Hey everybody. Hey everybody. Hey everybody. Welcome Welcome Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello. It is September 1st. Today we are officially in September, which is also lovingly known by those in the tech world as tech temp because this is when a lot of the tech companies mostly roll out their new phones. That's the big deal. And so just recently Google released the Google Pixel 10. Samsung came out with the super thin foldable apple's got their event scheduled for September 9th. It's just, it's fascinating. It's a Remi reminder of just how simple and I'm talking to myself here, how simple we can be to entertain and to captivate, right? It's Hey, look at this new phone. It does this thing. Oh, I want that. Ooh, ah I like that. And then you get that phone and they're like, oh, let me tell you about next year's phone. And you're like, wait a minute. I just got this one. Why are you already talking about next one? Yep. And so it's, yeah, it's the, it is the world of idolatry that we live in. It's not the same idolatry that we're reading about Ezekiel but we have our own idols and we chase after them regardless. And it's, whether it's a cell phone or it's a car or it's, clothes that you want, new shoes that you get new, like new shoes. I appreciate a good pair of new shoes, but then eventually they get their first stain or scuff mark on 'em and then it's alright, there, there goes though. Gotta move on from there. Yeah, it's just we're, we have this hunger in us for something that, that is gonna last, something that's gonna satisfy us. CS Lewis said, if we find in ourselves desires, I'm paraphrasing here, that desires that can't be satisfied by anything in this world. It should indicate in us that we were created for another world, for a different world. And that's a little bit what I was talking about on Sunday that there's a hope that's gonna be ours. That's what Peter's talking about. That we were to set our hope fully on the grace. That's to be ours at the revelation of Jesus Christ. And that involves a lot of mental work. That's a hard thing for us to do because we do live in the world of the new iPhones and the new cars and the new shoes and the new this, that and the other thing and the ad world. And you pick up your phone, social media, it's all over there. And the temptation to chase after temporal satisfaction when God has said there's something better that's coming. And right now we need to wait for that now. Those things, like I talked about on Sunday, are fine as long as what we do with those things is to remind ourselves, man, what's coming is gonna be so much better. And yeah, new month. Interesting. Just on my mind, because I know the new iPhone release is coming up and it just. Popped into my mind going, Hey, this is something that, that should re remind us of how much better Jesus is than anything this world has to offer. So speaking of your sermon from yesterday, lots of people were chatting it up about it, I anticipate. Yeah. Yeah. They're asking questions like, oh no, pastor PJ doesn't this kind of person and that kind of person. True. So let's let's just give you an opportunity to say a little more about some of these things. Okay. Talk about medications. When it comes to using medications to supplement our mood or even a DHD, Ritalin, medications like that, that help improve focus or some of them are downers, some of them are uppers. We've got a whole category of tranquilizers that are for sleep or yeah. Other things like that. How in general, and granted all these require a careful touch and specific answer, but in general, how should Christians think about medications as it relates to mood enhancement or mood modification, things like that? Yeah, I would say very cautiously. We are called time and time again in the Bible. In fact, even in the passage I preached on yesterday to be those that are sober minded and we have to be careful that we are not. Taking something or pursuing something that is going to lead us away from that's gonna cause us to lose our control over our mental faculties and our minds. We're, we talked about our minds yesterday, that our minds are part of the immaterial, part of the soul, part of the spiritual part of us. And one of the problems as Christians that we have to encounter and deal with is that we. Are those created in the image of God who have spiritual issues that the world looks at Naturalistically, the world looks at from a physiological sense and tries to treat what is a spiritual, oftentimes, not always, but what is oftentimes a spiritual problem with an a naturalistic antidote. And those things can they can be bandaids. In other words, they, they can. Feel man this is doing the job. I'm not as anxious as I used to be. I am getting the sleep that I wasn't getting before. I am, I'm not as depressed as I used to be, but the problem is a lot of times that will lead us to say, okay, so then I'm good In our confidence, our hope, our trust becomes the medication or the pill or that thing that we took and we're not doing the work to say, okay, but why was I in that position to begin with? What was going on spiritually? What was perhaps the underlying spiritual cause? That I have now overcome through this other means that maybe I needed to sit there and this was an opportunity that the spirit wanted to do, enact some change in me because the pill that I'm taking is not enacting any spiritual change. It's not capable of doing that. Only the spirit of God can do that. And so we talked yesterday about biblical worldviews is huge on this. And when we talk about two Peter three, one, that the Bible is sufficient for all things of life and godliness, that's really what we're talking about. The Bible helps us. Form a biblical worldview. That is to think biblically, to think how God wants us to think about any and every situation that we find ourselves in. So we as pastors, recognize that we're not medical doctors, but we as pastors also recognize. That we know and understand what God has called us to and how God wants us to think about our bodies as both body and soul and how we need to approach things when things go wrong with that, especially when we're struggling with anxiety, sleep issues, depression, even attention deficit disorder, things like that. Yeah, I was talking to Mark Axelson, not Mark Cogan Pastor Mark. I was talking to Mark Axelson. He brought up a good point and he said that sometimes God will give us things that he doesn't want to necessarily take away. Second Corinthians chapter 12, I thought of Paul and the thorn in the flesh. And Paul's Lord, please take this away and. And he said no. He said, no, I'm not gonna do that. I want you to have this because it weakens you so that you can depend upon me. And so it might be very well that God gives you these things that for you, you might feel like, oh, that's a bad thing for me to have. I can't focus, I can't sleep, or this or that. And those are certainly things that we don't like. It's possible, and you should at least ask the question, maybe it's God doing this for my good. And of course if you can't get rid of it, then certainly you can say without any second thought, then clearly God wants me to go through this, what he's attempting to do with it. That's a bigger question. At the very least, if you're at Christ, you can know it's for my good and it's for his glory. So how do I make sure that happens? So I appreciate what mark Axelson said about that. I thought that was an insightful. Observation then, in fact we don't think that way as Christians. We're like how do we get rid of it? I have a headache, right? Lemme take the medication. I have a, I have a toothache. Let me go find, lemme go find a dentist to help deal with that. And he should. I guess that's the starting place. We should deal with things as we're able to, but we should at least also ask the question. Maybe doesn't, does God want me to deal with it in that way? Maybe not. Yeah. Yeah. And I know you've been studying a lot about these things recently as you've been pursuing your doctorate there. Starting to study. Starting to study then but it's fascinating. Even what you had to say on Friday night, some of our leaders was really interesting just about how things are changing in the medical field even about it, that the experts are learning new things. Like they're not talking about chemical imbalances anymore. Yeah. That was news to me when you brought that up. I said, oh, I didn't realize that's not really a thing anymore. Yeah. And even the long-term effectiveness of things like antidepressants and whether or not it's really doing what they're telling us it's doing as far as the long-term. Positive impacts on it versus not, versus the placebo rounds, that people have been getting and things. So it's fascinating. There's so much that we don't know. That's right. But what we do know we have revealed in scripture and we have as Christians have to be careful not to throw that out as the blanket cliche. Hey, scripture sufficient. See you later. Go take your problems to somebody else. But we also have to acknowledge at the same time on the other side of that, that is true, that the Bible is sufficient for all things for life and godliness. And so it is sufficient for the per person that's struggling with depression or battling anxiety, or has the child who has been diagnosed with a learning disability, the Bible. Is sufficient for those things. We can't look at the Bible and say but it can't help me in this situation over here. There's no situation in our life in which we could say, the Bible can't help me over here. And sometimes it's harder work to plumb the pages and to plumb the depths and to plumb the wisdom to say, okay, what principles does the Bible teach me that I need to be applying over here? But the Bible does have the answers and does have those situations for us. Yeah, I Amen to that. It's interesting that. Generalized anxiety disorder continues to rise throughout the years. Over the last 20, 30, 40 years even, you've seen increases in people's engagement with that. People are now being tested more often. They're using a set of questions to diagnose whether or not someone has GAD or depression. And we're finding that we are the most therapized age ever. And we're also the sickest we've ever met. Isn't that interesting? That very, we are, we have more access and more resources and more diagnosis, diagnosees than we've ever had, and yet we are also in the worst shape than we've ever been. It's interesting someone has observed that maybe being part of a first world country, we have to create problems for ourselves. Yeah. And I don't want a blanket statement and say that's everyone's issue, but I wonder if that's part of it. A lot of times we're anxious about things. To your point earlier. Anxious about things that, maybe we shouldn't be anxious about. Yeah. We're anxious about a lot of things and some of them are valid. You can understand, okay, we're anxious about our family and things like that, but there's times we're anxious about things where it reveals a deeper concern that is more than just a superficial, I feel like my heart fluttering. It's more, Lord, am I trusting you or am I trusting something else? So we live in a fascinating time. We're learning a lot. We still haven't learned half of what we should learn because God has made things so wonderfully people that is, that we're still learning how the brain works, where we don't know how SSRIs work. We talked about that yesterday or Friday rather. And that's that all by itself. That was a lightning strike for me. Yeah. We don't know how it works, so we're just putting it in people's bodies. Oh, there's so much there. But yes, at the end of the day. We trust God. And I guess we asked the question on Friday. Let's answer it again. I know we're going a little long here, but this is worth it. What is scripture sufficient for? People will use that, and we don't necessarily know what we're saying at the end of that. Sufficient for what? So when we say life and godliness, is it sufficient to help me change the tire on my car? That, that's not what we mean there. What we mean is it's sufficient to help us think biblically about every circumstance that we're gonna encounter in life. And if you've got problems with your marriage, scripture is sufficient. It has guidance for you there. If you've got problems in, your purity scripture is sufficient, it's gonna have answers there. If you've got problems with sleep, scripture is sufficient. David is. Is in Psalm chapter three and Psalm chapter four, he's dealing with sleep there. He's going, Hey, I had to learn to lie down asleep and trust that the Lord was gonna sustain me. You've got situations where scripture is speaking to those things, and that's what we mean there. Two Timothy three, 16 and 17, all scriptures breathe out by God and useful for reproof and for correction, and for training and righteousness. The man of God may be complete and equipped for every good work. We believe that scripture is. Is profitable for us. It's not just for Sunday mornings and for quiet times with your coffee scripture has things to say and speak into the real life situations that we encounter on a regular basis. That's what we mean when we say it's sufficient for everything in life and godliness. Yeah. Amen to that and I guess even to the point about the changing the tire. Scripture may not tell you how to change a tire, but it tells you how to think about that. Yeah. It tells you how to interpret the world around you. It tells you how to understand God, how to love God, how to love people, and it's a meta narrative. It tells us how to look at everything else. It doesn't tell you about the tires. It doesn't tell you about how to get a cast around your leg when it, when you break it, it tells you how to think about those things and how to live faithfully in the midst of those things. Yeah. Yeah. Let's jump into the Bible. We are gonna be in Ezekiel. 18, 19, and 20 today, I believe for our DBR. And as we get into chapter 18, this is something that we've talked about quite a bit, but the general theme of chapter 18 is the people that are gonna be punished and the people that are gonna die, they're gonna be punished and they're gonna die for their own sins, their own guilt. They're not gonna die because of the guilt of previous generations. They're not gonna die because. Their dads did this sin and their grandfathers did this sin instead, they're gonna die because of their own guilt and their own sin. And he explains that and walks through that in the first portion of chapter 18 with some examples saying, if this is, if man does this and this then he's gonna be okay. If his dad did this, he's not gonna die for what his dad did. But if he does this, likewise if you've got a father whose son sins, the father's not gonna die for the sins of the son. Everybody instead is gonna suffer their own consequences, their own guilt, and their own punishment as a result of that. I think chapter 18 really highlights the fact that we are all individually responsible for God, the fact that. Something can happen corporately to people and it can appear indiscriminate in its effects. We'll see that in a couple chapters. Doesn't change the fact that all of us are individually personally accountable before God. You might be in a situation that you feel compelled to, to act in a certain way. You might, sometimes we say this, when you said that, you made me mad. You made me say what I said to you. You made me respond in this way, and that's certainly not true. The Bible says you are personally responsible. You might feel antagonized and instigated by somebody. If someone's poking at you, they're trying to press your buttons to elicit a response from you. You might feel the inclination very strongly to say, oh, I'm gonna respond. I'm gonna punch you in the face, or something like that. But you're never out of control and you're never. Unaccountable for your actions, right? This is such an important feature of our relationship to God and one another. We are always accountable for our actions, and I think that's what Ezekiel's getting at here. Everyone will stand before God and they'll give it a personal account to him for their lives. That said, put a caveat there, maybe an asterisk and we'll talk about this when we get there, but there is such a thing as a corporate responsibility and we'll see that very soon. Yeah, and I also noticed here in verse 20, he said, the soul who sin shall die, the son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the Father nor the father. Suffer for the iniquity of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself. I wrote down next to that though the word gospel because that just made me realize, man, how blessed we are to have the righteousness of Christ as ours because though this is true and God does interact this way, and God does deal with things this way. At the same time the gospel is a, is the one exception clause to this. And that is that, that our sins were put upon Christ, the righteous one and he did suffer for our guilt, our iniquity, and instead he gave us his righteousness. There's gospel here in chapter 18 of Ezekiel two that we should be thankful for. Chapter 19. Then we get into as this is titled, and as it ends a limitation, which is just a song of sorrow, and he's walking through the various kings. That's what it means by the princes of Israel there. And this is detailing the collapse of the Davidic house there towards the end. So verse three, you've got Jehovah has and Pharaoh Niko is gonna come and take him away in 6 0 9 bc Then Jo Hoya Chin is gonna come to the throne. Nebuchadnezzar is gonna take him away. Down in verse nine. In 5 97. And really just the downfall of the kings, the Davidic dynasty from there, which the reason that's a lamentation is because of what that represented for Israel. This was part of God's promises to his people. The Davidic Covenant was a huge deal, and what the destruction of Jerusalem meant beyond the destruction of the temple was also the destruction of the Davidic dynasty. There was not gonna be a king on the throne there, and in fact, after Zakiah, there's not a king that's gonna reign in Jerusalem again as far as the Davidic King until the coming of the Messiah. And we're not there yet. Jesus, we believe is coming back. We believe the millennial kingdom is gonna be that moment. And so this is a tragic time because this is a lot of uncertainty for the people there to look at the fact that, man, this is the end of the Davidic dynasty. What's gonna happen? God still has unfulfilled promises. God, how are you gonna fulfill these promises? If there's no Jerusalem, there's no throne, there's no kingdom, there's no dis descendant of David to sit on the throne anymore. What's that gonna look like? I wanna point to your attention again, you see yet another opportunity where God highlights the right response through Ezekiel's pin to actions that are coming. And the response is song, it's a lamentation is a poem set to music. It's a song. And so God is saying this is an appropriate response. This is emotionally appropriate to the kind of tragedy and destruction that's coming. And I wanna draw your attention then to the way that we still are called to respond to God today. He calls us to sing. He calls us to give of ourselves personally in our physicality. That is with worship, songs of happiness, songs of sadness, songs of lament, songs of repentance, and all the above. This is the way God has designed us, and I think you might be able to say in that culture, that was the way they did things. I don't know if this, I think this is transcultural, that is, it transcends the cultural moment and God sings over us according to the prophet of Aniah. Yes, Zephaniah. God sings over us. He's a singing God. He made us in his image and therefore we are a singing people worship and response. The response of worship is such a good thing for us. It is good. We should be full throated. It should be part of our emotional expression, to use music, to our advantage, to love God, and to respond to all of his decrees. Chapter 20 we find a situation about 5 91 BC here where the elders of Israel come and sit before Ezekiel and they're gonna inquire of him. They're gonna say, Hey, can you go and inquire before God for us? And God responds. This is my own paraphrase here with really. Really? Yeah. That's a good paraphrase. Seriously. Yeah. It's like the NLT right there, right? Yeah. He says, is it to inquire of me that you come? He says, I will not be inquired of you. This is in verse three. And then he proceeds from that point forward to, through Ezekiel, give them a rundown in a history of all of the rebellion, in how many times he had been merciful to them. And yet they continue to rebel. And you see that pattern here. He'll say, yet, for my own sake, I didn't destroy them yet. For my own sake, I didn't destroy them. And yet then they rebelled. They rebelled. And so finally he's gonna bookend this chapter there towards the end in verse 31. He's gonna say, and shall I be inquired of by you after all of this? After all the rebellion? Shall I really be? Really? You're gonna show up here and you're gonna seek my guidance, my will right now, after all of the times that I gave you plenty of chances to repent. Yeah. No, it's not gonna happen. And so in the first part of chapter 20 that's his message. His message is, I'm not answering you. The rest of chapter 20. There he points to the millennial kingdom and he says again, even still, there's a hope there, there is a future. He will again have mercy for the sake of his own name. And that's gonna be the future millennial kingdom. That's gonna be the time when he will be inquired of, he will be sought by the people and he will accept their their worship. But first is going to come judgment. And that's how the chapter ends with this reference to preaching to the southland, preaching against the south, prophecy against them. Hey, first comes judgment. Yeah, the millennial kingdom's coming. But again, you elders coming to seek my guidance here. Judgment's coming. That's what I'm telling you right now. All right let's pray and then we'll be done with another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. Lord, we are mindful that we are complex beings as you've created us. And it's hard for us to understand exactly how everything operates and how everything works. And yet we know what your word says, and we wanna be those that trust your word as we were talking about our, that your word is sufficient for all things for life and godliness. And so give us the wisdom and the discernment to know how to take your word and to apply it to various circumstances in our lives. And God guard us against. Doing anything that would cause us to short circuit what you might want to be doing in our lives spiritually by looking for a physical solution to a spiritual problem. And Lord, we wanna be those that are humble in this no matter where we're at in this this conversation, we wanna be gracious towards one another. And ultimately, we wanna see your will done in our lives. So we pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Keep in your Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Bye bye.

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Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said