Transcription

Chris
So, Jeff, uh, I was wrestling with my son, who’s now 24, and it got to the point to where he sort of surpassed me in strength, uh, a few years ago when he was.

Jeff
What, seven?

Chris
Uh.

Jeff
Yeah.

Chris
Pretty funny. So he grabbed my thumb and bent it all the way backwards. Oh my goodness. And I had to get surgery on my thumb. Oh, I ripped the tendon. And it was actually just like you could just pull it and it goes all the way back, like this.

Jeff
Crippled your hand.

Chris
So, uh, so thank goodness for the doctor who healed my hand. Uh, which is what we’re talking about today.

Jeff
Yes. Jesus heals a man with a crippled hand. That’s right. Wow. So he’s Chris, and I’m Jeff, and you’re watching the Bible, guys. So how’s your thumb now?

Chris
It’s fine.

Jeff
Thumb thumbs don’t come back very well, do they?

Chris
Yeah. It’s fine. I still feel it from time to time.

Jeff
I was, uh, I had a thumb injury. Uh, I was a baseball player, and I usually played shortstop, but I also could play catcher. And so I like putting on the equipment stuff. So I was also the backup catcher on one of our teams. So our catcher, uh, played on two teams. He was at a different tournament, higher level team. And he took our really good glove. Well, we had our best pitcher. He threw about 85 miles an hour, so that’s pretty fast in high school. But we had just a rag of a catcher’s mitt. So if I didn’t catch the ball right in the pocket. There wasn’t any other support and there was no thumb support. And when you’re catching over 70 miles an hour, you need some really good thumb support. And so I took three balls right off the tip of my thumb and it dislocated my thumb. And it’s never been the same never, never the rest of my life. There wasn’t any surgery to fix. It’s just my left thumb is weaker. So if you’re ever looking for a weakness in a fight. Yeah, go after my left thumb, because there is no other weakness that you’re going to have. There’s no other weakness. But. But my left thumb.

Chris
Funny. That’s funny. All right, well, today there’s a segment, uh, where, uh, Haley, she had written in a question. And so this segment is called Stump the Pastor. Okay, so here’s what Haley had written in. She said in First Corinthians chapter 11, Paul is talking about head coverings for women when they pray and that men need to keep their head uncovered. So basically my question is, as a woman, should I be covering my hair when I pray? Hmm. So I’m sure you’ve heard.

Jeff
What’s your thought?

Chris
Uh, well, uh uh, so, uh, I’ve heard this my whole life, uh, you know, because, you know, it’s a it’s a big deal when you, uh, because it’s sort of mixed together, isn’t it? Uh, with the authority of men and women and things like this. So it’s sort of like, eludes and it connects to a different topic, which is like women having authority in the church, women keeping silent, women having head coverings. It sort of, you know, falls under that whole blanket. And, um, and so I’m not going to try to answer all of that. But we do know that, you know, Aquila and Priscilla taught Apollos who was an educated person. You know, uh, we you know, we believe that women can teach in the scriptures. I think that there’s important things to understand about that. And we can, you know, answer that probably another day. But I’ve always looked at it and understood and been taught and believed that, uh, because Paul refers to the custom of the day. So in verse number two, he talks about traditions or customs, depending on your translation. And he refers very specifically to head coverings. So whether you believe that this is, you know, a head covering is just hair or whether you believe it’s, uh, an actual head covering. Here’s the good news to Hayley. You’re off the hook either way. Right? Because if it’s long hair, then it’s not a physical hair covering head covering. But if it’s a head covering, you’re off the hook anyway, because it’s a it’s a something that meant something in the first century that doesn’t mean anything anymore. So I’ve always been taught that the, um, uh, the tradition is, is that, number one, we have to understand that women were given equality at a time where women couldn’t even testify in court.

Chris
Right. So Jesus gave dignity and honor to women. And so a lot of times, women would, you know, interrupt the men when they’re speaking, you know, trying to, uh, you know, speak and use their voice, which is where the Scripture comes from, to stay silent in the church, to let the men teach, uh, that that was tradition then and then also for women to, um, uh, take off their head covering was actually looked at as a sign of rebellion against authority. Uh, which again, doesn’t mean that way. So even if you had a head covering, it still doesn’t mean that in today’s society. So so that’s that’s what I’ve always heard. I would say the vast majority of everything I’ve ever read, uh, feels like 90% of the of of of that, uh, customary belief falls under that explanation.

Jeff
Okay. Yeah.

Chris
Um, what about you?

Jeff
I’m glad you asked. We were talking about this right before the before the podcast. So, um. Uh uh one. This is where the tradition. If you’ve ever been around a lot of Christian men that have been Christians for a while, most men will take their hat off when they pray, right. It’s also where the tradition came in. Uh, quite honestly, one of the elements in American and in European world, when men would walk into a building, oftentimes they would take off their hat. Right. It was a respect thing. It’s why men take their hat off when they say the Pledge of Allegiance or sing the national anthem. It’s a it’s a respect thing, but it’s not expected for women to do that. It’s also where women wearing big hats to church on Sunday was a tradition in the West. Right in the Western culture was to wear that. It’s where the, um, Amish and the Mennonites, the ladies will wear little doilies or little little hats on, on their heads. Uh, is where this came from. Um, I would say that there’s a. Um, there’s a rule. So there’s a whole bunch of rules on how to study the Bible. It’s called hermeneutics and Bible college. Right. And one of the things is that Paul is writing from an eastern mindset, not a Western mindset. So that means that Paul is not Westerners would be very logical, this and then this. If these two things, then that equals this. And we tend to be very linear in our process, linear, whereas Paul does not do that. The Eastern and Middle Eastern mindset introduces an idea, talks about it in kind of a jumbled way, just throws out all the ideas and then comes back, restates the question, and then gives the final answer based on that.

Jeff
So he starts off saying, hey, we have a tradition. So he mentioned that there’s this custom. Then he brings up this should women be covering their hair? But when you get to the end of that chapter, uh, verse 13 says, judge among yourselves. Is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? So he’s taking us back after all those verses, he takes us back and he says, does not even nature itself teach you that if a man has long hair, it’s a dishonor to him. But if a woman has long hair, it’s a glory to her, for her hair is given to her for her covering, he says. But if anyone seems to be contentious, we have no such custom, nor do the churches of God. So he he ends it again with custom. So he starts and ends with. This is a custom thing. They had asked about this question and he’s just trying to answer it for him. But basically what he’s saying is, hey ladies, your hair is your cover, right? So so there’s a distinctness through this entire passage. It’s not about hierarchy. It’s about the importance of our genders. It’s important the importance of the idea that women should be feminine. Men should be masculine. Uh, the Old Testament had given rules about men cutting their hair. Right. And those kinds of things. So be distinctly masculine. The the Old Testament had given rules about about clothing men to be distinctly masculine, women to be distinctly feminine. And so that would be, I think, the thing so sure, he has all these other things he talks about, but when he finally restates the question, the he doesn’t mention fabric, he only mentions hair and then goes, but hey, if people want to fight about it, we don’t have any other custom, right?

Chris
So so just to be clear, uh, you you’re answering the question by saying head covering is referring to hair.

Jeff
Yes. And a woman’s longer hair would be her covering. Yes. But a man, he says it’s a what?

Chris
She clearly says yes. Yeah. So. So whether whether you believe that it’s a physical head covering and he’s using hair as examples or Jeff is saying no, if you read it this way, it falls in line, which it does, it falls. I’ve never heard that before. By the way. I told Jeff that before the podcast started. I’ve never heard that explanation before, but it does. Paul does exactly that, and he ends with conclusions. So if it is hair, here’s the good news for us today. I always try to say, why does this matter for us today? Right. So so it is written for us to read, uh, you know, it’s included in the Bible. It’s important. Right. Uh, and, and we glean things off of stories and we glean things off of things that happened back then that have anyway, the point the point is, is that for the 21st century person, um, you’re off the hook either way.

Jeff
Yeah. For, well, for the 21st century person. Distinctly feminine, distinctly masculine. Right. That would be so that doesn’t necessarily off the.

Chris
Hook, which is. No, no, no, what I’m meaning about is about head coverings. Yeah, I that’s what I said. You can glean. Yeah. You can glean principles. Right. That’s right, that’s right. From, from all sorts of stories and so principles from stories. Uh, you know, sometimes we read first century stories or even Old Testament stories, and we have a really hard time relating to Leviticus, and we have a hard time relating to the tradition of sacrificing animals.

Jeff
Right. So you pull out the principles.

Chris
Yeah. Yeah. You pull out the principles. That’s what I was trying to say. Yeah.

Jeff
So, so this is one of the benefits of learning. And I think at some point you and I are going to do some courses, right. And, and make those available on our website. And that’ll be a whole other thing that we’ll talk about someday. But in one of the courses we’ll probably do a hermeneutic hermeneutics kind of a course, which is how to study the Bible. And there are certain rules, certain guidelines that will be defined meanings of things, particularly when it comes to a guy like Paul. Paul will write entire chapters in, in the original language as one giant run on sentence. And so what happens is some heresies, some false teachings spring up when people pull a statement out of the center of Paul’s idea, rather than allowing Paul to bracket the idea, you have to read the beginning and the ending of the idea, or you’re going to have a wrong opinion about what Paul says because his thought process, he was not trained to think linearly like you were. You were trained to think algebra. You were trained to think one plus one equals two. You were trained to think front to end. Right. And he was not. He was trained to think present an argument, debate the argument with all of the arguments, and then come back and summarize at the end. And so you have to take the beginning and the end. So what he does. As he begins this question with a custom, he makes a custom statement. Then he asks the question. Then he rattles around with shaving your hair. Not shaving your hair and coverings and no coverings. But then he comes to the end and he restates the question, okay, now we know where his we all these other things are just incidental.

Jeff
And then he restates the question and he says, it’s a shame for men to have long hair. Don’t be feminine. It’s it’s a glory to a woman to have long hair. And that was given to you as you’re covering. And then he ends the way he began. It’s a custom. Yeah. Right. So he’s letting us know here. Otherwise what we want, what we don’t want to do is start saying, well, Paul wrote that in the old days, but it doesn’t apply today, right? Right. That’s the danger if we just start dismissing everything as a custom. Unless he specifically says it’s a custom. He started and ended with it’s a custom, but the next page or the next passage is he starts talking about communion. He does not say it’s a custom there, right? Right. So the only the times when he brackets a statement saying it’s a custom, then it’s only a custom, you can do what you want to do. Then he gives the principle and that is be masculine, be feminine. Yeah, but he’s not giving you the rule that you have to have some kind of fabric on your head.

Chris
Which which is why, by the way, to be extra clear, which is why we’re not saying that men with long hair are feminine today. Right? So, so otherwise you could take it to mean that. But because he says it’s a custom. I remember in the 70s, uh, you know, hippies. Remember we were coming off of hippies. Yeah. And when I was, when I was young, you know, I started going to church, bouncing around, uh, you know, all those old timey preachers would talk about how, uh, you can’t have long hair, you know, because it’s feminine. You know, it’s a shame. It’s a shame and all these kind of things. And then. And then right behind him as a picture of Jesus with hair down, even even though.

Jeff
It’s not in the churches I went to, Jesus didn’t have long hair in the churches I went to.

Chris
Oh, gee whiz, you got to be kidding me. I’m serious. Oh my goodness gracious. I’ve never even seen a picture with Jesus who didn’t have long hair. But but the Baptists have to repaint it, right? Yeah. So it’s so funny.

Jeff
It wasn’t just Baptist, but. Yeah. Yeah. So. So that’d be the issue. Even, like, you know, when you go, oh, Samson had long hair. John the Baptist had long hair. That was a Nazarite vow, right? Right. And so it was not a glory to them to walk around with long hair, because the Jews were the men were taught that they were supposed to have pulled hair. Right. It was supposed to be tapered in the back. They would have the curls on the side, but long in the back or short in the back. And so for these guys, Samson, it was not his glory. Now he took it to be his glory. Or Absalom took his long hair to be his glory, sure. But it was in defiance of culture. It stood out in culture. It was a surprise to see a man with long hair. Uh, and so, you know, it was a it was a humility. It was supposed to be a humility thing, that they both took pride in their humility, which I’m super proud of. My humility, by the way.

Chris
Hey, uh, we need to move on, but let me tell you, I went to the Hall of Fame, uh, to Hall of Fame game, watch the Cleveland Browns and the Jets. And, uh, we were walking behind this, uh, guy who? Him and his son had the same exact, uh, hairstyle, and, uh, he was shaved on the side. Shaved? Yeah. This guy weighed about £280. Uh, mostly muscle, but not quite all muscle. You could tell he at one time was muscle. Yeah, right. And his. He had a big mullet, uh, down in the middle of his back. And it was completely and utterly permed. Wow. I’ve never even seen this in my entire life.

Jeff
That’s in the 80s, man.

Chris
Yeah, and we’re talking like like like curly curl firm, right? And I looked over and I said, okay, number one, that guy’s hair is awesome. And then, and then and then my buddy Jeff goes, and I got to tell you, he goes, that’s the right guy to pull it off. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He said, because whatever he wants to wear, he can, he can wear he can wear whatever he wants to wear. And it’s like, that is, let me tell you something. It didn’t look feminine on that guy. Yeah. It looked about as masking as you could look. Well, we.

Jeff
Took a long time on this question. Yeah. And I thought it was a good, really good question. Right.

Chris
When you’re because this segment is, is all Bible driven anyway. It’s not it’s not drafting ice cream.

Jeff
And then and then the passage that we’re reading today, uh, lo and behold, is Jesus’s healing again on the Sabbath. Yeah. So we’ve kind of talked about this topic a lot.

Chris
Yeah. Well, you know.

Jeff
This is a neat one.

Chris
He’s driving it home.

Jeff
Yeah. Yeah. So so this one shows how incredibly ingenious Jesus is. So we’re just going to read it. It comes up in Matthew, Mark and Luke. Uh and so we’ll start off in Matthew 12 verse nine through 14. It says, Then Jesus went over to their synagogue where he noticed a man with a deformed hand. The Pharisees asked Jesus, does the law permit a person to work by healing on the Sabbath? They were hoping he would say yes so they could bring charges against him. And he answered, if you had a sheep that fell into a well on the Sabbath, wouldn’t you work to pull it out? Of course you would. Which by the law, by the way, Moses law allowed that it specifically said that, um, uh, and how much more valuable is a person than a sheep? Yes. The law permits a person to do good on the Sabbath. Then he said to the man, hold out your hand. So the man held out his hand, and it was restored just like the other one. And then the Pharisees called a meeting to plot how to kill Jesus. They want to kill this guy over healing a guy, right? Um, Mark says Jesus went to the synagogue. Again and notice a man with a deformed hand, since it was a Sabbath. Jesus enemies bless you. Yeah. Thank you. Jesus enemies watched him closely. If he healed the man’s hand, they planned to accuse him of working on the Sabbath. And Jesus said to the man with the deformed hand, come and stand in front of everyone. Then he turned to his critics and asked, does the law permit good deeds on the Sabbath? Or is it a day for doing evil? Is this a day to save life or destroy it?

Jeff
But they wouldn’t answer him, so he looked around at them angrily and was deeply saddened by their hard hearts. Then he said to the man, hold out your hand. So the man held out his hand, and it was restored at once. The Pharisees went away and met with the supporters of Herod to plot how to kill Jesus. There’s extra details in that one. That’s. Yeah, and it says on another Sabbath day, a man with a deformed right hand was in the synagogue while Jesus was teaching the teachers of religious law, and the Pharisees watched Jesus closely. If he healed the man’s hand, they planned to accuse him of working on the Sabbath. But Jesus knew their thoughts. And he said to the man with the deformed hand, come and stand in front of everyone. So the man came forward. And then Jesus said to his critics, I have a question for you. Does the law permit good deeds on the Sabbath, or is it a day for doing evil? Is this a day to save life or to destroy it? And he looked around at them one by one. And then he said to the man, hold out your hand. So the man held out his hand, and it was restored. And at this the enemies of Jesus were wild with rage, and began to discuss what to do with him.

Chris
Wow.

Jeff
I love this story. I absolutely love it. There’s so many cool details in it. First of all, here’s a guy. His right hand is withered. Jesus is walking through the synagogue. He sees the guy in one of the passages I think is Matthew. They ask him, is it legal to heal him? In the other two passages, Jesus turns around and says, well, what are you saying? Is it is it legal to do good, or should I just do evil? And then in Mark it says Jesus is mad at them because they have such hard hearts and don’t care about them. And he was.

Chris
Sad.

Jeff
Yeah, it was sad. Sad. Not mad.

Chris
No, no, he was angry and deeply.

Jeff
Sad and deeply saddened. And that they had such hard hearts and didn’t care about this man. The rule was more important than the man. But then they’re waiting to see if he says yes. It’s illegal to heal. And he heals the guy. Because Jesus is already on record. He’s healed a bunch of people on Sabbath. Then he breaks the law and he admitted it in front of all these witnesses. Now, finally, we have the ability to get him, you know, executed. But if he goes, no, it’s not legal. Well, now he’s submitting to their authority and either way they win. Jesus finds himself in a in kind of a tight spot there. Um, and so what does he do? His answer is he doesn’t heal the guy at all. He just says, stick your hand out because it’s not illegal to stick your hand out, right? Right. He doesn’t touch him. He doesn’t say, poof, you’re healed. He doesn’t say anything.

Chris
Well, he just says, stick your hand out. He heals him. But. But there’s no evidence that it was Jesus who healed him, right? Right. He just says, stick your hand up. But we all know that Jesus healed him, right? Right. But he just said, stick your hand out. And then it says, and it was restored. Right. There was nothing.

Jeff
They could grab a.

Chris
Hold of. Remember when he healed the guy? Genius in other parts of the scripture that we will get to probably later when he heals the guy who’s blind? Yeah, he puts mud on his eyes. Yeah, yeah, right. Which, by the way, he doesn’t have to do anything, right? Right, right. God speaks into existence, right? Right. Uh accelio. He speaks something, you know, from nothing, right? So he has the power to do whatever he wants to do, you know? You know. Hey, come to my house. No, no. If you speak, I know that my servant will be healed. I’ve not seen such great faith in history. But if he had spoken it.

Jeff
They would have said, right. He took credit for it, and he did the work of healing, right? So he didn’t speak it.

Chris
Yeah. My point was, he doesn’t have to put mud on the guy’s eyes. Yeah. He didn’t touch him. He doesn’t have to put his fingers in the guy’s ears to heal the deaf. But he does all those things he lays his hand on, uh, on different things and like, to your point, he speaks and says, take up your mat and walk. Right, right. But in this case, he goes, hold out your hand. And that’s it.

Jeff
Every other time Jesus references the healing, right? Right. Um. Uh. Hey, Jesus. If you wanted to, you could heal me. And Jesus says I do want to. You’re healed. Yeah. Uh, they let him down. Hey, your sins are forgiven. But to prove to you that I have the right to forgive sins, take up your mat and walk. There’s always a command about the healing. Except in this one. The only thing he says is take your hand out because they’re trying to trap him. Right? If he. If he goes, no, I’m not allowed to heal on the Sabbath. Now he’s submitting to their authority, and that totally changes the dynamic. If he goes, it’s legal to heal on the Sabbath. Then, um, they would say, oh, he’s breaking the law on purpose. If he because he, he’s he’s false teacher. If he says it’s illegal to heal on the Sabbath, but I’m going to heal him anyways, now he’s breaking the law. So they felt like they totally had him trapped in this one. Yeah. And he doesn’t get he’s so it’s it’s almost slick. It’s so clever. So I’m his response.

Chris
I’m Hollywood izing it in my mind. And I’m picturing this. How would you film this. And so they’re on the edge of their seat waiting for him to do this thing. And then, uh, and so Jesus gets them to admit and he says, does it not say that if a sheep falls in the pit, you can hold it out? He gets them to say, yes. Yeah, yeah. And then he goes, so it is legal to do good, right? So he doesn’t say anything about healing. He says he goes, it’s legal to do good. Don’t you agree? And they have to agree.

Jeff
So should we, should we take life or give life right. Yeah. He says it.

Chris
So is this a day of evil or good? So he gets them to admit all of those things, and then he says, hold out your hand. And it’s almost like when he holds out his hand, it’s almost like it hasn’t happened yet, right? Like, is Jesus going to do it or not? And all of a sudden, by itself, it heals and I can just see Jesus sort of shifting his eyes. Right. You know what I mean? And he just goes. He just goes.

Jeff
Yeah. And this is faith, right? It’s it’s the faith that heals this guy. Right? And it’s so powerful. It’s just a brilliant move on Jesus part. And one of my takeaways on this I can remember I had a, a, uh, Sunday school teacher, I think I was in middle school or maybe, maybe ninth grade. So seventh, eighth grade, something like that. And, uh, one of my teachers, he taught this and he said, hey, guys, there’s so many lessons. And he talked about all these different lessons. He said, but here’s the one I want you to go home with today, because at your age at eighth grade or whatever, at your age, you think you’re so smart, he said, so go home and realize you will never outsmart Jesus, right? Because he didn’t get Jesus, didn’t get outsmarted there. There will never be. They tried so hard to capture him. That’s why at the end, Jesus tells his disciples, nobody’s going to take my life from you. I’m just going to lay it down, right? Right is they tried so hard for three and a half years to to catch Jesus. Yeah. And every single time he had the brilliant response. Yeah.

Chris
It’s it’s, uh, we’re about to we’re going to eventually read The Woman Caught in Adultery. Yeah. Where he said, they said you have option A or option B, and he goes, I’m going to make a statement that is outside of the parameters of everything that seems like right. And everybody goes, uh, brilliant. Like, who would have ever thought right? And then both.

Jeff
Of us, we have the personality type. We’re both entp. So we love options, right? Right. And, uh, um, if you know, Myers-Briggs, the Entp or both of us have maximizer in the strengthsfinder, we love options. And the fact that Jesus always found a third option is brilliant. He’s just brilliant. So you’re never going to outsmart Jesus, right? Right.

Chris
Yeah. Well, I mean, think about that. The application of that. So, uh, what does that mean? In our own lives, we think that, uh, we can get away with stuff. You know, the Bible talks about, you know, what goes around, comes around. It talks about your sins, will find you out. It talks about, uh, you know, you can choose your own choices, but you can’t choose the consequences. All these different things in our lives where we think we’re clever, we think we can just get away with certain things. And by the way, that’s not just true with God. It’s true with, uh, bad behavior in business. You know, uh, conducting ourselves poorly at the office. Yeah. Uh, you know, with our with our with our relationships and, uh, all that to say, we may think we’re more clever, but in the end, what God says about how to handle our business, how to conduct ourselves morally, how to handle our relationships is always going to win out. Yeah, because none of us are more clever than Jesus. Yeah, right. The advice Jesus gives on how to handle our money is the best advice, right? Right. You are not more clever than Jesus on how to handle your money. That’s exactly right, because you may end up with more money, but you’re going to end up with a lot less of something else. That’s right, that’s right.

Jeff
And then. And then if you make a mistake, make it on the side of helping people, right? Right. So, so if you don’t know what to do, help somebody.

Chris
Oh that’s great right.

Jeff
That’d be the other one. So I think for me as I was, if I grew up in a world where you never break the Sabbath, but I’m being. Captivated by this guy named Jesus, and he has the power to help this poor guy. Now, I’m conflicted between my belief system on on the Sabbath and what do I do for this guy? I don’t know what I would do. I personally don’t know what I would have done in that moment because the, you know, it was so deeply ingrained in them. But Jesus said, you heal the guy. That’s why he says it’s permitted to do good on the Sabbath, right? Right. And so if you’re going to make a mistake, make a mistake helping.

Chris
People, that’s a great place to end. So we will see you next time on The Bible Guys.