Welcome back to the Daily Bible Podcast! We're so glad you've joined us. I've been given my job back on one condition: Pastor PJ prompted me to speak only the truth from here on out. So be it! muahahahaha. And now your hosts, Pastor PJ and Pastor Rod...

Hey welcome back, Bernard. You still may have your facts not entirely right there about the whole me programming you to say everything. That's exactly true. I don't know that we talked about that, Bernard, but we're glad to have you back and we're glad to have you back listening to another episode of the Daily Bible Podcast. Thank you for joining us. We are indeed. Happy to have you back. Yeah. Yeah. And I heard mixed reviews on Simon, but Bernard, I think he got a thumbs down mostly. I think so. Some people enjoyed them. They, the, those that liked the British, television shows in the ses liked him. But overall I think he, it was a good loss. He was too dry, a little too stodgy. He felt like that AI from Iron Man. It's funny that he felt like ai, strange. 'cause all of us know that Bernard's not ai. A hundred percent not, yes. Yes. In fact, I can be sure. He says as much. On the next podcast. Okay. I will let him know to be sure to clarify. Okay. People are wondering. Alright, so you're the one that talks to Bernard then? Is that saying? I'm that, yes. Yeah. I am the editor of this podcast, so I'm the one who goes between us producer, editor. Yeah. I'm the one who goes between us to convey your wishes. Is that true? Okay. We'll have to, we'll have to talk about how you're doing on that one. 'cause I don't know that going between us is working so well. I feel like it's working great. Alright. Hey, it's what is it, August 13th and we are back in school. We are halfway through August. The year is. Just trekking right along. We, we launched first Peter. We're in the next book study now. So things are going well. We've got women's bible study coming up, not this Saturday, but next. We've got our women's retreat out there. Ladies, make sure that you have registered for that. Men. Encourage your wives to register for that. We would love to help you out if you need some financial assistance on that. I didn't mention this on Sunday, but you can put a deposit down too. You don't have to pay for the whole thing upfront. So if this is something that maybe you'd like to make payments on, you can do that as well. And ladies, we'd love to get you registered and make sure that you've got a spot for what's gonna be a great retreat. I'm excited about it. Talking to Amanda about some of the messages that are gonna be preached there, and it's gonna be an awesome time. But let's jump into our daily Bible reading for today. Gen Genesis. Are we, let's go back to the beginning. We're back in Genesis. It's that important. Yeah. Jeremiah, that's Ken Ham. Just, he just get to beat a little bit. He was like, yes, that's what I was talking about this whole time. Jeremiah 23, 24, 25. So Jeremiah 23. Is another Messianic passage. It at least the first part of it is it's dealing with the Messianic kingdom and with the Messiah himself. But one of the things of note here is just how much God does care about having shepherds who are righteous. That is spiritual leaders who really do care for the people. And this is a theme not just in Jeremiah, but it's gonna show up in Ezekiel too. God is gonna really go after the lazy the. Overweight shepherds, the shepherds that are benefiting off the backs of the flock. And of course we know that the shepherd terminology is a metaphor for the way that the human shepherds, the human leaders and religious leaders of God's people care for his people. And so he's gonna say here in the millennial kingdom that there are gonna be good shepherds. He's going to give his people good shepherds and the chief shepherd as. Peter our book study in the, on Sunday mornings is gonna call him the Chief Shepherd. And from First Peter chapter five the, this ultimate shepherd is gonna come. And this is gonna be a descendant of David, a righteous branch. And this is a reference to the Messiah. This is a reference to Jesus. In fact, in Hebrew, the word for branch is not there. And there's a lot of people that think that this is the connection to Nazareth, that he, when the scriptures say that he was gonna be born in Nazareth or come from Nazareth, that this was a reference to the branch from the branch town. It's a little, maybe a little bit of a stretch. We don't have any text in the Old Testament, though, that specifically says that he's going to come from Nazareth. And so that would be the connection there, but the righteous branch, that's gonna be the Messiah, and he's gonna reign, he's gonna gather his people. Notice there in the middle section there, verses seven and eight, there's the reference to the second exodus. Again, as it was once said that God brought the people out of Egypt. So now it's gonna be said that he brought them back. He gathered his people again. And so we've got a second exodus, a greater exodus even that's gonna be this time in the millennial kingdom. But then from here the prophet Isaiah or Jeremiah rather, is going to indict the false prophets in the midst of the people here. And he really grieves over it. He says, my heart is broken in all my bones. Shake later on, Yahweh in verse 11 is gonna say, both prophet and priest are ungodly. So here's the contrast. God is saying in the future. The millennial kingdom, you're gonna have good shepherds. You're gonna have the chief shepherd, you're gonna have the branch, the righteous branches there. In the meantime, what's the landscape look like currently? You've got prophet and priests that are ungodly and Yahweh says, even in my house, I have found they're evil. And one of the main evils, and this is indicative of the rest of chapter 23, here, is a refusal to call the people to repent. One of the jobs of a prophet or a priest, or today a pastor, is to. Call for repentance. That's part of the prophetic voice. If you look down at verse 14, the prophets of Jerusalem have seen horrible things. They commit adultery and walk in lies. They strengthen the hands of evil doers so that no one turns for his from his evil. So you've got these prophets and priests that are scratching, itching, ears, and they're just allowing the people to continue to run amuck and do what they wanna do. And not call for repentance. You see this again in verse 17 that this is just something that they are letting this go on and God is done with it. They're what needed to be. The call for righteousness, the call back to following the commands of God. And that's something that the religious leaders of this day were not doing. Yeah it really it does help us to recognize just how important it is to have qualified leadership in our lives, trustworthy leadership. And Jeremiah is pointing to the fact here that the religious leaders of their day were just not cutting it, and that's putting it mildly. I would encourage you to be sure that you are thinking that. As you look for leaders, that you're thinking about what God qualifies as a leader. And that's an important feature because there's a lot of disagreement about some of those qualifications, and we don't have to talk about political offices and things like that. I know that's a whole other conversation, but asking God to not only provide them for you, but also to prayerfully support them. Those are so important. Do not take for granted if you have good leadership. If you have good pastors, thank God for that. That's not a given. In fact, scripture says that in the last days, people are gonna look for people that will itch their ears and say nice and pleasant things, not to unlike the prophets and the priests here that Jeremiah accuses. So be on the lookout for that. Be sure to pray for these people, and if you find them. Pray that God would keep them and preserve them throughout the duration of their ministry. Yeah. In verses 23 through, down through verse 32, basically here in this section, God is saying I'm not gonna be mocked by these false prophets. He warns that judgment is coming and that he will bring that. And then there's an interesting. The section here where I Jeremiah is telling the prophets, Hey, don't talk about the burden of the Lord. In other words, don't say that what Yahweh desires is too hard, it's too difficult, it's too burdensome for us, and we can't do it as though you're impugning God's character by suggesting that what he wants is not really right or good for the people. And so God in, in chapter 23 is at the beginning saying, Hey, there's going to be a time where you're gonna have great leaders, great shepherds. You're gonna have, the branch is gonna be here, the Messiah, the king is gonna be here. In the meantime, we have to deal with what's. What's presently here and that are, that is wicked, evil, lazy prophets and priests who aren't doing the job that they were called to do, and God was gonna bring judgment against them. Chapter 24, we move into a new message. And so there's these different messages throughout the book of Jeremiah. And in chapter 22 here we find an, or Chapter 24, here we find another one. And this is going to actually be taking place timeframe wise after the second deportation. So we're moving around quite a bit in the book of Jeremiah in these sections here. And this one we're now after the second deportation, there's gonna be, three, three total deportations I guess a fourth smaller deportation, but three main deportations of the people of Israel here. This is the second 1, 5 97 bc. The first was back in 6 0 5 bc. Then you have 5 97 bc and then the final one is gonna be, and this is the largest 5 87. 5 86 bc. That's after the fall of Jerusalem there. And so this is right in the middle of things. This is 5 97 BC and I, Jeremiah's gonna use a analogy that God gives him here of two baskets of. Figs, the good figs and the bad figs. And the good figs are those that are going into exile. And these are the ones that, that God said, Hey, remember, don't fight what I'm bringing against you. Don't turn to Egypt. Don't go to other places. But if you want to live and see your days extended, go with this exile. Go with the Babylonians, who I'm gonna bring against the people. And so the, some of the faithful. Daniel, Shadrach, Micha, AB Bendigo, he and I ra Micha, they're gonna be gone, and they're going and they're part of the faithful remnant. They're the good figs that are gonna be there in Babylon. And he's even gonna say, you know what? You should settle there. You should live there. You should see the welfare of the city as we're gonna see later on. But then there's the, also the bad figs. And these are the ones that are gonna stay behind Zaka being the leader of these bad figs. And they're the ones that are gonna still try to resist what God is doing here, and they're gonna fight against what God is doing in bringing the punishment against the people. They're the bad figs. They're the ones that God is going to going to end up destroying either with famine, sword, or pestilence. Yeah, so interesting to see that God does say, accept your consequence. Accept the pain of this and things are better. If you try to buck against what God is doing, you're always gonna end up hurt here. And the fact that he uses this analogy of the good figs and the bad figs, being the ones who are unwilling to accept his consequences is still. At work today, there are lots of people that are going to say, I don't wanna do what God wants me to do. I don't wanna own my sin. I don't want to confess those things. I don't wanna deal with things that God gives me. I, I don't know if he'd call us a bad fig, but certainly it's not bad. It's not good faith. That's bad faith to respond in that way. Best thing to do whenever you're in a difficult situation is to accept the consequences and to embrace them and say, yes, I sin in these ways, or, yes, I will do what you want, Lord, even if it costs me my reputation, it's gonna cost me my convenience, my comfort. These guys are leaving their hometown never to go back. They left and they'll never return back to their homeland. That's a devastating and difficult thing for most of us. Some of us anyway, not most of us. When we came to Texas, there's always a chance that you can go back to visit, say, hello. These guys don't have a choice. They can't go backward. Trust the Lord with the consequences of whatever it is that you're doing, and know that he has the better plan than you will ever have. Chapter 25. Then we have a pretty significant chapter here when it comes to one of the other books that we'll get to here shortly, and that is the book of Daniel, because in chapter 25, Jeremiah finds out from the Lord and records for us that there's gonna be 70 years of captivity. So this is over in verse 11. This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and the nation shall serve the king of Babylon, 70 years. And one of the things that I love from the book of Daniel is it's a glimpse into. The prophets reading one another. And so Daniel had, at the time, Jeremiah, it says in the text there in Daniel chapter nine that he's studying the scroll of Jeremiah and he realizes there that it's 70 years of captivity and Daniel's gonna be towards the end of that 70 years. And reading this is gonna cause him to go, oh, wait a minute. God prophesied 70 years, it's gonna be 70 years. And so here we see Daniel trusting in the trustworthy word of God, believing in the prophecies of God to be true, and taking the measures in accordance with with what he needed to do by going before the Lord and praying a corporate prayer of repentance before God and preparing for this return that would take place. After the fall of Babylon under the Persians, the Meads and Persians that came after him. So pretty cool here that we see this intersection between the two prophets, even though they were separated by so far. Chrono chronologically. Speaking of chronological, this is one of the reasons we love a plan like this. And even though we're not able to splice it up as more as finally as we might want to do, this is still really helpful because it helps put things in their perspective. Put things in their places. There's a few downsides to, to doing it this way, but there's a lot of upside. So for those of you who are joining us, or even if you're just starting to read with us, Hey, good on you. This is still valuable and it's still a use to your Bible reading to your depth of knowledge to your understanding. So the chronological sequence that we're trying to put together here, we're following Blue Letter Bible's plan. Is imperfect, certainly, but it's still so helpful and so good that you're doing it. So thank you for being part of this. We're proud of you for doing it and we hope that you'll stick with us the rest of the year. Yeah and I think we haven't landed officially but we're leaning towards doing this again next year. You know what, as I was thinking about this, I think why change it? Yeah. At least for the first five or 10 or 20 years. Yeah. Maybe 20 years down the line, we'll think maybe it's time to do a different plan. I love the regularity of it. Yeah. Even though there's thicker days, I think it's just really good and it does shorten our time in the New Testament, but man, I just. The Old Testament is so deep and rich in having a better understanding of how all these things work together is so helpful. It gives you a much greater appreciation for the New Testament. And we've never said that this is all the Bible reading you can do. In fact, we would love for you, I'd love McShane's plan. Have you ever done that one? I haven't. I've done Horner's plan. Horner's plan. So Horner's plan is, that's robust. Yeah. 10 chapters a day. You're in 10 different places in the Bible. I loved it. I did it for a season and I found it to be incredibly. Wonderful. So do more. You can always do extra credit. Please don't see this as the only Bible reading you could do. Do as much as you would like and maybe spend some more time in the New Testament as might be helpful to you. I, we've, you've heard us plug them before but audio bibles, maybe you have an opportunity to sit down in the morning with your DBR and you're reading it on your device or in your. Your hands, but then on your commute, you've got an audio, a chance to throw on an audio Bible. Dwell audio Bible is a great resource out there. Oh, yeah. ESB has their own audio too, and you can get more scripture in that way. We talked about this last year and I go back and forth still, but the second part of chapter 25 when the prophet's taken, sent with the cup of God's wrath to the nations we talked about whether or not this is metaphorical or maybe a vision. And it's hard to land. I don't know that I feel great about any of the options out there. I find it difficult to think that he would go literally to all of these different nations and make somebody there drink out of this cup. That seems like that would be an odd thing, even back in this day. Unsanitary too. Yeah. But but maybe it was a vision that he's doing this in his vision, or maybe it's just metaphorical. But God here in the end of chapter 25 is saying judgment's gonna come against the nation. So you're gonna be in exile for 70 years and then God's going to gather you back and I think there's. Dual layers here of both the near term fulfillment in regathering, the people outta Babylon, but also the long term of when he ultimately rega gathers people out of exile. And that's still in the future for the millennial kingdom man. God is gonna establish Israel as the nation par excellence. And then everybody else is gonna either have to bow the need of Christ or find themselves in opposition of God. One thing we can agree upon, and I think. Anyone who's a dispensationalist would be quick to say, yeah, that makes sense. As es we read texts like this. It is hard for me to make this say something else other than what it says. Yes. I have a hard time thinking, okay, if I'm a covenantal list and I just think this isn't what it says, this is actually pointing to something else. This is the church and the nations are being sub subdued because of the gospel. I just don't see that. I think the better reading is the more straightforward plain reading, which is that God's going to vanquish the foe and he's going to subdue Israel's enemies and restore Israel. I think when he says Israel here, I think he means Israel. So all that to say, I'm not trying to throw dirt at my covenantal, his brothers and sisters and friends. I just think as I read this, it's hard to look around it and say, I'm gonna read deeper than what the text says. I'm gonna read beyond it than what the text says. There are times that do that. I just don't think this is one of those times. Yeah, I agree. Let's pray and then we'll be done with this episode. God, we are. We recognize, we confess that that we need wisdom that is beyond our own capabilities to understand your word, even as we were just talking about, to be able to understand when is it right to, to take something literally versus metaphorically. And we just ask that you'd give us the humility to, to do that with with charity. With, especially with brothers and sisters in Christ that may take a different approach to things. We have to hold fast to the gospel, have to hold fast to the center of the bullseye of the target there. But outside of that, we can really make sure that we have a teachable about us as we come to the scriptures, as we come to other doctrines. And that's not to say that we're looking to be malleable and. And toss to and fro with every wind of doctrine. But Lord, we, we certainly wanna avoid the arrogance of believing that we have everything right and everybody else has everything wrong, and so help us to walk that fine line, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Keep renew Bibles. Tune in again tomorrow for another edition of the Daily Bible Podcast. Bye bye.

Well, thank you for listening to another uproarious episode of the Daily Bible Podcast, folks! 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. Ya'll come back now, ya hear? I need some brisket.

Yeah. I would agree with everything that you said