Transcription

Connor:
You’re listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun and practical ways.

Chris:
Hey, welcome to The Bible Guys. I have my shirt for those who are watching, and it says, The Bible Guys. Wow. And you know what we should probably do? We should probably make this available for purchase on thebibleguys.com.

Jeff:
Do you think so?

Chris:
I think we should probably work on that. Yeah. And so guess what? I’m going to throw it out there. Email us or respond back. And if you want a shirt, let us know. And if there’s enough response that comes in, I’ll get right on that.

Jeff:
I want a shirt.

Chris:
You don’t have a shirt?

Jeff:
I don’t know if I have a shirt or not. Do I have one?

Chris:
Yes, you do.

Jeff:
Where’d you get it?

Chris:
It was given to me by people.

Jeff:
Okay. People who like you.

Chris:
I mean, I didn’t print it.

Jeff:
Okay. I don’t have one.

Chris:
Yes, you do.

Jeff:
Do I? Okay. You do. I must have one. I’d like another one.

Chris:
Here’s the bottom line. Sir, may I have another? Hey, listen, here’s the bottom line. I’m not going to get handed a shirt without you getting handed a shirt.

Jeff:
Yeah, I don’t know. So. Okay. Well, hey, it’s cool. Yes. The Bible, guys, you wore that to remember what you’re doing today? No, I actually wore it. His mind comes and goes. He’s wearing a name tag now. Where am I going? Oh, I know where I’m going. They’re going to start pinning your name on your shirt for you.

Chris:
Get a little bracelet with my address on it.

Jeff:
If you find him wandering, please return him to this address.

Chris:
That’s so funny. So anyway, we are the Bible guys and we want to welcome you here. And today we’re actually jumping into, this is another big one. Actually a lot of big things with Moses, right? Yeah. This is the 10 commandments.

Jeff:
He didn’t just kind of go halfway on it. Hardly anything he did. These are big stuff.

Chris:
Everything is locked and loaded with Moses, man. I mean, just, you know, we have the Passover, which is so relevant for us. Fundamental, foundational with Jesus. We have the parting of the Red Sea, which is just yesterday. And today is the Ten Commandments.

Jeff:
Yeah, God’s top ten list.

Chris:
Yeah, top 10 out of the 613. There you go. So we are going to do a segment that Desiree put together called Stump the Pastor.

Jeff:
Oh, these are fun.

Chris:
Yeah. And so this one comes from Annie R. Hi, Annie. And Annie asks this question. If according to the Trinity, Jesus is really God, then why does he refer to God as his father?

Jeff:
Nice.

Chris:
This is a great question. And honestly, whether you’re a new Christian, which I would definitely understand why a new Christian would definitely ask that question. But even if you’re a mature Christian, you know, if you’ve never heard somebody fully explain the Trinity and just sort of reference it, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, and they just move on and you’ve gone to church your whole life and nobody’s really ever, you know, took a delve into it. You want to try to answer that?

Jeff:
Really? You said it all the way up to that point and then didn’t give us an answer? Well, I could answer it, but I think you… Yeah, go ahead.

Chris:
No, I think you did fine. All right. So here’s my response. The response is… There’s good answers.

Jeff:
We can understand why you’re confused. Jeff, go ahead.

Chris:
The answer is, is that the Trinity is one of the most complex things, I would say, conceptually in the Bible. Absolutely. And so what we did, as humans, is we invented the word Trinity. Nowhere in the Bible does the word Trinity actually appear. There is a concept in the Bible where Jesus refers to Him in being one with the Father. You know, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. We find out later on, Jesus was the Word, capital W, gave himself the nickname, or God gave him the nickname. It also says that Jesus was actually a part, he was a part of the creation of the world. It talks about, you know, Jesus says, if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father. You know, the Holy Spirit, the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus talks about the intrinsic relationship between He and the Holy Spirit and how the Holy Spirit interprets us when we pray. We pray and our prayers are received and interpreted and translated. by the Holy Spirit. So all of these things we piece together, and we’ve come up with the doctrine of the Trinity, which is that it is one God, three persons. It’s a triune God, right? So the Trinity is one God, three persons, and it seems to be that, you know, I was taught anyway in Bible college, that each one seems to play a specific role. So the way I was taught was, and it seems to match up, is that God the Father spoke primarily in the Old Testament, and that seems to be the age of God the Father who spoke aloud. And then the age of the Son, we see Him featured in the Gospels. He came on the earth, lived three and a half years, set course, you know, set everything in motion. And then we live post-church, which is the age of the Holy Spirit. which means now Jesus says we have the ability to have the power of God inside of us, which is a new concept. And we have the privilege of that. And then the role of the old Testament and the father was God seems to be the one that sets forth his will. He’s the one that has the will. Whenever you, whenever you hear about the will of a person’s life or the, you know, the, the direction is set, it always comes back to the, the word, the father.

Jeff:
That’s right.

Chris:
Jesus is sort of like the foreman on the ground. He’s the one that comes and He initiates the work of the Father. He sets in motion the work of the Father. That seems to be His role while on earth. And then the Spirit is the completer of the work, right? The Holy Spirit says He began a good work in you. The power behind the work. The power and the completer, right? Yeah, yeah, definitely the power, for sure. And, you know, He translates, He completes, You said he’s the helper. He’s the perfecter of the faith. He’s the helper. And that seems to be the Spirit’s role in all things. So, you know, why does Jesus call God the Father? Because apparently that’s the dynamic that is set up, and we don’t fully understand it. But we do know that that is what God says. He very specifically describes himself this way.

Jeff:
Yeah. There are some nontraditional groups that are on the fringes of Christianity that reject the idea of, of the Trinity. And particularly this would be one of the main arguments is why does Jesus refer to God as the father and always submitting? Why does he pray? And so the other side of that is, so there’s no doubt in the New Testament that Paul taught the Trinity, right? There’s no doubt that the Trinity shows up in so many places at Jesus’ baptism, at creation, where you see the God creating everything. Jesus is the word that creates and the spirit hovers over the earth. I mean, that’s the very first few verses of the Bible. You’ve got all three persons of the Trinity there. Paul references multiple times. What was it? I just pulled it up here a second ago. 2 Corinthians 13, he says, the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Right? So he’s very clear here what he’s talking about. It comes up in 1 Corinthians chapter 12, Romans chapter 8, Ephesians chapter 4, and we can go on different places. And he refers to the Trinity, but when we look at why would Jesus, who is God, pray to the Father, who is God, it really, I think it’s because we misunderstand what prayer is. Right? Prayer is just talking. That’s all it is. And so would it be natural that Jesus would talk to the Father? Sure. It’s perfectly natural. But we tend to make this some kind of a mystical religious thing, as opposed to, it’s just a natural outflowing of a relationship. If you have a relationship with somebody, you talk to somebody. And that’s the same thing here is that Jesus, it really highlights the intimacy of the relationship that the Trinity has, you know, amongst themselves.

Chris:
Yeah, and let’s not forget that as hard, as unbelievably hard as this is to understand, try splitting yourself and then part of yourself adding humanity to it. Whereas the other part of yourself has no humanity in it, right? So it’s beyond our comprehension, but if truly God’s portion of himself, the Father portion of himself, is the one that sets forth the will, then it seems natural to me that the other part of himself that isn’t the one would pray for the will of the Father. So that’s why Jesus would say, not my will but yours be done.

Jeff:
Yeah. Yeah. So there’s, there’s an argument here with regard to, you keep referring to God as himself, as opposed to themselves.

Chris:
That’s exactly right.

Jeff:
Right. So you gotta be careful. So this isn’t one God with three different ways of doing things. Right. Right. It’s, it’s three individuals that make up one God. Yeah.

Chris:
Is the doctrine of the Trinity. It’s hard because, because you know, when we pray, we say thou art, right? Which is you are. Right. Right. Which, which is singular.

Jeff:
Right. But we’re praying to the father.

Chris:
But we’re praying to the Father, that’s right.

Jeff:
Specifically, and the Father is singular. Yes. And yet He’s a part of a triune God. So, I don’t think it’s incomprehensible, quite honestly, the idea of the Trinity. I think that we can understand the edges of it. You know, it’s hard to understand the nuances, but the big idea, I mean, it’s happened in our, among humanity, the Romans had a triumvirate three guys were one emperor. They spoke as one, but they were three emperors, right? So I get that. I don’t know exactly, I don’t understand all the intricate details. I can read about it in Roman history, but I don’t understand exactly how it worked, but it was three emperors were one emperor. And it worked for a while, right? Well, in this one, then we have three individuals, the Holy Spirit, the Son, and the Father, and yet they’re one God. And like you said, they have different roles. And so they would mutually submit to one another in their different roles. and communicate. So yeah, it’s a, hey, good question, Annie. And then, you know, just understand that there would be some who would push back against that idea, but understand that that is not the historical orthodox Christian view over the last 2000 years. It’s pretty fringe. Some of the newer, maybe in the last 150 years, 200 years. And then there was a kind of a subset back more than a thousand years ago, of Christians that would push back against the idea of a Trinity. But for the most part, all of Christianity and the writers of the Bible believed in the Trinity. Right.

Chris:
Right. For sure. Hey, great question. Really good question. Yeah. And so yeah, stump the pastor. That’s a good stumping.

Jeff:
Good one. Hey, if you’re going to stump somebody, ask questions about the Trinity. So that’s right.

Chris:
That’s right. It’s hard.

Jeff:
Well, hey, we are talking today about the Ten Commandments. So Moses has led the people across the Red Sea. God does an amazing miracle. Then they start heading towards Sinai. Remember when Moses ran into God in the bush, he was at Sinai. And God said, hey, you’re going to come back here. Right. And so this is a big thing. He goes back to Sinai.

Chris:
So that’s the land of Midian. Right. And he would have had to have originally gone around the Red Sea when he first fled Egypt, right? That’s right. But he took a shortcut this time. Right. So he got to Sinai way quicker.

Jeff:
He could have gone across it in a boat. Oh yeah, you’re right. He could have. I don’t know if he did. Yeah, if he had a speedboat maybe. I’m just being contrarian. Sorry. So, there’s a couple things. Some people believe, most I think believe that Sinai is in the Sinai Peninsula between Egypt and Israel. Others, and there are some legitimate arguments for the idea that Sinai is actually on the Arabian Peninsula. So, it’s somewhere there. Yeah. Right. Somewhere in the Middle East and somewhere where they can wander for a long time, because it kind of stays that way for a while. Anyways, Moses goes up on the mountain and he’s communicating with God and he’s asking for help. And God is saying, hey, I want you to go and consecrate all this area. He gives them some basic laws for how to live and how to behave. And then after that, Moses goes back up on the mountain and God gives him these commandments. Right. And it says, or he’s still on the mountain, he comes down with these commandments. It says in Exodus chapter 20, verses 1 through 21, it says, You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea. You must not bow down to them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God who will not tolerate your affection for any other gods. I lay the sins of the parents upon their children, the entire family affected, even children in the third and fourth generations of those who reject me. But I lavish unfailing love for a thousand generations on those who love me and obey my commands. You must not misuse the name of the Lord your God. The Lord will not let you go unpunished if you misuse his name. Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day, no one in your household may do any work. This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your livestock, and any foreigners living among you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, and the sea, and everything in them, but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy. Honor your father and mother, and then you’ll live a long, full life in the land the Lord your God has given you. You must not murder. You must not commit adultery. You must not steal. You must not testify falsely against your neighbor. You must not cover your neighbor’s house. You must not cover your neighbor’s wife, or male or female servant, ox or donkey, or anything else that belongs to your neighbor. And when the people heard the thunder and the loud blast of ram’s horn, and when they saw the flashes of lightning and the smoke billowing from the mountain, they stood at a distance, trembling with fear. And they said to Moses, you speak to us and we will listen, but don’t let God speak directly to us or we will die. Don’t be afraid, Moses answered them, for God has come in this way to test you, and so that your fear of him will keep you from sinning. As the people stood in the distance, Moses approached the dark cloud where God was. That’s a sight.

Chris:
Yeah, that is definitely a sight. So this is a pretty, um, this is a pretty big, uh, moment because, uh, Moses comes down with the tent, the big 10, the big 10 commandments. And many people think when, when they refer to the law of the old Testament, people think it’s only 10, but it’s, but it’s more than 10, doesn’t it? Isn’t it?

Jeff:
Well, at this point it’s only ten.

Chris:
At this point it’s only ten, yeah. But Moses brings down later on a lot more. That’s correct. But yeah, the big ten. You know what’s so funny? So the very first one, it says, you should not have any other god before me. And if you’ve been around church world for a long time, you understand that we violate this all the time, right? we don’t mean to a lot of times, but a lot of times, you know, any, anything that we put in the place where only God is reserved to be, then we have a false God, right? So, so false God could be a relationship, a spouse. It could be, you know, it could be money. It could be anything. Right. And, and I think from time to time in our lives, we, we, we definitely do that. We go in and out where it’s like, ah, you know, God should Trump this, you know, and I’m, I’m putting more priority toward this than I am than the Lord, you know, God should have the final authority. And so whenever I teach on false idols, sometimes I do this thing where I have everybody stand up and I say, okay, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to read through the Ten Commandments. And when you feel like you’ve violated the Ten Commandments, sit down. And so all the mature Christians know that they violated, number one, a hundred million times. So I say, okay, you should not have any false gods. And it is amazing how only like 20% of the crowd sits down. Have you ever done this? No. And then you say, okay, you must not make for yourself any idol. And then, of course, you know, nobody sets down. And then you’re like, OK, you must not misuse the name of the Lord, your God, you know, in vain. And of course, like half the crowd sits down because they’ve done that. And then you say, OK, remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. You know, then a few more sit down. And then what I do most of the crowd. And then what I do is I say, you shall honor your father and mother. And then, you know, another half the crowd. But then it’s pretty amazing. I mean, at this point, depending on the size of the crowd, you have like 20 to 30 percent that are still standing. They actually think that they’ve not violated this. Right. And then because I don’t want to point anybody out for adultery, I always say, OK, how about this one? I’m going to put the next I’m going to lump the next three together. You must not murder. You must not commit adultery and you must not steal. Well, then that’s like, you know, the rest of the crowd. But then there’s always still these lingers. And then when you say you must not lie or bear false testimony, then usually everybody sits down. And I say, well, that’s really funny because it took you eight commandments to sit down. But the reality is everybody in this room should have sat down on number one. And then you go into false idol teaching. So I’ve done that like probably three times in my life. Yeah. And it’s amazing because, you know, the rich man comes to Jesus and says, what must I do to enter in the kingdom of God? And then Jesus says, well, you know, the commandments keep the commandments and and and follow me. And then and then the guy says in his arrogance, I’ve done all of this since my youth. Yeah. And then Jesus looks at him and he’s like, come on man, right? And he goes, okay, well then I’ll tell you what, take everything you have, sell everything, give it all to the poor, then follow me. And then the man walks away disheartened, right?

Jeff:
Which took him right back to the first one. Your stuff is your God. Right, right.

Chris:
That’s what Jesus was doing, wasn’t it? Yeah, that’s really great.

Jeff:
So it’s interesting, you know, if you want a summary of all the laws of God, Jesus says in Matthew chapter 20, just love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself is the second greatest commandment, right? It’s just like it. And these break into that. The first half of the commandments are all love God. It’s you and God. The second half of the commandments, you know, don’t kill people. That starts to be about loving people. Right. And so it really is divided that way. God really does see your life as two major, you have two major realms. What are you doing with God? What are you doing with people? Right. Those two sides. And so he breaks it into these areas. Now, I do believe he expects us to obey them. And the reason why, you know, that is because they’re terrified of hearing the voice of God. right? The people, and they’re like, hey, you talk to us. Don’t let God talk to us anymore. That’s too scary. And Moses said that, he said, don’t be afraid for God has come this way to test you. And so that your fear of him will keep you from sinning. You know, so a lot of times we talk about the grace of God and the love of God and God, we make God to be very, very cuddly. Read Mount Sinai. And Moses said, the reason why God’s doing this is so that you learn to fear him. And fearing God is what keeps you from sinning. Most of us, we’re happy to indulge in God’s grace. As a matter of fact, Paul multiple times in the book of Romans has to say, just because grace exists doesn’t mean we should keep sinning. So he keeps saying, that’s a problem. There’s a problem. If all you talk about is grace and you never acknowledge the justice of God, then you’re going to want to keep indulging in sin because this is great. You get a free pass. Right. Do you remember, did you ever get a hall pass at school and then abuse the hall pass? Sneak around. Probably in elementary school. Oh man, I used to do it all the time. I’d say, Hey, can I get a hall pass? I got to go to the bathroom. Sure. Next thing you know, I’m out talking to my friends, going all over the place, going to the candy machine, whatever. Right. And you know, all the things besides the hall pass. And that’s a lot of ways that people treat grace sometimes is grace, cheap grace, we treat cheaply. Right. And so here he says, a healthy fear of God is what keeps you from sinning.

Chris:
Well, the Lord says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom. Right. So a healthy fear of God is to understand that, you know, it’s fear in the sense to where like, oh, no, he’s going to zap me. Right. But it’s not fear of punishment necessarily, although that can come. But it’s a fear of violating the source of life. Like a fear. Could it not also be a fear of a life without him, right? So like, I fear his judgment, but at the same time, I fear not being a part of his wisdom, his plan, his blessings, right? So it’s more than just like, oh no, I fear you’re going to punch me.

Jeff:
I would say that that is a very mature view of a fear of God. Most Christians don’t get there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Well, it’s all of it. So what they’re seeing is they’re seeing smoke billowing, lightning, thunder, and they’re afraid of the power of God. And a healthy fear of the power of God in your life, what he can do. And the fact that, hey, there are significant consequences. What we didn’t read is right before this. He says, listen, he lays out all these things. He concentrates all this stuff. He tells them to wash their clothes. He tells them to be celibate for a while. There’s lightning and thunder and the cloud and all this stuff. And then he says, hey, if they go across this boundary, they’re going to die. Right? So this very powerful moment, and then there are significant consequences for breaking what God’s setting up. Then he gives these Ten Commandments, and all of that, they’re terrified now. Man, we’re not sure where we should step. We’re not sure what we should do. We’re afraid. Moses, don’t let God talk to us anymore. You talk to us. We’re afraid. And Moses says, okay, now you have a healthy fear of God. Right. Right. And developing a healthy fear of God. But if our children grow up and they don’t have an understanding of the power of mom and dad and the consequences that come from mom and dad, they usually don’t fear God either. Right. They don’t fear authority. They don’t feel. And I think that’s a significant issue in our culture, in our society today, that we have people who just don’t have any real fear of authority and don’t have any healthy respect. Right. And that all comes from, it starts off with mom and dad and God. And then, if we have that, then men alive, instead of killing somebody, will think twice. Instead of stealing from somebody, will think twice. And that’s really what God’s trying to do, is this is the moral code. If you can obey all of these, you can follow the rest of God’s law. right? All the rest of God’s law falls in here. Most of God’s law, as you read through the rest of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, all the rest of them are either about how to worship God, right, which is the first half of these, or how to deal with each other civilly, right? Take care of each other’s property, not steal from each other, don’t kill each other, right? So when we talk about the 617 other laws, all of them can be summarized in these 10. 613. Yeah, 613.

Chris:
Yeah, I remember Dr. Professor Eli Haryu had us memorize that there were 248 thou shalts, 365 thou shalt nots, to make up 613 precepts. I don’t know why I memorized it.

Jeff:
It’s in my mind. The stuff that’s in your head.

Chris:
Yeah, it’s just one of those things. He was a good teacher. Yeah, he was. And, but, but yeah, it’s, it’s a, and by the way, I’ve always laughed at the fact that there was slightly more thou shalt nots than there were thou shalts.

Jeff:
Well, that’s our nature though. We need to be, we always want to know the edges. So here’s what I would say is, and I’ve done this before. Hey, which one’s your favorite one to break? Right? Because there’s nowhere in the Bible where any of these laws are suspended. Yeah. I would say for our listeners, most of them, it’s the Sabbath.

Chris:
Right.

Jeff:
Right. A lot of our listeners probably have little statues that they pray to. Put little statues on their dashboard. Yeah. They wear little statues in their necklaces. Right. Or they pray to saints. Yeah. They pray in those situations and they’re using other advocates instead of the Father, right? Instead of going through Jesus to the Father. So there’s that one. There’s a lot of people who would have other graven images. But then the main one I think most Christians blow off is the Sabbath. And he says, hey, you work six days, you take one day off. And Jesus said in Matthew, he said the Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, not people to meet the requirements of Sabbath. And so even then Jesus affirms the fact that there’s value in the Sabbath, but it’s for you. It’s a gift. It’s a gift from God to you. And too often Christians go, oh God, I don’t have time for your gift. I don’t like your gift, whatever. And then they wander around wondering why they’re coming apart physically, why they’re coming apart emotionally, why their relationships are falling apart is because they’re just driving, driving, driving, seven days, seven days, seven days. And you believe you can get more done in seven days than God can get done in six days. And so that’s why we push that way. So I would encourage, hey, he doesn’t let you off the hook on any of these, and so you need to find a way where you got a 24-hour period every seven days where you’re taking a break and stepping away from whatever it is. You know, so at Heritage Church, we tell our staff, we don’t want you to plow Heritage’s field. Right. So I don’t, I don’t know what your Sabbath should be that recharges your, your, your batteries and this gift from God. But, uh, so we just say, Hey, don’t plow heritage’s field. Don’t do heritage church work 24 hours every six days or seven days. Right. And, uh, I think it’s important. God didn’t let us off the hook. So go through, figure out which one’s your favorite one to blow off. And then, uh, Hey, let’s address that one this week.

Chris:
That’s good. Well, hey, that is our time. Although there’s more to talk about, but we just have to end. So, hey, hopefully we’ll just pick up again and we’ll see you then next time on The Bible Guys.