Transcription

Chris
So, Jeff, are you a nice guy?

Jeff
I want to be.

Chris
Well, prove it right now.

Jeff
I’m not sure I can.

Chris
Nope. I demand you prove it.

Jeff
The way you’re treating me doesn’t make me want to show.

Chris
Me a sign, buddy.

Jeff
I don’t want to show you a sign.

Chris
Well, that’s exactly the position that Jesus finds himself in.

Jeff
Oh, well, there you go. Well, he’s Chris, and I’m Jeff, and we’re the Bible guys. Okay. Chris.

Chris
Well, Jeff, today is one of our favorite segments to sing, which is Mailbags.

Both
Mailbags.

Chris
There you go. You always do that little echo at the end.

Jeff
I love it.

Chris
Uh, so, hey, Colleen B writes in today, and she said this. She said, I love the bond that you two have. The back and forth between you has me cracking up. And she said, what’s one of your favorite things about getting to work together? Oh, so here’s a here’s a compliment, you know, uh, which is great. Thank you, Colleen. But then also a question.

Jeff
Well, how does she know we like working together, right? That’s a little presumptuous, isn’t it?

Chris
Right. Bad assumption. Colleen B.

Jeff
The whole thing’s a facade. It’s a charade.

Chris
That’s funny. Yeah.

Chris
Uh, no, I honestly believe that. The answer to that is, uh, you know, they always say be slow to hire people, right? Yes. Yeah. So.

Jeff
So it’s just hire slow people one or the other.

Chris
Oh, geez.

Chris
Wow. So, uh. But but but the reason why you should be careful about hiring somebody and do your due diligence is because you want to make sure that the right people are on the journey with you. Because I think in any job I’ve ever had in ministry, one of the things that I’ve appreciated the most is having fun. Yeah, yeah. Uh, obviously, you know, the spiritual parts are are assumed. Right. But but beneath that, in terms of, like the actual work itself. Yeah. Yeah. It’s the relationships. Right?

Jeff
The enjoyability of the daily grind. Yeah. Because ministry has a real daily grind, right? Yeah. Uh, not every believe it or not, not everybody’s happy with us all the time. Yeah. Um, right. Or, you know, there’s a lot of struggles. There’s a lot of brokenness. There’s a lot of broken people that we wind up working with. Yeah, there’s never enough resources. You can just go on and on. It’s it’s always a struggle.

Chris
I was watching Hard Knocks yesterday, and, uh. Uh, what’s his name? Aaron Rodgers. And he goes, hey, man, they love you in New York. And he goes so far.

Jeff
Yeah, exactly.

Jeff
And you’re only as good as your last game.

Chris
And I thought of ministry I thought of ministry. I thought that’s exactly true, man. People love you until they don’t. Yeah.

Jeff
So, you know, there’s all those struggles, but I think you and I are the kind of people we’re going to find fun, I always did, I always found fun at every job I’ve had or tried to find fun as much as possible. And if I couldn’t find it, I didn’t stay at that job very long. So yeah, we’re just kind of. We laugh a lot. We laugh all the time. It doesn’t matter what we’re doing. We’re cutting up and laughing. Uh, we take shots at each other. There’s that. The fact that you’ve got thick skin and I’ve got thick skin so we can.

Chris
Well, we’re we’re wired that way. Yeah, yeah. So it was, it was actually probably surprising to me because I knew I was similar to you. But then, you know, when we got together and started working on the same team. Yeah, I started to think to myself, wow. You know, the, you know, the you take the Myers-Briggs test. The Strengthsfinder test. Yeah. And then all of a sudden, you get to know more about a person’s background and you’re like, okay, we’re different people, obviously. Sure, but wow, were we similar?

Jeff
We’re so compatible.

Chris
You you complete me. Yeah. So it’s so funny. Yeah.

Jeff
You know, so that fun thing I have people sometimes I just recently had a pastor ask me, how do you know when to make a change? How do you know? Should we leave? And so faithfulness is the foundation. So I always ask, are you being faithful? If you’re not being faithful, you’ve got a lot of other things to fix before you go quit a job. Right? So faithfulness would be the first thing. But then the three big questions are, uh, are are you being fruitful at what you’re doing, or will you be more fruitful at the other, at the new thing? Right. So how fruitful are you being the second would be fulfilling. How fulfilling is this for you personally? Um, do you feel like you’re fulfilling your call? You do you feel like you’re doing what you’re designed to do, right? Or is this new role or this new opportunity more in line with what you’re designed to do and be? Yeah. And then the last one, honestly, and it seems funny to people but they’re surprised by it is I think. Is it fun. Are you having fun doing it. So God’s not against fun. And when you’re having fun, you wake up ready to do the next thing, right? Right. So I’ve had both of us have had really hard schedules over the last several weeks. My schedule has been pretty tough. I woke up this morning tired but ready. You know what I mean? Oh, hey, we’re going to go in the studio. It’s going to be fun today. And, uh, there is something to that that the fun factor should be a part of your consideration. Yeah. So is it going to be enjoyable?

Chris
So the biggest word is faithful. That has to be assumed. Absolutely. Uh. Or else don’t move on. But as soon as faithful is there, then you have fruitful. You have fulfilling and fun. Yeah. Yeah, that’s a great formula. Yeah. I’ll see what I did there. I said formula. Formula.

Jeff
Oh, there you go. It’s the five F’s.

Chris
It’s a fantastic formula.

Jeff
Fantastic formula for finding finding your life’s focus.

Chris
Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Wow.

Chris
So, uh, thank you, Colleen B, for writing in. That’s nice. And, uh, that was very. Jeff
She made my day. She said nice things.

Chris
And by the way, you can email us at any time at info at the Bible guys. And if you email us in, you can ask any question, make any comment or comment on YouTube or any of those platforms in which you can contact us. Uh, because. We’d love to hear from you. And we certainly love responding.

Jeff
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jeff
It’s great. Well thank you Colleen. Hey, guys, before we get to the Bible reading part of the conversation today, would you do us a favor? If you’re watching on YouTube, would you subscribe on YouTube? Follow us on YouTube. It helps us so much when you do it and then give us a thumbs up. If you have a thumbs down, then I’m not talking to you. Forget about it, but give us a thumbs up if you like it. Leave a comment and all those things help the algorithms get the message out further. Thanks so much!

Chris
Well, today we’re jumping right into, uh, people asking Jesus for a miraculous sign.

Jeff
Yes.

Chris
Yeah. And it’s found in two of the Gospels of the four, both in Matthew 12 and in Luke 11. Both are similar, but a little bit different.

Jeff
Yeah.

Jeff
So, um, we’ll just start Matthew chapter 12, verse 38. And Jesus, the Bible says one day some teachers of religious law and Pharisees came to Jesus and said, teacher, we want you to show us a miraculous sign to prove your authority. But Jesus replied, only an evil adulterous generation would demand a miraculous sign. But the only sign I’ll give them is the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was in the belly of the great fish for three days and three nights, so will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights? The people of Nineveh will stand up against this generation on Judgment Day and condemn it, for they repented of their sins at the preaching of Jonah. Now someone greater than Jonah is here, but you refuse to repent. The Queen of Sheba will also stand up against this generation on Judgment Day and condemn it, for she came from a distant land to hear the wisdom of Solomon. Now someone greater than Solomon is here, but you refuse to listen. When an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert seeking rest, but finding none. Then it says, I’ll return to the person I came from. So it returns and finds its former home empty, swept and in order. Then the spirit finds seven other spirits even more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there. And so that person is worse off than before. That’ll be the experience of this evil generation. And then in Luke 11 chapter verse 24, basically the same, he says, when an evil spirit leaves a person, it goes into the desert searching for rest, but when it finds none, it says, I will return to the person I came from. Jeff
So it returns and finds that its former home is all swept in an order. Then the spirit finds seven other spirits even more evil than itself, and they all enter the person and live there. And so that person is worse off than before. As he was speaking, a woman in the crowd called out, God bless your mother, the womb from which you came, and the breasts and nursed you. And Jesus replied, but even more blessed are all who hear the Word of God and put it into practice. As the crowd pressed in on Jesus, he said, this evil generation keeps asking me to show them a miraculous sign, but the only sign I’ll give them is the sign of Jonah. What happened to him was a sign to the people of Nineveh that God had sent him. What happens to the Son of Man will be assigned to these people that he was sent by God. The Queen of Sheba will stand up against this generation on Judgment Day and condemn it. For she came from a distant land to hear the wisdom of Solomon. Now someone greater than Solomon is here, but you refuse to listen. The people of Nineveh will also stand up against this generation on Judgment Day and condemn it, for they repented of their sins at the preaching of Jonah. Now someone greater than Jonah is here, but you refuse to repent.

Chris
There it is. Jeff
So it kinda seems like Jesus is being a little bit obstinate here. Yeah. Hey, Jesus, show us a miracle.

Jeff
No, no. Right.

Jeff
He’s already shown a bunch of miracles.

Chris
Well, he doesn’t want to be a dancing monkey. Because, you know what’s so interesting is because every time that he’s done miracles, uh, Jesus knows people’s intent. He. He recognizes their faith. Yeah, yeah. Uh, you know, he immediately says, great is your faith, you know, or or, you know, you have such great faith or whatever it is. And I love how the how Jesus. There was never a point in the Scripture where Jesus doesn’t know what they’re thinking or what they’re feeling or what their intent is. And so I think it’s largely in my mind, I bet you the reason why Jesus refused to do a miracle on the spot is because the intent wasn’t for healing or for faith, right?

Jeff
Yeah, it was so all these other people, you know, somebody with a withered hand or a paralyzed person or bringing, you know, your sick child or or sick servant to Jesus or whatever, talk so many times. How many times have we read and he healed everybody who came to him is what, you know, what the Bible would say. But then now they come and just ask for one miracle. He goes, nope. It was because all those people were coming in desperation. They desperately needed help. And this situation, I think that Dancing monkey, you know, statement is true. What they were really wanting was do another trick for us. And if you do that trick, we’ll believe that you really are who you claim to be.

Chris
But one more miracle isn’t going to make him believe.

Jeff
Yeah, exactly. And that’s what he sees. That’s why he says, listen, you know, uh, the only miracle I’m going to show you is my resurrection. Just as Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights, I’m going to be in the ground for three days and three nights. Other than that, I’m not going to show you anything else.

Chris
Yeah. And by the way, I want to go ahead and comment on the fact that he talks about an evil generation, which is why he was saying like, hey, the main miracle is going to be Jonah. This will be your sign. But he also refers to a demon going out of a person and coming back into a person. Well, you know, we love the new, uh, the Life Application Study Bible. And so there’s a note here that says this. It says Jesus was describing the attitude of the nation of Israel and the religious leaders in particular. Uh, so just cleaning up one’s life without filling it with God leaves plenty of room for Satan to enter. The Book of Ezra records how people rid themselves of idolatry, but failed to replace it with love for God and obedience to him. Ridding our life of sin is the first step, but we must also take the second step, filling our life with God’s Word and the Holy Spirit. Because unfulfilled and or unfilled and complacent people are easy targets for Satan. Isn’t that great? Hmm. Wow. I think that’s a lot of really great insight, because if you think about it in the context in which he’s talking about, he’s talking about an unbelieving generation, he’s talking about, you know, uh, I think that that’s probably pretty accurate, but but obviously, Jesus is also not going to say something that isn’t true. Right? So he’s actually giving us some insight into the spiritual realm and how it works as well.

Jeff
Absolutely.

Jeff
That’s that’s really an amazing thing. I wish he’d said more about that passage. Yeah.

Chris
I thought the same thing. Jeff
He just kind of gives you a little bit and moves on.

Chris
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris
Not the half has been told.

Chris
Right.

Jeff
So that wasn’t his primary thing is I think partly what he was trying to tell them is listen, you already have an opportunity to respond. You’ve already seen enough. Right. So the psalmist wrote that the heavens declare the glory of the Lord. Later on, Paul writes how all of creation points to God. So, you know, God kind of has this expectation that even just seeing what’s been created is should be enough to know that there is a creator. And then Jesus said, and then I show up and I do all these miraculous signs, all these things. That should be enough. You’ve seen enough. You don’t, you don’t need more. Yeah. And so then he goes, but here’s the bad news. I show up for a little while and things get a little better for you people. But what’s going to happen when I leave? It’s going to get. Worse than it was before. Yeah, right. And it did. I mean, the Romans eventually come and wipe them out, and they have all kinds of destruction. They get dispersed for thousands of years. And and it just, you know, a devastating, uh, experience for the people of Israel. And I think that’s partly what Jesus was talking about there, too, is you had this moment where things could have been different and you’ve rejected me. And now even worse things are coming.

Chris
You know, parts of the Bible, like in Colossians and others, where it talks about how you can see God in creation. Yeah. How you know this, these are the miracles around us every day, right? Yeah. Um, I was talking to my father the other day who’s about to turn 84, and he was talking about fearing death, you know, like his death, a fearful thing. And we normally don’t talk about spiritual things. But as I was trying to quote Bible verses and lay out some theology about not fearing death, he says, you know, he sort of interrupted me and said, you know, I was walking the dog and I looked over and I saw this massive moth. And he was describing how it was like, you know, six, seven inches, you know, it’s just one of these really big ones. And he said, and I looked at the beauty of the design on the wings, and he said the intricacies. And I thought to myself, there is no way that that doesn’t have a designer. And he said, it flew away. And I thought, you know what? God is real and I’m okay. And I thought to myself, all of my knowledge, right? All my knowledge, I’m trying to drop into him. And he interrupts me and says, you know, no, I’m okay because I saw a moth. Yeah, well.

Jeff
It’s the intricacies of creation, right? Right, right. When you just look at it, logic tells you. It’s too well designed, right? Right. Um, I think you’ve used the illustration before. I’ve done it too. You know, smash up a watch and shake it. And and, you know, in a bag. It’s all smashed. You’re never going to shake it back into a watch, right? Right. All these random pieces don’t eventually become a watch, right? I read an article several years ago. Probably 15 years ago, a mathematician did a, um, uh, uh, calculations on the probabilities of taking, um, Scrabble tiles and only not not all the Scrabble tiles, just the, the letters necessary to spell out to be or not to be. That is the question. Right. Mhm. And he said just those letters. Put them in a bag, shake them up, dump them out, put them in a bag. Shake them up, dump them out. Put them in a bag, shake them up, dump them out just to get that sequence exactly in order. We haven’t had enough time in, in in all of creation. There hasn’t been enough time, uh, for that that to randomly land. Exactly. In order to spell out that sentence. Right. Yeah. And, uh, I remember being amazed by that, especially. I’ve had an opportunity to talk to two different scientists that were not yet Christians, but were really struggling with what they saw. One, an astrophysicist who works on the, you know, uh, the scale of the universe and distances and planets and gravitational pulls and black holes and all that kind of stuff, dark matter. And he said that the bigger the universe gets for him, the further out we go, the more precise it is designed. And he used the word design, he said. Jeff
When I first started off, he said I was a committed atheist. I just believed everything was random, he said. The further out I go and the more, um we learn, the more precise the universe is, he says. Not random chaos. It’s tremendous razor’s edge precision for the universe. And he said, I thought the bigger it got for me. The simpler it would be and the more evident it would be that it was just random. And he says the other way around, and I’ve had the same thing with a guy, a scientist I knew who was the he was an associate scientist on the Human Genome Project back in the early 2000, when they were mapping out human DNA. And he said the same thing, that the smaller he’s gone on a molecular level in the cells, according to Darwinian theory, it should have been simpler and simpler. We should have gotten down to the simplest piece, and instead, the smaller we go on a cellular molecular level, the more intricate it becomes. And we got all these little machines inside of our cells. Right. And then he said, on top of that, he was working on the on the DNA sequences. It’s information, it’s letters. It’s literally he said, Jeff, it’s the code that makes you a human right. He said literally. And I said, well, where does a code come from? He goes, I don’t know. I said, well, doesn’t information come from intelligence? Because that’s what it is. A code is information. He goes, yeah. He said, that’s my problem. I’m struggling with the fact that he said, I have a hard time believing that a million lines or a billion lines of code randomly happen, especially when, you know, you and I can’t spell out Scrabble letters and spell to be or not to be. Jeff
That’s the questions.

Chris
Well it’s like the works of William Shakespeare just randomly appearing on this table with no author.

Jeff
Right? Right, right.

Jeff
It just poof. There it is.

Chris
Right?

Jeff
It’s absurd. There’s nothing in our in our minds. There’s nothing in the in logic that would say that’s even possible. Right, right. Um, and so even this molecular scientist coming back and going, I just feel like there’s a legitimate argument for an intelligent designer because intelligence was passed on.

Chris
Yeah, well, I always say this. It takes actually more faith to believe in atheism than it does for in Christianity. Oh, yeah. Yeah, because.

Jeff
It wasn’t it. Who was it that wrote the book? I don’t have enough faith. Um, uh, Norm Geisler wrote that book. I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist.

Chris
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris
Yeah, that’s great. Because because it’s not just that you figure out that the that the Earth is exactly the distance it needs to be away from the sun and then rotates on an axis and gives us four seasons. And if it were any closer, we’d burn up in just a few miles. Uh, further away we’d freeze. It’s not just that you learn that one fact, it’s just that you learn 100,000 of those precise facts. Oh, yeah, and it becomes like the watch shaking, right? Right where you’re like, how could that possibly be? Because it is, uh, it takes it takes less faith to say, well, there’s the intelligent designer, right? It takes more faith to say, no, I bet you right. All these things mathematically happened, right? Right. So yeah, it’s just incredible.

Jeff
So that’s one of Jesus defenses here. Listen, there’s enough miracles around you. You’ve already seen enough miracles. I don’t need to do one. So if your motivation is prove to me that you’re real by doing this miracle, Jesus response back to you will be, I’ve done enough miracles.

Chris
Mm. That’s great. Right.

Jeff
Uh, if if you’re saying, Jesus, I desperately need you to intervene because I don’t have anywhere else to turn. That’s when Jesus shows up to do miracles, right? So he shows up to do miracles for people that are desperate. And he refuses to try to prove something to somebody. Right? And so instead, look around you. And then the one proof he offers is his resurrection. So when people are struggling and I come across somebody who’s struggling with faith, I usually get them to lean into, do some study and research on the resurrection. Look at what Josh McDowell has has done on the resurrection, or William Lane Craig has written on the resurrection or what? Um, uh, I don’t know who are some of these other guys. Um, Norm Geisler has written on the On the Resurrection. So many of them have done so much great research. The case for Christ or the case for the resurrection, uh, by what’s his name? Uh, man, I’m forgetting his name.

Jeff
Uh, Strobel. Is it? Yeah.

Jeff
Lee Strobel. Yeah. Uh, so many people have done tremendous scientific research on the resurrection. And so if you’re struggling, the only evidence Jesus promises to offer you is his resurrection. Right. And then I think one thing that we can’t pass by is that lady shouts out, oh, your mom is so blessed.

Chris
Right?

Jeff
Yeah. And he said, let me tell you who’s really blessed. He said, even more blessed are all who hear the Word of God and put it into practice, right? Isn’t that amazing? Yeah, he says so. So this is all in the same context of these religious leaders saying, prove something to me, right? And Jesus said, there’s a whole bunch of people who listen to me and they don’t do what I say. There’s a whole bunch of people who’ve seen my miracles and don’t believe them. They need one more. But he said, let me tell you, the person who hears my words and puts them into practice, that’s going to radically transform your life. And you contrast that with his statement about demons, right? Everything gets cleaned up for a little while, and then when when nothing actually is transformed, it’s even worse. But he says, for this person, the person who hears his words and then actually puts them into practice is said to be blessed. That’s the favor of God, is what that blessing is there.

Chris
Well, that sounds like a fantastic place to end. And, uh, we will see you next time on The Bible Guys.