Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. How's it going? And hello? It is going. And Pastor Mark, you pointed out, well, no, actually, was it you or Lewis that pointed out to us during our staff meeting yesterday as people are listening to this, that today March the fourth? Is that was Lewis? That was. That was Lewis, yeah. Yeah, I do. I do like. Marching band. I do like those sort of festivities. 'cause it is marching band day, but it is marching band day. Yeah. Why is that? March the fourth? 'cause March 4th. March 4th. Oh, March 4th. Yeah. That sounds such a band nerd thing to do. Were you in marching band? No, I was in orchestra. Were you in a marching band? Nope, but I have gone to like drum core performances and stuff like that, so yeah. What did play the orchestra trumpet? So when are you gonna be joining our worship team playing trumpet? Uh, probably never. Hmm. I think your son has my trumpet though. Yeah. Yeah. And he's thankful he plays that quite a bit. Yeah. I love that trumpet. Do you really? I did. And I was the second best in the state of New Mexico with that trumpet. Wow. Which New Mexico has about 14 people in it. So being second best is actually probably not that good, but you know, I mean, what's one seventh? What does that work out to? Let's not focus on the math, let's just focus on the honor and the distinction. I'm just saying if I was in some other state. You know, you may not have been the second probably been, probably wouldn't have been as cool. So just give context, you know, if you say you're the second best in Texas or something, that's probably pretty, pretty cool. Usually. Yeah, you would think. You would think for sure. So March 4th as we're recording this, we still have war going on overseas and that's probably something that's still worth our consideration as believers. Love to get y'all's thoughts. How much are you sharing with your kids about this, if anything? I know we've got parents that are listening to this and we've got a lot of young families in our church. How much should kids be aware of? I know for us, we've had the news on in the background. The kids have been home while we've had the news on, we've talked some with them about it, but a lot of times they're not able to process how far away this is and what the imminent threat is to us and what as Christians we should be, and yet we still want to take advantage of an opportunity to teach. So what have y'all been doing with your families with this? Well, I started out strong because I. Let them listen to Donald Trump's announcement of it. It was about an eight minute speech, and Lincoln at the end of the speech says, well, I guess we can't go outside today, because he thought that there was gonna be bombs dropping outside our house. So, yeah, that I might've needed some additional context before I, I let them see that, but I did let them see it. Yep. I can't stop my kids from reading the Telegraph or the Washington Post or the New York Times. So I feel like they're pretty well informed. Your kids read those? Yeah, I was just, I guys, please let me, I'll just tell you what's happening. And they insist no. And the Telegraph is their favorite. The Telegraph is their absolute favorite because they read it with an accent. It's the, they hear the accent through the right. They were on the Daily Mail until he was like, no, don't, don't do that one. Uh, I, I said nothing to my kids. I, I do think. That as long as I think first you need to know your kids. I think you need to know your kids. Sound advice for any parent what? Well, yeah, but it's, I mean, it's their names. It's easier said than done and their birthdays. You need to know what, where did you come from? You need to know your kids. What is helpful for them at their age? What? What would be something they need to know as opposed to something that. They just stumble across. I think if you're just have stuff playing in the house and they're just stumbling across it I think that's a, I think that can be an issue. I think that can be an issue, especially if your kids are not ready to know that sort of thing, or it's gonna produce questions in their mind that would be unhelpful at their age to answer. I think you can show them things that maybe you're not gonna tell 'em, but if there's questions in their mind about things that you're not willing to answer, it's probably unhelpful to. To show it to them because you should, I think, answer questions when your kids bring them to you at least, again, in an age appropriate way. Yeah, that's such a good point because there's lots of things that your kids should not even be asking questions about yet and moderating what they have access to serves them. Kids should not by definition, know the things that an adult knows. There's a lot of things that you should say, we're not gonna. Talk about that right now, or It's a good question, but you know what, here's a really basic answer so that I don't mislead you, but this is not the kind of thing we can talk about at your age and to your point I think a lot of parents maybe don't spend enough time thinking about the fact that our kids are our kids. They don't have the processing faculties that we have, or at least we should have. And so giving them a drip feed of information as opposed to a deluge, a flood of saying, here's everything that's happening and here's what this means for all of geopolitics. Maybe not the most helpful way to approach that. Is there. Such a thing as an innocence with our children that we as Christian parents should be protecting. And yet balancing that with an understanding of the fallenness of humanity and a desire to not shelter them from the idea that, Hey, this is a broken world. Yes, I think there is an innocence that we should protect because you could theoretically. Find all the most vile things that have happened in the last week in the news and take it to your kids and say, look at all these horrible, vile, disgusting things that have happened. Yeah. And that would be inappropriate. Obviously making it extreme right to answer the question. But I do think that you have to balance that. I do think though, that there's a place where you could be overly protective as well, and you know, even think about this war in Iran, kids are gonna hear it about it at school. I think it's good for you. To be able to be the ones that introduce the concepts to them and be able to explain to them what, what's going on, and give them the initial interpretation of those things. So you do have to balance it and which is why I use the term, or I say the phrase you need. You need to know your kids. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's something to letting your kids be a kid. Let, letting them mm-hmm. Play outside. Mm-hmm. Without the burden of the world events on their shoulders. Not, I'm not attacking you, not with Lincoln. I'm just saying in general, like letting them enjoy the innocence of childhood is a good thing. It's appropriate. It's okay. Your kid can be brilliant and yet not know all the InterQual inter, you know, all the inner workings of what's going on at that geopolitical level. That's okay. You can shelter them from that and let them play ninjas in the backyard and just have fun doing that, or play, you know, queen of America in the their room or whatever they're doing, you know? So, it's okay to preserve that. You're not abdicating your job as a parent either. Well, let's jump into our daily Bible reading for today. Numbers 32 through 33. Can I just mention one thing before you keep going? Yeah, please. It is our one year anniversary in this office. It is our one year anniversary in this office, and I just wanted you guys to know that on March 4th day, the band day. That's the day of our anniversary. That's when we moved in here. We're thanking God for that. And if you're thinking, if you're listening to this podcast today, we're also doing a little small thing here at our office celebrating this great space. And we have it for, what, two years? We have it for two years. Yeah. Two years. So we have one more year in this building. And based on our current trends, we will be looking to move into a little bit of a larger space. I trust, hopefully, Lord willing, God willing, so long as he provides. Yep. Yes. Yeah. Yeah, we're thankful for the space, for sure. Yes, we are. And it reminds me too, of just that time, that transition time. I mean, pastor Mark had been with us for a while, but we were bringing all on around that time. We were bringing Louis in around that time as well. So, yep. It's been a good last year for sure. Yeah. Whoever we bring on next is gonna have to be in the attic. They are. There should no more space. It's gonna be brutally hot up there too. And cold. And cold, yeah. Yeah. During the cold months. Well, let's get into numbers 32 through 33, man, numbers 32 is one of those head scratchers for me because you've got. Two tribes really I guess three when we find out more about it. But Reuben and g and then we're gonna find out the half tribe of Manas is gonna get in on this as well, who opt to stay on the trans Jordan side of the promised land. They're saying, Hey, we kinda like this area. Our herd is comfortable here. Our animals have enough grazing space here. Moses, can we just stay here? And the immediate question that comes up is, are these guys trying to get out of, going over and fighting the battles? Are they afraid of going across? Is this the 12 spies report happening all over again just with a new generation? And they assure Moses and the leadership, no, this isn't the case. We promise we'll go over, we'll fight the battles. And that's the stipulation that he's gonna give him. He does seek the Lord's advice on this. And the Lord is gonna allow them to do this. I, I don't know in, in my mind, I think I said this last year too. This just seems incredibly shortsighted to me because God has been promising how good the Promised land is gonna be. And here you have these guys going. Yeah, no thanks. We'll, we'll just stay on this side. I I would not have been happy as one of the citizens of Gad Manasses and Ruben here to be like, wait a minute, you guys asked what? No, no, no. We want to go across, we want to go over there. It's better over there, but they choose to stay over here. Just an interesting shortsighted situation here. All right, chapter 33. We are going to begin to get into the rehearsing of the history of the people of Israel here. And so we are gonna go back through from the Exodus in chapter 33, at least all the way through to the Plains of Moab there by Jordan at Jericho, where they are. And there's a lot of different cities. Where it says the camped here, the camped here, the camped here. This is one of those opportunities where in Pastor Ron, and I've recommended this in the past, if you have a good Bible atlas or if you've got a good map in the back of your Bible or you've got Bible software like logos or something like that opening up an atlas and finding these cities and you can kind of trace the journey of Israel, if you go and look these various cities up, a lot of 'em are smaller, a lot of 'em are not gonna. Make much of a dot on the map at all. But this would be a good way for you to see visibly where they, they journeyed from. And there's some significant markers, like in verse 10 the Red Sea verse 15. They're in, they're at Sinai there down in verse 38, you've got. Aaron's death reference there. You've got the 40th year of wandering there, so, you know, we're getting close to the end at that point. So chapter 33 is really getting into a lot of the wilderness wanderings and the history of how they got from Egypt to where they're now. Yeah, there's a, think about 40 locations that are mentioned here, and some of these we really don't know about. We don't have anything written about them that were unique or special but what I'm reminded about co constantly is that someone's keeping track, someone's notating when they leave, what they're doing, why they're doing it, and within their 40 year span Moses at least, and perhaps others are helping to create a story a documentation of what God has done with them. And some of it's not very notable, it's just like, oh, we were there and we stayed and we left, and then things were just fine. And I constantly am reminded about how valuable that kind of information is. I wish I had a lot more information about my ancestors and know what they did and how they got to the states and what precipitated that move. And so I appreciate seeing this. My only takeaway from this would be something akin to you ought to do something similar. It doesn't have to be the same burden of saying, I wanna document every single thing that God does in my life, but to have some kind of documentation would be such a blend, a benefit for yourself and also for those who follow you and can appreciate how God has cared for you. In the same way that we appreciate how God has cared for the Israelites in numbers 33. Chapter 33 ends with a very clear admonition from Moses that when they enter the promised land, well from God through Moses, they need to drive out all the inhabitants. And there's a condition here that God says, if you do this, then I will bless you. And this is also connected back to the Abrahamic covenant in chapter 33, as well as God is talking about the promise of the land and the blessings. That's a key aspect of that promise that he gave to Abraham back there. So when Israel. Goes into the promised land and spoiler alert doesn't fulfill this. This is one of those things to go back to and say God told them this is what they were to do. They couldn't plead I ignorance. They couldn't say, God, we didn't know that you wanted us to drive them out completely. And so this is a situation where God is saying, this is what you're to do. Enter the promised land and get rid of all of them. Leave no one there behind. And I think going back to. Chapter 32, where we see some of those, you know, the questionable decision of those two tribes staying outside of the promised land. I think we're getting hints here of some of the disaster that is coming. I think what we're, there's not an explicit statement by. Moses, right? He's not saying this is a problem for these 10 reasons, but he is through the narrative and through how he's compiling these things, giving us as readers the anticipation of this not going well. Yeah. Yeah. And I also see here we're gonna start getting into more and more of this language, and I'm sure we're gonna have to discuss it at least a few times. Moses is telling them you're gonna drive them out and you're gonna destroy all of their metal images, their high places. And he's gonna say more about that. In fact, we've already seen several phrases where he talks about what they're supposed to do, and you've already alluded to it as well, and people have often struggled with this. But I just want to point your attention to this last perpe that we look at from verses 50 through 56. What we're seeing here is that the motivation is not ethnic. It's not anything to do with anything except for the fact that these are evil people who follow and worship an evil God. Which is why Moses says to them, if you go in there, you're gonna drive out the inhabitants, which by the way, it's interesting language because it's not destroy. We have seen that word before, but this is drive out. Dispossess to move them from one place to another. That doesn't change a whole lot for us, but it is an interesting language. Change or twist from what we've seen before. Notice again, he says drive them out and destroy all their figured stones and destroy all their metal images. We know from. Reading beforehand that Israel is susceptible to idolatrous worship in the same way that these other guys are, which is why God is so protective over them. It is his special love for them that calls them and commands them. You cannot intermingle with them because their religion is a snare to you, and I want you to see that because God cares for you. I think the transference for us under the new covenant is similar. Obviously we don't bow down to idols. We're not making calves out of gold, but we are susceptible to a false religious view of God, of the world if we're not careful. And so I think what God said to Moses and the Israelites under the old covenant, he would say to us as well, be careful. Be careful that you and flee from idolatry lest you become ensnared. Yeah, it makes me think of Joshua 24 where Joshua tells the people, right? They, there's, we'll get to that obviously in a little bit here in our plan, but he tells the people after they say they're recommitting to the Lord, he says, you are not able to serve the Lord for he's a holy God. But paired with that is, oh, command from him to the people to put away their foreign gods that are among you and to incline your heart to. The Lord. I mean, the problem that people of Israel have is that they're not willing to do that, and you can see that going all the way into Joshua and of course further beyond Joshua, but. There's a problem here and ultimately New Covenant is our solution to that. Yep. Well, let's jump over to Mark chapter 10. Speaking of the new Covenant, our New Testament reading, mark chapter 10, we are gonna open up what Jesus's teaching here about divorce and so this is a another familiar scene from the Pharisees. One thing to point out, we've talked a little bit on the podcast recently, or this year at least, about polygamy and about the multiple wives that we find in the Old Testament, and I think it's important for us to note here in the New Testament, we don't really find much. If any of the evidence of polygamy taking place during the church age here during the early first century when Jesus is here and even in through the church. In fact, I think we get some of this here when the Pharisee comes up in verse two and said, is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife? And he's identifying one singular woman who is the wife. And so we don't know at what point in time polygamy kind of faded out of the. The vogue culturally here, but it certainly appears by the time of Christ here. We, we do have the establishment of, or the reestablishment of what God's design always had been, which is one man, one woman. And here the question is, when can that man choose to part ways with his wife? When can the man choose to divorce his wife? And similar to what we read in the gospel of Matthew we find that Jesus says, you shouldn't. And the only reason why Moses allowed you to is because the hardness of your heart. You were stubborn enough and Moses said, okay, for these reasons and these reasons alone, may you divorce your wife. Now, mark doesn't record the reason of adultery here but Matthew does. And so it's not here, but it, we do find it in Matthew 19, that Jesus does give the exception clause for, unless somebody commits adultery, then you may divorce the person at that point. But even still there, I think the argument can be made. That's not the design, that's the design, the desire is still for reconciliation to take place if possible at all. One thing that stands out to me as really important, and this was kind of a new thing for me this year, I've been working through some books on Christian ethics and how we deal with things, especially as we're talking about under the Old Covenant, when we look at how God dealt with the Canaanites is this passage stood out to be. Because here's what Jesus' commentary is about the Old Testament law, and what we notice here is that the law that God gave Israel was never meant to be an endorsement. It was never, at least not all of it. Here Jesus is saying this stipulation in the law was a concession. That is, it wasn't God's perfect plan. It was what God permitted to take place until the new covenant came in fullness, which is a whole new chasm of understanding. For me, this is like, okay, a new paradigm rather, because this tells me some of the laws that we read about are not God saying, here's a really good way to live, but let me regulate and moderate the evil ways that you're already living. What a good point. Yeah. And that to me tells me there's more to God's law than what meets the eye. Just because it comes from God's law through the pen of Moses, doesn't mean this is God's perfect way of living. It might be, as we see in the case of divorce, this is God just saying, I will permit this, but I'm gonna regulate it. So that you do as minimal damage to yourself and to others as possible. Yeah. E especially because the people of Israel were coming out of it. They were not. They were coming outta 400 years of Egyptian influence. They were coming outta 400 years of Pagan oversight and influence. And that was their culture. That was their background. That was who they were. And so they're not coming out of, you know, we're not going straight from Adam to Noah, to Moses and here's Israel. We're going, you know, through this long period of time where they're being influenced and formed by pagan ideas and cultures. And you're right. I think God is taking that people. And he's beginning to say, let me, lemme curb some of your sinful ways and patterns with this law that I'm giving you now and reteach you and or train you rather how you should operate under my law and what's right and what's good under my law. It is also interesting though that cultures have changed. Without specific revelation from God, which I think goes to the argument and obviously we see specific Revelation mentioned here in chapter 10 as he references back to Genesis. But you do see that natural law is something that does influence societies and humanities, humanity. Not humanities does influence it. And we should be thankful for that. You referenced the fact that the society and the culture at Jesus's time wasn't promoting that Well, that wasn't because that they had gotten revelation from God and or specific revelation from God, but it was because of what I'm gonna argue is natural law. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. The other thing I really appreciate about Mark chapter 10 in the teaching of the rich young man who comes up, is one of the phrases that we see here, and that is this, that Jesus looking at him, verse 25, 21, loved him and said to him, you lack one thing. Go sell all you have and give to the poor. I, I think what we see here is that it, it is. Loving for us to look at somebody who is wrong, and just say, oh, you'll be okay. Don't worry about it. You'll make your way there. You're doing good enough. Hopefully you'll come around to it. But it's loving for us to enter in and say, this is the path forward. This is the right thing for you to do. This is what you really need. And Jesus loved him enough to say, you know what you need? You need to put this idle to death. We've talked about it before. The problem with this man wasn't his money. It was that's what had his heart. That's what had his affections. That's what he was unwilling to give up to follow Jesus. And Jesus said, this is why I'm gonna press in on this because I love you enough to tell you this is in the way you want eternal life. This is what's in the way. And I think we need to love our neighbors enough. We need to love our coworkers, our family members, enough to be able to say to them, you know, what's in your way is your false religion? What's in your way is your pride? What's in your way is your sin? What's in your way? Whatever it may be. Because it's not loving for us to just look at them and be like you know what? You'll be okay. I'll just pray for you. One of the things I think is really interesting is the contrast here. You passed over it. It's one of my favorite sections, so I have to give you a little grief of passing over it, but verses 13 through 16 and you see that typical kids men pass. I wanna talk about the kids. Whatever. Fine. Go. No, go ahead. Go ahead. Talk about, isn't it fascinating that we see this passage where Jesus. Says, look how easy it is. I'm paraphrasing aggressively, but he says, look how easy it is. And then with the rich young man, he says how difficult it is. Oh, yeah. And I think it's I think it's interesting. Because we are people who don't wanna be like the children, right? We want to, we, our inclinations, and I think even to some degree, as we get older, our inclinations become more like the rich young ruler. But then also what's the solution to this? Well, in verse 32 and the following couple verses, right? What's the solution to it? It is the death of Jesus on the cross. In the section about the children coming to Jesus, I found it fascinating that Jesus was so approachable to kids. Yeah. That he is. I was watching an episode of Little House on the Prairie, and by the way, what a great show. I just I haven't recommended that enough. I, we've been watching it slowly but surely. We're on, what season are you on? Five. Mm-hmm. Season five. You're in a pretty good weight, right? Yeah. Or a little over halfway, I think. And we just watched an episode where. Charles was interacting with kids and the woman was like, oh man, he's so good with kids. And she's impressed by that. And I thought, man, the reason that's attractive is because I think Jesus shows us that it, there's something about masculine power being subdued enough for children to say, I like being around this guy. He exudes safety and not danger, security and not insecurity, I suppose. So here, I think Jesus shows us that he. He wants kids to come to him. They, he was not opposed to that. He liked that. And there's something incredibly manly and good about having young people say, you're disarming enough that I wanna be around you, or you're strong enough that I wanna seek shelter under your coverage. I think that's a really beautiful picture of Jesus that we sometimes just don't see. Yeah. Well, hey, let's pray and they'll be done with this episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. Father, thanks for your word and for the new insights that we gain as we continue to read it. Even as I was talking about some, it was somebody else this week, just that idea that there's always more to be found in your word. Not that your word changes, but we change in our understanding of it. Does as we continually come back and read it more and more, and I pray that we would be faithful to read your word every single day, that we would get the full picture of it, so that we could see more of how your story is woven together and how your character revealed to us. And so we love your word. We thank you for it, and pray that we'd be faithful to apply. In Jesus name, amen. Amen. Keep your in your Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Amen. See ya. Bye.

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