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:
You know, Wesley, we’re friends.

Wesley:
Yeah.

Chris:
We’re a couple of friends talking about the Bible in fun and practical ways.

Wesley:
Yeah.

Chris:
Which makes us The Bible Guys.

Wesley:
Yes, we are The Bible Guys.

Chris:
If you’re just tuning in for the first time, Jeff is out of pocket. So I’m here with Wesley Woods. My name is Chris Zarbaugh, and we are The Bible Guys today. And we are basically doing this whole week, right? Yeah. We film five at a time, by the way, which is Monday through Friday in one setting, which is why we don’t change clothes. Yeah. Do you ever see The Voice where they have the same outfits?

Wesley:
Yeah, I think some people thought we keep this on for the month.

Chris:
Right, right, right. Man, he wore that again today? Man, that thing must stink by the time he gets to the end, right? Five days in a row, holy Christmas. Well, listen, today Desiree has chosen a segment for us, and I like this segment a lot. It’s Would You Rather.

Wesley:
Yeah, these are always good.

Chris:
Yeah, and so we just take turns reading questions, and then we have to pick one. Okay. Are you ready? All right, Wesley, here’s your question. And it’s mine as well. Would you rather be able to speak any language fluently, but sound like a robot or only be able to whisper?

Wesley:
That is tough. I would, you know what, I’m going to go with speak fluently and sound like a robot. Really? Only because like how useful that would be. You could be in, in India or China or.

Chris:
It’d be hard to emote, like, like you have no inflection in your voice.

Wesley:
You’d have no inflection, but you could understand everybody. But I could preach if I whisper. Yeah, true. That’s true.

Chris:
And then the Lord said, and let me tell you something about this, right? But if I’m going, but if I’m going, and then the Lord said, my name is Wesley Woods. So, I mean, I don’t know, man.

Wesley:
I just think the aspect of being able to speak in every language, you know, no matter where you go to Brazil, you go to wherever, I think that is cool.

Chris:
Yeah, but I spend 98% of my time in English speaking territories. So I’m going to choose Whisper considering what I do for a living as well. So we differ on that one. All right. You want to take number two?

Wesley:
Number two. Would you rather have a permanent unibrow or no eyebrows at all?

Chris:
Well, there’s no question for me. I would say no eyebrows at all because I could draw them on.

Wesley:
Okay. That’s, that’s pretty good.

Chris:
Right. So, so I mean, because a permanent unibrow is, I can’t even imagine. I can’t even imagine that it’s like Oscar the grouch.

Wesley:
He’s got one straight. It’s like an M a slight M. Oh, I can’t even imagine unibrow.

Chris:
I’d rather have people go, okay, does that do draw his eyes, eyebrows on then? Because at first glance you might not be able to tell. Yeah. But everybody would know the unibrow. Is that your choice?

Wesley:
I would go with no eyebrows at all, just because I’m not too far off. The hair is already gone. It wouldn’t be too hard of a shift.

Chris:
Yeah. You can get a permanent tattoo of eyebrows. Yeah. Yeah. You can do that too. So. All right. Here’s number three. Would you rather have popcorn kernels stuck in your teeth forever or have Cheeto dust on your fingers forever?

Wesley:
Oh, this is easy. Cheeto dust. Yeah, me too. The thing about having something wedged in your, like between your teeth is like so irritating.

Chris:
My wife said, Hey, take a bite of this. I don’t know what it was called. Like there’s just some sort of roast beef or something. And I took a bite and these little strings of meat got caught in my teeth. And let me tell you something, I immediately had to excuse myself, go upstairs, floss, brush, rinse my mouth out, and come down before I could continue to eat the rest of the food. Because I was like, there’s no way I’m eating any more of that meat.

Wesley:
Stuck in your teeth.

Chris:
For some reason, it’s stuck in my teeth. Wow. I agree completely.

Wesley:
Okay, next one. Is it me? Yep. Is it? Okay. Would you rather have a permanent mullet or a permanent mohawk?

Chris:
Wow. A permanent mullet. Two great options. Permanent mullet. Geez, I’d have to go mullet, I guess.

Wesley:
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. I think I would go mullet too.

Chris:
Yeah, because mohawks are the worst. Yeah.

Wesley:
Well, I think it’s, socially acceptable. Like, you go in certain parts of the South, you still see the mullet going on. And I think a lot of people wouldn’t even bat an eye.

Chris:
Right. So it’d force you to move to Georgia. But like Dublin, Georgia. What part of Georgia are your folks from?

Wesley:
They are from the deep south in Georgia, in a city called Brunswick, right on the Atlantic Ocean, near Jekyll Island.

Chris:
Is that near Valdosta?

Wesley:
Um, I’m probably not too far away. I know they are like, and I could get this wrong. It may be like an hour, hour and a half South of Savannah, but like right on the, they’re actually just 50 minutes, maybe North of Jacksonville. So that’s how like far South it is.

Chris:
One of my really good friends from my first youth group lives in Brunswick, Georgia. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that’s really cool. It’s a cool little town. Yep. All right. And then the finally, the last one is, would you rather have to sleep hanging upside down like a bat or standing up like a horse?

Wesley:
I’m going horse only because I, when I read this, I think like, Logically, like if I’m upside down all the blood is rushing to your head, you know, I start going through all the so I’m like, yeah, I’ll stand up Like okay, so horses are made to sleep standing up.

Chris:
Yeah humans or not. Yeah, it’s true. Okay bats are made to sleep upside down Yeah, where their blood brushing their heads not a problem. Yeah, and humans cannot yeah, so when I read that question, I immediately thought to myself that I would obtain the ability to sleep upside down with no blood rushing in my head. Okay. And I’d be able to sleep standing up without falling down like a horse. Yeah. So now given the choice between those two conditions, the magic abilities, then what would you choose?

Wesley:
Well, see, at that point it wouldn’t matter, so I could do either one. So I could be the bat, so it wouldn’t matter then. And you could be the horse too, right? Who cares? Yeah, if you’re not going to have any effects from it, you know.

Chris:
Right, right. Then I would say, for me, I would choose the horse. I don’t like upside down. Because then you wake up in the middle of the night and you’re like, oh, oh, what is going on? Oh, I’m upside down. Yeah, everybody’s upside down. No, you’re upside down. Right, right, right, yeah. And not only that, but bats have wings. Yeah, true.

Wesley:
So if they fall, they’ve got some help.

Chris:
Right, right. Whereas if we fall, we’re done, right? We’re done. Yeah. All right. So there you go. We’re the horse people. So hey, thank you, Desiree. That was riveting. Yes.

Wesley:
Just riveting. I don’t know where she comes up with this stuff.

Chris:
I don’t either. All right, well, we’re launching into Exodus chapter 40, and basically we have skipped over the completing of the work. So we’ve looked at the instructions from God, hey, build this Ark of the Covenant, build this Table of the Showbread, build this Altar of the Incense, build this, you know, all these different things, you know. And so basically we’re skipping over the chapters that say that they’ve completed the work. You know, they’ve made the clothes for all the priests. Moses has inspected all the work. And now we’re really reading the completion of the tabernacle and the dedication of the tabernacle. Exodus chapter 40, verses 17 through 33.

Wesley:
It says, So the tabernacle was set up on the first day of the first month of the second year. Moses erected the tabernacle by setting down its bases, inserting the frames, attaching the crossbars, and setting up the posts. Then he spread the coverings over the tabernacle framework and put on the protective layers, just as the Lord had commanded him. He took the stone tablets inscribed with the terms of the covenant and placed them inside the ark. Then he attached the carrying poles to the ark and he set the ark’s cover, the place of atonement, on top of it. Then he brought the ark of the covenant into the tabernacle and hung the inner curtain to shield it from view, just as the Lord had commanded him. Next, Moses placed the table in the tabernacle along the north side of the holy place, just outside the inner curtain. And he arranged the bread of the presence on the table before the Lord, just as the Lord had commanded him. He set the lampstand in their tabernacle across from the table on the south side of the holy place. Then he lit the lamps in the Lord’s presence just as the Lord had commanded him. He also placed the gold incense altar in the tabernacle in the holy place in front of the inner curtain. On it he burned the fragrant incense just as the Lord had commanded him. He hung the curtain at the entrance of the tabernacle, and he placed the altar of burnt offering near the tabernacle entrance. On it he offered a burnt offering and a grain offering, just as the Lord had commanded him. Next, Moses placed the wash basin between the tabernacle and the altar. He filled it with water so the priests could wash themselves. Moses and Aaron and Aaron’s sons used water from it to wash their hands and feet. Whenever they approached the altar and entered the tabernacle, they washed themselves just as the Lord had commanded Moses. Then he hung the curtains forming the courtyard around the tabernacle and the altar, and he set up the curtain at the entrance of the courtyard, so at last Moses finished the work.”

Chris:
So there is a very obvious repeated sentence that is the theme of this passage. And so you want to say it together? just as the Lord commanded him. You see that over and over. Over and over and over. And so that is the obvious sermon in the passages. So, you know, Moses obeys and his obedience in the little things translates into a big kind of blessed life. Right. So, you know, it’s interesting because when I was in college, they told us to come up with a Christian hallmark card, all these goofy assignments, right? And I remember it was like advertising. It was like an advertising exercise. And I came up with Hallmark, and I forget what I called it. It was like the Sin Mark or something like that. And my slogan was, little sins mean a lot. Right? Because Hallmark’s slogan at the time was, little things mean a lot. And And because I thought it carried a lot of truth that little sins, even though they’re small, added up over time can stack up and mean a lot. And I think the same thing with this, little tiny acts of obedience, right? You know, they may not seem like they’re huge, right? You know, so he hung a curtain, like, just as the Lord had commanded him. But all these little acts of obedience translate into a blessed life. They translate into, you know, a safe life, a life that God promises for us, a total trajectory change. Because, you know, Did you ever hear about in the 1990s when they launched the probe to Mars and it missed Mars by millions of miles? And they tried to figure out what went wrong. They wanted somebody to blame because it was billions of dollars lost.

Wesley:
Yeah, just floating off in the…

Chris:
And come to find out, uh, they traced it back to one engineer and this one engineer, uh, changed the church. He was off on its trajectory by a fraction of a millimeter, but over time and distance, it missed Mars by millions of miles.

Wesley:
Yeah, that’s like being in Texas and being off by like a degree. You could end up in, let’s say if you’re trying to get to Montana, you know, just above you, just straight north, you could end up in Maine. Right. You know what I mean? Just a fraction of a degree off.

Chris:
Right. Yeah. Right. Isn’t that amazing? And so it’s one of those things where the trajectory of the little obedience commands can set you on a whole different path, and you’ll find yourself with a completely different life just by obeying the little things that God asks us to do.

Wesley:
Chris, I thought about this years ago with obedience and how when you read God’s Word, it always seems like there’s a blessing attached to the obedience. So whenever you see someone being obedient, there was a blessing that typically followed behind that. The interesting thing about that, I started to think about this and say, well, wait a minute. I think that’s why sometimes God asks us to do certain things, not because He has need for the thing. It’s kind of like tithing. God isn’t asking you to tithe because He’s poor and He can’t pay His light bill. He’s asking you to tithe because when you obey Him, you’re blessed. He said when you tithe, He would rebuke the devourer. So, the obedience is really for our benefit. It’s for our blessing. Sometimes we look at the obedience as a difficult thing. Right. Where God is saying, I’m literally giving you opportunities to be obedient so you can be blessed. Right. So when you start to look at it like this, like, wait a minute, this hard thing that God is asking me to do, that’s just an opportunity to be blessed. When God told me to forgive that person, like we talked about in a previous episode, that’s just an opportunity to be blessed. So when you change your thinking around that, I think it will help you be obedient, not just to get something, but there are blessings attached to our obedience.

Chris:
Yeah, that’s right. And by the way, we don’t necessarily think of being under the New Testament and under the grace of Jesus. We don’t think that sometimes blessings are conditional, right? Because most blessings are not conditional, right? I mean, God gives us unconditional mercy, Unconditional love and grace. Sometimes He favors us in spite of ourselves, not because of ourselves, right? So sometimes we’re on the receiving end of blessings, even when we don’t deserve them, right? And God says that every blessing is given. But there are some blessings that are attached to a promise of obedience. So for instance, God does say if you honor God with your marriage, Right? From the time you’re dating to the time you, right, there’s blessings that come with that. Just like you mentioned before, if you honor God financially, then God says there’s a blessing that’ll come your way that you otherwise would not experience had you not, you know, walked out in faith. I think that sometimes when God nudges us to do a specific thing, you know, like there are blessings on the other side of that obedience. You know, so God says, you know, go do this. Well, you know, all we have to do is look back on our lives and say, man, there was that one time that God asked me to do this, and I did this, and so many blessings came from it. And then all we have to do is say, well, had I not done that, I would have missed out on those blessings.

Wesley:
I can give you a real life example of this happening in my life. And I’ve shared this story before where I was saving up money, working at a part-time job and I was saving up money for a car and you know, working at a part-time job to save up to like almost a thousand dollars is an incredible feat. You know, when you’re working a part-time job, making minimum wage. So this is when, this would have been like my, first year of college. Oh yeah. I think it was my first year of college.

Chris:
So in the 90s. Yeah, so in the 90s, yeah. So minimum wage is like five bucks.

Wesley:
Yeah. So I had saved up like just under a thousand dollars, and I will never forget this, Chris. And don’t ask why I had the money on me. I was sitting at a church service in Detroit, and I know to this day this was God, I felt this overwhelming feeling to give all the money in the offering. And guess what I did, Chris? I said, heck no. That is my money. I am not giving that money. So God and I are having this argument back and forth in my seat. This is all the money. No. So finally I said, You know what? I’m just going to be obedient. I’m going to do it. This makes no sense. Don’t even know why I had the money on me to begin with. I put all of that money in the offering plate. And then within 30 days, so my prayer was for a car. That’s what I was saving up for. My boss at the company I worked for at the time said, Hey, Wesley, we see that you’re commuting back and forth. At the time I was going to Eastern Michigan. We see you commuting back and forth and you have to catch a shuttle and all this crazy stuff. We have a company car. You can just have the company car, just keep gas in it. If you ever have problems with it, fill out an expense report. We’ll give you the money back. And I think about that, would that have happened if I had not been obedient to God? That obedience opened a door. I was just trying to get a junky, you know, thousand dollar car, and God blessed me with a very nice automobile that I didn’t even have to make payments on.

Chris:
Well, that’s amazing. Yeah, that’s amazing. Yeah. And the other way would have been worse. Yeah. Yeah. Financially. Yeah. So that, yeah, that is amazing. Yeah. And it’s, you know, the scripture, what does Jesus say? He says, knock and then the door will be open. Yes. Right. Seek and then you’re going to find. And so there are things that just, you know, remind us that God’s obedience, you know, or excuse me, God’s commands and our obedience, they’re there for a reason. So God always has His end game, right? His end game is ultimately for His glory. He’s going to ask you to do things for His glory, but it’s always for our benefit. So every time there’s a command or a rule or an invitation on either how to live well or please Him, it always comes back to, it’s going to be for His glory, but it’s always, always, always going to be for our benefit, whether we see it in this life or the next, but it’s going to be.

Wesley:
Yeah. Do you have an instance in your life where something like that, where it was an act of obedience and then there was a blessing on the back end? And you didn’t maybe at the time know if there would have been a blessing or not, but it turns out that your obedience was blessed.

Chris:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the smallest of examples would have been, and again, this isn’t translating to a car, but so I remember when I very first became a Christian, I was a Christian for like five minutes. Yeah. Okay. Like I was in high school.

Wesley:
So you were getting put to the test right away.

Chris:
I remember going to a Sunday morning church, and there was a missionary there, and he was from Kenya, Africa, and I only had $5 in my wallet. Now, back then, $5 can actually get you something, right? I had $5 in my wallet, and I remember thinking, okay, I’m going to meet a girl. at, um, at a place. And now I, now I, it was actually like a ballpark that I hung out at. And, uh, I know what I can get. I can get a hamburger for 50 cents. I can get a whole, like a meal for like a dollar 50. Right. So I’m going to be able to take her to this, uh, uh, you know, a snack shack, uh, where they, where they basically provide, uh, food for the, for the players and such. I’m going to be able to like pretty much buy us a meal and have everything I need to have with this simple $5. Right. So I’m in the church and I see this missionary and I feel like God says, give the $5. And I’m like, no God, because I like, does God know I’m going to meet a girl? And I’m trying to impress this girl. And it’s the first time I’m meeting her. It’s like a blind date of sorts. So anyway, I’m like, oh no. So I give the $5 and I’m like, oh, I’m going to have to be embarrassed and say I have no money. So I go to this little date, right? I’m getting out of the car and you have to understand my dad and my mom were divorced and my dad just doesn’t pass out money. He does not pass out money. And so the number of times I think if I can count on my hand of times where he just said, hey, here’s some money. At that time, for no reason, it would have been zero. And so anyway, he gives me a ride, drops me off. I must have been like 14. He drops me off, or 15 maybe. And he goes, I get out of the car, and he goes, hey Chris. And he reaches in his back pocket, and he’s like, here’s some money. And he hands me a $10 bill. Oh wow. And dude, $10 back then. You were rich. It’d be like handing a kid a 50 today. Yeah. Right? And he gives me a $10 bill, and I’m like, what? And it was no reason at all. It was no reason. He didn’t have any motivation. He didn’t even ask me if I had money. He just gave me $10. And I thought to myself, okay, God, if this is how you work, that’s pretty cool. Because I was able to walk by faith. And by the way, that’s how I love That’s why I love how the church works. And so let’s get back to the scripture, and let’s talk about the fact that God, or excuse me, Moses, well God first, and then Moses put such great importance in the details of taking care of everything. And it reminds me that this tabernacle was the very first example of a central place of worship, right? So we have a central place of worship called the church. And even though that God doesn’t exist in one address at a building of a church, even though people think He does, right? Like God’s at that place. Let me go to that building because that’s where God is. Well, that’s not true. And the church technically is not a building. The church definition is the called out body of believers, which is us. We’re the church, right? So we make up the church. But The thing that’s in common is this is the first example of a central place of worship. Because up to that point, they didn’t have a central place of worship. So think about this. Our central place of worship is the church. And so people should choose great care. Right? So, I mean, things in this central place of worship, they’re made out of gold, right? You know, it’s only the best of the best. Even the fabric woven, I told you, with gold and silver, rope even. You know, all of this is very treasured. It’s very valued.

Wesley:
Even that one verse that talks about putting a covering just for extra protection. Right. Yeah.

Chris:
So, yeah. And so, give God your best. And those are semantics, and it doesn’t necessarily translate into wearing a suit to church, and it doesn’t translate into, you know, plastering everything with gold. But it does give you an entire mindset that God is honored with excellence, right? So, yeah, I don’t necessarily wear a suit and tie. I mean, heck, you could take it to the example, to the extreme. Hey, why are you only in a suit and tie? Wear a tuxedo. Yeah. Right. I mean, you know, those are semantics. That would kind of be cool. Preaching a tuxedo. Well, that means everybody would be required to wear a tuxedo to come to your church, right? Which was nobody would come. Yeah. Right. So anyway, the point is, is that, you know, it’s not necessarily the letter of the law. It’s the spirit of the law. That’s what Paul says. Yeah. Paul says it’s not the letter, it’s the Spirit. So the Spirit is whatever you do, do it to honor God. And if it’s not honoring God, change it, right? And if you’re going to honor God, do it with excellence. And so that’s why we have such high standards at our church. And so if there’s something that happens and it’s not good enough, we’ll cut it. Yeah. And let’s just say a person gets up and they sing off key and they’re like, and that we have a thing in between the first service and the second service called the make it better meeting. And if there’s something that’s not quite up to par, we’ll go to that person and be like, Hey man, you know, you’re a great singer. This song, maybe it’s just not your day for this song. And so we’re going to cut the song. And some people would say, I’d never do that. because, you know, you’re going to hurt people’s feelings. Well, God is honored in excellence, right? And so, you know, we as Christians should sacrifice our own feelings and preferences so that we all understand that we’re going to bring the best possible experience to honor God, which means if it means cutting your song or cutting your video that you took time to make, or changing this or changing that, we’re going to make it better because we believe that the church deserves the best. And God is honored with the best.

Wesley:
Yeah, that’s awesome. I’ll toss in one really quick thing. A couple of days ago, I think it was, there was a verse that talked about not offering unholy incense. I think it was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it kind of ties into that very thing that you’re talking about. Give God your best. Don’t give God the scraps or the leftovers. I think the implication there was don’t give God the thing that you don’t even want. Right. Sometimes we’ll do that with God. We’ll give an offering, but it’s like, well, I didn’t care about that anyway. Well, that’s, it’s the heart behind it. That’s what God is after. It’s not the actual thing.

Chris:
It’s like people who say, Hey, I was going to throw this couch to the curb, but does the church want it? Yeah, exactly. Like that mentality is the worst, right? Like, Hey, these old books in my, in my cellar, uh, they’re, they’re so outdated and they’re from 1972. Does the church want them? You know, anyway, that’s funny. Yeah. So, hey, those are a lot of good sermons in there and we are at our time. So hopefully we will see you next time on The Bible Guys.