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.

Jeff:
Here we are, Chris. We are here. Oh, this is a good day.

Chris:
It is. Yes. This is the day. This is the day that the Lord has made.

Jeff:
Okay. Yeah. You know that song. Absolutely. It’s a flashback from the 80s.

Chris:
And it’s the song we sang in St. Croix at that church.

Jeff:
That’s true. That’s true. It’s in my mind.

Chris:
It’s in my mind. So we went to a church as a Converge partner in St. Croix just a week ago, and on Sunday morning, he got up and he sang that song, and I looked over at Chad, and I said, this reminds me of me being in the 80s.

Jeff:
Well, hey, today is a special day because… It’s dad joke competition day.

Chris:
This is my daughter’s favorite segment.

Jeff:
Okay, well this is for you then.

Chris:
Tori, this is for you, but I want to let you know that I go home after I record these and when I see her, like tonight, I’ll see her and I will say, Tori, and I’ll say we had another dad joke competition and I will pull these out and I’ll just go through these one by one.

Jeff:
And she likes them? Oh, she loves them. Okay. Loves them. All right. So you should go first.

Chris:
Okay. What’s the difference between a bad joke and a dad joke? I don’t know. The first letter.

Jeff:
Okay. No, I’m not laughing. I liked that one. That’s a good. I liked that one. Okay. So I’ve cleared my cache of cookies, but I don’t see how eating 300 Oreos is going to make my computer work better.

Chris:
Oh, that’s hilarious.

Jeff:
So my cache of cookies is 300 Oreos. Oh my goodness. You don’t have to explain it.

Chris:
You don’t have to explain it. Not to me anyway. All right, here we go. Ready? My wife told me to take the spider out instead of killing him. We went out and grabbed dinner. Turns out he’s a nice guy. Even a web designer.

Jeff:
Okay, so I don’t want to brag but I finished a jig jigsaw puzzle in a week and it said two to four years on the box Took me a week to finish a two-year-olds puzzle.

Chris:
That’s like 12 pieces. That’s so good. I Alright number three Finland has just closed their borders. No one will be crossing the finish line Okay Come on, that’s three for three for me.

Jeff:
That’s pretty good. I like it. So did you know that my family on my mom’s side immigrated from Finland to the U.S.? I did not know this. Yes. And so my whole life, I thought I was Finnish until we did one of those 23andMe things. Yeah. And it turns out while my family had lived in Finland and they all only spoke Finnish, they’re all British and Scottish and they’re all English, Scottish and Irish. Isn’t that funny? Yeah. There’s no Finnish blood in me at all.

Chris:
Your whole life you were claiming something that you weren’t.

Jeff:
Yeah. So I’m not genetically Finnish, but you know, our people immigrated from Finland and they had lived there for generations. So pretty crazy.

Chris:
Can you still claim Finnish? I guess you can’t.

Jeff:
Well, you can say my people came from there. Yeah, I guess so. Difference. I mean, they eat dried fish and stuff. Right. Right. OK, so here you go. My boss told me that as a security guard, it’s my job to watch the office. I’m on season six, but I’m not really sure what that’s got to do with security.

Jeff:
That’s my favorite one. That’s my favorite one. It is so good. I’m not really sure what that’s got to do with security.

Chris:
It’s so good. Wait till he gets to seven. It’s the best. Oh my goodness. Okay, here we go. Number four. A man walks into his home to realize that all of his lamps were stolen. He was delighted.

Jeff:
Delighted. Yes. No. That was a womp womp. Yeah. This one’s going to be too. Dadgummit. I started a band called Blanket. It’s a cover band. Oh, that’s really bad. That was a rough one. That was a rough one. Okay.

Chris:
Yeah. By the way, we don’t, we don’t read these until we read them.

Jeff:
That’s right. I’d never seen these before.

Chris:
I’ve never seen these. So, so these are legitimate reactions. Number five, uh, I threw a ball for my dog. It’s a bit extravagant, I know, but it was his birthday and he looks great in a tuxedo.

Jeff:
He’s a good boy, he’s a good boy I

Jeff:
Do you ever put your cats in a costume? No, never. So we have two dogs at home, Gucci and Chanel. And my wife sometimes will put costumes on them like at Halloween. And Chanel loves it. She goes running around, Bonnie put a shark on her and she’s running around showing off in her costume. If we put a costume on Gucci, he’s so ashamed. He goes and hides He like hides underneath stuff or goes for some reason whenever he’s scared. He gets in the bathtub So go get in a bathtub. It’s so funny. That’s all right. I also have a joke a dog joke for my last one Why did the man name his dogs Rolex and Timex because their watchdogs? Yeah, that’s rough. I like juice better

Chris:
So we had three, we had three bummers out of 10. That’s pretty good. We had, we had, we had seven pretty good ones.

Jeff:
That’s pretty good. I’m all teared up, man.

Chris:
That’s funny. Dude, that, that is so funny. That was so funny. You go, you go, he’s a good boy.

Jeff:
I’m picturing, I’m picturing like the whole ball.

Chris:
It’s so good. It’s great. Okay. All right. It’s time to move on. So we have this thing. Jeff loves slogans. And one of his slogans is, we take our faith seriously. We just don’t take ourselves too seriously. That’s correct. And it’s a slogan because it communicates, hey, we’re allowed to be goofy, right? That’s right. So every time that we are goofy, he’s like, Hey, that has nothing to do with my faith. That’s right. Right. So don’t,

Jeff:
Well, the joy of the Lord, I think has everything to do with our faith, right? We’re just joyful people.

Chris:
We’re not miserable people.

Jeff:
So we can laugh at ourselves. We can laugh at ourselves. We can laugh at funny things in the world around us. There’s a lot of difficult things and we’re serious in those difficult moments, but it’s okay to laugh. If you and I don’t get to laugh doing stuff like this and at church, we never get to laugh because it’s all we do.

Chris:
Right. And also, to be honest with you, for those people out there who maybe don’t have laughter in their church, I’m not saying it’s a bad experience, because there’s all different types of churches for all different types of people. I don’t want to disrespect any culture of a church at all, but I have to tell you, when you do enter into a culture in a church where laughing is allowed, I think laughter should be a value. I think there’s purpose. You know, not meaningless laughter necessarily, right? But to actually have purposeful joy and planned laughter in the auditorium or in the sanctuary, I think that that is a good thing to associate your faith with joy.

Jeff:
And the wisest man in the world, besides Jesus, King Solomon, had many things to say about laughter and joy. He said laughter works like a medicine. That’s right. A joyful heart will heal you. Those kinds of things, it’s very healthy for you. And people who can’t laugh tend to struggle with a lot of other uh, uh, uh, mental issues, right? So learning to laugh, learning to find joy in things can begin to release you sometimes from the heaviness of the rest of life, right? It’s not saying that the other things aren’t important. It’s saying that you can get a reprieve from it. You can enjoy the good things. Um, sometimes people get to the point where they can’t see any joy in anything, right? It’s because they’ve taught themselves not to find joy, not to laugh.

Chris:
And medicinally, right? Laughter actually, you can break down the actual physical and mental and emotional benefits of laughter. They do studies on laughter and they talk about how good it is for you in every way.

Jeff:
So laughter long-term alters the chemical imbalances in your body. It releases endorphins and all these things. People, if you have a good belly laugh in the daytime, it’s good for your heart. It’s good for your, every system in your body just about is good. So it’s fun.

Chris:
Listeners, let’s find something to have joy about, smile about, and maybe even laugh about.

Jeff:
Go back and rewind our dad jokes today. Anyways, so Jesus appears to these women. Again, this is another thing that if you and I were trying to make up a religion, we would not have Jesus appearing to women.

Chris:
Well, not in that culture.

Jeff:
Not in that culture in that day. That’s right.

Chris:
Yeah, 2024, it’d be more feasible than the year… Yeah, but we’re talking Peter, James, and John guys.

Jeff:
That day, because of the way their culture worked, they would not have had their new god appearing to women first. So anyways, here it is in Matthew chapter 28. We’ll unpack that, why we said that in just a moment. But in Matthew chapter 28 verses 9 and 10 it says, In Mark chapter 16 verse 9, in the longer ending of the book of Mark, it says, after Jesus rose from the dead early on Sunday morning, the first person who saw him was Mary Magdalene, the woman from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went to the disciples who were grieving and weeping and told them what had happened. But when she told them that Jesus was alive and she had seen him, they didn’t believe her. And then in John chapter 20, it says, Mary was standing outside the tomb crying and as she wept, she stooped and looked in and she saw two white robed angels, one sitting at the head and the other at the foot of the place where the body of Jesus had been lying. Dear woman, why are you crying? The angels asked her. Because they’ve taken away my Lord, she replied, and I don’t know where they’ve put him. She turned to leave and saw someone standing there. It was Jesus, but she didn’t recognize him. Dear woman, why are you crying? Jesus asked her. Who are you looking for? She thought he was a gardener. Sir, she said, if you’ve taken him away, tell me where you’ve put him and I’ll go and get him. Mary, Jesus said. She turned to him and cried out, Rabboni, which is Hebrew for teacher. Don’t cling to me, Jesus said, for I haven’t yet ascended to the father. But go find my brothers and tell them I’m ascending to my father and your father, to my God and your God. Mary Magdalene found the disciples and told him, I have seen the Lord. And then she gave him his message. So this seems just a touch out of place because it was after this that Peter and John run down to the tomb. You know, so as we’ve been doing a chronological, maybe we should have done this passage before the Peter and John running to the tomb. But anyways, yeah, it’s still an important portion of the story.

Chris:
Yeah, for sure. And yeah, that is interesting, isn’t it? So are you saying that the book messed up?

Jeff:
I’m saying that the life applications study Bible chronological study Bible is maybe slightly out of order. Chronologically speaking.

Chris:
Yes.

Jeff:
In my expert opinion.

Chris:
Well, yeah, because, because, uh, clearly Peter and John running to the tomb happened after the women came back and told them.

Jeff:
Yes. Because you, they wouldn’t have had any reason to run down there.

Chris:
Yeah. But it is kind of mixed up a little bit because Matthew just kind of sums it up really, or Mark sums it up really, really quick. That’s correct. But anyway, needless to say, this is actually my favorite part of the resurrection story. Really? Yeah. John chapter 20 verses 11 through 18 in particular. So, you know, Jesus has this personal interaction with Mary. And so Jesus is talking to Mary, but he has not yet revealed the fact that he is Jesus. It says to us in detail that she supposes that he’s the gardener, right? So once again, here we have Mary, her first expectation is, hey, maybe that’s Jesus in the shadows, right? So clearly she wasn’t looking for the resurrected Jesus. But she’s crying because she’s grieving over the fact that Jesus’ body’s not there. And then here’s Jesus knowing that she doesn’t know who he is. And yet very tenderly, he looks at her and interacts with her and says, dear woman, why are you crying? And by the way, dear woman was the most affectionate thing that you could say to somebody. So it wouldn’t have been uncommon for somebody to extend an affectionate term to somebody who was grieving, especially not at a tomb. Sure.

Jeff:
So it could have been a stranger and not a very close friend.

Chris:
Right. Yeah. Right. So like, like in other words, like, you know, Oh dear one, you know, they’re there, right. You’re, you’re grieving over a loved one. Right. That’s, that’s common. Right. But, but dear woman is a very affectionate, it doesn’t seem like it for us because we say woman and you’re thinking that’s how you can read it. But that, that’s, that’s not how it was. Dear woman is, is a very affectionate term. And he says, why are you crying? And then, and then of course, you know, she expresses her pain. Uh, you know, and then he says, who are you looking for? You know, and so Jesus knows it’s him. He knows that she doesn’t know yet. And yet he’s still leading her along the way. And then it says that he says her name, excuse me, and then this is when she realizes it’s Jesus. And she cries out, Rabboni. And so there’s such a great sermon in there because Jesus knows us by name. Jesus knows our grief. Jesus walks with us in our grief. Jesus could have just been like, hey, one of my disciples, you know, Mary and the others, go tell everybody. But he didn’t do that. He wanted to meet Mary in her grief. He wanted to look her in the eye and comfort her and let her know that he was alive, that he was the resurrected Jesus. And so he says, he calls out her name, and guess what? God calls out our name. God knows us by name. God looks you in the eye, and he doesn’t just say, hey, here’s the answer to your problem. He says, let me be with you in your grief. Why are you crying? I understand that. Who are you looking for? Right? And so Jesus isn’t an unsympathetic God, right? He’s the God who cares. He’s the God who knows our name. He’s the God who calls us out. And that for me is my favorite part of the entire story.

Jeff:
I love that. And you know, she was blinded by her grief. Which happens a lot to us. Right? She’s blinded by her grief and in that moment she couldn’t see Jesus. He was there. It’s not like he had abandoned her. He was there. Right there. He was engaging with her. She couldn’t understand him. She couldn’t see him. And, you know, I think that that’s true. Sometimes people, they’re in the middle of a divorce. They have a child die. They lose a job. their dreams come crashing down, and in their grief, they can’t see God, they cannot find Jesus, and so they feel like they’re alone. But it was in his word that she discovered who he was, right? So I always encourage people, listen, one, when you’re grieving, It’s a bad time to make a decision. Don’t make a decision when your decision maker’s broken, right? When you get the worst news of your life, when you get the worst circumstances show up in your life, don’t make life-altering decisions in that moment. Pause and wait. and listen for God’s voice. So God’s always calling you. Jesus is always calling you. He’s calling you by name. But she discovered who he was or realized who he was. She realized she was in his presence when his word was spoken. And it reminds me of the book of Romans where it says, faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And so when you don’t know what else to do, don’t make a big decision. That’s fantastic, that’s good. Don’t make a big decision, get into the Word. And sometimes, I’ll be honest with you, I’ve had really bad times in my life when I thought, you know, I open the Bible and I just can’t even find a thing to read. I just, and then I’m looking, I’m just looking at black letters on white pages. And I, and so there’ve been many times where I would go and I would listen to, you know, I have a couple of my favorite preachers I like to listen to and I would just listen to their messages on the issue I’m going through in the moment. And it would be, I listened to a couple pastors that are very significantly deep Bible type teachers. I love, well, I’m not gonna name them now, I guess. And I would go and just hear them talk about God’s word in an area or in the circumstance that I’m in and be pulled back out of the dark places I was in when I couldn’t see Jesus, right? There’s something to that. So a podcast like this can keep you in front of God’s word, or God’s word in front of you, I think is the important thing. Having a few, you know, okay, let me say it. I listen to Mark Jobe sometimes on Moody Radio. He’s the president of Moody.

Chris:
I’m glad you said it, because people would be like, I want to know who Jeff listens to.

Jeff:
I really like Mark Jobe. He preaches different than I do. He’s kind of a verse-by-verse guy. I like his preaching. I’ll listen to David Jeremiah sometimes. I’ll listen to a couple of others. But for me, it just gets my attention and reminds me again of God’s Word. Rick Warren has been a mentor to me for a long time. So sometimes when it comes to hopelessness or struggle, I really lean into what Rick has to say about those things from God’s word. And you know, so preachers who use a lot of scripture is important for me.

Chris:
That’s great. And then the other part that I really love is it says, she cried out to him and said, rabbi and I, and then the next phrase, Jesus says, don’t cling to me for I’ve not yet ascended to the father, but then he gives her instructions. And so, so don’t cling to me means it’s giving us a visual aid of her running to hug him. Right. Right. Or grabbing his garment or falling down at his feet or something where she is. In other words, she’s wanting to reach out and to touch him. Right. She’s wanting to connect with him. Right. Right. And of course he would. But he says, no, no, no. Hey, hang on. You know, you can touch me later. You know, I’ll appear to you in the middle of the room and then we can hug each other then. You can touch my hands and my feet and my side and everything else. But for now, there’s something that is going on with Jesus because he says, I have yet to ascend to my Father. And apparently that was a thing. And he doesn’t explain that, by the way. But there’s either a holy thing or there’s a consecrated thing. There’s something happening there. There’s the supernatural and the natural.

Jeff:
There’s something happening. Some theologians would say that this is a, a different event that somehow, um, between the time of Jesus resurrection and, uh, the time he was going to go meet the disciples, he had to ascend to the father. That’s what some would say. Others would say, what he’s saying is don’t hang on to me because remember he’d already promised the Holy spirit. And he’s saying, I’m going to ascend to the father. This isn’t going to last very long. So it’s not like I’m back forever, right? I’m going to send to the father. So he could have been talking about the ascension, at the end of the book of Matthew or the beginning of the book of Acts, right? So some theologians say it’s just one ascension. What he’s saying is, I’m not here permanently, I’m only here for a few more days. So don’t hang on to me, the Holy Spirit’s coming. Others would say that there was some kind of a special thing that happened after the resurrection that apparently Jesus couldn’t do while he was in the tomb, which doesn’t make sense to me.

Chris:
Yeah, well, actually, I gotta be honest, that’s what I would immediately assume.

Jeff:
Is that there’s another event here?

Chris:
Well, yeah, because what happens, okay, for instance… Why couldn’t he go to the Father while he was in the tomb? Well, hey, he’s got a lot of things happening, right? So who are you, and this is my thinking, my line of thinking is, who are you to try to even pretend to understand all the things that Jesus had to do? You know, isn’t there sort of… I’m nobody. Right, and so am I. So the point is, is that like, I’m sure you’ve read these things where people talk about how people sometimes believe that Jesus went and battled in hell.

Jeff:
Well, yeah, that’s in the, I think the Nicene Creed or the Apostles Creed, one of them. Yeah.

Chris:
So there’s theories about that, that, you know, during during the time that he died on, you know, three hours to go on Friday and and right on Sunday morning. So those and I like to sort of say, hey, if it’s one hour on Sunday and three hours on Friday, that’s four plus twenty four. That’s twenty eight hours. Right. So he’s in the tomb for about twenty eight hours ish. And so the point is, what happened during that 28 hours? Where did he go in his spirit? Right? Because when you die, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Who’s to say he couldn’t have been, you know, bopping from here and there the whole bunch of times? Right? Like, nobody knows. So, you know, to say, yeah, I could logically assume, well, that’s fine. That’s just an opinion. You know, we can just say, hey, this— I can conclude— I think that was a lot of words to say.

Jeff:
There’s either one ascension or two ascensions.

Chris:
Well, it depends on how you define ascension.

Jeff:
That’s semantics. So, no, no, in this, there’s this ascension, don’t cling to me, I have yet to ascend to my Father. If that’s a separate ascension from Acts chapter 1, ascension to heaven, or the end of Matthew, okay, then there’s two ascensions that Jesus mentions.

Chris:
The definition of ascent is just to go up.

Jeff:
Right. But what you’re doing is you’re guessing there might’ve been a whole bunch. What I’m saying is the Bible only mentions either one or two. That’s what I’m saying.

Chris:
But the event of the ascension is a physical Jesus. Yes. And I would say that I don’t think that necessarily when he was in the tomb, if he went to his father, it doesn’t have to be a physical Jesus.

Jeff:
Yes. So what I’m saying is the Bible only mentions two ascensions or one ascension. Right. So the question in this statement is, is he talking about one or two ascensions? Yeah. That’s, that’s the thing. And also, as I was pointing out, was that some theologians say there was only one ascension and Jesus is saying, don’t hang on to me because I’m not going to be here very long. Sure. Or he’s saying, don’t touch me because I’m going to heaven. Yeah. I get it. I get it. That’s what I’m saying. So we said a lot of other words that convoluted what I was trying to say on this one thing. This one thing was, it was one or two.

Chris:
Yeah.

Jeff:
Or more. Yeah, there’s only two the Bible mentions, is what I’m trying to tell you. You’re trying to add things that aren’t in there.

Chris:
There’s only two that are mentioned or one that’s mentioned. My belief, there’s more than one. Okay. Yeah. I believe, I believe there’s more than one. I believe that Jesus skedaddled and went back up to his father. Cause he told Mary that, uh, he has, he has other business to do. Right. He has, he has his father’s business. Uh, he says, I am ascending to my father and your father, my God, and your God don’t touch me. I’ve not yet. And then when he appears to disciples in a room later on, he says, touch me. Yeah. So what changed?

Jeff:
Yeah. So that’s good. Baptist preaching. The problem is you have to, you have to, uh, reject Matthew 28 that says, she grasped his feet. She’d already touched him.

Chris:
Where’s it at?

Jeff:
Matthew 28 9-10, we read it. As Jesus went, he met them and greeted them, and they ran and grasped his feet. So they’d already touched him. So sometimes good Baptist preachers, and me included, would preach the idea that, oh, he couldn’t be touched by sinful people yet because he needed to go to the father and offer the sacrifice on the thing.

Chris:
But that’s just not true. I wasn’t thinking at all that he was untouched because the very nature of him saying, don’t cling to me, means she was clinging to him.

Jeff:
Yeah.

Chris:
She’s hanging on. But he was not wanting to be corrected.

Jeff:
Right. So the point I was making, some theologians just say, Hey, I’m not going to be here for a long time. There’s more, there’s more going on. Right. Don’t, we can’t just stand here and keep hugging. You’ve got work to do. Go tell my brothers. And that’s it. And I’m going to send back to heaven.

Chris:
And the reality is it could be any one of those things.

Jeff:
So it’s one or two times, but anyways, the big picture is she heard his voice. And when she heard his word, she turned from grief to celebration. Oh yeah. Right. And that that’s, that’s the point of this. And, um, you know, so when you’re in the middle of grief, uh, you need to spend time in God’s word. And sometimes it’s hard to read the word when you’re in grief for me, but it’s, it’s easy to hear the word.

Chris:
Yeah. And, and by the way, those things are interesting and fun to talk about because we’re going to have enough time in, in, in eternity, uh, because there will be no time for us to talk about for me to clear these things up for you. There’s only one ascension. All right, we got to go. All right. Well, that’s our time. And we will see you next time on the Bible guys.