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:
Welcome to the Bible guys my name is Chris.

Jeff:
Episode 426!

Chris:
Is it really?

Jeff:
It is that’s why it says we’re here on the show notes oh wow that’s a big one never even looked at that I know I’m so excited about it I can’t hardly stand it

Chris:
That’s got to be some kind of… What’s so special about 426? I don’t know.

Jeff:
It’s more than 425.

Chris:
That’s true. Wow. We’re so grateful for every day.

Jeff:
At this point, 426 in, I’m just delirious. How about that?

Chris:
Hey, I talked to my father yesterday. He was 85. And he said, he goes, I woke up and I have another day. And he goes, and I think to myself, oh, oh good. Another day. He goes, Lord, just keep them coming.

Jeff:
That’s what he said. Keep them coming.

Chris:
Keep them coming, Lord.

Jeff:
All right.

Chris:
So that’s what it is. Episode 426. Oh, Lord, thank you for 426.

Jeff:
Our listeners are like, there’s another one? That’s how I listen.

Chris:
Yes. Well, I would hope our listeners who love us say, yay, there’s another one.

Jeff:
Yeah. I kind of have it in my mind. They hate listening. You ever do that? Like you just tune in to like hate watch a football game? No. Watch football games against people you hate? No.

Chris:
You just hate those teams? I do not do this.

Jeff:
Or hate watch a baseball game?

Chris:
I do not do this. No? No.

Jeff:
Sometimes, sometimes, you know, there’s nothing else on, the Tigers aren’t on or whatever. And I decide, okay, I’m going to see how terrible this is.

Chris:
Cleveland’s doing or whatever. I’m going to watch women’s basketball. No, no, no, no.

Jeff:
That’s not it. I’m talking about like, you hate the team so bad, you watch and see how bad they’re doing. Like the Lakers. I’ll do that at the Lakers. Like, I can’t stand LeBron James. But why would anybody do that with the Babble Guys? Sometimes I’ll watch it. I don’t know. I’m just saying.

Chris:
Oh, I hate Chris and Jeff.

Jeff:
Yeah, I wonder what they’re up to today. Those morons. That’s funny. That’s what I’m saying.

Chris:
Well, Jeff, we’re going to get into a segment called Stump the Pastor. And this is written by Chris S. Hi, Chris S. Yes, and here’s what Chris S. reads, and I’m assuming it’s a guy, but it could be a girl.

Jeff:
It could be either.

Chris:
But Chris says, when Jesus was on the cross, why do you think he gave John, his cousin, the responsibility of caring for Mary, his mother, rather than one of his brothers or sisters?

Jeff:
It’s a good question. Well, Chris, it’s none of your business. It’s family stuff.

Chris:
And Jesus knows best, the end. He made the right choice because it was the right choice.

Jeff:
I think I know who Chris is, by the way, so he’ll think that’s funny. Anyways, here’s my take on it. I don’t think that what he did was take his mother away from his brothers and say, okay, from now on, mom, you’re not allowed to talk to Jude and James. You can only talk to John. Right. Right. And so it was more like John was there and it doesn’t mention his brothers. It mentions his mother was there, but it doesn’t mention his brothers. So while he’s on the cross, go, oh, hey, John, take care of mom for me, is I think really what’s happening there. I don’t think that now all of a sudden he’s severed ties with the family for mom and gave her only to John.

Chris:
Right. And he also knows that John at this point in time is a fully devoted follower of Christ. That’s right. He is a guy who, and again, Peter’s not there, Peter denied Christ and Peter is ashamed and Peter’s wondering about his future at this point. There’s other disciples scattered. John had an inn. We’ve talked about that before in the last series. John was there. And so John is with Jesus to the very end. So Jesus knows that John is fully devoted to him. And so somebody who cares a lot about Jesus would then care a lot about his dying wish.

Jeff:
I can remember when I was early in ministry, my pastor, we had a young man die in the church, and he was newly married, and the family of the young widow wasn’t from that town. They were quite a ways away. They were within an hour or two, but still quite a ways away. And I can remember that pastor hugging the dad of the widow and shaking his hand and looked him in the eye and said, hey, listen, I just want you to know our church has got her. We’re going to take care of her. And that didn’t mean, hey, you don’t have any responsibilities as a dad. It just meant, hey, we’re leaning into this too. And I really read that passage as if Jesus is saying, hey, lean in, take care of my family, take care of my mom. And I think that that’s probably a lot of it. And then we don’t know at this point, John’s situation either, right? So John might have been, we know he was the youngest of the disciples, he could have still been a teenager at this point, and maybe Jesus was looking, maybe John was an orphan at that point, I don’t know. And so it could have just been, hey, you mutually can help each other, but I don’t think he’s dismissing his brothers.

Chris:
Yeah, and then it’s worth talking about, just for a second, that a lot of theologians do believe that John perhaps was Jesus’ cousin. Yeah. So James and John, because of the… Yeah, and we’ve talked about that. Yeah, because it says the sister of Mary was at the cross, and just piecing those pieces of information together.

Jeff:
She appears to be, yeah, the wife of James and John’s mom, or dad.

Chris:
Yeah. So that’s interesting.

Jeff:
So yeah, good question, Chris S. I think it was more about making sure that John was included in Mary’s family, as much as it was, I don’t think he was taking her away from her sons. Yeah.

Chris:
But as always… Great question. But as always, a Stump the Pastor question ultimately ends with, we don’t know.

Jeff:
We don’t know. We don’t know.

Chris:
Because nobody really knows, but… If we’d known, we would have said it in the episode. Right, right. And not only that, but it would have been told to us. It would have said, behold thy mother, and then it would have said, now he did this because of this reason. That would be the only way to know. You know, it’s most difficult to answer the questions why. You know, why did Jesus do that? Well, how can you speak into his motivation, right? And sometimes, you know, you can connect the dots where it says he did the miracles so that they would know he’s the son of God. So you can connect those dots. But oftentimes, you know, people ask the questions why, and you’re like, well, you could give your best guess.

Jeff:
So sometimes, the other thing you can do, talking about connecting dots, is the preponderance of evidence. It doesn’t have to say he did it because of this reason. Sometimes you can piece together these three things together, that they’re very clearly, there’s a line of action happening, and then you can put two and two together from that, right? So that’s how most court cases are solved. is through a preponderance of evidence. It’s not usually one thing, it’s a whole bunch of things stacked up that go, that sure looks like that guy’s guilty. Or it’s the same thing with regard to the resurrection and those things. You ever read Lee Strobel’s books, the first book, The Case for Christ? I did. That’s one of his things, right? As he talks about the preponderance of evidence. So it’s when you build a case, it’s you keep stacking evidences on top of each other. So sometimes it doesn’t have to be direct. Sometimes it can just be the evidence points that direction. But in this case that there’s no evidence one way or the other, I don’t think at all. It just, yeah. So great question, Chris. Good thinking. All right.

Chris:
We’re going to jump into finishing, well, not finishing, but almost finishing the story of Noah and the flood. Because Noah, at this point, if you remember last week, if you were following by day, Noah was still in the boat. That’s correct. And the floods are still, you know, over the earth.

Jeff:
Yep. And every once in a while, somebody will say, wow, you believe in the story of Noah? And I’m like, I only believe in the story of Noah because Jesus did. Right. So I believe Jesus. I do. And he quotes many times. So here we go. Genesis chapter 8, verse 1, it says, But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals and livestock with him in the boat. He sent a wind to blow across the earth, and the floodwaters began to recede. The underground waters stopped flowing, and the torrential rains from the sky were stopped. So the floodwaters gradually receded from the earth. After 150 days, exactly five months from the time the flood began, the boat came to rest on the mountains of Ararat. Two and a half months later, as the waters continued to go down, other mountain peaks became visible. Another 40 days, Noah opened the window he had made in the boat and he released a raven. The bird flew back and forth until the floodwaters on the earth had dried up. He also released a dove to see if the water had receded and it could find dry ground, but the dove could find no place to land because the water still covered the ground, so it returned to the boat. Noah held out his hand and drew the dove back inside. After waiting another seven days, Noah released the dove again. This time, the dove returned to him in the evening with a fresh olive leaf in its beak. Then Noah knew that the floodwaters were almost gone. He waited another seven days and then released the dove again. This time it did not come back. Noah was now 601 years old. On the first day of the new year, 10 and a half months after the flood began, the floodwaters had almost dried up from the earth. Noah lifted back the covering of the boat and saw that the surface of the ground was drying. Two more months went by and at last the earth was dry. Then God said to Noah, leave the boat, all of you, you and your wife and your sons and their wives, release all the animals, the birds, the livestock, and the small animals that scurry along the ground so they can be fruitful and multiply throughout the earth. So Noah, his wife, and his sons and their wives left the boat, and all of the large and small animals and birds came out of the boat, pair by pair. Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and there he sacrificed his burnt offerings, the animals and birds that had been approved for that purpose. And the Lord was pleased with the aroma of the sacrifice and said to himself, I will never again curse the ground because of the human race. Even though everything they think or imagine is bent toward evil from childhood, I will never again destroy all living things. As long as the earth remains, there will be planting and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night.

Chris:
There it is, and by the way, that still happens today.

Jeff:
Summer and winter, day and night.

Chris:
Yes. Yes. Because he says, as long as there’s remains, there’ll be these things. That’s right. Yeah. And, uh, and of course there are those things.

Jeff:
Um, thank you. That was deep. Well, you know what, Jeff? I am so glad I tuned in for that one. That little nugget. You’re bringing it today.

Chris:
By the way, we’re about to see tomorrow’s episodes. One of my favorite episodes because, because it’s the origin of the rainbow and everything else. It’s really cool. It’s the covenant. It’s the covenant that God makes with Noah. And that’s also a connection point that we still see today. Yes. So, so that’s really why my brain went there. My brain went there, like God declares, this shall be. And then from that day to this, it still is. Okay. And so anyway, so he’s on the boat for about what? Seven and a half months. It seems like, right. Cause it says he was there longer than that.

Jeff:
It was 10 and a half, 10 and a half plus another couple of months.

Chris:
What? It said five months after five months.

Jeff:
Yeah. I’m sorry. I don’t think you were listening.

Chris:
No, it says after 150 days, exactly five months from the time the flood began, it came to rest on the boat.

Jeff:
Let’s go to 13. Noah was now 601 years on the first day of the new year, 10 and a half months after the flood began. And then it’s two more months went by in verse 14.

Chris:
Oh, so you’re thinking it’s 5 plus 10 plus 2?

Jeff:
So that’s 12 and a half months, and then he sends a bird out, it comes back, he waits… Seven more days? Seven more days, he sends it out, it comes back, he waits seven more days, and then he waits, what, two more weeks?

Chris:
No, two more months, two more months. Yeah. So, so either way. So now it’s over a year. Yeah. Yeah. He’s yeah. I missed, I missed that one little piece of information. That’s the biggest gap, which is 10 months.

Jeff:
It’s okay.

Chris:
So, um, so Holy cow, imagine being in that boat for one year. Holy Christmas with just you and your family. Oh, the smell in there was, I bet in the, in the, in the windows were 18 inches all the way around, but, but holy cow, that, that is, that is something there. But he lived, keep it clean.

Jeff:
Right. Keep it clean. You’ll be okay.

Chris:
Right. So, so Noah is, you know, it reminds me of that song as a kid, it goes, Then Noah sent a bird out to take a piki-piki. Noah sent a bird out to take a piki-piki.

Chris:
Came back with a twig in his biki-biki. Children of the Lord, so rise and shine. Give God the glory, glory.

Chris:
Yep. So anyway, it reminds me of that every single time because, you know, he sends out a dove and a dove comes out with a twig. And you know what? The twig is a very hopeful moment, isn’t it? It is. So it’s, can you imagine being in the ark for a year? We can’t imagine that. And he sends the bird out. And then, uh, you know, the first Raven, it doesn’t even say that it came back and said, it just flew back and forth. And then the, then the dove came back and you could imagine like, no, he’s just waiting for that ray of hope. Like it’s around the corner. It’s it’s, it’s, you know, it’s, there’s the light at the end of the tunnel. And it sort of reminds me of, um, you know, the storms that we go through. Oh yeah. Right. And we just, we wonder when it’s going to end. And wouldn’t it have been better had God told Noah, okay, you’re going to be in the boat exactly this many days. And then Noah would have been like, okay, I’m going to brace for that. I’m going to mentally prepare for that. I’m going to have a calendar with a countdown, you know, it’s like, all right, I can survive because I know it’s just going to be three more months. Right. But when we’re in the storm, we don’t know when it’s going to end. And sometimes in our lives, we’re in these seasons and sometimes, you know, we’re just like, you’re hoping for a better day. You know, I have a son who struggles with his health, and he’s doing so well right now. But, you know, it’s been quite a while. And rewind seven years ago, and had you told me it was going to be seven years until he felt this good, I would have been discouraged, but at least I would have prepared for it. But you know, you sort of, you sort of just say, maybe it’s going to get better tomorrow. And, uh, you know, there’s a dependence on God, you know, factor there where it’s like, you don’t know what tomorrow is going to bring. And so you just, you know, lean on God every single day, not knowing when the storm is actually going to end.

Jeff:
Yeah, so it doesn’t mention here that Noah was upset about it.

Chris:
No, it doesn’t.

Jeff:
Or even that he was frustrated.

Chris:
Or discouraged.

Jeff:
Yeah, I always think it’s funny when we say, wouldn’t it be better if God had done something? As opposed to, you know, like God’s like, oh shoot, I should have thought of that. Man, if only I had Zarbaugh up here advising me on the decisions I make.

Chris:
That’s like that George Burns movie, Oh God. Remember the Oh God book too? Where she says, she goes, why’d you make the giraffes necks so tall? And God says, to eat the leaves off, to eat the leaves off the trees. And she goes, why didn’t you just make the tree shorter? And he looks down and goes, where were you when I needed you?

Chris:
As if we can inform God, right?

Jeff:
Yeah, just helping him out. I think we help God out a lot, by the way. We tell him exactly what we need and how we need it. So yeah, I really do think there’s a dependency there. On the other side of it, as bad… So Noah believed God when there had never been rain. And there’s no evidence. I mean, he’s building an inland boat at this point. There’s no evidence that there were boats up to that point, certainly not boats that were a football field and a half long, 450 foot long boats. I’m guaranteeing you, he’d never seen an ocean liner before. And yet he started building a boat and it took him over a hundred years and people are mocking him and he did whatever he needed to do because he trusted God. And then the storm does come and everything happens exactly the way God said it would happen. So at that point, I think you probably kind of lean to go, okay, After a hundred years of me following God, everything happened exactly the way God said it would happen. I can wait another year.” Dude was 600 years old when this started. So I’m guessing he can wait one more year. It’s like a couple of weeks for him. Years are nothing. Nothing! It’s only 14, 15 months.

Chris:
Whereas my dad, who’s 85, would say, that was 1 85th of my life.

Jeff:
Yeah, it was 1,600th of his. What’s 1,600th of an 85-year-old person’s life?

Chris:
It’s a lot.

Jeff:
It’s a little. 85 divided by 600. .14. .14? Yeah.

Chris:
Oh, wow.

Jeff:
So what would that be? Like a month and a half? Two months?

Chris:
Three months? Wow, look at you. Something like that? Making all sorts of calculations.

Jeff:
Something like that. So, you know, for a guy who’s lived 600 years, waiting another year’s not. Right. Although, I don’t know, you know, when I’m in Florida, have you ever noticed you’ve heard comedians talk about drivers in Florida? Why do they drive so slow? Wouldn’t you think they’d be driving fast? Right. Right. I mean, you don’t have much time left. You should be hurrying everywhere you go. When you’re 600 years old, one more year is a little long.

Chris:
It seems like, come on, I don’t want to die in the boat. My thinking is a day is still a day, right? It’s still 24 hours. It’s a long time to be with animals.

Jeff:
No, I do think it’s funny when I read this just now, I never thought of it before. Verse 26, then Noah built an altar to the Lord and there he sacrificed as burnt offerings the animals and birds that had been approved for that purpose.

Chris:
Yeah. From the very beginning.

Jeff:
Yeah. But he couldn’t have sacrificed all of the sheep and all of the doves, or we would have had no sheep and no doves. Right. Right. That’s a full-blown extinction event right there. Cause there are only seven sheep and seven.

Chris:
Yeah. Well, remember though, when they boarded the Ark, the very first thing that God said was load the sacrificial animals first. And then besides that grab.

Jeff:
But I’m guessing the sacrifice was only limited to five. and not seven. Because he needed two in order to have the rest of them.

Chris:
Wait a minute, my understanding is that he had additional animals besides. So in other words, let’s just say he had seven sheep, he would have had seven sheep plus all the offered sheep. Yeah, or how many there were, because when he was instructing Noah to gather the animals, like I said, the very first thing that he said was, grab these animals that are approved for sacrifice. And then he listed the other animals by twos and sevens.

Jeff:
All right. I’m going to permit that.

Chris:
I’ll allow it. I’ll allow that.

Jeff:
Tony Stark. I’m not sure I believe it, but I’ll allow it.

Chris:
You’re going to make me look it up now.

Jeff:
I know.

Chris:
All right.

Jeff:
It’s in the Bible somewhere.

Chris:
Well, you, you talk for a minute. I’m going to look at it. I’ll talk.

Jeff:
Yeah. That’s the reason why you assigned me to talk. Cause I can talk about thinking like right now. I’m not, I don’t have a thought in my head and words are just coming out of my mouth.

Chris:
It’s about Jerry Seinfeld’s show. It’s a show about nothing.

Jeff:
Yeah. This could be the show. You don’t have it. Okay. Hey, we’re just gonna concede that to you. I’m gonna give that one to you and say that’s fine.

Chris:
That seems like Extras I’ll look it up and I’ll mention it next podcast.

Jeff:
So you think he brought extras? That’s right. Okay

Chris:
So, yeah, so in the end, you know, this is a sort of obscure passage. You don’t hear a sermon just about Noah sending out a bird and then coming out. But you do hear sermons about the gratitude of people building altars, right? So that’s probably the most significant portion of this passage, right? Exactly. So God comes, or Noah comes out, and he gives an offering to the Lord, and it’s an aroma, which means it was the, there’s only one kind of sacrifice that was actually, that gave an aroma. And I don’t know if you remember this, we included this on our Palm Sunday message just recently, We talked about how Jesus was connected to that type of sacrifice, where the book of Hebrews says that when Jesus offered his life, it was a pleasing aroma to God, right? And so, but there’s only one sacrifice that represents the sins of the world. And in the temple, when Jesus came in and he offered his life during the Passover, there’s all sorts of different types of sacrifices, but only one is representative of the sins of the community, and that was the one that had the aroma.

Jeff:
The burnt sacrifice.

Chris:
the burnt sacrifice. It was called something, I’m trying to remember, but there’s a name for it. It’s a Hebrew name. But anyway, the point is that this is also symbolic. So a lot of times in the Old Testament, you know, when God, for instance, killed the animals to cover the sins for Adam and Eve, That was a foreshadowing of Jesus, right? So, you know, this, you could argue and say that this was a foreshadowing of Jesus. You know, there’s a sacrifice given in thanks for salvation with an aroma, right? Of course, this is a physical salvation. So it’s much like, you know, for instance, remember the plagues that we’re about to talk about with Moses, you know, the actual Passover plague, that was a physical rescue, you know, the passing over of a physical death, you know, representing Jesus, the Passover for spiritual rescue. So yeah, so I would argue and say that there’s a foreshadowing sermon that you can slip in here as well.

Jeff:
Absolutely. Absolutely. So, you know, ultimately it comes down to this idea right here that I will never again curse the ground because of the human race. And then this is funny for all the new moms out there looking at your darlings. God says, even though everything they think or imagine is bent toward evil from childhood,

Chris:
Right, right.

Jeff:
He’s not saying it used to be that way. He’s saying right now, after the flood, it’s still that way. Right?

Chris:
Yeah. And so, you know, little sinners. He’s such a good boy.

Jeff:
Yeah. We’re all little sinners from the very beginning. We’re born into sin from the day that we are born and we need a Savior. That’s exactly right. That’s what that’s all about.

Chris:
All right. Well, hey, I think we’ve pulled out of that passage just about everything we can. Today. Today, yeah. So we will pick up tomorrow with God’s covenant. So hopefully we’ll see you next time on The Bible Guys.