree. And so is the heart of it, not so much a rebel, an act of rebellion or trying to add to, or adjust, but more of wanting to convey the seriousness with which they needed to. Avoid any sort of impropriety in crossing the line that God had drawn. It's possible, but I think even there you run into dangerous territory that the Pharisees are also guil guilty of in the New Testament, right? Adding additional things to the law that become more than it ought to be and then begin to misinterpret it. And that's where I think the distinction between the fallen nature that the Pharisees possessed and Adam in his created state before the fall. Which is such a unique stage. 'cause you're right, pastor Rod he wasn't glorified at that point, so we can't argue that he's in a perf, a state of perfection. There was something in him, and yet he was in a state where God created him and said, this is good. And this is where, again, not to open up that can of worms, but the relationship of free will and God's sovereignty. There was something that God created within Adam that gave him the capacity, the prerogative to choose to disobey. Even though there was nothing inherent within him to incline him towards disobedience, which is what's different between us and Adam. We're born with the sin nature in that as soon as we're born, we are predisposed to disobey. We are predisposed to corrupt. We are predisposed to add to or take away from for the wrong reasons not for reasons that would perhaps be more. Innocuous. So there is a hundred percent clarity for you. Ali, thanks for asking that question. I could tell that you are now without any further questions. We have resolved all of your questions and problems in the span of four minutes. You're welcome. What else? Anyways. Alright, well let's jump in. We we have numbers 18 through 20 and then we are in what is it, mark chapter six. Mark chapter seven, I believe, for our New Testament reading. Yeah. Mark seven, one through 13. So, numbers 18 through 20 and numbers 18. We have instructions that are given here for the Levites as to how to receive the various offerings that were gonna be brought. Again I think this is similar to what Pastor you and I talked about a couple of days ago where God is returning to this stage of trying to encourage the people and show them grace after Core's rebellion and say there's going to be a future here for you. So he's giving instructions even some clarification as to the roles and responsibilities of the Levi's to avoid. Cora's rebellion again to avoid this taking place for a second time. And so in this chapter as well, the Lord makes clear that they were to receive no inheritance in the land, the Levites. That is because God was to be their inheritance. Instead, they would be supported and provided for by the tithes the of the people. So forward looking into the entrance to the Promised land after CORs rebellion. This is a way that got us coming alongside them saying, Hey it's going to be okay. There is still a future here for you. And this is where with now three people, we don't know whose turn it is to speak pastor on this is jazz brother. You jump in, you jump out whenever you see fit, but we're all soloing at different times. But jazz, there's actually sound going and just there, there was kind of dead silence. So, but the dead air is taken out. So the dead air, you don't have to be afraid of dead air. Dead air is taken out by our post editing. That's right. We got a post editing team. So professionals who know how to take care of that for us. Yeah. One of the things that stands out in chapter 18 for me is this idea that God is giving. So he's taking care of the Levites. By saying, all Israel, give your best to me, but I'm gonna give it to the Levites and the priests. And so that chain of command follows all the way up until, I think, until you get to the high priest. I think he's the only one who's exempted from the giving, which is interesting and kind of cool. I think we loosely follow this under the New Testament, you've said from the pulpit before, pastor pj, we as pastors we give to our church. Because we're bought in, we're invested. We're not just receiving the ties, we're also giving of the ties, which is, by the way, a misnomer. We don't really tie 10%. It's more than what you want. It's really from the heart. That's what the New Testament model is. 10% is a good number but a tithe is a 10th. So here we see that this is how Israel operates. This is how God cared for them and protected them. We no longer have the tithe, but that doesn't mean it's not a really great starting place for your giving to the church. And all of us give, it's part of how God protects his people, protects them from greed, protects them from any materialism, but also protects those who serve his people, which in this case are the priests and the Levites. And it's serious business. At the very end of chapter 18, and maybe I'm jumping ahead of where, whether comments you guys are gonna make, but the very last sentence of the chapter is, but you shall not profane the holy thing. So the people of Israel lest you die. This is serious. This is serious business. It can be easy to read this and just be like, oh, here's some instructions. Here's rules for my IKEA furniture that I gotta put together. But it's far more serious than that. This is serious business to God. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Our giving is serious to the Lord. Even in the New Testament, it's not quite the same. But the only story I can think of is Anani and Sapphira, who they're giving, they said, oh, we're giving all this money, aren't we awesome? And the Lord's like, actually, you didn't, and you're gonna die. You're gonna die. By the way, that hasn't happened at Compass Bible Church nor Texas yet. Yeah. But don't be the first. True. Yeah. We don't wanna have to carry you out and then we'd have to ask permission to the school to bury you. Yeah. It would just be bad. Whole ordeal. A whole ordeal. Yeah. Well, in chapter 19, he turns to part of the purification rules and laws. Remember, we're dealing with a society where you. One could become ceremonially unclean and that could come through contact with a dead body or the bodily fluids or anything like that, that we've read. All that fun stuff. And so one of the ways that they were going to go about being cleansed was through the process of taking the ashes from a specific animal. In this case, it's a red. Heifer. So a red cow. This cow was to be killed. It was to be burned completely with its ashes being taken outside the camp to a clean place, and the ashes would be stored there. And then when somebody was unclean, the ashes from this red heifer would be combined with water that would then be sprinkled on anyone who had. Become defiled. And that was to be part of the cleansing ritual. There was also a period of time that they were to spend while they were unclean. But these ashes were important here. And if the person was not sprinkled, they were not clean, they were then gonna be cut off from the people. So this is just a unique situation with the red heifer here that is going to serve as an important. Aspect of the ritual of the people of Israel being cleansed from their sins. Do you guys have any input as to why it's a red heifer? I have none. None? None. None. Why not just a regular heifer? Why does it gotta be a red one? Like what are redheads? Get all the attention here. I don't know either. And I guess my only point in bringing that up is I think there's a lot of things in scripture where you just scratch your head and say, I don't know. Yeah. I think that's one of the temptations for a lot of us is that when there's something that the Bible says and we're not quite sure what to do with it, we might be tempted to. To explain it away and maybe not do it, but here clearly they understood why, perhaps. But whatever it is, I think this is an important point for us to see. When God gives us commands that we don't understand, it doesn't mean that we have to understand before we render obedience. Sometimes obedience is rendered before we understand, right? Yeah, absolutely. And maybe it was the uniqueness of it I don't know how many red heifers were walking around, but maybe it was like the lamb without blemish that this was a unique cow that was gonna be set apart for them. Yeah, that's a great point. There's a lot of emphasis on the dead body here. Yes. Why the emphasis here, and in fact, I think this is a helpful clarity for uncles in general. 'cause this is an easy clean cut example of why uncles is there. Why does it matter that we, or I guess the people of Israel. Don't touch a dead body. Yeah. In this time I think it was particularly poignant because there were dead bodies all over the place. The generation that was not to enter the promised land. They were dying and they were still dying at this point in time because they're not yet in the promised land. They're not yet. Crossing over. And so there, there's dead bodies all over. And you think about the plagues that had happened and everything else. They're dealing with death in a far more intimate way than you. And I deal with death when we deal with death, our society has largely sanitized it. It's rare even for us to be in the presence of death, although sometimes you're around your loved ones when they pass away, when they die. But generally speaking, we have sanitized it. And by the time that we see the dead body, the dead body has been prepared by the mortuary laid in a casket made to look as a. Life like as possible, even though there is no life there anymore. And that was not the case here. And so God wanted his people to be aware that death was real and what it was, and that it wasn't something that was just as some people say part of life, but that this was an interruption of life and it was even a defiling thing. And then the other thing too is dead bodies, let's face. Carry disease and God was concerned that his people be careful about that because he didn't want this to go with plagues and the black plague or whatever, just running rampant through the Israelite camp and doing great damage to his people. So that would be my 2 cents on it. Yeah, will just reiterate what you say. I think death clearly, and we see that in the New Testament is the result of sin and the defilement of the tabernacle is caused by death being around it. And death has no part with God and cannot be near God. And so there's lots of other places where we see uncles talked about in many other ways, but most of them relate to and some more cleanly than others. They relate to death and the results of sin. But clearly a dead body is a product. The wages of sin. That's right. Well in chapter 20 tragedy Upon Tragedy, first the Death of Miriam. So Moses's sister dies here as she is not going to be one of the ones to enter the promised land. And then after this, you have Moses's own disqualification from entering the promised Land, the waters of MEbA. So they come again and there's a situation where the people are gonna grumble what's new. The people are complaining about God, they're complaining, saying, we wish we had never left Egypt. And. God speaks to Moses and says, I want you to speak to the rock. Tell the rock is what it says there, and I want you to tell the rock and water will come for forth. This is verse eight. Well, Moses comes up before the people, and whether it's out of anger or frustration, consternation, whatever it is, he doesn't speak to the rock but strikes the rock with his staff. It says twice in verse 11, and yet what's interesting here is water still comes out. He fails in his leadership and God still. Provides water for the people and so the people end up drinking from this, but Moses is gonna suffer the consequences of his failed leadership. He did not sanctify the Lord. He did not hold the Lord up as holy within the side of the congregation, which tells me that the people probably knew that he was supposed to speak to the rock. And that's why this is such a grave thing, Moses sins publicly here. It seems that the people were aware he was supposed to tell the rock, and instead Moses strikes the rock. And so they saw his disobedience and I think that's one of the reasons why this consequence is so grave for Moses here. Yeah, this is tragic for a lot of reasons, and Moses is not gonna get over this quickly. He's gonna continue to blame Israel for several chapters. They're gonna read about this is your fault that God didn't let me in the promised land. But notice here the expectation that God has for his servants is quite high. There. There is a higher standard. Of behavioral expectation that God has for those whom he endorses and puts in leadership positions. And it, of course is no different today. In fact, I would even argue that for those of us in our role, even though we're not Moses and we're not prophets, I think the standard is higher in part because we're under A, the new covenant, and B, because we have the complete canon. Those two things alone. And by the way, number three, let me add a third one here. We have the indwelling spirit. I don't know that Moses experienced the same thing that we do. So new covenants. New spirits, we have the whole cannon. Those things make us more responsible than Moses. And therefore, I think it's a, it's expected on your part as a congregation to expect that your pastors, your leaders, your ministry leaders live a standard, a cut above the rest. You should want that. You should expect that for sure. Yeah, after the situation with the rock Israel wants to pass through mite territory. Remember, Edem, Edomites are the descendants of Esau. And we see here what's going to be a problem for Israel throughout much of the Old Testament and even will be a problem in the future, again, for God's people. And that is the mites are a thorn in their side. This goes back to the relationship of Jacob and Esau there. And so here the Edomites are gonna say, no, you can't pass through our territory. So they're gonna end up going around. The book of the Amos is gonna deal with the Edomites and really God's judgment on them, even for this. Instant instance here where they deny Israel passage during the, their Exodus period here. And then finally we see the death of Aaron in chapter 20. So chapter 20 is not a good chapter. There's not a lot of positive things to find here in chapter 20. All right, let's flip over to our New Testament reading. So we are gonna be in Mark chapter seven, the first 13 verses here, mark chapter seven verses one through 13. And in Mark chapter seven, Jesus is going to confront the Pharisees here and the religious rulers for having the wrong emphasis. They're putting the wrong and fastest on the wrong sable. He's gonna explain the problem here where Matthew assumes his audience already understands and Mark's gonna explain that for us in verses three and four for the Pharisees. And all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly holding to the tradition of the elders. And so the Pharisees are confronting Jesus's disciples. They're not washing their hands, and yet Jesus is gonna spin on them and say your hypocrites. In other words, you're condemning the very thing that you yourselves perpetuate. And the problem the Pharisees had is he points out. To them that the fact that you're supposed to honor your father and mother and yet you say, well, whatever is Corbin now that's an interesting word. It's a word that means whatever's devoted to the Lord is exempt from me having to honor my father and mother. What seems to have been taking place here is rather than caring for their parents in their. Their older years, the Pharisees were taking money that they would've otherwise been able to do that with and saying, well, this is the Lord's money, so I shouldn't use it to care for my parents here. And so Jesus is basically saying, you're circumventing God's law by appealing to tradition, and now you're accusing my disciples of circumventing God's law as well. When reality is, you're just emphasizing tradition here instead of going to the heart of the law and what God really intends here. Are there any traditions that you guys are aware of that the church honors today that we might be in danger of some of the same things? 'cause I think people read this and say, well, that's not gonna be me. We would never do that. I would never put tradition above scripture. Are there places where you might be aware of and you would say, well, here's a caution. It's not that it's a wrong thing per se, but when tradition elevates above scripture, well then it's a problem. This is close to home for you. I think worship can easily be that in music selection. I didn't say worship, bro. Something else. It's been great to have Pastor Mark on the podcast see's last episode. See all, yeah. Worship's a big one. Yeah. Say a little more about that. I think the varies beginning. We can elevate our preferences over the words, the lyrics of it, and the body worshiping together. We can easily. We can easily do that. I think there can be more complicated or intricate ways that we can do that as well. I do think we have to be careful. I'm not saying there's not any place to be careful with our music selection and I know you are very careful and we are as pastors, but you can end up in really dangerous territory, bro. That's such a good point because I can think of some certain people who would say, man, it's my preference, my tradition is hymns. I like hymns. That's my tradition. That's what I'm used to. I like that. And hymns are awesome. I'm not gonna say anything bad about them. I love hymns. But why does Chris Thalman have to add a chorus to every hymn that he uses? Why can't he just leave it alone? It's a good song already. Chris. One of those things. That's a good one. Movies, if it has a certain rating we don't watch 'em because that's un-Christian. And I'm not saying that they're good. You hear me saying that? Right? I'm not saying it's a bad tradition. I'm just saying there are things like that, that fly under the radar that we often don't pay attention to. 'cause that's just how we do things. That's the definition of a tradition. This is how we do things. And it may not be the tradition of your elders from your church, but there are things that go unspoken that all the time we're just flying by a formula that we don't often think about. Is there anything that you would add to the PPJ? Yeah, I think just our liturgy in general. How we go about, for example, communion, what we do, how often we observe communion even our view of communion, we can elevate our tradition over what scripture clearly teaches. I think there's things that we are serious. Things like we would say communion is very serious, we would say. Tism very serious. And yet I think there's freedom to an extent in the expressions of those things, even though we have convictions about what we believe is right. A lot of our convictions about our approach to these things are tradition informed. And so we do them because we believe that these are tradition formed things that are exp exposed in scripture the right way. But it is an interpretation and it is tradition. And so, we lean. Church tradition. I think to your point, more than we realize, we lean on church tradition, so we, so we moving to sprinkling babies. That's exactly what I was hearing too. That's, I was confirming that we're gonna get everybody in the audience to qui. Yeah. We have another reason why we have to be Bible people. Yes. Because so often we just don't think about it until we have to think about it. Passages like this are a good reminder that not everything that comes outta the mouth of. People from your tribe is a good thing. Yeah. And as long as we keep them in proportion to the scripture, I think we're gonna be okay. Amen. Today's reading only goes through verse 13, right? Correct. So it really leaves the thought unfinished. It's kind of unfortunate in my opinion that this reading doesn't go through verse 23 because Yeah, yeah. He talks about honoring fathers and mothers, but then he also helpfully very clearly. Answers what he said at the very beginning of chapter seven. So I guess look forward to tomorrow. Ooh, that's a teaser. Alright, for tomorrow's meeting and hey, maybe when you read tomorrow, read the beginning of chapter seven as well. I thought you were just gonna go rogue and be like, well I'm gonna talk about, talk about, anyway, that section. Anyways. That's a good idea. You already fired me so I guess, you know, what do I to lose? Yeah. What I lose. Alright. Hey, let's pray and then we'll be done with this episode. Yeah, we thank you so much for. Just the word and the fact that we get together, together and talk about it and talk about its implications for our lives, how it relates to us. Lord we're grateful that we have your word, that we're not just dependent upon church tradition, and we wanna be careful to acknowledge that your word is what is authoritative at the end of the day. Not tradition, not human reason and wisdom. Your word is authoritative. Your word should inform all those things. But ultimately, we wanna subject ourselves to the scriptures as our authority. So thanks for this time. Thanks for Pastor Mark joining us for this. This podcast as well, and we just pray that we continue to be benefits to the people that tune in and listen, we pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen. Keep in those Bibles y'all, and tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. So long. See ya. Bye.

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