Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello and good morning. It is Thursday and February 5th, and if you are a celebrator of Valentine's Day, it is coming up around the corner here. So maybe make plans. Make those reservations order you don't go out on the day of though, right? That custom bouquet you never go out on the day of. It's Saturday this year. Yeah, that's the worst day It is. I go out around the Valentine's Day, not on Valentine's Day. Yeah, who does that? Yeah, probably lots of people. We're not trying to throw you under the bus here. That's true. You know, I had a question come in recently. It's not through the podcast normal channels. Okay. But it's related to something that you did on Sunday. You brought up this gal from the women's, from Preston Preparation, Preston Prestonwood, pregnancy Center, Prestonwood Pregnant. That that was close. Yes. Prestonwood Pregnancy Center. And she made a passionate appeal for help and for prayer to support the movement. And by that we mean pro-life, right? I had a conversation with somebody after that, and they're not a Christian. But they were asking how do Christians, and I guess he has talking points, he's heard things online, but how do Christians deal with the question of the R word? Mm-hmm. And the things that happen after that. So if a baby occurs, there's a pregnancy after that, why would you make the mother go through that? Yeah. Doesn't, isn't this one of those times where it's justified Yeah. To do something like this? Why or why not? Talk about that. Yeah. I think we need to talk about the separation of the life the mother is carrying from the life of the mother. And that's one thing that I think the pro-choice the death culture doesn't get right. And that is that they deny that the life has its own rights that that child has just as much of a right to live as anybody else on the face of the planet does. And it's not even a question of is it life anymore? That used to be the battlefield for the question of Roe v, Wade and everything else. A lot of times now you'll get those that are pro-choice, that will say, we don't have a problem telling you that this is a living clump of cells, or whatever it is that they wanna call it. Fetus. Yeah. They're saying it doesn't have any rights and which is Latin for baby. Yes. Even to the point of birth and to the point of even sometimes now in some states, live birth takes place and there's still a window where a mother can decide at that point even what to do. Yeah. California just extended it like months or something. Yeah. Which is tragically and horrifically wicked. So that would come back to the scenario that you just asked. That baby is not guilty of the sin that led to the conception of that baby. That what led to the conception of the baby. Her horrible, sinful, no doubt about it. But that baby is life. And as Christians, we have to come back to the fact that this life is a life that God has created. God doesn't create life on an accident. God doesn't say, oops, I didn't mean for that one. So let's go ahead and take that one out. And that's whether that is. Is this instance, or you've got a situation where they run the tests on the baby in utero and find out that this baby is gonna be born with deformities or born with genetic issues, cognitive issues, whatever the life is still precious in the sight of God. Now, long term, what does that look like? Are there situations where it might be too much for that mother to raise that child? Sure you could see a scenario like that, and that's where, as Christians, I think it's important that we do support things like adoption and promote those options when necessary. But I think we can also understand and believe that God's big enough to redeem a situation, even as horrific as that, to cause that mother to love that child in a way that is just like any other mother child relationship when someone responds with, that's incredibly cruel. It's cruel to make a young woman do that. She'll be reminded every day for the rest of her nine months carrying that child and perhaps the rest of her life, knowing that there's a child out there that has half of her DNA and half of this other guy. Yeah, it's cruel to make her do that. How would you respond to someone who's saying, this is horrific to make her do this? She'd had no choice in the matter. Yeah. She's not a participant. This seems like an obvious case where we want to mitigate her trauma and her suffering By, I mean, today there's options where you can go to the pharmacy right within a few hours and get something to cause things to be right. Flushed out or even in the mail? In the mail. I guess I say that only because conception can take several hours. Yeah. After the deed is done. Yeah. So in theory then, if several hours within that timeframe, she's able to go to the CVS and pick up something to cause the uterus to. Reject its layer. Right? Is that okay? Can she do that? 'cause that's not technically an abortion. And yet we don't know. Right. We don't know because we don't know whether life was gonna conceive or not. And so I would say no. It, that, that would not be okay. And coming back to this, I. I think as the church, we should be ready to walk through this process with this young woman. I don't think this is a situation of just looking at her going, well, you can't because it's wrong to kill a baby, and so you need to move on with your life and carry this baby, and then you can give it up for adoption. And then the, there's the bandaid and everything's fine. No, we need to be ready and willing to walk through this and to love her and to help her see the gift of life and to help her understand that this is a child that God has created and that God is even giving to her. And I think. It pursuing her if she's not saved with the gospel or if she is encouraging and reminding her of biblical truths and biblical realities about this life and that this life is not the monster that did this thing to her, but that this life is a life that is here and the. The better choice between it's an awful thing. It's a cruel thing. Well, we have to say, okay, is it more cruel to say we want you to carry this baby to full term? Or is it more cruel to say, no, we're gonna go ahead and extinguish this life. We're gonna take this person out. We're gonna kill this person so that you don't have to go through these nine months of a difficult season. And that's where again, we have to put our money where our mouth is and be willing to walk through that with her and support her and help her plan for this, and help her provide for if that's necessary and so forth and so on. Yeah. Amen to that. Man. They, the problem that I see is that the justice of the baby's denied, right? The baby is an innocent bystander of this, right? He didn't choose it. She didn't say, oh look, I'm gonna be born. Right. She and he are. Are just there, they just show up and they have no idea about the circumstances that led to their arrival. But the baby doesn't deserve to be punished, right? Any more than, a grandson of a slave holder deserves to be punished because his grandpa held the slaves. He has nothing to do with that. Yeah, he might've benefited from that, but it doesn't mean that he's morally culpable. And so, in a similar sense, we're gonna say the baby is innocent, as innocent as they could be. Obviously we do believe in the depravity of man, but the baby didn't. Choose to do anything evil. The baby is just a, an innocent bystander. And so we don't wanna punish the baby for the dad's evil deeds. And we would always say that a baby is an unmitigated good. A baby's always an unmitigated good, even if the circumstances that led to that baby are an unmitigated bad, an evil it gets complex because, I guess related to this then, lots of people are concerned about taking vaccinations. Mm-hmm. Because what was used is an embryonic stem cell, or multiple, mm-hmm. Stem cells. Mm-hmm. To create this vaccination. Do we apply a similar principle to that, even though it might've been evil, what was done to gain those embryonic stem cells? Is the vaccination something that we could say, well, that's an unmitigated good. Assuming that the science is all there, obviously there's complications with some of the latest mRNA vaccinations. Right? But is it a similar principle at work there? I think it is. You taking the vaccine is not making you complicit in the act that led to the development of the vaccine. Right. And if you've got the option of we can just take these cells and destroy them and they can go into the ether or whatever, or we can take them and there can be some good to be found in this. It's not that we celebrate the act that led to that, but you're not complicit in the act itself by saying, I'm gonna take that vaccine. Right. So we can still say we can honor the life of that baby, right? And celebrate the life of that baby. Because even though the circumstances by that led to that baby were evil, the baby itself, the baby himself is an unmitigated. Good? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Big questions. Exodus 37 through 38, that's our Old Testament reading for today, and then we'll be in Matthew chapter 23 for the rest of the woes to the Pharisees. Chapter 37, we get more on the furniture specifically with the tabernacle. So we've got the arc, we've got the table, we've got the lampstand and the altar of incense here. In chapter 38, we'll get into the altar of burnt offering, the bronze basin and the outer court there. So, this is a kind of the heart of the Tabernacles, what we're reading about here. And one of the things that struck me this time, I, we talked about how there's a lot of repetition in this section and there is, I think in both sections it's there. But what. Stood out to me this time reading it a second time. And again, this is one of the evidences of why it's good to read these things multiple times is all of the gold that's present in the tabernacle, just all of it is so many things overlaid with gold. Overlaid with gold. Overlaid with gold. It was a, it was an opulent. Edifice. The building itself was just beautiful with the curtains and everything. But then when you walked inside, it would've been brilliant with the lights from the lamp stand shining and burning, and then seeing it reflect off of all of the gold there. This was quite the showy worship center, for lack of a better term. Yeah. And what's interesting about that is the closer you get into the concentration of God's glory the more gold there is. Mm-hmm. And the further out you get from it, the less gold there is. And as we talk about this in chapter, I think 38, we start looking at bronze which has to do a lot more with the judgment of God. In fact, that's one of the things that. Sets Solomon's kingdom apart is when they lose all the gold. It becomes bronze laden as opposed to golden. So the closer you get to the concentration of God's glory the more precious stones, the more precious material metal is being used. And of course, the idea behind that is. God deserves the most precious God deserves the most opulent, the most glorious, because he is those things. And even those things are just a shadow and a flicker of the true glory that emanates from God himself. The making of the arc. The arc is his throne. He doesn't have a body. Obviously. John chapter four tells us God is spirit and therefore he doesn't have a place to sit, but it is representative of his throne. It's the concentration and this is the arc that sits behind. The Holy of Holies that, yeah, that curtain where it's protected. And so this is the thing that you would only see once a year. This is the thing that everybody would love to see today. I think it's, there's one of above in heaven. I don't know if it's the original right, but one is in heaven. And so the arc itself is probably the highest and holiest of objects. But the table that that he's referring to here in verses 10 through 16. This is the table of the bread, is this? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The shirt. The table for the bread. Yeah. So this one, if, when you walk into the tabernacle, this would've been on your right side. The left side would've been the menorah which is right below this section here. So left and right. The table for the bread is where the bread would sit. And this is the representation of God having communion and fellowship with the 12 tribes. There was 12 pieces of bread there, a lampstand. That was continually lit, would've represented the spirits and his work among his people, them also being the light of the world, God being their light, the altar of incense. This is also sitting right before the curtain. What did this represent? The altar of incense the. Sorry, sorry. Looking up something else while you were asking that, is that x.com that you're on which is not, it's the site that it sounds like it's, no, it's not. It's like Twitter. No, I was looking up something about the lamp stand that I had a question about earlier, but the alter of incense that, that aroma, that we talked about act Yes. Couple days ago. Whenever what it was for man or for God. Oh yeah. The pleasing aromas there. That's part of the pleasing aromas that were part of the worship of the the incenses. I also noticed later on and we're not there yet, but the smoke from the altar of incense or from the incense is the cloud that covers the mercy seat. Mm-hmm. Which is interesting. Yeah. And I guess in part we see the. Alter, or we see incense at least reappear in the book of Revelation. Yeah. And the incense represents the prayers of the saints. They go up to the Lord. And so I think there's something still connected in there. I think Genesis, or rather Exodus and Revelation are connected in that regard. But the altar of incense, y that this was not often touched either. So the arc and the altar, those two pieces of furniture were the super most important ones. Yeah. They're the ones that are closest to this century anyway. Yeah. Yeah. I was curious when I was reading this time around about the almond flowers. Why the lamp stand had the almond blossoms on it. Oh, and the CAEs, I think it's design. No, it is design, but also the suggestion was the almond blossom connected it to Aaron's staff. Because when Aaron staff butted the representing his priestly authority, it was sprouting and budding and bo bearing almond blossoms overnight. And so I didn't realize that was an Alman staff. At least that's what the the resource that I consulted, which is Ian Duge and Kent Hughes from numbers. And so their commentary on numbers points to the fact that Aaron's staff would've sprouted own blossoms. That's after though, right after this. Yeah. His staff doesn't bud until later. Unless, yeah, I think we're before that. We are, before that I think it's still a connection point. But what the re relevance is, they wouldn't have known that at that time. Yeah, that's well pointed. Yeah. And then also just the idea of life because the almond blossoms were some of the earliest blossoms that sprouted in the spring. No, I don't know that. So cool. Yeah, and I guess that's a valid question of how much we press symbolism in some of these things, like why there's pomegranates that are woven in and why there's, these things and that some of it we don't know. Yeah. And there is the mystery there. And that's where you're what you just did is instructive because you're gonna have to say, okay, is there a symbol here? Well, let me look through scripture and see has it been used elsewhere for a certain purpose? And that's a really helpful way to say is a symbolism that I'm thinking about, is that a. A helpful way to approach this, or am I just inventing things? Because you can get really creative with scripture and there's some people that would encourage you to do that. We wanna be as tethered as possible to the text, and that just means saying, that just means looking at these symbols and saying, where can I see some of this connected? And scripture does a good job of that for us. One of those symbols. I think your point about the bronze is helpful too and 'cause you might be tempted to think, well maybe bronze, is the burnt altar a higher melting point than gold? It's actually the opposite. Gold has a higher melting point than bronze does. That's true. Yeah. So this isn't just that they're trying to make it more functional. I think your points either the quality and the distance from the Holy of Holies, theirs is notable. The rest of chapter 38, we get more of these materials, all the gold used. We're gonna start counting things up. We're gonna start giving numbers here as far as how much we see the count of the men, again, as 600, 3,550 men. And that's keeping with the number of those that left with Moses at the Exodus that we read about earlier. Mm-hmm. And so we see some consistency there between those numbers. But this is. The Israel coming together to say we're behind this. This is gonna be exciting. We want this. And I think seeing the effects in Moses and even just Moses coming down the from the mountain with his face, a glow, would've motivated them even more to say, let's get this done. This is a good thing for us to do. I still just wanna know who these women are. Verse eight. He made the Bain of bronze and its stand of bronze from the mirrors of the ministering women who ministered in the entrance of the tent of meeting. These women perplexed me. In case you're wondering, by the way, bronze was used highly polished bra bronze was brushed to make it reflective. Yeah. And so that's what he's talking about here. So the bronze alter and basin were, may, maybe not as dingy as you might think. They were highly polished and they came from the mirrors. What's so interesting here is that you have women who are serving serving in the entrance of the attentive meeting. Which is, in my estimation, as I understand that, that would be entering into the court. Is that how you understand that, or would they be at the entrance of the actual tent? Yeah, I don't think they were at the entrance of the actual tent. Right. Yeah. So this would have to be like in the courtyard area. Right. They're standing somewhere. So this is fascinating because I would expect. This is my expectation and this is wrong. Clearly, I would expect that if whatever their function is, God would've said, and by the way, you may allow the women to serve in this capacity. They can be the welcome team, or they can be the hospitality team, and here's what they do and here's how they're supposed to be clean and all these things. None of that in the text. Yeah. Not a single shred of anything about these women. And here they are. They're just serving and clearly this is okay. This is not looked down upon. This is not corrected. Moses doesn't have an issue with this. Aaron has no issue. This is just stated here, like this is a matter of fact. Whatever's happening here, it went without being said. It was one of those things like, of course this is what's happening. And I wanna know more. The scripture says nothing else about them except for one Samuel chapter two, where eli's sons Hni and PHUs and PHUs, yeah. Are doing things inappropriately with these ladies. That's the only other time you hear about them. Yeah. So I'm fascinated. I don't know what to do with that other than to say who are they? I don't know. Yeah. What do you do with that? Give us a principle. They're the mysterious things belong to the Lord. Secret things belong to the Lord. What's so interesting is that throughout this whole thing, and we're seeing it, Moses is following the Lord to the T. Yeah. And that's what's so commendable about Israel right now. Right. They're doing what they should do. Yeah. There are things that God didn't tell them to do that they're like, we're just gonna do this. And it was fine. Like these women. Yeah. Certainly women were involved in the cultic religions at the entrance of temples, right? As you're referring to For bad reasons. Yeah, for bad reasons. So maybe, maybe though it wasn't all bad reasons. Maybe there were things that they did that were, that made sense, that were beneficial. Maybe they had a serving capacity of providing, they had to, yeah. Something. So they were doing something here, and I think Israel's looking to redeem that in this role. That's a great, that's a great take on that. It's just the absence is glaring to me. It's, it's one of those things, God is so specific about what he wants, and yet, here we go. Here are you rest of chapter 23 in Matthew. Then we started yesterday as we looked at the first of. The seven woes, the first three of the seven woes. Now we're gonna get into it. Woe 4, 5, 6, and seven in the rest of chapter 23. And here he's gonna go much more after their hypocrisy. He's going to talk to them about them being like whitewashed tombs, which is quite an indictment. That's wo number six. Or wo number. Yeah, one. Number six, that they look good on the outside, but inside they're full of death. One. Number five. Similarly, you're like a bowl, a dish that looks good on the outside, but inside it's gross. You don't want to eat out of it. And he's just talking about, yeah, you're righteous on the outside, but you, the problem is you're not righteous on the inside. And this reminds me of. The Sermon on the Mount when Jesus began the Sermon on the Mount by saying, unless your righteousness exceeds outta the scribes and the Pharisees, you'll never enter the kingdom of heaven. The righteousness, the scribes and the Pharisees had they were great externally, but as Jesus goes on in the Sermon on the Mount to say that the problem is not all just. The external, but the problem is the internal. The problem is the heart. Even as Jesus begins to go through and en list those laws, you've heard it said, do not murder, but if you're angry with your brother you're guilty of this again here. He's coming after the Ferris. He's saying the same thing in a different way. You look good on the outside. You're righteousness on the outside. Fine, it's intact, but. Internally, you've got a massive problem and that's the issue that you really need to solve. Yeah. I still keyed in on verse 23 where he says, you've neglected the weightier matters of the law. Yeah. Which tells me that Jesus understands that there is a ranking of the laws. They don't all have the same bearing at the same time, but he doesn't let them off the hook. He says, look, you should have done the heavier things. Justice mercy, faithfulness without neglecting the lesser things. And so they're not off the hook. He's saying, great, you did a great job doing the itty bitty things, but you left out the most important things, which here he identifies as justice, mercy, and faithfulness. Yeah. The final woe you scribes and pharisees, you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous saying, if we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them. And so what Jesus is saying here is, you're perpetuating the same problem that your forefathers did. You, you are building. Their tombs. You appear like you're honoring them, but they were pointing to me essentially and me saying, and you're missing it all over again. And so you are perpetuating this. It's as though their blood is upon you. Again, it was upon your forefathers for rejecting them. It's upon you as well because you're rejecting the message, even though you see the one that's come to fulfill the message. Standing right here in your midst. In this last few verses here, I just wanna point to your attention as you read this. Notice how Jesus talks to Jerusalem and of course Jerusalem. He's not talking to the city, he's talking to people in there, obviously. Here's what he says. How often would I have gathered you? And he says, you were not willing. He doesn. Point to the sovereignty of God. He doesn't point to God's elective choice. He points to their willingness and he says, I would have done these things if you were willing to do those things. I think this is important and interesting. Important. Well, let me start with the interesting. It's interesting because scripture so often what we understand God is sovereign. He makes choices and ultimately the secret things belong to him, as we just quoted, Deuteronomy 29 29. Mm-hmm. But notice here he's saying, I would've done these things. You weren't willing. It's not that I wasn't willing. You weren't willing. Right? So interesting and important, important because we want to get the tenor of scripture, right? Mm-hmm. We believe everything scripture says, and so we're gonna say with God, he's sovereign overall things. And at the same time, there is a real, something that's happening here. There's a real choice that Jesus is pointed to. You. Were not willing, I was willing you weren't. So endlessly interesting. Don't simplify God. Don't put him in a box, as some of my friends would accuse me of when I became reformed. Don't put God in a box here by trying to simplify the way that this works. What we see here is that clearly Jesus says you had a genuine choice, however that worked out, but God is also sovereign. Yeah, no, for sure. And this is one of the reasons why y'all we're not gonna get bored in heaven. We're always going to have more to, to try to figure out about God and opportunities to ask more questions and get more answers, because it's not like we're gonna get to heaven and immediately understand how all this stuff works. We're gonna spend eternity trying to understand more and more and more about who he is and how he works and how he operates. That'll be fun. Maybe you'll have a podcast there still. Subscribe to our heavenly podcast. We'll compete with Paul and Peter. Oh, I think they'll win. Well, I'm gonna try outdo 'em. All right, let's pray. God, I pray that we would be hungry to know as much about you as we possibly can, and that certainly comes from your word. And so I pray that you'd keep us reading, keep us questioning, keep us asking good questions, not just letting our eyes glaze over the page, but looking for things that we want to know more about. And so thanks for your word and the opportunity that we have to know it and to read it and to understand it. Lord, make us more like Jesus as a result of our time in it through your spirit. So we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Keep in your Bibles, y'all and tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. We'll see you then. Bye.

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