Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello again. It's good to see you all. It's good to have you virtually. Thank you. You're you had a class for your DMIN. How's that going, by the way? Give us an update. Not a whole lot happening right now. Lots of reading. I have two classes that I've currently been working on. One is happening over the course of a week in January where it requires a lot of pre-work, and then there's post-work, and then the other one that I'm doing right now is. A class that's designed around creating my formal proposal for my ministry research project. So I'll have that done by, I don't know, the end of December at all, all the work that I'm supposed to do. The professor's like, Hey, sorry you picked the bad time to do this, but this is what has to happen. Yeah, there's all the things that you have to do. So it's a good class. I'm glad that I'm starting it, but it's also gonna be kind of inconvenient. But it, but a good, but a good inconvenience, a good thing nonetheless. Yeah. And you've got some ideas on what you're gonna do with that project. So Yeah. I still have I haven't gotten a formal approval yet, but I really like the idea. It seems great to me and I feel like it serves a need for us, and it could be useful for many years to come if I do it right. God willing. Yeah. Yeah. And I agree with you, you were talking to us about your idea for it. I think it would be really beneficial for us as a church, which is the whole point of a DMIN, and that's one of the things that differentiates a DMIN from a PhD doctor of ministry, not doctor of ministry. Yeah. Not a, not a demon. No. Not a demon. Yeah. Not the same thing, but the PhD is more for the academics, so the PhD is gonna get super nuanced and, dive into real specifics on their project or their dissertation. Because the point of a PhD dissertation is no one else has ever studied this field before, right? You're charging new territory, right? You're making a unique contribution to the scholarly field versus a doctor in ministry is a practical degree, which is more geared at, Hey, we want you this to benefit you but also benefit your church. And so that's why the project is more geared towards the church as a whole than it is towards a specific contribution to an academic field. Though both are accomplished, I think when it's done well, that's right, and I'm excited about it. It's been great so far. I've really enjoyed doing it. A, alongside all the stuff that we're doing here, I'm chomping at the bit to get rolling on this thing. So yeah, pray that it goes well and that it goes quickly and that I don't have to take off too much time from Thanksgiving and Christmas to do all these great things. Yeah. Well, hey, we had a question written in by somebody who is near and dear to your own heart. Yeah. Do you wanna set this up for us? Our most beautiful listener, inside and out, the holiest and godliest, absolutely. The most amazing person that I know. And I know a lot of people, lemme just tell you, I know lots of people. You sound like Trump right now. I just gotta tell you, I know lots of people. I know lots of people and this one is head and shoulders above the rest. And so she writes in and she wants to know where In Matthew 27, pilot's wife has this dream and she wants to know whether that dream is from God or from the devil. And based on her reasoning, neither one's a good option. Why would God want to interrupt the sacrifice of his son? That was his ultimate plan. The devil seems like he would want to do that. Yet, why would, what's going on behind that? Why would he want to enter into Judas and sell out Jesus? It seems that there's a mix up here. What's happening? Who's provoking the dream and what do we do about that? Yeah, that is a good question, insightful question, and it's a difficult one to answer because we don't really know the content of the dream. Other than it says in verse 19 of Matthew chapter 27, that his wife, pilot's wife sent word to him saying, have nothing to do with that righteous man. For I have suffered much because of him today in a dream. We see examples in scripture of God speaking to people through dreams, and certainly we have seen examples in scripture of demonic possession and oppression, which can impact people. And so the. The two potentials there. I understand that. I don't think Satan knew that the cross was gonna be the death blow. And she even points that out when she says, you know, why would he then have entered into, to Judas to carry out the plan? Is Satan not being omniscient? Could not have known. The rest of the story. And so Satan was not aware of the resurrection impending three days after Christ's death. I think Satan was believing that he had won at the cross and at the crucifixion. So that's where I would say I, I would hesitant to attribute this to a demonic being at this point because of that. But then again. What would Jesus, or what would God be doing here other than, and this was something that I noticed with pastor Mark as we were recording yesterday, is through the trials, there are so many times when other people outside of the disciples, outside of Jesus' own words, testified to the innocence of Christ. And so here in her dream, she says, have nothing to do with that righteous man. And so even there you have from pilot's wife who really, this is the only interaction with her that we get. She's even another voice testifying to the fact that he's righteous. And so maybe my best read on it would be, this is another example of where when PIL goes to the crowds and says, I find no guilt in him. His wife is saying, Hey, be careful because. I don't think he's guilty. My, this dream that I had implies that he's righteous. And so it's again and again and again, God, through these voices saying he was the innocent sacrifice, which was important for us, for the purpose of the atonement and so forth and so on. Your analysis assumes that Satan does have access into our dream state. Is that possible, or is that only true for unbelievers or is that, can a Christian have a dream that's influenced by the demonic, whether. Directly, indirectly, something like that. Does the devil have the ability to do this? And that's where getting into the realm of understanding what's taken place in the dream state and. The ability to influence those thoughts. And would that require possession or is that something that can be influenced from the outside? I'd say that is above my pay grade in general, but I would say if you're giving yourself over to things that are evil, if you're giving yourself over to things of the occult and other things like that, or even for a Christian, somebody who's, taking a keen interest in those things and in horror movies and things like that you are putting yourself in a position where what you take in is gonna influence what comes out. And I think what you take in can also influence your dreams can also influence what thoughts you are having and entertaining overnight. So, she's not a believer and so I, I would say, I think I'd be more comfortable saying he has the ability to influence the dreams of unbelievers than believers. But I do think believers can have their dreams influenced by things that are sinful and ungodly if they're filling their minds with too much of that. Yeah. It seems to me like you would be able to be influenced in some capacity. We don't know what the spiritual realm looks like. We don't know what it feels like. We don't know how it operates, but we do know that there are forces that are working against us and there are forces that are working for us now. It's not a mutual battle where it's good versus evil and who's gonna prevail in the end. We know that God controls all things. I don't think it's a stretch, though, to suggest that. The devil being the active agent that he is with his minions are working at all times to do damage to the church and to his people any way that they can. So I can't deny it, I can't dismiss it, but neither can I say with a hard, fast fist on the table saying it's, this is the way it is. But I am cautious and I'm aware of that. With regard then to Pilate's wife, is it possible that the Lord gave him the dream or gave her the dream in order to provoke Pilate, who is not necessarily a good guy to say? Make sure that you don't involve yourself with this to the degree that you might otherwise do. In other words, maybe this is a mercy of God to prevent Pilate from doing this. Not that he's not guilty. Right. He still is. Right. He still held account. In fact, that's what I think Peter says in Acts chapter one, two, or he says that it was. Through Pilates inherited that Jesus was given over. So I don't think he's immune from guilt, but he's less guilty. Mm-hmm. Maybe this is a mercy of God to spare him of the full wrath that he otherwise would've obtained if he had been active in the condemnation of Jesus. In this case, he's only passive, which still to me means he's guilty, just less guilty than he otherwise would've been. Yeah, I could see that a hundred percent because he does multiple times after this attempt to, get the crowd to release Jesus. Yeah. And he is unsuccessful in it. But contrary to God's desires though, which is again where her question comes from, right? This is not what God wanted, but still it prevented. So here's what I think. God knows and has decreed. This is going to happen, but doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be Pilate. That he has to be the one to say, I condemn this man to be guilty and he's going to be this, this, and this. He pushes back on the Jewish Sanhedrin and the Pharisees to say, you guys decide this. You make the decision. Well, and even, it's John's account where Pilate is talking with Jesus and. He says, don't you know that I've got the authority to release you? And Jesus says, you would have no authority unless it was granted to you from above. Therefore, greater is the sin of the one who betrayed me to you. And so even there, there's evidence of you've got Judas and you've got Pilate, and both of them are guilty. And yet Jesus is there implying that one is more guilty than the other. Right? Which shows us that there are gradations of guilt even as there are gradations of punishment. You can be more or less guilty in your life as you go about. Your walk with Christ. And I think that's true for everybody, not just for the unbelievers, but all of us. The measure of our knowledge will also have an impact on the measure of our. Our reward and also our loss of reward depending on our obedience to those things. Yeah. Yeah. Well, good question. Excellent question. Excellent question. It was so good. Yep. I almost fell over. It was so good. Yeah. Hey, our favorite listener, in case you guys are wondering who wrote that question in it. No, no, no. Let 'em figure it out. We'll let you figure it out. If they, if they're still guessing, they don't deserve to know. That's true. Yeah. By the way I got a gift in the mail. Oh yeah. So somebody happened to send me a lid for my head, something that, that goes on top, a little hat there. And it says something on the front of it that I don't want us to get an e for explicit on the podcast. So I'll be careful on that one. But it says. World Series Champions, Los Angeles Dodgers. Oh, the woo woo woo. Yeah. So anyways whoever said that to me, thank you so much for that. I appreciate the sentiment. I appreciate the thought on that. It matches your back tattoo with JohE Tani. It's, you know, I'm surprised. I was debating getting that, but then I finally was like, you know what, this hat, this is, it just ties it all together. This is it. Amanda was for it. I'm glad it's there. Yeah. Yeah. Or not. Or not. Hey Matthew 28. Mark 16. Matthew 28. We have the account of the resurrection of Christ. And as it opens up here, we read about two Marys showing up at the tomb. And I think there's a caveat here that's necessary to understand how all of these different accounts of the resurrection coalesced together. 'cause it says in 28, 1 that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. Now, in the other accounts, we found out that there were other women beyond just these two that went. And I think that's important because. Is one of Jesus's first resurrection Appearances that we don't have recorded here by Matthew actually is Jesus' appearance to Mary Magdalene. And she, it appears, stays behind at the tomb. The other women run back to go tell the disciples, which is what Matthew's implication is here. And as we read this, it would seem that maybe Matthew's implying that they all left, but because of the other accounts of the resurrection, we know that Jesus actually encounters Mary Magdalene in the tomb. She's weeping because she thinks that the body has been stolen and we will get there. But remember she talks to the gardener and she says, Hey, you know, where did you put him? Just tell me where the body is. And she finds out this gardener is actually Jesus. So even though Matthew only records two women, there were other women that the other gospel accounts record there for us, including Salome and some others that I believe were probably the ones that ran back to the disciples. Meanwhile, you had Mary Magdalene who had an intense devotion to Christ and the world has taken that and made that something that it shouldn't be. Dan Brown, da Vinci Code, some other things like that. Marriage was. Insanely grateful for Jesus. She's the one that's anointing his feet with the expensive perfume. And so I think that's why she lingers at the tomb. But as I was reading through the gospel accounts this time I stopped and I had to think to myself, okay, how does all the, do all these things fit together? 'cause Matthew seems to imply that these two women went, and then both of them left. But then Jesus appears to marry another time. It's hard to put all these things in concert together, but I think that's what's happening here in the resurrection accounts. Yeah, I was just gonna ask you about that because it is challenging to harmonize the four gospels into one story. Yeah. Into one unit or one experience, and in particular, John chapter 20, speaking of Mary Magdalene says, now, in the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So what's happening here? Is this just a focal point on Mary when there's others with her and it's spending unique time looking at her experience? Or is this, did she come back after the disciples came and went? What's happening here? And the short answers we're not sure. Right. There's questions about the timing of these events and whether this came first and that came second. And I think the point for us to realize here is that scripture, especially with the four gospels, they're all, telling about the same story, but again, they're using different perspectives or vantage points to elicit the kind of response they're looking for. Now, they're not being loosey goosey with the details. They're not making stuff up, but they are focusing on certain events. Again, whether it's one angel. Or there's two one gospel writer is focusing on the one angelic being, whereas the others are looking at both of them, right? It doesn't mean they're liars or that someone's just being inaccurate. But truth doesn't demand precision. Truth can still be true even if you're just using approximations. Truth can also still be true, even if you're saying, I saw this and not that that doesn't mean that you're being loosey goosey. The way that the writers approached telling the story. Right. And we saw that earlier in the gospel with the Garrison Dimani acts too. Was there one Demoniac? Was there two? One or two? Yeah. How do we deal with that? Yeah, so well, from here we have the the guards report. The guards report about. What has happened and the Sanhedrin bribes of the guards to tell a lie. And you just wonder what the Sanhedrin must have been thinking at this point. They have the firsthand account from the guards, and again, second Corinthians four comes to mind here because of the God of this world blinding the eyes of the lost to keep them from seeing the glory of the light of the gospel. The Sanhedrin was kept, at least a lot of them were. Not all of them. We saw this because remember Joseph. Arimathea was a member of the Sanhedrin. You also had Nicodemus who was there at the burial of Christ. And so not all of them, but a lot of them are so stubborn in their unbelief that even in the face of this report of the resurrection, they're gonna tell the guards to tell a lie in order to cover this thing up. And surely they saw Jesus, I'm sure the Sanhedrin did throughout his 40 days as he was going about, or at least they encountered others that did. And so it's fascinating and it just reminds us again of the necessary act of God that is regeneration to give somebody the faith to be able to believe in Christ. Right. And this is interesting for a number of reasons because it's one of those things where if my family could just see someone being raised from the dead. Surely they would believe, right? If my friends could just see that this had taken place and here we have it, that that's not necessarily true. Human nature is such that it's not just evidence that we're looking at, there is a heart condition that either encourages or prohibits our faith. And for those who are born again, that is made alive by Christ through the spirit, we have the eyes to see. We can see things like this and say, yeah, I wanna believe this. I trust in this. This is where my hope lies. And for others, they see this and they scratch their chin and say, well, right, maybe this, maybe that, maybe you know, atmospheric conditions and maybe it's swap gas. Who knows? No one can know possibly. Right. Yeah. And that's, yeah, because we still think, yeah, exactly the same things today. If only they could see, a, after this we get Jesus's commissioning of his disciples. And this is where we take our church mission statement from, which is to make disciples by reaching people for Christ, teaching people to be like Christ and training them to serve Christ. And so here we get that from the Great Commission passage here because we see that laid out for Jesus when he commends people to go and make disciples of all nations. There's the reaching component. And then he goes on and he says that they need to be baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them, there's the teaching to observe all that I have commanded you. There's a training that's implied in that as well as we think about that, and then behold, I'm with you always to the end of the age. Just that encouragement for the disciples, knowing that the ascension was nearby that he was gonna go to be with the father. And he's just reminding that his presence would be there even through the spirit, as we talked about in John chapter 15, that he was gonna leave the helper behind as he ascended. But here's the mission of the church right here in the Great Commission passage. Two questions that people might have about that. And the first would be this. Jesus isn't talking to the church, he's talking to the disciples. He calls 'em a disciples. He doesn't call 'em apostles. How do we know that this is instruction for the church? Because that's the rest of the story. That this is what the disciples go out and do and we're about to get there in our reading, in the Book of Acts, we see the birth of the church there, that this is part of Jesus' plan is to cause the church to happen. And we see that. Through the day of Pentecost. Even what takes place on the day of Pentecost, there is an act of God whereby these tongues of fire descend upon the disciples and they proclaim the gospel. And then it says they were added to that church that day. 3000 souls, right? And then later on in acts were up to 5,000 men just a couple of chapters later. So the church is clearly God's plan, and so the disciples understood in the application of the Great Commission, that that was gonna be the church. And we have followed in those footsteps ever since. Some churches will have the catchphrase or something similar. And this is my second question. Love God, love people, something like that. Yeah. And they focus heavily on those two things. And Es especially. Expressing those things via things like good works. Like, oh, we go and clean the schools during the summer. We donate X amount of food to the food pantry. We give it out for Thanksgiving and things like that. So we love God, love people. It would they take issue with this passage and say, well, yeah, we see this, but here's how we see this in application. Is that a bad way to look at the way that church functions? Or are we missing something? Are those two things the same, different compatible, incompatible. Yeah. I mean, there, there's a call to that, right? Jesus, even in the Sermon on the Mount said let others see your good works and give glory to your father who's in heaven. So there's an element to where we should be doing good deeds. We should be salt and light and even there's a, social component to that. The problem is when we look at the social component of that and overemphasize it into this is what the role of the church is. The role of the church is to reach people for Christ. The role of the church is to be the mouthpiece of God. Romans chapter 10, even to see lost people, repent and believe in Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. And so while the church shouldn't necessarily. Necessarily neglect those pursuits of being a light and doing things like we do with Fall Fest and other things like that. And being involved in our community. That's not the mission. And when we make that the mission, what we've done is we've made the church the world maybe a more pleasant place to be as the ship is going down. Right. As our sending pastor always used to compare it, we're on a ship that's sinking and there's lifeboats, and as believers, we know where the lifeboats are. Mm-hmm. And so you may. Go into the sinking ship and realize the restaurant needs to be swept and mopped and to only care about the social gospel, is to go out and sweep the floors of the restaurant while the ship is going down. It's like, okay, well the people in the restaurant may enjoy that for a brief amount of time, but ultimately they're all gonna perish because you didn't tell them where the lifeboats are. And so as Christians, we have to be sink. This is the key. This is salvation. Yeah, that's a really good way to put that. And perhaps you might even argue the best way to love God and to love people the best way to do good to them. Is by making disciples of them. Yeah. To help them love the Lord for sure. And to glorify him with their obedience, their faith-filled obedience that is not their trying to earn salvation obedience, but a response to his graciousness by saving us. So the goodest good work we can do is by sharing Christ. Mm-hmm. And by making disciples and helping them to love Christ as they should. Here according to Matthew 28. Yeah. Well, let's flip over to Mark chapter 16, where we get another of the resurrection accounts here. And this is going to be a unique one. Mark's gospel is the shortest of all of them, and his resurrection account is one of the shorter ones that we have as well. In fact probably Mark's gospel ended after verse eight. Now there may have been a longer ending to it but whether or not we possess that is what's in question. And so you'll notice much like in John chapter eight with the one. Story of the woman cotton adultery, that here you've got bracketed out a section in the ESV that says some of the earliest manuscripts do not include Mark 16, nine through 20. And so what that breaks down to essentially is we have two key fourth century ad manuscripts. That, so we're talking three hundreds. That, that do not include the longer ending here of Mark. That's what it means by some of the earliest manuscripts. There are some manuscripts that date back to the fifth century and later and after that, so later manuscripts that do have it. And you might think, well, why do we have it in our Bibles? Then? There is some evidence from early church fathers, people like Justin Martyr Tian and EU, who do include references to the longer ending of March chapter 16. But there's others that, that exclude it, right? So. We have to figure out what to do with this. And in a church tradition eventually emerged that attributed this longer section to a man named Aris, who purportedly was a disciple of John. So maybe he heard from John that Jesus said some things like this. There's some things in the longer ending of Mark that you read that sound like other sections of the gospels or sound like even some of the great commission language here. But then there's other things here that, that we struggle to, to really wrap our minds around and apply like the handling of poisonous snakes and things like that. So. There's some other technical elements here. Even the vocabulary, the style that is a little bit different than Mark's style and the rest of the gospel that would lead us to think that this probably wasn't original to Mark's original account of the gospel, so why put it in there? Part of the reason is if you look at verse eight, they went out and fled from the tomb for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid. Period like that doesn't feel like a good ending to the gospel. And so you can think why somebody would be tempted to say, okay, well there must have been something more to it. And as good intention as it was I really wish if this wasn't original, that they hadn't added it at all. If that's the case, then this is not scripture. Correct. Properly speaking, we're not saying that this is actually the word of God. We're saying this is maybe adjacent someone that c cared and concerned themselves as saying, this needs to be finished and I'd like to complete the gospel of Matthew or Mark rather, by adding a few elements that maybe these are true, right? Maybe they're true. Maybe, maybe that's what Jesus said in some context. But here's the thing when it comes to what we take away from this, that means we really shouldn't build. Any theological basis on verses nine through 20. Right. There, it's good that we have them here. We're not trying to hide anything. Christians are not trying to nefariously rewrite the scriptures or change things up. We're just, we're trying to be honest with the data here. Yeah. And the data is stacked against these verses being included in the original manuscripts of the Bible. And that's important consideration when we're talking about what the Bible is. The Bible is not words in the page. The Bible is a collection of manuscripts that were the original. Autographs that's what they're called from the original authors. That's what we'd call scripture. And the process of copying that, that scripture into multiple forms, vellum being one of them. Animal skins, papyrus being others. People copy these things and copy these things and do the use of techniques that we refer to this category of thinking as textual criticism. It's an academic discipline whereby you take all these copies that we have and then try to distill which of these are the earliest and most reliable. Now it's really like I, I oversimplified that a lot. But that's essentially what's happening here. So when we look at verses like this, that should not spark fear in your heart for the Bible. That should give you more confidence that we're learning all the time which of these manuscripts are more accurate and less accurate, given the fact that their age, their location, and what's written on them. There's a lot of factors included in that. So all that to say this is still the word of God verses nine through 20. Maybe not so much, right? Yeah, yeah, that's a great point. There's nothing that we're hiding in there. You can read it for yourself and see nowhere in there. Does Jesus deny to be God or anything? Anything like that? Yeah. There's no secret. There's, yeah. The Gospel of Thomas, gospel of Peter, right. These are, those are spurious accounts of the gospels that are they're called gnostic gospels. Those are not the same thing. Not even close, right? We're not saying, oh, the gospel of Thomas used to be in the Bible. We took it out because we didn't like it. Not the way this process worked at all. Gospel of Peter, gospel of Thomas Gospel of Mary. All of these are forgeries. They're written far later Yep. Than the actual gospels are written and they're, I think they're fan fiction. Yeah. Really. That's what we'd call that today. There are people who were bored and this is how they entertain themselves. They create stories that weren't the real thing. And if you read any of these, you'll find out in short order. This doesn't even sound like the Bible. Right. Not even close. It's weird. And I think, okay, fine, if it's entertainment, great, but it's not anything close to what scripture is. Yeah. Very weird. But real quick, I know we're long on this but. Because we just brought those up. Would you say that it would be a good thing if somebody's curious about those things for our church to read those? Depends on what you mean. In a formal way, like the daily Bible reading plus the gnostic gospels. Not so much that, but somebody's like, okay, what is the gospel of Thomas, if you're interested. Sure. I mean, there's, again, we're not hiding anything, right? So, Christians don't fear truth. We lean into it hard, right? We depend on that. Jesus says, I'm the way, the truth and the life. So we're not gonna say. Don't do it. We prefer that you don't think about it. Is there always danger in interacting with material that leans heretical and on the worst side, heretical on the better side. Unorthodox sub orthodox. Even We would say it's probably not the best use of your time, but if you're interested and you find yourself gravitating toward that, you got an itch that you have to scratch. Okay? Prayerfully go into that and read it. But remember, these are older documents that are proven to be. Fake. They're forgeries, they're not true. So whatever you do with them, don't start thinking about them as scripture. Yeah. Good word. Alright, let's pray. Lord, we thank you so much for what these chapters record, which is the empty tomb, the resurrection that Jesus did emerge from the grave. Otherwise, what we're doing is. Is pointless. As Paul says in one Corinthians 15, it's vanity and so what we are so grateful for the resurrection of Christ. We wanna be a church marked by faithfulness to the great commission that carries out our mission of making disciples by reaching teaching and training. And so help us to be faithful in that even as we are winding down on this year and thinking about the next year. I pray that you would make us fruitful in this next year and this next season for reaching people. And and become a stronger overall as a church. And so we wanna be a faithful bride of Christ. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Keep in your Bibles, tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you. Bye.

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

Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said