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 The Bible Guys. My name is Chris, this is Jeff, my faithful companion, and we are here today with excitement.

Jeff:
We are here to just brighten your day. Well, that’s why I’m here. I’m here to brighten everybody’s day. Well, you brighten my day, Jeff. So, I would imagine. I can only imagine what it must be like to be you. I can only imagine. Great movie. That’d be great. So, I don’t know why you’re here, but I’m here to just brighten everybody’s day.

Chris:
Well, we don’t know why the listeners are here. They keep tuning in.

Jeff:
To have their day brightened, Chris.

Chris:
I just told you. Well, to learn about the Bible. And to get to know more about us. Yes. In fact, that is a great segue into the first segue.

Jeff:
That’s right. What is it called? Segue into the segment. That’s correct. It’s called Storytime.

Chris:
Storytime.

Jeff:
Yes. And so we’re starting a brand new series today, right? So we just finished up 250 events in the life of Jesus. Let’s acknowledge that. All the way through the four gospels. And that was pretty great. Yeah, for sure. And thanks for carrying me through that whole thing. Well, you know, I do what I can. And then now we’re going all the way back to the very beginning. We’re going to go back to the book of Genesis, and we’re going to take the highlights of the Old Testament. Right now we have 105 highlights laid out, but there’s a bunch more. I just haven’t finished the work of laying them all out yet. But yeah, we’ll go through a couple hundred.

Chris:
You’ll get there. These things take time.

Jeff:
Exactly. So anyways, we’re going to go through the highlights of the Old Testament. So today we’re going to share a funny story about something that happened to you when you first started doing ministry full time.

Chris:
Wow, a funny story that happened to me when I first started doing ministry full-time.

Jeff:
Yeah, and I have to give you a caveat. If your story is long, she has here, for time purposes, it’s okay if only one person shares the story. Right, right. It’s almost like Desiree knows.

Chris:
Yeah, well, do you have one off the top of your head? I do, I have a couple. Okay, go ahead and share one, and then I’ll think of mine while you’re sharing, depending on if you’re long-winded.

Jeff:
Right after I started working full-time in ministry, it was at a Baptist church down in Texas. And we had a big baptistry on the back of the stage. So if you think of the big stage, and it was one of those ones that had thrones, you know, where all the pastors sit in thrones. And then there was the choir loft behind that. And then up above there was a big baptistry. And there’s like a little glass window along the bottom. You could see the water. You see people go underneath. So it was kind of deep because that meant both people had to get into this big baptistry. And the guy who did most of the baptizing was our youth pastor. He was assistant pastor there, but he’d been there the longest. The senior pastor and myself were both young, hadn’t been there very long. He’d been there a long time. So most people wanted Monroe to baptize. So it was a suit and tie church. We always wore suit and tie, right? We always looked really good. So there was a baptizing suit coat for each of us that we could wear over top of waders. So you wouldn’t see that we were wearing waders, but you’d see us wearing our suit and tie. Because you were in the water. Because we were down in the water, that’s right. So Monroe goes in, And Monroe was maybe, still is, I was going to say was, hi Monroe if you’re listening, was 5’6″, maybe 5’7″, and he goes down in this water, and at the time he probably weighed 150 pounds max, 145 pounds max, and this lady comes in and she’s easily 6 feet tall, and she’s two and a half times his size, right? So he leans in, I saw him whisper to her, and then she nodded and everything, and so he goes through the thing, here, plug your nose, and he baptized in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. When he went to dunk her, she panicked going under the water, and she grabbed him, and she pulled him under the water with him. So I’m just sitting there watching, all of a sudden, she disappears, Monroe disappears under the water, there’s just thrashing, it looked like… It looked like a shark attack, you know, just water flying, feet and hands everywhere. And Monroe comes up out of the water for a breath, and she grabbed him and pulled him back down. So, and you can just see, because there’s that little glass window, you can see below the water, you see panic on his face, he’s trying to get up. So finally, everybody’s laughing. That was the only baptism that day. She gets up, she goes out, but now his waders are full of, you know, like a hundred gallons of water. He can’t get out. He can’t get out of the Baptistry. He just stuck there. We had to cut him out of his… out of his waiters. So that’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in my life.

Chris:
Wow. That is unbelievable. Okay. Mine is very fast. One of the first times in my entire life that I was going on a trip, I was only maybe 20 years old. One of the first times you’ve ever gone on a trip in your life.

Jeff:
I’m sorry.

Chris:
As a youth pastor, it was one of the first trips I ever took as a leader.

Jeff:
As a leader.

Chris:
Okay. I said it better. I was going to say. So then I went to the U-Haul place and they were, I was waiting in line and there’s a bunch of people getting a U-Haul. And I was just trying to hook up a, one of those U-Hauls attached to a van, like the little, you know, the little attachment right there. Well, I’m just waiting and waiting and nobody’s helping me. And so anyway, I got kind of bored and I noticed that my, uh, you know, the, the thing was reserved for me. So I picked it up and I pulled it and I set it on top of, the ball, right? Right. But I didn’t lock it in and I didn’t chain it up at all. Right. So I just, I just sort of had set it there. That’s all I did. Well, apparently the guy who was helping me came out, looked and saw that it was on my truck and thought to himself, Oh, look,

Jeff:
This young man looks competent, like he knows what he’s doing.

Chris:
Or he thought another employee did it for him, right? But he looks like, oh, it’s already hooked up. So he goes inside and he says, OK, you’re all set. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Well, I’m assuming that he’s hooking it up out there. Right. So, you know, so anyway, so I that’s that’s the mistake. So I pull out and I go down. I’m probably like. a quarter of a mile down the road. I’m up to like 40 miles an hour. And all of a sudden this thing comes off. Well, it turns out that he noticed that the chains weren’t on. So he went ahead and hooked the chains up. Okay. Oh yeah. So, but he didn’t screw the ball thing on. Well, the ball thing came off. Well, you know what happens? It’s got like a, okay. So it fell first. And then when, when it falls down, it launches like a catapult. Right? Does that make sense? So the chains held it. So it was still there, but it came off of the thing, the hitch, and it falls down, it catapults, and it slams into the back of my van. And then because the chains are on, it’s continuing to slam against the van. And it literally smashes the van to smithereens on the back end. And by the way, I’m getting this the day of the trip.

Jeff:
Is this a church van?

Chris:
This is a church van. And we’re talking like the kids are waiting on me and the parents are waiting on me. Okay. So, you know, last minute kind of thing. So I’m driving down the road and all of a sudden when it smashes, the glass, and this is a 15 passenger van, had flown up and hit the back of my head, hit the windshield. That’s how, that’s how much impact. So all of a sudden I hear, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. I’m like, oh no, oh no. So come find out like, you know, everything was delayed a couple hours. They drove out and then they tried to blame me. And then all of a sudden it was my boss who went in and said, okay, come on. He goes, you’re liable for this. So then they had to end up paying for the repair of the van. Wow. Yeah. It was terrible. Wow. But it was me. I was just being incompetent me.

Jeff:
Well, no, you were being helpful and somebody didn’t finish their job.

Chris:
That is actually accurate.

Jeff:
There you go. Yes. We’ll see. I’m on your side, Chris.

Chris:
Yes, you are. Here we are 30, 30 years later. I wish you would have been there that day.

Jeff:
That’s right. You were just trying to be helpful. It wasn’t your job to hook it up, but, uh, okay. So, or the other side is mind your own business. Let somebody do their work. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris:
Well, that’s, that’s what I got back then. That’s what I got. Okay. Yep.

Jeff:
Well, there you go. I hope that suffice. That was our first time ever with Storytime.

Chris:
Yes.

Jeff:
And it was seven minutes. Yeah. So good job on that one. Yeah. That’s a lot. Well, hey, as we said, we’re kicking off a brand new series called, what are we calling it? I don’t even know what we’re calling it.

Chris:
I would say Highlights of the Old Testament. Highlights of the Old Testament. Testament.

Chris:
Testament. What? That’s the soundbite? I don’t know. Okay.

Chris:
Hey, we’re going to make up time because today it’s only one verse.

Jeff:
Is this the only time we’ve ever done one verse?

Chris:
Oh, for sure it is. Yeah.

Jeff:
For sure. I think so. Yes. We’ve done a couple that were two or three verses, but this is the first ever.

Chris:
But the good news is there’s a lot packed in here because it’s the most important verse of the Bible.

Jeff:
Yeah, I guess so. I guess it’s the most, none of the rest of the Bible matters if the first verse isn’t true.

Chris:
Genesis 1.1.

Jeff:
There you go. So would you like me to read it or would you like to have the honors? No, no, no. It’s all you. It’s me? Buckle up. Here it comes. Here we go. Genesis 1.1. Okay. The Bible says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. There you go. Okay. Thanks for tuning in. We’ll see you tomorrow.

Chris:
No, no, no. It’s unbelievable. In the beginning. God created the heavens and the earth. And you could break that down word by word. In the beginning, God, God in the beginning, God in the beginning was God, what? Created the heavens and the earth. There was no heaven, there was no earth, a void, what? I mean, there’s so many implications just in that one verse. Yeah.

Jeff:
So first of all, this one verse establishes the fact that there’s a God. Yes. Right. So for a Christian, or, you know, this was the, in Moses gave us this in the Pentateuch. So this would have been for the Christian and the Jew. This is the defining verse that establishes that there’s a God and that there’s a God who is active in the universe. He actively created what was. So there was nothing. And then God said, I’m going to make it. And there was everything. That’s how the process happens in the first chapter of the book of Genesis. So tomorrow we’re going to pick up and I think we’re reading where God creates humanity, right? But what you’ll notice is if you read through the rest of these passages, God speaks right? It’s always speaking. He says, let there be light and bang, there was light. And then he goes, let there be space between the waters, you know, separate the heavens and the earth and all those things. So he’s speaking out creation over these six days. And so it establishes, first of all, that there’s a creator. I pulled up an idea here, a thing that highlights the eight major elements of Genesis chapter one, verse one. It says, God is the creator, right? So these very first words in the passage, in the beginning, God created. Make it clear that according to scripture, God’s the ultimate cause and he’s the ultimate source of creation. It’s very significant. We’re not just finding a God. And I think sometimes people are tempted to go find a God for good luck. Right? What they’re thinking is, man, you know what I need? I got problems. I need somebody better than me to fix them. Rabbit’s foot. Right. Yeah, exactly. And it goes way beyond that. Now, God does, you know, intervene and does step in and help us in our problems. But ultimately, first, we have to understand it goes way beyond his great desire to solve your problems. Yes. God is the creator of everything. He’s the author of everything. He’s the source and the cause of everything.

Chris:
Are you going to expand on every point like that?

Jeff:
No, I was just highlighting this one idea.

Chris:
Yeah, because that is an unbelievable thing to talk about just there. That’s a podcast right there.

Jeff:
I set it up because I wanted you to unpack it.

Chris:
Yes, yes. Well, I mean, there’s so much to unpack.

Jeff:
Because I usually give like the facts and then you give the color commentary. Is that what it is? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s kind of like we’re calling a baseball game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I’m like, he winds up, then is the pitch. And then you’re like, you know, he can throw 105 miles an hour. Right, right. Okay.

Chris:
My favorite show that I watch every day, I think it’s every day, is Big Bang Theory. And it’s based on the fact that it’s the Big Bang, right? I mean, the title is at least, right? But there is some sort of religion thing where his mom’s totally religious and she believes in God and then he doesn’t. He’s a scientist and all these kinds of things. You’ve never seen it, right?

Jeff:
I’ve never seen an episode.

Chris:
Okay, yeah, it’s pretty wonderful. So anyway, the point is, is that in what you just said, in that first thing that God is the creator of all things, is, you know, it matches up with Creation vs. Evolution. I mean, that’s not just a podcast, that’s a series, right? Yeah. So the idea that people think that, you know, science and God cannot go together, And the unbelievable thing is this, science, the more people dig into science, those scientists who aren’t even Christians would, you know, there’s been like Blaise Pascal, there’s been different scientists over the years who have started off not as Christians, And then when they try to, you know, press into the Big Bang Theory and the precision of the universe, and they try to get into all these different details, they become Christians because they say the more you press into science, the more you realize it goes hand-in-hand with Genesis. Right? They don’t have to be separate. But I think a long time ago when we were kids, it felt separate, didn’t it? It felt like it was either evolution versus creation, and these two were pitted against each other as if science and Genesis were enemies and they could not go together. Mainly because the Earth’s billions and billions of years old versus no, no, no, you know, that’s only thousands and all that kind of stuff, right?

Jeff:
Yeah, I think it’s funny. This verse specifically for me is always of interest whenever I run into somebody who… This happened to me. This happened to me… I’m on plane a lot. It happened to me just before Christmas, so a couple months ago. This guy was talking, asked me what I do. I mentioned I was a pastor. And so it leaned into, oh, talk about this faith thing. He just was really interested in why somebody would give their life to talking about faith. And he kind of implied maybe I was a charlatan, you know, a little bit. And then he goes, well, you know, I just believe in science. And I said, that’s amazing, so do I. Right, that’s what I’m talking about. And he goes, what? He says, so you’re a pastor who believes in science? I said, absolutely. I said, so thus far, I’ve only ever seen science corrected by the Bible. I’ve never seen the Bible corrected by science. He goes, give me one instance. I said, oh, I don’t know. For the first several thousand years of human society, they believed that the universe was eternal. And now we realize it’s expanding, which means it had to have had a beginning. The whole concept of a bang, I think, in your system was there was nothing, and suddenly there was something. That’s amazing because this book 4,000 years ago, or whenever Moses wrote this 4,000 years ago, he claimed that there was nothing and then there was something. Then science said, oh, no, no, no, it was always here. And then even to the time of Einstein, they were still questioning whether or not the universe was permanent or eternal, or whether or not there was a beginning. Right. And I said, so, I mean, dude, that’s only the first verse in the Bible. So if you want to go on and he started laughing, he goes, well, that’s of interest. And then we leaned in and it opened up this conversation about science versus the Bible, all this stuff. I said, dude, that’s just the first verse. And you led him to Christ. I did not. No, no, no. Okay. All right. After a while, he put his headphones on and ordered a drink, fell asleep.

Chris:
That’s it. That’s it. It’s still a good story.

Jeff:
It was a very good conversation, a very friendly conversation.

Chris:
My good friend used to tell me, whenever you have a story that needs a good ending, he says, and just simply say, and then I found $5.

Jeff:
And then I found $5.

Chris:
Can I read real quick before we move on to the next one of those eight things? There’s a really cool note in the Life Application Study Bible. We recommend it. Yeah, we love it. We love it. And this is how it reads. It says, the simple statement, God created the heavens and the earth is one of the most challenging concepts confronting the modern mind. The vast galaxy we live in is spinning at the incredible speed of 490,000 miles an hour. But even at this breakneck speed, our galaxy still needs 200 million years to make one rotation. And there are over 1 billion other galaxies just like ours in the universe. Some scientists say that the number of stars in the creation equaled the number of grains on the sand. and all the beaches in the world. Yet this complex sea of spinning stars functions with a remarkable order of efficiency. To say that the universe just happened or evolved requires more faith than to believe that God is behind these amazing statistics. God truly did create a wonderful universe.

Jeff:
Well, that was one of the phrases I mentioned is I said, to be honest with you, I’m not sure I have enough faith to actually reject a God. Because he had commented on it, well, it takes a lot of faith to believe in a God. And I said, I think it’s the other way. I think to just believe that it randomly happened and that you are intelligent enough to just sit here and have a conversation about it and contemplate our place and our purpose in the universe and the beginning of it. I said, dude, snails aren’t having this conversation as far as we know. you and I are, the diversity of life on this planet, the scale of the universe is almost absurd. The fact that we live on absolutely a mathematical razor’s edge in order to have life exist on this planet is just unbelievable. It’s unfathomable to me. So I said, to be honest with you, I have a hard time believing that there is no God. I don’t think I have enough faith to reject the idea of a creator in my mind. It’s too precise. And I said, and that doesn’t even deal with my genetics. The fact that I got a billion lines of code in my DNA describing who I am, I said, there is nothing else in your life. You don’t believe. And he had a book on his desk or on the table in front of him. I said, surely you don’t believe that all those letters just randomly showed up in the book to tell you the story that you’re reading, right? You look at letters and you see information. And with that information, you automatically, and this doesn’t take a lot of faith, believe that there was an intelligence behind those organized letters that gave you the information that you’re taking in through your eyes that are magnificently created. I said, so dude, I just don’t have enough faith to believe that there’s not a God.

Chris:
Yeah. Well, somebody said, if you figure out the mathematical odds, it’d be like taking a watch, like the watch that’s on my, uh, you know, wrist and taking it and putting it in a paper bag and smashing it with a hammer until it’s almost ground to dust. And then shaking the bag and saying, uh, what are the odds that you’ll shake this back into a perfect functioning watch? Right. Right. And that’s, and those odds are greater or less than right. right? There’s a comedian that talked about how he said, well, people believe that God designed the universe. And then there’s a group of people that believe that nothing designed the universe. And he goes, so either you believe in a God, something that you can’t, you know, see, smell, hear, or science can’t prove, or you believe in nothing, which is something that you can’t see, hear, smell, or science can’t prove.

Chris:
And he goes, he goes, well, some people say that God doesn’t exist. He goes, you know what really doesn’t exist? Nothing. Nothing doesn’t exist. Let me tell you that, nothing doesn’t exist, you know, which is hilarious. So anyway.

Jeff:
So this establishes then for the Christian, this passage establishes the fact that there is a creator and not only that there is a creator, but he made the heavens of the earth. And then the rest of this chapter is he specifically in order, he creates an atmosphere and a planet, and then he separates water from the land, and then he raises up stars in the sun, moon, and stars in the universe for time and day and all that kind of stuff. And then he creates food on the planet, on the dry land, he creates fish in the sea, and then finally humanity. And This passage, the first chapter in the most important book in history, articulates the fact that this is a creator that didn’t just spin things off and ignore us, but he’s been active, active in his creation from the very beginning with a sovereign plan, right? And so one of the greatest exercises you could go through, and maybe this is the journey of your entire life, is to discover what is your purpose, because he made you on purpose, and he made everything around you on purpose. And so to discover your purpose and then fulfill it is the greatest discovery that I think you can have, apart from how to have a relationship with him.

Chris:
Yeah, that’s great. Do you want to work through that list? Because when you read it earlier, it was pretty phenomenal.

Jeff:
Oh yeah. So all I said was that this, this little list I have is God is the creator. It also identifies the Trinity in the first chapter. It mentions that in the beginning, God created the earth. The Bible says that over the waters there, the Holy spirit hovered. And then it was the word of God who spoke everything in existence. John 1, 1 tells us Jesus is the word. Yeah. Right.

Chris:
And I think somewhere in there, it says we too.

Jeff:
Yeah. And then it said, let us make man. That’s right. And then there’s the divine plan. He very clearly, there’s an organized, we call it the solar system. You and I have a circular system and a respiratory system. God was very, very systematic in his plan. And it’s not just for that, but for time as well. It also establishes sovereignty and his authority. If you make it, it’s yours. I don’t know if you, do you have that sense? Sure. Right. Yeah. So I signed it at the bottom. Yeah, you write your name on it. This is my, I did this, right? So God is the authority. It highlights the power of God’s word. Just the fact that he used Jesus to speak into existence, everything that exists, God’s word. When God says something, it’s going to happen. And then the order of creation, which by the way, follows exactly. If you believe in evolution, it still follows the exact same path, right? That there was nothing, then there was something. And then, you know, you had to have food before you had people and, you know, all those kinds of things. And it works out that way. Then human stewardship, the fact that he gives us a job. He said, now I want you to take care of this planet. And then ultimately, since he’s the source, he’s also the one we’re dependent on. Yeah.

Chris:
Yeah. So somebody once told me that we were created for relationship. And, you know, number one, you know, what does God tell us? We were created to be in relationship with God. That’s why he created us. And then number two, to be in relationship with each other. So God brought Eve on the scene and then, you know, told us to be fruitful and multiply. And then interestingly enough, he said, we also, he also created humankind to be in relationship with the planet. And he said, and then he just dissected it and said, think about the fact that we breathe in oxygen and we breathe out carbon dioxide. And then the trees and the plants of the world, quite literally breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. And he’s like, hello. It’s incredible. Just, it’s incredible. And then, and then in just the, just the fact that, and then there was a few other things I think mentioned.

Jeff:
And that’s why when, when at the end of this chapter, it says, when God was done making everything, he said, it was very good. What God made was perfect. We’ll find in the next couple of days, it all broke. But what God’s original plan was, is it was perfect. And it was perfectly symbiotic. Everything related to everything else in a way that all worked.

Chris:
Sin broke everything that exists. And not just us, but also even the effects of the planet.

Jeff:
And we’ll uncover that in the next couple of days.

Chris:
Well, that looks like about our time. Good job, Chris. Hey, how about us talking about one verse? Yeah. And I honestly, I think we could have done a whole series on this one verse.

Jeff:
Oh, absolutely. And for those of you that don’t sit in our office every day, Chris and I could do this over less than that. We could talk for 30 minutes.

Chris:
Give us a word. Any word. Just any word. We’ll talk about it. All right.

Chris:
Well, hey, hopefully we will see you next time on The Bible Guys.