Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello. Hello. What's up folks? Happy Saturday. Hey, let's talk let's talk extravaganza for a second. Extravaganza is our big outreach that we do as a church on Saturday. Well typically on Saturday. Last year we had a, a rain day and so we moved it, but we've got a rain plan, so it's gonna be Saturday in between. Good Friday and Easter Sunday, resurrection Sunday. Even the fact that we refer to Easter Sunday and I know some people take issue with that. It's only resurrection Sunday. That should only be what it is. And here we are, we're gonna do an egg hunt. And people are like, what do eggs have to do with Jesus? And you know what about the Easter? We're not gonna have the Easter bunny there that I know of All the Pastor Marcus here, he's our Kidman pastor. He might correct me on that, but I'm pretty sure we have 10 coming. 10, 10 Easter bunnies. Okay. But let's kick this around for a minute. It's the same thing at Halloween or round Halloween. Every year we do fall fest. Why do we, some people would look at us and say, you guys are pandering to the culture that you've compromised by doing this egg hunt and you're distracting from what Easter should really be about. This is wrong and you shouldn't do this. So let's maybe shadow box a little bit with somebody that might be out there and saying, I don't think that we should be doing this. We're spending God's money on this big egg hunt and candy for these little, you know, rugrats that are running around. Why do we do what we do and why do we feel like this is something that we should be doing at this time of year specifically? I think it goes back to understanding what are we called to do as Christians first and foremost. You know, there is not instructions in scripture about church programming and events and how they ought to be run and what types they, they ought to be. So I think it has to go back to first what is our mission as. As Christians, then we need to begin to consider how do we do that well and faithfully in this time. How do we do that Well and faithfully in this time? That can look different in, in, in many different places and times. I, if we're missionaries in Chad, doing extravaganza would probably be unhelpful. It'd be why out there'd be helpful. Be helpful. 'cause they have no idea what any of this would have anything to do with. It would be a completely bizarre thing to do in. Texas in 2026. There are extravaganzas and there are park days, and there are all these sorts of events that people are very comfortable with, that people are very used to. And I think there's often the term we can redeem some of these things. Does that mean that we're celebrating the Easter Bunny and worshiping the Easter Bunny, whether he's chocolate or not? On do by doing an extravaganza. I don't think we are. I'm very confident in fact that we aren't perhaps your conscience would say that it would keep you from that, and that may be a conversation that you should have with a pastor. Come in and talk to one of us and we'd be happy to talk about that and why our church does that in further detail. But just because we have an event that. That is called extravaganza doesn't inherently mean that we're worshiping. And in fact, I think we very much are worshiping Jesus when we do an event like that because we're calling people from our community who don't know anything about God, who have perhaps never heard about God. There's many that are like that here and. We're giving them the opportunity to hear the gospel and that's what we're about. I would add Romans 14 starting at verse three. Let the, let not the one who eats, despise the one who abstains and let, not the one who abstains past judgment on the one who eats for God has welcomed him. Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another? It's before his own master that he stands or falls and he will be upheld for the Lord is able to make him stand. One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. Each one should be fully convinced in his own mind. Paul here describes Christian freedom to make decisions that are not explicitly described in scripture, and this is where I would say. Extravaganza fits along with some of the other things that we do. I would not quarrel a lot with a Christian who has a tender conscience and says, I am really bothered that we do this. And I would say I understand that. I totally get that. Let me ask you though, to share a charitable opinion of us as we share a view. And I know you're gonna struggle with this, but I can, I could also ask you questions, I think friend, brother, where I think you would be. You might be looking at us and saying, this is wrong, but I'm, if I looked at your budget and I looked at some of your expenditures, I might be able to point out to you though that company that you support, they're doing things that you probably don't know that they're doing. It's really bad. Mm-hmm. There, you can't shop anywhere. You can't use any worldly. Company without tainting yourself in some way, shape, or form. And so I don't think Jesus desires us to exit the world entirely. That's what his point says. I don't want you to leave the world. I want you to be in the world to redeem it. So I would say it's a matter of charitable opinion for both sides to look at each other and say, I'm gonna trust that you're doing what you think is right before the Lord. I might contend with you in a helpful, brotherly way and say, well, let me ask you this question. Let me ask you that question. And I want your conscience to be informed. But I don't want to ultimately pass judgment in an unhelpful way. And when he says that here, we're not just talking about putting our minds on the shelf and not thinking. He's talking about passing judgment as though God has spoken here, he's spoken. You should not be soliciting that company. You should not be eating that bunny. I don't care if it's dark chocolate. Do not eat that bunny. It's a matter of. Charitable discernment on both parties ends and it's up to both of us to work together to say we're gonna be okay with one another. We're gonna serve them and loved one another even though we might disagree on this. Yeah. One of the things that, I can't remember who first told me this, but it's stuck with me ever since is that, is if God ever saw fit to close down our church, and Lord willing, he never will, I would want our community to miss us and. Know that we're not here anymore. And I think there's a lot of churches that will shy away from engaging with the community because they don't want to deliver the wrong message. But really what that leads to is a general sense of anonymity in the community. The community doesn't even know you're there. And this is one of the ways for the community around us to know that we're here. And for us to be a blessing to them, to be someplace that gives them a positive taste of being around, you know, for an unbeliever to show up, this is a low bar entry level for them to show up and come to our church campus and be with us and be around other Christians and be around believers and we're not just there to give them eggs and say, see you later. We're gonna have people strategically there whose job it is to begin conversations with these people and to have those conversations to say, hey. You know, do you go to church anywhere? Hey, our services tomorrow at nine 11, we would love for to, for you to join us for one of our Easter services tomorrow to come find out what this is all about, why we're doing this. You know, we're not just doing this to give your kids candy. We love to do that and we're happy to do that for you, but we're really doing this because we wanna love you. And the greatest thing that we could do to love you is to say, Hey come see what Jesus is about. Come visit our church. We'd love to have you there. Let me save a seat for you tomorrow morning. Albeit this service, I'd love for you to join me. We want to do that sort of engagement with the community and this facilitates that. So. If a church doesn't do something like this, that's okay. We're not saying, Hey, they're evil for not doing this to Pastor Oz's point. We're just asking people that might hold a position to say, I wouldn't do that. To say of us, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna believe the best about them. Like one Corinthians 13 tells me, I'm gonna believe that they're doing this because this is really part of what they believe is the mission that God has given to them and that local church there to try to reach the lost and hopefully see some people show up at church. That would be a huge blessing as a result of this. Another helpful passage. I won't go into it now, but one Corinthians eight I think is a helpful passage in considering and discerning some of these things as well. Let's get into Deuteronomy three and four and Mark chapter 11 verses 2333. Deuteronomy three and four. A couple of things that jump out at me here that I really did appreciate in this is across the page, at least in my Bible, Deuteronomy 3 21 says this I command Joshua. At that time, your eyes have seen all that the Lord your God has done to these two kings. He's talking about the two kings of battle that we've just read about, the King of Sahan and the King OG here. And so he's saying, your eyes have seen all that God has done. And then he says this, so will the Lord do To all the kingdoms into which you are crossing, you shall not fear them. For it is the Lord your God who fights for you. Man, we have no greater ally. We were talking about it yesterday. The parallels that we can see between the God of the Old Testament, who he is and who he was and then and who he is today with us in the New Testament era and the church era. And it's the same thing is true today. There is no greater ally that we could have than the God of creation. And he is for us. In fact, Paul. Asks that question in Romans chapter 80 says, look if God is for us, who can be against us? And that's an extrapolation out of this. I mean, he was literally fighting battles for Israel. He's not literally fighting battles for you necessarily in that same sense, but man, he's for you. And the greatest evidence of that is the cross is that he sent Jesus to die on the cross for your sins so that you can be forgiven and to rise against so that you can live with them forever. I mean, God has taken out your greatest enemy, which is sin and death. And he's taken that outta the way. If you're in Christ, he is for you, and what an awesome thing that is. In fact, in chapter four, a similar thing comes up in verse seven, where Moses is talking to the people here and he says, for what great nation is there that has a God so near to it as the Lord our God is to us. Whenever we call on him. And imagine that, that was back in the Old Testament times when they didn't have near the access to Yahweh that you and I have through Christ today. The writer of Hebrews says we have a great high priest that we can draw near to him at any time through draw near to the throne of mercy, to find grace and mercy, to help in time of need. What an amazing reality we can take away from chapters three and four to say, man, this God is our God. He's for us. He was for them. He's for us, and we have such a good close relationship with him. So remember what's happening here in this book. Now, the book of Deuteronomy is a series of speeches that Moses is gonna give just before the people enter into the Promised Land. In chapter one, when we began this, he began his first speech, and that's gonna take us all the way through chapter four, ending at about 40 something. 43. 43 is when he ends his first speech. This whole section here is Moses recounting what God has done for them, how he's been faithful, and all the people that some of them you've seen. You've seen the defeat of King Shan and King Aog. You should see some of these things as as remember, remembrance, markers of what you read in the book of numbers. Moses is now providing some divine commentary about some of these events, and it's kind of cool to see inside the mind of Moses to see how he interpreted these events. What stands out to me? At verse 26 of chapter three, Moses is upset and he's upset at them for his disqualification. He says, but the Lord was angry with me because of you and would not listen to me. And then he said, enough from you. Do not speak. Do not speak to me of this matter again. And that, okay. Several thoughts. Number one, it's kind of funny, I'm sorry, Moses. Number two, God told Moses to stop praying. About this. Sometimes we talk about praying incessantly for something, but there is a time to stop. Yeah, this is one evidence of that, but Paul gives us another where he prays three times, only three times I should note, and God says That's enough. My grace is sufficient for you. I don't know if you need to hear this or not, but maybe there's a time for you to stop praying about a certain thing. I don't know if there's a clear, objective way to measure that. Only that I see that there's a principle in scripture that says there is a time. For some things, sometimes to stop praying. I mean, I'd say that time comes when you begin to get angry with God. That's a good marker. When you become, when you start be becoming angry with God for not responding to your prayer, that might be a point where you need to check yourself and say, is this. Prayer in and of itself, something I should keep doing. Do I need to resolve the sin and the bitterness and the disappointment that I might feel before returning? And that doesn't mean you can't ever return to that prayer, but if your prayer becomes dominated by a theme of anger towards God for not responding to it, I think you're in danger territory. I like that one. I wanna know though. So it kind of seems like Moses is. Kind of maybe retelling this in a more favorable light than than maybe we've seen in previous accounts of what's going on here. What do you guys make of that? What do you guys make of the fact that here, Moses, and actually this phrase is repeated a number of times in yesterday's reading, in today's reading that he says it's because of you. Yeah, what do you make of that? Because that doesn't seem to line up with what we've already read. No, I agree. Think it's I think he's looking beyond just the striking of the rock event. I think he's looking at the entirety of the continued persistent grumbling against Moses, against his leadership against God. And because I think at the rock there, I think that's Moses' breaking point. I think it's not just in the moment. He was frustrated and angry and with that particular time, I think it was just the whole time that he finally got worn down and was like, I'm done. I've had it up to here. And he lashed out in an angry way and struck the rock. So I think in that sense, he's looking at the people of Israel going, man, you drove me to the point that I made a really stupid decision and it was my own fault and I'm a bonehead. Even though he doesn't say all that in the text. But it was you were such a, a. And a greasy wheel. Right? And I didn't have enough oil to silence you, and it finally got to me where I couldn't do it anymore. And so this is you. And so that, that's my read on it, that he's just pointed to the whole event of leading them out, the persistent grumbling against him. I agree with you, but let me just press, can we make that argument with our kids? I mean, I know you're, I'm not saying you're right. I'm just saying I think that's probably his mindset. Yeah and I think also remember what Pastor Rod said, this is a speech given to the people of Israel. Right? Right. This is a different type of text than the historical account that we read when we first discovered why God. Said that, yeah, you can't answer, you can't go into the promised land. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I don't know if I have a great answer to that either, other than I think it's God's word is not meant to be seen as everything that's in it is meant to be prescription from God. We've talked about description versus prescription. I wonder if this is a real response that Moses is having, and even though he is the most meek and the most humble in all of creation at this point, it doesn't mean that he's perfect. That's right. And so I'm wondering if there's an in this. A bit of deflection where he should say, I was a bonehead and I should have responded differently. I don't know, but I do know that what he says in chapter four in verse nine is something to me that always makes me skip a beat a little bit. Only take care and keep your soul diligently, lest you forget the things that your eyes have seen unless they depart from your heart all the days of your life. Make them known to your children and your children's children and he goes on to say, I want you to. Fear me. And he's telling them he's, and it's funny 'cause in this book he's reminding them, don't forget, we need this so much. And when we go to church and we hear the same sermon from the same pastor, thanks, man. Every week it's the same thing. It's Amanda in church and all these, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. We need to hear the same things. My point, I just, we do, I see this and I think, man, so many times I'm like, okay, I know this. I've heard this. I need to hear the same things. We need to hear the same things unless we forget. It's also a great reminder that Moses is not perfect. Moses is an incredible leader and in many ways very righteous. But we're also looking forward at this point in history to somebody who is better than Moses. A prophet like him maybe we'll read about that soon. Prophet, priest and king like him, which is one of the internal evidences of the reliability of scripture because it does record the faults of the heroes. Mm-hmm. It does record the low points in the embarrassing situations of the heroes. A manmade book typically doesn't do that. The manmade book is gonna take the hero and say, no, he's the hero. We're gonna show him in the most favorable light possible. And so one of the. I would say it's a more minor argument for the reliability of the Bible, but it's still there as far as the internal evidence of the evidence from the Bible itself is the fact that, yeah, it does record the fact that Moses wasn't perfect. He did some things that we would look at and be like, ah, I wouldn't do that. Or you think about New Testament, the we're reading Peter's accountable, life of Christ and Mark we're studying first. Peter's a perfect example of a guy who. You know, records some faults of his and the other writers records some faults of his that normally you, if this was just a manmade book, you'd go, oh, we don't wanna do that. Peter's supposed to be a, a guy in authority. So let's not talk about how Paul had to confront him about his sin. Let's not talk about how he denied Jesus three times. 'cause that's gonna undermine his credibility. When in reality what it does is it bolsters our confidence. He's a perfect example of imperfection. Yeah. Yeah. And in our New Testament passage today, we're gonna also see Peter perhaps stumble slightly. Ooh, that's a good transition. Sorry to steal your transition. That's transition. That was a great transition. Yeah. Yeah. That's advanced level of transition right there. Well, we get to our New Testament reading Mark 1120 through 33. And so we pick up in, in verse 20, and as pastoral alluded to yesterday, this is the bottom bread, or maybe it's the top bread depending on how you look at the mark and sandwich here. Which now I'm just hungry. But this is about the lesson from the fig tree. So Pastor Rod, you. Poked at this a little bit yesterday, but why don't you unpack it a little bit more. Why the fig tree? Why cursing the fruit and what this lesson is that Jesus teaches us here, Jesus enters Jerusalem with the desire to see his people being fruitful. A among that is fruitfulness in reaching the nation. So you might remember any yesterday's reading. He says, my house should be called a house of prayer, a house of. For the nations. This was more than Israel, so their mission was so important because it concerned their future and their progeny, but also that of everybody else in the whole world. This goes back to Genesis chapter 12. The blessing of Abraham is that he would bless the nations. They are part of this franchise as enterprise, and they're totally failing because they're not only not doing that, but they're crowding out the very space where Gentiles would be to pray and offer their worship to God. And so he's. He's very upset. Jesus is unhappy here to put it mildly. And so he sees that they're fruitless. Fast forward to our text here, starting at verse 20 through 25. He sees that same fig tree that he just saw the day before, and he says, there's no fruit here. I'm gonna curse you. And then he sees now that the fig tree has been destroyed, we know that in 80, 70 Jerusalem would eventually be destroyed. And the te. The Temple Mount would also be summarily destroyed as well. So this is a forecast of what Jesus is going to do to these people because they did not bear the fruit that they were supposed to bear. And I think that there is, again, this is j Jerusalem. This is Israel. But for us, I think he does call us to be faithful and fruitful. And if we're not, that we should be concerned that we suffer a similar discipline, although not quite the same. There seems to be a, even a, maybe a secondary lesson that he's teaching here. And that is about just the power of faith. The power of, yeah. And which is I think what helps us understand where he goes in, in the rest of verses 25, especially here, 24 and 25, because he's talking about prayer. He is talking about faith and this is coming off the fig tree. So yes it's about Israel and the fruitlessness there. And then he's peter's amazed. He's saying, Lord look at the fig tree. Look, you said there's not gonna be any figs on it. And now look it's dead. And Jesus says, yeah, it's almost a, and you will do greater things in these that he says. Is that in, I should know this. Is that in John's gospel? But here he's saying if you have faith like a mustard seed, you'll be able to say to this mountain move and the mountain's gonna be moved. And then he says something quite astonishing in verse 25, he says, whenever you stand praying, which was the posture of the day to, to do, he says, forgive if you have anything against anyone sow, that you father, who also who is in heaven, may forgive your trespasses. I mean, forgiveness is such a, an evergreen topic for us as human beings really. And it doesn't change for us as Christians, in fact, that it gets. Ratchet it up, that may lack of forgiveness. Harboring unforgiveness of somebody can not only impede your prayer life, but it can potentially reveal that you aren't right with the Lord. Because if you don't understand the amount you've been forgiven, I think the implication is here then how can you expect to claim that you're right with the Lord? If you're not willing to forgive somebody else, how can you expect that God's gonna hear you, and how can you expect that God's gonna forgive you? Yeah. And I just have to point out, Peter, he, he doesn't remember the other teaching that has happened. He just sees the tree and is like, oh, look, there's the tree. Amazing. Sometimes I like to think like, oh, what would it be like to be a disciple? And I'm like, oh, I would've so many questions and so many, you know, insightful things to ask. And I would just, I think it would be actually probably worse than Peter. And if all Peter can do is just be like, oh, look, hey. There's the tree that you cursed. Good job. Jesus. Yeah. But what we're seeing here though is what you guys are saying but I think we're seeing the new covenant becoming a reality, right? It's faith that is. In God that saves us, right? And it is then access to him through prayer that is something that's immediate and no longer necessarily through the temple, through the old way of doing things. So I think we're starting to see the initial, I mean, we've seen it already, but we see the initial little sprouts of the new covenant here popping up in what Jesus is saying. Yeah. And part of that sprouting is the fact that prayer becomes a much more, I mean, not that it wasn't a centerpiece, but now it's becoming front and center. Yeah. Jesus is mad because the Gentiles couldn't pray. Mm-hmm. Jesus now emphasizes to Peter, it's because you need to pray and then we're gonna see even more that there's hindrances to prayer. So much. So much so that our new approach to God, our new worship, is gonna be primarily, I think, prayer centered. Mm-hmm. Animal censored anymore. There's no blood to spill. 'cause Jesus is gonna spill his blood. But there are now hindrances to prayer that will stifle your worship. Mm-hmm. Stifle your relationship with God. And this is one of them. It's a failure to forgive. Peter's gonna mention another where you live with your wife in a misunderstanding, a not understanding way. And consequently, you stifle the effectiveness of your prayer, of your prayers. And so I think what we see here. Is how we to how we are supposed to foster a thriving, active prayer life with God. And part of it is that we have a clear conscience before him that we're living in blamelessness, not perfection, but living with in such a way that we are confessing sin and that we are seeking to deal with those things and not try to hide them. And that we. Believe that God can and will answer our prayers. We're so trigger shy or so we are shy about this because of the prosperity gospel, right? We would say this much stronger if we didn't have Creflo dollar in our background. Mm-hmm. And Benny hint, if these guys weren't on the scene saying foolish things, we would say, guys, you gotta trust. The Lord's gonna act. Yeah, trust that he's gonna act on your behalf and know that he's got your best interest at heart. And I think we probably should start doing a lot more of that despite the fact that there are risks inherent. One of the things that we should, again, pay attention to here is the passage of time. So after the cleansing of the temple there, there was another night where Jesus went back to Bethany. He's probably, by the way, staying with you. Either Lazarus at his house or Simon, the leper back there because Mark doesn't record the raising of Lazarus, but that's happened right before the triumphal entry. And so he's going back to Bethany, which was just outside the city of Jerusalem there. That's where he's staying and he keeps coming back. So he ke comes back the next day after all this, and that's on their way. They see that fig tree again. That's why they're seeing it again. And he enters Jerusalem and he's gonna be met by the scribes and they're still upset and they're gonna challenge him and saying, Hey, who gave you the right to do these things? And Jesus doesn't answer them. He says, well, let me ask you a question. He said, why don't you tell me on whose authority did John baptize? Was John's baptism from Heaven or was it just of his own accord? Did he just say, I'm gonna start doing this? And the Pharisees don't want to answer because they know how highly John was regarded by the people. So they can't say, well, John just did it out of his own accord 'cause. People will be mad, but they also can't say that it was from God because then they're trapped, because Jesus's question is going to be implied or there. Okay, then why didn't you go out to John? Why didn't you obey what he was calling you to do? Checkmate. Yeah. And so they say, well, we're not gonna answer you. And Jesus says, all right, well then I'm not answer interested in answering your question about my authority here. So, Jesus is, this is a different Jesus Now as the cross is drawing near, he is on the offensive. Yeah. Jesus doesn't answer the question, right. This is, again, I don't know that an honest answer to a dishonest question is required. And it's things like this that give me that mentality. I can offer a answer. A politician's answer or I can ask a question that is meant to exp. I'm not as sharp as Jesus. I don't know if I'd be able to think of a good question like that on the spot. Right. But this does tell me that in my interactions. But some people and granted again, Jesus knows their heart better than we do. There are times when not giving an answer is an appropriate answer. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's pray and then we'll be done with this episode. Lord, thanks for your word and thanks for Christ. Thanks for the example that he is to us. We wanna be as much like him as we can be. We're also grateful for what we're reading about right now, the passion week the obedience even to the end, that he was perfectly submitted to your will, even through to the cross. And so we're so grateful for that. As we study this, I pray that we would read it with fresh eyes as we approach it and not just let it wash over us as something so familiar that we are looking forward to what's next. And so I pray that we would appreciate it for what it is in that light. In Jesus name, amen. Hey guys, keep renew your Bibles and tune in again tomorrow, which is Sunday for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you soon. Bye.

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