Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast and the team is back at it. Pastor Rod is back in office. Hello. There he is. You've been waiting to hear his voice. I mean, we had Pastor Mark, we had Lewis in here and they both did a good job, but, and you guys are hired. Yes. Congratulations. You just earned yourself a job and you put us out of one. So thank you very much for your efforts. They have been well rewarded. The new hosts. Lewis and Pastor Mark. No, it was good to have them and good to know that we can swap them in, but uh, yeah, you perhaps permanently and kind of hung around locally here. Do you have any good food, anything like that over your time away? We did hang around locally. We did try. Kristin and I went to this Italian place next to the tracks in Salina Square. They have some old gas stations in the front, Uhhuh. I forget the name of it, so please forgive me guys. But the food was delicious. We had, I forget what the sandwiches were, but we had two sandwiches and the sandwiches were delightful and we really enjoyed that. And then we went to this place thanks to the cleanses called Heyday. Yep. Also in the square. And we had some of their breakfast brunch food. Kristen had, I think, steak and eggs and I got their breakfast tacos, both of which were excellent. We liked those a lot. And then we had. Because we had some gift card money for it. We got the dessert and it was a carrot cake. That was probably my fa favorite carrot cake I've had to date. It's high praise. It's uh, it was pretty good. Yeah. I'll, I'll say that. So we went to those two places. I can't rec, oh, we also went to this, I forget the name now. Honey Bird, I think is the name. Okay. Just ring a bell for you. Honey Bird is a specialty donut shop slash cafe, I guess. And the donuts, I found them on TikTok the donuts. Have, I mean they're huge, number one. And 'cause it's Texas and number two, they had this filling inside of them. They were delicious. They're like four bucks a pop, so don't go thinking you're gonna spend, yeah, 12 bucks on a dozen. It was a lot. We only got three or four donuts and it was just us and the girls. 'cause the boys were in school. But we had a lot of fun there. And that's in Plano and we enjoyed it. It was delicious. We got a breakfast bagel thing. Croissant thing. I forget what it was, but that was also really good too. So we went to a couple places to eat. That was fun. We did stay local. Um, we don't do a lot of vacationing out different places. I know that a lot of families do that. That's kind of not been our thing. We try to, we don't always do it, but this particular season the kids were in school and so because Jacob and Adam were there, it didn't feel like a normal vacation, but we did have a lot of fun when we did have time together. And that was, it was a really good time to get away. That's good, man. Yeah, the man GMOs, I think is the name of that Italian place. I would did not even know that. Yeah, I don't think I ever remembered the name. I have been there as well. And is delicious. Their pizzas are really good wood-fired pizzas. There haven't been to Heyday yet, but it's on my list to, to try for sure. Well get their carrot cake. Okay. Will do. I enjoyed that. Yeah. Hey, we had some questions that have been long overdue and I was getting to them part because you and I were both traveling at different times or gone away from the office at different times. So one of them came in from our dear editors, Matt and Hannah, who by the way, congrats guys on the birth of Little Robbie. And we are with you guys and just continue to pray for him as, we're looking forward to him coming home with you guys and just thankful for Hannah's Health as well and all that. They were at church on Sunday, which was awesome to see them back, which was encouraging to all of us that were able to be with them. But they wrote in and Matt wrote in, and he wants to know. What's the story behind godparents? He says, do your children have godparents? Do you spit, in the general direction of godparents? Matt writes in some of the most creatively worded questions that we get, and, it's fun to get them. So the concept of godparents, pastor Rod, do you have any experience with godparents? Do you have godparents yourself? If I do, I dunno who they are. Yeah, so I guess that answers the first half of the question. We do for our kids and we haven't changed anything recently, although we did decide to do it for reasons that we think are still significant, but they're not reasons that I would like to discuss publicly. Fair enough. Yeah I have godparents. I was born in the Episcopal church, so that's part of it. This has a liturgical root liturgical tradition. And not that that means that it's inherently bad or good one way or the other, but, it began in the form of you would have these individuals that would sponsor the child for the purpose of baptism saying, we're gonna take responsibility that this child is gonna be raised in a way that is going to be consistent with the teachings of scripture. We're gonna do our best to keep them in the church. We're gonna do our best to care for them spiritually. So that was kind of the genesis of this. And so a lot of godparents early on were the. Actual parents. And then later on it took on more of an honorific title, and so somebody would be referred to as the godparents of the child. And it became more of a traditional label in the church to have a godparent and that godparent would commit to, along with the parents praying for the salvation of that child, praying for the spiritual wellbeing of that child and also working towards that end as well. We don't do it. As an official title or office within our church, but we do something similar in the sense that we do our child dedications, which are coming up by the way in February, February 22nd. And with that, we do ask the church family to be praying for these parents to be coming alongside and to as best as they're able to partner with these families in raising their children in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. So in a sense, our church in the kids born in our church and raised in our church. Have godparents all over the place because they have spiritual moms and dads that love them and care about them and granted different than their biological parents for sure. But that is the genesis behind this is these were people that stood up to say, I'm vouching for what this child's life will look like. I'm going to do everything in my possibility to point them to Christ. So I don't think it's a good thing or a bad thing inherently, it's just something that has, I think, fallen out of vogue by and large in the church as a whole. I'm very much in favor of the practice, although I did not do anything in a. In a liturgical sense to ordain godparents for my kids, but much more, it was, it's legal so that if we die, our godparents for my kids would take legal control over my kids and their futures. Yeah. So we made a pretty clear decision that if something were to happen to us, we want this family to take the reins for us because we trust them to do A, B, C, and D. So I would say, man. Um, some people would make different decisions for different reasons, and not all of them are equally good. Let's start with that. But I do think it's helpful to say, okay, what do I want for my family? Are there people that I can yoke with to say, these are on the same page? Are the kind of people that I trust with my life, and even more so trust with my kids' lives. And so I want these people to be. To have a special role in the life of my kids. And so I, I'm still very much for the practice. We have, again, we haven't changed anything. We haven't done anything since back when we first had our kids Jacob and Adam, who are now much older. But I still very much like the practice because it does say there's people that I want to have a special partnership with us in the raising of our kids. And for that reason alone, I think it's worth saying to somebody a couple, a family to say, we'd love for you to partner with us and if something were to happen, would you please take my kids? And of course you can't just have a verbal word there. There has to be a legal exchange Yeah. Of paperwork that says, I will this particular situation happen. Yeah. Yeah. So no, Matt, we don't spit in the general direction of godparents but we do appreciate your question. It was a good one that, that, uh, stopped revoking. Wait, I do not, not spit. I spit as in positive or spit as in negative. Negative. Oh, okay. Yeah, so it's, it hearkens back to Monty Python. Oh. And there was an interchange there where he says I spit in your general direction Oh, in other things too, in your general direction, but it's a negative thing to spit at something. Got it. I thought it was like, do you throw. I don't know. I guess it was a colloquial way to say, is this something you're interested in? Yeah, I guess. Yeah. We don't spit. Yeah. But we do appreciate it. Yeah. Just like your question. So, hey, we've got, more questions, but let's jump into our text and we'll hit some more questions tomorrow and in the next podcast as well. We've got at least two more in the queue if we're still here in the hopper, if we're still. Because Pastor Rod is ready to Knight Sir Lewis and Sir Mark to take over the podcast. They did such a great job. They did. They did a good job. A little long from my taste, if I do say so, it was otherwise good. Good content. Alright, so we're in Genesis. And Pastor Adam, I'm sure you've been tracking with us and where we're at here. But we're at the very end of Genesis today. So Genesis chapter 49 and 50. And so Joseph is back now in with his family again, and Jacob's here, and we've seen everything we saw the blessing of Eem and Manas in our last episode. And now Jacob is gonna continue in some of his final moments to bring all of the rest of his sons before him and go through a series of blessings with them. And so if you go through chapter 49, I would encourage you as at least I did in my Bible take a pen or take your pencil and mark the names of the different children that come forward so that you can see the progression of the argument here. 'cause some of them have much longer blessings than others. Some of them don't get any blessings really at all. And our group together, for example, like Simeon and Levi in verse five. Now you're gonna have to go back to the situation with Dina to remember why are Simeon and Levi spoken of here by Jacob and. Way that they are. And that's because of their violence against Shechem and the inhabitants of Shechem there for what they did to Dina. But then you'll notice Judah, Judah has a much longer portion here and we know that there's significance if you know the rest of the story of the Bible because Judah is the line of Christ. So there's mentions here about, the scepter and Judah being the line. The, the kings and the rulers, which is fascinating because at this point in time, Israel doesn't have a king. Israel isn't even really a formalized nation at this point, and yet he's talking about a ruling scepter to come from the line of Judah. And then you've got the other tribes which play a smaller role and yet not insignificant. Zebulon Iscar, Dan, remember Dan is gonna be a tribe that's also gonna cause problems later on in the history of Israel, especially with the Northern Kingdom during the Divided Kingdom era. You've got Gad Asher Naf. He addresses Joseph. Now Joseph remember is gonna be replaced by em and, and NASA in the tribal allotment, but Joseph is gonna get his own blessing here from his father there on his deathbed. And then finally, Benjamin is the last one that he notes here, but this is Jacob preparing to breathe his last preparing to die. And he wants to give these final words of blessing or even just I guess, prophetic in some instances, borderline judgment against some of these sons as he lists through all of them. Do we need to remember any of this? For the purposes of our walk with Christ, understanding our study, making sure that we understand the scope of scripture. Is this necessary for us? I mean, I think it's a good, there are books that you get that are, I'm gonna read through this as a devotional and I'm gonna benefit from this and I'm gonna read it cover to cover. And then there are books that you get that are more, Hey, this is a reference book for me. And so I think in some ways you can think of this chapter. A bit like a reference chapter for you as you go through and read through the rest of the Old Testament specifically, and you read through the different tribes. And even when we get to the divided kingdom, which we'll get to later on you can figure out, okay, which tribes are in the north, which tribes are in the South? How does this go back to some of Jacob's words here. And then certainly once we get into the New Testament, when we're dealing with the tribe of Judah and the line of Christ and the Messianic line, there's a lot about what he says to Judah that, that is significant for us. So it, it probably doesn't. You know, give you the warm fuzzies and make you walk away going, man I feel like I know what to do and this is a sanctifying chapter for me to read in the Bible, but it's a helpful chapter for us because it gives us information that's gonna help us understand the rest of God's plan as it unfolds. Yeah. This is your context as much as it is Israel's context. Granted, you're not an Israelites. We don't believe that we've replaced Israel, but we do believe that we build off of the same history. And so when you read Genesis 49, this is for you. This is for you to understand. Here are, here's my spiritual heritage in some sense. And I also learned from the. Testimony and the example that's been set here and in all the prev previous chapters combined. One thing I liked about this particular chapter is that Jacob slash Israel, which by the way, let's briefly talk touch on that. Scripture goes back and forth. Jacob in Israel. Jacob in Israel, sometimes you're not sure, like, who is this again? Oh, it's Jacob. Oh no, this is Israel. Now. Why is it doing that? I've heard that people have commented that. When Jacob is acting like his old self, he's called Jacob, and when he's acting like the patriarch that he's called to be, he's called Israel. Do you ascribe to that at all, or do you see this more as just incidental to the narrative? What do we make of it? I've looked at it as more incidental to the narrative. I've looked at his name as Israel as more significant for the future of the nation and identifying him as the father that would. Be the source of the tribes of Israel more so than the moniker by which he's gonna be called from, you know, those that are in his life at that point in time. So I don't know that I, 'cause even here, I don't think he's doing anything negative. And he's referred to as Jacob here. And even as he dies, he's referred to as Jacob at the end. So I don't know that I would press it so far as to say when he is doing things wrong, he's Jacob. When he is doing things right, he's Israel. Helpful insight. Again, what I was gonna get to is that I appreciate that for Jacob. He does something that I think we all should consider doing. He gives his family some end of life instructions. Now, that's new vernacular ascribed in an old situation here. But in verses, well, let me start at the beginning here. At the beginning of this chapter, he's telling his sons, here's what's going to happen. Here's what, and this is not something you can do. This is something that God does through him. He's acting as prophet here, but nearing the end of the chapter, he says, here's where I want you to bury me. I'm about to be gathered. I want you to send me here. Here's the place I want you to do that. And I think a modern day equivalent would be something as simple as saying, I'm gonna buy a plot for myself and for my bride or vice versa. And make sure that I have some end of life instructions already set up so that when I do kick the bucket. My family doesn't have to stress out about what does my dad want? What does my mom want? Mm-hmm. What does my brother want that we know ahead of time? And so it's a small thing and it's almost just in passing that he's saying these things, but it is significant to him that he's buried next to his wife. And something as simple as that can instruct us as Christians to say, I better think about by end of life it's gonna come unless Jesus comes first, of course. But we ought to be thinking about these things as we consider our families. Yeah. That's good. Is there, an age you think would be appropriate for that? I mean, if we've got. Dads that are in their twenties that are listening to this, moms that are in their twenties. You've got older people as well. I mean, is this something that by the time you turn 40, you should have this mapped out? What are your thoughts on that? Certainly, the older you get, the more pressing it becomes and the more obvious it becomes, you're drawing closer to your last breath. Uh, the surprise of it all is that you don't know, right? Unless you're given the gift of some kind of terminal disease where you know, oh, I have three months. And that's not a gift, obviously, but you get my point. It is one of those questions that you say to yourself after I have and here's something interesting that I've learned life insurance and short-term disability insurance, things like this, these really matter. Yeah. You don't think about these things unless you have a large stockpile of cash that you can rely upon. Maybe you have a nest egg that you've saved up for years. Things are gonna go wrong. And we've learned this recently as our church has been going through different seasons for different people. Things go wrong all the time. Mm-hmm. We live in a cursed, fallen, broken world, and it means that we ought to be prepared for, as people call him Murphy, be prepared for Murphy to show up. And if we're gonna be prepared, that means we have to have certain things in place. So if you have the basics in place, you have your life insurance policy, your term life insurance. You have your SDI, that's not state disability anymore, but you have your disability insurance. If you have your things in place, if you have money enough to set aside cash for where you want to be buried, maybe your family already has a plot and it's a few thousand bucks for. For you and for your spouse. Great. Now, I know for some of you guys, you don't feel settled where you are. Maybe you're living in a state or a place where you're not sure you're gonna be there for the long term. I understand that. But maybe then you have a certain dollar figure set aside so that people know what your wishes are. And again, if we can just talk really quickly again about encouraging you to consider burial as opposed to burning up your body into ashes. Lots of people choose this route. There's nothing inherently wrong with it. You can do that more cheaply and affordably. We totally understand that. But if at all possible, we'd encourage you to get buried because it signifies your hope in the resurrection. Again, not a wrong thing, not sin, but we would strongly encourage you. To testify to your family and to those who will visit your grave site to showcase your faith and what Christ will ultimately do, which is to raise your body and to renew it in Christ and to glorify it. So all that to say, there's not an age. No. But there is a certain wisdom that says I wanna be thinking about this on the regular and at least wanna have money set aside and I wanna be prepared 'cause I know what's gonna come. That's good. That's good. Well, in chapter 50 then we see the death of Jacob and Joseph. Certainly Mourns and it's interesting because he participates in the cultural. Mourning practices for Jacob and even has Jacob embalmed which is unique. I mean, the body's gonna decay. We know that we don't embalm our bodies today. And this is something that's more done in a head nod, I think to the Egyptians there and some of the practices there, probably so that the Egyptians wouldn't despise Joseph and his family or that he wouldn't dishonor them even the way that he treats his dead. I think this is okay what they do here. But Jacob is ultimately gonna be taken up and that's what he makes Joseph promise. He says, make sure that you take me with you or my bones that is with you when you leave this place or make sure that that happens. And Joseph is gonna remember that he's gonna pass that on from generations to generations. And then from here the brothers have another panic moment because they feel like maybe Joseph has. Treated them kindly for the sake of his father Jacob. And when Jacob dies, they're worried Now the real Joseph's gonna come out. And yet what they find is the Joseph is as trusting in the sovereignty of God as he ever was. And that's what he does here with his brothers. He says, look you meant this for evil, but God meant this for good. This is that well-known statement there that it expresses Joseph's in incredible trust in God's goodness and God's sovereignty through this. And he comforts his brothers with that. And then the chapter ends with a quick summary of the rest of Joseph, his Joseph's life that he lived in Egypt. There. He lived to 110 years old. He saw his grandchildren as well, and then eventually he dies. They embalm him as well, and they put 'em in a coffin there in Egypt, but not before he said to those that were his offspring. Hey, make sure that you take me up from this place as well. So, this kind of brings the. Time of the patriarchs to a conclusion here before we turn the page into Exodus and Moses, which is where we'll go tomorrow. I noticed this time around two things that stood out. First of all, the Egyptians mourn for Abraham. For 70 days. That's a long time. That's a long time. This is way longer than well. Okay let me just the next column from my Bible, verse 10. They mourned for him seven days. This is Abraham, so I, his closest family mourns for him seven days. The state of Egypt mourns for him 70 days. And I just thought that we do it so differently. We do, we, we mourn for maybe an afternoon and even then it's pretty quick. You know, you're looking at a memorial or a funeral, it's maybe a couple hours at most, and then people kind of move on with their lives. I, you know, I don't wanna make too much of it, but I do think we're probably missing something in that we try to push it away so quickly and so fast that we don't have the time to let it settle upon us. They mourned from seven days, and so I'm gonna use that number. We memorialized somebody one seventh of what the ancients did. Yeah. And I'm not saying that they did it better necessarily, although I do think they felt the weight of death more than we do. Yeah, I could see that almost with certainty because we so anesthetize ourselves that we don't even pay attention to stuff like this anymore. So I see this as being something profound to me to say that's it's good to acknowledge death. As painful as it might be. It's good to mourn, it's good to be sorry about sin. And we have a chief example in Christ himself who knew he was gonna raise Lazarus, and yet he wept with the people. People ask why he wept, and there's probably good answers to that. But suffice it to say he wept and he wept at the grave of a friend, somebody he cared about, and granted he did resurrect him. That's not gonna happen all the time, but it's good to mourn at a funeral. It's good to. To mourn the loss of life and it's less a celebration of life and it is the cessation of a life that we lament. There's mourning there. Christian, please be aware that a cultural thrust in the direction of we celebrate life and we don't mourn the loss of somebody. I understand the instinct. We don't like being sad. But it's biblical to mourn. Mm-hmm. It's good to acknowledge death is an enemy. We proclaim Christ's victory over sin and death when we mourn, when we feel the weight of its consequences when we see someone lying in the grave. Yeah. Mourning as those with hope doesn't mean. We don't mourn, right? Yeah. We feel it in. In fact, we often hear quoted, death wears your sting, grave wears your victory. Death is swallowed up in victory and yet when we look at the context of that from one Corinthians 15, the full reality of that is not gonna be until we are resurrected. Yeah. Until then, we do feel the sting. We do feel the loss. And it's okay to feel that so long as you do hope still in the future, resurrection. But yeah, I think your challenge there is appropriate. First. Uh, first, first, Matthew. First. First. Matthew. Not first. Do you have second Matthew in your Bible too? You know, lemme see your Bible. Give that over here. Matthew 15 one through 20. Matthew 15, Jesus is engaging the Pharisees. Now, yesterday I mentioned the region of Nesser as a gentile region. That's debatable and I need to clarify that editor's note here. There's debate as to whether or not this was part of the de capitalis or not, but what you should see here is the Pharisees in the Sadducees scribes. Coming to Jesus. They're no longer passive and just kind of sit, sitting back and watching what's happening. They're on the offensive here, and they're trying to trap him. They're trying to trip him up, and so they find the disciples and they accuse the disciples of breaking more laws here. They say, Hey, your disciples eat without washed hands, and Jesus confronts them. And answers back and says, look at, here's areas where you also break the law. When he says you, you honor the father, your father and mother, and yet you hold back some things that you should be devoting to them by saying, well, this is, this is Corbin, and so I, I don't have to give it over to you. And he says you're hypocrites over this. And then he goes on in the rest of our section and talks about the real problem and that is that as he's gonna. Talking about later on in Matthew, they're so concerned with the outside when the problem is the inside, and he talks about the idea of the heart, what comes outta the mouth, proceeds from the heart. He says, it's not what you ingest, it's not what you eat. They're eating with un, with unclean hands. Okay? But that's not really truly defiling them internally. What defiles us internally is the heart, and that was the problem the Pharisees had. That's what Jesus came to address was the heart the true sickness. The issue the Pharisees were struggling with is they didn't realize their sickness. They didn't realize where their true pollution, their true defilement lay, and so Jesus was confronting them and calling them to recognize that as they were trying to go on the offensive against him. One of the things that I find especially helpful in a text like this is that Jesus reminds us that it is possible and maybe even likely I'll go that far. Likely that you will be tempted to elevate tradition to the same level of which is to overrule and override the level of scripture. Let me explain. Suppose you have a Christian tradition where you, I don't know, you take your babies to get blessed by Pastor pj. You know, we dedicate your kids. Um, that's a fantastic tradition. I love that. We do that. We do that. You were just talking about this. We have one coming up, but if a church doesn't do that. It doesn't make them less biblical. Right? Maybe they don't do that at all. Maybe they don't, they, they don't do that for whatever reason, they decided not to. Um, you can't go to that new pastor and say, well, I'm at my old church. We used to do child dedications. Why don't you do this? This is unbiblical. And of course, the pastor will say, there's nothing in the Bible that says we have to do this. And so this is not a matter of biblical fidelity. Faithfulness to God. This is a matter of preference tradition. You might say there's, that's an easy one, and that's one that doesn't step on anybody's toes I trust. But there's lots of traditions that we engage in as Protestants, and even particularly as non-denominational baptistic and reformed Christians, where we may not be self-aware that we are participating in tradition without recognizing it. And so lemme just encourage you with that. When you read Jesus words here and you could say yes and amen to the people out there, we need to look at ourselves and make sure that we are humbly letting scripture speak for us and to us to say, am I ever in danger of elevating my tradition and even my tradition of understanding of what the scripture says to the same level of God's word? And often, if we're honest with ourselves, we'll realize, Hey, I, you know, I, I, I'm trying to be faithful here. I wanna be faithful of what God says and the way that I apply it may not be perfectly. On target. And if you're there, I think that's a good spot to be. I think that's what Jesus is getting at the heart. You can honor me with your lips and obeying certain what you think are commands while still being far from God. I think the heart of a true disciple is gonna be humble and say, Lord, I wanna do what you want me to do. Help me to be sensitive and tender to what your word says so that I'm governed and guided by your word, through your spirit, and not by man's tradition. That's good. Yeah. Well, hey, let's pray and they'll be done with this episode. God, we are grateful to have Pastor Rod back in office with us and grateful to be back on the podcast together. We pray that we would live as those that are faithful to your word, even as he was just talking. We don't want to elevate our traditions, our personal convictions over what is clearly there in your word. We want to be sure that anything that is not black and white in scripture we're holding with a. Somewhat loose hand, willing to be flexible and willing to certainly love those who differ with us because this is not a tier one issue. And so God, help us to define those things by your word and into walk in wisdom in accordance with that. We wanna be a church that is, is charitable for those that disagree with us and yet still love Jesus. And so we pray for that mindset and that attitude, and we pray that we continue to be good, be as we study your word, and we ask this in Jesus name. Amen. Hey. The end of January is right around the corner. You're almost done with one month of Bible reading this year, so good job, keep going. Don't forget, keep listening to the podcast as well because the top one, 2%, 3% are gonna get some swag at the end of the year. I know it seems a long way away, but it's gonna be here before you know it. Keep your Bibles, we'll catch you guys tomorrow. See you then. Bye.

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