It is January 11th, and we're back with another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. We're so glad you're with us. I'm Pastor Mark and I'm joined by my faithful friend. I'm Lewis and I'm excited to be here with you once again. It's a good thing to be reading our Bibles and I trust that you are well at Compass. We are wrapping up a weekend of a. Intensive. Very intense weekend. Yeah, very. What makes this weekend so intense? Pastor Mark? Yeah. Very intense weekend. Well, it was our Biblically. Biblically. Yeah, I guess it was biblically, but it was our biblical counseling intensive. We brought in Pastor Lucas, who is one of the pastors from our sending church. I am, I know you've heard about him from the announcements and here on the podcast in the past, but it was great to have him here. And we as a church got to get better at what is called biblical counseling. What is biblical counseling? What is biblical counseling? Is it just like every other kind of counseling? Well, it's biblical. That's what makes it different. It's biblical. But what we mean by that, when we say biblical counseling, we don't mean that this is the only type of counseling in the Bible necessarily. It means that it's the type of counseling that uses God's word as its foundation, as its starting point. It's the type of counseling that directs people to solve problems God's way. Yeah, and there's many, many things out there in the world. There's many people who go to their therapists, who go to their counselors, who go to all these things, and it's not based on the word of God and biblical counseling. There's much more to it. But at a very high level, it is designed around the word of God and the truth that's presented in scripture. So we were really blessed this weekend to have that. I know Pastor Lucas is coming back out again for another weekend, another intense weekend. But what a blessing it is. As a church to together better understand what good biblical counseling looks like. If you miss that, the sessions will be recorded and it, I believe they'll be recorded. And if not, then we'll just have to come back and edit this section outta the episode. But I'm confident they'll be recording and they'll be available for you to watch. If you were not able to join us this weekend and you want to find out more about. Biblical counseling or perhaps even join us for the next set of sessions that we'll be having later this year. Alright, we're gonna jump into our Bible reading for today. And speaking of counseling, this is a family that needs counseling that we're about to see in Genesis 27. Oh oh oh. That is a good transition that I did not have. I did not have. Yeah, and they, they don't, that's why I'm here. They don't have. The counseling, at least in the account that we're gonna read, that they probably should have. In fact, there's plenty of bad counsel Yes. In these chapters. Well, what's happening here? Well, Isaac is getting old. Isaac is getting old. We're actually moving pretty quickly through the patriarchs and in a lot of ways we're pretty. Rapidly progressing through their lives. Isaac is getting old and he is going to bless his son. Who is he supposed to bless? Well, according to what he was told about his kids when they were born, he was told that the older would serve the younger. So he was told that his younger son was going to be the one through whom God. Kept his promise line going. Right. And a big theme in Genesis is which person is continuing God's promise line. We started it off with Adam and Eve. They had a son. We thought it was gonna be Abel who was continuing the promise line, and then Kane killed them. So then it ends up being Seth, and then out of Seth's kids, we see That's why there's so many genealogies. It goes down to Noah. And then out of Noah's kids, which one is it? Well, it ends up being one of those three, right? Not all three. One of the three. And then we keep that going. Abraham, then not Ishmael, but Isaac, and then here we are. Which one? Esau or Jacob? It ends up being Jacob, but instead Isaac has other plans. Right? Right. Isaac is intending to bless Esau. He is effectively trying to subvert God's plan. Mm-hmm. But then there's also another subversion that happens in here and. In some sense it is God. Well, I say in some sense it's very much is God's sovereignty over this situation. Working through Rebecca and her subversion of her husband is Rebecca. Acting righteousness. Righteously. Fuck man. Righteousness. I'm having a hard time talking today. Is Rebecca acting righteously? No. Right? No. Rebecca is actually, she's having favoritism, which we know is a bad thing. We see that in the book of James, right about partiality deception, right? She's lying. And even trying to take into her own hands what she should be trusting God to carry out even in the face of. Even in the face of Isaac's intentions to do the wrong thing, we've already seen God intervening and stopping. Stopping the wrong thing from happening, and Rebecca, rather than taking it into her own hands and sinning in the process, ought to be trusting God, even as this blessing seems imminent, even as it seems like there's nothing else that can be done. She doesn't believe in God's sovereignty in this situation as she ought to. And I think this is a great lesson for all of us, right? There's so many times that we think. God has a plan for us and we think, man, if God would be so glorified by this thing. And really it's just us trying to baptize our plans, our timing, our goals, and doing it our way. And we justify it by attaching it to something that God may have said. And so I think this is a really great lesson for. For me and for all of us that we don't wanna justify our own selfish desires by trying to attach them onto God's plans for us. Yeah, there's a lot of characters in this chapter who are way off track. There are a lot of characters who are certainly not being faithful to God. Jacob though is interesting because he certainly is part of this conspiracy, but he also recognizes in verse 12 that if his father feels him, he might be seen as mocking him. And he actually might bring a curse upon himself and not a blessing. I'm not trying to defend Jacob here by any means, but Jacob is the one voice of reason even as the then goes on to participate in the shenanigans. But he does recognize the severity of what's going on here, even when everybody else. Hmm. Probably doesn't as they ought to. Well, so ultimately you know, this, I trust from reading your Bible, reading today, but the trade happens, right? Isaac, who is the one of the promise, right? The seed of the woman is. Swapped into the clothing of the seed of the flesh. Right. And that's what you see here. Jacob, right? Sorry. Yes. Did I misspeak? I'm sorry, Jacob. That's okay. Yes. To be clear, Jacob right? Mm-hmm. He is covered up in the hairy. The hairy skin of animals and the deception takes place. Now, I wanna just think about something really quickly here that I think is really important because we've talked about this seed of the serpent, seed of the flesh, and we've seen all these nations. Coming from Abraham, right? Mm-hmm. Starting with Ishmael, but we've seen all of these different nations, and many of those nations are what make up parts of Africa today and parts of the Middle East. Mm-hmm. Should we continue to look at those people as seeds of the serpent? What do you think? Yeah, so Genesis, right? Setting up that good guys, bad guys almost. Right, right. In the two lines. And I don't think so because I think a big part of this is when we see later on in the Old Testament even like we talked about a few episodes ago about the nations are invited back into, god's people, right? Yes. And God, a big deal about the New Testament is God showing that his people are not an ethnic group, but the children of Abraham are those who are children of Abraham by faith. Right? Right. It's a big theme in Romans and in Galatians. Yeah. And so it's right to see these themes. It's right to identify how Moses has structured this to kinda communicate to us and help us see who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, especially when the bad guys are often looking like, good guys. And sometimes the other way around. But. We need to make sure that we are not assuming that this is something or a principle that we should continue to apply today. In fact, we're sending missionaries, Lord willing from our church to Chad. And I mean, I obviously can't make direct parallels between the people who live in Chad today and what we're reading here in Genesis, but I think it's a fair assumption to say that the lineage of some of these people comes from who we're reading about here, the bad guys in this narrative, but also notice. Even in this narrative, there is blessings that God gives to the bad guys. Not the blessings of Abraham in the sense of the promises for the people of Israel, but God is kind to Issa. God is kind to Ishmael. Mm-hmm. God is kind to these people and ultimately he's gonna be kind to them by what you bring up, which is that he is going to send a Savior and he's gonna call the nations back. Right. They're the Gentiles. Mm-hmm. That he then calls back to faith. And so, yeah, it is a literary function here, but it is not necessarily something that we should apply as a principle. And I think you can even see that with the reality of the hairy skin being put on Isaac, right? God is kind to all these people. And even in the New Testament, there's a big theme that the ethnic people of Abraham are not always God's people. Yeah. Right. Jesus tells the Pharisees, you are of your father, the devil. Right? Yeah. We're gonna see that even in Matthew nine. Right. And so he's saying that even though you're biologically descended from Abraham, spiritually, you are. Seed of the serpent. Yep. That's right. That's right. Well, chapter 28 is the progression of this story. For obvious reasons. For obvious reasons, Esau is not particularly happy with Jacob. Yeah, and I think that really highlights the fallout of sin. Mm-hmm. I think that's a really good takeaway from these two chapters, is just the consequences of sin right at the end of chapter 27. Rebecca is saying, Hey, you need to flee. You need to run away. And she's actually never gonna see her son again. She'll never see Jacob again after this whole fiasco with trying to deceive her husband. Isaac is never gonna see his son again after this. And think about the marital strife mm-hmm. That this would cause between Isaac and Rebecca. That's right, and we mentioned this the other day, but this is something I try to teach my kids, is that sin seems like it will satisfy. Mm-hmm. Sin seems like it's the solution in the moment, but the Bible makes it very clear that sin is never. An actual solution Sin, mm-hmm. Never actually satisfies. It is only an illusion. It is only a bandaid at the very best for the very briefest amount of time. Sin will always produce pain and suffering. Mm-hmm. And despair. Now, righteousness, on the other hand, will do the very opposite, and that's something that kids need to learn. That's something we, you need to be teaching in your homes, but that's also something that we need to be reminded of. Definitely as adults we're not that far removed from those struggles. And as tempting as sin might seem, and as we might be like, ah, God's got to, you know, he's gotta do something different here. He needs my help. We need to remember that he's sovereign. We need to be trusting in him, and we need to be fleeing sin in every way that we can. Yeah. So he is sent to Laben and who's Laben? Laben is. None we met before, right? Than his very own relative. Yeah. I think it's his uncle, right? Yes. Lavin is Jacob's uncle. And so Esau wants to kill Jacob because he's stolen his birthright and his blessing, right? Jacob? Tricked Isaac into blessing. Himself instead of blessing his older brother. Which is interesting that Isaac was planning on passing on the blessing to the wrong son. Yeah, right. He was planning on disobeying God. And God uses Jacob and Rebecca's deception. He uses their sin to bring about his promise. So Rebecca comes up with another scheme to send Jacob off to her brother away from his. Rather Esau who wants to kill him? And now I think this sets up a theme in these next, this kind of this Jacob story arc that I had a professor who, he put it this way, Jacob schemes, but God redeems. So Jacob is gonna be doing a bunch of crazy things that he thinks are going to set him up for success and none of them work, but instead God is going to. Redeem them. He's going to use Jacob's terrible plans for good. And that's the start of this right here in chapter 28. Yep. At the end of chapter 28 is the account of Jacob's Dream. He has a dream that God sends to him and there is. A ladder. In this dream, there's a ladder with angels going up and down it. You might read that and go, why is that here? What does that matter? And you, that'd be a totally fair question because you could think, why doesn't God just jump to telling him the promises and reminding him of these things? But I think that is there though as Jacob makes it clear, Jacob. I guess didn't understand that God is in this place. Mm-hmm. God is working in this place and that. Opening illustration of maybe, perhaps even the spiritual realm of what's going on. Demonstrate to Jacob that God is indeed in this place. And I think that location's important because this is away from the promised land, right? He's gone away from. S what should be the presence of God, right? And especially in this culture is you have a lot of local deities, right? Like I remember later on in the Bible there's a story in, I believe it's in Kings or Samuel, where the people who are invading Israel think, oh, we should fight Israelites on a different area because maybe their god's a God of the hills. And if we fight them on the planes, we'll be okay. And so I think that's part of it too, is God is showing them that I am, I'm everywhere. I'm not just. In the Promised Land, I'm still with you, even though you've gone away and I, he says right in verse 15, I am with you. I'll keep you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to land. I won't leave you until I've done what I promised you. And that's such a great passage right there. Right? Because we see that even though Jacob is going away from the promised land, which is usually like we talked about, usually a bad thing. Usually when someone's leaving the promised land, it's not a good thing. Someone like lot is going, goes away from the promised Land, he goes to Sodom and it ends poorly. Ishmael goes away from the promised land, ends poorly. But God is saying, I'm still going to be faithful to you even though, you're the here because of your sin, you're deceiving. And something else that I think is interesting is this is the first time Jacob has contact with the Lord. Yeah. He's his first interaction with the Lord, isn't it? Yeah. And I would even suggest. That perhaps in, in terms of Old Testament salvation, this is where you see that, right? You see this as the recognition of Jacob, and he sees God, who he really ought to be understood as. And you know, in terms of Old Testament salvation, which is. Of course in the context of Genesis I think this is where he recognizes that God truly is God for the first time. I think he sees that in the previous passage that there are there's problems when you disobey God, but I think here. He recognizes for the first time. Something though that is interesting about Jacob's if you will, profession of faith, right? When he responds to God in verse 20 and makes a vow and it's almost conditional. So what we're gonna see in these chapters of the following chapters when Jacob is scheming that. He likes to make bargains. He likes to come out on top and he tries to make, it seems like his vow is really a bargain with God. He says, so you don't think this is a point where he's So, in my opinion, I don't think this is where Jacob is. Trusting the Lord. I think he is trying to use the Lord for selfish gain. Where do you think he does? I think at the, when he comes back to the promised land I think in chapter 34, 32, 32, I think that's where, he fully trusts the Lord. I think right here he's saying, God, if you're with me and if you do this for me, right? Look at verse 20. If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go and will give me, if you do all these things for me so that I come again, then the Lord shall be my God, right? The end of verse 21. So he's trying to make a bargain with the Lord. And we see that the rest of his time that he's always trying to. Do things on his own. Fair enough. We can finish our debate about this so that our episode doesn't run to 60 minutes. We'll finish it later. Okay. Yeah, we'll just, we'll see. We will, over the course of the next few episodes, we'll talk about this and we'll revisit what, how we think Jacob's doing and how his relationship. The Lord is, but right now we should probably turn our attention to Matthew chapter nine. That's right. That's right. And Matthew chapter nine. Yes. Let's turn our attention to Matthew chapter nine at we're halfway through this, so in verse 18, we're picking up with the kind of dual account of the restoration of the daughter, of the ruler and also the woman who had the discharge of blood for 12. Years. Yesterday, we saw that specifically through one of the miracles, that God is demonstrating his power, yes, to solve human sickness and the problems of sin in creation. But he's also is very clear that Jesus is here to forgive sins. What does this passage now have to do with sin? Well, I think we're seeing here that faith is. The solution not faith that comes from ourselves. Not faith that comes from this ruler or from the woman, but faith is the means by which we see the salvation. And so the woman very clearly is told by Jesus after her act of touching his garment. Jesus says in verse 22, take heart. Daughter. Daughter. What a precious word. Yeah. What a precious word. Right? Take heart, daughter. Mm-hmm. Your faith has made you well, so is that. Her faith in the sense of something that she mustered up in and of herself, and that's what solved her problem. If we just faith our way to healing, is, is that, is that possible? Is that something that we should be doing? Yeah. Well, faith is only as good as its object, right? Faith is only as good as what you pay. Put your faith. In. And so the most important thing is who her faith is in. And something that we've learned in the student ministry. We've been going through Romans. And Romans chapter three talks a lot about how faith is the opposite of boasting. Mm-hmm. Faith is incompatible with taking credit. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And here the ruler, he comes to Jesus and. And he's dependent on him. Mm-hmm. To save. Right. And the woman, yes, she touches the fringe of the garment of his clothing, but. She thinks that that's all, that's all she has to do. The most simple act and indeed that faith is what Jesus attributes to what makes her well, and ultimately we see the resurrection of the girl as well. Yeah, and I think that emphasis on faith is so important because if you think about it, Jesus is in this crowd, right? He's walking through this crowd and many people. Bump into Jesus. Mm-hmm. Um, but she touches him. It's not the touching that makes her Well, that's right. It's the faith that makes her Well, that's right. And then we're gonna see some more faith as in verse 27, we start to hear of the account of the two blind men. So they're blind. What's interesting about them being blind, specifically in the context of faith and what we're talking about here. Yeah. Well faith often gets compared to sight across scripture and Matthew started his gospel by saying that Jesus is the son of David. Mm-hmm. The son of Abraham. And the very first people in Matthew's story that recognize Jesus as the son of David are the blind man. Yeah. Isn't that funny? The people see Jesus. Matthew has to have a sense of humor Absolutely. In this, like, this is, this is a joke, not in the sense of. Like comedy. That's ironic, but this is ironic. Like this is intended to be seen as something ah, get it seen. Mm-hmm. It's intended by Matthew to be ironic, to be like, look at what's going on. All these other people misunderstand. Mm-hmm. They don't get it. They have sight, they have learning. They have, mm-hmm. The Jewish customs, they have wealth, they have all these things. They don't get it. Guess who gets it? Two blind men. Right? They're the ones who say, have mercy on us. Son of David. Right? And again, that's that faith coming through, right? Mm-hmm. They recognize they're entirely dependent on the mercy of Jesus, the son of David, for their healing. Then Jesus says, right, do you believe that I'm able to do this right? Mm-hmm. Belief and faith are very much equivalents, right? Yeah. Do you have that faith that I'm able to do this? And of course they say, yes, Lord, and they are healed, right? And then just make sure it's not missed. Jesus says, according to your faith, be it done to you and their eyes were open. So again, another account of Jesus working to solve a bodily problem to. Solve a problem that is the result of sin. In these men's flesh, but also a demonstration of faith and ultimately of salvation. Now, after those two really good responses to Jesus, right? Two responses of faith, or I guess three, if you include the woman and the. Man, and in these blind men we see a not so great, probably the worst response possible. Can you have a worse response than what we see from the Pharisees here? I don't think so. No, I don't think so. I'm confident in fact, yes. That you cannot have a worse response. Right? This in verse 34 is the response of the Pharisees. They say he casts out demons. By the Prince of demons that is, that's fighting words. Mm-hmm. And in fact, that is the antithesis of the truth. Yes. So not only are they confused and maybe murky on things mm-hmm. Or partly confused or, we've seen the crowd say, wow, this guy's got this guy, this man has authority. Wow. Why would God give this guy authority? That's a different kind of confusion than this sort of statement, right? Right. To say what God is doing is actually attributable to Satan. That is, you can't get worse than that. Yes. You can't get worse than that. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yeah, so we've seen a lot of Jesus his, he's doing miracles and people responding. So hopefully throughout, as you read the gospels this year, you're really paying attention to how are people reacting to Jesus, and what is that supposed to tell me about who Jesus really is and how God wants me to respond to him. Yeah, and one of the ways that you ought to respond is by listening to this. Very last couple verses of chapter nine and where Jesus says the harvest is plen, plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest. Into his harvest. Yeah. So instead of saying, this is the work of Satan, you should be, as a Christian, you should be praying. Earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into the harvest. Into his harvest. Yeah. And the motive for all of that is compassion, right? That's what Jesus, she sees the crowds and he has compassion. Right? And that should be our first response to lost people. It's not anger, not frustration, but compassion. That's right. That's right. Well, hopefully you have compassion on us for continuing to put out 30 minute episodes. We are so great right now. Uh, no. We're really grateful that you guys are listening to Lewis and I we are grateful to give Pastor PJ and Pastor Rod a break as they take vacation and as Pastor Rod does his PhD work. And we are going to pray as we wrap up today's episode. Lord, please help us to have faith. Please help us to have faith. That is righteous. That is good. That is from your spirit. Now, we don't want to be foolish like the patriarchs of Israel. We recognize that we are sometimes we recognize we are, but we also are thankful that we can have faith like Abraham and that we can look back at the cross as the solution for our sin. Please help us to be motivated by that. Help us to be eager, therefore to go out and share that with other people. Help us to, as Lewis said, have that compassion for others who are lost, who are foolish. In that sense just as we once were, now, we're thankful for your word and we pray for another day of faithful living as part of your family and as part of your church. In Jesus name I pray, amen. Amen. Alright, have a great one. Bye.

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