Hey everybody. Welcome back to a brand New Year's edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Happy New Year. That's a firework. I was wondering if you were the first to wish everybody a happy New Year or not. I was not the first, at least today. I was the first, several days ago. I don't know, maybe a month ago at this point. Probably Happy New Year. Yeah, happy New Year. I am Pastor Rod. I am the associate pastor at Compass Bible Church. And who are you? My name is Pastor pj, and I am the lead pastor at Campus Bible Church. Oh and we meet in Prosper, Texas. If you're in the area, we'd love to have you join our Church Founder's Classical Academy. Thanks for tuning in. How long have we been doing ministry here? What are we doing here? Why are we here? Have been here for just about two and a half years. We launched in 2023 and we launched here in this area because of all the growth that's taken place here. There's a ton of people. There's a lot of people. Yeah. And it's not slowing down. Why did you choose North Texas? North Texas. The growth was a big part of it. Yeah. We looked at the map we were seeing, okay, where are people moving to? These were Prosper. Salina McKinney, some of the fastest growing cities in the nation at the time. Not just in Texas, but in the nation. And so it made sense for us to come here because this is where the people are coming, but also my. Background here. I grew up in this area and so I have a heart for this area to have biblical preaching and teaching and and biblical churches here. So that's one of the reasons that drew us as well. That's a great reason. What are some of your hopes for this podcast? Why do we do this? This is a lot of time. Yeah. We're both full-time pastors. We're doing ministry, but we've been doing this now for about as long as we've been planted. So two and a half years, we have, why are we doing this? Yeah, we're doing this. In fact, I preached on this on the 28th, that time in God's word is the greatest investment that you will make in 2026. That time in God's word is never wasted time. And we want to give our thoughts and attentions and mind fully to time and God's word, but even as the spirit dwells within us. Anytime that we're spending in God's word is going to bear fruit, it's going to be positive for us. It's gonna be beneficial for us to make us more like Christ. And so we have a passion. The Bible is central. It's one of our distinctives, but we want our people in God's word. Not just on Sundays or even Sundays and Wednesdays, or maybe when you have your community group. We want our people in God's word every single day of the year. And so our challenge from that sermon back on the 28th was that everybody participate with us in this. And so hopefully we've got a lot of new listeners to the Daily Bible podcast today because the challenge was, hey we want you in God's word every single day. We're gonna be with you every single day helping you out with the podcast here. And this is the greatest investment that you can make because this is the investment that's gonna make you more like Jesus more than anything else will. Yeah. And one of the things that we would encourage you to do is to get the bookmarks for your Bible, because this is gonna help you stay on track. We're gonna be here with you every single day of the year, God willing, unless Jesus comes back and we don't have any more. Episodes in the queue. We won't promise to do it after that, but short of that we will be here. And if not us, we would find some worthy substitutions, God willing. So we're gonna be here. We'd love for you to go to compass ntx.org. You can find our Bible reading plan. There. You can find some bookmark. PDFs, I think. I'm not sure what they are, but we would love to have you join us this day and every day. And it's always gonna be mostly PPJ and myself will bring up all the hard topics. I'm gonna ask the really tough questions, hard hitting. I'm going for the hard hitting questions. I don't hold back. I don't pull any punches. I go for the jugular because the word of God deserves that. It deserves our effort and our intentionality and our questions. We don't shy away from questions. In fact, that's one of my favorite parts of the podcast is I get to throw stuff at you and I get to sit back and listen to you answer. One of the best parts of the podcast. Speaking of questions, if you have any, we invite you to participate Yes. podcast@compassntx.org is the email address that you can send your questions into. And we will get 'em answer. And by and large, we do get to them. Sometimes it takes us time for whatever reason. But we would love to have you participate with us. You can give us your feedback and let us know what you're thinking. podcast@compassntx.org. And I think without further ado, now we wanna jump in where we wanna start the year strong. It is the new year. Maybe one other thing, one other thing though if you stay with us. Oh, all year long. What? Oh, here we go. There may be some swag. A thousand dollars. Oh, well I, pastor Rod's gonna pay you a thousand dollars. You may get some swag for Pastor p checking account that might be a little reward for saying, Hey, I made it through, I was with you all 365 days. We're excited to do this with you. So what are we thinking? What kind of swag? Let's get the people some, something, see what it tastes like. we might do a t-shirt, we might do, oh, like a, we talked about a refrigerator magnet or something like that magnet that Every year. Every year. A add to that. Yeah. So we will get creative. We've got ideas, a Yeti tumbler. A MacBook, perhaps, maybe all sorts of options that we can think of. We wrap your car if you're the top 1% of our Spotify listeners this year. So help us, Lord. We will create one of those Spotify wrapped special messages for you. We're gonna do that. There we go. We're gonna do it. Yep. And if you're the top 1%, you, you'll get to wrap your car with our church's logo on your dime. We're gonna let you do that. And for the top. 0.01%. You get to have Pastor PJ's car. The Okay. For a day. For a day. I was gonna say, I'll autograph your car. I don't know, but, but okay. Yeah. Anyways, yeah. But we can jump in right now. So we're in, this year we're in Old Testament and New Testament together. Yes. So that's different from last year. Last year we were. Chronological and all God's people said, amen. Amen. This is good. Yeah. So last year I think we kicked off with Genesis one through three. So this year we're only doing Genesis one through two, but then we're also gonna be in Matthew chapter one. Nice. So as we start in the Old Testament here what we're doing is we're setting up everything for the rest of the Bible. In fact, in the beginning, God could be seen as the foremost important words in the entirety of the Bible, because if we can't get past those words, then none of the rest of it makes sense. If we can, if we can agree with that. Okay. Yes. God was there at the beginning. Of all things. In fact, maybe you're brand new to reading the Bible, you're a new Christian. You're trying to figure that all this out. What this is arguing is that God is the unmoved mover, he's the uncreated creator. He's the one that existed before all things existed, and so he is the one that has to be there by necessity for anything else to exist because there's no other logical expression or understanding for why we have. What we have in the universe. So in the beginning, God, super important words, just four of 'em, but don't overlook their significance there. And then from here in chapter one and chapter two, which is our reading today Moses, who's the author of Genesis as part of the beginning of the first five books of the Bible called the Penit. Moses is the author of these five books, we believe Moses. Is gonna give us the creation account of how God formed the world, and not just our world, but the universe in total. So chapter one is kind of high level. Chapter two is gonna zoom in specifically with the creation of mankind. I'm really glad that you said that. 'cause I think some people are gonna be tripped up over chapter two and say, well, what is this recapitulation? What are we doing? I thought we just read this. It kind of slows down the scene and zooms in to. Focus in on the two highest ranking creatures in all creation, which are God's people. Of course you've got Adam and then it zooms in on Adam and Eve and talks about how they originated. But what's important to see here is that God created everything. We don't believe in a Darwin evolutionary model. We don't believe that nothing produces anything. We think that nothing produces nothing unless God steps in and creates everything. And you might know the term x nihilo, which is Latin for. Out of nothing, I believe. Is that right Pastor pj? It is, yes. You took Latin for like 16 years or something? Not quite. Can you take that at some point? I took it for a minute. Yeah. Okay. What does X mean? I must mean out of, I'm guessing. Yeah. Out of X Nilo. Yep. God creates everything X nihilo. And sometimes we look at Genesis. It's not a science textbook, let's just be clear on that. It's not meant to be read that way, but it, it is meant to tell us how God created things. So we do take it at face value. We don't take it in an overly wooden or overly literal position, but we do take it for what it says and we take it. Absolutely. That is God made everything that we see and nothing is without accidents. We think that it's really hard to fit in a Darwinian model here. We know that there are some Christians who will look at Genesis one and two and say, well, it's possible between verse one and two that God made everything and there's this large untimed gap between space. Yeah. Billions of years, billions of years could have been there. And they would argue, that could be the reason why it appears that the universe has this redshift, which only shows a certain a timing, a timing element, and that everything's expanding. And dinosaurs, which are dated, we use carbon dating and they're billions upon, billions of years old. So let's talk about a few of those things. Of a Christian who is more scientifically minded, looks at Genesis chapter one and two and says, well, I don't see evolution in here, but does it fit? What do you think? My argument in conviction is I'm gonna say no, it doesn't fit. And the reason being is one of the problems with evolution, that is a big problem for Christians, and a big problem for the gospel in general, is the death of living beings, the death of those beings that have the breadth of life within them. Mm. And so when you have death prior to the fall, which doesn't take place until Genesis. Three. Then what we are implying, or what we were suggesting is that what God created and declared to be very good, which is what his assessment was after his creation of mankind had a defect. And that is that these animals were aging and breaking down and their bodies were breaking down and they were dying of old age or dying of disease or dying of whatever may have you. And we have to ask the question, where did that come from? Where did that deficiency? Where did that imperfection come from 'cause God is creating as the perfect God and he's declaring things to be very good. And so if we're gonna allow for death of those that have the life of God breathe into them, then we have to imply by extension that God created with imperfections in his creation, which would suggest a problem with God. Not only that, I think it also calls into question a problem of the wages of sin. The wages of sin is death. And so death is a physical consequence and an eternal consequence, but a physical consequence nonetheless of sin, and sin doesn't enter the picture until Genesis three. That's a helpful that's a helpful feedback and response here. Let me ask you this question. When we talk about death, what kind of death are we talking about? That is, are we talking primarily physical? Physical and spiritual. And who are we talking about? Are we talking only humans? Are we talking animals? Are we talking plant life? Yeah. I heard someone say once, did Adam and Eve when they walked through the garden, did they step on a twig or did they step on leaves? Were there leaves falling from the trees? And if so, is that not a form of death, even though it's not animal or human? What's your take on those things? So I'll start on the back end of that question. That's why I was saying the breadth of God in them. And so I think we would look to death as being animal and human death, I think would be the category that I would put there. Prior to the fall, I don't believe there was any death of animals. I don't believe that there was any death of human beings. And so I think that the death that came as a result of the fall then was a death that was applied to the animal world and to obviously Adam and Eve and their progeny after them. Plant life. Was there death there? Yeah, because Adam and Eve had to have, they had sustenance. Sustenance. Yeah. They had to have food. So certainly there was death to plant life. But the plant life doesn't have the breath of God breathed into it. And so I think that would then extend into our understanding of what the death is as a result of the fall applies. Specifically in the main thrust is that this is. To the Imago Day, those that are created in the image of God they were created not to die. And yet because the, the fall death enters the picture. So is that physical death? Yes, it's physical death. That they're no longer gonna live forever. And that's seen by the fact that after Adam and Eve eat of the tree, the knowledge of good and evil, which is, I think tomorrow's episode, God takes the tree of life away because he doesn't want that spoil or alert to live forever. And it's also spiritual death. And that's the greater problem because that's the death of the wrath of God for eternity. That's the death of the infinite chasm between us and God. That's bridgeable by no one else other than Jesus. Fantastic. Okay, another follow-up question. This one comes from chapter two, and this is specific specific to the language that's used here. It says here that on the seventh day, God rested, he finishes work and then he rests. Why does God need a break? So what he's resting from here, and it's important that we understand this is not. Everything. And we know this because Colossians chapter one says that by in him, all things are held together. In Hebrews chapter one says that Jesus upholds all things in the universe by the word of his power. If God rested from everything, the universe would've completely fallen apart and completely been destroyed. So this is rest from his creative act. This is rest from the work that he had done on the first six days of creation. It's not resting from sustaining creation because then creation would be completely obliterated. This is rest from his creative activity. In fact, Jesus talks about this in John's gospel in John chapter five when he says, my father has been working until now, and I myself am also working. And he's saying that in response to being accused of doing work on the. Day on the seventh day. Mm-hmm. That's a good connection. And so Jesus is saying, I'm still working just like he's still working because even though it says he rested, he was still working, doing the work that he needs to do as God. And Jesus was saying, I'm God, so I'm still doing work. So God rests in that He ceased from activity in the creation process. Right. He never can rest. Right. At least by definition, because if you did, then we'd stop existing. Right. So he's always functioning. Okay, fantastic. Let me back up a few verses now that I'm looking at this. Can you address the plural that God uses? Is he talking about himself and angels? Is he talking about himself, the son and the spirit when he says, let us make man an our image? Who's he talking about? Yeah, it's it, I think the only way that we can really look at it. Is as a, an expression of the Trinity. And we see the Trinity even before this. In Genesis chapter one, it says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and it says the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And we even see the word of God. And this is extrapolated from John chapter one, looking back and commenting on Genesis, when Jesus is referred to as the logos of God. And through him all things were created. So when it says, and God said, and that's a repeated refrain over and over again. I think there's grounds for us to see the logos of God. The word of God, the. Can member of the Trinity here. So I think we see the Trinitarian creative activity here in Genesis chapter one. Thus when it says, let us make man in our own image, this is the Godhead. This is the what's known as the imminent Trinity. This is a conversation amongst the father, son, and spirit that we get to eavesdrop on through the process of divine revelation as God in the Trinitarian formula talks about creating mankind after the image of God. Okay. Man, there's so many questions in Genesis, and I cannot ask everything that you are thinking. I know that you have more questions. If you wanna follow up, send 'em in, but there's a lot more here, and let me just make one observation for you. Okay. Days one, two, and three, you might have noticed and maybe you didn't. That what God does on day one, two, and three is creates the environment. And then on day four, five, and six, he fills that environment. So, day one you have light and dark. On day four, you have lights for the day and you have light for the night. So the sun and the moon. On day three you have the fertile earth, and then on day six, you have the animals that fill the earth. So God creates environments and then he fills the environment. It's beautiful because God creates this parallelism and you're gonna see this all throughout the Hebrew Bible. There is parallel all over the place where God does an A and then an A one Prime and then a B, and then a B one prime, something like that. So keep an eye out for those things. Genesis one and two in the books. Alright, let's jump over to our New Testament reading in Matthew. Matthew chapter one. We read this not long ago if you were with us last year because we. Back load the New Testament. So now we're in it right at the start of the year again, and we start chapter one with the genealogy of Jesus and the genealogy of Matthew here. 'cause Luke has one as well. He starts with Abraham because Matthew's intent was, he was writing to a Jewish audience, and Abraham was a very significant character, significant figure in the lives of Jewish people. It was through Abraham that the promised blessing would come to Israel, and not only to Israel, but also to the nations. Now. He's gonna go through this genealogy here and he's gonna provide a lot of different names that you're going to read, but it's important for us to know and to admit and to be okay with the fact that there's gaps in this genealogy. And you might think to yourself, well wait a minute. It says the father of the father. Of the Father of. So how can we be okay with the gaps? Well, the phrase father of can also mean. Ancestor of, or progenitor of. And so it's not necessary to translate that as he's the direct father of this person. And so we know that there's gaps, for example, between Rahab and David. There are four centuries that elapsed there. So, there are far more people that were born in four centuries than the names that we have listed there in verses five and six. And we see that a few more times in this genealogy. So at the end when it says in verse 17, all these generations were 14, and then 14 more, and 14 more really. You. What this is, is Matthew saying, we're doing this as a way for you to remember things. This is a mnemonic way of breaking all of this down so that you have a general flow of what's happened and how we get from Abraham all the way to Jesus. It wasn't necessary for Matthew to unpack every single name to show that Jesus lineage goes all the way back there. It's to Abraham. So what you have here then is a compression of the genealogy. And this is important because some people might struggle with this PPJ. What would you say to the person who says, well then this isn't accurate. This isn't true. If you have 14 generations here, 14 generations there, that's, he's cherry picking number one and number two, this is not the way it was. he's cherry picking. Was actually factual, right? And that's what I was driving at there. This is all true that these people were all connected, genealogically speaking. It's simply a matter of the fact that he skipped over some generations there in part number one, because maybe those names wouldn't have been as familiar to his audience. But number two, he's hitting the high points so that his people can remember these things. This was an old. Oral culture even now in the New Testament, as Matthew is writing, it's becoming more of a literate culture, but it's still a largely oral culture. And Matthew probably learned this genealogy orally himself. And so he's going back and tracing these things in a way that's gonna allow his people to remember it on the fly because they're not gonna be able to whip out their New Testament copy and open up to. To Matthew chapter one, when they're having the conversation around the passer Seder, when one of the Jewish converts is trying to tell his Jewish family that Jesus is the promised Messiah connected to Abraham, and they say, well, how can you prove that Matthew's got a genealogy here? That was memorable for the people to be able to say, well, let me tell you how he gets back to Abraham. So what you have here then is a true and it may be not accurate by today's standards and not accurate in the same sense. But I guess that does bring up the question about what kind of text we're looking at. Are we looking at a textbook that is meant to tell us with precision, this is this person's father, all the way down the line? And of course the answer is no. The gospels are not meant to give us comprehensive information, but they are meant to give us true information. They're meant to give us true things about Jesus. And so here this genealogy. Is rife, it's rich with, I don't wanna say symbolism, but it's rich with meaning. Because as you trace your finger down these names, some of these names might ring true to you. Oh, I know that person. I know Hezekiah, he's one of The's, one of the good kinks. But you also see Manas there. And as you pointed out, you also see Ruth and you also see Rahab and you see different names that you're like, oh man, this is the lineage. Of the king. This is the lineage of the Messiah. Okay. One more quick thing then you said it's a monic to, for the purpose of remembering 14 generations from David, 14 generations after David, is there any other significance? We start getting into numerology here and I think it's called gria, yeah. Where you ascribe meaning to numbers, anything there about that? The only other observation I might make is 14 is seven twice, which seven is the number of God. And so it's possible that there's some significance there as well. There's, there's some, some spiritual significance there. Okay, that's good. After the genealogy, then we get the account of the birth of Jesus, which. Christmas in our rear view mirror is again, something that we've been through together recently. And I'm sure you've thought about this and read it together as your family too, but this is the birth of Jesus. And I think there's a couple of points here to note. Number one the emphasis on the virginity of Mary, I think is specific here with Matthew where it says there that she had been betrothed to Joseph and it says before they came together without going too far. Just know that implies, this is definitely before they consummated the marriage. This is something that is specific from Matthew to note this, that she was found with child from the Holy Spirit. We can go to Luke chapter one verses 26 through 36, which I preached on just recently, where Luke there is recording the Angel Gabriels specifically explaining how this could be because Mary's gonna ask that question. How could this be? And so we can go to Luke and see that as well. But he's going to be the one that is going to go as the angel goes on to say save his people from their sins. 'cause the angel goes to Joseph, who at this point in time was uncomfortable things. And Joseph has told No, go ahead and take Mary. And this is where we see some commendable things about Joseph. Joseph, it says, was a righteous man. A just man. The word there is is from the same word that we get righteous. He loves Mary. He doesn't wanna shame her. And the angel says. Take Mary don't divorce her. So, Joseph's a man of faith, a man of obedience, a man of love, a man of righteousness. And he goes on to do this. And then in verse 23 it says, behold the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. That name means God with us again, emphasizing the necessity of the virgin birth there. And that's a quote from Isaiah chapter seven, verse 14. Awesome. Cool. Well, like we do at the end of every one of our episodes, we're gonna pray together and then make sure that you bookmark us, like us. Give us a thumbs up, whatever you do on the podcast app there that you listen to and tune in again tomorrow with us 'cause we'll be back. But let's pray right now. God, thanks for a brand new year that we get to give our attention to your word. I pray that we would mine the riches from it. I pray that we would gain and glean so much from our time in the word that we would be faithful, that we would be consistent, that we would not neglect to turn to the pages of your word day after day. And so help us, Lord, to learn as much as we possibly can and that we would be different people a year from now than we are as we start out this morning or whenever it is that we're reading this. I pray that we would be more like Jesus as a result. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Hey guys. There's a lot that you can do, but we pray that you will make reading your Bible an important part of every single day this year. See you tomorrow. See you then. Bye.

Thank you for listening to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. We’re grateful you chose to spend time with us today. This podcast is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in North Texas. You can learn more about our church at compassntx.org. If this podcast has been helpful, we’d appreciate it if you’d consider leaving a review, rating the show, or sharing it with someone else. We hope you’ll join us again tomorrow for another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast.