Hey, and welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello. Hello. I can't say that. No, you can. You can. I'm not gonna mention what day today is 'cause you don't like today. So I'm not gonna say anything about what day it is today. I don't like today.

Oh, it's April 1st. It's April 1st. I think. That's not, I hate it. I just, I get bamboozled, I believe what I'm looking at. And they're like, oh wow, that's that. That's a big thing that's happening. And then I'll think, wait a minute.

Yeah, wait a minute, it's April 1st. I don't even know 'cause we're recording this ahead of time. But with this current situation, politically geopolitically with the president that we have, like how are you gonna know if it's an April Fool's joke or not? Shit, you know what

that is a fa, let's just suspend April Fool's jokes. We should this year? Maybe for the next couple years. Yeah. Let's just not do it because you don't know if it's a headline anymore or if it's the, if it's a fake one or a real one.

Yeah. Hard to know. These days it's gonna be like Trump sends Elon to grab some of the sun to throw it at Putin or something like that. That's possible. Possible. I could see that happening.

Yeah. Hey, I wanna play a game with you called I don't know we're gonna call it, but we're gonna, we're gonna unpack some Christianese. Okay. I feel like there's terms that we all use and. I think we know what we're saying to each other. Okay. And we know what we're saying to each other, but often there's ambiguity, especially for an outsider. We have our APAs and we have things like that. Or what else do we have as an internal? I dunno hcp, iss another one. We don't use that one too much anymore. We don't. Things like that, Christianese, that really would do well to get explained so that we're on the same page. So let's just start with some easy ones. Would love for you to explain let's start with this one. Sometimes a pastor or other people will say, Hey, we just need a love on them. What does the term love on them mean? Yeah. Yeah. That one reminds me of doing

life together, right?

Yeah. Doing life together. But I, yeah, I guess you do life together and you love on them. That's how you do life together.

Yeah. It's the tangible expression of our. Affection for somebody else. I think when you've got somebody who is walking through a trial, somebody who's suffering to love on that person might be spending time with them, might be showing up, might be being present with them to love on them. Might be hey, they're, they've gone through it. They need some meals brought so that they don't have to think about dinner. We're gonna love on them by getting a meal train started to love on them. Those are some ways that we can love on people. Why do we love on

them? Like, why can't we just love them? Because one wonders why the on is in there in the first

place. I don't know who the first person to do it was. So you're gonna, seems weird. You're gonna have to find him in eternity and be like, dude,

what were you saying? I say, what were you? Yeah. I think it's a bit icky if you're an outsider. Like why are you loving on them? Yeah. Just love them.

I don't know. It's like the dog loves on somebody by gets all like in their lap and wants to be around them and everything else like that. It's just that affection that is shown by loving on someone. That's a weird phrase. Okay, how about this one? God won't give you more than you can handle. Yeah. We can go to the Bible and say, God does tell us that he's not gonna tempt us beyond what we're able to handle. He okay, so talks about that. So maybe it's not entirely true's. But as far as giving us more than we can handle, I don't know that we can find a place in the Bible that we can say, God's not gonna overwhelm us. There's gonna be times in our life where we're gonna be overwhelmed. And he's, and that's the point. Exactly. Yeah. He's gonna do that to break us of our pride, to break us of our self-reliance, to cause us to maybe we're gonna be disciplined for a season where he's gonna overwhelm us and we're gonna be. Having to fight sin and put sin off during that season. Yeah. Can he, can we be tempted beyond what we can handle? No. That's a promise. Biblically, but he may overwhelm us that may happen. Okay. You're doing great

so far. Yes. So far. You got five points Yes. On your side. Okay. Let's do one more word. Okay. Out, out of a hundred, by the way. Okay. Another word that I think we use and this one's a little more serious. Okay. Now let's talk about the word disciple. Disciple or discipleship. Let's use discipleship. Yeah. This is a word that we use. Throw it around all different places. Can you give us a succinct idea of what this is?

Succinct. That's the key word there, huh? Yep. Yeah. Part of what we equate with discipleship in our church most readily is we'll talk about partners, our one-on-one discipleship program. In fact, that's what the way we de define that and describe that. But discipleship is more than a, a. Program, and whether you've been through partners or you've been through another book or something like that if we stop there, if we just say, this is what discipleship is, it's to go through this book with someone else, then we've really limited what it really is. If you think about the disciples of Jesus, they followed him for three years and so they learned from him and they experienced those moments of wisdom and. Teaching both that was gonna be formal and informal with him. And they had opportunities to ask him questions and they had opportunities to just see him interact with other people and learn passively secondhand from watching the way he did things with others. And I think that's such a good picture of discipleship. Discipleship for us as a church is something that is gonna look similar. And sometimes it's gonna be for a short season, sometimes it's gonna be for multiple years. But it, it could be just a season where you are seeking out. Wisdom from somebody who typically is further along in the faith than you are, and a lot of times that's going to equal somebody who's probably a little bit more physically further along in age than you are, but not always. Sometimes somebody who's younger in age might disciple somebody who's older because the person who's older is a brand new believer and you have an opportunity to pour into their life. But. Discipleship. It can look like going through a book. It can also look like saying, Hey, I've got a question. I'm struggling in my marriage. Can you help me in my marriage? I've got this question with my kid over here. Can you've gone before me in here. What wisdom do you have to impart for me as a dad? It can take on a lot of different forms.

Yeah, it's a very broad term, isn't it? And it's one of those terms that can be applied to a lot of different situations. You might even call what we're doing a form of discipleship. Sure. We're not discipling one another. We're trying to disciple you as our listeners, and ideally what we have in mind here is that our church is listening to this. In fact, that's the whole reason we. Came to this idea that we ought to do this 'cause we want to help disciple you into knowing your Bible better so that you can apply it and consequently become a more mature Christian. But it can be applied in all sorts of different contexts or small group. It could be a form of discipleship. In fact, I think that's in intentioned behind the idea for small groups that you're you're being, you're, you have a facilitator who's leading you through the questions, but there's also teaching happening. There's teaching happening at different levels. Someone who's applying the word to their lives is saying here's how I understand it and I think about this passage and this cross-reference, and I've been reading this book. And they're gonna share things. And you're being taught the idea of discipleship is that you're learning, you, you're a learner who's learning from someone else who's wiser than you. And frankly, let's just be honest here. There's all kinds of situations where other people, even if they're at different stages of life, could be wiser than you about a given thing. Yeah, I'm gonna learn from that person. I wanna learn from anyone that God puts in our path. If they're biblically wise, that is, so discipleship is broad. It can be applied in very specific scenarios where it's a formal relationship, but often it's informal. And I guess where do you stand on that? Should we pursue formal relationships of discipleship or is it better just to say, Hey, one-off here, one-off there? What do you think about that?

I think it's gonna, again, be seasonal with people. When I was in seminary I brought this up with our leaders. I had a, a. Pretty formal relationship with one of the older men in the church as a discipler. And he was my mentor and he was one of the elders at our church too. And I met with him regularly, weekly and he would have a series of questions that he would go through with me and we would talk about those when we met together. And that was super helpful for me during that season. There were other seasons where I didn't have that directly. I think I've always had people in my life that I can turn to and know that I can go to and get help from or get counsel from, or get guidance or be discipled by. And I think that's something that's good for us to have that. Relationship somewhere in, in our perimeter. But it may be different that it may be formalized during some seasons and more casual during other seasons. What do you make of the phrase when someone says, everybody needs a Paul and everybody needs a Timothy? Yeah I think I. That is again, something that at points during your Christian life, you should be investing in others the way that Paul invested in Timothy. And you should have somebody who is a Paul investing in your life as that. But that's not always gonna be that you're at effective in that or that you are sharp enough spiritually for that during this season. So I, I don't. I like the concept. I think it's a helpful concept. I don't know that it's as practical day in and day out. Yeah. It's a good rule of thumb. I

think you should aspire to that and maybe wherever you are in your spiritual progress, maybe you could serve in the kids men area or do something like that. Yeah. But certainly if you can find yourself a Paul who has the capacity and the desire, who wants to, love on you. Maybe. See, I don't like that phrase, man. The way you said it too was like, I didn't say it weird. I said it the way that people use it,

love on you.

I'd say it like that. You did was true. That is reminiscent of a revival video. I did not say it that way. You stopped and you like got all weird. Say, I didn't get all weird. I didn't get all weird always. Oh, I'm trying to say is that it's good to have it. If you can find it, someone who has the capacity and bandwidth and wants to do it with you, man, that's a great thing. I've benefited so tremendously from people who did this with me.

Yeah.

I would not be the guy I am without several people in my life doing exactly this. So same if you can find it, go get it.

Yep. Agree. I agree. We need a title for this section, so if anybody has a title for this segment or unpacking Christian needs. And then maybe we could get like a fun like intro music to it. Loving on that to play in. Let's not do that one. Hey, let's jump into our Bible reading judges six and seven, just two chapters. And hey, guess what? Israel does evil again in the sight of the Lord. That's not a good thing. Lord gives him into the hand of the Midianites for seven years. John or judges John judges six verse one. The oppression in the Midianites one through five does some pretty significant damage to the land. This is bad for Israel. Israel. Verse six is brought very low. It says in the text, and cries out to help from the Lord. Cries out to help from Yahweh, from the covenant, God there. And he responds in verse 10 and says, I'm the Lord your God. You shall not fear the gods of the Amorites in whose lands you dwell, but you have not obeyed my voice. So God is calling them out on this. This is not, they're not just sending, getting a rap on the hand. And then God's okay, here's a judge. I'll let you out now. He's confronting their wickedness too and calling them out on, on their sinfulness. And so he shows up the angel of the Lord. Again, verse 11, the angel of the Lord. There he is again, shows up and and appears to Gideon and Gideon is going to be conscripted to be used by God. And yet Gideon, I'm conflicted over Gideon. I think Gideon, the Lord. I guess verse 12, the Lord is with you, almighty man of valor. And so we can't deny the fact that there are admirable traits about Gideon, that Gideon was a man of valor, of courage of bravado. And yet we just don't see that with him. I, he's skeptical. I feel like he's Zechariah like in, in John the Baptist dad, he's how can I know? But okay but how can I know? Just stood out to me more this time reading it than it has in years past. I think this relates to something you said

on the last podcast, which is that the absence of so many strong men. Maybe it's the fact that Gideon is the best of the lot. Yeah. Ought to stand out as being, wow, this guy's kind of a dud. He maybe not gonna be picked first on the team, but because all of Israel is running for last place right now, maybe he is first and God sees it, or he's calling him what he is not yet. I've also heard that interpretation of this particular passage, but I think maybe you might be onto something that maybe Israel just doesn't have a lot of Godly men who can step in, step into the batter's box and take a swing at it and God's you're the guy.

Yeah.

Yeah. Did you catch that baseball analogy? I just used? I did. And I appreciate that, man. I just feel like I've grown so much in this area. You're, you've grown, which it is great.

Lord

has blessed me, bro.

That's

great.

Yeah. By the way you angel of the Lord. Look at verse 22. I think we see another evidence here of this being the second member of the Trinity. Gideon perceived that he was the angel of the Lord, and Gideon said, alas, oh Lord God. For now I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face. That wouldn't be problematic if this isn't God. And in fact, verse 23, but the Lord said to him, notice who says it to him. The Lord does. Peace be to you. Do not fear you shall not die. Gideon's afraid he is gonna die because he understands man. I've seen not just an angel, but the angel of the Lord, the second per person in the Trinity. He's seen God face to face and Gideon's afraid he's gonna die at that point. What happens from here is Gideon is instructed to destroy this altar. This false alter the alter to the God of Baal. And he does and the people get upset. And again, this is not Gideon doing this under the guise of his bravado. He's doing this under the darkness of night. He's trying to do it so that nobody will know that he's done it. And yet it's found out that it's him. And he does stand up and he does say, yeah, no I did it. And it says that the spirit of the Lord then following this cloth him for battle for the battle ahead. Gideon obeys the Lord, but this is again, still, he's not. He's not the awe-inspiring leader that you that you hope him to be. In fact it says in verse 32 where was it? Verse Joe Ash, verse 31. Joe Ash said to all, who stood against him? So this is Gideon's dad. Will you contend to for bail or will you save him? Whoever contends for him shall be put to death by morning. Gideon's dad is the man here, not Gideon. Gideon does it, but it's his dad who's Hey if bail's that big, let him show up. But God's gonna use Gideon. And that's the rest of this in verse 36 through 40. Gideon's fleece. Sometimes you'll hear people today talk about I wanna put a fleece out for the Lord. This is not a good thing. I don't think I think this is again, lack of faith from Gideon, lack of courage, lack of trust from Gideon. And he says, Hey, let the fe fleece be dry. Let the fleece be wet, and then I'll believe that this is you. I don't think this is a good thing that we should do. I don't think we should say, okay, God, if this is your will, here's my fleece. I want you to show me that this is your will by, by doing this for me. So something unique about Gideon

is that in verse 34, it says Here, the spirit of the Lord clothed him. Can you talk about the rule of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament and what it means when the Holy Spirit cloth somebody?

Yeah. Think new covenant terminology. Jeremiah 31. Ezekiel 36. Am I in the ballpark there? Ezekiel 36, I think. New covenant language. Yeah. Six. Yeah, that sounds right. I think so. Therein we find out that the Lord is gonna put the spirit, put his spirit within the people under part of the new covenant, which signifies to us that's not part of the old covenant. And so the old covenant is what they're in right now, the mosaic covenant and the covenant law. And so what we're gonna find with the spirit in the Old Testament, under the old covenant, is that he would. Come and anoint people. He would rest upon people. He would clothe people. As it says here, he's gonna do this to Saul. We're gonna find out he's gonna do this with David. In fact, David is gonna pray in Psalm 51, on the heels of his sin with Bathsheba, he's gonna pray and say, God, take not your spirit from me. And so that was something that would happen, that God would remove his spirit and send his spirit. And so here he sends his spirit to Gideon for the purpose of what Gideon's about to do to equip. Gideon to embolden Gideon to enable and empower Gideon to accomplish what God has set him out to accomplish. And that was the role of the Spirit in the Old Testament. The Spirit was used to anoint and empower individuals to do what they needed to do in fulfillment of God's will. When Saul has the spirit rush upon him, it's to go and rescue the, his kinsman there at the outset of his reign. This is not a regenerative. In dwelling of the spirit, in other words that we experience in the new covenant. And that's why when Jesus picks up the cup in the upper room, he says, this cup is the new covenant of my blood. So it's already been inaugurated for us as the church and will ultimately be realized for Israel in the future.

What a cool fact that in the Old Testament, the spirit was upon or on the person. But in the new covenant, we have the spirit. In us. I guess that's a really interesting concept too. Can you quickly, and I know we're getting slightly off track here, but it's such an important topic, talk about how then the spirit is in the believer. Is he like, is he next to my heart? Is he in my, the pit of my stomach? And what sense does the Holy Spirit reside in us? 'cause there's lots of ways that the Bible talks about it and I think there's something really cool here again. On the person of Gideon, he's clothed, Gideon upon Saul, on Saul versus in us. Yeah. The spirit said to be in, in us, working through us, those kinds of things. Can you help us see some of those nuances?

Yeah, so the spirit being spirit is immaterial and so this is where when we talk about, or sometimes people say. I have Jesus living in my heart. Yeah. And you have this tiny little figurine that, more Christianese, right? Exactly. The spirit is immaterial. So we can't say that here's the locale of the spirit specifically within us, but we can say that the Bible does teach us that the Spirit does take up residence within us as believers. And I think the way that we experience that most tangibly is when we see the fruit of the spirit, when we see what the Bible tells the spirit's work is doing in us, when we see the love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. When we see. The evidence of us being a new creation in Christ. The old has gone. The new has come. When we have desires to be in the Word of God, when we have desires to pray, even the fact that we can pray, when we feel conviction, when we feel the, this is evidence of the spirit's presence within our lives. This is what differentiates us from the unbeliever. The unbeliever can't do anything to please the Lord. Whereas as a believer, we are able to, because we have the spirit dwelling within us, and Paul says in Ephesians one, that spirit has been given to us as a guarantee of our future inheritance. So when David prays, Lord, take not your spirit from me, that's not a prayer for a Christian. Because if a Christian has been saved and has the spirit. The Lord's never gonna take his spirit from you. That's Ephesians one. That's that idea that we have been sealed for the day of redemption by the Promised Holy Spirit who lives within us as believers as that guarantee. This is such

a cool part of our theology, and I know that, man. I'm getting excited just talking a little bit about it, but. You would do well to study a little bit about how the spirit operated both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, and to see how infinitely greater we have it. As New Testament believers, we have the same spirit. He stays with us. He doesn't just rush upon us momentarily or seasonally. He's with us permanently, and I would even contest permanently all the way through glory. That's my contention. That's a little bit of ambiguity in terms of scripture, whether it warrants that, but the spirit definitely is our guarantee. He sustains us. That's different than what the Old Testament he has experienced

indeed. The way that the spirit is gonna empower Gideon to win this battle in chapter seven is through stacking the odds against him. God's gonna say, you've got so many people for me to give the Midianites into your hand lest Israel boast and say, I've done this. And so God is gonna make it abundantly clear that they have not done it. And so they, they originally had the 22,000, then 10,000, and then the Lord takes it down to 300 people and he does that. Quite interestingly through watching the way that they drink, and they take the people that lap the water with their tongue as a dog laps the water, and and that those are the ones that Gideon's gonna take. He's gonna take 300. And that's staggering that they would take an army of 300 to go to battle against a foreign nation. You would think that there's no way that they're gonna win that battle. And that's the point. And Gideon. Has his battle plan. The mens around the camp they blow their trumpets, they smash their pottery, and the enemy hears the sound and they're thrown into a panic. And God does that, and they end up really killing themselves in a reaction in confusion and fear. And so God does this amazing work and wins this decisive battle for the Israelites. Is there anything significant in the fact that God chose, according to the way that they lapped water, that you can see? I've asked that question in the past and wondered that myself. I don't know. I don't know if I've ever been able to land on anything that I'm, I think this is why. Yeah, same here. I

don't really have any good answers to that, but maybe it is just God saying, look I'm just gonna choose whoever, and this is gonna be the way I choose people. And to the point that you're making here, I'm just gonna show that this is me working and not you. And I really appreciate that idea because it reminds us that God will deliberately handicap us and sometimes even physically. I think Johnny Erickson, sometimes he will deliberately handicap us in order to cause us to rely on him. This is also second Corinthians chapter 12. Paul says, look, a thorn was given me in my flesh in order that I wouldn't be proud. Yeah, God deliberately handicaps us. Hey, what are you going through? Christian, God deliberately might be handicapping you so that you don't say, oh, it's me and my smarts, or my this or that, but him what a good thing to remember. If you're going through a tough season. And that connects

well to the sermon that we just heard on Sunday too. So it was such a good sermon. Thanks man. Fire. I appreciate that. I haven't heard it yet, just in case anyone's wondering. Yeah. 'cause it's a Saturday when we're recording this. So anyways, hey, let's pray and we'll wrap up another episode. God, we are grateful for an opportunity to talk about words that we take for granted, these Christianese concepts and words and things like discipleship, and even as we talk about the relationship. Ship of the Holy Spirit to us as believers today. These are things that matter for us right now and we're grateful for passages like this that call that to mind and help us to think, okay, what does that mean that the spirit rushed upon Gideon? And how is that different from what we experienced today? Help us to be good Bereans, that students of the word and to always go deeper and deeper to make us more and more like Jesus. So we pray this in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Keep bring your Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you folks. Bye.

Thanks for listening to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. This is a ministry of Compass Bible Church in north Texas. You can find out more information about ourChurch@compassntx.org. We would love for you to leave a review to rate to share this podcast on whatever platform you happen to be listening on, and we will catch you against tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast.

Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said