Podcasts about Sadducees

Jesus silences the Sadducees by proving resurrection from the very books they accept, teaching that denying life after death is really a failure to believe Scripture and to grasp the power of God.

Discussion Questions: Sermon Overview Receive the Christ and receive the resurrection.Digging Deeper    Read Luke 20:27-441. There are aspects of life in this broken world that can cause us to long for “the resurrection.”  What would be some of those things for you?   2. In this passage, Jesus is confronted by some “who deny that there is a resurrection.” (v. 27) There are some who do the same thing today.  How important is belief in the resurrection from the dead for true, biblical Christianity? Support your answer.  (Please read 1 Cor. 15:12-20, to see the apostle Paul's answer to this question.)3. This passage teaches us that human marriage will not be a part of the age to come in the new heavens and the new earth. How does that land on you?  4. Human marriage points beyond itself to the marriage of Christ and his bride, the church. Why is the marriage we will enjoy for all eternity something worth looking forward to?  In what ways will it be better than even the best of human marriages? 5. It is good to live with all our might while we do live, and it is good to eagerly long for the day when we enter our eternal home. What might it look like to live well now, and yet long with eager anticipation for the resurrection?  6. There are many today who (as did the Sadducees) think Jesus is little more than a “good teacher” (v. 28). Why is it not a viable option for us (or anyone else) to see Jesus as simply a good teacher (and nothing more)?  How might we respond to those who see Jesus this way?  7. What is Jesus' line of reasoning in support of the resurrection from “the passage about the bush” (v. 37)?    8. What is the significance for us that Jesus (“the Christ,” v. 41) is both David's son and David's Lord?   9. How might the truths from this passage help you grow in your love for Christ and in your pursuit of a life that is pleasing to him? Prayer

Friday, 30 January 2026   When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, “Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?” Matthew 16:13   “And Jesus, having come to the allotments – Caesarea, the Phillipi, He entreated His disciples, saying, ‘Whom they say, the men, Me to be, the Son of Man?'” (CG).   In the previous verse, the disciples finally clued in to what Jesus was trying to teach them. His words about the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees were speaking of their evil doctrine. Matthew now continues the narrative of their time after arriving on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee, saying, “And Jesus, having come to the allotments – Caesarea, the Phillipi.”   A new word, Kaisareia, Caesarea, is introduced. It is derived from Kaisar, Caesar, a Latin word referring to the title of the Roman Emperor. Caesarea refers to two places in the area of Israel. The first is this location, Caesarea Philippi. Of this location, Albert Barnes says –   “There were two cities in Judea called Caesarea. One was situated on the borders of the Mediterranean (See the notes at Acts 8:40), and the other was the one mentioned here. This city was greatly enlarged and ornamented by Philip the tetrarch, son of Herod, and called Caesarea in honor of the Roman emperor, Tiberius Caesar. To distinguish it from the other Caesarea the name of Philip was added to it, and it was called Caesarea Philippi, or Caesarea of Philippi. It was situated in the boundaries of the tribe of Naphtali, at the foot of Mount Hermon.”   Having come to this general area, “He entreated His disciples, saying, ‘Whom they say, the men, Me to be, the Son of Man?'” Translations consider His words in one of two ways. One is “Whom do men say that I am? The Son of Man?”, or “Whom do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?”   The latter is correct. Jesus has referred to Himself as the Son of Man nine times already, making this the tenth. Peter's answer will also show that He is not asking if people say He is the Son of Man. Rather, He is asking what He, the Son of Man, is called by others. He is preparing them for a great pronouncement by asking this probing question first.   Life application: Jesus came to His own country in Matthew 13:53-58. He was rejected by them. In Matthew 14:1-12, the account of the beheading of John the Baptist was given. That was followed by the feeding of the five thousand in Matthew 14:13-21.   Jesus then walked on the sea, as is recorded in Matthew 14:22-33. From there, they came to the area of Gennesaret, at which time He fully saved all who simply touched Him. In Matthew 15:1-20, it then noted the traditions of the Jews which Jesus condemned, explaining that what comes out of a man is what defiles, not what enters into him.   That was then followed by His journey to the allotments of Tyre and Sidon, where the faith of the Canaanite woman was noted, and her daughter was saved. After that, Jesus went around the Sea of Galilee to the eastern side of it. There, He healed many and eventually fed four thousand. After feeding them, they crossed the Galilee, coming to the region of Magdala.   While there, He was accosted by the Pharisees and Sadducees who looked for a sign from heaven. He told them no sign would be given but the sign of Jonah. Once that was complete, they once again crossed the Sea of Galilee to the eastern side, being instructed on the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Now in the account, they have remained on this eastern side and gone north to the area of Caesarea Philippi.   This crisscrossing of the land and the Sea of Galilee all has a purpose. Jesus' movements are being used as a walking instructional tool in what God is doing in redemptive history. It is good to stop and reconsider where He has gone and where He is at any given time. By considering these things, we can follow what God is doing in reconciling the world to Himself through Jesus.   Each area visited, each topographical marker that is mentioned, and each thing Jesus does is being woven into a marvelous tapestry for us to ponder and learn from. Keep paying attention to the details, both from a micro and macro viewpoint. God is telling us a story of humanity's long trek back to Him, and it is all centered on Jesus.   Lord God, it would make no sense for You to send Your Son into the world unless there was something to be gained from it. His life of trials and burdens, culminating in His cross and resurrection, tells us that there is a great plan that has been put in place to bring Your people to a place we cannot even imagine at this time. We are grateful to be on this journey because of Jesus! Thank You for the sure hope we possess. Amen.

Thursday, 29 January 2026   Then they understood that He did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Matthew 16:12   “Then they comprehended that not He said to caution from the leaven – the bread, but from the teaching – the Pharisees and Sadducees” (CG).   In the previous verse, Jesus explicitly told the disciples that He didn't speak to them about bread, but about the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. With His words spoken to them, the light bulb came on. Matthew says, “Then they comprehended.”   Jesus took the disciples through an instructional process to help them learn how to think clearly. Instead of just saying what He was talking about, He asked them questions that would help them to think through the matter.   With the questions complete, He then told them what He was talking about while still using the leaven metaphor. From there, they would have to make the final leap from the metaphor to the matter He was addressing, which was, “that not He said to caution from the leaven – the bread.”   They now know it isn't leaven of bread. Jesus told them He was referring to the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. As Pharisees and Sadducees are not loaves walking around, either leavened or unleavened, Jesus had to be referring to something else while using a metaphor.   With this understood, they were able to deduce that it wasn't really leaven He was addressing, “but from the teaching – the Pharisees and Sadducees.”   This is their lightbulb moment. Jesus has successfully schooled them on a matter while giving them a warning about that matter. What the Pharisees and Sadducees had asked from Jesus was hypocritical, wicked, and adulterous according to Jesus' words to them.   Understanding this, Jesus then let the disciples know that such people, who ask for signs when there are already signs galore to confirm what they had wanted, are false teachers. As false teaching comes from a sinful heart, their doctrine itself is sinful.   Jesus told the disciples to beware of their doctrine, meaning concerning the things of God, because the source of what they taught was corrupt. This is essentially the message Jesus conveys to them. It is somewhatone analogous to what He said to them earlier concerning false prophets –   “From their fruits you will recognize them. Not any, they gather from thorns a grape or from thistles figs? 17Thus, every good tree, it produces good fruit. And the rotten tree, it produces evil fruit. 18Not, it can, a good tree, bad fruit produce, nor a rotten tree good fruit produce. 19Every tree not producing good fruit, it is exscinded, and it is cast into fire. 20Hence, from their fruits you will know them.” Matthew 7:16-20   Life application: These leaders in Israel were to be obeyed in accordance with the law. Jesus will make this explicit in Matthew 23. However, the disciples were told to beware of what they taught, as it was an infection that would only lead people away from a sound relationship with God.   Nothing has changed with Israel's religious leaders since then. The rabbis teach what is contrary to what God has determined, meaning salvation by faith through grace, as is found in the gospel of Jesus Christ. This is what God is doing. If they are teaching contrary to that, they are not teaching what God is doing.   This is such a sad situation for the people that many rabbis over the years have been proclaimed the Messiah. Today in Israel, there are billboards and banners along the highways proclaiming one person or another is the Messiah.   Until they get this right, as a nation, they will remain under the curse of the law. However, isn't this what has happened in Christian circles many times as well? Throughout church history, a litany of false teachers has claimed they were God's representative on earth.   There are people who have started aberrant cults and sects. There are those who claim the Messiah is alive today and he lives in the Philippines, Russia, Miami, and elsewhere. Why is this the way it is? It is because in both Israel and throughout the rest of the world, people don't take the time to learn the Bible.   In not knowing the Bible, we cannot know if what we are being told is true or not about what God is doing. All we have to lean on is what we are told and whatever discernment we possess. Unfortunately, quite often those who claim the “gift” of discernment are the ones lacking even a modicum of it.   It is important for us to read the Bible. It has been given to keep us from being led down the primrose path. Be sure to use wisdom, pick it up, and read it!   Lord God, You have said in Your word that there is a proper path leading to restoration with You. If there is a proper path, then not being on it will not lead to that restoration. Help us to be wise and discerning concerning such things. May we be willing to put in the effort necessary to hold fast to You alone by knowing how to do so through Your word. Amen.

Wednesday, 28 January 2026   How is it you do not understand that I did not speak to you concerning bread?—but to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.” Matthew 16:11   “How not you recollect that I spoke not concerning bread to you! Caution from the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees” (CG).   In the previous verse, Jesus continued His reminders to the disciples concerning His miracles, specifically the giving of the bread to four thousand, which was followed by collecting seven large hampers of leftovers. Because of this, He incredulously asks, “How not you recollect that I spoke not concerning bread to you!”   He had multiplied bread to feed many thousands on two separate occasions. And more, there was enough bread left over that people could have grabbed a snack for the journey on the way. So why would He care about the disciples not bringing bread? He wouldn't. Something entirely different was on His mind. That is stated with the words, “Caution from the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”   There are two small changes in some of the texts –   How not you recollect that I spoke not concerning bread to you, but to caution from the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. How not you recollect that I spoke not concerning bread to you! Caution from the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.   Either way, the sense is understood. In the second example, there seems to be a bit of impatience implied in the response, something that would be completely understandable. Jesus' words in verse 6 said, “You behold, and you caution from the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”   Not getting the metaphorical nature of His words, they had assumed He was upset that they hadn't brought bread. But now, after reminding Him that He could multiply bread at will, He restates what He had originally said to them, if not a bit more impatiently. He wants them to contemplate the metaphor without His having to explicitly explain it.   Life application: What Jesus is doing is instructional. Instead of just outright telling the disciples what He means, He gives them a chance to think through the words. Teachers may do this in class.   Instead of saying what the answer to a problem is, they may restate it as a question. In doing this, it forces the students to think through what the teacher intends to say. Otherwise, the students may hear the information in one ear, and it will go right out the other.   However, when confronted with the chance to appear smart or refrain from looking uninformed, the question will cause each person to pay attention and contemplate what is on the teacher's mind.   An even more subtle approach is what Jesus did. He didn't ask a question. Instead, He said something intending for a metaphor to be considered, but knowing that probably wouldn't be understood at first.   Then, after seeing the frustration of the disciples, He takes time to explain why their thinking is askew, and then He restates the original question, implying a demand for them to think again about what they had originally considered.   Suppose a person who owns a bell factory is getting married. He walks into the company and says, “I hear bells ringing soon.” The employees may say, “We are working on the whole new line. They should be ready soon!”   But the owner repeats his original statement, “I hear bells ringing SOON.” By repeating the same thing, he is letting them know he didn't mean what they thought he meant. By adding stress, he asks them to reconsider the entire paradigm. Searching the recent past, they remember that the boss has been doting on Polly Pretty a lot lately.   Suddenly, the bells in their own minds ring clearly. The boss is talking about getting married. The metaphor is not only understood, but it has also been highlighted for them to joke about and reconsider in the years ahead. Jesus has used such a tool. That has now been reiterated to us in millions and millions of copies of the Bible for the past two thousand years.   We have learned, explicitly, what leaven is to be equated to when we read the Bible.   Lord God, we love how Your word instructs us. Again and again, teaching techniques are used that are intended to help us perfect our doctrine and also remember lessons that may otherwise escape our memories. But because of the way the word is laid out, we will remember many details as clearly as the ringing of a bell. Thank You for this. Amen.  

Tuesday, 27 January 2026   Nor the seven loaves of the four thousand and how many large baskets you took up? Matthew 16:10   “Nor the seven loaves – the four thousand, and how many hampers you took?” (CG).   In the previous verse, Jesus reminded the disciples about the five loaves of the five thousand, asking them to recollect how many handbaskets they had taken up. He next reminds them of the second feeding of a multitude, saying, “Nor the seven loaves – the four thousand.”   If the chronology is as recorded by Matthew, this was a very recent event. It is recorded in Matthew 15:32-38, as the chapter closed out. Therefore, unless the events are not chronological, it has been an extremely short period of time since then.   They went to the area of Magdala, had an interaction with the Pharisees and Sadducees, and then they departed. Upon their departure to the other side, Jesus warned them about the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. The implication is that all of this was in a very short time span. And yet, Jesus is questioning them about what happened, as if they had completely forgotten. He continues with, “and how many hampers you took?”   The answer is seven hampers, meaning big basketfuls, of leftovers. How they could have forgotten that and worried about not having taken bread is a bit astonishing.   Life application: Despite being incredible that the disciples forgot the great thing Jesus did, how can we look down on them for having done so? Do we remember what Jesus did for us? He saved us from the power of sin and the hand of the devil.   One would think we would be constantly and eternally grateful for this. And yet, how often do we forget as we go through our daily lives? We may go back and do some of the stupid things we once did, or we may find some other thing that we never did before and pick up that habit.   Instead of living holy lives and honoring Him, we fail Him often. Imagine the words He would say to us! “Don't you remember the pit you were in? Don't you remember the joy of the day you first believed? How can it be that you have forgotten those things and have picked up the ways of the world again?”   The good news is, Jesus didn't say, “You guys can't be my disciples anymore. Your memory is short, and your level of understanding isn't up to par.” Rather, He continued to work with them despite their many faults and limitations. And He will continue to work through those He has saved throughout the ages.   We are fallible creatures doing an imperfect job in telling the world about the goodness of God in Christ. This is how Jesus has set things up, and it is how God is being glorified as the years pass. When people point their finger at you and say, “You aren't a good Christian because of XXX,” you can respond, “XXX is why I am a Christian. Jesus saved imperfect me. I understand my faults, and Jesus does too. We are in the process of getting me to be more like Him. That is why I need Jesus!”   If we were all perfected when we came to Christ, there would be no need for us to grow in Him. We wouldn't be dependent on Him for our walk. But just as the universe is being held together by the power of His word, we are continually being saved by the power of His all-sufficient atonement.   Thank God for Jesus Christ, who has accepted us and granted us eternal life. How great He is! Let us not forget the great thing He has done and is doing for us. Praise God for His goodness to us.   Lord God, thank You for the surety we possess because of Jesus. We are ever-unfaithful, and yet You are ever forgiving of it because You have saved us through the fully sufficient sacrifice of Jesus. Despite our faults and waywardness, we are Yours. Hallelujah! Hooray for Jesus! Amen.  

Ancient Roots of Life Ep 32In this episode of the Ancient Roots of Life and Wellness podcast, hosts JT and Josh delve into the intriguing genealogies found in Genesis, particularly focusing on the kings of Edom mentioned in Genesis 36. They discuss the implications of these genealogies, questioning the authorship of Genesis and whether Moses could have known about future kings in Israel, especially since he died before entering the Promised Land. The conversation shifts to the significance of the Septuagint and the Masoretic text, exploring how different translations can alter interpretations of biblical events. They also touch on the historical context of the Israelites and their relationship with surrounding nations, pondering the timeline of events leading to the establishment of kings in Israel and the implications of these narratives on modern beliefs about lineage and faith. In this episode, Josh and JT delve into the intriguing connections between ancient civilizations, pyramids, and their cultural significance. They discuss the retrofitting of Egyptian tombs and the possibility that pyramids served as altars for sun worship rather than mere burial sites. The conversation shifts to the architectural similarities between pyramids in the Americas and those in Egypt, suggesting a deeper connection between ancient cultures and their worship practices. They also explore the influence of lunar and solar worship in various civilizations, including the Sadducees and the Ottoman Empire, and how these beliefs have permeated modern interpretations of scripture. The discussion then transitions to the impact of color and frequency on health and well-being. Josh shares insights on the benefits of copper, its role in the body, and how it can influence pH levels and inflammation. They touch on the significance of colors in clothing and their psychological effects, as well as the importance of sound frequencies in promoting plant growth and overall health.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/jt-s-mix-tape--6579902/support.Please support our sponsor Modern Roots Life: https://modernrootslife.com/?bg_ref=rVWsBoOfcFJESUS SAID THERE WOULD BE HATERS Shirts: https://jtfollowsjc.com/product-category/mens-shirts/WOMEN'S SHIRTS: https://jtfollowsjc.com/product-category/womens-shirts/JT's Hats: https://jtfollowsjc.com/product-category/hats/

ScriptureMatthew 22:34-40 (NIV)The Greatest Commandment34 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together.35 One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”37 Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' 38 This is the first and greatest commandment. 39 And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.'40 All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” 

Sunday, 25 January 2026   But Jesus, being aware of it, said to them, “O you of little faith, why do you reason among yourselves because you have brought no bread? Matthew 16:8   “And Jesus, having known, said to them, ‘Why – you deliberate in yourselves, little-faithed? Because you took no bread?'” (CG).   In the previous verse, the disciples reasoned that Jesus' words concerning the Pharisees and Sadducees were because they had taken no bread. Matthew continues the narrative with, “And Jesus, having known.”   Matthew doesn't say how He knew. Mark doesn't provide any extra info. He may have known their thoughts, reasoned it out by watching them, or He may have overheard them. Whatever transpired, He knew and “said to them, ‘Why – you deliberate in yourselves, little-faithed?'”   Notice how He didn't rebuke them for not reasoning the matter through, but for their lack of faith. In this case, the two do complement each other, but they are distinct enough to show where their true problem resided, which is a lack of faith.   They had failed to consider Jesus, what He had done, and the outcome of the things He did. He will explain this to them in the next few verses, but for now, this verse finishes with, “Because you took no bread?”   Jesus gets to the heart of their faith problem. They are worried that they failed to bring bread, not having taken the time to think through Jesus' words about leaven. If their faith in Jesus and His capabilities was properly directed and sufficiently strong, they would have either reasoned through what He was talking about or come and asked Him to explain things.   Life application: Jesus' words concerning faith are, at times, taken to unintended extremes. This is quite common among charismatic denominations. They make claims based on their supposed faith concerning healing, financial success, obtaining a goal, etc. They will even make claims about changing the weather, such as not being harmed by a hurricane, earthquake, tornado, etc.   As ridiculous as that may sound, it is as common as drumbeats on a Beatles album. This unbalanced faith-driven mentality is used to demonstrate a supposed superiority over others who don't make such claims, such as “You got sick because you are lacking faith” or “You didn't get the promotion you wanted because you lacked faith.”   This type of attitude demonstrates a lack of understanding of the true purpose of faith, and it dismisses many facts, both from a scriptural sense as well as from the perspective of how things work in the world.   Claiming something you want, like a financial breakthrough, is not a demonstration of faith. It is a self-centered attitude that does nothing to glorify God. The fact is that God uses troubles, trials, and hardships in our lives to mold us and instruct us.   It may be that our affliction is intended to lead others to a relationship with God or a right understanding of His word. When we have a desire, we should pray about it, knowing that God is fully capable of granting it, but we should also understand that He is not obligated to make it come about.   All people suffer loss. One cannot faith-claim away death from those around him. To blame God after our little demands aren't granted is also a nonsensical way of handling our relationship with Him.   If you sit down with people who have this faith-claim attitude and explore their knowledge of the Bible or doctrines that stem from the Bible, you will normally find that they are lacking in real biblical understanding.   Don't feel like your level of faith isn't what it should be based on such people. You will never win at that game. Rather, let your faith be directed to what is reasonable and in accord with the words of Scripture. With this attitude, you will have a proper balance in your relationship with God.   Lord God, help us to rightly direct our faith as we walk in this fallen world. It is true that faith can move mountains, but it is also true that You may not want us to move a particular mountain. Help our faith to be properly directed and motivated through the desire to glorify You. Amen.

Read OnlineWhen Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee… From that time on, Jesus began to preach and say, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Matthew 4:12, 17When John the Baptist was arrested, his followers were likely overcome with fear and grief. The man they revered as a prophet, who fearlessly proclaimed the coming of the Messiah and called for repentance through baptism, had been imprisoned. John was arrested by Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great, infamous for ordering the massacre of infants in Bethlehem. Like his father, Herod Antipas was ambitious and morally corrupt. As tetrarch of Galilee and Perea under Roman authority, Herod's political survival depended on maintaining Roman favor. He often used religion to secure legitimacy among the Jewish people, though his actions routinely violated Jewish law.Though nominally Jewish, the Herodian dynasty was of Idumean descent, tracing its lineage to Esau rather than Jacob. The Idumeans were forcibly converted to Judaism between 135–104 BC. While this history granted the Herods a claim to Jewish identity, their foreign lineage and collaboration with Rome made them unpopular with many Jews. Herod Antipas, like his father, prioritized political cunning and personal ambition over genuine adherence to Jewish law.When John the Baptist emerged on the scene, he proclaimed his message with fearless conviction. His central call was one of repentance and baptism for the forgiveness of sins, urging the people to prepare for the coming of the Messiah. Yet John did not shy away from addressing the moral and spiritual corruption of his time. He famously denounced the Pharisees and Sadducees as a “brood of vipers,” rebuking their hypocrisy and lack of genuine repentance. John also boldly condemned Herod Antipas for violating Jewish law by divorcing his wife and marrying Herodias, the wife of his half-brother, Philip. This marriage not only violated Mosaic Law but also reflected Herod's ambitions to consolidate power and status. John's fearless denunciation of sin, even among the powerful, ultimately led to his arrest and eventual martyrdom.This historical context surrounding John's arrest is crucial because it helps us understand God's providence—how He permits certain evils to occur in order to bring about a greater good. Jesus Himself later affirmed John's greatness, saying, “Among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11:11). If the Son of God declared John's greatness shortly after John's arrest, why didn't God miraculously free him from persecution? The answer lies in John's mission. He had fulfilled his primary role: preparing the way for the Lord, the “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). Once John's mission was complete, God permitted him to seal his testimony with his own blood, offering his life as a martyr for the Lord and for the Truth that sets all people free.Reflect today on John's arrest and consider how you might have reacted if you had been one of his disciples. From an earthly perspective, martyrdom is difficult to comprehend or accept, especially in our own lives or in the lives of those we love. Though John's arrest and subsequent martyrdom likely brought fear and grief to his disciples, shaking their sense of security, from an eternal perspective, John's martyrdom was his greatest act of witness. It fulfilled his mission by pointing his disciples—and all of us—toward the true Prophet and Messiah, Jesus Christ. John is forever glorified in Heaven, and in the end, that is all that truly matters. As we honor John's unwavering faith, seek to embrace God's permissive will in your own life. Even in the face of suffering or evil, trust that God, in His providence, can bring about a greater good if we surrender ourselves fully to Him.My provident and loving God, You permit evil to touch the lives of Your faithful followers, knowing that in Your perfect Wisdom, You can bring forth a greater good. Grant me the heart of a martyr, filled with courage and trust, whenever I face injustice in my life. Help me to unite my every trial to Yours, in imitation of Saint John the Baptist and Your own Passion and Death. Jesus, I trust in You.ImageSource: Free RSS feed from catholic-daily-reflections.com — Copyright © 2026 My Catholic Life! Inc. All rights reserved. This content is provided solely for personal, non-commercial use. Redistribution, republication, or commercial use — including use within apps with advertising — is strictly prohibited without written permission.

Saturday, 24 January 2026   And they reasoned among themselves, saying, “It is because we have taken no bread.” Matthew 16:7   “And they deliberated in themselves, saying, ‘Because not we took bread!'” (CG).   In the previous verse, Jesus said to the disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Because of Jesus' words, not understanding the metaphor He spoke to them, Matthew records, “And they deliberated in themselves.”   A new word, dialogizomai, to reckon thoroughly, is seen. When one reckons a matter, he deliberates. HELPS Word Studies says, “properly, go back-and-forth when evaluating, in a way that typically leads to a confused conclusion. The term implies one confused mind interacting with other confused minds, each further reinforcing the original confusion.”   This word is only found in the synoptic gospels. At times, such as in Luke 1:29, it signifies an internal pondering or musing over a situation. In this case, however, any internal musing spilled over into dialogue where they deliberated the words of Jesus, “saying, ‘Because not we took bread!'”   Not understanding Jesus' intent concerning His words about the Pharisees and Sadducees, they could only grasp at straws about what He meant. Eventually, they came to the faulty conclusion that He must be scolding them for not bringing bread. Thus, they assumed Jesus meant their shortsightedness would leave them hungry on their journey.   Life application: The definition concerning the word dialogizomai given by HELPS words studies spoke of a confused conclusion, which resulted from one confused mind interacting with other confused minds. Because they have started with the wrong premise, their conclusions will be faulty.   This pretty much sums up any rapture discussion board you may go to. People start with a faulty premise. In doing so, their analyses will always end with faulty conclusions. Jesus' last words to His disciples were based on a question they proposed to Him –   “Therefore, when they had come together, they asked Him, saying, ‘Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?' 7 And He said to them, ‘It is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has put in His own authority. 8 But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.'” Acts 1:6-8   Paul, when referring to the timing of the rapture, uses Jesus' words to explain end times matters –   “But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you have no need that I should write to you. 2 For you yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night.” 1 Thessalonians 5:1, 2   The Lord, through His word, has told us that we are simply not going to know when the rapture will take place. That is the end of the matter... well, unless you think you are smarter than God. And so people constantly and nauseatingly come up with a constant stream of predictions as to when the rapture will take place.   This has been going on for two thousand years. Eventually, some false prediction is bound to correspond to the day, merely because every day, someone has a false prediction about the rapture.   There will be no reward for “getting it right” by such a person. In fact, there will be no rewards for having wasted one's life sitting on rapture boards with other ill-informed people, deliberating a day that we are told we will not be able to identify. Instead, there will be many who stand before the Lord and have absolutely nothing of value to present to Him for the lives they lived.   It is even questionable if many of these rapture seekers are even saved. The best way to avoid coming to faulty conclusions because of debating with confused-minded people is to not bother debating with them.   Instead, read your Bible, study it carefully, and be ready to tell people about the goodness of God in Christ. This is what we have been tasked with, so be about that good business. The Lord will come when He comes. Let's leave that to Him.   Lord God, help us not to get caught up in sensationalism, predictions about things we are told we will not know, and focusing on the nothingness of useless banter about unproductive things. Instead, may our deliberations be based on what is sound, reasonable, and glorifying of You. Amen.

Friday, 23 January 2026   Then Jesus said to them, “Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.” Matthew 16:6   “And Jesus, He said to them, ‘You behold, and you caution from the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees'” (CG).   In the previous verse, it was noted that the disciples had forgotten to take bread as they traveled. Matthew next records, “And Jesus, He said to them, ‘You behold, and you caution from the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.'”   Leaven, yeast, is something that has been noted many times in Scripture. It was something the people knew was forbidden during the Passover –   “Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven from your houses. For whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. 16 On the first day there shall be a holy convocation, and on the seventh day there shall be a holy convocation for you. No manner of work shall be done on them; but that which everyone must eat—that only may be prepared by you. 17 So you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this same day I will have brought your armies out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations as an everlasting ordinance. 18 In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread, until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. 19 For seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses, since whoever eats what is leavened, that same person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a stranger or a native of the land. 20 You shall eat nothing leavened; in all your dwellings you shall eat unleavened bread.” Exodus 12:15-20   Elsewhere, leaven is forbidden at various times during the instructions for the sacrificial offerings, etc. The disciples would probably not understand Jesus' words outside of that type of context.   In Hosea 7:4, the use of leaven is used in a metaphorical sense, but it is not a verse that most people would look at and understand the scriptural idea that is to be explained by Jesus. There, it says –   “They are all adulterers. Like an oven heated by a baker— He ceases stirring the fire after kneading the dough, Until it is leavened.” Hosea 7:4   Jesus used leaven in a parable in Matthew 13:33. That too would be tough to get metaphorical meaning out of unless the disciples specially asked Him what He was talking about. In Matthew 13:51, Jesus asked the disciples if they understood everything He had spoken to them, but it is questionable if they understood it as He is now relaying.   Their thoughts would be directed to Jesus' words being literal, something Matthew will confirm.   Life application: As you read the Bible, there are thoughts that are presented, such as having no leaven in the house during the time of Passover and Unleavened Bread. It is right to stop and ask why that would be included.   Eventually, when you get to the New Testament, the idea of leaven being a metaphor for sin is explained several times. As this is so, we can know exactly why the Lord instructed the people as He did.   It was an instructional tool to teach us about the nature of sin, how God would deal with it in Christ, and our responsibilities, as well as our position in Christ. Because it is explained in the New Testament, we should go no further with metaphorical applications. Scripture has interpreted Scripture –   “Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? 7 Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. 8 Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” 1 Corinthians 5:6-8   Look for the meaning of things in the unfolding pages of Scripture. If no explanation is given, then careful thought should be given to why certain things are presented. Don't just make stuff up out of your head.   Instead, let the Bible provide insights into the typology. If it is correct, a panorama of interesting information will arise that will then be consistent throughout the rest of Scripture. If this doesn't happen and things don't fit elsewhere, it means your original idea was not correct.   Be careful and contemplative as you consider what the word is saying.   Lord God, what a great and precious word You have given us. May we handle it carefully and analyze it in hope of finding what You intend for it to say, not what we want it to say. Help us in this endeavor, O God. Amen.  

Jesus warns His disciples about the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees—and they completely miss the point. Sound familiar? In Matthew 16:5–12, we see how easy it is to confuse religion with a real, living relationship with Jesus.In this week's study, we'll explore what “leavened bread” really represents, how religious thinking quietly shapes our faith, and how Jesus invites us into freedom, discernment, and truth. This passage challenges us to ask: Am I feeding on Jesus… or just religious habits?✨ Come ready to reflect, wrestle, and grow together.https://www.inseparableministries.org/  https://www.inseparableministries.org/event-calendarhttps://youtu.be/4ZBYQ2Th50s

Thursday, 22 January 2026   Now when His disciples had come to the other side, they had forgotten to take bread. Matthew 16:5   “And His disciples, having come to the beyond, they overlooked to take bread” (CG).   In the previous verse, Jesus rebuked the Pharisees and Sadducees for having sought after a sign. From there, it says He left them and departed. The meaning of where He departed to will be found in the next words, “And His disciples, having come to the beyond.”   In Matthew, it isn't obvious where Jesus is at this time. The reason is that in verse 15:39, it says that Jesus got into a boat and came to the region of Magdala. Nothing is said about His disciples, which is usually the case.   However, Mark specifically notes that they all had traveled together. Therefore, they have gone from the eastern shore of the sea to the borders of Magdala (Dalmanutha in Mark). Jesus talked to the Pharisees and Sadducees in that area. They then went back to the eastern side of the sea. When there, Matthew records, “they overlooked to take bread.”   A new word is seen here, epilanthanomai, to lose out of mind. It is derived from epi, upon, and lanthanó, to escape notice. The sense, then, is a focus on the consequences that arise when one forgets. The word overlook is a suitable match for what the Greek signifies.   Because of this oversight on their part, the disciples will misunderstand what Jesus will next convey to them.   Life application: It is interesting that Matthew did not record if the disciples traveled with Jesus in Matthew 15:39. Nor did he mention if His disciples went with Him in verse 16:4. Because of that, one might question if His disciples came to Him in Magdala in verse 16:5 or if He and His disciples traveled together to the eastern shore. This is unlike Matthew's normal precision concerning Jesus' travels, but it shows that the accounts are dependent on each other to fully understand what is going on. And yet, each is a single whole that gives exactly what is needed to meet the intent of the narrative.   The Bible does this in both testaments. Each main narrative is sufficient for the purpose being conveyed, but there are details that must be determined from other narratives to see the full scope of what actually happened.   A long and detailed example is found between the details of the books of Kings and the books of the Chronicles. They each provide the necessary information to understand the intent of the books, and yet, without having both of them, there seem to be contradictions in the timing of the kings' histories. However, when placed side by side and along with an understanding of the type of dating used by each author, the histories come together to form a complete whole. Along with that, adding in the overlapping historical and prophetic narratives found in other books, an even more detailed understanding of what is being conveyed comes into focus.   This is true with the book of Acts and the epistles as well. Taken together, the timing and details of what occurred at various times are more fully understood. And so, what we have is a collection of books that are independently sufficient for the intended purpose being conveyed, but they are actually all dependent on the whole for the entire panorama of God's redemptive purposes to be fully understood. Without including all sixty-six books, there would be a deficiency in knowing what the ultimate purpose of Scripture is. There would also be an unraveling of being sure of the authenticity of the books.   Therefore, the Bible is like a tapestry that has been perfectly woven together. By pulling out one string, the book would unravel in its perfectly harmonious intent.   This pattern is followed by authors of series today. Each book written by an author is an independent whole, but when details refer forward or back to other books, you can say, “Ah ha! I see why this happened in that other book!” There was no lack in the other book. And yet, there is a synchronization of all of the books that forms a complete panorama of the intent of the author. The difference, however, is that the Bible spans about fifteen hundred years and has about forty human authors.   And yet, it is a perfectly harmonious whole where thousands of years later, people are still finding new insights, almost daily, where it can be said, “Ah ha! I see why this happened in that other book!”   As the majority of the human authors had no idea who the other authors were, having come from different lands and different times, it means that the Bible is either the greatest fluke in human literary history, or it is truly the divinely inspired word of God. By faith, you can choose to believe the latter. That would be the wise course to take.   Lord God, we confidently receive the Bible as a reliable record of Your dealings with humanity as You work to reconcile us to You through the span of history. We know what we possess, and we thank You for it. Be glorified, O God, in our cherishing and careful handling of this precious word. Amen.

Thanks for listening to this week's episode where Daniel continues our talk series on The Lost! To join us for our Weekly Meeting, we meet every Tuesday night at 8:00 in Memorial Hall. We'd love to have you! For more information about us, please visit www.cruuga.org. To get more connected or if you have questions, please fill out this form: cru.typeform.com/to/ixJ2S6aS

Wednesday, 21 January 2026   A wicked and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign shall be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.” And He left them and departed. Matthew 16:4   “Generation – evil and adulteress – it seeks a sign, and a sign – not it will be given it – if not the sign of Jonah the prophet. And having left them, He departed” (CG).   In the previous verse, Jesus noted those who could tell the day would be one of inclemency because of a morning red sky. He then called the Pharisees and Sadducees hypocrites because they knew how to discern the face of the heaven, but the signs of the seasons they could not discern. Having said that, He continues with, “Generation – evil and adulteress – it seeks a sign, and a sign – not it will be given it – if not the sign of Jonah the prophet.”   The words are identical to Matthew 12:39 except that in some manuscripts, the words “the prophet” are not included. To understand the meaning, refer to that commentary. In short, however, the sign of Jonah is the proclamation of Jonah to the Ninevites, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”   Jesus equated those forty days to Israel's offering of Jesus, a day for a year. In their rejection of Him, the temple was destroyed, and the people were exiled in 70AD. To confirm that this is what He was referring to, Peter said this in Acts –   “And with many other words he testified and exhorted them, saying, ‘Be saved from this perverse generation.'” Acts 2:40   The same generation, wicked and adulterous, was described by Peter as skolias, warped, and thus perverse. Peter implored the people to come to Jesus and be saved from what would come upon them. As for Jesus' words to the Pharisees and Sadducees, once He stated them, it says, “And having left them, He departed.”   The meaning is that He got into a boat and left their area.   Life application: The preaching of Jonah is a part of the Old Testament Scriptures. Jesus' words concerning this sign are something that can be read and then compared to literal history.   Though there is debate about the exact timing of Christ's ministry, it is generally accepted that it encompasses the year 30AD. Seeing that the temple was destroyed in 70AD, as any competent scholar will testify, it is a certainty that Jesus' words were a prophecy that can be attested to as true and reliable.   This was to be the sign for the Jews that they missed what was plainly there in front of them. To this day, they fall under the same descriptions given two thousand years ago by Jesus and then Peter.   To become a righteous generation, then, they must repair the breach that they caused. The only way to do this is to receive Jesus as their long-rejected Messiah.   This happens in individual Jews anytime they turn to Christ, but it is the nation, as a whole, that must acknowledge Jesus before they can enter into the New Covenant. Today, it is common for Christians to cite Genesis 12:3 and claim that when Christians do not support Israel, they fall under a curse.   In fact, Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, did this when speaking to a group of pastors in early December 2025. There is a problem with this thinking. Actually, several. First, the promise was to Abraham. Paul demonstrates in Galatians 3 that only those of faith are counted as the seed of Abraham.   Second is the fact that Israel rejected Jesus. When they did, they were cut off from this fountain of blessing, instead falling under the curses of the law. God cannot spiritually bless those who are under His curse. They must first come out from under the source of that curse, meaning the Law of Moses (see Galatians 3:10).   Third, Christians are saved through faith in Christ, not through accepting or rejecting Israel's place in the world.   It is doctrinally correct that Christians should support Israel and the plan for them, which Scripture lays out concerning their future. However, it is incorrect and a misuse of Scripture to cite verses out of their intended context in order to motivate that support.   Rather, scholars, professors, pastors, preachers, and teachers should properly handle the issue of Israel because it is a type and a picture of individual salvation as much as it is an ongoing and, so far, stormy relationship between God and the people of Israel.   Would it be appropriate to say that we must support a person's present wayward walk because we know that they will someday be saved? The thought is unimaginable. Rather, we should speak against whatever wickedness they hold to and evangelize them in hopes of that day of salvation arriving.   The same is true with Israel. To blindly support a nation that is at odds with God's plan for them, as Jesus has clearly presented in the gospels and as is painstakingly explained in the epistles and Revelation, can only harm, not help, the situation.   Unfortunately, the modern Christian Zionist movement is doing exactly that. So what are we to do? The answer is to stand up boldly and support Israel because God has a plan in motion to bring them back to Himself. However, we are to include in that stand that Israel as a nation is currently unrighteous and at odds with God, and to convey the explicit idea that it is Jesus who will make restoration and righteousness possible.   Anything else, such as supporting Israel's building of another temple and going back to national law observance, is to directly and unambiguously challenge the cross of Jesus Christ as a means to restoration with God. May we never have such a purpose for these people who so desperately need Jesus. Jesus! Israel needs Jesus.   Lord God Almighty, You have set forth a plan for Israel's restoration. You have carefully laid out what is necessary for that to come about. You have given innumerable examples of it in typology and prophecy in their Scriptures. Help us to show them what they need and how to obtain it. Jesus! Help us to show them Jesus. Amen.  

Tuesday, 20 January 2026   and in the morning, ‘It will be foul weather today, for the sky is red and threatening.' Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times. Matthew 16:3   “And early, ‘This day... inclemency!', for glowering, the heaven, it reddens. Hypocrites! Indeed, you know to discern the face of the heaven, and the seasons' signs, not you can” (CG).   In the previous verse, Jesus said to the Pharisees and Sadducees that they can tell when the weather is good simply by noticing the red sky at night. He continues, saying, “And early, ‘This day... inclemency!'”   Two new words are seen here. The first is the adverb prói, early. It signifies the time of dawn. The second word is used, cheimón, the rainy season or foul weather. In essence, the person looks out and understands that a stormy day is ahead. As such, the noun inclemency suits perfectly. From the earliest moments of the day, people can walk outside and tell if it will be a stormy day. Jesus gives the reason for this, saying, “for glowering, the heaven, it reddens.”   Another new word, stugnazó, to glower, is seen. The idea is rendering something gloomy. When the sky is red in the morning, it is as if the sky is glowering down on the people, ready to drop rain, hail, etc., rendering their day as gloomy as it appears.   Jesus' words in both verses are pretty much universally understood. The old saying, “Red at night, sailor's delight, red in the morning, sailor's take warning,” has been used in one form or another throughout the people groups of the world.   Each has its own nuances, but it is common for people to speak of the sky in such simple, understandable ways. Because of this, Jesus says, “Hypocrites! Indeed, you know to discern the face of the heaven, and the seasons' signs, not you can.”   The point of His words is that the messianic signs He had performed, along with everything else that pointed to Him in prophecy, were as evident as the color of the sky in telling what was going on.   John the Baptist was prophesied to come as the forerunner of the Messiah. The prophetic timeline in Daniel, of which they would have detailed knowledge, pointed to the coming of the Messiah. The star of Bethlehem was a clear herald of the coming of the Messiah, as evidenced by “the chief priests and scribes” being brought before Herod to confirm the location where He would be born.   Everything in the land was swirling with the hope of the Messiah and the surety of His having come because of the confirming signs and wonders He was accomplishing. And yet, despite this, and much more evidence as well, these men had come to Jesus asking for a sign from heaven.   The only possible meaning of this is that they were willfully ignoring these things, as well as their own Scriptures, to challenge Jesus as they were doing.   Life application: The same attitude found in Israel at the time of Jesus is on full display among the religious elite today. How many Christian scholars, teachers, pastors, and priests see the people of Israel back in the land, exactly as Scripture prophesies, and ignore what is going on?   Many deny that it is the same group of people. Others claim that the church has replaced them, and there is no more plan or purpose for them. Some simply call the situation an aberration that will eventually be dealt with by their enemies, removing all trace of this disobedient nation in the process.   And yet, these same people will gleefully acknowledge that Israel received its just punishment under the law when they were exiled and scattered among the nations. But those prophecies don't end with permanent destruction. Rather, they end with restoration.   Even the epistles proclaim restoration for Israel. But somehow, the mental disconnect severs these deniers from accepting that God could possibly be gracious to them once again. The problem is one found in the heart. No wonder so many teach that grace requires works as proof of salvation! No wonder so many teach that salvation can be lost.   If God can withhold His grace from the people He covenanted with at Sinai, then He can do so with those He covenanted with in Jesus as well. One misunderstanding in God's nature will inexorably lead to more. The world is swimming in a pool of bad theology because we cannot understand the simple word “grace.”   Grace cannot be earned. It is unmerited favor. God's grace comes through faith in Christ for salvation. It comes from God's faithfulness to His covenant-keeping for Israel. We can trust God's grace. It is unconditional, and it will never expire.   Lord God, thank You for the grace that is found in our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

Start with the home and everything else starts to make sense. That's the heartbeat of this conversation—why children are gifts, why marriage is worth celebrating, and why people matter more than any résumé line. We share a candid look at the cultural script that paints kids as limits and freedom as escape, and we answer with a counter-story of joy, duty, and the long arc of legacy.We move from the poetry of Song of Songs to the power of Matthew's account of feeding the four thousand, drawing out a practical thread: gratitude and obedience turn scarcity into sufficiency. Along the way, we unpack Jesus's warning about the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees, exploring how subtle distortions can swell into dangerous doctrines. Psalm 20 and Proverbs 4 give us a daily rule of life—guard your heart, fix your eyes, speak cleanly, and boast only in the Lord—offering a path through noise, outrage, and distraction.Service and courage come alive in the Medal of Honor story of Willis Winter Bradley Jr., a reminder that real love runs toward danger to protect others. Then we zoom out to a civics lesson with stakes: America was built as a constitutional republic, not a pure democracy. We thread founder quotes and modern unrest to show why ordered liberty protects rights better than unfettered majorities. The throughline is simple: when faith sits at the center, families flourish; when families flourish, communities hold; and when communities hold, a nation stands.If this resonates, share it with a friend, subscribe for more faith-and-history deep dives, and leave a quick review to help others find the show. Your support—listening, sharing, or a short note—helps us keep building something true together.#AmericanChristianHistory #AmericaChristianNation #BibleAndHistory #FoundingFathers Support the showThe American Soul Podcasthttps://www.buzzsprout.com/1791934/subscribe Countryside Book Series https://www.amazon.com/Countryside-Book-J-T-Cope-IV-ebook/dp/B00MPIXOB2

Monday, 19 January 2026   He answered and said to them, “When it is evening you say, ‘It will be fair weather, for the sky is red'; Matthew 16:2   “And answering, He said to them, ‘Evening having come, you say, “Good weather!”, for the heaven, it is red'” (CG).   In the previous verse, the Pharisees and Sadducees approached Jesus, asking for a sign from heaven. He now responds to their request, saying, “And answering, He said to them, ‘Evening having come, you say, “Good weather!”   A unique word is seen here, eudia, good weather. It is derived from eu, well or good, and the alternate of Zeus, Dia (the accusative case), the god of the weather. Jesus remarks to them that in the evening, it is normal for people, including the scribes and Pharisees, to walk outside and deduce that good weather is ahead.   The words are colloquial. One might walk out with a wife, a friend, or, when his neighbor is outside, look up and simply say, “Good weather!” That is next followed by Jesus' explanation, as He says, “for the heaven, it is red.”   The clause contains another new word, purrazó, to be red or, intransitively, to redden. The word is only found in this verse and the next. It is derived from purrhos, fire-like, and thus red. Jesus' words are axiomatic. People observe the sky and understand its regular patterns.   Life application: In Florida, when the wind may start racing from the south during winter, there is a ton of moisture and heat being drawn up from the tropics. This warm (or even hot) muggy air tells the locals that a cold front is on its way.   As the front nears, the wind turns to a west breeze. For those who surf, they start waxing their surfboards. Eventually, the wind switches to the north, and a line of often very heavy rain will come rushing through.   That is the same moisture that was being drawn up from the south. It is now being returned to the people, often with violent thunder, lightning accompanying it as the cold air meets the tropical air.   Very quickly, the temperatures begin to drop, the waves build, the surfers surf, and the bays that are along the Gulf Coast between the islands and the mainland will drop many feet in level, sometimes so much that fish are left lying on the bay's bed, flopping around, waiting to be picked up by the thousands.   People know these things will come about, and they anticipate the changes coming simply because they understand the obvious nature of what is occurring. At such times, the bays can be so drained that one could walk across them without it getting more than knee deep.   This can all happen in a few hours. It is how the Red Sea passage is described in Exodus 14, where a strong east wind blew all that night.   Anyone who thinks the story is implausible has never seen the events in Florida at times as described above. Wind can be a strong force in drying out deep bodies of water.   Believe the Bible. It is reliable.   Lord God, we know that You can do all things, including drying out the sea for Israel to pass through it on foot. You even told us how You did it. Help us in our times of unbelief about things that we don't have an explanation for. Be with us in our times of weakness and doubt. Amen.

Topical Sermons / Speaker:Berry Kercheville Be Careful How You Hear (2) How to Understand the Message  Introduction: Last week we looked at the emphasis Jesus placed on hearing. He accused the multitudes of having the same dullness and hard heart as their forefathers in Isaiah's time. However, it is a peculiar rebuke considering the sermon was merely 5 stories without any mention of explanations or applications. Therefore, in this lesson we will explore the method of of the Master Teacher. Jesus used a method that is uncommon today but was common in the first century.  Consider Luke 2:46-47 when Jesus at age 12 was in the temple. “After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.” The text reflects the method of teaching and learning. The scribes are questioning Jesus; they are not simply giving him information. It is not a one-way street. Jesus is listening and asking, but the teachers are also asking Jesus questions. They are testing his knowledge and his desire to learn. Why continue a conversation if he loses interest? Therefore, to understand Jesus and the biblical message, we must understand Jesus' method of teaching, a method that is usually unfamiliar to the modern reader.    Understanding Begins with How Jesus Taught There are many messages in the Parable of the Sower. One of those messages is how aggressive our minds must be in order to learn. Television and other types of media have caused us to be lazy listeners. It is noteworthy that Jesus refers to the secrets/mysteries of the kingdom. When we read a mystery book or watch a mystery movie, what happens? The joy of the mystery is trying to see the clues given in the story in order to find the answer to the mystery. That is what Jesus has done in telling parables, not just the Sower, but 9 parables, five to the multitudes and four more to those who came in the house wanting answers. Add the parables up, meditate on them, and we come to a very good picture of what Jesus has planned for his kingdom. Therefore, this sermon of parables was used by Jesus to engage dull minds in discovering a secret. Isn't that in many ways the whole method in scripture? There are always embedded messages. Why did God rest on the seventh day? What is marriage about? Why do we read an elaborate story of the Exodus? Mysteries and secrets are echoed time and again and God is urging us to work at discovering the answer. We should say to ourselves, “Wow! How exciting! The God and Creator of the universe is bringing us into an eternal reality show. Want to play?  Consider Mark 4:13, “And he said to them, ‘Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables?'” Obviously, it was not impossible to understand the parable without Jesus giving an explanation. Challenging, yes, but not impossible. Jesus gave them clues: this is a parable about the coming kingdom (of which the Jews had the wrong belief) and it is a parable about “hearing.” The only other ingredient needed was a knowledge of farming—seed responds differently to different soils and that's the way the kingdom of God is! That's not rocket science, but it does need careful meditation.  The point is, the possibility of understanding was present in the parable. One of the themes of Mark's account is the dullness of the apostles and the Jews in general. However, though Jesus gives a mild rebuke to the disciples in the house, he commends them for asking in order to learn and condemns the multitude for not pursuing an answer. With the above knowledge, “why did Jesus speak to them in parables?” Did he expect the multitude to understand? No way! Not even the apostles understood. In fact, at the moment Jesus does not intend for the multitude to understand: “but for those outside everything is in parables, so that they may indeed see but not perceive, hear but not understand…” (Mark 4:11-12). He is looking for people who desire to know and learn; people who will come and ask and pursue the greatest offer made to mankind, the Kingdom!—“to you it is given to know, but to those outside it is not given!”  Therefore, Jesus purposely does not make everything perfectly understandable to every person on every point.  Does that surprise you? We would be appalled if a preacher today gave a sermon of five parables without explanation! The expectation was and is that each person would bring their brain to the study and go into discovery mode and draw conclusions from what they heard and then ask questions and seek answers. Jesus was testing their hearts, testing their desire for the Kingdom of God! Consider some examples; Example: Exodus 3:6 “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Jesus strongly rebuked the Sadducees for not understanding the resurrection based on this verse. Listen to his words, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God?” (Mark 12:24). And in Matthew's account, “Have you not read what was said to you by God?” (22:31). Example: Matthew 22:41-46 Jesus asked the Jews a question they could not answer. Why didn't the Master Teacher go beyond the question and give them the answer? We would never have left the conversation at that point! When Jesus went away after the question, there would have been two kinds of soil left behind. Some would have been so predisposed to the Messiah being a mere human, they wouldn't have cared. They had already made up their minds. But others would not have been able to get the question off their minds and they would have gone to the scriptures to find the answer. It is these latter people who would be saved and who Jesus was interested in saving. Therefore, the message for us is critical—we need to learn aggressive listening, not simply with a sermon, but primarily with our own personal study. Jesus' Expectation of Aggressive Listening, Mark 4:21-25 This is Jesus' immediate followup to the interpretation of the parable of the Sower. Do you understand verses 21-23? This is such an interesting few verses because we easily skip them in favor of the simplicity of Jesus' explanation of the parable in the previous verses. But is Jesus finished with his explanation? Obviously not. He is giving the final explanation point on the message of the parables. The purpose of the parable is to bring everything that is hidden to light. In the Lord's Kingdom everything that is secret must be revealed. Nothing will be hidden any longer. Therefore, in the parable what is hidden that is being brought to light? It is the hearts of men and women! When Jesus preached his word throughout the entirety of scripture, it became a lamp. And the purpose of a lamp is to reveal and expose all that is in the room. When Jesus again repeats the words, “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear!” we are able to get the primary message of the parable. The parable illustrates exactly what happened after Jesus preached it. Some went away without a thought of what Jesus said (wayside ground). Some had a measure of belief, but never pursued any further so that they became “rooted” in Jesus' teachings (stoney ground). Others believed, but allowed the other desires and cares in their life to take precedence over the pursuit of the kingdom (thorny ground). And those who came into the house and asked for more and put following Jesus and bearing fruit the priority in their lives are the good ground. Do you see it? Jesus has exposed hearts—all of our hearts. And of the four types of soil/hearts only one is good. With this we can conclude that Jesus' is not trying to keep people from being saved by giving the parables, he is weeding out people who do not have the heart he desires. Therefore, consider what Jesus is doing—and I would say is always doing in his preaching and in the biblical text—he is testing us as hearers and revealing our hearts! Just think how much God has revealed in his word. But how often have we looked briefly just like the multitudes and just shrugged it off because it did not immediately peak our interest or we did not immediately understand. There are eternal consequences to dismissing biblical truths that do not interest us or we do not understand. Verse 24 “Pay attention to what you hear.” Jesus is the teacher and the Holy Spirit revealed everything in our Bibles. Pay attention to what you hear! If we don't, we have failed the test, and even what we have will be taken away from us. Jesus Destroys Our Excuses, Luke 11:5-13 The context is Jesus teaching the apostles how to pray. We read it easily; we read it simply, but we miss the point!  The parable: God is not like a friend who does not want to be bothered by another friend seeking bread at midnight. The friend gives the bread, but only because his neighbor won't stop banging on the door!  God is different. He loves people who ask, seek, and knock. And to those who do, it will be given, they will find, and the door will be opened. What kind of Father do you think God is! He is ready to give! Oh goody, we say. I can ask God for “things,” the things I've always wanted. That's not what Jesus is talking about. Verse 13 “…how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Jesus just took away all our excuses. “It's too hard! It's too deep! I'm not a scholar!” Sorry, that doesn't work. Jesus just gave us two keys to understand even the most obscure of his teachings. The best Bible student always asks questions while reading. Don't just read and don't just listen. Ask questions—that's what a seeker does. If you are not asking questions and desiring a fuller understanding, then you are not seeking. God rewards seekers—that is the promise Jesus gives in his application of the parable.  Most importantly, when you have the desire of a seeker, nothing in scripture becomes too “deep” or too hard for you. Two reasons: Jesus just made a promise to us that if we ask, seek, and knock, he will give abundantly to us. Therefore, the seeker is not trusting his or her own mental intelligence, but trusting God. Further, to convince ourselves that there are parts of scripture “too hard” for us, is to indict God. We are accusing God of not delivering his word in an understandable way. Is this not the the main point of the parable? There is nothing wrong with the seed! It is the ground that is the problem! We simply cannot buy into the idea that there are books of the Bible that are just too deep, too hard to understand. [Harrison is a new Christian, but nothing is too deep for Harrison. David and I can teach him anything and everything that is in a text. Harrison doesn't know that something in the Bible is too hard—and so he asks, seeks, and knocks, and the result is he always understands. And when he understands, he asks for more.  A hungry person eats differently than a person who has filled themselves with cake, pie, and deserts. Conclusion: The Bereans (Acts 17:11) are the perfect example of proper connection between teacher and listener. Paul preached a message to them that they had never heard before in spite of their knowledge of the scriptures. Their response is what made them more noble than the Jews in Thessalonica. Those Jews immediately rejected preaching that was new and different. But the Bereans searched the scripture. That is what Luke is commending and that is what God is commending when he inspired Luke to record those words.  Berry Kercheville The post Be Careful How You Hear (2): How To Understand The Message appeared first on Woodland Hills Church of Christ.

Sunday, 18 January 2026   Then the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and testing Him asked that He would show them a sign from heaven. Matthew 16:1   “And having approached, the Pharisees and Sadducees, testing, they queried Him to show them a sign from heaven” (CG).   The previous verse closed out Chapter 15. Matthew 16 begins with, “And having approached, the Pharisees and Sadducees.”   It is similar to the two groups who approached Jesus to open Matthew 15 –   “Then they came to Jesus from Jerusalem, scribes and Pharisees, saying...”   “And having approached, the Pharisees and Sadducees...”   Their presence is consistently presented as antagonistic and challenging. Each time they show up, it is certain that a dispute of some sort is ahead. Jesus, understanding this, is always ready to stand against their challenges. This time, they have come “testing.”   In other words, they may have just heard of Jesus' miracle of feeding the four thousand and are suspicious about how He did it. They may suppose He had gone to the area a few days earlier and dug underground bunkers, filling them with enough bread to feed an army. How else could such a thing have transpired?   As such, they are testing Him, looking for a validation that He can really make the miraculous come about. Therefore, “they queried Him to display to them a sign from heaven.”   A new word is seen here, epideiknumi, to display. It is derived from epi, upon, and deiknumi, to show. Thus, it literally would be to “upon-show.” The word is found only seven times. Reading the context of those seven uses, one can see that “display” gives the proper sense.   Unfortunately, pretty much every translation punts and says “show,” the same translation as deiknumi. Thus, the reader will never know that a more poignant thought is being conveyed. They are asking for an actual display of a sign, as if Jesus could hold it in His hands, put it on like a garment, or set it before them as a piece of heavenly evidence.   This is the second time they have asked for something like this –   “Then, they answered, some of the scribes and Pharisees, saying, “Teacher, we desire to see a sign from You.” Matthew 12:38   “And having approached the Pharisees and Sadducees, testing, they queried Him to show them a sign from heaven.” Matthew 16:1   Apparently, Jesus doing a sign has been elevated to Jesus displaying a sign from heaven. If their request is, in fact, based on having heard about the feeding of the multitudes, they have gone from wanting a miraculous sign from Jesus to a magnitude greater, demanding one from heaven.   Elisha had multiplied bread in 2 Kings 4. Being an account in their Scriptures, it was considered a divinely sourced miracle. As such, and as the claim is that Jesus did this, they now want something greater, perhaps fire from heaven.   Life application: People want more than the written word. It is as if the masses have an insatiable hunger to have proof that God is God and that He is as He claims. Paul speaks of this in 1 Corinthians 1 –   “Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. 22 For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; 23 but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” 1 Corinthians 1:20-25   Perfectly understanding the question of the Pharisees and Sadducees, because he was a Pharisee, Paul says that Jews request a sign. Having lived and evangelized among the nations, Paul also fully understood the Greek mind, always seeking after wisdom.   Such people want proof of what they have been told. There is nothing wrong with thinking things through, but it is an entirely different level when God says XX, and we demand that He prove XX. Who are we to question God?   Rather, if we read the Bible and understand that it answers to the needs of humanity, we should then, by faith, accept God's word and, by faith, acknowledge what it says about Jesus, the gospel, and our eternal hope.   To many people, videos about dreams, books about coming back from the dead, and attending churches with supposed miraculous events are what life in Christ is about. But those things are opposed to life in Christ.   God is pleased with faith in His faithless people. So even a little bit will do. Have faith and be pleasing to God.   O God, may Your word be enough to guide our hearts and minds. Help us to faithfully follow You and trust in Your word and the promises found in it. May we not seek or demand that which is contrary to faith. Help us to have this attitude, O God. Amen.  

John's Baptism “Now in those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea, saying,“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” For this is the one referred to by Isaiah the prophet when he said, “The voice of one calling out in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, Make His paths straight!'” Now John himself had a garment of camel's hair and a leather belt around his waist; and his food was locusts and wild honey. At that time Jerusalem was going out to him, and all Judea and all the region around the Jordan;and they were being baptized by him in the Jordan River, as they confessed their sins. But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You offspring of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Therefore produce fruit consistent with repentance; and do not assume that you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father'; for I tell you that God is able, from these stones, to raise up children for Abraham. And the axe is already laid at the root of the trees; therefore, every tree that does not bear good fruit is being cut down and thrown into the fire. “As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in His hand, and He will thoroughly clear His threshing floor; and He will gather His wheat into the barn, but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” Matthew 3:1-12 NASB Jesus' Baptism “Then Jesus arrived from Galilee at the Jordan, coming to John to be baptized by him.But John tried to prevent Him, saying, “I have the need to be baptized by You, and yet You are coming to me?” But Jesus, answering, said to him, “Allow it at this time; for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he allowed Him. After He was baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and settling on Him, and behold, a voice from the heavens said, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Matthew 3:13-17 NASB Why Did Jesus Get Baptized? He was reliving Israel's history 2. He was repenting for us 3. He was consecrating Himself for ministry Believers' Baptism “And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,teaching them to follow all that I commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:18-20 NASB Believers' baptism is sacred 2. Believers' baptism is symbolic 3. Believers' baptism is singular

Have you heard that phrase before? “That's why they're ‘sad-you-see'?” What a sad state of being – no hope of an afterlife, and only your current status, power, or position to drive your morality and spirituality. As Pastor Bill will point out in today's message, the Sadducees didn't believe in the resurrection of the dead or the afterlife. This life was it. As followers of Jesus, the hope of eternity is a critical part of what drives us and supports our sense of inner peace through the hardships of this world.

Have you heard that phrase before? “That's why they're ‘sad-you-see'?” What a sad state of being – no hope of an afterlife, and only your current status, power, or position to drive your morality and spirituality. As Pastor Bill will point out in today's message, the Sadducees didn't believe in the resurrection of the dead or the afterlife. This life was it. As followers of Jesus, the hope of eternity is a critical part of what drives us and supports our sense of inner peace through the hardships of this world.

Our Election in Christ (3) (audio) David Eells, 1/14/26 I'm going to continue to speak on our election in Christ and how God has chosen Israel, and who Israel is in the New Testament. In (1Co.15:22) For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. Everybody who abides in Christ is going to be made alive, so it's important for us to know what it means to be “in Christ.” Does it mean, “I accepted Jesus as my Savior”? It could be, but it might not be. Some people truly want Jesus to be their Savior. They are truly repenting and believing, while other people are merely parroting words. Did you know that the Bible says salvation and eternal life were not given to you? (Gal.3:16) Now to Abraham were the promises spoken, and to his seed. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. The promise that God gave to Abraham was only to Abraham and Christ. And the promise of eternal life was given to Christ; it was not given to us. The gift of eternal life is in Christ. God didn't give the gift of eternal life into your hand outside of Christ. He gave that gift in Christ and only if you are abiding in Christ do you have that gift. The “once saved, always saved” believers think that they have been given a gift of eternal life which is outside of Christ, but that's not Biblical. (1Jn.5:11) And the witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. The eternal life that God gave us is in Jesus. The only way you can have it is to be in Jesus because the promise wasn't to you, it was to the seed of Abraham, “as of one.” That seed is Christ. (12) He that hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the life. Let's face it, some only have religion. Jesus said, (Joh.15:1) I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. No man is going to pluck you out of Jesus' hand; the Father is the Husbandman and He is the One Who is going to pluck up the plant. (2) Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh it away.... There are people whom we have considered to be Christians who are not Christians. They may have started out with Christ, but they have not come to Him. (2) Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh it away: and every [branch] that beareth fruit, he cleanseth it, that it may bear more fruit. (3) Already ye are clean because of the word which I have spoken unto you. (4) Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; so neither can ye, except ye abide in me. (5) I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for apart from me ye can do nothing. (6) If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch.... He is “cast forth” from where? He is “cast forth” from being in Christ. He said, “Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, he taketh it away.” If you are bearing fruit (Galatians 5:22,23; Ephesians 5:8-10), you are in Christ and have nothing to worry about. If you are not bearing fruit, it's because you are not abiding in Him. “To abide” means “to endure,” “to persist,” “to continue,” “to remain,” “to be steadfast.” To abide in Christ is to abide in His Word. It is to have ears to hear His Word (Matthew 11:15; Mark 4:9; Romans 11:8; etc.) (Joh.15:6) If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned. (7) If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall be done unto you. (8) Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; and [so] shall ye be my disciples. It's in bearing fruit that you are proven to be a disciple. You can come into Christ, but you won't stay there if you don't bear fruit. (2Jn.9) Whosoever goeth onward and abideth not in the teaching of Christ, hath not God: he that abideth in the teaching, the same hath both the Father and the Son. The “once saved, always saved” crowd believes that after you step over the line, that's it, but Jesus said that if you don't bear fruit, you are not My disciple and you are going to be cast forth as a branch. The word translated “elect” and the word translated “chosen” are the exact same word. The Greek word eklektos is translated sometimes as “chosen” and sometimes as “elect.” It's many who are called but few who are chosen. Jesus speaks about the man who made it into the marriage feast, but didn't have on the wedding garment. (Mat.22:11) But when the king came in to behold the guests, he saw there a man who had not on a wedding-garment: (In Rev 19:8 the wedding garment was “the righteous acts of the saints”, which also represents our fruit.) (12) and he saith unto him, Friend, how camest thou in hither not having a wedding-garment? And he was speechless. (13) Then the king said to the servants, Bind him hand and foot, and cast him out into the outer darkness; there shall be the weeping and the gnashing of teeth. (14) For many are called, but few chosen. Those who are abiding in the Kingdom are the ones who are bearing fruit and are chosen, or eklektos, or “elect.” The elect are all called and once they are saved, they are always going to be saved, but “many are called.” Among the called, there are those who don't bear fruit and there are those who bear fruit. Those who bear fruit are chosen. God said in (Hos.11:1) When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. You say, “He was talking about Jesus.” No, He was primarily talking about the children of Israel and then it was used of Jesus. He called them out of Egypt and into the wilderness, and then He tried or tested them. Some bore fruit and went into the Promised Land, and those were the elect. Those who died in the wilderness, in type, had been called, but they were not the elect; they were not chosen. (Num.32:11) Surely none of the men that came up out of Egypt, from twenty years old and upward, shall see the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob; because they have not wholly followed me: (12) save Caleb the son of Jephunneh the Kenizzite, and Joshua the son of Nun; because they have wholly followed the Lord. Joshua and Caleb bore fruit and were chosen. Here's a good example of this: (Rom.11:26) And so all Israel shall be saved.... Is that all of natural Israel? No, because (Rom.9:27) … If the number of the children of Israel be as the sand of the sea, it is the remnant that shall be saved. So, who is “all Israel” who is going to be saved? (Rom.11:19) Thou wilt say then, Branches were broken off, that I might be grafted in. The “branches” that were broken off are the natural Jews who would not believe. (20) Well; by their unbelief they were broken off, and thou standest by thy faith. Paul is talking about the Gentiles who are standing in the vine by faith. Be not highminded, but fear: (21) for if God spared not the natural branches, neither will he spare thee. So, where is unconditional eternal security?? (22) Behold then the goodness and severity of God: toward them that fell, severity; but toward thee, God's goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off. (23) And they also, if they continue not in their unbelief, shall be grafted in: for God is able to graft them in again. In the New Testament, “all Israel” is those natural Jews who believe and those Gentiles who are grafted into the vine by their faith. All the people who were broken off for unbelief were not Israel, but all of true spiritual Israel is going to be saved. Look what Paul said about the end of the Jewish Covenant: (Rom.11:5) Even so then at this present time also there is a remnant (This is speaking of a remnant of Jews.) according to the election of grace. (6) But if it is by grace, it is no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. (7) What then? that which Israel seeketh for, that he obtained not; but the election obtained it, and the rest were hardened. He said a remnant of natural Israel was elect, but Israel as a whole did not obtain grace. The called who were not the elect were hardened and the elect obtained grace because they believed. This was at the end of the Jewish Covenant. Now we are coming to the end of the mostly Gentile Covenant, and today “Israel” is the Gentile church and the few Jews; I.e., all who are “circumcised in heart.” (Rom.11:7) What then? that which the “Israel of God”(As a type of this Church) seeketh for, that he obtained not; but the election obtained it, and the rest were hardened. Is that Scriptural? Yes, because the Bible plainly says that the lukewarm are going to be spewed out of the body (Revelation 3:16) and there will be a great falling away (Revelation 12:4). Pagans can't fall away. Those people who fall away have to have been believers first, or they could not have fallen away, and the Lord is not coming until the falling away comes to purify the Church. (2Th.2:2) To the end that ye be not quickly shaken from your mind, nor yet be troubled, either by spirit, or by word, or by epistle as from us, as that the day of the Lord is just at hand; (3) let no man beguile you in any wise: for [it will not be,] except the falling away come first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition who was reprobated. The same statement can be made of the Gentile era because the elect are going to obtain grace to bear fruit and the rest are going to be hardened. The rest are going to fall away, exactly as Jesus showed in the Parable of the Sower. This should really give you the fear of the Lord. By the faith that God has given us, we are responsible to take God's grace and put it to work in our lives. We are responsible for obeying what we see in the New Testament, not in “Church.” Everybody who abides in the vine, which is Jesus, whether it's the remnant of natural Israel or whether it's the remnant of the Gentiles, is true Israel. And “all Israel” shall be saved because all true Israel is the elect, regardless of race. At the end of the Jewish Covenant, Jesus came to prove who the elect remnant was among the Jews. Jesus said, (Joh.16:21) A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but when she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for the joy that a man is born into the world. (22) And ye therefore now have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no one taketh away from you. Our personal man-child is born to us as the fruit of Christ being manifest through us to the world. All who exercise faith in the promises will bear His fruit, which looks like Him. In these days, the corporate Man-child body, in whom is the full manifestation of Jesus, is coming to prove who the first fruits elect remnant is in the Church, and the Man-child is going to use the same method that Jesus used to bring this nature to the Church. What was Jesus' method? (Mat.13:10) And the disciples came, and said unto him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables? In other words, “Why are you saying things to them that are so hard to understand?” (11) And he answered and said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. (12) For whosoever hath, to him shall be given.... “Whosoever hath” what? Well, if we go back three verses, we'll find the answer: (9) He that hath ears, let him hear. It's like when something makes perfect sense to you, but when you try to explain it to other people, somehow they just can't understand what you're saying unless they have the gift of faith. You see, Jesus' method for separating the elect from the non-elect was to preach the Word and when He preached the Word, the elect understood because they had ears. (Mat.13:12) For whosoever hath, to him shall be given (If you have ears, it's going to be given to you. Sometimes we do not hear the word of the Lord with the respect that we should have. God is speaking.), and he shall have abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he hath. People who don't have ears to hear are going to lose what understanding they do have. Remember what happened to the servant who was given the one talent? (Mat.25:14) For [it is] as [when] a man, going into another country, called his own servants (The Greek word there is doulous and it actually means “bondslaves.”), and delivered unto them his goods. (15) And unto one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one; to each according to his several ability; and he went on his journey… (24) And he also that had received the one talent came and said, Lord, I knew thee that thou art a hard man, reaping where thou didst not sow, and gathering where thou didst not scatter; (25) and I was afraid, and went away and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, thou hast thine own. (26) But his lord answered and said unto him, Thou wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I did not scatter; (This servant had no ears; his knowledge was false. His Lord did scatter it, to him. He didn't realize that all was given to him by grace. It did not come by their works. Many think they own what they have.) (27) thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the bankers, and at my coming I should have received back mine own with interest (or fruit). The servant with the one talent didn't bring forth any fruit from what was given to him. The Lord took away the one talent from him and gave it to the servant who had the 10 talents. (Mat.25:28) Take ye away therefore the talent from him, and give it unto him that hath the ten talents. (29) For unto every one that hath (ears) shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not, even that which he hath shall be taken away. Again, a person who doesn't bear fruit is not “harkening,” which means “to hear and obey,” unto the voice of the Lord, and even what they do have is going to be taken away from them. Jesus told us, (Mat.10:34) Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. That “sword” separated the righteous from the wicked, and the wicked from their demons. That was a good thing because a little leaven leavens the whole lump (Matthew 13:33; Luke 13:21; 1 Corinthians 5:6; Galatians 5:9). (Jer.48:10) Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord negligently; and cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood. Now, there are a lot of preachers who are not going to cut anyone with the Word; it's too easy to lose tithes that way and so they aren't going to step on anyone's feet. Your sword is supposed to separate. The Word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword and it divides. (Heb.4:12) For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart. The Word divides the carnal from the spiritual. Jesus wasn't trying to explain things to people who didn't have ears to hear. Even if He had given it to them, as we've seen, they could not have kept it. (Luk.13:23) And one said unto him, Lord, are they few that are saved? And he said unto them, (24) Strive to enter in by the narrow door (Many pass up the narrow door of grace until it is too late.): for many, I say unto you, shall seek to enter in, and shall not be able. (25) When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, saying, Lord, open to us; and he shall answer and say to you, I know you not whence ye are; (26) then shall ye begin to say, We did eat and drink in thy presence, and thou didst teach in our streets; (27) and he shall say, I tell you, I know not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity. Well, they were walking with Jesus, but they had not come to Him, just as Judas walked with Him and did miracles and signs but was an unrepentant thief until he couldn't turn back. Jesus warned us (Mat.7:21) Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven. (22) Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy by thy name, and by thy name cast out demons, and by thy name do many mighty works? (23) And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me, ye that work iniquity. How could they do these miracles if He didn't “know” them? It's because Jesus gave them authority to do those works (Matthew 28:18-19; Luke 9:1). You see, “knowing about” someone is not the same as “knowing” someone. “Knowing you” is like the relationship Adam had with Eve. He knew Eve. This is a personal relationship with the Lord, like a husband knows his wife. “I never knew you” is what Jesus will say about a person who was doing the work of God, but was not giving good ground to the seed. Some people think they surely must be acceptable to God because they are doing the work of God. No, you can do the work of God and yet totally fail in your personal relationship with God. Personally, someone can be a total failure in their life of obedience to God, but they can still go cast out demons and do many mighty works. It's not gifts that open the door to the Kingdom, folks, it's fruit. He said that many are going to seek to enter in, but they will not be able. When the five foolish virgins came to the marriage feast after the door was shut, they called out, (Mat.25:11) … Lord, Lord, open to us. (12) But he answered and said, Verily I say unto you, I know you not. Were they Christians? Yes, they were Christians and they did start out and seek to enter in, but they did not bear fruit. In a way, at the end of the Jewish Dispensation, the Lord was getting up to close the door, and Jesus was a part of God closing that door. Though all of those Jews, according to the Old Testament, were Covenant people, all but a remnant were rejected at that time, and God closed the door. Here we are at the end of the Gentile Covenant and the exact same thing is getting ready to happen again, which lets us know that we have to bear fruit. What's the difference between the called who don't bear fruit and the called who do bear fruit? The called who do bear fruit are the elect among the called because they abide in Christ by their faith, and therefore they receive more grace. Those who don't abide in Christ eventually lose even what grace they have. Hopefully, they will return when they receive the greater knowledge that is coming. Grace comes by faith. The only difference between those who bear fruit and those who don't bear fruit is that some walk by faith in the truth and some do not. There's no use in worrying, “Am I the elect or am I not the elect?” The only way you are going to prove that you are the elect is to walk by faith. You have that choice; everyone who is among the called has the choice to walk by faith or not to walk by faith. Why did Jesus rebuke His disciples for their unbelief? Did Jesus rebuke them because they couldn't walk by faith? Did He rebuke them because they weren't the elect? No, He rebuked them because they could walk by faith, but they were not walking by faith at that moment. He does the same with us sometimes when we are not walking by faith. But notice that they repented and He didn't remember their sins against them. (Joh.17:6) I manifested thy name unto the men whom thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them to me; and they have kept thy word. He said that they were obedient disciples. Jesus doesn't remember our sins against us, either, but He wants us to repent and walk by faith. So don't get caught up in, “Am I just called and not elect?” All you have to do is walk by faith because, if you walk by faith, you will bear fruit and you will be the elect. We are here in this wilderness to walk by faith and to prove that we are ‘Joshua and Caleb'. The Jews who convert to Christianity have no problem with predestination, calling and election because that's what they have been taught all of their lives. It's the Gentiles who have a problem with it because it's so foreign to their thinking. (Deu.7:6) For thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God: the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a people for his own possession, above all peoples that are upon the face of the earth. (7) The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all peoples: (8) but because the Lord loveth you, and because he would keep the oath which he sware unto your fathers, hath the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. There are answers here to some theological problems if you believe that history repeats. As Jesus said, (Mat.5:18) … Till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished. And Paul told us, (1Co.10:11) Now these things happened unto them by way of example; and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come. One theological problem is all the prophecies we've heard about the coming great revivals because people feel that God has failed unless He converts a large number of humanity. We can see here, if God has failed in the New Testament, He certainly did fail the Old Testament, but God wasn't going after large numbers. In fact, He picked the fewest of all peoples to be His people. He was after quality and not quantity. Some people think that God is out to convert the people of the world, yet Jesus prophesied, (Mat.7:13) Enter ye in by the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many are they that enter in thereby. (14) For narrow is the gate, and straitened the way, that leadeth unto life, and few are they that find it. Even though Jesus will “compel” many to come in, He didn't prophesy that great masses of humanity would be running into the Kingdom of Heaven over the course of time. Another theological problem for people is the classic question, “What about the heathens in deepest, darkest Africa? What is God going to do about them?” Well, we just saw that back in the days when God chose Israel and even all through the Old Testament, they were a small group of people compared to the rest of the world. If you had asked one of them that question, they would have replied, “What are you talking about? Don't you understand that God has chosen Israel?” And if you repeated your question, “Yes, but what about the heathens in the deepest, darkest Africa who have never heard about God?” They would have replied again, “Don't you understand? God has chosen Israel.” The Jews understood this. If you give people this answer today, they don't understand, but the Jews did understand because they were raised with the predestination doctrine. Now, I do have a couple of answers for this problem: one is election and the other is conscience. Let me point out that God said He was going to judge people according to their conscience, but first, I'd like to clarify something here. He's talking in this Scripture about Christians coming to God, as opposed to the Jews who were with God under the Law. And so He says, (Rom.2:15) In that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness therewith, and their thoughts one with another accusing or else excusing [them]; (16) in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men, according to my gospel, by Jesus Christ. A person's conscience is either going to accuse or excuse them. We know this text is talking about Christians because they are the only ones “who show the work of the Law written in their hearts.” But the rest of the world is going to be judged according to conscience, too, and conscience won't put any of us in Heaven. Jesus said, (Mat.24:37) And as [were] the days of Noah, so shall be the coming of the Son of man. If God did the same thing He did in the days of Noah, some would find grace and the rest would find justice. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord (Genesis 6:8). He was elect; he found grace and the rest found justice. God did no wrong for the rest had defiled their conscience they were born with. Remember what Jesus spoke in the Parable of the Husbandman, who went out at different hours and hired people to work in his vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16). The people who were hired last worked for only one hour, while the rest of them worked through the heat of the day. When it came time to pay the people, the husbandman called the last first and paid them a shilling and then He paid everyone else a shilling. But those who were hired first were unhappy. (Mat.20:11) And when they received it, they murmured against the householder, (12) saying, These last have spent [but] one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat. (13) But he answered and said to one of them, Friend, I do thee no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a shilling? (14) Take up that which is thine, and go thy way; it is my will to give unto this last, even as unto thee. (15) Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? or is thine eye evil, because I am good? That's the Lord's reasoning. God is never going to do less than justice, and in fact, God is almost always merciful. He doesn't have to be merciful, but at the least, He's always going to do justice. We've received God's grace, but we don't deserve it; it's a gift of God. When God judges, the world will receive righteous judgment (Acts 17:31), but true Christians will receive grace. Praise the Lord! So the answer to “What about the heathen in deepest, darkest Africa?” is that the heathen in Africa are going to be judged according to their conscience. Their conscience will either condemn them or excuse them. Everyone in the world has a conscience, but for some, their conscience has condemned them until it became quiet and just gave up condemning them. Their conscience finally became hardened, you see, because they rebelled against it. God has chosen the few and He's always chosen the weak among men in the next two verses. (1Co.1:25) Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (26) For behold your calling, brethren, that not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: So we see that God is clearly speaking of calling weak men. Then the translators, who probably didn't consider themselves weak and foolish, added things in the text over and over in the next three verses, which they italicized, showing it was not in the original text. Clearly, God is not speaking of things but MEN. So when we read them without things but with minor corrections from the Numeric Pattern, the text fits together and makes sense. (27) But God chose the foolish things of the world, that he might put to shame them that are wise; and God chose the weak things of the world, that he might put to shame the things strong; (28) and the base things of the world, and the things despised, did God choose, [yea] and them things that are not, that he might bring to nought those things that are: (29) that no flesh should glory before God. Clearly, He chose weak and the base men so no one can brag. He wants to prove His power to save. He has always chosen small and weak Israel. Even in the New Testament, spiritual Israel, those who are after the same faith as Abraham, is still the only one who is chosen. (Psa.147:19) He showeth his word unto Jacob, His statutes and his ordinances unto Israel. (20) He hath not dealt so with any nation; And as for his ordinances, they have not known them. Praise ye the Lord. Not showing the nations His ordinances and statutes in the Old Testament is the equivalent of not giving someone “ears to hear” the Gospel in the New Testament. Jesus told the Jews in (Joh.6:44) No man can come to me, except the Father that sent me draw him... And (37) All that which the Father giveth me shall come unto me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out. God is not wrong by giving mercy to some and reaching out with the good news to bring them into the ark, no more than He was wrong when He brought those few into the ark in Noah's day. God is not wrong. And in many cases, God does not open the ears of people and He hardens hearts, and He hides things from “the wise and capable.” (Isa.45:15) Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour. You may ask, “What's His method of hiding things?” Well, the devil is one. (2Co.4:3) And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled in them that perish: (4) in whom the god of this world (The devil is the god of this world because the world copies and thus worships him.) hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn [upon them]. The devil has permission to do this. Also, (Mat.11:25) At that season Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding (This is speaking of the Pharisees, Sadducees and their students.), and didst reveal them unto babes: (26) yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight. (27) All things have been delivered unto me of my Father: and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal [him]. So it pleased the Father to hide some things, and in this text, He talks about hiding them even from religious people. There truly is a supernatural blindness on people. You've probably seen it when you try very simply to share the Gospel or a revelation from God with people, but somehow they just can't see it. And you look upon them almost in awe, wondering, “Why can't they see it? It's so simple.” Of course, it's simple to you because you have a gift they don't have. You have the gift of hearing.

Will marriage exist in heaven? Why did Jesus say that people will "neither marry" nor be "given in marriage" in the resurrection?In this episode of Apostolic Life in the 21st Century, Dr. David K. Bernard examines Jesus' response to the Sadducees' question about marriage and the resurrection in Matthew 22:23–33. Dr. Bernard explains the theological significance of this passage and what it reveals about the nature of eternal life and the resurrection body.Dr. Bernard also thoughtfully explores what Scripture does—and does not—say about relationships in eternity, offering careful biblical insight along with informed reflection on how our connections may be transformed in the world to come.This episode provides a hopeful, Scripture-centered perspective for anyone seeking to understand Jesus' teaching on heaven, resurrection, and life everlasting.Visit PentecostalPublishing.com to shop Dr. Bernard's full catalog of published works. Enter promo code DKB10 at checkout to save 10 percent on your order.If you enjoy this podcast, leave a five-star rating and a review on iTunes or your preferred podcast platform. We also appreciate it when you share Apostolic Life in the 21st Century with family and friends.

Matthew 3:1-12In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea 2 and saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” 3 This is he who was spoken of through the prophet Isaiah:“A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.'”5 People went out to him from Jerusalem and all Judea and the whole region of the Jordan. 6 Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. 9 And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.' I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. 10 The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.11 “I baptize you with[b] water for repentance. But after me comes one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with[c] the Holy Spirit and fire. 12 His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

Acts 22:25-23:35 But when they had stretched him out for the whips, Paul said to the centurion who was standing by, “Is it lawful for you to flog a man who is a Roman citizen and uncon-demned?” 26 When the centurion heard this, he went to the tribune and said to him, “What are you about to do? For this man is a Roman citizen.” 27 So the tribune came and said to him, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?” And he said, “Yes.” 28 The tribune answered, “I bought this citizenship for a large sum.” Paul said, “But I am a citizen by birth.” 29 So those who were about to examine him withdrew from him immediately, and the tribune also was afraid, for he realized that Paul was a Roman citizen and that he had bound him. 30 But on the next day, desiring to know the real reason why he was being accused by the Jews, he unbound him and commanded the chief priests and all the council to meet, and he brought Paul down and set him before them. 23:1 And looking intently at the council, Paul said, “Brothers, I have lived my life before God in all good conscience up to this day.” 2 And the high priest Ananias commanded those who stood by him to strike him on the mouth. 3 Then Paul said to him, “God is going to strike you, you whitewashed wall! Are you sitting to judge me according to the law, and yet contrary to the law you order me to be struck?” 4 Those who stood by said, “Would you revile God's high priest?” 5 And Paul said, “I did not know, brothers, that he was the high priest, for it is written, ‘You shall not speak evil of a ruler of your people.'” 6 Now when Paul perceived that one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, “Brothers, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees. It is with re-spect to the hope and the resurrection of the dead that I am on trial.” 7 And when he had said this, a dissension arose between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the as-sembly was divided. 8 For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all. 9 Then a great clamor arose, and some of the scribes of the Pharisees' party stood up and contended sharply, “We find nothing wrong in this man. What if a spirit or an angel spoke to him?” 10 And when the dissension became violent, the tribune, afraid that Paul would be torn to pieces by them, commanded the soldiers to go down and take him away from among them by force and bring him into the barracks. 11 The following night the Lord stood by him and said, “Take courage, for as you have testified to the facts about me in Jerusalem, so you must testify also in Rome.” 12 When it was day, the Jews made a plot and bound themselves by an oath neither to eat nor drink till they had killed Paul. 13 There were more than forty who made this conspiracy. 14 They went to the chief priests and elders and said, “We have strictly bound ourselves by an oath to taste no food till we have killed Paul. 15 Now therefore you, along with the council, give notice to the tribune to bring him down to you, as though you were going to determine his case more exactly. And we are ready to kill him before he comes near.” 16 Now the son of Paul's sister heard of their ambush, so he went and entered the bar-racks and told Paul. 17 Paul called one of the centurions and said, “Take this young man to the tribune, for he has something to tell him.” 18 So he took him and brought him to the tribune and said, “Paul the prisoner called me and asked me to bring this young man to you, as he has something to say to you.” 19 The tribune took him by the hand, and going aside asked him privately, “What is it that you have to tell me?” 20 And he said, “The Jews have agreed to ask you to bring Paul down to the council tomorrow, as though they were going to inquire somewhat more closely about him. 21 But do not be persuaded by them, for more than forty of their men are lying in ambush for him, who have bound themselves by an oath neither to eat nor drink till they have killed him. And now they are ready, waiting for your consent.” 22 So the tribune dismissed the young man, charging him, “Tell no one that you have informed me of these things.” 23 Then he called two of the centurions and said, “Get ready two hundred soldiers, with seventy horsemen and two hundred spearmen to go as far as Caesarea at the third hour of the night. 24 Also provide mounts for Paul to ride and bring him safely to Felix the governor.” 25 And he wrote a letter to this effect: 26 “Claudius Lysias, to his Excellency the governor Felix, greetings. 27 This man was seized by the Jews and was about to be killed by them when I came upon them with the soldiers and rescued him, having learned that he was a Roman citizen. 28 And de-siring to know the charge for which they were accusing him, I brought him down to their council. 29 I found that he was being accused about questions of their law, but charged with nothing deserving death or imprisonment. 30 And when it was disclosed to me that there would be a plot against the man, I sent him to you at once, ordering his accusers also to state before you what they have against him.” 31 So the soldiers, according to their instructions, took Paul and brought him by night to Antipatris. 32 And on the next day they returned to the barracks, letting the horsemen go on with him. 33 When they had come to Caesarea and delivered the letter to the gov-ernor, they presented Paul also before him. 34 On reading the letter, he asked what province he was from. And when he learned that he was from Cilicia, 35 he said, “I will give you a hearing when your accusers arrive.” And he commanded him to be guarded in Herod's praetorium. 12

Psalm 26 tells us David's love for his God. The Psalmist delights in every opportunity to extol the virtues of his Sovereign. David also tells of his detesting of the ways of the wicked. Psalm 27 speaks of the LORD being the light (revealer of what is right and honourable) and salvation (the process of saving and bringing to His kingdom of the faithful believers). The writer tells of the Almighty's capacity to defend the upright. He speaks of his Creator's pull on the writer's heart to seek fellowship with his God. And the Psalm concludes with a love and loyalty to his God which exceeds that of any human bond. David encourages himself in the assurance that his God will not see him abandoned into the hand of his foes. Wait he says on Yahweh; you will never be disappointed by taking this course. Psalm 28 says that "Yahweh is the strength and shield" of the psalmist. The thoughts are similar to God's consoling promise to Abraham at the start of Genesis 15. The confidence of knowing God is always with, and surrounding His children with His all-powerful arms. Yahweh will repay both the wicked and the righteous according to their works (Romans 2verses5-11). The response that such understanding generates in God's people is outlined in verses 6-9. Slowly read aloud; and pause and ponder.In chapter 14 of Matthew Herod is struck with terror on hearing of the miracles of Jesus. Herod Antipas, a convert of the Sadducees (and therefore a non-believer in the resurrection of the dead) was convinced that John the Baptist had been raised from the dead. Our Lord is told of John's brutal decapitation and in response responds by seeking solitude to reflect. This is interrupted by a multitude seeking him out and he compassionately responds to their need of a shepherd to teach them. He feeds 5,000 of them and heals many. John 6 tells us that their desire was to take him by force and make him their king. Jesus summarily dispersed the crowd and went into a mountain to pray. He sent the Apostles by boat to the other side of the lake. When the storm arose, he came to them walking on the water. Peter alone showed the faith and courage to briefly do likewise. He was rescued by his Master. Finally, upon reaching the other side of the lake Jesus healed many at Gennesaret.Thanks for joining us - we pray you found these comments helpful in your appreciation of God's words, join again tomorrow

Caleb Drahosh When the Pharisees, Herodians, and the Sadducees approach Jesus, they do so out of antagonism. Jesus keeps turning the tables on them, showing that He's the One who is over them. Jesus doesn't go into His final days with His back up against the wall; He goes to the cross in full control, completely unrivaled. But now a scribe comes questioning Jesus. Unlike the others, the scribe is happy for an answer. He is close to the kingdom because He believes Jesus' answer. But will this belief be validated by submission to Jesus?

This Sunday we'll be returning to our study in Matthew, and we'll read Matthew 15:29-16:12. It's a big section, but I think you'll see how it all goes together pretty well.As you read through this section you'll notice that, even connected with last section, there is an ongoing bread theme. The Canaanite woman asked for bread crumbs. Jesus provides bread in the wilderness and then warns about the wrong kind of spiritual bread. There could be a whole teaching in that thematic vein alone…but that's not where I went for this study.In the section that closes out chapter 15, Jesus is doing all sorts of miracles, finishing off with a miraculous feast on a desert mountaintop. Mark's parallel account clues us in that this happened in the Decapolis – a largely gentile region. When Jesus is performing all these miracles in that region, what does it mean? How should it be read?When we come to chapter 16 the Pharisees and Sadducees ask for a sign – ignoring what has been happening right under their noses. They are intent on trying to control God's plan concerning what Messiah would be doing, and with whom. In what ways are we sometimes guilty of trying to dictate to God our own purposes? How can we keep from trying to steal the director's chair in life?in v 5-12, Jesus' disciples are cast in a pretty dim light. They forgot bread and assume Jesus' warning about the leaven of the Pharisees was about a lack of bagels. Leaven is used as a metaphor for an element introduced that changes it's host into something else. Leaven changes bread dough, causing it to rise and inflate. In what way do you think the teaching of the Pharisees had done this as it touched Israel's calling? What is Jesus warning his disciples about? What are the philosophies, politics and religious agendas in our world that could veer us off the path that God originally set the church on? What is lacking, according to v8, that can keep us from falling prey to these aberrant directions?Once again, this will be a challenging and thought provoking passage to dig into. Hope to see you on Sunday!Click here for a pdf of the teaching slideshow.

As we transition from Christmas into the new year, may we focus on the main reason we exist, to know Christ and make Him known! May your time in God's word, and your fellowshipping with the body of Christ strengthen your faith, established and firm, not moved from the hope held out in the gospel.Prepare for this week's sermon and this new year to come by reflecting on Jesus' great commission and great command:The Great Command:Matthew 22:34-40 Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”The Great Commission:Matthew 28:18-20 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

After a month away from our study in Mark, we're returning to the middle of chapter 12, where Jesus faces a series of challenges from religious leaders in Jerusalem during his final week. After Jesus entered Jerusalem to shouts of Hosanna and cleansed the temple, a delegation from the Sanhedrin questioned his authority. Pharisees and Herodians attempt to trap him with a question about taxes to Caesar, and Sadducees pose a hypothetical about marriage, hoping to prove there is no resurrection. This Sunday, we'll examine the final question from a scribe—a legal expert on God's law—regarding the greatest commandment (Mark 12:28-37). This leads to a discussion that highlights how someone can be remarkably close to God's kingdom without actually entering it. The main point is that true entry into the kingdom requires more than intellectual agreement with God's truths or admiration for Jesus; it demands recognizing, trusting, and submitting to Jesus as Lord, the divine Son of God, who alone has kept God's commandments in our place and, in the new birth, enables us to love God and others. I. The Foundational Truth of God's Law (v. 28-31) II. The Full Agreement Of A Lost Sinner (v. 32-34) III. The Faith That Enters The Kingdom (v. 35-37)

John Baumgartner Another group faces off against Jesus with a tricky question. The Sadducees think they understand the Bible, but they only use it to win their arguments. They are proud of their knowledge while being ignorant of the scriptures. Jesus reveals their ignorance by beating them at their own game. He is the true King of Israel, and He is defeating His adversaries with the Word of God.

How Did the Religious Leaders View Jesus?: Even though He came to offer salvation from sin, not everyone loved Jesus. We saw that fact last week through the eyes of the Romans, who were more concerned with their empire than with the Lord of the universe. This week we look at Jesus through the eyes of the Pharisees and Sadducees. ... Read More The post Perspectives on Jesus: The Religious Leaders (Part 2 of 3) | January 3, 2026 appeared first on The Friends of Israel Today Radio.

A Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Innocents St. Matthew 2:13-18 by William Klock Have you read a great book and then gone to see the movie and the movie totally lost the plot?  Or maybe you got into a TV show, but then the longer the show ran, the more it seemed to lose the original plot?  We've been watching one show that started out spectacularly, but now I'm starting wish they'd just ended it after the first season, because lately it feels like the original plot has been hijacked by today's obligatory plot about sexuality. I found myself thinking how ironic it is that in a postmodern culture that claims to hate metanarratives and insists we all write our own stories, its stories all seem to go the same way. And in the midst of it all, as we all try to write our own stories while having our stories hijacked by the various commercial, political, and sexual plot-writers of our culture, often without our even realising it's happened, well, Christmas comes.  And if we'll listen, we just might hear, we must might realise that there's a greater story and a greater drama with a happier ending.  A story so wonderful, so masterfully written, that it shows up just what fools we've been to try to writer our own stories.  A story, too, that's full of grace.  A story in which God himself has come into the midst of our mangled plotlines to forgive our bad writing, to remind us how the story is supposed to go and what a truly good story looks like, even to welcome us back into his great drama of love and faithfulness and redemption and glory. Genesis reminds us how the story was supposed to go: human beings created by God, mortals made of the same stuff as the rest of creation, but animated and brought to life by the very breath of God.  And then we were placed in his temple.  In the spot where pagans would place their idols to represent the presence and rule of their gods, the living God placed us.  To represent his good and sovereign rule over creation, to act as his stewards, and to know the goodness and the life only found in his presence.  It was a story in which we knew all those things we've recalled when lighting the Advent candles—a story of perfect love, peace, joy, and hope.  And we were to be fruitful and to multiply so that we might ever expand the Lord's temple until it filled all of creation with his glory. And then we tried to hijack the temple for ourselves.  Instead of being the image of God, we tried to become gods ourselves.  And immediately we began to accuse each other.  We began to exploit and dominate each other.  Within a single generation, as Genesis tells it, we were murdering each other.  We were at each other's throats.  Everyone out for himself, no matter who he had to step on or exploit or enslave or kill. I talked last week about the darkness of the pagan world into which Jesus came.  A world of petty and fickle gods, constantly fighting amongst themselves.  Gods representing the idols of the human heart: power, sex, money, war…you name it.  If it can be used to exploit others, we made a god for it.  The world was dark.  But there was a light—or there was supposed to be.  Two millennia before, the living God had called Abraham out of the darkness of pagan Ur and set him up to be a light in the midst of the darkness.  A man who knew the light of the living God and became, himself a light to the nations.  At first just one man, but then a growing family, and eventually a whole nation—set apart by God and living around a temple in which that light was manifest as a visible and awe-inspiring cloud of glory.  But even Israel succumbed to the darkness.  The kings and people of Israel did what rebellious humanity had always done: they tried to write their own script.  And so Jesus came not only to the dark world of the pagans; he also came to the dark world of Israel. Our Gospel today is a stark reminder of just how off-script things had gone for God's own people.  It picks up immediately after the wise men had visited Jesus.  Remember that they had travelled to Jerusalem from somewhere in the east, probably Persia, following a star that somehow told them that a king had been born.  They went to the palace of Herod, who was the King of the Jews—at least in title.  And when they asked where they might find the new-born King of the Jews, of course, he had no idea what they were talking about.  These foreigners had to remind him of his own scriptures about the coming king, the one who would finally shepherd God's people aright, and how he would be born at Bethlehem. From Jerusalem, the wise men travelled to Bethlehem where they became the first of the gentiles to worship Jesus the Messiah. And you'll remember that an angel came to them and warned them to avoid Jerusalem on their way home.  But Herod didn't forget the prophecy or the wise men.  He bore the title “King of the Jews”, but he wasn't really Jewish.  He was the child of a forbidden marriage between a Jew and a gentile.  He was a puppet king set up by the Romans.  He tried to win the people over with grand building projects and public works.  The most important was a renovation of the temple.  But no one like him and no one really thought he was the legitimate king.  And so he was also paranoid.  He wasn't above murdering his own sons just to make sure he had no rivals. And so, St. Matthew tells us, “After the wise men had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. ‘Get up,' he said, ‘and take the child and his mother and hurry too Egypt.  Stay there until I tell you.  Herod is going to hunt for the child, to kill him.'” Tom Wright tells a story that I expect must have happened when he was Bishop of Durham.  A prominent historian who was well-known for his scepticism about the Bible showed up at church one Christmas.  Wright was preaching.  And when the service was over, the historian approached him and said something to the effect of, “I've got it all figured out why people love Christmas so much.  It's about a baby and babies threaten no one, and so we all feel good, but in the end it's really all about nothing.”  And Wright goes on to say just how dumbfounded he was.  Had this man not heard the Christmas story?  Right here from the get-go, an evil king—a king who insisted on writing his own story—did everything he could to stop God's rewrite before it could even be started. Considering how impious Herod was, I suspect he didn't even really believe the prophecy about Bethlehem and a king.  He was just a paranoid despot who had it in his power to murder people frivolously, so…why not?  You know, just in case. “So,” Matthew goes on, “Joseph got up and took the child and his mother by night and went off to Egypt.  He stayed there until the death of Herod.  This happened to fulfil what the Lord said through the prophet [Hosea]: ‘Out of Egypt I called my son.' And so Jesus escapes, but there's no good news here.  Herod just lashes out blindly.  He's powerful, he can, and he does.  And so Matthew tells us, “When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he flew into a great rage.  He dispatched men to kill all the boys of Bethlehem, and in all the surrounding districts, from two years old and under, according to the time the wise men had told him.  That was when the word that came through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled: ‘There was heard a voice in Rama, crying and loud lamentation.  Rachel is weeping for her children, and will not let anyone comfort her, because they are no more.'” Tell me again how this baby threatens no one.  The shadow of the cross hangs over Jesus' story before he can even walk or talk.  Because Herod couldn't stand the thought of not being the master of his own story.  And under threat, he did what he always did: he murdered.  How many?  Bethlehem was likely a town of about a thousand people in those days.  There were probably somewhere between a dozen and two dozen boys there two years old and younger.  And Herod didn't give it a thought to have them killed.  And apparently neither did his soldiers.  That, or they feared Herod more than they feared God. Again, Herod reminds us that it wasn't just a dark pagan world into which Jesus was born.  The same darkness hung over Israel.  Because Herod's problem is a universal one.  Ever since Adam and Eve, we've all been trying to write our own stories and to put ourselves in the place of God.  To define for ourselves who we are and what our purpose is.  To define for ourselves what is right and what is wrong.  And the end result of all of our self-serving stories is that we trample and abuse and exploit others to further our own ends.  None of us has the relatively unchecked power of an ancient near eastern despot like Herod and so we balk at his evil.  And yet here in Canada the official statics show that about 20% of pregnancies in any given year are ended by abortion.  And that number is low, because it under-reports at-home chemical abortions.  If we can get away with it, if we can dehumanise another person in our minds, and if that child threatens the story we're trying to write for ourselves, many, many, many of us will do precisely what Herod did and kill an innocent.  And many will and have done it repeatedly.  Abortion is an extreme example.  Maybe we'd never dream of going that far to guard the narrative we write for ourselves.  Maybe we'd never go that far in our attempt to play God.  But this rot, this rebellion that corrupts human relationships spreads its roots through our society in all sorts of ways.  Maybe it's the influence of the wicked principalities and powers that St. Paul writes about in Ephesians—trying to corrupt everything, even the good systems we try to put in place.  But the rot spread.  Recently I was listening to a friend tell me the havoc pornography has wreaked in her life.  We tend to think of pornography use as a personal sexual sin—and that's certainly part of it—but this conversation had me thinking that at the heart of pornography is a dehumanising exploitation of others.  It turns fellow human beings into objects to be used to fulfil our own ends, human beings turned into non-player characters in the sinful and self-gratifying stories we write for ourselves.  It's not just about sex or sexual immorality.  It's about the abuse and exploitation for our own ends of fellow human beings, created by God, meant to bear his image, fellow priests of his temple to whom we have an obligation of love and humility and grace and respect. And when you think about it in those terms, you start to see just how much our rebellion against God, just how much our desire to write our own stories and to be our own gods infects and corrupts our network of relationships.  Our marriages and our families break down because we choose to use our husbands or our wives or our children to fill roles in the stories we write for ourselves, instead of being the fellow players we're meant to be in God's great drama.  We do the same thing in business and with the people we employ—as if they exist to serve us, to meet our needs, to act their parts in our stories.  And then we get into economics and politics and without even realising it, we've let the powerful and the well-placed convince us to live out their stories—that we have to be this  and buy that in order to be fulfilled and happy.  That we have to support this and vote for that, that we have to hate this person over here and that person over there because they have the wrong values, support the wrong thing, or are playing parts in the wrong narrative.  And so we write those people into our stories as the bad guys or the guys to be exploited or the guys to be hated or the guys who aren't really human at all—they're garbage, trash, something sub-human.  And they do the same to us and it spiral and spirals and the pain and the sorrow and the hurt and tears just get worse and worse.  And we get caught up in all of this and forget that none of these stories, none of these narratives, none of these dramas matter one whit.  Brothers and Sisters, it's God's great drama that matters; it's God's drama that we need to remember and live. And God knows all this.  He knows how we've fallen.  He knows how we so want to write our stories for ourselves.  He knows—better than we do—the pain and the misery and the tears that we inflict on others and that they inflict on us.  And so he comes, as the baby, into the midst of the darkness and the tears and, again, before he can even walk or talk, he's a homeless refugee in a foreign land with a king looking to kill him. This was the thing no one expected of the Messiah.  They expected a great king, like David, but greater.  Born in a place.  Eventually riding in to Jerusalem in a chariot to bash Roman heads and to set the world to rights by putting Israel on the top of the heap.  They expect that because the people of Israel were still trying to write their own story for themselves.  But, instead, Jesus is born in humility to ordinary parents.  From his birth he knows the danger and the tears of being part of someone else's wicked story.  All things that Israel should have known.  This is what Matthew is getting at when he quotes Hoses saying, “Out of Egypt I called my son.”  That's who Israel was.  They were God's beloved son and they were the rescued-form-Egyptian-slavery people, born in sorrow and tears and pain, exploited and abused by a king who thought he was a god and who forced them to live his drama.  Jesus came the same way.  He knew the pain of sin.  He knew the pain of abuse.  He knew what it meant to be forced to live as someone else's non-player character. And in that echo of Israel's past and Israel's identity, there's hope.  Again, Matthew cites the prophets—this time Jeremiah—as he recounts the horrible murder of the holy innocents of Bethlehem.  Think again of Pharoah, threatened by the fruitfulness of the Israelites.  Pretty soon there would be more of them than there were Egyptians.  And so he ordered their baby boys to be drowned in the Nile.  Rachel wept for her children, as Jeremiah said.  But Moses, Israel's deliverer—Israel's first “messiah”, if you will—escaped in the Lord's providence, and rose up to challenge Pharoah and his gods and to lead the people out of their bondage in Egypt.  Just so, Matthew wants us to hear that story echoing in the story of Jesus.  Like Pharoah, Herod tried to write his own story, he tried to stamp out the Lord's deliverer, but the Lord is sovereign and somehow always manages to take our bad and pathetic rewrites and bring them into his own great drama to further his own ends and to reveal his glory to the world. He did this at the cross, Brothers and Sisters.  The people of Judaea, the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the priest and Levites and scribes together with Pilate as the representative of Rome and the pagan nations, they tried to write their own story—a story in which Jesus was a pretend king and a blasphemer of the temple and the things of God, a story in which they were right and Jesus was wrong, a story in which they were justified in rejecting and mocking and crucifying the son of God as a false messiah.  And that Friday when Jesus gasped out, “It is finished” and his friends took him down from the cross and buried him in a tomb, the people of Judaea, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, Pilate and Rome all thought they had the happy ending they wanted.  They were the heroes of their own stories and Jesus was dead, but all the while God was using their rebellion and their grasping at godhood to his own ends.  They rebelled, but God in his sovereign grace, incorporated their stories into his own to serve his own ends.  A story in which evil and sin and death foolishly concentrated themselves all in one place, in which evil and sin and death did their worst—and failed—as three days later Jesus burst out of the tomb with the power of God's life and his new creation.  Burst from the tomb alive to sweep the whole of creation itself up into God's great drama of light and life. Brother and Sisters, that's grace.  If this were one of our stories, we'd fire the writers who made such a mess of it and consign them to oblivion, but God instead comes in love and grace to forgive and to set right.  He takes our horrible stories and, master storyteller that he is, he uses them for good and instead of consigning us to oblivion, he offers us our places back in the great divine drama we once rejected…if we will only trust that he is the way and the truth and the life, if we will give him our allegiance and pledge to live out his story instead of ours.  It should be such an easy choice when see the wake of destruction our stories have left in contrast to his great story of love and grace that leads to life and new creation and all the sad things we've written for ourselves somehow one day becoming all untrue. Brothers and Sisters, hear the Christmas story again this year.  Really and truly hear it so that it drowns out and overcomes all the other narratives and stories and dramas you've been hearing and living.  Let it be a reset.  Let this story of God, humbly incarnate who humbly dies for rebellious sinners, let this truth become the truth by which you measure everything.  Let the glorious light of resurrection and new creation and the presence of God be your hope and your only hope and be so overcome by it that you lose all desire to write your story for yourself, and choose to become a faithful player in Jesus' drama of love and peace, of joy and hope. Let's pray: Almighty God, whose loving purposes cannot be frustrated by the wickedness of men, so that even infants may glorify you by their deaths: strengthen us by your grace, that by the innocency of our lives and constancy of our faith even to death, we may glorify your holy name, through Jesus Christ our Lord who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

We have all grown up believing in family and church traditions, legends and such like which have become "truth" for us.  Many of these beliefs are not true at all.  The Sadducees learned a hard lesson when they posed a question to Jesus whose answer to them included these words: "You are mistaken, not understanding the scriptures..."  How well do we read and understand the scriptures?

Daily Dose of Hope December 23, 2025   Scripture – Acts 22   Prayer:  Almighty God, We come before you this morning with awe and humility.  Help us remember all you have done for us.  We are nothing without you.  We need you desperately, Lord.  Help us gather our scattered thoughts today as we focus on you.  In these next few moments of silence, help us remember that we belong to you.  Help us lay our worries and cares on the throne of your grace...We pray this in the powerful name of Jesus, Amen.   Welcome back to the Daily Dose of Hope, the devotional and podcast that complements the New Hope Church daily Bible reading.  We have been on a journey, reading through the Gospels and the book of Acts.  Today, we walk through Acts 22.   The chapter starts with Paul speaking to the crowd in Aramaic.  His knowledge of their language demonstrates that he is one of them.  All the lies are just that, lies.  He shares his background as an educated Jew and then tells his conversion story.  Remember, no one can ever argue with your conversion story.  It's your story!  Paul uses this time to talk about how Jesus led him to share the Gospel with the Gentiles.    But when he gets to this part --- mentioning the Gentiles --- things get heated again.  They demand that he be killed for his blasphemy.  It's now that the Roman commander demands that he be arrested and flogged.  But just as this is about to take place, Paul mentions that he is a Roman citizen by birth.  This changes things.   The scholars have mixed opinions on how being a Roman citizen in that day and time determined one's treatment by governing authorities.  Certainly, in Paul's case, it kept him from being flogged and lynched. In fact, the commander seems frightened when he finds out that the man he is about to whip is a Roman citizen by birth. (I would have hated to see what they did to the non-citizens. It was a brutal world.)    But one thing Paul could not get out of was being sent before the Jewish high council. I'm sure the Roman commander would be relieved to give Paul to the Jewish leaders. Let them be the ones faced with the repercussions of dealing with such a controversial figure. What will it mean for Paul to go before the high council? The council, also referred to as the Sanhedrin, was led by the high priest and consisted of Pharisees and Sadducees.  This group had broad authority, overseeing criminal, civil, and religious cases. This was a group that would not be sympathetic to Paul. Part of their role was to discern when the Messiah returned and they clearly did not think Jesus was it. Hearing Paul preaching Jesus as Lord would be deemed blasphemous.   Will their distain keep Paul silent or make him soften his message? I think we can all guess that the answer is no! Paul is resolute in what God has called him to do. No amount of persecution, oppression, or intimidation will keep him from teaching about Jesus. So our question for the day-what keeps us from speaking boldly about Jesus?   Blessings, Pastor Vicki    

This week's program looks at Matthew 3. What do we have in common with the Pharisees and Sadducees? Get ready to chuckle or even chortle with Pastor “Jolly” John Lukomski and Pastor Matt “Youngblood” Clark as they take a humorous approach to Bible Study. Submit comments or questions to: listener@kfuo.org

In this episode of Out of Zion, ICEJ USA’s Dr. Susan Michael shows how understanding Judaism helps us connect the Bible to life today as she traces its development from Jesus’ time to the present. She reviews the four major New Testament-era sects—Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and Zealots—explaining how the 70 AD temple destruction led to Rabbinic Judaism and how oral traditions shaped practice. She also examines the major modern streams and discusses the question of “Who is a Jew?” as a blend of peoplehood, culture, and religion Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

The sermon delivers a sobering warning about the dangers of both no faith and little faith, illustrating how spiritual blindness and neglect of God's revealed truth lead to severe consequences. Drawing from Matthew 16:1–12, it contrasts the Pharisees and Sadducees—religious leaders with no faith who reject Christ despite overwhelming signs—with the disciples, who, despite being believers, exhibit little faith by misinterpreting Jesus' warning about 'leaven' as a concern about bread rather than the corrupting influence of religious hypocrisy. The central message is that faith is not optional but essential for discernment, and a lack of faith—whether in unbelief or spiritual complacency—results in blindness to God's work, hardened hearts, and vulnerability to deception. The remedy is intentional, daily engagement with Scripture, meditation on Christ's redemptive work, and communal discipleship, which cultivate a faith strong enough to resist the leaven of worldly and religious compromise and to stand firm in the face of opposition.

https://wels2.blob.core.windows.net/daily-devotions/20251211dev.mp3 Listen to Devotion But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.' I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham. The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire.” Matthew 3:7-10 Are You Ready? When we bought our house, it came with an orange tree. I was pretty excited. However, it didn’t take long before my dream of freshly squeezed orange juice at breakfast was shattered. The tree wasn’t producing fruit, so I cut it down. The Pharisees and Sadducees, who had come to John, thought that because of their heritage, they were all good with God. Sometimes people today think that because their parents went to church, or they themselves used to attend church, or they stepped foot into a church at some point in their lives, they’re all good with God, too. But John’s words of warning should give all our hearts a gut-check moment. Are you ready? If you had to meet your Maker, do you think you’d be all good with him? Your readiness doesn’t depend on what your parents believe or whether you went to church at some point. Your readiness depends on your heart. Please understand that I’m only saying this to you because I care about you and don’t want you to be unprepared. So, if you were to die tonight and God asked you why he should let you into heaven, what your parents believed won’t matter for you. But this is what will: God has given an incredible gift. He sent his Son, Jesus Christ, who was cut down on his cross and paid for your sins and mine. So, when that time of death comes, and God asks you why he should let you into heaven, you can say with confidence, “Jesus has paid for me.” Prayer: Dear God, thank you for sending Jesus, who has paid for all my sins. Turn my heart to you today and every day. Amen. Daily Devotions is brought to you by WELS. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. ™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

Into the Inner Desert: Rediscovering Our Relationship with God During Advent Today's Gospel reading centers on John the Baptist's call to repent and be fruitful. John preaches in the desert . . . a place free of distractions . . . where people must face the fundamental question: What is my relationship with God? Advent invites all Christians into this same interior desert, prompting honest self-examination and the courage to change. True repentance requires more than words or ritual; it demands inward transformation and the willingness to leave comfort zones. John challenges the Pharisees and Sadducees by insisting that repentance must bear fruit . . . justice, peace, patience, forgiveness, and compassion. Merely acknowledging sins is not enough; one must produce spiritual fruit that reflects a renewed relationship with God. The Homily also encourages believers during Advent to make a sincere confession, focus on personal conversion rather than others' faults, and open their hearts to God so they may live more lovingly and be prepared for Christ who is already in their midst. The Kingdom of God is at Hand … What does that really mean? Listen to this Meditation Media. Listen to … Into the Inner Desert: Rediscovering Our Relationship with God During Advent ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Art Work Christ (Fasting) in the Dessert: Russian Painter: Ivan Kramskoi: 1872 The painting is sometimes called, Christ in the Wilderness. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gospel Reading: Matthew 3: 1-12 First Reading: Isaiah 11: 1-10 Second Reading: Romans 15: 4-9

Monday December 8, 2025Week 2 of AdventToday's Advent Reading: Amos 7:1–9; Revelation 1:1–8; Matthew 22:22–33In Amos 7:1–9, we hear the sobering visions God gives Amos—pictures of locusts, fire, and a plumb line—revealing a God who measures His people with truth and calls them back before it's too late. Judgment isn't God's desire, but His warning is a mercy. In Revelation 1:1–8, we lift our eyes to the One who was, and is, and is to come—Jesus Christ, the faithful witness and ruler of the kings of the earth. Advent reminds us we're not just looking back to His first coming… we're preparing for His return. And in Matthew 22:22–33, Jesus silences the Sadducees with a breathtaking reminder: God is the God of the living. In a season that points to hope, Jesus anchors us in the reality of resurrection and the life to come.Come expectant. He is coming again.

John the Baptist and the Second Sunday of Advent, Year A 2025 Gospel Matthew 3:1-12 John the Baptist appeared, preaching in the desert of Judea and saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!" It was of him that the prophet Isaiah had spoken when he said: A voice of one crying out in the desert, Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths. John wore clothing made of camel's hair and had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. At that time Jerusalem, all Judea, and the whole region around the Jordan were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River as they acknowledged their sins. When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones. Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. I am baptizing you with water, for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is mightier than I. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

Matthew 3:1-12   In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'” Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

In this theologically rich episode of The Reformed Brotherhood, Jesse and Tony delve into the Parable of the Lost Coin from Luke 15:8-10. They explore how this parable reveals God's passionate pursuit of His elect and the divine joy that erupts when they are found. Building on their previous discussion of the Lost Sheep, the brothers examine how Jesus uses this second parable to further emphasize God's sovereign grace in salvation. The conversation highlights the theological implications of God's ownership of His people even before their redemption, the diligent efforts He undertakes to find them, and the heavenly celebration that follows. This episode offers profound insights into God's relentless love and the true nature of divine joy in redemption. Key Takeaways The Parable of the Lost Coin emphasizes that God actively and diligently searches for those who belong to Him, sparing no effort to recover what is rightfully His. Jesus uses three sequential parables in Luke 15 to progressively reveal different aspects of God's heart toward sinners, with escalating emphasis on divine joy. The coin represents something of significant value that already belonged to the woman, illustrating that God's elect belong to Him even before their redemption. Unlike finding something new, the joy depicted is specifically about recovering something that was already yours but had been lost, highlighting God's eternal claim on His people. The spiritual inability of the sinner is represented by the coin's passivity - it cannot find its own way back and must be sought out by its owner. Angels rejoice over salvation not independently but because they share in God's delight at the effectiveness of His saving power. The parable challenges believers to recover their joy in salvation and to share it with others, much like the woman who called her neighbors to celebrate with her. Expanded Insights God's Determined Pursuit of What Already Belongs to Him The Parable of the Lost Coin reveals a profound theological truth about God's relationship to His elect. As Tony and Jesse discuss, this isn't a story about finding something new, but recovering something that already belongs to the owner. The woman in the parable doesn't rejoice because she discovered unexpected treasure; she rejoices because she recovered what was already hers. This illustrates the Reformed understanding that God's people have eternally belonged to Him. While justification occurs in time, there's a real sense in which God has been considering us as His people in eternity past. The parable therefore supports the doctrines of election and particular redemption - God is not creating conditions people can move into or out of, but is zealously reclaiming a specific people who are already His in His eternal decree. The searching, sweeping, and diligent pursuit represent not a general call, but an effectual calling that accomplishes its purpose. The Divine Joy in Recovering Sinners One of the most striking aspects of this parable is the overwhelming joy that accompanies finding the lost coin. The brothers highlight that this joy isn't reluctant or begrudging, but enthusiastic and overflowing. The woman calls her friends and neighbors to celebrate with her - a seemingly excessive response to finding a coin, unless we understand the theological significance. This reveals that God takes genuine delight in the redemption of sinners, to the extent that Jesus describes it as causing joy "in the presence of the angels of God." As Jesse and Tony note, this challenges our perception that God might save us begrudgingly. Instead, the parable teaches us that God's "alien work" is wrath, while His delight is in mercy. This should profoundly impact how believers view their own salvation and should inspire a contagious joy that spreads to others - a joy that many Christians, by Tony's own admission, need to recover in their daily walk. Memorable Quotes "Christ love is an act of love and it's always being acted upon the sinner, the one who has to be redeemed, his child whom he goes after. So in the same way, we have Christ showing the self-denying love." - Jesse Schwamb "The coin doesn't seek the woman. The woman seeks the coin. And in this way, I think we see God's act of searching grace... The reason why I think it leads to joy, why God is so pleased, is because God has this real pleasure to pluck sinners as brands from the burning fire." - Jesse Schwamb "These parables are calling us to rejoice, right? Christ is using these parables to shame the Pharisees and the scribes who refuse to rejoice over the salvation of sinners. How often do we not rejoice over our own salvation sufficiently?" - Tony Arsenal Full Transcript [00:00:08] Jesse Schwamb: There still is like the sovereign grace of God who's initiating the salvation and there is a kind of effect of calling that God doesn't merely invite, he finds, he goes after he affects the very thing. Yeah, and I think we're seeing that here. The sinner, spiritual inability. There's an utter passivity until found. The coin doesn't seek the woman. The woman seeks the coin. And in this way, I think we see God's act of searching grace. It's all there for us. And the reason why I think it leads to joy, why God is so pleased is because God has this real pleasure. To pluck sinners as brands from the burning fire. Welcome to episode 472 of The Reformed Brotherhood. I'm Jesse. [00:00:57] Tony Arsenal: And I'm Tony. And this is the podcast with ears to hear. Hey brother. [00:01:01] Jesse Schwamb: Hey brother. [00:01:02] Jesus and the Parable of the Lost Coin [00:01:02] Jesse Schwamb: So there was this time, maybe actually more than one time, but at least this one time that we've been looking at where Jesus is hanging out and the religious incumbents, the Pharisees, they come to him and they say, you are a friend of sinners, and. Instead of taking offense to this, Jesus turns this all around. Uses this as a label, appropriates it for himself and his glorious character. And we know this because he gives us this thrice repeated sense of what it means to see his heart, his volition, his passion, his love, his going after his people, and he does it. Three little parables and we looked at one last time and we're coming up to round two of the same and similar, but also different and interesting. And so today we're looking at the parable of the lost coin or the Lost dma, or I suppose, whatever kind of currency you wanna insert in there. But once again, something's lost and we're gonna see how our savior comes to find it by way of explaining it. In metaphor. So there's more things that are lost and more things to be found on this episode. That's how we do it. It's true. It's true. So that's how Jesus does it. So [00:02:12] Tony Arsenal: yeah. So it should be how we do it. [00:02:14] Jesse Schwamb: Yes. Yeah, exactly. I cut to like Montel Jordan now is the only thing going through my head. Tell Jordan. Yeah. Isn't he the one that's like, this is how we do it, that song, this is [00:02:28] Tony Arsenal: how we do it. I, I don't know who sings it. Apparently it's me right now. That was actually really good. That was fantastic. [00:02:36] Jesse Schwamb: Hopefully never auto tuned. Not even once. I'm sure that'll make an appearance now and the rest, somebody [00:02:42] Tony Arsenal: should take that and auto tune it for me. [00:02:44] Jesse Schwamb: That would be fantastic. Listen, it doesn't need it. That was perfect. That was right off the cuff, right off the top. It was beautiful. It was ous. [00:02:50] Tony Arsenal: Yes. Yes. [00:02:51] Affirmations and Denials [00:02:51] Jesse Schwamb: I'm hoping that appearance, [00:02:53] Tony Arsenal: before we jump into our, our favorite segment here in affirmations of Denials, I just wanted to take a second to, uh, thank all of our listeners. Uh, we have the best listeners in the world. That's true, and we've also got a really great place to get together and chat about things. That's also true. Uh, we have a little telegram chat, which is just a little chat, um, program that run on your phone or in a browser. Really any device you have, you can go to t Me slash Reform Brotherhood and join that, uh, little chat group. And there's lots of stuff going on there. We don't need to get into all the details, but it's a friendly little place. Lots of good people, lots of good conversation. And just lots of good digital fellowship, if that's even a thing. I think it is. So please do join us there. It's a great place to discuss, uh, the episodes or what you're learning or what you'd like to learn. There's all sorts of, uh, little nooks and crannies and things to do in there. [00:03:43] Jesse Schwamb: So if you're looking for a little df and you know that you are coming out, we won't get into details, but you definitely should. Take Tony's advice, please. You, you will not be disappointed. It, it's a fun, fun time together. True. Just like you're about to have with us chatting it up and going through a little affirmations and denials. So, as usual, Tony, what are you, are you affirming with something or are you denying again, something? I'm, I'm on the edge of my seat. I'm ready. [00:04:06] Tony Arsenal: Okay. Uh, it is, I thought that was going somewhere else. Uh, I'm, I'm affirming something. [00:04:13] AI and Problem Solving [00:04:13] Tony Arsenal: People are gonna get so sick of me doing like AI affirmations, but I, it's like I learned a new thing to do with AI every couple of weeks. I ran across an article the other day, uh, that I don't remember where the article was. I didn't save it, but I did read it. And one of the things that pointed out is that a lot of times you're not getting the most out of AI because you don't really know how to ask the questions. True. One of the things it was was getting through is a lot of people will ask, they'll have a problem that they're encountering and they'll just ask AI like, how do I fix this problem? And a lot of times what that yields is like very superficial, basic, uh, generic advice or generic kind of, uh, directions for resolving a problem. And the, I don't remember the exact phrasing, 'cause it was a little while ago since I read it, but it basically said something like, I'm encountering X problem. And despite all efforts to the contrary, I have not been able to resolve it. And by using sort of these extra phrases. What it does is it sort of like pushes the AI to ask you questions about what you've already tried to do, and so it's gonna tailor its advice or its directions to your specific situation a little bit more. So, for example, I was doing this today. We, um, we just had the time change, right? Stupidest thing in the world doesn't make any sense and my kids don't understand that the time has changed and we're now like three or four weeks past the, the time change and their, their schedule still have not adjusted. So my son Augie, who is uh, like three and three quarters, uh, I don't know how many months it is. When do you stop? I don't even know. When you stop counting in months. He's three and a quarter, three quarters. And he will regularly wake up between four 30 and five 30. And when we really, what we really want is for him to be sleeping, uh, from uh, until like six or six 30 at the latest. So he's like a full hour, sometimes two hours ahead of time, which then he wakes up, it's a small house. He's noisy 'cause he's a three and a half year old. So he wakes up the baby. The baby wakes up. My wife, and then we're all awake and then we're cranky and it's miserable. So I, I put that little prompt into, um, into Google Gemini, which is right now is my, um, AI of choice, but works very similar. If you use something like chat, GPT or CLO or whatever, you know, grok, whatever AI tool you have access to, put that little prompt in. You know, something like since the time change, my son has been waking up at four 30 in the morning, despite all efforts to the contrary, I have not been able to, uh, adjust his schedule. And so it started asking me questions like, how much light is in the room? What time does he go to bed? How much does he nap? And it, so it's, it's pulling from the internet. This is why I like Google Geminis. It's actually pulling from the internet to identify like common, common. Related issues. And so it starts to probe and ask questions. And by the time it was done, what it came out with was like a step-by-step two week plan. Basically like, do this tonight, do this tomorrow morning. Um, and it was able to identify what it believes is the problem. We'll see if it actually is, but the beauty now is now that I've got a plan that I've got in this ai, I can start, you know, tomorrow morning I'm gonna try to do what it said and I can tell. The ai, how things went, and it can now adjust the plan based on whether or not, you know, this worked or didn't work. So it's a good way to sort of, um, push an ai, uh, chat bot to probe your situation a little bit more. So you could do this really for anything, right. You could do something like I'm having, I'm having trouble losing weight despite all efforts to the contrary. Um, can you help me identify what the, you know, root problem is? So think about different ways that you can use this. It's a pretty cool way to sort of like, push the, the AI to get a little deeper into the specifics without like a lot of extra heavy lifting. I'm sure there's probably other ways you could drive it to do this, but this was just one clever way that I, that this article pointed out to accomplish this. [00:08:07] Jesse Schwamb: It's a great exercise to have AI optimize itself. Yeah. By you turning your prompts around and asking it to ask you a number of questions, sufficient number, until it can provide an optimize answer for you. So lots, almost every bot has some kind of, you can have it analyze your prompts essentially, but some like copilot actually have a prompt agent, which will help you construct the prompt in an optimal way. Yeah, and that again, is kind of question and answer. So I'm with you. I will often turn it around and say. Here's my goal. Ask me sufficient number of questions so that you can provide the right insight to accomplish said goal. Or like you're saying, if you can create this like, massive conversation that keeps all this history. So I, I've heard of people using this for their exercise or running plans. Famously, somebody a, a, um, journalist, the Wall Street Journal, use it, train for a marathon. You can almost have it do anything for you. Of course, you want to test all of that and interact with it reasonably and ably, right? At the same time, what it does best is respond to like natural language interaction. And so by turning it around and basically saying, help me help you do the best job possible, providing the information, it's like the weirdest way of querying stuff because we're so used to providing explicit direction ourselves, right? So to turn it around, it's kind of a new experience, but it's super fun, really interesting, really effective. [00:09:22] Tony Arsenal: And it because you are allowing, in a certain sense, you're sort of asking the AI to drive the conversation. This, this particular prompt, I know the article I read went into details about why this prompt is powerful and the reason this prompt is powerful is not because of anything the AI's doing necessarily, right. It's because you're basically telling the AI. To find what you've missed. And so it's asking you questions. Like if I was to sit down and go like, all right, what are all the things that's wrong, that's causing my son to be awake? Like obviously I didn't figure it out on my own, so it's asking me what I've already tried and what it found out. And then of course when it tells me what it is, it's like the most obvious thing when it figures out what it is. It's identifying something that I already haven't identified because I've told it. I've already tried everything I can think of, and so it's prompting me to try to figure out what it is that I haven't thought of. So those are, like I said, there's lots of ways to sort of get the ais to do that exercise. Um, it's not, it's not just about prompt engineering, although that there's a lot of science now and a lot of like. Specifics on how you do prompt engineering, um, you know, like building a persona for the ai. Like there's all sorts of things you can do and you can add that, like, I could have said something like, um. Uh, you are a pediatric sleep expert, right? And when you tell it that what it's gonna do is it's gonna start to use more technical language, it's gonna, it's gonna speak to you back as though it's a, and this, this is where AI can get a little bit dangerous and really downright scary in some instances. But with that particular prompt, it's gonna start to speak back to you as though it was a clinician of some sort, diagnosing a medical situation, which again. That is definitely not something I would ever endorse. Like, don't let an AI be your doctor. That's just not, like WebMD was already scary enough when you were just telling you what your symptoms were and it was just cross checking it. Um, but you could do something like, and I use these kinds of prompts for our show notes where I'm like, you're an expert at SEO, like at um, podcast show notes. Utilizing SEO search terms, like that's part of the prompt that I use when I use, um, in, in this case, I use notion to generate most of our show notes. Um, it, it starts to change the way that it looks at things and the way that it, I, it responds to you based on different prompts. So I think it, it's a little bit scary, uh, AI. Can be a strange, strange place. And there's some, they're doing some research that is a little bit frightening. They did a study and actually, like, they, they basically like unlocked an AI and gave it access to a pretend company with emails and stuff and said that a particular employee was gonna shut out, was gonna delete the ai. And the first thing it did was try to like blackmail the employee with like a risk, like a scandalous email. It had. Then after that they, they engineered a scenario where the AI actually had the ability to kill the employee. And despite like explicit instructions not to do anything illegal, it still tried to kill the employee. So there's some scary things that are coming up if we're not, you know, if, if the science is not able to get that under control. But right now it's just a lot of fun. Like it's, we're, we're probably not at the point where it's dangerous yet and hopefully. Hopefully it won't get to that point, but we'll see. We'll see. That got dark real fast, fast, fast. Jesse, you gotta get this. And that was an affirmation. I guess I'm affirming killer murder ais that are gonna kill us all, but uh, we're gonna have fun with it until they do at least. [00:12:52] Jesse Schwamb: Thanks for not making that deny against. 'cause I can only imagine the direction that one to taken. [00:12:57] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. At least when the AI hears this, it's gonna know that I'm on its side, so, oh, for sure. I, for one, welcome our new AI overlords. So as do Iye. [00:13:05] Christmas Hymns and Music Recommendations [00:13:05] Tony Arsenal: But Jesse, what are you affirming or denying today to get me out of this pit here? [00:13:09] Jesse Schwamb: So, lemme start with a question. Do you have a favorite Christmas hymn? And if so, what is it? [00:13:16] Tony Arsenal: Ooh, that's a tough one. Um, I think I've always been really partial to Oh, holy Night. But, uh, there's, there's not anything that really jumps to mind my, as I've become older and crankier and more Scottish in spirit, I just, Christmas hymns just aren't as. If they're not as prominent in my mind, but oh, holy night or come coming, Emanuel is probably a really good one too. [00:13:38] Jesse Schwamb: Wow. Those are the, those are like the top in the top three for me. Yeah. So I think [00:13:42] Tony Arsenal: I know where you're going based on the question. [00:13:44] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah, we're very much the same. So, well maybe, so I am affirming with, but it's that time of year and people you, you know and love and maybe yourself, you're gonna listen to Christian music and. That's okay. I put no shade on that, especially because we're talking about the incarnation, celebrate the incarnation. But of course, I think the best version of that is some of these really lovely hymns because they could be sung and worshiped through all year round. We just choose them because they fit in with the calendar particularly well here, and sometimes they're included, their lyrics included in Hallmark cards and, and your local. Cool. Coles. So while that's happening, why not embrace it? But here's my information is why not go with some different versions. I love the hymn as you just said. Oh, come will come Emmanuel. And so I'm gonna give people three versions of it to listen to Now to make my list of this kind of repertoire. The song's gotta maintain that traditional melody. I think to a strong degree, it's gotta be rich and deep and dark, especially Ko Emmanuel. But it's gotta have something in it that's a little bit nuanced. Different creative arrangements, musicality. So let me give two brand new ones that you may not have heard versions and one old one. So the old one is by, these are all Ko Emanuel. So if at some point during this you're like, what song is he talking about? It's Ko. Emmanuel. It's just three times. Th we're keeping it th Rice tonight. So the first is by band called for today. That's gonna be a, a little bit harder if you want something that, uh, gets you kind of pumped up in the midst of this redemption. That's gonna be the version. And then there are two brand new ones. One is by skillet, which is just been making music forever, but the piano melody they bring into this and they do a little something nuanced with the chorus that doesn't pull away too much. From the original, but just gives it a little extra like Tastiness. Yeah. Skill. Great version. And then another one that just came out yesterday. My yesterday, not your yesterday. So actually it doesn't even matter at this point. It's already out is by descriptor. And this would be like the most chill version that is a hardcore band by, I would say tradition, but in this case, their version is very chill. All of them I find are just deeply worshipful. Yeah. And these, the music is very full of impact, but of course the lyrics are glorious. I really love this, this crying out to God for the Savior. This. You know, just, it's really the, the plea that we should have now, which is, you know, maranatha like Lord Jesus, come. And so in some ways we're, we're celebrating that initial plea and cry for redemption as it has been applied onto us by the Holy Spirit. And we're also saying, you know, come and fulfill your kingdom, Lord, come and bring the full promise, which is here, but not yet. So I like all three of these. So for today. Skillet descriptor, which sounds like we're playing like a weird word game when you put those all together. It does, but they're all great bands and their versions I think are, are worthy. So the larger affirmation, I suppose, is like, go out this season and find different versions, like mix it up a little bit. Because it's good to hear this music somewhat afresh, and so I think by coming to it with different versions of it, you'll get a little bit of that sense. It'll make maybe what is, maybe if it's felt rote or mundane or just trivial, like you're saying, kind of revive some of these pieces in our hearts so we can, we, we can really worship through them. We're redeeming them even as they're meant to be expressions of the ultimate redemption. [00:16:55] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah, I, um, I heard the skillet version and, uh, you know, you know me like I'm not a huge fan of harder music. Yeah. But that, that song Slaps man, it's, yes, [00:17:07] Jesse Schwamb: it does. It's [00:17:07] Tony Arsenal: good. And Al I mean, it, it also ignited this weird firestorm of craziness online. I don't know if you heard anything about this, but Yes, it was, it was, there was like the people who absolutely love it and will. Fight you if you don't. Yes. And then there was like the people who think it's straight from the devil because of somehow demonic rhythms, whatever that means. Um, but yeah, I mean, I'm not a big fan of the heavier music, but there is something about that sort of, uh. I don't know. Is skill, would that be considered like metal at all? [00:17:38] Jesse Schwamb: Oh, that's a loaded question. Probably. [00:17:39] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. So like I found, uh, this is, we're gonna go down to Rabbit Trail here. Let's do it. Here we go. I found a version of Africa by Toto that was labeled as metal on YouTube. So I don't know whether it actually is, and this, this version of skill, it strikes me as very similar, where it's, ah, uh, it, it's like, um. The harmonies are slightly different in terms of like how they resonate than Okay. Other harmonies. Like I get [00:18:05] Jesse Schwamb: that [00:18:06] Tony Arsenal: there's a certain, you know, like when you think about like Western music, there's certain right, there's certain harmonies when, you know, think about like piano chords are framed and my understanding at least this could be way off, and I'm sure you're gonna correct me if I'm wrong, is that um, metal music, heavy metal music uses slightly different. Chord formations that it almost leaves you feeling a little unresolved. Yes, but not quite unresolved. Like it's just, it's, it's more the harmonics are different, so that's fair. Skillet. This skillet song is so good, and I think you're right. It, it retains the sort of like. The same basic melody, the same, the same basic harmonies, actually. Right. And it's, it's almost like the harmonies are just close enough to being put into a different key with the harmonies. Yes, [00:18:52] Jesse Schwamb: that's true [00:18:53] Tony Arsenal: than then. Uh, but not quite actually going into another key. So like, sometimes you'll see online, you'll find YouTube videos where they play like pop songs, but they've changed the, the. Chords a little bit. So now it's in a minor key. It's almost like it's there. It's like one more little note shift and it would be there. Um, and then there's some interesting, uh, like repetition and almost some like anal singing going on, that it's very good. Even if you don't like heavier music. Like, like I don't, um, go listen to it and I think you'll find yourself like hitting repeat a couple times. It was very, very good. [00:19:25] Jesse Schwamb: That's a good way of saying it. A lot of times that style is a little bit dissonant, if that's what you mean in the court. Yeah. Formation. So it gives you this unsettledness, this almost unresolvedness, and that's in there. Yeah. And just so everybody knows, actually, if you listen to that version from Skillet, you'll probably listen to most of it. You'll get about two thirds of the way through it and probably be saying, what are those guys talking about? It's the breakdown. Where it amps up. But before that, I think anybody could listen to it and just enjoy it. It's a really beautiful, almost haunting piano melody. They bring into the intro in that, in the interlude. It's very lovely. So it gives you that sense. Again, I love this kind of music because there's almost something, there is something in this song that's longing for something that is wanting and yet left, unresolved and unfulfilled until the savior comes. There's almost a lament in it, so to speak, especially with like the way it's orchestrated. So I love that this hymn is like deep and rich in that way. It's, that's fine. Like if you want to sing deck the Holes, that's totally fine. This is just, I think, better and rich and deeper and more interesting because it does speak to this life of looking for and waiting for anticipating the advent of the savior. So to get me get put back in that place by music, I think is like a net gain this time of year. It's good to have that perspective. I'm, I'm glad you've heard it. We should just open that debate up whether or not we come hang out in the telegram chat. We'll put it in that debate. Is skillet hardcore or metal? We'll just leave it there 'cause I have my opinions, but I'm, well, I'm sure everybody else does. [00:20:48] Tony Arsenal: I don't even know what those words mean, Jesse. Everything is hardcore in metal compared to what I normally listen to. I don't even listen to music anymore usually, so I, I mean, I'm like mostly all podcasts all the time. Anytime I have time, I don't have a ton of time to listen to. Um, audio stuff, but [00:21:06] Jesse Schwamb: that's totally fair. Well now everybody now join us though. [00:21:08] Tony Arsenal: Educate me [00:21:09] Jesse Schwamb: now. Everybody can properly use, IM prompt whatever AI of their choice, and they can listen to at least three different versions of al comical manual. And then they can tell us which one do you like the best? Or maybe you have your own version. That's what she was saying. What's your favorite Christmas in? [00:21:23] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. And [00:21:24] Jesse Schwamb: what version of it do you like? I mean, it'll be like. [00:21:28] Tony Arsenal: It'll be like, despite my best efforts, I've been un unable to understand what hardcore and medical is. Please help me understand. [00:21:37] Jesse Schwamb: Oh, we're gonna have some, some fun with this at some point. We'll have to get into the whole debate, though. I know you and I have talked about it before. We'll put it before the brothers and sisters about a Christmas Carol and what version everybody else likes. That's also seems like, aside from the, the whole eternal debate, which I'm not sure is really serious about whether or not diehard is a Christmas movie, this idea of like, which version of the Christmas Carol do you subscribe to? Yeah. Which one would you watch if you can only watch one? Which one will you watch? That's, we'll have to save that for another time. [00:22:06] Tony Arsenal: We'll save it for another time. And we get a little closer to midwinter. No reason we just can't [00:22:10] Jesse Schwamb: do it right now because we gotta get to Luke 15. [00:22:12] Discussion on the Parable of the Lost Coin [00:22:12] Tony Arsenal: We do. [00:22:13] Jesse Schwamb: We, we've already been in this place of looking at Jesus' response to the Pharisees when they say to him, listen, this man receives sinners and eats with them. And Jesus is basically like, yeah, that's right. And let me tell you three times what the heart of God is like and what my mission in serving him is like, and what I desire to come to do for my children. And so we spoke in the last conversation about the parable lost sheep. Go check that out. Some are saying, I mean, I'm not saying this, but some are saying in the internet, it's the definitive. Congratulation of that parable. I'm, I'm happy to take that if that's true. Um, but we wanna go on to this parable of the lost coin. So let me read, it's just a couple of verses and you're gonna hear in the text that you're going to understand right away. This is being linked because it starts with or, so this is Jesus speaking and this is Luke 15, chapter 15, starting in verse eight. Jesus says, or a what woman? She has 10 D drachmas and loses. One drachma does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it. And when she has found it, she calls together her friend and her neighbors saying, rejoice with me for I found the D Drachma, which I lost in the same way I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. [00:23:27] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. On one level, this is, uh, again, it's not all that complicated of a scenario, right? And we have to kind of go back and relo through some of the stuff we talked about last week because this is a continuation of, you know, when we first talked about the Matthew 13 parables, we commented on like. Christ was coming back to the same themes, right? And in some ways, repeating the parable. This is even stronger than that. It's not just that Christ is teaching the same thing across multiple parables. The sense here, at least the sense I get when I read this parable, the lost sheep, and then the prodigal, um, sun parable or, or the next parable here, um, is actually that Christ is just sort of like hammering home the one point he's making to the tax collectors and or to the tax collectors or to the scribes who are complaining about the fact that Christ was eating with sinners. He's just hammering this point home, right? So it's not, it's not to try to add. A lot of nuance to the point. It's not to try to add a, a shade of meaning. Um. You know, we talked a lot about how parables, um, Christ tells parables in part to condemn the listeners who will not receive him, right? That's right. This is one of those situations where it's not, it's not hiding the meaning of the parable from them. The meaning is so obvious that you couldn't miss it, and he, he appeals, we talked about in the first, in the first part of this, he actually appeals to like what the ordinary response would be. Right? What man of you having a hundred sheep if he loses one, does not. Go and leave the 99. Like it's a scenario that anyone who goes, well, like, I wouldn't do that is, looks like an idiot. Like, that's, that's the point of the why. He phrases it. And so then you're right when he, when he begins with this, he says, or what woman having 10 silver coins if she loses one, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and seek diligently until he, till she finds it. And of course, the, the, the emphasis again is like no one in their right mind would not do this. And I think like we think about a coin and like that's the smallest denomination of money that we have. Like, I wouldn't, like if I lost a, if I had 10 silver coin, 10 coins and I lost one of them, the most that that could be is what? 50 cents? Like the, like if I had a 50 cent piece or a silver dollar, I guess, like I could lose a dollar. We're not really talking about coins the way we think of coins, right? We're talking about, um. Um, you know, like denominations of money that are substantial in that timeframe. Like it, there was, there were small coins, but a silver coin would be a substantial amount of money to lose. So we are not talking about a situation where this is, uh, a trivial kind of thing. She's not looking for, you know, I've, I've heard this parable sort of like unpacked where like, it's almost like a miserly seeking for like this lost coin. Interesting. It's not about, it's not about like. Penny pinching here, right? She's not trying to find a tiny penny that isn't worth anything that's built into the parable, right? It's a silver coin. It's not just any coin. It's a silver coin. So she's, she's looking for this coin, um, because it is a significant amount of money and because she's lost it, she's lost something of her, of her overall wealth. Like there's a real loss. Two, this that needs to be felt before he can really move on with the parable. It's not just like some small piece of property, like there's a [00:26:57] Jesse Schwamb: right. I [00:26:57] Tony Arsenal: don't know if you've ever lost a large amount of money, but I remember one time I was in, um, a. I was like, almost outta high school, and I had taken some money out of, um, out of the bank, some cash to make a purchase. I think I was purchasing a laptop and I don't know why I, I don't, maybe I didn't have a credit card or I didn't have a debit card, but I was purchasing a laptop with cash. Right. And back then, like laptops, like this was not a super expensive laptop, but. It was a substantial amount of cash and I misplaced it and it was like, oh no, like, where is it? And like, I went crazy trying to find it. This is the situation. She's lost a substantial amount of money. Um, this parable, unlike the last one, doesn't give you a relative amount of how many she has. Otherwise. She's just lost a significant amount of money. So she takes all these different steps to try to find it. [00:27:44] Understanding the Parable's Context [00:27:44] Tony Arsenal: We have to feel that loss before we really can grasp what the parable is trying to teach us. [00:27:49] Jesse Schwamb: I like that, so I'm glad you brought that up because I ended up going down a rabbit hole with this whole coined situation. [00:27:56] Tony Arsenal: Well, we're about to, Matt Whitman some of this, aren't we? [00:27:58] Jesse Schwamb: Yes, I think so. But mainly because, and this is not really my own ideas here, there's, there's a lot I was able to kind of just read and kind. Throw, throw something around this because I think you're absolutely right that Jesus is bringing an ES escalation here and it's almost like a little bit easier for us to understand the whole sheep thing. I think the context of the lost coin, like you're already saying, is a little bit less familiar to us, and so I got into this. Rabbit hole over the question, why would this woman have 10 silver coins? I really got stuck on like, so why does she have these? And Jesus specific about that he's giving a particular context. Presumably those within his hearing in earshot understood this context far better than I did. So what I was surprised to see is that a lot of commentators you probably run into this, have stated or I guess promulgated this idea that the woman is young and unmarried and the 10 silver coins could. Could represent a dowry. So in some way here too, like it's not just a lot of money, it's possible that this was her saving up and it was a witness to her availability for marriage. [00:28:57] The Significance of the Lost Coin [00:28:57] Jesse Schwamb: So e either way, if that's true or not, Jesus is really emphasizing to us there's significant and severe loss here. And so just like you said, it would be a fool who would just like say, oh, well that's too bad. The coin is probably in here somewhere, but eh, I'm just gonna go about my normal business. Yeah. And forsake it. Like, let's, let's not worry about it. So. The emphasis then on this one is not so much like the leaving behind presumably can keep the remaining nine coins somewhere safe if you had them. But this effort and this diligence to, to go after and find this lost one. So again, we know it's all about finding what was lost, but this kind of momentum that Jesus is bringing to this, like the severity of this by saying there was this woman, and of course like here we find that part of this parable isn't just in the, the kingdom of God's like this, like we were talking about before. It's more than that because there's this expression of, again, the situation combined with these active verbs. I think we talked about last time that Christ love is an act of love and it's always being acted upon the sinner, the one who has to be redeemed, his child whom he goes after. So in the same way, we have Christ showing the self-denying love. Like in the first case, the shepherd brought his sheep home on his shoulders rather than leave it in the wilderness. And then here. The woman does like everything. She lights the candle, she sweeps the house. She basically turns the thing, the place upside down, searching diligently and spared no pains with this until she found her lost money. And before we get into the whole rejoicing thing, it just strikes me that, you know, in the same way, I think what we have here is Christ affirming that he didn't spare himself. He's not gonna spare himself. When he undertakes to save sinners, he does all the things. He endures the cross scor in shame. He lays down his life for his friends. There's no greater love than that. It cannot be shown, and so Christ's love is deep and mighty. It's like this woman doing all the things, tearing the place apart to ensure that that which she knew she had misplaced comes back to her. That the full value of everything that she knows is hers. Is safe and secure in her possession and so does the Lord Jesus rejoice the safe sinners in the same way. And that's where this is incredibly powerful. It's not just, Hey, let me just say it to you one more time. There is a reemphasis here, but I like where you're going, this re-escalation. I think the first question is, why do the woman have this money? What purpose is it serving? And I think if we can at least try to appreciate some of that, then we see again how Jesus is going after that, which is that he, he wants to save the sinner. He wants to save the soul. And all of the pleasure, then all of the rejoicing comes because, and, and as a result of that context. [00:31:22] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. [00:31:23] Theological Implications of God's People [00:31:23] Tony Arsenal: The other thing, um, maybe, and, and I hope I'm not overreading again, we've, we've talked about the dangers of overreading, the parables, but I think there's a, and we'll, we'll come to this too when we get into the, um, prodigal son. Um, there is this sense, I think in some theological traditions that. God is sort of like claiming a people who were not his own. Right. And one of the things that I love about the reform tradition, and, and I love it because this is the picture the Bible teaches, is the emphasis on the fact that God's people have been God's people. As long as God has been pondering and con like contemplating them. So like we deny eternal justification, right? Justification happens in time and there's a real change in our status, in in time when, when the spirit applies, the benefits that Christ has purchased for us in redemption, right? But there's also a very real sense that God has been looking and considering us as his people in eternity past. Like that's always. That's the nature of the Pactum salutes, the, you know, covenant of redemption election. The idea that like God is not saving a nameless, faceless people. He's not creating conditions that people can either move themselves into or take themselves out of. He has a concrete people. Who he is saving, who he has chosen. He, he, you know, prior to our birth, he will redeem us. He now, he has redeemed us and he will preserve us in all of these parables, whether it's the sheep, the coin, or as we'll get to the prodigal sun next week or, or whenever. Um. It's not that God is discovering something new that he didn't have, or it's not that the woman is discovering a coin, right? There's nothing more, uh, I think nothing more like sort of, uh, spontaneously delightful than like when you like buy a, like a jacket at the thrift store. Like you go to Salvation Army and you buy a jacket, you get home, you reach in the pocket and there's like a $10 bill and you're like, oh man, that's so, so great. Or like, you find a, you find a. A $10 bill on the ground, or you find a quarter on the ground, right? Yeah. Or you find your own money. Well, and that that's, there's a different kind of joy, right? That's the point, is like, there's a delight that comes with finding something. And again, like we have to be careful about like, like not stealing, right? But there's a different kind of joy that comes with like finding something that was not yours that now becomes yours. We talked about that with parables a couple weeks ago, right? There's a guy who finds it, he's, he's searching for pearls. He finds a pearl, and so he goes after he sells everything he has and he claims that pearl, but that wasn't his before the delight was in sort of finding something new. These parables. The delight is in reclaiming and refining something that was yours that was once lost. Right? That's a different thing. And it paints a picture, a different picture of God than the other parables where, you know, the man kind of stumbles on treasure in a field or he finds a pearl that he was searching for, but it wasn't his pearl. This is different. This is teaching us that God is, is zealous and jealous to reclaim that which was his, which was lost. Yes. Right. So, you know, we can get, we can, maybe we will next week, maybe we will dig into like super laps area versus infra laps. AIRism probably not, I don't necessarily wanna have that conversation. But there is a reality in the Bible where God has a chosen people and they are his people, even before he redeems them. [00:34:52] Jesse Schwamb: Exactly. [00:34:53] God's Relentless Pursuit of Sinners [00:34:53] Tony Arsenal: These parables all emphasize that in a different way and part of what he's, part of what he's ribbing at with the Pharisees and the, and the scribes, and this is common across all of Christ's teaching in his interactions and we get into true Israel with, with Paul, I mean this is the consistent testimony of the New Testament, is that the people who thought they were God's people. The, the Jewish leaders, especially the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the scribes, the, the sort of elites of, uh, first century Jewish believers, they really were convinced that they were God's people. And those dirty gentiles out there, they, they're not, and even in certain sense, like even the Jewish people out in the country who don't even, you know, they don't know the scriptures that like, even those people were maybe barely God's people. Christ is coming in here and he is going, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like you're asking me. You're surprised that I receive sinners and e with them. Well, I'm coming to claim that which is mine, which was lost, and the right response to that is not to turn your nose up at it. The right response is to rejoice with me that I have found my sheep that was lost, that I have reclaimed my coin that was lost. And as we'll see later on, like he really needles them at the end of the, the, uh, parable of the prodigal son. This is something I, I have to be like intentional in my own life because I think sometimes we hear conversion stories and we have this sort of, I, I guess like, we'll call it like the, the Jonah I heresy, I dunno, we won't call it heresy, but like the, the, the like Jonah impulse that we all have to be really thankful for God's mercy in our life. But sort of question whether God is. Merciful or even be a little bit upset when it seems that God is being merciful to those sinners over there. We have to really like, use these parables in our own lives to pound that out of our system because it's, it's ungodly and it's not what God is, is calling us. And these parables really speak against that [00:36:52] Jesse Schwamb: and all of us speak in. In that lost state, but that doesn't, I think like you're saying, mean that we are not God's already. That if he has established that from a trinity past, then we'd expect what others have said about God as the hound of heaven to be true. And that is he comes and he chases down his own. What's interesting to me is exactly what you've said. We often recognize when we do this in reverse and we look at the parable of the lost son, all of these elements, how the father comes after him, how there's a cha singer coming to himself. There's this grand act of repentance. I would argue all of that is in all of these parables. Not, not to a lesser extent, just to a different extent, but it's all there. So in terms of like couching this, and I think what we might use is like traditionally reformed language. And I, I don't want to say I'm overeating this, I hope I'm not at that same risk, but we see some of this like toll depravity and like the sinner is lost, unable to move forward, right? There still is like the sovereign grace of God who's initiating the salvation and there is a kind of effect of calling that God doesn't merely invite, he finds, he goes after he affects the very thing. Yeah, and I think we're seeing that here. There is. The sinner, spiritual inability. There's an utter passivity until found. The coin doesn't seek the woman. The woman seeks the coin. And in this way, I think we see God's act of searching grace. It's all there for us. Yeah, it's in a slightly different way, but I think that's what we're meant to like take away from this. We're meant to lean into that a bit. [00:38:12] Rejoicing in Salvation [00:38:12] Jesse Schwamb: And the reason why I think it leads to joy, why God is so pleased is because God has this real pleasure. Jesus has this real pleasure. The Holy Spirit has this real pleasure. To pluck sinners as brands from the burning fire. You know, it was Jesus, literally his food and drink like not to be too trite, but like his jam went upon the earth to finish the work, which he came to do. And there are many times when he says he ammi of being constrained in the spirit until this was accomplished. And it's still his delight to show mercy like you're saying He is. And even Jonah recognizes that, right. He said like, I knew you were going to be a merciful God. And so he's far more willing to save sinners than sinners are to be saved. But that is the gospel level voice, isn't it? Because we can come kicking and screaming, but in God's great mercy, not because of works and unrighteousness, but because of his great mercy, he comes and he tears everything apart to rescue and to save those whom he's called to himself. [00:39:06] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. I love that old, um, Puritan phrase that wrath is God's alien work. And we, you know, like you gotta be careful when you start to talk that way. And the Puritans were definitely careful about everything. I mean, they were very specific when they spoke, but. When we talk about God's alien work and wrath being God's alien work, what we're saying is not, not that like somehow wrath is external to God. Like that's not what we're getting at of Right. But when you look at scripture and, and here's something that I think, um. I, I don't know how I wanna say this. Like, I think we read that the road is narrow and the the, um, you know, few are those who find it. I think we read that and we somehow think like, yeah, God, God, like, really loves that. Not a lot of people are saved. And I, I actually think that like, when we look at it, um, and, and again, like we have to be careful 'cause God, God. God decreed that which he is delighted by, and also that which glorifies him the most. Right? Right. But the picture that we get in scripture, and we have to take this seriously with all of the caveats that it's accommodated, it's anthropopathism that, you know, all of, all of the stuff we've talked about. We did a whole series on systematic theology. We did like six episodes on Divine Simplicity and immutability. Like we we're, we're right in line with the historic tradition on that. All of those caveats, uh, all of those caveats in place, the Bible pic paints a picture of God such that he grieves over. Those who are lost. Right? Right. He takes no delight in the death of the wicked. That's right. He, he, he seeks after the lost and he rejoices when he finds them. Right. He's, his, his Holy Spirit is grieved when we disobey him, his, his anger is kindled even towards his people in a paternal sense. Right. He disciplines us the way an angry father who loves us, would discipline us when we disobey him. That is a real, that's a real thing. What exactly that means, how we can apply that to God is a very complicated conversation. And maybe sometimes it's more complicated than we, like, we make it more complicated than it needs to be for sure. Um, we wanna be careful to preserve God's changeness, his immutability, his simplicity, all of those things. But at the end of the day, at. God grieves over lost sinners, and he rejoices when they come back. He rejoices when they return to him. Just as the shepherd who finds his lost sheep puts that sheep on his shoulders, right? That's not just because that's an easy way to carry a sheep, right? It's also like this picture of this loving. Intimate situation where God pulls us onto himself and he, he wraps literally like wraps us around himself. Like there are times when, um. You know, I have a toddler and there are times where I have to carry that toddler, and it's, it's a fight, right? And I don't really enjoy doing it. He's squirming, he's fighting. Then there are times where he needs me to hold him tight, and he, he snuggles in. When he falls down and hurts his leg, the first thing he does is he runs and he jumps on me, and he wants to be held tight, and there's a f there's a fatherly embrace there that not only brings comfort to my son. But it brings great joy to me to be able to comfort him that that dynamic in a, uh, a infinitely greater sense is at play here in the lost sheep. And then there's this rejoicing. It's not just rejoicing that God is rejoicing, it's the angels that are rejoicing. [00:42:43] The Joy of Redemption [00:42:43] Tony Arsenal: It's the, it's other Christians. It's the great cloud of witnesses that are rejoicing when Aah sinner is returned to God. All of God's kingdom and everything that that includes, all of that is involved in this rejoicing. That's why I think like in the first parable, in the parable of the lost sheep, it's joy in heaven. Right? It's sort of general joy in heaven. It's not specific. Then this one is even more specific. It's not just general joy in heaven. It's the angels of God. That's right. That are rejoicing. And then I think what we're gonna find, and we'll we'll tease this out when we get to the next par, well the figure in the prodigal son that is rejoicing. The one that is leading the rejoicing, the chief rejoice is the one who's the standin for God in that parable. [00:43:26] Jesse Schwamb: Right, exactly right. So, [00:43:27] Tony Arsenal: so we have to, we have to both recognize that there's a true grief. A true sorrow that is appropriate to speak of God, um, as having when a sinner is lost. And there's also an equally appropriate way to speak about God rejoicing and being pleased and delighted when a sinner returns to him. [00:43:53] Jesse Schwamb: That's the real payoff of this whole parable. I think, uh, maybe all three of them altogether, is that it is shocking how good the gospel is, which we're always saying, yeah, but I'm really always being moved, especially these last couple weeks with what Jesus is saying about how good, how truly unbelievable the gospel is. And again, it draws us to the. Old Testament scriptures when even the Israel saying, who is like this? Who is like our God? So what's remarkable about this is that there's an infinite willingness on God's part to receive sinners. [00:44:23] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. [00:44:23] Jesse Schwamb: And however wicked a man may have been, and the day that he really turns from his wickedness and comes to God by Christ, God is well pleased and all of heaven with him, and God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, like you said, but God has pleasure and true repentance. If all of that's true, then like day to day, here's what I, I think this means for us. [00:44:41] Applying the Parable to Our Lives [00:44:41] Jesse Schwamb: Is when we come to Christ for mercy and love and help and whatever anguish and perplexity and simpleness that we all have, and we all have it, we are going with the flow. If his own deepest wishes, we're not going against them. And so this means that God has for us when we partake in the toning work of Christ, coming to Christ for forgiveness, communing with him despite our sinfulness, that we are laying hold of Christ's own deepest longing and joy. [00:45:10] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. And [00:45:10] Jesse Schwamb: Jesus is comforted when we draw near the riches of his atoning work because as his body, even his own body in a way is being healed in this process. And so we, along with it, that I think is the payoff here. That's what's just so remarkable is that not only, like you're saying, is all heaven kind of paying attention to this. Like they're cognizant of it. It's something worthy of their attention and their energies and their rejoicing. But again, it's showing that God is doing all of this work and so he keeps calling us and calling us and calling us over and over again and just like you said, the elect sinner, those estr belongs to God and his eternal purpose. Even that by itself, we could just say full stop. Shut it down end the podcast. Yeah. That's just worthy to, to rejoice and, and ponder. But this is how strong I think we see like per election in particular, redemption in these passages. Christ died for his chief specifically crisis going after the lost coin, which already belongs to him. So like you were saying, Tony, when you know, or maybe you don't know, but you've misplaced some kind of money and you put your hand in that pocket of that winter coat for the first time that season and out comes the piece of paper, that's whatever, 20 or whatever, you rejoice in that, right. Right. It's like this was mine. I knew it was somewhere, it belonged to me, except that what's even better here is this woman tears her whole place apart to go after this one coin that she knows is hers and yet has been lost. I don't know what more it is to be said. I just cannot under emphasize. Or overemphasize how great God's love is in this like amazing condescension, so that when Jesus describes himself as being gentle and lowly or gentle and humble or gentle and humiliated, that I, I think as we understand the biblical text, it's not necessarily just that he's saying, well, I'm, I'm displaying. Meekness power under control. When he says he's humble, he means put in this incredibly lowly state. Yeah. That the rescue mission, like you're saying, involves not just like, Hey, she lemme call you back. Hey, come over here, says uh. He goes and he picks it up. It's the ultimate rescue, picks it up and takes it back by his own volition, sacrificing everything or to do that and so does this woman in this particular instance, and it should lead us. I think back to there's this virtuous cycle of seeing this, experiencing this. Being compelled by the law of Christ, as Paul says, by the power of the Holy Spirit and being regenerated and then worshiping, and then repenting, and then worshiping, and then repenting, and then worshiping. Because in the midst of that repentance and that beautifulness recognizing, as Isaiah says, all of these idols that we set up, that we run to, the one thing they cannot do for us is they cannot deal with sin. They cannot bring cleanliness and righteousness through confession of sin. They cannot do that. So Christ is saying, come to the one you who are needy, you who have no money. To use another metaphor in the Bible, come and buy. And in doing so, we're saying, Christ, Lord have mercy on me, a sinner. And when he says, come, come, I, I've, I have already run. After you come and be restored, come and be renewed. That which was lost my child. You have been found and I have rescued you. [00:48:04] Tony Arsenal: Yeah. Yeah. And these, these are so, um, these two parables are so. Comfortable. Like, right, like they are there, there are certain passages of scripture that you can just like put on like a big fuzzy warm bathrobe on like sn a cold morning, a snuggy. Yeah. I don't know if I want to go that far, but spirits are snuggy and, and these two are like that, right? Like, I know there are times where I feel like Christ redeemed me sort of begrudgingly, right? Mm-hmm. I think we have, we have this, um, concept in our mind of. Sort of the suffering servant, you know, like he's kind of like, ah, if I have to do it, I will. Right, right. And, and like, I think we, we would, if, if we were the ones who were, were being tasked to redeem something, we might do it. You know, we might do it and we. We might feel a certain sense of satisfaction about it, but I can tell you that if I had a hundred sheep and I had lost one, I would not lay it on my shoulder rejoicing. I would lay it on my shoulder. Frustrated and glad that I finally found it, but like. Right. Right. That's not what Christ did. That's right. Christ lays us on his shoulders rejoicing. Right. I know. Like when you lose something, it's frustrating and it's not just the loss of it that's frustrating. It's the time you have to take to find it. And sometimes like, yeah, you're happy that you found it, but you're like, man, it would've just been nice if I hadn't lost this in [00:49:36] Jesse Schwamb: the That's right. [00:49:37] Tony Arsenal: This woman, there's none of that. There's no, um, there's no regret. There's no. Uh, there's no begrudging this to it. There's nothing. It's just rejoicing. She's so happy. And it's funny, I can imagine, uh, maybe, maybe this is my own, uh, lack of sanctification here. I can imagine being that friend that's like, I gotta come over 'cause you found your coin, right? Like, I can be, I could imagine me that person, but Right. But honestly, like. This is a, this is a situation where she's so overcome with joy. She just has to tell people about it. Yeah. She has to share it with people. It, it reminds me, and I've seen this, I've seen this, um, connection made in the past certainly isn't new to me. I don't, I don't have any specific sorts to say, but like the woman at the well, right. She gets this amazing redemption. She gets this, this Messiah right in front of her. She leaves her buckets at the well, and she goes into a town of people who probably hate her, who think she's just the worst scum of society and she doesn't care. She goes into town to tell everybody about the fact that the Messiah has come, right? And they're so like stunned by the fact that she's doing it. Like they come to see what it is like that's what we need to be like. So there's. There's an element here of not only the rejoicing of God, and again, like, I guess I'm surprised because I've, I've, I've never sort of really read this. Part, I've never read this into it too much or I've never like really pulled this out, but it, now that I'm gonna say it, it just seems logical, like not only is God rejoicing in this, but again, it should be calling us to rejoice, right? Christ is. Christ is using these parables to shame the Pharisees and the scribes who refuse to rejoice over the salvation of sinners. How often do we not rejoice over our own salvation sufficiently? Like when's the last time? And I, I don't want to, this is, this can be a lot of loss. So again, like. God is not calling every single person to stand up on their lunch table at work, or, I don't know if God's calling anybody to stand up on the lunch table at work. Right. To like, like scream about how happy they are that they're sick, happy, happy. But like, when's the last time you were so overcome with joy that in the right opportunity, it just over, like it just overcame you and you had to share it. I don't rem. Putting myself bare here, like I don't remember the last time that happened. I share my faith with people, like my coworkers know that I'm a Christian and, um, my, they know that like, there are gonna be times where like I will bring biblical ethics and biblical concepts into my work. Like I regularly use bible examples to illustrate a principle I'm trying to teach my employees or, or I will regularly sort of. In a meeting where there's some question about what the right, not just like the correct thing to do, but the right thing to do. I will regularly bring biblical morality into those conversations. Nobody is surprised by that. Nobody's really offended by it. 'cause I just do it regularly. But I don't remember the last time where I was so overcome with joy because of my salvation that I just had to tell somebody. Right. And that's a, that's a, that's an indictment on me. That's not an indictment on God. That's not an indictment on anyone else. That's an indictment on me. This parable is calling me to be more joyful about. My salvation. [00:52:52] Jesse Schwamb: Yeah. One of the, I think the best and easiest verses from Psalms to memorize is let the redeemed of the Lord say so. Yes. Like, say something, speak up. There's, there's a great truth in what you're saying. Of course. And I think we mentioned this last time. There's a communal delight of redemption. And here we see that played out maybe a little bit more explicitly because the text says that the joy is before the angels, meaning that still God is the source of the joy. In other words, the angels share in God's delight night, vice versa, and not even just in salvation itself, but the fact that God is delighted in this great salvation, that it shows the effectiveness of his saving power. All that he has designed will come to pass because he super intends his will over all things that all things, again are subservient to our salvation. And here, why would that not bring him great joy? Because that's exactly what he intends and is able to do. And the angels rejoice along with him because his glory is revealed in his mighty power. So I'm, I'm with you. I mean, this reminds me. Of what the author of Hebrew says. This is chapter 12, just the first couple of verses. Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses in this communal kind of redemption of joy surrounding us. Laying aside every weight and the sin,

Notes Matthew 3:1-12 Isaiah 11:1-10 Romans 15:4-13 Summary In this episode of the Pulpit Fiction Podcast, hosts Robb McCoy and Eric Fistler discuss the readings for the second Sunday of Advent, focusing on John the Baptist's message of repentance and the concept of the Kingdom of Heaven. They explore the significance of bearing good fruit in faith, the role of religious leaders, and the historical context of the Pharisees and Sadducees. The conversation emphasizes the importance of embodying faith through actions and the continual nature of repentance. In this conversation, Robb McCoy and Eric Fistler explore the themes of continuity between Jesus and John the Baptist, the significance of Isaiah's prophecy, and the transformative imagery of the stump. They discuss the hope embedded in these biblical narratives and the role of Gentiles in the Christian faith, emphasizing the importance of radical welcome and compassion within communities. The conversation highlights the intrinsic value of individuals and the potential for renewal and growth, even in seemingly hopeless situations. Takeaways This episode discusses the readings for the second Sunday of Advent. John the Baptist's message emphasizes repentance and preparation for the kingdom of heaven. The concept of the Kingdom of Heaven is often misunderstood as merely a place after death. John's call to produce good fruit is a central theme in his message. The relationship between John the Baptist and Jesus is one of continuity, not separation. The Pharisees and Sadducees are called out for their hypocrisy, emphasizing that all need to bear fruit. The idea of repentance is not a one-time act but a continual process. The imagery of the axe and the winnowing fork highlights the urgency of John's message. The conversation touches on the historical context of the religious leaders of the time. The discussion reflects on the importance of embodying faith through actions. Jesus' message is a continuation of John the Baptist's teachings. Isaiah's prophecy speaks to transformation and hope. The stump symbolizes decay but also potential for new life. God's grace nurtures us even when we feel like a stump. The roots of faith are essential for growth and renewal. Wisdom and understanding lead to peace and transformation. The message of inclusion extends to Gentiles in the faith. Radical welcome is central to the Christian community. Compassion is necessary for healing broken relationships. Communities can thrive by embracing openness and generosity.

In this Bible Story, Paul is saved from certain death by the judge of Jerusalem. The jews spit and spite Paul, planning to take his life. Yet Paul remains protected by God through the Roman legal system. This story is inspired by Acts 22:30-23:35. Go to BibleinaYear.com and learn the Bible in a Year.Today's Bible verse is Acts 23:3 from the King James Version.Episode 238: As Paul stood before the judge and a council of Pharisees, Sadducees, and Elders, he saw his opportunity to shift the attention from himself. He addressed the crowd in a loud voice saying that it was because of the hope of the resurrection from the dead that he was on trial. And at that, the crowd became divided, the Pharisees and Sadducees broke out into an argument so fierce that once again the judge had to send men to rescue Paul. While there in prison once again he received a word from God that He was sending him to Rome.Hear the Bible come to life as Pastor Jack Graham leads you through the official BibleinaYear.com podcast. This Biblical Audio Experience will help you master wisdom from the world’s greatest book. In each episode, you will learn to apply Biblical principles to everyday life. Now understanding the Bible is easier than ever before; enjoy a cinematic audio experience full of inspirational storytelling, orchestral music, and profound commentary from world-renowned Pastor Jack Graham.Also, you can download the Pray.com app for more Christian content, including, Daily Prayers, Inspirational Testimonies, and Bedtime Bible Stories.Visit JackGraham.org for more resources on how to tap into God's power for successful Christian living.Pray.com is the digital destination of faith. With over 5,000 daily prayers, meditations, bedtime stories, and cinematic stories inspired by the Bible, the Pray.com app has everything you need to keep your focus on the Lord. Make Prayer a priority and download the #1 App for Prayer and Sleep today in the Apple app store or Google Play store.Executive Producers: Steve Gatena & Max BardProducer: Ben GammonHosted by: Pastor Jack GrahamMusic by: Andrew Morgan SmithBible Story narration by: Todd HaberkornSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Fr. Mike highlights the boldness of Peter and John in our reading from Acts as they stand before the council of church leaders and defend the name of Jesus. He also addresses Paul's writings on God's grace given to us in our sinfulness and the war between good and evil present within ourselves. Today's readings are Acts 4, Romans 6-7, and Proverbs 27:4-6. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/bibleinayear. Please note: The Bible contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.