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 everybody, welcome to another episode of The Bible Guys. Here we are. We are here and we are going to jump right into Desiree’s game. It’s a lot like Taboo. And for those who are listening, you can just believe us. For those who are watching, we are going to hopefully put the words up on the screen of the words that I cannot say. But my goal is to get you to say words.

Jeff:
Okay. I have to guess what you’re trying to get me to say without you saying the thing. The clues. Okay.

Chris:
And by the way, this is according to Desiree. She assigned points. Listen, listen to this. You’re going to give Jeff clues to see if he can guess the bold word without the keywords. You are not allowed to say the italicized words or else you will lose 1000 points.

Jeff:
Okay.

Chris:
So she just tosses that in there.

Jeff:
There’s a thousand points.

Chris:
I didn’t even know I had a bucket of points. I don’t know. Do I have points already?

Jeff:
You’re going to go negative. I guess I’m starting at zero. Yeah. You’re going to go negative. So the goal is always points in the future. You’ll always point.

Chris:
I didn’t know there was a running tally of points. All right, here we go. Ready? Before you attack a city, you have to come up with a plan plan.

Jeff:
That’s it. Wow. Good.

Chris:
Okay. I was not allowed to see scheme, strategy, plot, idea, or architect.

Jeff:
Very good. Nailed it. All right. Ready? Me, buddy.

Chris:
When you have supper, you have to sit at a table table. I wasn’t allowed to say chair desk dinner. I said supper, tennis or claw.

Jeff:
Yeah. Hey, that’s right. All right.

Chris:
Semantics, but Hey, it’s, I mean, I mean, I didn’t say anything. You’re right. Okay. Okay. Ready? The Ark of the Covenant was made out of? Gold. Gold.

Jeff:
There you go.

Chris:
That’s it. So I wasn’t allowed to say silver, treasure, watch.

Jeff:
We are killing this one. I just want you to know.

Chris:
Yellow or mine. Well, it’s all about me.

Jeff:
Yeah.

Chris:
Yeah. Right. It’s all about the clues. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So here we go. Ready? You always say we don’t take, but we receive the. We don’t take it. We receive it.

Jeff:
Offering. The offering. Yes.

Chris:
Yes.

Jeff:
So I wasn’t allowed to say… Only the mafia takes offerings.

Chris:
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. And by the way, that’s Jeff’s big thing. So when I got to Heritage, I think one of the first times I get up, I said, hey, it’s time to take our offering. And then he saw me afterwards and said, you know, it’s really bad language to say, take an offering. You know, so say receive. But that’s not a suggestion. That’s a commandment. All right. I learned that. So I wasn’t allowed to say sacrifice, peace, burnt, offer, or off.

Jeff:
Okay. So offerings. Yeah.

Chris:
I don’t understand the offer or off. I don’t know. Oh, offer an offering. Yeah. Offer a burnt. Okay.

Jeff:
Yeah. Yeah.

Chris:
That’d be it. But the off thing anyway. Okay. All right. And so, uh, gee whiz, this last one’s pretty hard. Um, uh, okay. Um, Today we’re talking about the table of bread.

Jeff:
Bread. Yeah. Bread. Bread. Oh, that was it? Yeah. Oh, wow.

Chris:
Okay. I wasn’t allowed to say loaf, butter, dough, wheat, or toast.

Jeff:
Okay. Wow. That was a tough one.

Chris:
Yeah. But I got them pretty good.

Jeff:
Good job, Chris. We should go on, if the ministry doesn’t work out for us, we should just be like professional game show people. Just go on all the game shows and win them all.

Chris:
I’m not sure that we could do that.

Jeff:
We would. Would we? Oh yeah. Man, you’re amazing, Chris.

Chris:
Look how well you just did right there. It’s all about me. I do like games. I like game shows.

Jeff:
We win like $10,000 every week.

Chris:
What is the game show that if you’re flipping the channels and it’s on, you’ll usually pause and watch a segment of it?

Jeff:
Oh, man. Usually pause. I know what it is for me. I’m not many. I used to, we got really caught up in who wants to be a millionaire back in the day. Oh yeah. Back in the day. Yeah.

Chris:
But I, but the original one, not the, not the girl one.

Jeff:
Right. Right. She was terrible. But I don’t watch game shows much.

Chris:
For me, I already know what it is. So I have the game show network. I used to have the game show network. But always. Price is right. No, no, no. Although that’s pretty good, but.

Jeff:
Without fortune.

Chris:
Nope. It is Family Feud.

Jeff:
Family Feud. Okay. Okay. Family Feud is one I’ll watch. Yeah. So one, Steve Harvey’s funny. Yeah, Steve Harvey’s great. And two, it’s a clever show.

Chris:
Yeah, it’s really good. And you know, you could immediately play it.

Jeff:
You’re right.

Chris:
Whereas like, you know, Wheel of Fortune is like so slow sometimes, you know, and you’re like, d-d-d-d-d-d-d-dell, and you’re like, okay, whatever. But immediately when there’s a question asked, you go, ooh, I have an answer. Right? And it’s different than Jeopardy because Jeopardy’s one answer. Right. And you have to, you have to sort of play Jeopardy the whole thing. Right. But you could, you could, you could pause and watch it for five minutes and then leave it and play. See what I’m saying?

Jeff:
That’s true. You’re right. Um, so I don’t watch a ton of, of the game shows, but, um, with my kids, it seemed like, I remember thinking the last time I watched Family Feud was at the emergency room. Then the next time I watched Family Feud was at the emergency room. And then, so I don’t know if they just have Family Feud on the emergency room. That might be the only thing they do is just reruns of Family Feud. Yeah, maybe. But it was probably two or three times in a row, taking the kids, you know, for dislocated arm or broken arm or something, you know, we wind up going and it seemed like Family Feud was always on.

Chris:
Well, I don’t know why.

Jeff:
I don’t know what to do with that. That was a little nugget. They had nothing.

Chris:
Thank you for that useless piece of information.

Jeff:
Well, I’m just suggesting that perhaps they have it on a, maybe there’s some medical reason for having it on replay on joy. I don’t know.

Chris:
Yeah. Put, put something that causes people joy. Maybe, maybe most people like it like me.

Jeff:
So we were talking yesterday about the idea that, oh, we wish we had the ability to just go through all of the different features of the tabernacle without looking ahead and realizing actually what we’re going to do is go through all the different features of the tabernacle. Desiree already had us set up for that, and we just didn’t realize it. That’s so funny. So we already talked about how God said, build it, right? Build it! and collect the offerings, and you’re going to need all these special things. And then the first thing you want to design and build was this Ark of the Covenant where the cover of atonement was going to be, right? The mercy seat. And then the next thing that he wants, he says this in Exodus chapter 25, verse 23, he says, then make a table of acacia wood, 36 inches long, 18 inches wide, and 27 inches high. Overlay it with pure gold and run a gold molding around the edge. Decorate it with a three-inch border all around and run a gold molding around the border. Make four gold rings for the table and attach them at the four corners next to the four legs. Attach the rings near the border to hold the poles that are used to carry the table. Make these poles from acacia wood and overlay them with gold. Make special containers of pure gold for the table, bowls, pans, pitchers, and jars to be used in pouring out liquid offerings. Place the bread of the presence on the table to remain before me at all times.

Chris:
Yeah, so this is the table of presence. Right.

Jeff:
Or sometimes it’d be called the table of showbread.

Chris:
Yeah, showbread, yep. And so there’s really not a ton here about this piece that we know about other than the symbolism, right? Right. So the symbolism is pretty cool. But I’ll read some of it, and then you can chime in. I’m going to read the opening paragraph on this. So, you know, for me, I’m looking these things up right before the podcast, right? Sure. Although I do know a lot about the tabernacle and its contents inside, but I would say this one here is the one I was like, geez, I wonder what we’re going to talk about. It says, the primary purpose of the table was to hold the bread of the presence. And it says literally translated as the bread of the face, that’s interesting, which was set before the presence or the face of Yahweh. Each Sabbath, the priests would replace the loaves from the previous week with a fresh batch of bread. Exactly 12 loaves were arranged into two rows of six, and these loaves represented the 12 tribes of Israel.” Now, they’re probably describing it in the Solomon’s Temple, or wouldn’t you think? It would be the 12 tribes of Israel now. Yeah, with Joseph, right? That was before the slavery. These loaves were a food offering to God that was perpetually carried out as a covenant forever, as mentioned in Leviticus Chapter 24.

Jeff:
It also represented, so it represented God’s work, the work of the priests, right? There’s all that. That’s why he’s really specific about the size and where the rings are and how the poles are, you know, be able to carry all these things. And so he’s highlighting the work of the priests of the people. And then it also, the bread represents God’s provision for the people. So the people are sacrificing bread to God, which was their main food staple. So they’re bringing sacrifice to God saying, Hey, what keeps us alive? We’re surrendering to you first. And then it also represents the fact that God always provides. So as they bring to God, God always provides enough for them. Right. And so that was a big part of it. He’s giving so many specific instructions. It’s really amazing. Not 26 inches and not 28 inches, 27 inches. Not only that, I want the molding around the edges. I want the gold like this. I want this part covered. I want this open wood. I want rings over here. I want it to be cornered like this. God’s really, really, really, really precise on his designs. And it shows that God is intentional. on everything, that he’s actively engaged in everything with regard to his connection with him, because worship is just connecting with God. And so he’s having them build these articles for worship, but really it’s about the fact that God is intimately involved with every aspect of human connection with him. Yeah.

Chris:
Yeah, and the extravagance of, you know, things being pure gold. So, you know, you mentioned earlier that, you know, they left Egypt and one of the miracles, you know, that wasn’t listed actually as a miracle, but was the fact that their pockets were filled with silver and gold. that they went to the Egyptians and the Egyptians gave them all this money so they had all the resources. Well, imagine this, where would they have gotten the gold to build all this? So, in other words, you’re a slave, okay, the Forrester household is generations and generations of being slaves. And then all of a sudden, Moses tells you, go collect gold. So you go around to all the Egyptians that know you, and they willingly give you all this gold. And so now you’re rich, right? You have, you have resources. You take it back, you carry it with you. Not only that, but you carried a very, very, very long way. Right, for a long time. For a long time. You finally get to a place where you establish a city, right probably at the base of Mount Sinai, you know, and this is where you’re going to be. And then, and so you build a temporary dwelling, I’m sure, like some sort of a tent or something like this. Yeah, like a tent city. Yeah, but then you have your gold. And it’s like, this is my family’s gold. And then all of a sudden Moses comes down and says, okay, We need to build, and we need a bunch of gold, right? We need a bunch of gold. Where’s he going to get it? The people have to give it, don’t they? They have to. God’s not going to just, it doesn’t say anyway that he’s going to provide gold out of a mountain, right? So the people are going to give. So my point is, even though it doesn’t say that, we have to piece it together and understand that he’s asking Moses to do this, but it’s for the people, which means the people are going to have to give to the church. So this would be probably I think the first example of people giving their resources to a place of worship, wouldn’t it?

Jeff:
Well, this is their first place of worship, as a people, as Israelites, yeah. So this would be their… So, I mean, it had happened in other cultures and things, but for the Israelites, this would be the first.

Chris:
Yeah. Because, you know, if you go Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Joseph, there wasn’t a central place of worship for those people. That’s right. So this would be it.

Jeff:
You do have the one time Abraham is giving an offering, a financial offering to Melchizedek, a priest. Right? So you have that piece. So it’s in their history, but it wasn’t for a place. It was to a priest.

Chris:
And that was also one person to a singular priest. Right. But this is a communal idea of a church where everybody gives, if everybody, it’s not the church, it’s the temple. I know, I know, I know. But I’m saying the call out people is what I was trying to refer to. But the idea of a church anyway, if everybody gives a gold ring, we’ll have enough to cover one of the poles Right, right. You know, that kind of thing.

Jeff:
Well, and God wasn’t asking for anything that he hadn’t already provided. That’s right. Right. So if he’d hauled them all out of Egypt, and hadn’t given them the plunder of Egypt, it would have been kind of rude to say, hey, I need you guys to give me what you don’t have. Or dig. Right? Start digging, guys. But he wasn’t asking for what they didn’t have. He was only asking for some. He didn’t even ask for all. He was only asking for some of what he’d already provided. And it was plunder. And then the other thing is, hey, when you’re out in the middle of the desert, what good does gold do you? Right. It’s just heavy. It just burdens you down. There’s no good.

Chris:
Unless you’re going to travel and trade.

Jeff:
Yeah, but it’s useless to them out in the middle of the desert. But how funny is that? We’d be like, oh man, that’d be really hard. I want to keep all my gold. I’m going to haul that heavy brick around all the desert. It doesn’t do me any good, but I don’t want to let go of it. I think a lot of times we get bogged down by the stuff in our life because we think it’s so important, when in reality, we are literally wanderers on this planet because this isn’t home. We haven’t made it to the promised land yet. And we get bogged down by the extra weight of all the stuff in our lives and we just have a hard time imagining why would God ask for some of it. He didn’t ask for all of it. He asked for some of it. So then this table, the bread, represents the fact that God provides, but then that God continually provides. It’s every week. He’ll provide it now. He’ll provide it again next week. He’ll provide it again next week. He’ll provide it again next week. And that God is always paying close attention to his people. And then you’ll notice all these things have the ability to pick them up and move them because it’s a temporary thing. And the people of Israel are not in the promised land yet. They’re kind of wandering in the wilderness. And you know, you and I have not made it to the promised land yet either. And so we should make all of our things temporary. They should all be portable. We shouldn’t be putting down too deep roots. This isn’t home, right? Preparing for what God has for us. And then the extreme value of these things, even though they’re temporary, the respect that it takes and the value of bringing the very best of what we have for God, even in these temporary situations in the tabernacle, they brought the very best of what they had. And there’s something to that. You know, sometimes Uh, sometimes we can be a little bit flippant. We just come, I struggle, you know, on one side, you know, we’re kind of a blue jeans church. And, uh, I, I see the value of that. The reason why I think that that was so valuable was I can remember I had a conversation with a lady on the phone. She was very concerned that they wouldn’t be welcome. Uh, the church that they had been in with some other people, uh, the, Some of the leaders have pointed out the fact that their children didn’t fit in because they were so poor and that maybe it’d be better to find a place where their peers were more like them. And it just devastated her. So she called and she’s asking all these questions about would they be welcome? They were extremely poor. And I can remember walking out on stage that next morning because I said, of course you’re welcome. And we had made a conscious decision that we would go casual rather than suit and tie. We would go casual so that people like her and her family would feel comfortable. And unbeknownst to me, I walk out on stage and clearly the poorest family in the whole church was sitting next to what I knew to be the richest family in the church. And I never do this. I’ve never done it before, never did it since, but for some reason I just walked out, and before I made eye contact with those people, I said, hey, it’s good to be here. Why don’t you stand up, give somebody a handshake, a pat on the back, give them a hug, let them know you’re glad to see them. And I’m not a hugger, so I never encourage that. But I did that day. And then I realized the poorest family sitting next to the richest family, the richest guy in the room was wearing a golf shirt and a pair of khakis. And the guy, the poorest guy in the room was wearing a Red Wings golf shirt and a pair of khakis. And they turned, they shook hands, and then just leaned and gave each other a hug. And the poor man didn’t know that he was sitting next to the rich man. And the rich man didn’t know he was sitting next to the poor man. And I thought, that’s the way it’s supposed to be, right? The grounds level at the cross, we’re all equals. And sometimes, had that rich man been wearing a Brooks Brothers suit that cost $3,000 and the poor man is wearing that same outfit, it was just nicest clothes, they would have had a sense of who was more important than the other or richer than the other, right? But they didn’t. So I appreciate our decision to be casual. However, sometimes, our casual thing can turn into a lack of respect for what’s happening and why we’re there and who we’re there for and all those kinds of things. And so I think we have to have a conscious effort to make sure that when we’re coming to gathering together for worship, that we’re making a conscious effort to remember that we’re on holy ground and that what we’re doing is a sacred thing. This is an important, you know, sacred element. And this is a lot of what God’s doing is bringing the very best And that’s what I want, is I want you to set apart. This isn’t how you guys decorate your house. This is how you decorate my house, right, is what he’s doing there. And there’s something to that. So I like living in the tension of those two, of remembering that what we’re doing and where we’re at and who we’re for is holy, and at the same time, everybody’s welcome.

Chris:
And you know what’s so hard about this is that it’s all semantics and it’s all interpretation. Like for instance, like the fact that we don’t have stained glass windows and the fact that we don’t have like, you know, so we’ve not chosen to have you know, crosses everywhere or crucifix everywhere. And there’s something about an environment where you walk in, and I grew up in the Catholic Church, and I remember there was a big, you know, huge cross with Jesus on the cross. And when you walked into the foyer, He was there in the foyer, and He just sort of looked right at you. And then, you know, depending on which set of doors that you walked in, because his head was tilted one way, and as you walked in and you looked up and he’s looking right at you, it’s like, I’m not going in those doors anymore. You know, that to me was just, but when you stand in that type of presence, it demands that you which is why I didn’t feel like there was permission for a lot of clapping or laughter or celebration or, you know, what I would consider normal things. Right. And so there’s a reverence there, but then you lack, you know, the humanity side of it, the relational side of it. You laugh, you know, you lack the whole, everything, a lot of stuff that’s missing in the New Testament, you lack. So it feels like an Old Testament type environment. But then when you go to our church, and we don’t have many of those things, that’s why I appreciate a lot that we do Good Friday service often. And there is a… Well, on Good Friday. On Good Friday. Yeah. So once a year. I’m sorry. Yes. I’m saying almost every… We do Good Friday all the time. Almost every Good Friday we have done this. Yes, yes. Since I’ve been there. Yeah. Yeah, so in my experience there, so and you’ve done it plenty before that, but there’s a reverence to that. And because we’re not as reverent as we could be. I appreciate the reverence. And I think to myself, man, we, we, we miss this a lot. Right. Like we’re not as reverent as we should be. And, and, uh, but at the same time, like it, it depends on what you believe, you know, uh, you know, excellence translates into, Oh, you gotta have your best. That means suit and tie. And I’ve heard people say that. I’m like, that doesn’t always mean suit and tie. Like since what, that doesn’t equal that. Right. Cause if that’s the case, then, you know, you might as well, you could translate that into everything.

Jeff:
Yeah, well, my dad said, hey, I dress for God like I would dress for the president. That would be my dad’s view. And hey, there’s a lot of respect in that. Right. Sure. And none of it’s wrong. No, that’s perfectly legit. If that’s what you feel convicted to do, you should do that. Our choice in our building, is to level the ground so that there is no rich and poor, right? That’s what we’re trying to do in that environment. So I would say, make sure that it’s intentional, but I think that in an environment like ours where we work hard to be casual so that a poor person doesn’t stand out, we have to also consciously work hard in our individual hearts to also understand this is a holy moment. That song up there is not just a song. That’s a holy moment for you. That prayer is not just one more religious hoop that we jump through because it’s a Sunday morning. That is a holy moment where we are collectively going before our God. That’s good. That’s good. And so… Because otherwise we’re like, we like this song. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris:
which is a casual attitude, right? But it’s a reverence. It’s your going before a holy God. It’s a worship moment. And even God says, you know, come boldly before my throne. And when we enter into the presence of God, which again, I mean, semantics, God is everywhere. We’re always in the presence of God, right? But to go before him in prayer, It’s as if God is saying, you’re going into the Holy of Holies.

Jeff:
Yeah, we’re gathering together for these purposes, and there’s something holy in that. So, you know, having a strategy where our intent is on a Sunday morning, we know that most people who aren’t Christians in our community So we live in kind of a post-Christian area where most of the people have some kind of religious background, but they’re not currently followers of Christ.

Chris:
My father used to go to some church somewhere.

Jeff:
Yeah, yeah. We are aware that most of the people, if we stop them on the street and ask, if you were going to get right with God, what would you do? They would say, I’d go to church on Sunday morning and meet with a priest or a pastor. That’s what they tell us. So we on purpose make our gathering on a Sunday morning be for that lost person to introduce them to Jesus, right? That’s what we’re doing. And so our intent is different, but we have, you know, specific worship nights and we have gatherings. And I think that those moments in the homes, if you look in the New Testament, they weren’t, you know, they were gathering in the temple. Certainly those were those holy moments, but they were also gathering house to house that, you know, for fellowship and for the purpose of leaning into the apostles teaching and all these things. And it’s both sides. There’s the holy side and the personal relational side. And we just have to be conscious about both of them. not just embrace the casual without the holy or not just the holy without the normal people thing. There’s a tension there. But God is really setting it apart on purpose because they were only ever slaves and they had no concept of the holy, right?

Chris:
Yeah, because this is generations

Jeff:
Right. 400 years. And there had never been a tabernacle. So he’s setting up going, Hey, this is particularly special because they’d never had it before. Right. And so I just have to be aware of the fact that there’s kind of a pendulum that swings back and forth where we go too casual, too holy.

Chris:
And it convicts me because we do a lot of the planning for the weekends and we should do more very intentional, reverent kind of moments. Right. And we do that sometimes. Yeah. We do that sometimes, but we should probably do it more.

Jeff:
Sure. And so that’s, that’s what I’m taking away from this is that God always provides and he provides every week just like this. There’s always enough. He wants to be with his people. He’s very engaged with the details of how to come to him in this. And God’s paying attention to every detail in your life. And then he invites us into the Holy. And I think we have to just be, you know, even today as you pray, you know, that’s a Holy moment. There’s something special about that.

Chris:
That’s awesome. All right. Well, Hey, that is our time. So we will see you next time on The Bible Guys.