Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Let me be the first. Be the first to say, hold on, hold on. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas one. You're muted right now, bro. What? That's my gift to you all. I've unmuted you. Now, you may say your thing. Ah, Merry Christmas everybody. Merry 2026. Christmas there. Huh? Merry. I jumped the gun. Let me be the first to wish you all. Merry Christmas in 2026. I'm looking at one of the Christmas gifts you got. I got it. Yeah. An eagle. Yeah, this is dope, man. It is an eagle in front of your office. You can fly. That is pretty, I feel more patriotic just holding it. You should. You should say the pledge of allegiance. Right now I'm putting my hand over my heart. Let's take a break, guys. No, it's awesome. It's great. Yeah, I got one. I got one Jason made these they're pretty cool. I think. I can't remember what they're called, diamond art or something like that, but it's a bunch of tiny little I don't know what they're called, discs that are glued and it makes a bald eagle and it, it must have taken 'em a long time to do this. It, because this, I'm sure, this, this requires more patience just to look at it. Than it is to like to do it. Right. I don't have the patience even to look at it. This, because I'm looking at, there's, they're all brown, the ones that make up his feathers, but they're different shades of brown. Right. So that's impressive, man. Like numbers, but not with patience. That is super impressive. Yes. Well done. Yep. Anyways, this Christmas, hopefully you guys are having a great Christmas morning. Yes. And making the word of God part of it. Hopefully you're healthy too. Should be. Yep, should be. That's a healthy. Christmas practice. That is a healthy Christmas practices ally. Healthy. Yes. I hope you're eating unhealthy food though. Yes. Lots of unhealthy food. Yes. This is the day to throw out all of your red dye restrictions and all of your sugar, fat stuff. Christmas. Get rid of it today. Throw it out. You have a good time. Yes. Doctor's orders. Absolutely. Doctor pj. That is. Yes I am. I mean, I am a doctor. A doctor prescription. That's go prescription. Spiritual prescriptions. You know what? That'd be a really great gift. We should get you a pad. Or you can write spiritual prescriptions for people. That would be so funny. Yeah. And if it had one of those, what do you call that? Once again, was this duplicate on the bottom? Uhhuh, you should get one of those. Alright guys. Sure. My wife would love that. Amanda, you seem stressed. Let me write spiritual prescription Anyways, dude, your family would love this. All right, guys. Day, I'm not gonna take it. You can have it would day if you guys wanna do it. You're free to take that idea anyways. Yeah. Merry Christmas, y'all. It's a good day for us to be in God's word. And yeah, it's yeah, such a good day. Christmas is awesome. A great day. It's awesome. And if you're, if you're healthy. If you're healthy, I love you. Stress that. I hope you guys are healthy. I know there's lots of sickness going around and it happens every year. Not as bad this year, though. It's true. In fact, yesterday was unseasonably warm. It was. And I, you know, I liked it. I have liked it. Yesterday I was a little put off 'cause I had to turn on my air conditioner to cool off my master bedroom. I was not happy about that. Have you seen this weekend? I have not. Friday's supposed to be 83. Saturday's supposed to be 3 83. Yep. Alright, I'm going, I'm gonna go surfing or something. I don't even surf. I'll figure it out. Yeah. So, and then it's gonna cool off again next week, but that's great. Anyways, I don't mind it. I, I really don't, I just, yeah. I hope Christmas is a little cooler. Well, we've got a letter that was written to us Oh, electronically. Oh, okay. We call that an email. Yes. Well, you know, it's an e-letter. Alright. By one of our faithful listeners and also faithful editors of the podcast. Oh, yeah, I know who these are. S uh, Matthew. That's right. Yeah. He asks good questions. He does, he addresses us. Did you notice his dear. Yes, yes. Optimistic overseers. Dear optimistic overseers. Yes. So, and he says this, he says, what are the things that everyone listed in Hebrews 11 had an assurance of despite not seeing? That's an excellent question. It's a great question because we're dealing with all these Old Testaments saying, so what did they have faith in? Because we talk about the faith that saves being faith in Jesus Christ. Right? If you went back to Moses and said, or to Abraham, or to any of them and said, Hey, what do you think about Jesus? They would've said, you mean John? Yeah. Al Joshua, the guy that led people into the Moses land. Yeah. Or into the Promised Land. Moses Land. I'm gonna start calling it the Moses Land. Moses land sounds like a great theme park idea that could fund our church building. There it is. Moses Land and Prosper Texas folks. Anyways, it actually might fly here just to say it. It it could, it could, yeah. What were they trusting in it? That's, that's a great question. And he even lists some suggestions here, and I think his, some, his suggestions are insightful. He said, were they trusting that God exists and reward those who seek him? Yes. Were they trusting that God will keep his promises? Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah. Were they trusting that God will prepare a way to, to have your sins forgiven? Yes. Yeah. Yes, yes to all of those. And that's the follow up to that, he says, is there some common set of propositions that Abel and Rahab and s Samson and Paul all agreed on, or is the content of their faith different? I would say I think the content of their faith was different than what we assume and what we understand the content of saving faith to be today because we have it informed by the new Covenant, the New Testament, our understanding of Christ being on the backside of the cross, so forth and so on. But for them, all of those things that you observe, Matthew, is part of what it was for them to believe God and for God to count to them as righteousness. So it had different variances for different people based on the context in which they found themselves. I'd say that's even true today. We all have a common object of our faith, and it's often, although not always clearly articulated, it is Jesus Christ who lived in our place, died as a substitute for us, and then rose again for our justification. So we could all say that's the object of our faith. That's where the weight of our faith is placed. But once you're saved, really depending on your Bible reading and your study habits and what you know about God the propositions of your faith. Although there are basic propositions that we all confess, the meat and the content of it changes dramatically. For those of us who had the privilege of going through seminary, I know more things about God than you do, and that's not a flex, that's just the reality. I had the chance to study. We've had the chance to go and learn these things, and that's part of the fun of it. And therefore, my faith is gonna look different. My faith is gonna feel different because they have these things. And so I would say it's true for them as well. So they're faithful. Their faith, however, was based largely on what they heard orally from God through the word. And I would say most of that is gonna be what you hear in the Pentateuch the genesis through Deuteronomy. You have a lot of that, that I'm sure was communicated by faithful Jews and rabbis who told them about, here's how Joshua conquered and here's what Moses did. And eventually you have a whole corpus of scripture that's written in the word and it became the scrolls that you and I now read today. We read this in the Old Testament, so for all of them they had. Faith, and I think that's the point in Hebrews chapter 11, they had faith, they had an assurance of things. Hope for that is what they knew about God and what they could trust about God. And that's why Jesus could say, if you have faith like a child. If you have childlike faith, this is what God esteems and approves of. It doesn't mean you're childish. That's different. We're not saying you should be perpetually immature, but that you have faith that is simple and trusting and what they could trust about God, God approved of and God loved. And therefore, God highlights and adorns that even at the point of saying, look, Ray Hab and Jeff the, they had faith clearly, and I think Hebrews 11 gives me the sense of it was a saving faith. Even though their faith was in some cases woefully misapplied. Mm-hmm. Even so, God honors that. Yeah, I would agree. I would agree. Well, let's get into our Christmas reading. It's such Christmasy books today too. Second Peter and Jew just give you the warm fuzzies. I, I, false teaching and I love that. Yeah. Well, did, didn't Santa Claus punch someone in the face? He did. Well. Or it's unclear. It's, it's, yeah. Legend says, yeah, well, church history is a bit blurry sometimes. Right. I'm just gonna go with it and assume it's a true story. So tell us a story. What happened? Well, Saint Nicholas, that's, its Christmas after all, was was present at a church council where a man named Arias was denying the humanity of Christ. And so Saint Nicholas being a man who knew his scriptures well legend has, it was not standing by that because this was such a threat to the gospel and such a threat to the understanding of who Jesus is, that Saint Nicholas decided to haul off and punch Aria in the nose, just decked him right in the face. He decked those halls. He, yeah. Yes, yes. There it is. And so that's the legend, that place. So false teaching definitely has a role in Christmas. It does. Second Peter and Jude do fit. You're right. Good connection. That was that was good. Well, second Peter and Jude are also connected because they share a lot of commonalities. We'll get to that in just a second here. But second, Peter is written to a group of Christians to make sure that they understand the difference between genuine Christianity and the fake Christianity of false teachers. That's why the first chapter opens with him saying, if you want to confirm your calling election and you should, you should practice these things. And he lists all of these different things that he says we should supplement our faith with. If you think about a supplement, A supplement is something that is meant to come alongside of, to boost, to help to provide. A benefit to. And so he's saying all of these things can supplement your faith such that you will have a greater certainty, a greater confidence in your standing before the Lord. And so he tells them, do these things, and in doing them, you will be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election because this is the way that you will be granted an entrance into eternity with the Lord. One of my favorite verses and one that's often cited in biblical counseling material is second Peter. One three. His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness. So this is one of the verses that you'll often get pointed to when we start asking the question, well, do you have enough resources to go through this marital difficulty or this particular struggle that you're going through, or, this season of infertility or whatever it is. You have everything you need in the word of God. And it continues through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory in excellence. And that's one of Peter's themes in the book. Knowledge, knowledge about Christ. In fact, verse two, he says, may grace in peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God. And then he says, you have the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory in excellence. Look out for that word as you read 'cause it's all over. I love also in later on in chapter one, where he talks about his experience of being an eyewitness to the transfiguration. And you expect him to say, so listen to me. Listen to all the cool things I have to tell you because I saw the resurrected and I saw, or, well, he did see the resurrected Jesus, but I saw the transformed Jesus on the mountain. And then he goes on and he says but actually, you know what? We have something better. We have something even more fully confirmed, which you would do well to pay attention to as a lamp shining in a dark place until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts. And that is, we have the scriptures and he goes on to talk about the power of the scriptures. So he says, yeah, I may have been there to see Christ transfigured on the mountain there, but what we have is just as good, at least because we have the inspired word of God that which is not coming from the will of man, but is from God. As men spoke, as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. He says in the last verse there of chapter one, so Peter just pointed to the importance of the word of God because he's about to go on to talk about those that undermine the word of God as the false teachers, and this is one of the classic passages, pastor pj. Let's talk about this really quickly here. When we talk about the word of God being infallible. People are gonna say, well, God used humans though. And humans are fallible and humans sin all the time. And so it makes perfect sense that there would be errors in the Bible because he used people. And we would say, well, but second Peter one, 20 and 21 tells us not. And so here's where we start getting into some challenging waters. Let's try to identify this because it sounds like. According to second Peter, that God took over these people and maybe mechanically or robotically just, he made them write down exactly what he wanted them to do 'cause men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. So first of all, let's talk about the kind of interaction the Holy Spirit had with these people, whether it was mechanical, robotic, and then secondly, talk about how if it is by God's will, this is what it says here, how that either moderates or eliminates errors in the text. Sure. We see a different personality in all of the scripture writers. You can look at the writings of Peter and the writings of Paul and the writings of John, and you can pick up on different personalities. Even vocabulary is gonna be different. One of the reasons why, for example, we don't believe that Paul wrote the letter to the Hebrews is because the Greek and the letter to the Hebrews is of a level that is beyond any of the Greek that we find in any of the other letters that Paul wrote. So we see evidence within the pages of scripture themselves, that the personalities of the authors, their knowledge, their background were preserved even as the Holy Spirit superseded what they were writing to be that which God wanted them to write. So God used men, but he used even their personality to write the things that they wrote you, you think about some of the passages that Paul writes, like Second Corinthians chapter 11, you see some sarcasm there where Paul's like, you wanna boast? Okay, let's boast, I'll boast for a minute. Lemme boast in all the things that I've suffered. Yeah. Or in Philippians chapter three when he says, if anyone has a right to boast in the flesh, I have a right to boast in the flesh. Look at all my life. Look at all these things I've written. Peter's a different guy. He doesn't do those same things. He writes in a different way. So we do see their personalities and even some of their own experiences come through. John, once you read, you'll read it in, in first John, you'll see how much he focuses on the concept of love and abiding. And then you read John 13 and you read John 15 through 16. You'll see these things where the writers have their. Their passions that they emphasized even in their letters. But the spirit was the one guiding the content of what was being written. What they wrote was what God wanted written, but God used their personalities in the process of recording it. So when he carries them along, then it's not robotic, it's not mechanical. It's not like Jesus is just, or the spirit is just taking over someone's hand and they're going into a trance and they're just communicating whatever's coming outta their mouth. Right. They're. Spirits is working along with the Holy Spirit. Okay, so here's a more challenging question. Some people will say, well, look, you're going to this book to prove that this book is reliable. Infallible is the word that we typically use. Mm-hmm. Infallible in errand. Mm-hmm. And inspired by God. Most people will quickly point out this is circular reasoning. And I think if we're honest, we would say, well, yes it is. How do we feel about that? Is this a problem? Should we go and start calling people and saying, this is fake. We should just jump ship. No, I don't think circular reasoning takes this out of the realm of whether or not It's true. And I think at the end of the day when we're dealing with eternity, we have to apply what's called the law of non-contradiction. That is that. All things can't be true at the same time. Two competing truths can't be equally true at the same time. So whether it is you're gonna take the word of God or you're gonna take the Quran and you're gonna choose, which 1:00 AM I gonna believe, those are competing truth claims. You can't believe both. You're gonna have to make a decision on that. Some people decide, you know what? My God is myself, and so as an atheist, then I'm gonna reject all sources of authority and I'm gonna just trust in my own intelligence. To get me through this life. I think when we look at the word of God, it gives us the best understanding of the current state of things. I think it gives us the best understanding of sin. It gives us the best understanding of human nature. It gives us the best understanding of where we're headed in hope and justice in all of these things. That add up to being something that is, is reliable and worthy of our trust. There's other fields like textual criticism that you can get into to see that the text has not been corrupted over the ages and has been reliably trans. Over the ages, that can give you confidence in the content of what we have. But at the end of the day, what's gonna make you believe this is God's word is God. God's gonna open your eyes and give you the faith to trust in him and to trust in His word at the same time. Yeah. And one quick note here, this is not unique to Christianity. Sure. Every religion, anyone, someone, even for someone who's not religious, you're gonna have to appeal to a standard. And eventually that standard, if it's the ultimate standard, if it's the highest standard, you can't appeal to anything else. You're gonna say, well, why do you believe that? Well, because. That it says so, so everyone's gonna get to this point if you have an ultimate standard. And so this is unavoidable if you have a highest authority, Christians do. And our highest authority is God. And we believe God has spoken through his word. And so we're gonna say, well, why do you believe what you believe? 'cause the Bible tells me, why do you believe the Bible? 'cause the Bible tells me why do you believe that the Bible is true? Well, the Bible tells me, right? So, right. You have to, it's circular. We agree with that. We acknowledge that. Every highest authority is gonna be circular. It's unavoidable. So this is not unique to Christians. The question that you should all ask is, is my highest authority a good and righteous highest authority? Mm-hmm. Does it make sense to all the things that you just said? Yeah. And if you can pass those barriers, then you're at least on the right track. We would say the highest authority of God is evidence in scripture because of several reasons not the least of which being the word of God itself. Yep. Second Peter deals a lot with false teaching and so does Jude, and this might be a good time to, to bring up the fact that there are parallels between these two books. And so we might read them and think, man, this, in fact, there's even some that, that it sounds almost like they're quoting from each other on this. And so, a lot of people have questioned that or raised a red flag on that. Who's borrowing from who? And the short answer is we don't know exactly who might be borrowing one from the other. But we do see a lot of similar themes here and. We have to ask ourselves a question is that really a problem in our current cultural context, a academic integrity is something that is, is at the forefront of a lot of people's mind, especially with the advent of AI and whether or not AI is the same as plagiarism and so forth and so on. But did Peter plagiarize, Jude did Jude Plagiar plagiarize Peter. At the end of the day, I think we have to remember what their goal was. Their goal was not to submit an academic paper. Their goal was to write, to build up and encourage and edify and protect the church. And there were common themes that they're both writing and it seems like even maybe very similar themes to one another that were borderline. Borrowing from the content of each other. But number one I think they, they both would've been okay with that because they're brothers in arms pursuing the same thing. And then number two, this is for the building up and the good of the body of the church. Neither of them are submitting an essay in this, or an article or a paper for personal credit that's gonna be published in, in, they're saying, make sure that I cite this person or I cite this person. So in this time, in this context. I don't find any problem with the fact that Jude and Peter May have been writing similar thoughts or even one borrowing from the other person because they're writing to different contexts and they're writing about the point, as Jude says, that they need to contend for the faith, and that's something that we all as Christians need to be concerned with. That's right. And that concern is never gonna go away, even on a day like Christmas when our job is to, we're just reading the word, we're talking about the Bible, and we're going about our day and celebrating things. We can't let our guard down and we always have to be vigilant, spiritually aware and alert that there's always gonna be threats to the gospel. There's always gonna be threats to your faith, and your job is to be aware of them. And to reinforce against them. And that's part of what we do on Christmas. We're reading scripture. We're talking about the reason that we're doing this. It's not just about the presents, it's not just about the fun treats and things, although that's great, we should celebrate. But our job as Jude reminds us is to always remain vigilant to contend for the faith, once for all delivered to the saints. And praise God, we have that. Yeah. Praise God Indeed. Peter does back in, in second Peter chapter three, talk about the coming return of Christ. And he says, a lot of people are saying, man, this is slow. And Peter says, just remember God is not slow as some count slowness, but he's patient towards all, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. Here we see God's heart that God does love. People enough to the fact, to the point that he sent Jesus as the sufficient sacrifice for anyone that would repent from their sins and put their trust in Jesus. And yet we know that not all will and not all have even historically. And so we're left to conclude that there must be a difference between the desired will of God and what we know to be the decretive will of God or the declarative will of God. And we see a little bit of that here in Peter where Peter says, God desires that everyone should come to repentance and. Faith, and yet what the decreed will of God is according to his perfect plan is that. Not everybody will. And how do we reconcile those things? Man, that is hard. That's difficult. And I wish that I could give you one more Christmas present to open by reconciling that perfectly for you today. I can't. And so I think we have to recognize that the task he's given us, because he does desire all men to be saved. Is to go out with the gospel, and that's what he means by hasting, the coming day of the Lord. The more you share the gospel with people and the more people come to faith in Jesus, the faster, so to speak, as our sending pastor used to say, all the seats on the bus are gonna be filled up, and when all the seats on the bus are filled up with the church, that's when Jesus comes back for his bride. And so one of the things that we can do is recognize God desires more people to be saved. We should desire that too. And we should go out and share the gospel with as many as we can. And that's exactly what we hope to do this year. We wanna do a lot more of that. Amen. And get really good at being an outreaching kind of church. So if you're part of this congregation, buckle up. Yeah. It should be a good year. Yep. Let's pray and then we'll be done with this episode. God, we are so grateful for the gift of Jesus, which we celebrate today. We're thankful for salvation. We're thankful for redemption. We're thankful for everything that is representative in what Jesus came to do for us. I pray that we would celebrate well this Christmas, no matter where we find ourselves, Lord, that we would find reason to hope in the great joy, the good news of great joy that is. The news of Jesus Christ, that this world is not all there, is that there's a world that's even better that's coming for us as even we've talked about in second Peter. And we do want to hasten that day where we will be with you forever. And we pray that we would do that. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Keep bring your Bibles, tune in and get tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. And let me be the first to say Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. I thought you were gonna say Happy New Year. Not yet. By all.

Well, thank you for listening to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast! We're honored to have you join us. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about our Church at compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review, to rate, or to share this podcast on whatever platform you're listening on, and we hope to see you again tomorrow for another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast.

Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said