Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello and happy Sunday. We hope to see you at church this morning. We hope you're having a super Sunday, in fact, because it is, and we hope to see you at church this morning, super Bowl Sunday, and we do hope to see you at church this morning. Oh, that's what you were, I totally over my head. Yep. That's why. Yeah. I mean, we always hope you're having a super day. I thought it was super because it's Jesus Resurrection Day that we traditionally celebrate on Sunday. Well, it's that too. Yes. And all the things that we do on Sunday. I thought that's what was making it super. But I It's where you're going. And I will get you next time. Okay. And we'll score the touchdown. Okay. Together. Well, next sun next year. It'll be on a Sunday again. So we'll have another opportunity. It's, it's on Sunday every, every year. Right? It's okay. Yeah. I'm gonna do it next time. Yep. I will catch what you're throwing. Okay. I will receive it. Awesome. Yeah. Hey, speaking of church in gathering together, I made an argument on last Sunday, and it wasn't an argument, it was an assertion. People have been clamoring, have not been clamoring a response to this. And by people, I mean myself. Okay. I was thinking about it since Sunday. Yes. And I keep on saying, well, I gotta tell 'em about this. It's been a burn your saddle. It has been. 'cause I thought it's such an interesting and compelling point. Okay. That it warrants your defense of it. Here's essentially what you said. I can't recall exactly the quotation, but it was something to the effect of. Your primary fellowship should be in the local church. And then you just kind of went on and you started seeing other things and I said, what are you doing? Yeah, tell me more. Yeah, so I'm willing to guess and bet if I were a betting man, that there's several people who listen. Who would say, I suppose that might be true. But prove it. Is that a biblical principle to stand on? Is that just your pastoral preference? Because you do have every reason to want that, right? You want your people to be tight and connected and all those things, so, right. Is this a preference that you have or is this a biblical principle that you've derived from the text? Yeah, so biblical principle and I said a little bit more than that. On Sunday, I think I said I forgot it. You gather under the same ecclesial authority under the same pastors. You hear the same sermon each week. Okay. And so it's, it's helpful to have those components. Now granted, those aren't chapter in verse. So biblically, I still think this is defensible. The first thing I would point us to is Acts 2028. In Acts 2028, Paul is speaking to the Ephesian elders and he encourages the elders to keep watch over the flock of God which he purchased with his blood, which Christ purchased with his blood. Paul's understanding of that. They're in the book of Acts as well as the early church's understanding of that. In the book of Acts, the church is the local church. That is what the makeup of the local church is, or the universal church is. It's local bodies of believers. And so when Paul's saying that, he's referring to the fact that man Christ purchased the local church with his blood, it's not to say that these other. Offshoot, these parachurch ministries, be it BSF or Young Life or something like that, that you may be involved in are not valid, but those are modern development. What the church was from the very outset was the lifeline of the community, the lifeline of the body there, and then you get into God's design for the spiritual wellbeing and shepherding of the flock. You get the fact that God has installed pastors to be those that care for and shepherd the flock. Elders and pastors, we referenced Hebrews 13. We go to this passage quite a bit and I think it applies here as well. In Hebrews 1317, it says, obey your leaders and submit to them for they are keeping watch over your souls as those who will have to give an account for you. This is specifically for those that are the elders and the pastors of the local church. This does not apply to your BSF leader. This does not apply to your young life leader or to your local Bible study leader. The Lord has given pastors and elders to shepherd the flock and to care for the flock and to be accountable for them. So when I'm making the argument, your primary fellowship needs to be within the local church. These are the reasons why this is. The design that God had for the local church is to be the community. And I would even go so far as to argue. I think our Parachurch ministries exist because of the neglect and failure of the church to begin with. To be what the church should be. The need for people to go outside the church, to find more, to find fellowship, to find Bible study, I think is so like young life. Yeah. FCA. Yes. I, I'm not saying. They need to go away. I'm saying I think their origin was in a lack where the church wasn't doing enough or wasn't doing the right things. Interesting. And so those things emerged as a result. You bring up several interesting points, but let me help clarify. Can you talk to then about the word fellowship when you say that word? Yes. It means a lot of things to a lot of people, right? Primary fellowship, I understand the word primary. Explain fellowship. Yeah, fellowship. Meaning not just relationships, not just friendship, but where you're doing the one another's of scripture where you're being encouraged by each other, where you're gathering together, where you have accountability, where you have discipleship relationships taking place. That within the body of Christ, I think is the design that this needs to be the primary place where you're finding those things and seeking those things. Okay, so like more than friendship? Yes, friendship is included, but the whole, the whole, if you're doing the Christian life right, with people, it's. Mostly are primarily the people of the local church. Right. Okay. So is there anything wrong in your mind then, if I have a close friend from the trails and another close friend at Providence and all these, you know, I keep up with them and I still got friends from California or New York, wherever I came from. Is that okay? Yeah, that's totally fine. I mean, the body of Christ is broad. There's nothing wrong with that, but I think you are gonna be. You are gonna be better off if your primary circle of those that know you and who you are known by are those within your local church. 'cause you see them most consistently. You're with them again, you're sitting under the same instruction from the word. You're gonna have the greatest opportunity to mutually encourage and edify each other through applying the word of God together within the context of the immediate local church there. So it's not wrong to have those relationships. It's not wrong to go to BSF or to go to Young Life or to go to FCA. It's not wrong to be involved in those things. But I think if you're choosing to. Abstain from or opt out a fellowship in your church or that level of engagement in your church because you say, I have these other things over here. I don't think you're doing it the way that Christ designed it. Well, that raises another point then. If I have 168 hours in the week if I invest two or four or whatever hours into this other thing, and necessarily that means I have less free time elsewhere for sure. If I, if it inhibits or contracts the time that I would spend doing something else that Compass is doing, does that mean that I shouldn't do that? Probably it depends. It does depend. And now I would say if it's consistent enough that you find yourself, Hey, you know, the pastors have said they really want me in community group with the church, but I don't have a night because I've got, BSF on Tuesday nights and I've got this thing on Thursday nights and I've got this thing on Friday nights and mm-hmm. You know, I've got all this spiritual stuff in my life and so I'm too spiritual elsewhere to be able to be spiritual with the church. I'd say that you need to reprioritize and re-engage. Is it sin? Would you go so far as to say, Hey, if you do this as a rule, this is not only, just not ideal. This is, I would have to go so far as to say yes, because I think we're neglecting what it is to be a part of the local church. I don't think you can effectively be as involved in the local church as you're called to be. If you're not, I mean, yeah, if you're just showing up and checking a box. Okay. I have another question from an email listener. Okay. They don't listen via email. They're a listener who has emailed. That's helpful. Helpful clarification. Just so that you know, here's the question they ask. They want to know if they're understanding us right? When someone said or that we intimated the idea that God does not look at all sin equally, is that true? I would say yes. I would say yes. All sin is condemnable as far as being that which renders us guilty before the Lord. In fact, our sin nature is that right? We are born at odds with the Lord. We are born as those that are. Sinners in, in represented by the sin of Adam from the very beginning. But our sin, whether it's a white lie or it's a, taking the life of someone our sin is that which divides us from God, separates us from God, and yet the gravity of our sin can be weighed differently than one sin from another. For example, I don't think the noble. If I can put it that way, the noble atheist, who is a kind person and a generous person and a loving person, and yet rejects the existence of God for their whole life they're gonna go to hell, there's no doubt about that. And they're gonna go to hell for their sin. But is their existence and torment in hell going to be on par with some of the more. Horrific and notable, evil people in the world. And I would say we even see some evidence of that in the New Testament with the variance of woe to you Capernaum, for if the work's done in you had been done in Sodom and Gomorrah, they would've repented and in sackcloth and ash, it's gonna be more tolerable for them than it will be for you. Well, that's telling us there's a variance in the gravity of sin. So when we say all sin is sin in God's eyes. As far as how it severs us from our standing before God, yes. But as far as the nature of the sin, is all sin equal in the eyes of God? I would say no. Right. And we get a sense of that when Jesus says, it'll be more tolerable for you than for these other guys. Right? Because there's greater sin. Rejecting greater light. So yes, we would say, and it's a really good principle to consider that all sin is equally condemnable, but not all sin is equally grievous to God. There are assumptions that are gonna cause greater offense and less, and you understand this at the normal family level, there's things that your kids can say or do to you that would be. Maybe just annoying. Yeah. And there's other things that they can say or do to you that are just really upsetting and frustrating. In a similar sense, in our relationship with God, there are degrees of offense to him just as there are degrees of condemnation or degrees of reward. God is not a simpleton in the way that he thinks about us. He's complex, he's varied, and he considers the harsh motive. He considers the action, he considers the whole thing. And so if we can do this at a human level, albeit imperfectly, God certainly does it at the divine level. So that's a great question and a clarification. Thanks for sending that in. I know you have another one. Actually have a couple more if I am not mistaken, and we'll cover those as we're able to. Yeah, well, it's a good tee up also for Levi case, chapter four. Because in Leviticus chapter four, what we're dealing with is we're dealing with the different sin offerings and the prescribed responses to sin in different people. And so you'll notice there are directions for a congregational sin where the elders are gonna bring the bull. Before the Lord and represent the congregation. Then there are instructions for when a priest sins. There are instructions for when a leader sins. There are instructions for when a common person sins here and there are variances within these instructions. And I think part of that goes back to what we were just talking about. When a priest, sins the priest had to offer atonement. And also the sanctuary was considered defiled as well. And so the sanctuary needed to be cleansed. The leader's sin was weighed differently than the sin of just your average Joe in Israel. So all sin needed to be atoned for. What was involved in making Atonement was different in each of these different categories. That's right and I think part of what we're meant to see by these distinctions is that God does hold different people to different levels of responsibility. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. We see that all over the place in the New Testament as well. God does hold pastors to a higher standard. He does expect them to live differently than. What everyone else around them is doing. And that's not to shame anybody or to cast aspersions on anyone. It is to recognize that with greater responsibility or greater privilege comes greater responsibility. I said that backward, but you get the idea here. And so God is acknowledging that therefore, when a certain member of the priestly clan sins, there's a greater responsibility and therefore a greater sacrifice that's necessary. Leaders one notch down and people the notch furthest, but still notice all sin requires a sacrifice to make us right with God. And again, the whole goal behind this, this bloody ordeal is to unite us back with God in relationship. This is meant to reconcile us by the sacrificer, offering to remove the sin debt between them. Now, this is just pointing to the future where Christ would be sacrificed, but this is what they were doing at that point. In chapter five and it's worth noting that we're dealing with what's known as unintentional sins. So these are gonna be sins that are committed that then somebody comes to realize. And we notice that even in some of the phraseology here that we find in these verses, we read it, I believe in verse three of chapter five, realizes his guilt, again, when he comes to know it and realizes his guilt. This is repeated time and time. Again, verse four, same thing. This is a sin that's committed, not willfully. This is not a high handed sin. This is not an intentional sin. Rather, this is something that somebody commits and it comes to their knowledge. Here's what they need to do. And so more things are given, more different examples. If somebody remains silent and doesn't give witness when they should if there's unknown defilement they come into contact with an animal, they don't realize they're defiled, then they come to know it. There's an offering for that, making a rash oath. And there's different things that are prescribed in different situ. In chapter five, we also get the Gil offerings, which takes us through part of chapter six as well. The Gil offerings are involving the Rams and the sacrifice of the Rams versus the SIN offerings being the bowl there and to cleanse the Gil. So, to your point, all of these things, there's all kinds of different offerings and all of it was meant to. Make atonement to reconcile, to restore the relationship between the sinner and God. And all of these things, according to the law of Hebrews or the book of Hebrews were meant to appoint us to Christ. I think one special point of interest here is the fact that not being aware of our sin, not being aware of our offense, doesn't negate the fact that we are still guilty. For sure. And some of the implications for this are pretty vast. There are people that will never hear the name of Christ. And that's a scary reality for us, and that ought to urge us and motivate us to get busy. But that doesn't change the fact that, and in God's eyes, we are still guilty and we are still in need of a sacrifice to atone for our sins. Now, you might ask them, how is it sin if we're not aware that it's sin? Well, God has revealed it. In fact, this is an argument that Paul's going to anticipate in the New Testament. In the book of Romans, he says, you may not have the law of God, but you have conscience and you have creation which testify against you. And so there is some kind of revelation that God shows us in those two things that still make us culpable, morally culpable enough to say, okay, I'm guilty. Now can someone get saved by simply looking at Revelation that is creation and conscience? Well, of course not. They need the name of Christ. But this ought to remind you that when we talk about sin, debt, and guilt before God, it's not just when you realize it, it's also when you don't realize it. Yeah. Rest of chapter six, we get into some of the instructions to the priest, how they were to go about doing these things, including right off the bat there. Notice the burnt offering. They were supposed to have the fire going on the hearth at all times. They were supposed to tend to it so that it was ready to go at any moment. Priest, part of the priest's job was making sure the fire was burning. They talk about the laws for the grain offerings, the laws for the sin offerings. And so again, this is, we're setting out here, why is Leviticus dealing with so much detail? Because this is all still new to the people of Israel. And they needed a written record for what it was to be and how they were to go about doing these things. And so Moses is giving these instructions from the Lord to the priests, to the people saying, this is what it's gonna look like. This is how we're gonna do this. What God is doing here is forming the conscience of his people. He's training their spiritual sensibilities so that they feel appropriate responses when they sin against God. Their job was to know this word. Now this is particular, particularly for the Levites. This was their instruction manual for how to conduct worship and how to go through the sacrificial system. But for you and for I, this also plays a role of helping us understand how God shaped their conscience. I talked about earlier, the conscience is not an infallible guide to God. It can be. Unaware that it's sinning against the Lord. And it's our job to take what God has revealed to us through the scriptures and have our conscience formed such that it bothers us at the right time for the right things. Our conscience can also be misdirected and go off when there's something that's not there. We call that scrupulosity, someone who thinks that they've sinned against God or that there's something. Between them and God that isn't there. But God is forming and shaping their conscience, and this is a gift of God. He has to reveal to us what makes him happy and what makes him sad. And that's part of what Leviticus is doing. It's showing us the character of God, and our job is to know it, to study it, and to respond to it appropriately, especially in light of the New Testament. Yeah. Speaking of the New Testament, let's flip over to Matthew Chapter 25. Matthew chapter 25. We've been talking about the end times quite a bit. End of chapter 24, we even talked about, Hey, be ready for you don't know the hour. Jesus is gonna seize upon that idea. And in chapter 25, with the parable of the 10 Virgins and the Parable of the Talents, which is our text for today. He's going to give a story that would convey the idea to his readers that they need to be prepared for the return. That they can't sit back and think that he's delayed, he's not coming, or they can't be so lazy as to be found wanting when he does return. The 10 virgins, half of them don't take enough oil to be ready for the whole night, to be able to last the whole night. And so when the Lord returns, when the bride groom comes back, half are ready for him, the other half are not. They ask. The others to borrow some oil and they're rejected there, which tells us that there's a time when it is too late, when you can't get a second chance or you can't that expect to, to receive the mercy of extended time or the grace of more time. That you will have enough time, have had enough time at that point and need to be ready when he returns. And then similarly, the parable, the talents. This is more about what are you doing with what the Lord has invested in you. If he is coming back, which we believe he is, are you taking what he's invested in you and are you using it to see a return on that investment? And two out of the three of the servants do, and the one buries it because he's afraid that the master would be angry with him if he lost it. And he's condemned for not doing what he should have done with it to begin with. One of the scariest parts of this passage is the fact that God expects to get a return on investment. In fact, he assumes it. If you're a Christian, you will respond to the master and say, I want to do what you please and I want to be put to work, and there's going to be an ROI. He expects it. He plans for it. And I think that this passage gives us every confidence that a true Christian will be productive to some measure, and not everybody will be equally productive. No one can. Be John MacArthur. There's only one not all of us are gonna be, as, you know, Johnny Erickson or someone like that. Though our job is to be faithful of what we have and to multiply it. Here's why I say it's scary. Verse 30 says, and cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness, and that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. This, of course, is language for hell. And this tells me that for the one servant who said, I'm not gonna do anything, I'm just gonna be here and call myself a servant, but not. Get to work. That servant was punished and not just a slap on the wrist. This is Jesus saying, you're not even my people. So this scares us because it tells us that for those who are in Christ, we're gonna get busy. And for those who are not in Christ, they may not be busy, and this is going to cost them not just temporally, but eternally. That's a really scary passage. It is for sure. Well, let's pray and then we'll be done with this episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. God, make us a church that is both ready and productive. We want to be ready for your return, but not just sitting here looking to the skies and waiting, but we wanna be busy while we're waiting. We wanna be doing the work that we're called to do, and I thank you that as believers, as followers of Christ, through the Spirit, you've given each of us something you've entrusted us a gift, something to be used for the building up of the body of Christ, the edification of the church. Pray that we'd be busy about. Doing something with that, that we wouldn't waste it. That when you return, you would get your return on investment, so to speak through the life of obedience we've offered to you. And so we pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen. Keep reading those bibles y'all, and tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you guys. Bye bye.

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