Hey everybody, welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. What's up? It's Saturday. Hopefully you're getting some rest and relaxation and getting ready for the weekend. Getting ready for tomorrow, getting ready for Sunday, getting ready to come and worship God with your church family. Hopefully you're not sick. Hopefully you're not sick. Yeah. And if you have a student, send them to the pinstack event this afternoon. Boom. Pinstack event down in Plano, right off the toll road. That's right. I believe. I, yeah, that sounds about right. I've not been there yet. But I've seen all the pictures and it looks amazing. Does it? That's great. I haven't been there either. It's bowling. It's laser tag. It's chicken tenders. I saw that chicken tenders and French fries. Yeah. It's going to be amazing. I don't know where else you can get that on a Saturday. Nowhere. Yeah, this is the okay. There's a lot of places, but this place looks really nice. It looks like it's brand spanking new. And you can't get the fellowship with. The student ministry of true north you cannot come to north texas only at pinstack plano. That's the only place exactly Which is important I think You know, a lot of student ministries will build their Identity on more of the event based the fun the atmosphere that totally and there's in our theological camps There's a resistance to that. There's we need to teach them the Word of God. No fun. Yeah, I'll buy it but this is equally important and I think You've made that, that point before with some of the emails you've sent out to parents but broader audience, people listening to this, how, why, what makes this important? Why have parents spend money on this? Why put this on the calendar? Why do this when it's, you're not going to be gathering them up together to say let's talk about the importance of bowling as it relates to your relationship with Christ. How has the, what's the payoff? What's the positive on this? One of my old pastors used to say relationships are the currency of the kingdom. And by that, I think he meant that relationships are the thing that really make the Christian faith attractive, make it workable, viable. Make it kind of work period. It's how we do business, so to speak. And so one of the things that we want to be aware of, and we're teaching people, the Bible, they don't do that in a vacuum. We can't just transmit Bible information and expect that to transform someone's life. It has to be done in the context of relationship where people feel loved for cared for, honored, understood, respected, yada yada, on and on it goes. And really some of the best ways to do that are the things that a family would do. When you're having some family time, you're going to go and play, you're going to walk at the mall or whatever. You're going to go do stuff together. That's what a family does. And so the church is a larger extended family. And so we try to do families type things where we're together, laughing, spending time, having fun, talking about everything, talking about nothing, just doing stuff. And when we do that, what we find is we create a context where people are more engaged. Willing to let their hair down and to talk about real and important things because there's the context of trust and care that makes everything else make sense. And so we don't divorce the things that God has joined together. We don't tear us under fun and relationships and Bible. We think all of those things fit together and God has designed us. As human people embodied people that love to have a good time. There's nothing wrong with that. There's everything right with that So we put those things together We never want to be the kind of ministry that saying hey, all we do is talk about the bible And that should be enough for you Why aren't you mature enough to just love the bible and can't you just come and be excited about the bible? Because no one's that god didn't design us to just be bible people He designed us to be people and that's why we do everything that we do. We want to have a holistic ministry that appropriately emphasizes biblical truth love for christ love for his body You Yes, but that doesn't mean we can't take a nerf gun to someone's face every now and then it's part of the fun of being a Christian. And that extends even into our adult ministry as well. And that's one of the benefits of community groups. Maybe not the nerf gun side of things, although maybe though you're with, yeah, come on. The Kim's group gets a little bit crazy. Sometimes I think they, they're, I heard they're the most unhinged. I that's, I'm going to visit them in a couple of weeks here. So I'm pretty sure I'll find that out. But. But with our community groups, I think every community group has it's not like people show up and they walk in they immediately sit down They're like, let's get to the Bible one right now. Yeah I think there's, I know for my group there's a fellowship time where we're hanging out together. We're talking, we're catching up and we have dessert together each week and rumor has it, you guys barely even get to the questions. You guys are getting so much fellowship. That's true. Two and a half hours of fellowship and 15 minutes of the applications. Exactly. Yep. Because, yeah, because I know the guy that preaches the sermons and he feels weird about discussing the sermon that he preached with a bunch of people in the room. Yeah. Yeah. How good was the sermon guys? Let's talk about that. Let's talk about what was your favorite part on a scale of eight to 10? What was the funniest thing that the guy said? Yeah, and the people that don't have anything to say we kick them out of the group. That's right Yeah, that's how you keep a group of high quality. Yeah but you guys are talking, you fellowship, all the fun things, that's what our community groups do. They create that, those relationship contexts for people that make fun of each other. Yeah, exactly. All the things. Yeah. That's what a family does. All of it. In fact it's last night now, but Friday night our ladies got together offline and had a ladies night where they were hanging out and just spending time together. So that was, Oh, this is ladies night. Yeah. So typical guys though, none of our guys have been like, Hey, can we do the same thing? We have enough time to get her guys. We're done. None of the guys have been like, Hey, we should get together and hang out and do stuff. There's gotta be one guy in every group though. There's always one. Yeah. It was like, guys, we should do something and everyone else is okay, I guess you're right. We should. It's not going to be you though. I don't know who that would be in our group. There's not going to be you. Yeah. Come on, Tim. Step it up. Yeah. Tim Morgan. Yeah morgan steps in morgan you and tim work together step it up. There we go. There we go hey, let's jump into our bible reading. We are finishing up the book of leviticus today leviticus 26 and 27 chapter 26 is real easy to remember it breaks down into blessings and curses and this is The stipulations. This is the contractual agreement that God is entering into with his people after the giving of the law. He says, look, if you do these things here, the blessings that are going to come. If you're obedient, it's going to bring good things to you. Agricultural blessings blessings of peace. Shalom is the word there versus six through 10 there, Abrahamic covenant fulfillment. Elements here. Verse nine. I will turn to you and make you fruitful and multiply you confirm my covenant with you. Again, the interweaving of the Abrahamic covenant in the Mosaic covenant here, God's presence being with them versus 11 through 13. He promises and says, I will be with you as your God. You will be my people. That's an illusion that is pointing to ultimately the final realization of that is going to be Revelation 21. In fact, in Revelation 21, God is going to tell John that he will be with us as our God and we will be with him as his people and that's going to be on the new earth. Earth. And so that's not really going to fully be realized until then. But this is the holdout of the promise here. He would be with them. And in the immediate sense, that's going to be through his presence with them in the tabernacle and then eventually in the temple. And so that's God's offer there. If you do these things, here are the blessings. But then on the flip side, if you don't do these things, if you're disobedient, these are the curses that are going to happen. And there's a general escalation of each of these. That was meant to be disciplinary, though, not destructive. God was not going to wipe them out and forget about them and start over again from scratch. But if they ignore the discipline, these curses are going to increase in the nature of their tragedy as time unfolds. And so there's, again, like the blessings there's counterparts, agricultural curses, there's wild animals. There's war induced plague and famine. There's war induced atrocities, just a lot of things that when you read these the drive should be, I don't want to experience any of that ever. And that was the point. That was what God wanted the people to walk away with and going, I don't want any of that to happen. And so what do we need to do? We should be obedient to the gap. And he always gave them an escape clause too. They always had the opportunity to escape. Escape from the escalating disciplinary response that God would give them. It's basically the old Testament version of first John one, nine in verse 40. But if they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their fathers in their treachery that they committed against me and also doing these things. So that I had to do all these other things. And he says in verse 42, then I'll remember my government, my covenant with him. So God was always willing and ready to forgive and to reconcile and allow them to enjoy the covenant promises and blessings. If they would simply acknowledge their sin. And you see a little bit of this. In the time of the Kings, when you have good Kings and you have bad Kings and you have some Kings that are cutting down the Asherah and drawing close to God again, and having a national kind of repentance and a national revival and other Kings that would dig the knife even further and say, Oh, we did a sin. We're going to do even more sin. We're going to repeat the sins of Jeroboam. So all of this to see, you're going to notice as we make our way through the Bible again, that. God is faithful to his covenant promises, but he's also faithful to the covenant disciplinary responses as well But god was always willing to forgive if they were willing to draw near and confess their sin You brought up kings. Do you think we see a similar pattern in the book of judges? Or do you think it's less that and more just god's? Mercy in raising up judges because I don't know As i'm just going through my mental rolodex of the book of judges There's not a lot of direct repentance that we see I don't think there but the people definitely cry out You Because of the oppression of the foreign nations, because God, the people rebel, God brings a nation in to judge them, and then they cry out and he raises up a judge there. It seems maybe that's more just God's mercy than it is. Amen to that. I would agree. I think it's God's mercy in the book of judges. I think in kings, you have a much better view of a good king because God says this was, this is a good king, never in the Northern kingdom, but he always makes it clear that the good kings get God's good favor, which makes perfect sense. And the judges, I can't see almost any of that. And not think this is entirely god's mercy because he was under no obligation to respond to them. They were sinful They were doing the wrong thing and god showed them mercy despite the fact that they didn't earn it Yeah, and this is hopefully a reminder as you're listening to this I know you know this but the idea that there's still time for repentance for anyone in your life right now somebody that is Has walked away from the Lord somebody that you thought was a believer who is demonstrated that they're not Somebody who is not ever Looked like they're a believer and you've been praying for them There's still time for them to repent and come back to the Lord In fact that the Scripture say that repent while there's still time drawn near to him while there's still time and God will abundantly pardon. And so there's not a point at which from our perspective we can look at anyone and say that person is beyond the reach of God's grace or God's mercy to enable them to repent and come back that may exist in the category of of God's economy where God may Romans one, turn somebody over, but we don't ever know that. And that's a mercy and that's a grace of God. And in our lives to be able to say, man, we can always go to somebody and say, Hey, come back to the Lord. There's time you can repent and return and he will forgive you and you can be restored and you can be brought back in amongst the place in God's family at any point. You're never beyond that. No one's ever beyond that. From our perspective. And then to that. Yeah. Chapter 27 there. Any anything else on, on 26? I'm good to go. Okay. Chapter 27, then we get into some of the vows and I talked about this a little bit with the year of Jubilee, but these are the valuations that are set for anyone who vowed themselves or an animal to serve the Lord and then desire to redeem it later. Again, the remaining useful years between the time of their decision and the year of Jubilee could be bought out from the Lord. And so if somebody pledged themselves to Temple Service. And they needed to go back on that they could buy themselves out from that dedication to the tabernacle service. And that could be offered to the Lord and that would be given the amount of time between that and the year of Jubilee or an animal or whatever it may be. And so this is within the economy of Israel here, as they're wandering through the wilderness, these are ways that, that. Society would operate. If somebody changed their minds on something, there was a, there was an escape clause, there was a way out. There was something they could do. And that had to do with redeeming them with the cost associated with the value between that day and the year of Jubilee. Yeah, this is interesting because I don't know, we don't see a lot of this in the new Testament church. We don't see people making vows. I think there's evidence maybe a Nazarite vows in a, as an effect with Paul We see it again in the old Testament maybe James and John perhaps. And I guess we'll talk about that when we get there in the book of numbers, but it's interesting because I don't see very many people doing this and I don't even know that there's a culture where we would say, Oh, I vowed it's accepting giving campaigns. It's like one of those things where somebody might give, I'm going to vow to give 10, 000 to the building fund or whatever, but you don't see stuff like this. And I'm curious as to why we don't do it. I don't know. Maybe you have any thoughts on that. Yeah. I, other than I think so much of our worship to God, Today is spiritual and spiritualized that there's less of that I'm vowing this I'm vowing myself in this act or I'm doing this. It's less ceremonial. And I think the vow smacks more of ceremony than it does the freedom of New Testament worship, the way that we experience it today as redeemed members of the church of God. Would you discourage anybody who says, man I, God has just blessed me with this job. I want to vow this much money to the Lord, or I want to vow this kind of service. Are vows in vogue? Are they still something that Christians should indulge or even practice in some measure, or are they? Something part of the old testament covenant that we should disallow. Yeah, I mean I would say carefully even the end of the chapter he talks about tithes in verses 30 through 33 We talk about tithing in the church and a lot of people are like, oh you know giving to the church Tithing is 10, but if you go back to the old testament that the tithes were numerous there were You were given a lot more than 10 percent in that capacity. So I think we have to be careful about saying we want to do what they used to do in the Old Testament. If somebody was going to, could I say it's sinful for somebody? Say I'm gonna vow, this I'm selling my house. I'm gonna vow 30 percent of the profit. Then I'm gonna get to the I'm gonna give that to the church. No, I'm not. I'm not gonna say that's sinful or wrong, but I would say be very careful about that. I think maybe we see a little bit of perhaps in the book of Acts as people were selling what they had and they were giving it to the church for the support of the church. And then you've got Ananias and Sapphira show up and they're like, Oh yeah, we sold the house for this much and here's, and we're giving it perhaps that was a situation wherein there was some sort of vow that was taking place there and they were going back on that pledge. And so I think we have to be careful on that. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. I don't want to be, I don't want to create law where God has freed us, but I don't think this is it. Maybe it's, I guess it's his law because he's telling us how to deal with it in the old Testament, but it just seems oh, that's a cool heart posture. Like I want to give something to the Lord. He's been so kind to me or he's done something good. I want to honor him with this vow of, I don't know, myself or temple service, or I want to give a certain amount of camels to the Lord. I don't know. It just seems cool. And I, I wonder. Why something like this hasn't endured and maybe the point of it is just that it's Old Testament and it doesn't need to be carried over. We have something newer and better in Christ, or maybe it is there. We just don't call it the same thing. Jesus isn't very fond of odes, right? No, don't say, don't just let your yes be yes, but I don't know that an oath and a vow are necessarily in the same category. Yeah. Although it's interesting in this chapter that a lot of this chapter is devoted to how you get out of the valve if you're in it and you need to get out. Yeah. All we see a lot of misapplied vows, right? Jeff does vows when that comes in mind in terms of being the most egregious and it's evil. So yeah, I guess I'm going to think about this a little more. Yeah. Yeah. I yeah. That's a, I don't know. You know what you should value you should vow to listen again tomorrow to another episode of the Bible. I can't vow that You can't I because I don't look I'm part of every episode. I don't know that I listen to all of them That's true. I listen to a lot of them because I have to go into the editing now So I'll do I'll take stuff out add stuff I was trying to get you to record your voice so I could use the AI to put your voice in my phone Your voice is out there right? Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna find a system that will let me just strip your voice. Don't and utilize it. I have no doubt. I'll record an intro. I'll record an outro. I'll record an ad and you would never use it nefariously. No, of course not. Ever. Never. All right, guys, let me pray. God we want to be careful with what we say that we will do or won't do for you. And we want to be faithful to our word. We want to be men and women of integrity. And I got it. It's a good thing to devote things to you. I think it's a good thing for us to have that posture towards you to want to use ourselves or our resources to worship you, to serve you for the good of the community, even as it's part of the church Lord. And so give us that generosity towards you of our time, talent, treasures, everything that we have helped us to be a church with the Adapt mindset, anything, any place, anytime. And that we would be willing to worship you with everything that we are, whether that's a formalized vow or not, we want to have that posture towards you as a church. We want to be ready because of how much you've done for us and we want to live faithfully before you. So we ask that you would enable us to be that type of church and allow us to have that posture in Jesus name. Amen. All right, y'all keep reading your Bibles and tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the daily Bible podcast. See you folks. Bye.

Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of the daily Bible podcast. We hope and pray this has been a blessing to you and your time in the word. If it has, if you would subscribe to this podcast, leave a like, leave a comment and share it with some friends and family. That would be awesome. If you need more information about Compass Bible Church here in North Texas, you can go to compassntx. org. Again, that's compassntx. org. And we'll be back with you tomorrow for another episode of the daily Bible podcast.