Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. We are doing this a little bit differently. We are snowed in and so we're recording. Via Zoom. So we're thankful for technology, but we are not unfortunately in office or maybe fortunately because otherwise we might be spun out on the side of the road somewhere. It was pretty nasty out there. This is one of the worst ice storms that I can remember being in, in Texas, even when I lived in Missouri, this was bad. But we're thankful that we still get to record over Zoom while we continue the Daily Bible podcast. Yeah, I'm bumed not to be in the office. I enjoy being around people. At least having people hustle and bustle around me. I can hear Ali's voice in my ear right now. I can hear Kelly as I walk past her desk in the morning. I'm just missing these things. Yeah. However, I really have enjoyed this storm. This has been awesome. The power stayed on the heating was always working. I really appreciate that. And just having a forced slowdown and shutdown down of everything. I don't know. It's kind of cool. I like it. We haven't had this since 2020 and I appreciate this 'cause it's a much smaller dose and one that I welcome, quite frankly. So this has been nice. I like it. I'm glad that we're exiting it though, a few days at a time. Great. But much more than that. I don't want to deal with that. Thank you very much. Yeah. No I am with you. I'm with you. One of the things that we got to do during our slowdown is we watched the Alex Honnold. Climbing of the giant skyscraper in Taiwan, so it's like the fifth largest building. Tallest building in the world. And he climbed it with no ropes. He free soloed this building. And it was nerve wracking, man. There were times like my palms were sweating and I was just sitting on my couch. It was one of those situations where you're like, this is crazy. And so that led to a question that was submitted to the Daily Bible podcast. Not via email or a text, but by somebody that I share my house with. So my wife said, Hey, I've got a question for the podcast. And rather than say, well, you have to email it, I said, okay, well what is it? And she asked, do it, do it. Got an email. She asked the question, can somebody free solo to the glory of God and her? What she's driving at there is the question of. The stewardship of our lives. Is there a point at which we would draw a line and say, okay, I don't know if you can do that thing to the glory of God, because it crosses a line into. Other areas where, for example, the stewardship of our bodies. Is it wise to go out and free solo a building? Now I can tell you I can't free solo to the glory of God because I don't have the skillset to be able to do that or the confidence to be able to do that. So I'm falling off that building probably like five feet off the ground. But for this guy, he has trained for this, he's technically skilled at this. He knows what he's doing. Now, to my knowledge, I don't think he's a believer. But if he was, could he do that to the glory of God? And I guess if your expertise is such that you have that confidence, y yes. But it's an interesting conundrum of the risk versus doing it in glorifying God by saying, look at what my body is able to do as you created me to do at. Yeah, this is interesting because I think this really comes down to a question of risk tolerance and risk appropriateness. Risk tolerance. Everybody has a different level where they're comfortable making decisions, and most of us are comfortable enough driving a vehicle. Although that's incredibly risky. Yep. When you comes down to it, it's one of the ways that people most often lose their lives driving is risky. And yet we do it every day because we fancy ourselves capable enough to do that without compromising our. Health to any great degree. Other people race cars, they don't just drive cars. They race them around a circular track and they go hundreds of miles per hour. Their risk tolerance threshold is greater than mine. And then even further that, you talk about people that fly airplanes or people that do climb rocks for a living or for fun or whatever else that people are doing. Risk tolerance is a personal question that requires a personal assessment. Someone's risk tolerance could be quite high, in part because they have a high threshold of professional skill sets like you just talked about for this Alex character because he's a professional, he is been doing it for so long. I trust that for him, even though it is risky, it's not as risky as you jumping. On that building or even us driving a car, maybe his ability to climb a rock is greater than my ability to drive a car. And so his risk taking tolerance is higher for good reasons. Risk appropriateness would be the second consideration for me in terms of whether or not it's right to take the risk. And I think this is what it, your wife is getting at. And this is where I think. You could say in the same way that a seal team member or a scuba diver or a parachute, all these people can do their jobs of the glory of God. I think risk appropriateness is this a wise stewardship of my life, isn't it appropriate risk and for honnold? I suppose it is. It could be, at least if someone is able to do that, I could. Let's just imagine Alex comes to our church and he's telling us, Hey, I have this big climb and. Where was it? Korea, ti Taiwan, Thailand, Taiwan I have this big climb. I have an opportunity. It pays this many millions of dollars. I'm sure Netflix is a Netflix thing, right? Yep. I'm sure they paid him a lot of money and he's saying, look, I could do this and I feel really confident in my skills. If he applied the same mentality to this building that he did to El Capitan right. So he did that. I'm sure he applied the same mentality, so mm-hmm. The diligence to prepare and to plan. So for him it was still risky, but not nearly as risky as it might be for us to jump in an airplane or get into car, something like that. I don't know. Those are considerations that I think are fair. So I would say it's possible in theory, at the very least. Yeah. It was super interesting listening to him talk about it afterwards. I guess they paid him about half a million dollars, which for me to free SIL building. I'm like, okay, that's one year's work for you, man. Let's be clear. It's not but he said they paid me for the spectacle, not for the climb. Which was an interesting comment that he made because he did the climb because he loves to do the climb. He was like, I don't care what you I'm climbing this, even if you don't pay me anything, because he, it's a thrill for him to be able to do that. But I guess his comment was they paid me for the spectacle for the privilege to watch it, not for the climb itself, interesting. But yeah, so I'm not gonna be free climbing any buildings anytime soon. But it was fascinating to watch man, scary moments in that thing. For sure. Well maybe if it's part of a sermon series, taking risks for the glory of God and maybe you're preaching while you free solo. Oh, that's a good idea. The outside of the building. And I'll just, if we get a church with a steeple someday, maybe I'll free solo the steeple. I'd like to see it. Alright, well hey, let's jump into our DVR for today, which is Exodus 16 through 18, and then we'll be in our New Testament reading in Matthew chapter 19. Exodus 16, we get the Israelites having just come out of the glorious victory of going through the Red Sea, and they are in the wilderness now and they begin to complain almost right off the bat. And I just have found myself just more. Convicted of how likely the Israelites I can be in my own life As I've been reading through this and in some of the chapters in advance, just how quickly we can go from God providing God doing something great for us, and even in the small things to then turning and saying, yeah but what about this? But I don't have this. Okay, God, it's great that you brought us through the Red Sea, but now we don't have food, so what are you gonna do about that? And so they're grumbling and they're grumbling against Moses and Aaron, and yet Moses and Aaron are gonna say, Hey, you're not grumbling really against us. You're grumbling against the Lord. And rather than just immediately destroy them, God shows them great mercy and grace and patience, and he provides for them this promise of bread. And it's not gonna be that immediately he's just gonna say, here's the bread. He's actually going to provide it for them via a test. And he's gonna say that he is gonna say, I'm gonna test them whether they will walk in my law or not. And so he is gonna give these stipulations. He's gonna say, you're gonna wake up in the morning, you're gonna go out and gather a certain amount of bread that's fit for the day at hand. If you gather too much the next day, it's not gonna be good. It's gonna rot. If you gather too little, you just need to gather what you need in other words, except for the Sabbath day the day before the Sabbath, they were to gather twice as much. And so that's what God does. He provides it. The people said, what is this? As they saw the bread, they said, what is it? And that's really what they called it. They called it manna, which I believe is a word that means, what is it? And so it was there every single day and they found it to be true. If they took too much, then it would rot if they took too little or if they took double the day before the Sabbath. It lasted all the way through and yet God was seeing that for those that didn't trust him, this was a test to say, do you trust me or do not trust me? But again it's the grumbling coming right off of this amazing miracle walking through the Red Sea. They don't go to Moses and say, Hey Moses, can you go to the Lord and see if he can provide food for us? 'cause we're hungry. They go to him and they say. They complain. They say, we wish we were back in Egypt. And that desire to go back to Egypt is something that's gonna plague them throughout this time in the wilderness. Yeah. What's so interesting about that is they start off misremembering their history. Verse three says, oh man, what? That we have died by the hand of the Lord in Egypt when we sat by the meat pots and we ate bread to the full. How wonderful was that time in Egypt, guys? You remember how good it was? Apparently this took off. People believe this and said, yeah, no, that was good. Our memories can so betray us so quickly. And I think Israel's a really good example of that because when they misremember, then they mistake what's happening. And your point is well taken here, they rumble. We grumble and it demonstrates a lack of trust, a lack of care for God's provision. This grumbling that we do, as they did, is against the Lord. And that's exactly what he says here in verse eight. It's not against anybody. You're grumbling to Moses, but it's really against the Lord. You're grumbling to Aaron, but it's really against the Lord. You're grumbling to your parents. But it's really, again, so Lord, and I think that's an important thing for us to remember because God controls the weather even though. Some people maybe don't like the snow when you complain out loud to no one in particular, you're complaining against the Lord. And that's a really powerful reminder for all of us. So much so that Paul reminds us in Philippians chapter two, he says, do all things, everything you do, do all of that without grumbling or disputing. This is an important chapter for us because we really haven't grown out of this as a church. We're doing a lot of what Israel does, even if it's not publicly. Maybe we're more private grumbler and we are public, but it's still a really good lesson for us. We should really, and I think the women's retreat, somebody talked about this, maybe it was your wife actually. It's a really good reminder for us. This is the never ending evergreen point that we should take. We don't wanna grumble against the Lord. And that's exactly, we're grumbling against when we allow ourselves to do that. Yeah. He says there at the end of chapter 16 that the Lord provided this for 40 years. And so we see the faithfulness of God to continue to care for the needs of his people all the way through. In fact, it's gonna be noted that as soon as they enter into the promised land, that the man has stops. And so this is something that starts here and it's gonna continue all the way through with the people of Israel. Chapter 17 they move on, so they're making. Progress, and they're making progress towards the mountain of the Lord, Mount Sinai. And that's gonna be where the law is gonna be given eventually. But they're making progress towards that. And as they're going along, they run into another problem. And that is now that there's not enough water or really any water for the people to drink. And so the people, again, grumble against Moses, they grumbled about a lack of food. Now they're grumbling about a lack of water. And Moses goes to the Lord. And again the complaint that they bring is, why did you bring us up out of Egypt to kill us? And so they're again, looking back over the shoulder. And wanted to go back to Egypt. And so the Lord, again is patient at this point and says to Moses, go and take your staff and hit the rock, and water shall come out of it. And so that's exactly what he does here at Horrib. And the water flows and satiates the thirst of the people. But again, God is still patient at this point, but his patience is ultimately eventually gonna wear thin over time with the people of Israel. Yeah. And one of the things that we didn't mention yet is. God doesn't initially respond to their grumbling. Kind of gives into it. Hmm. He willingly elect, he willingly supports them and blesses them despite the fact that we know they, they deserve to be chastised for this. But you're right, as we get to chapter 17, this whole section here is just a continual spiraling down for them, which tells us that sin, if it's not dealt with, is going to grow. Sin is like a weed. It doesn't need a whole lot of water for it to grow. It grows pretty easily by itself. And so here. As they complain at the waters of Masa and Rabba it is evident here that they're continuing a pattern that will eventually grow into something that destroys all of them, and they do die in the wilderness. They are gonna die before they enter the promised land, but not before they encounter some really genuine obstacles. Yeah. And it seems to be that, that maybe what God is doing here is he's being patient with them to try to show them over and over again. You can trust me, you can trust me, you can trust me. And so freeing them from Egypt, taking them through the Red Sea, giving them the manna, giving them the water from the rock, and then what we read about next in chapter 17, giving them victory over the Amalekites, that he's kind of showing them, I'm gonna provide for you. I'm going to protect you. I'm going to fight your battles, the things that have promised about the promised land and driving out the inhabitants. Here's a glimpse of that. So here come the Amalekites. And Israel has to go to battle. And we see Joshua introduced here and Joshua is gonna be the commander of the armies of Israel. And they're gonna go out to battle and Moses is gonna hold his hands up. And I can't remember who it was, but somebody recently was talking about that, that that was a, probably a gesture of prayer that he's not just holding his hands up just for the fun of holding his hands up. But he's probably, it's a posture prayer before the Lord. And this is when Israel experiences the victory as Moses is interceding, as Moses is in treating the Lord on their behalf. The Israelites have victory. And yet when Moses' hands drop they end up running or they end up fleeing. And, and so again, Moses is gonna have his hands propped up there by Aaron and her, and the Lord's gonna give them victory. But I, I wonder if this is just God again, being patient with the people trying to get them to see you can trust me. How faith that I'm gonna bring you to where I told you I was gonna bring you. Yeah. This is a curious account because I wonder the same thing. It's possible that the hands being raised are a prayer posture that would make sense. We've seen that before, but the thing that causes me to scratch my chin is where he says in verse nine, tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with a staff of God in my hand. So he's holding up not just his hands, but the staff. Yeah. And I think there's at least some symbolism there about God fighting for them. The people clearly can at least see some of this. I think, at least that's my impression. They're able to see whether or not he is holding up the staff. And so maybe there's a morale connection to it. But the easiest interpretation would be, it seems like prayer. But then why is he holding the staff and how is, how are those two things connected? And because it, Texas in tele specifically, that this is the, that he's praying. You're left a little bit of guesswork here, but I'd like to think that whatever's happening, it's Moses demonstrating to the people our reliance is on the Lord and not on ourselves. We are sring ourselves to show that God is the strength behind our efforts and what a good reminder for us. It's the Lord who does the good work through us. And even though this may not be prayer, it's still works perfectly to say we should be people of prayer because this is how we demonstrate our reliance on the Lord. Yeah. In that theme of We Need, the Lord carries on into to chapter 18 then with Jethro, and again, we were introduced to Jethro back in Midn and he, as he was called rural back then, he's referred to as Jethro this time, and Jethro is going to come to Moses. And I think there's a couple things here but one of the key things here is Moses is gonna be shown by his father-in-law, you can't do it all either, Moses, you need help. You need not only the Lord's help, but you. You need the help of others in the midst. You need other leaders to come alongside you and help you with the responsibility that the Lord has given to you. So continuing that theme of trusting in the Lord, not trusting in themselves. God uses, I think, Jethro here to deliver that same message to Moses. Do you think Jethro's conversion is recorded in this chapter? I've heard that before. That in chapter 18, verse 11, when he says, now I know that the Lord is greater than all Gods. That some people said, this is the moment that Jethro becomes a follower of the God of Israel. This is the moment that Jethro is all in with Yahweh after he hears what God has done through the Exodus and everything else that God had done to deliver the people. Yeah, I don't know. It's too soft in my estimation for it to be that. In fact, I wondered reading that very same thing if Jeffer wasn't already a follower of Yahweh in some way, shape or form. He is priest of Midian, so he's got some kind of religious responsibility. And he doesn't ever seem adversarial to Yahweh. But neither can I say that he ever gives a full throated endorsement as strong as what we have here. But I'm not sure that, that tells me with confidence he's converted or he's a, he's aligning himself with Yahweh. I'm not sure if he had always been, or if this is a new thing. I'm not ambivalent, but I'm not convinced either way. What would you say to that? Yeah I'm with you on that. I don't know that I would press it far hard enough 'cause I don't think there's enough evidence there to press it and say, yes, this is his conversion. But it is interesting because he was a priest in median of a foreign God when Moses was there. And so at some point he has to leave that off and turn to the god of Israel. When does that happen? I don't, so that. That would change the game for me. 'cause I always thought that he was a priest of Midian, but that it was never specified a priest to whom? So if I could see that there was like, he's a priest of an unknown God, I think about him. And in a similar way to the way I think about, Melek. Okay. Melek appears out of nowhere, and yet he has an allegiance to Yahweh that we can't explain. I lean toward that explanation for Jethro slash rule in the same way now, because Moses doesn't seem to offer any qualms. He marries his daughter. And I'm just thinking, okay, maybe there's a loose connection to Yahweh there or an uninformed one. I clearly God operates and he has different people, different pockets of people. That, know him and worship him, although not identified through Israel. Yeah, I think just because there wasn't really a, an official Israelite priesthood at this point. I, I'd assumed, and you're right, it doesn't say an ex is two 16 is where it talks about him being a priest of Midian. And that's all it says is he was the priest of Midian. But I guess I'd always assumed just because there, there wasn't. A known priesthood. There wasn't a law system with the nation at this point, 'cause there wasn't really much of a nation other than the populace that this was a foreign god that he was serving. Yeah, I guess because it doesn't tell me, I've always given it a pretty open hand and saying, I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. I, and I can't tell. So eight chapter 18 could be interpreted either way. Maybe he does become a follower of Yahweh, or maybe he's just always been and now he has greater clarity and he's extolling the virtues of God. In any case, what I do see here is commendable for him. He's giving Moses, here's another factor. God used him. Let's just suppose he is not a Yahweh follower. God used him. To instruct him how to lead people. Yeah. Talk about something interesting because, okay, so you, we didn't make this connection in the last chapter, but in chapter 17, Aaron and her have to help Moses fulfill what God desires, and so these guys have to hold up his hands. God strengthened Moses. By strengthening him through the means of others, and I think that's an important point. God often will send us help, but not necessarily by making us more spiritual, spiritually capable or physically capable. He will help us by means of others as he as in the case of Aaron and her and in chapter 19. Rather as in the case of additional leaders who can bear the responsibility with him. So I think both chapter 17 and 18 speak to Moses need for help. One God sends Aaron and her and then the other God sends Jethro to say you need to do things differently. Who if again, if he is a pagan priest, speaks even louder to me than if he were a follower of yah. Yeah. Yeah. And the men that Moses is to choose are qualified men. And so in that sense, we can look back at this and even though this isn't the church, and this isn't the same thing that the qual the men that God is gonna bring alongside Moses here need to be men of upstanding character. They need to be men that are qualified men that fear God. Are trustworthy and hate bride and place such men over the people as chiefs of the thousands and so forth and so on. So, Moses is looking for men to help him here at the advice of his father-in-law. Not just anyone will do but he wants qualified men. He wants the right men to be able to come alongside him and help him in that. And so there is some, foreshadowing for what the church is supposed to be as well. And we'll get there later on in the year, but. When we think about the church leadership, it's the same thing. A church shouldn't be led by one man who's doing all the work. A church should be led by a plurality of the elders that are serving together and working together. That's been God's model from the outset with Israel, conveyed by, again, Jethro here, and then it's also gonna be his model for his church in the New Testament too. All right, well, let's flip over to the New Testament. We're gonna be in Matthew chapter again, 19, and we are in verses 16 through 30. Matthew 1916 through 30. It starts out with one of the more familiar parables, and that is, and I guess it's, it doesn't just start out, but that's this whole section. And that is the parable of the rich young ruler, or not the parable. I'm sorry, this isn't a parable at all. This is an actual account. A rich young ruler comes up to Jesus and says, what must I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus says to him, well, you know the commandments. And the man says, well, I've done all those. And then Jesus says, okay, well here's what you have to do. You have to go sell what you possess. Give to the poor and you'll have treasure in heaven. And then come follow me. And I think what we should note here is that Jesus, what he does here is I, he identifies the idol that's preventing this man from following Jesus. That's Jesus' point here. If this had been a womanizer, he would've pressed in on that. If this had been somebody who was, profane, he would've pressed in on that. This was somebody who had made an idol of his possessions, and that was what was impeding this man from following Jesus. And that's why Jesus said to him. If you want eternal life, you have to be able to follow me. And if you wanna follow me, that means you've gotta sell all that you have because that's where your heart is right now. And so that's why he goes after this and then tells the disciples, only with difficulty will a rich person answer the kingdom of heaven, which prompts the disciples to say, well, how is this even possible then who can be saved? Probably because they would've often looked at a man like this who's righteous and has great possessions and said, whoa, God must be blessing this man. If Jesus is saying, well, this man's not worthy of entering the kingdom, they're looking at their own lives and saying, well then who can be worthy of entering the kingdom? And that's why Jesus says, with man, this is impossible. But with God, all things are possible. And then he gives them an encouragement that there is eternal rewards waiting for them. Because Peter says there, we've left everything, Lord, what are what about us? And Jesus says, there's gonna be a reward for you, not just here but more importantly there. And this is where he says, you're gonna sit on the 12 Thrones and judge the nations with me. So, again, this is not about if you have money, you can't go to heaven. This is about if you have an idol that's impeding you from following Jesus, you can't go to heaven. And that's what you have to get rid of. Yeah. This is really a follow up to what Jesus was talking about several chapters ago. Now we read it, I don't know when we read it, but Matthew chapter six, where Jesus says that we're to lay up treasures in heaven, where Moth and Russ. Destroy or not where Mo, Mo and Russ don't destroy and where thieves cannot break in and steal or where your treasure is there, your heart will be also. And I would fully agree, he's exposing this young man and saying, look, you say you, you want to be my disciple. You're willing to leave everything and that you've not broken any laws. Well, let's just show that you've actually broken the first commandment to have no other gods before me. And so one of the things that makes having riches difficult, that it makes it difficult to leave your kingdom, to enter god's when you have a lot of money. There's always going to be this tug in your heart to say, well, I like being my own God. I like having sufficient resources in myself. I like being able to do these things. And the problem is not that he has the riches, the problem is that the riches are his master and not the other way around. For those whom God can entrust riches, it's the person who can say, my riches belong to the Lord. They're at the Lord's disposal. You can do them, view with them, with however he pleases. I might use 'em to invest here, or I might spend them over there. But ultimately a rich Christian is gonna say, my riches are not mine. They're the Lord's. And that's the distinguishing factor between the rich young ruler and. And a Christian who says, all of my wealth belongs to the Lord. One Timothy chapter six also speaks about this. He says, it's hard for people. Paul is agreeing with Jesus and saying that it's hard for people have a lot of, who have a lot of money to, to enter into heaven because riches can become a. A temptation, a snare that leads people into senseless and harmful desires, and that plunges people into ruin and destruction. And this is where we get the famous verse, or the love of money, is a root of all kinds of evils. And so this is important for us as modern day Christians, because most of us who listen to this would be by global standards, wealthy and rich. You may not feel that way, but we are, and this passage speaks to us. We need to have a loose grip on the money that God entrust to us and make sure that we can stay within our own hearts. This money is actually God's money. Yeah. Yeah. Alright, well let's pray and then we will be done with this episode of the DBR podcast. That we pray that as we just read about and talked about, that we would learn to trust you and and not trust in ourselves. That we would not need the same object lessons that Israel experienced to be able to understand that, but that we would learn, as you say in the New Testament from these things written down in the Old Testament for our instructions, or help us to examine our own lives, to see where we might be relying on ourselves instead of trusting in you. Where we might have a grumbling or a disparaging spirit that is complaining rather than being thankful for the things that you've given to us would reveal those things and help us to be those that are humble and grateful for all the good that you provided for us. So we thank you for this time. We thank you for your word. We thank you for technology to be able to continue to do the podcast even with the weather the way it is, and we look forward to things getting back to normal. But we thank you for this time of rest. In Jesus name. Amen. Well, hey guys, keep reading your Bibles no matter what the weather looks like and we will be back with you again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you. Bye.

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