Hey everybody. Welcome back to another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Hello. It is Saturday and so if you are catching up with us on all things weather related, we have canceled. Revival winner edition. We have also canceled our Women's Bible study, and those were not easy decisions that we made. We talked about this a little bit yesterday in the podcast as far as our rationale behind it. But those were not easy decisions that we made. We never liked to cancel something that involves the gathering of the church together, but we thought this was. Prudent and in keeping with what we were seeing from recommendations from the state officials and local officials as well as looking around and saying, what are some other churches doing in our area? We want to not stand out one way or the other on that for unnecessary reasons. So. Be praying for our students. I know it was disappointing for them, and our ladies too. But know that we are still monitoring everything. Look for communication today from us as far as what tomorrow's gonna look like. And we will nonetheless, no matter what, we will have something for you, whether that's in person or not. We will have something for you and we will send an email out to you if we're not meeting together. There's gonna be still a sermon. There's gonna still be something for your kids to focus on as well. Because we do want to still honor what we're. Part of what we're there to do, which is to sit under the preaching of the word of God. Even though we can't gather in person, it's still important that we give ourselves over to the word of God and that we continue our study and continue to walk together as a church. In that. On the heels of yesterday's podcast, we had a question about the spirit versus the letter of the law. Does this also fit your sermon from last week? Gathering together. Yeah. We were laughing a little bit as a staff that I just preached the sermon. Do not neglect meeting together and then potentially we're not gonna meet together. And you're like, you know what? We're not gonna meet. Yeah. Yes. Because of the context surrounding it. Right. And that's. Part of what helps us understand the passage of scripture is to say, okay, what is the context in which we find ourselves and how then do we interpret this passage? So I think the writer of Hebrews, if he were here today with us, would evaluate everything. And after he got over the advent of technology and cars and streaming devices and everything else, I think he'd probably agree with us that we need to make a wise decision when it comes to the weather and not put anyone in unnecessary harm. The question I think we have to ask ourselves is. Are we compromising by not meeting together? There's bad reasons to not meet together that have more to do with compromise than what we're doing right now. For example, if it was, Hey, don't meet together because if you meet together, we're gonna show up and we're gonna find your church for gathering together. We would say, you know what? That's not a reason for us not to meet together. Depends on why they're saying, don't meet. 'cause this is the whole COVID thing. Right. That's the COVID thing. It is, yeah. And that, and that's true. And that's true. I'm just saying we're not. Neglecting to meet together. We're not saying, Hey, we're not gonna meet together because we're afraid of the consequences. We're saying we're not gonna meet together because we want to be wise stewards of the lives of our people and the lives of those around us as well. And so as we're hearing our governing officials say, Hey, stay off the road, things like that we're probably leaning towards, we may not be gathering together on Sunday. So yeah, spirit of the law, letter of the law, I think this does apply in there as well. Yeah. So we're gonna make a decision at some point soon, but we're gonna do it with an eye toward honoring Christ. Again, we talked about this yesterday. We're not trying to be safety police and saying, you can only do what's safe. And certainly we don't wanna put anyone in unnecessary danger. So we are thinking about it, we're praying for it, and you know what, we were talking about, the weather changing, maybe God will open the doors and make it possible. So pray for that. Yep. That would be kind of fun. Yep. Again, check your emails and make sure that you're there because we will have communication to you on that front. So, yeah. Is this the beginning of God's judgment, these weather patterns, or is this a pat? Is this global warming? Is this the 11th plague? But now not toward Egypt, but toward America. This podcast just went somewhere. I was not expecting it to go at all. There was an earthquake yesterday here, no, Friday up in Utah near Salt Lake City. Wow. Well, okay. That one makes sense. Yeah. I don't know if it took out the temple or not. No, probably not. They, after they recently, I don't know if they rebuilt it. I know that when I went there the last time, taking a short term missionary group there too. Talk to Mormons and shared the gospel with them. The real one, they were renovating it and so it was gutted and they were, had all these different scaffoldings on it. It was really kind of cool to see it. Yeah. And if you go across the street to their, I forget what the building is called, it's one of their, they own that whole area, so they have several buildings that sit on that same square grid. And one of them, you can see the temple insides slice in half. They have a, I don't know what the scale model is, could die. A one 50th Yeah. Scale model where you can look inside the whole thing. It's quite interesting. I've heard that when. Some of the Mormon temples open up for the public to come in and see it. Which they do from time. Time before they, yeah, before they anoint it or, yeah, before they sanctify it. I think that's it. Yes. I've heard they go in and like rip out all the carpet afterwards too and, oh, I don't know about that. Yeah. Wouldn't be surprised though because they build it and then the gentiles go in and we define it and then they have to rip out the carpet and put it in your stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Well anyways, hey, we are in Exodus seven and eight and Matthew chapter 17. Man, Exodus seven introduces some difficult concepts for us, because now we're gonna start talking about who's hardening Pharaoh's heart and who's responsible for Pharaoh's rebellion against God. And did Pharaoh ever have a real choice in the matter of whether or not he was going to let God's people go? When Moses and Aaron came in and said, let my people go, and I think we've kicked this around years past on the podcast, and I think that the clear thing is we have to. Concede that God has a hand in the hardening of Pharaoh's heart. In fact, he says, I will harden Pharaoh's heart. And he, it goes back and forth and there's times when Pharaoh's doing the action and other times when God is, but we know that God is ultimately the actor behind it because he says so in verse three. And then in verse five he says this, the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them. So God is after getting glory. And this is Paul's argument in Romans nine when it comes to Pharaoh that he is, arguing or God is saying I am doing this in order to win and get the glory over, the leader of Egypt, the most powerful person in the world at this time. God's saying I win in this circumstance. And so Pharaoh, I'm not gonna go so far as to say he's pun. He has a very. Real responsibility. He's making the choice in real time as Moses stands before him to say no. But at the same time, as we've talked about this mystery of God's sovereignty and man's responsibility, there's this dance that's taking place in this whole interchange throughout these next handful of chapters here. Probably the question that would arise for most people is how is God then good in provoking or hardening pharaoh's heart such that Pharaoh does exactly what God intends for him to do and what he's doing in short is sending against the Lord and doing a dis a disservice at minimum. Maybe injustice is a better term toward Israel. Help us frame that because I know that that's gonna come up for a lot of people. How is God good if that's what's happening? If God's the one who's heartening his heart, can, Pharaoh. Be blamed for that. Yeah. And let, how has God Good and can Pharaoh be blamed for that? I think we're related. Yeah. Related but different. Let's start with how can Pharaoh be blamed for that? Pharaoh is a sinner and Pharaoh has a sin nature and Pharaoh is guilty of the sin that. Deserves the wrath of God no matter what, even before this. And so God's sovereignty in these things doesn't make Pharaoh more guilty than he would've been prior to this. This is God's sovereignty man's responsibility in the dance between these things. Pharaoh was, it doesn't make him more guilty, meaning he was deserving of God's full wrath as a fallen, sinful human being from the word go. When you say full wrath, what do you mean by that? Damnation e eternal eternity apart from God in hell. Well, you would still say though, and I've heard you say before, that there are degrees of punishment. Yes. So when you say full wrath, you don't mean like everyone gets a hundred percent of God's true. Wrath. True. Yeah. You get the number that you get depending on your acts and life. So he wouldn't be deserving of God's full wrath in the sense of getting everything God has to throw at him. Fair. Yes. And that's true. That's true. How is God? Good? God is good because God is the definer of what is good. God is the one that lays out for us and defines this is what is good. And it's not necessarily always that we would look at what he's doing and from our perspective be able to say, I'm gonna define that as good the way that God is defining it as good. But God sees things from a God's eye view and sees things in total perfection as far as what he's doing, and understands what is ultimately good for his glory. And that's at the end of the day, what is most good. That God is glorified and is if God is glorified from his creation. And this is where the uncomfortableness of Romans nine comes into this. If God is glorified through those that are created to be vessels of wrath, prepared for destruction then that's not ours as the clay is say to the potter, God, that's not okay. That's not fair. Probably the end. Of all of this is not gonna make people feel warm and fuzzy. True. What do I do with that? Yeah. I get that and I'm with you there and it probably shouldn't, I don't think we should ever gloat over the idea that there are those that are. Hardened by God for destruction. I don't think that's what we're supposed to feel. And I don't think God does either, even as we read, and I think this is where the passages come in that say that he doesn't desire that anyone should perish, but he desires that all should come to eternal life. I think there's this desire that that's true. That God does desire, that we should desire that too. So it's not gonna make us feel warm and fuzzy, but I think we have to, at the end of the day, this is part of where the fear of God comes in, where we say, God, I can't understand, I can't wrap this up. And no one has ever been able to understand this. Theologians for the last 2000 years of church history have written volumes on the relation of God's sovereignty and man's responsibility. And nobody's ever, at the end of the day walked away and said, we've solved the argument. We're done. We don't have to worry about this anymore. And I think part of that, of the not having the warm fuzzies is why this continues to be an ongoing source of contention and debate within the church is trying to understand how can we wrap this up. Because I think there's an inherent desire within us to be able to say, I can resolve the tension between God being good and totally sovereign in situations like this. And I don't know that we're ever going to be able to resolve the tension. Doesn't mean we shouldn't try and apply ourselves like we talked about yesterday, being a good workman, working hard at it. Mm-hmm. But when we can't get there I don't know that we should be able to get there. It's interesting. One of the things that I take comfort in is the fact that my experience of everyday life is not robotic, doesn't feel like I have strings on me. For sure. Doesn't feel like God is saying, rod, you're going to say this and I'm gonna make you. I don't feel that. Right. I believe that. By faith that God ordains all things, even the next words that are gonna come out of my mouth. He ordains the end and the beginning, the first, and he's, he does it all. Yeah, I believe that with all my heart in scripture. But my experience of how that works is functionally, I'm free to make decisions. And it is in fact not only functionally true, but that's theologically true. God says, I'm accountable for my sin. I'm accountable for my decisions. I get to make real, true, meaningful decisions. And my experience of that reality is I'm free. I can give a biting word to my wife, and I don't feel compelled to do that. No one is twisting my hand to do it. I can choose not to, and no one's twisting my hand not to do that. I choose. Mm-hmm. And to your point, one of the greatest comforts I have is that experience. And so I'm gonna say it's true that this is a theological grounding behind all that we're seeing in this episode between Pharaoh and Moses and Aaron. But Pharaoh was free. He is free. His experience of life was free. He's free to make decisions that at the end of the day ultimately are God's control under God's ordination. But his experience and his practical effect is that he's making decisions. He doesn't feel God's constraint. He doesn't feel God jumping into his soul and saying, you have to do this. How God accomplishes that. I don't know. Yeah, I think you're right. And even as you were talking there, I was thinking about. It's not as the Pharaoh was a God-fearing, Cornelius type character before all this. Yeah. He's an enemy. All this happened, right? No he had lived a life where he was making himself. He was availing himself to be an opposite, an enemy of God through everything else he was doing up to this point. And so, yeah, I'm with you there as far as. He was free in that sense. Aren't you comforted by that? Yeah. If you feel free, like you make decisions. It's that whole, it's that, I don't know if you've ever seen these, it's, it feels like it's a meme at this point. Someone takes a pen and drops it. Can I, did I do that freely or did God make me do that? Right, right. And the answer is, oh yes. Right. Yes. Yes. It's both of those things. Yeah, you did it freely. If you define freely in a theological category, but you also did it by God's ordination, there's no way to get outside of that. If God controls the end from the beginning, there's just no way to exit theologically from that truth. And I know our mini brothers and sisters will say, well, yeah, we think. Differently about that. And that's okay. Yeah, we can disagree and we're okay that you guys are wrong about that. We'd love to have you come to this side of the tent, but that's okay. You guys live there. We love you still. God has ordained you to be wrong about that. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I shouldn't be like that. Yeah. You know you're right man. And this is so hard to wrap our minds around. But notice here again, 40 years passed. While Moses was in the wilderness, Moses went into the wild. In Midian at 40 years old, so now he's 80. And so I think you mentioned that in a couple of episodes ago. And he's a, before Pharaoh as an 80-year-old man here, and he is telling Pharaoh to do these things. Now Pharaoh's rejecting and saying no. So here come the plagues and we get the first one at the end of chapter seven. This is gonna be blood and death in the Nile River. The Nile is gonna be turned to blood. And the. Life in the Nile is gonna die. And it's interesting here because there must've been some fresh water still available somewhere because the magicians are able to replicate this. And so they're able to do the same thing. Pharaoh then is going to say, Nope I'm not listening to you. Then he's, his heart's gonna remain hardened and he would not listen to them. As the Lord had said, if you underline things that are repeated, that's something to underline in this next handful of chapters here, as the Lord had said, again, this goes back to God's sovereignty. He's saying this is what's gonna happen, and then this is what happens. As we get through here, chapter eight, then we get another plague. This time it's gonna be the frogs. Which no, thanks. I'm out on that one. A again the magicians are able to do these things and Pharaoh is going to harden his heart again. It says there in verse 14 Pharaoh hardens his own heart this time, as the Lord had said though. So the third plague comes along, this is the plague of the gnats, and then you get the plague of the flies for number four here. This is life is. Getting increasingly more and more miserable with the Egyptians here as God is trying to get them to understand that he's the one that's in control and is. I don't know, man, I, every time I read this, I come back to it and say, why does it take them so long to figure out that God's the one that's in control? They must have just thought that Moses was some sort of great magician, and I think that's why we read there, that Pharaoh's magicians can replicate some of this. They must have just thought this is just this Moses guy and Pharaoh must have had it in his back pocket. If I just take out this Moses guy, I can put an end to all of this at some point, but this is enough to drive me crazy just with the gnats at that point in time. Now I going, okay, get outta here. Go. That's like, God sends mosquitoes to us here in Texas and I'm willing to throw in the towel. Yeah. The first second I see them. Yeah. This is fascinating for so many reasons, not the least of which what we just talked about, but yeah. Why don't they just. Say, you know what? We're outgunned here. Let's just, let's let this go. One of the things that stands out to me, and I'm scratching my head on this still. I don't have any strong answers. Maybe you can throw something in here. It's not until plague four where God sets apart Goshen. Yeah. And true. That's true for all, not all 10 of them. It's true for only a few of the. Of the plagues where God says, I'm going to protect my people from this particular plague. The first one we encounter here is the flies plague number four. That tells me then for plagues one, two, and three, his people had the spillover effect to God's judgment upon the Egyptians. Now, this is interesting because they're not under the judgment. They're not the target of God's wrath being poured out, so why wouldn't he make a distinction? For all the plagues as opposed to only a few of them. Any thoughts on that? No. Part of me wonders if plague number four was just Moses saying, Hey, you should be paying attention to what's going on over in Goshen because these things aren't happening over there. In other words, I wonder if God was. Protecting his people this whole time. But in by number four, that's the one that Moses is making sure he's pointing that out with Pharaoh to pay attention to that. Well, maybe. But then in plague 10, he makes them go through something to protect themselves from it. Right. For all of 'em. Israel included. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So it seems to me like that's. The exception is when God protect. So I, yeah, I, your point is well taken. I just think, it seems to me like he's not protecting them from experiencing some of the, what I'm calling the spillover effect. They're not the absolute target of his anger, but they're the. What would you call that? The relative targets? Yeah, the accidental target, the incidental targets. And I am affirmed in that idea because again, the plague 10, he says, here's how you're gonna avoid this one. Yeah. 'cause you're gonna get this unless you do these instructions and then you have the Passover, they're getting friendly fire from God. Something like that. Yeah. Maybe it's because of their initial response there. When they disbelieve Moses after Pharaoh said, Hey, we're gonna harden your labor here. Maybe it's the unbelief. In what God had sent Moses and told them. And so there's some of this judgment that is for Israel because of their unbelief there. I don't know, the text doesn't say that, but this is one of those things that would cause me to doubt my pre-trib rapture idea. Interesting. Because if God's willing to let his people suffer. Yeah. Under his wrath against their larger neighbor Egypt. It leads me to say, okay, well, maybe then not that I'm changing my mind, I'm saying this is one that sticks in my cross saying, huh, if this is for their deliverance. And yet they experience some of the effects of God's judgment upon the Egyptian neighbors. So, I don't know. I, hold to preach trip convictionally, but this, it gives me pause. Let me just say that I'm gonna counter your preacher by saying that this is Israel, not the church. Okay. But with the principle, again, the spirit of the text tells us that God is in principle willing to let his people suffer even though his anger and his wrath is targeted to, to others. Yeah, I agree. I agree. And we actually, that, that question came up in 1 0 1 this past weekend, different views of the trim tribulation in the rapture, either before mid or post. And we do hold to a pre-trib and convictionally to a pre-trib rapture, and. In part because of, a couple things. First, the church is not on the scene anymore after Revelation chapter three until Revelation chapter 19 and the marriage chapter of the Lamb. So the rest of Revelation, you don't see the church there. There's also the words that Jesus gives to one of the churches there where he says, I'm gonna keep you from the hour of tribulation that's coming upon the whole earth. There's never been an hour of tribulation that's come upon the whole earth. Other than what will be there at the end time. And because that was a historical church, we can safely extrapolate that out to be the church at large to say, okay, we, he's talking to the church, big C here when he says, I'm gonna keep you from this. Not through it, but from it from that trial. And then we go back also in the Old Testament where this is referred to as the time of Jacob's trouble, that this appears to be a time of purging and purification. And even judgment for Israel as well as the, those in the earth that have rejected God. So those are, just to give you some reasons why we are pre-trib and why we hold to that position. Even though, to your point, God is not afraid to let his people suffer. And we see that in, in multiple places. And I think that's a good point to make here in from this passage. Well, let's jump over to Matthew chapter 17. In Matthew chapter 17. We didn't hit on this, but Jesus said something interesting at the end of chapter 16. He said, truly, I say to you, there's some standing here who will not taste death until they see the son of man coming in his kingdom and we have to. Understand that that's not referring to the second Kingdom or second coming, which is what we're waiting for now, but it has to be something else. And we think that this is why the Transfiguration follows right on the heels of this, that Jesus is gonna take some of them, that's Peter, James and John up on the mountain, and he's gonna be transfigured before them. He's going to appear in the fullness of his glory before them. And they have this interesting situation there where they see Moses and Elijah on the mountain with them, and they hear this voice saying, this is my beloved son, with whom I'm well pleased. You've got Peter there saying, Lord, it's good that we're gonna be here. Let's just live here. Let's set up some tents and hang out up here for a little while. But this is that fullness of the glory that appears before these three. And this I believe is what he has in mind at the end of chapter 16. This is the son of man in the coming of his kingdom. This is him in the fullness of his glory as the. King as he will return. He's transfigured. They get to witness this in this interesting incident at the beginning here of chapter 17. After chapter 17 or after this they come down from the mountain and again, there's kind of a high point and then a low point. And this high point is Jesus has this, these three disciples up on the mountain, he's transfigured and then they come down and his other disciples bring to him this child that they're not able to heal. They can't get. This demon to leave this child alone. And Jesus makes this statement says, faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How am I, how long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me. And then he casts out this demon from this child. The disciples say, Hey why weren't we able to do this? And his response is, because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, and then he talks about that the grain of mustard seed. If you have faith like a mustard seed, you can move a mountain. So Jesus is reminding his disciples you still need me. You're not quite there yet, and there's still some growth that needs to be taking place here for you to be able to do what you will what you think you can do at this point. So in verse 17, he calls them faithless and twisted. He says, faithless. And then in verse 19, he says, you have little faith. What is the idea that Jesus is trying to communicate here? In other words. Do they have no faith? Just a tiny bit of faith because it seems like if you just have a tiny bit, you can say to this mountain, go from here to there. Is does he really mean they don't have any faith? What do you make of that? No, I don't think he's implying that they don't have any faith. I think he's just identifying the fact that they don't have faith the way that they think they might have faith, that their faith is maybe misplaced or their faith is in something that he is not there to be at this point in time. Yeah, it's interesting 'cause he does it, it is the negation of the word faith. Tis, you might know the word PTIs. You might have heard your pastor refer to that before as being the word that undergirds the word trust or faith. It's typically the word that's used. And so here it's a tis the negation of that. So I agree though. I don't think Jesus is saying they don't have any faith. I wonder if it's less the quantity and more the quality of their faith. Sure. They were trying to cast out a demon. And I wonder there's a, there's another a parallel text here that says that. Jesus says something like, this kind can only come out by prayer and fasting. Right? It seems to me that his disciples were leaning not on their faith in him, but on their past success. Yeah. I've been able to do this. Sure. Bring him to me. I got this guys, let me just call this dude out in the name of Jesus. I command you to something like that. I can imagine. And then nothing happens. And they're like, well, maybe you try. And they go through one another saying, oh, this is not happening. What's going on? I don't know. Did you do say the right thing? I don't know. Did you say the right thing? So I can imagine them trying to figure these things out and Jesus says, you guys don't get it. You can't. You can't look at your past success. You can't look at your, you know Right. Use of formulas. And using my name. He said, you gotta have faith in me. This kind comes only by prayer and fasting as another another variant. But I think that's what the idea is. Not faithless, but not necessarily. Robust a robust faith in Christ. Maybe more faith in what they were taught to debrief before. Yeah. Well, the chapter ends with another prediction of his crucifixion. It says that the disciples were greatly distressed, and so they're not fully understanding it, but they are understanding enough that this is causing them angst. This is causing them turmoil. And then the chapter concludes with Jesus saying, Hey, you need to pay your taxes because that there's an argument there. Hey, why does your. Your teacher not pay the tax or does your teacher not do this? And Jesus makes this statement and says, Simon, whom do kings take their taxes from their sons or from others? And he answers rightly and says well from others. And Jesus is his point here is this, you are the sons of the ultimate king. And so, you really owe nothing to anyone. No tax exempt, right? Tax exempt. But then he goes on and says, in order not to give an offense to them, go ahead and go to the sie. Jesus does this miracle where he. Call takes a fish outta the sea and opens it up and there's the tax. That would be great if Jesus was like, Hey, go to the grocery store, buy that bag of bread off the shelf and open it up and there's your tax money for this year. That would be nice. But yeah, Jesus is teaching us how to relate to those governing officials there at the end of chapter 17. Well, this is the temple tax too. This is not Oh, yeah, you're right. Roman tax. This is the temple and Jesus is the true temple. Yeah. He's the one that brings God's presence. And so he's saying this is. This is outmoded, outdated. This is no more, this is no longer binding, especially for you who are sons of the king, but in order to keep the peace, essentially, this is Romans 13, right? As far as it depends upon, you live at Romans 12, live at peace with everybody. So I think that's what Jesus is modeling for us. I don't know that he always wants us to capitulate or to take the hit, but here's a good example of him doing exactly that to model for us what it looks like to keep the peace. Yeah. Yeah. He makes a similar argument. When we do deal with paying taxes to Caesar, when he says whose image is on the coin and then he makes that statement render to Caesar, that which is Caesar's isn't to God that which is God's, which would imply God owns everything. Right? Right. And so again, you owe God your life. You owe God your life. You go, you owe him your everything. Give Caesar their money. Yeah. But give God your life. Yeah. Well, let's pray. Lord, thanks for another episode where we were able to unpack your word together. We thank you for the hard things in your word for us to understand and to think about and to dwell on. I pray that we would not just shrug them off, but that we would think hard about them, that we would do our best to try to understand as much as we can about these things. And yet, Lord I pray for humility for all of us Lord to be able to hold these things loosely. Understanding that you are the possessor of ultimate truth, that you know how all of these things resolve, how all of them work, and how all of them fit together. Help us to walk in faith. In that regard, Lord, in you and in what you have for us to do on each and every day that we walk as we surrender our lives, even as we were just saying to you, because you are the owner of all things. We pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Keep reading those bibles and tune in again tomorrow with us for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. See you folks. Bye.

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